The Second Shooter (2 page)

Jake's Rolex showed six o'clock.

***

The diner was on 11th Street, between E and F streets. Painted letters on the plate glass window identified it as Louie's Café.

Jake stood at the edge of the big window and peered through. The caller had given him a recognition signal, a pack of Lucky Strikes set on top of a copy of The Washington Post. But the diner was crowded and Jake couldn't see any Lucky Strikes. There was one guy, though, who looked like the type to make crazy calls to the FBI hotline about the Kennedy assassination. He was old-late sixties, at least-sitting at a two-topper in back, facing the door, with long gray hair pulled into a ponytail and a bushy white goatee. He was looking down, pen in hand, scribbling on something Jake couldn't quite see. Everyone else in the place seemed relaxed, eating, drinking, and chatting. Not this guy. He had that frenetic, nutty professor look about him.

"That's got to be him," Jake mumbled to himself. "Just my luck." Then he took a deep breath and stepped through the door.

At least it's warm inside, Jake thought as he made his way between the tables. He had to scoot around a busty waitress carrying an overloaded tray of coffee and food. "Sorry, honey," she said as she squeezed past Jake, giving him a long brush with her equally overloaded bosom.

Nearing the old man's table, Jake saw what he was looking for, an unopened pack of Lucky Strikes perfectly centered on the folded front page of the Post. Next to the newspaper sat a nearly empty coffee cup. Jake also saw what the man was scribbling in, a tattered black and white composition notebook, the same kind Jake had used for countless English assignments in high school and college. The writing was small and dense, with the same look as the written ravings of loonies like Charles Manson and Richard Ramirez, which Jake and his classmates had studied at the Academy.

Jake stopped beside the table, but the man didn't look up. He just kept writing. Jake cleared his throat. The man kept writing, pressing down even harder on the pen. Jake tried to read the upside-down words, but they weren't in English. When the man reached the end of his sentence he stabbed a period onto the page and looked up. He had the bluest eyes Jake had ever seen.

"Are you going to stand there all evening, Agent Miller," the man said in a strong French accent. "Or are you going to sit down?" On the phone, Jake had half-thought the accent was fake, but in person it sounded real enough.

"Are you Henri Broussard?" Jake asked.

The old man pushed the extra chair out with his foot and gestured for Jake to sit. Jake glanced over his shoulder at the door behind him, wishing he hadn't agreed to this meeting. Then he sat down.

A block from Louie's Café, a Ford Explorer with blacked-out windows idled in a fire zone, its exhaust blowing vapor and dripping water from the tailpipe. Two men sat in the front seats. Both wore dark suits and ties over starched white shirts.

The passenger was looking through a digital Nikon that was connected by a USB cable to a laptop computer sitting on the console between the front seats. The camera was zoomed to maximum and focused through the front window of Louie's Café. "Guy just walked up next to him."

The driver looked down at the laptop, where the image from the camera's viewfinder was displayed. A young man with short hair and wearing a heavy jacket stood next to the old guy. He was turned mostly away from them so that they could only see the back half of his profile. "He's kind of young to be hanging with this geezer," the driver said.

"That's what I was thinking."

"Can you get a shot of him?"

"If he turns around I can," the passenger said.

A few seconds later the young guy looked over his shoulder toward the front of the diner. With the image zoomed in so tight, it seemed as if the guy was looking directly at them. The camera clicked and whirred, snapping five shots per second. Ten photos of the newcomer's face arranged themselves on the laptop's screen.

"Good job," the driver said.

"Good enough for an ID?" the passenger asked.

"Let's see." The driver used the laptop's touchpad to drag the best of the photos down to the taskbar and dropped it onto the icon for the facial recognition program.

***

The old man seated across the table from Jake placed his pen inside his notebook and closed it, then stretched a rubber band around the cover to keep it closed. "Can I see your identification, please?"

"Seriously?"

The old man nodded. "If you don't mind."

Jake reached into the back pocket of his jeans and pulled out the leather case that contained his FBI badge and credentials. "You called me, remember?"

