A slight nod in reply. "Everything in this bank. I'm sorry, Mr. Cole, but we had no choice. We had to follow the directives of the Treasury Department. We've sent you a registered letter, explaining what has happened... "
Living the way I did, my mail ended up in a post office box in Tyler, and usually a twice-a-week visit was good enough. But not today, apparently.
"What's next?" I asked.
"I imagine they will be in contact with you, Mr. Cole. But I can’t tell you when. In the meantime, 1 suggest you get a lawyer. A very good one. And prepare, well, prepare for a long haul." She lowered her voice some, as if afraid the banking gods would hear her. "When you get caught up in the gears of something as large as the Treasury Department, it can be a very long time before something is resolved. A very long time, even if eventually is resolved in your favor.”
She paused. "A very long time," she repeated.
I paid very little attention to what was on the road ahead of me as I headed east, back to Tyler Beach and my home, the day now overcast again. The little gang of D EA agents and their head, Laura Reeves, had just shown me what they were capable of. In spite of my now-serious financial condition and my anger, I was impressed. Just a couple of days. That's all it took to seize my funds and stop my monthly stipend. Fine, I thought, making a left hand turn onto Atlantic Avenue, heading up to the Lafayette House. On my property was a hidden safe, and contained therein was about fifteen thousand dollars. I also had a couple of credit cards with zero balances that allowed cash advances. If need be, I could live off those resources for a year or two, until Reeves and her friends got tired of waiting and went on to something else.
I made a right into the Lafayette House parking lot, now almost feeling a hell of a lot better than I did back at the bank branch. I had taken a hit, but it was survivable. And if Reeves wanted to play hardball, well, I could take up the challenge. I could get one of the lawyers in town that I was acquainted with to take up my case, to start raising a fuss. Publicity? Reeves had said she was doing everything to avoid publicity, and I could show her in a day or two of my own what I could do in return. Hell, I could even come clean with Paula Quinn, and that would be a story I'm sure even her new boss could be interested in.
Down I went, over the bumpy dirt path to my house, and I thought I saw something on the front door as I parked my Ford in the garage. I got out and made my way across the thin lawn. The wind had picked up some, and the booming sound of the waves was comforting as I saw my brand-new front door and three white business-sized envelopes flapping in the breeze. All three had been stapled on the door, and I reached up and tore them free.
I looked at them in the late-afternoon light, the wind still malting them move in my hands. The first envelope was from the Internal Revenue Service was a receipt for cash funds seized at my residence in the amount of $15,113.12. These funs were going to be held in escrow until the completion of an investigation into a matter involving disbursements from the Department of Defense. So much for my well-hidden safe. I closed my eyes for just a second, and then went to envelope number two. It was from the Department of the Interior. This one was a bit longer and more in-depth than the IRS note, but boiled down, the message was pretty simple. When I had come out here years ago, the title to the house and property-which had once belonged to the Department of the Interior --- had been transferred to my name. Now, the Department was politely telling me that they were taking the house back, and I had seven days to move my belongings out. Have a nice day.
I sat down on the stone steps, looking at both messages.
The wind was making me cold, quite cold, and I shook myself free and got up, let myself into my house-my house, damn it! --- and flipped on the entranceway light. Nothing happened. I flipped the switch up and down again, and then looked at envelope number three. It was from the Exonia & Tyler Electric Company. I made a mess of the envelope tearing it open. Inside, the letter said at the request of this particular home's owner --- the Boston office of the Department of Interior ---- all power had been switched off
Back into the house I went, and in a matter of minutes I had lit a couple of candles. I sat down on my couch, feeling the coolness about me. With no electricity, there was no oil furnace, and no heat. The three envelopes were in my lap. I thought back to what the bank manager had said. I had just got caught up in the gears of something large and black and nasty indeed. Reeves and her crew wanted my cooperation, and they had just demonstrated what they were going to do to ensure it. A more noble and stronger man than I would fight them, would fight them on the leaches and landing fields and cities. He would move into a tiny apartment on the beach and put his belongings in storage, and get a job as a dishwasher or something, and eat lots of rice and beans and fight, fight, fight the good fight.
I sighed, looked about my house. My one sanctuary, the one place that had really belonged to me after a lifetime of renting apartments and condos. The memories and good times and quiet peace that had been offered to me here ...
Noble. Strong. Not two adjectives that applied to me at this particular moment. I got up from the couch and picked up a candle, and guided by its flickering light, I went up to my office. I looked around my messy desk for a moment before finding the business card that had been left here, and I picked up the phone. I got the reassuring sound of the dial tone. At least she had left that, but knowing what she had just done, I'm sure that this was part of the plan.
I dialed the number on the card, and the phone was picked up on the second ring. "Four-seven-four-six," came the man's voice, merely identifying himself by the last four digits of the number I had dialed.
"Laura Reeves, please."
"May ask who's calling?" the man said.
"Lewis Cole," I said.
"Hold one."
There came the sounds of clicks and buzzes, and I stood there, the candle in one hand and the phone in the other. Blue wax began to drip down the candle and onto my fingers, but I didn't move.
The phone seemed to ring again. "Hello?" came a different male voice.
"Laura Reeves, please," I said, and wanting to move things along, I added, "This is Lewis Cole calling."
"Just a moment."
There was a cluttering sound as the phone was put down, and then it was picked up. I took a deep breath. For a moment I was going to hang up the phone, but then I pressed on.
"Hello?" "Laura?" I asked.
"Yes. Is this you, Mr. Cole?"
"It is," I said.
“What can I do for you?” she asked in an innocent-sounding voice that was quite good. She had been trained well.
""I think you know already," I said.
"Maybe I do," she said. "Go on."
I looked around my dark office. "You got me," I said. "You've won."
Chapter Six
For the next few minutes, Laura Reeves of the Drug Enforcement Agency tried to be gracious about the whole damn thing. I guess she had read Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address, for she certainly was being magnanimous in victory. The first thing she said right off the bat was, "No, no, we haven't won anything," her voice sounding almost shy. "This isn't about winners or losers. This is about working cooperatively together for the good of your state, and for the nation."
I guess I should have hung up the phone on that twisted statement, but I said, "You want my cooperation, you have it. But I want everything else taken care of. The Treasury Department, the Interior Department, my bank and the power company. Understood?"
"Fine," she said. "Let's get together now and talk, and when we're done, it'll all be settled."
"I'd rather have it taken care of before I troop out some-where and meet up with you."
She laughed. "It wouldn't be a long troop. We’re right across the street.”
"Excuse me?”
"The Lafayette House," she said. "We've rented some rooms. I'm in five-twelve. We'll be expecting you."
And she hung up. I stood there in my dark office, the candle flame flickering bravely, the hot wax trickling down my fingers. I blew the candle out and in the darkness made my way downstairs and outside of my home.
The Lafayette House began its life as a tavern in the early eighteen hundreds, and is named because the Marquis de Lafayette, during his famed tour of the young United States in 1824-25, had supposedly stopped there for a drink on his way to Boston. Of course, if Lafayette had stopped at every public house and tavern that claimed his presence back then, his liver would have had the consistency of leather by the time he got back to France. I huddled in my winter coat as I trudged up my dirt driveway, and then walked across Atlantic Avenue. Since then, the place has been expanded, built upon, almost completely destroyed by fire a couple of times, before it reached its level of Victorian splendor back in the late nineteenth century.
Now, though it had suffered some during the 1970s and early 1980s, it's a touch of old money and class that exists for those people who still think there's something grand and glorious about spending an average year's wages to summer at the shore.
I went into the glass-and-marble-decorated lobby and took the elevator up to the fifth floor. I was by myself, which suited me fine. The corridor was wide and there were small mahogany tables along the way, each one bearing a vase with fresh flowers. At room 5121 rapped on the door and one of the larger men in the DEA group opened it up. He gave me a quick once-over --- no doubt evaluating my physical condition, weapon-carrying status and current voter registration- -- and stepped back I walked in and Laura Reeves came up from a couch, sipping a Diet Coke.
She had on gray sweatpants and all MIT sweatshirt. Her feet were bare and her toenails had been painted red.
"Thanks, Doug," she said, walking over to me. "I can take it from here. Come on in, Mr. Cole. We've got things to discuss."
"You should stop speaking in understatements," I said, "or people will stop taking you seriously."
"Not being taken seriously is something I haven't had to worry about since I gave up cheerleading after high school," she said, without a trace of humor in her voice.
Doug went to one of the easy chairs and picked up a
Wall Street Journal
and started reading. The room was huge, with a conference table in the center, two couches, a handful of easy chairs and a couple of coffee tables scattered around. There was also a large-screen television and a kitchen setup off to the left. On the conference table was a mess of notepads, envelopes, papers and photographs. Another table set up against the windows had two computers and some communications gear. One closed door to the light, I imagined, led to sleeping quarters for Reeves. The other probably led into another room.
I sat with her at the conference table. "Nice to see what my taxes are being used for."
She put the Diet Coke can down on the table, picked up a thick file folder. "I've not been home for two months. Most of my crew can say the same thing. We're on the road constantly, eating bad food, sleeping in hotel rooms or motel rooms. Sometimes we're in places where cops don't like to travel except in pairs. So when I have a chance to make things a bit better for me and for them, I take it, with no apologies."
"All right, no apologies accepted."
As she went through the file folder, I looked at her sweatshirt and said, "Your school?"
"Nope, my boyfriend's. I went to Cal Tech."
"Is he in the D EA as well?"
"Nope," she said, removing a few papers and a thin stack of black-and-white photograph from the folder. "He's dead."
"Oh. I'm sorry, I should have kept quiet."
“No matter,” she said, rubbing the side of her face for a moment. “Sam’s been gone for six months now. He was a pilot in the Air Force. He was flying a drug surveillance aircraft in Colombia when it was shot down by narco guerrillas. Did you see it in the news?"
"I remember seeing something about that," I said. "But I thought the aircraft crashed in the mountains."
Her lips just managed a thin smile. "That usually happens when a Soviet-built Grail 7 SAM takes out one of your engines. We're in an undeclared war down there, Mr. Cole, one that the current administration is trying desperately to keep out of the news. Let's begin, shall we?"
I shifted in my seat, saw Doug was still staring intently at his newspaper. Surprisingly, his lips didn't move as he read. "Let's begin with a few other things first, all right? First, by the time I leave this room, everything will be set back --- my power, my finances, my home title --- correct?"
A nod.
"Good," I said. "My cooperation means just that. Cooperation. No miracles. And one more thing. For God's sake, please stop calling me Mr. Cole. It makes me feel like I'm ready to start wearing an adult diaper. Lewis will work just fine."
Another nod. "All right, Lewis. That's all acceptable. And we're not looking for miracles, not at all. We're just trying to button up this little battle of ours in the drug war on your home turf. The narco guerrillas move on a lot of different fronts, from most of Colombia to states in Mexico to islands in the Caribbean. What they're looking for are safe and secure routes to bring their product into the States, their most profitable market. What we do is to make it more expensive for them. That's all. We're never going to stop it, not ever, but we can harass them, make their lives difficult, force them to be on the defensive, all the time. Which is why we're here. For a while New York City was their favorite destination, but we've had too many successes there for them. Boston would he a logical choice, but from what we've learned, they've decided to go one step farther up the coast. Here."