"I apologize but my paranoia is quite justified, as you will soon learn."

Jake opened his credentials. The small gold FBI shield was pinned to the outside of the case. The credentials themselves were two large laminated identification cards. The top card had "FBI" superimposed over it in big blue letters, and the bottom card bore Jake's photograph and the signature of the FBI director. Although he pretended to be irritated with the man's request to see his ID, Jake got a thrill every time he got to show his FBI credentials.

The old man tried to take the leather case from Jake's hand to examine the credentials more closely, but Jake wouldn't let it go. After a few seconds, Jake pulled the case away and stuffed it into his jacket pocket.

"It's time you tell me what this is all about, Mr. Broussard," Jake said, trying hard to keep the impatience out of his voice. This was, after all, his first tour as duty agent, a weeklong assignment that always drew after-hours crank calls and kooks with tips, and clearly this was one of them; still, he didn't need his very first kook filing a complaint against him. The Bureau, Jake was learning, took everything seriously, especially complaints about agents not behaving professionally during interviews with members of the public.

The man picked up the pack of Lucky Strikes and peeled off the cellophane wrapper. "Cigarette?"

"I don't smoke," Jake said. "And you can't smoke in here."

The man shrugged, then opened the pack and plucked out a cigarette. "I've always found that it calms my nerves."

"It's against the law," Jake said.

Ignoring him, the old man slipped a battered silver Zippo lighter from his pocket and lit the cigarette. He took a long drag and held it for several seconds before turning his head and blowing it out. "Are you going to arrest me?"

Jake leaned back in his chair to keep from breathing the fumes. He looked around for the busty waitress he'd seen earlier. Maybe if she threatened to kick the old guy out he would douse the cigarette. Naturally, she wasn't around. Several nearby customers were glaring at them. Jake felt like pointing out to them that he wasn't the one smoking.

The old man either didn't notice the hostile stares or didn't care. Jake was betting on the latter. Then he took another drag and started looking for an ashtray. There wasn't one. So he flicked his ashes on the floor. "How could anyone be so foolish as to make it illegal to smoke in a coffee shop?"

"It's actually a diner," Jake said. "People are trying to eat here."

The old man waved his cigarette. "To tell you the truth, I don't much care for American cigarettes, but if I have to smoke them," he tapped the pack of Lucky Strikes, "these are the only ones I can tolerate. All your other brands are so...weak."

"Where did you learn about recognition signals?" Jake asked.

"Spy novels," the man said as he scooped his notebook off the table and shoved it into a worn leather messenger bag on the floor beside his chair. "I read a lot of them while I was in prison."

"Prison?" Jake said. "For what?"

Just then the busty waitress showed up and poured more coffee into the old man's cup. He held his cigarette under the table and wore an expression that made Jake think of a boy caught looking at a porn magazine. The waitress arched an eyebrow at him but didn't mention the cigarette. Then she turned to Jake. "You ready to order?" she asked, a piece of gum smacking inside her mouth as she spoke.

"Just coffee," Jake said.

"Pie's really good here," she said with a few more smacks.

"No, thank you. Just coffee."

She rolled her eyes and walked away.

"I understand that in this country they live mostly on tips," the old man said.

"You talking about the waitress?"

The old man nodded. "In Europe we don't tip, but waiters and waitresses make a decent wage."

"What can I help you with, Mr. Broussard?"

"My real name is Andre Favreau." The old man took a long drag on his cigarette and flicked more ashes on the floor. Then he blew out a stream of smoke and looked at Jake. "I killed President Kennedy."

Inside the Ford Explorer, the laptop computer on the front console beeped as its facial recognition software spit out a match.

"Son of a bitch," the driver said. "He's fucking FBI."

The passenger, who was still watching the meeting inside Louie's Café through the Nikon's zoom lens, pulled his eye away from the viewfinder and looked down at the laptop. On the screen were two photographs, one of which he had shot just moments ago of the young guy in the coat meeting with the geezer in the diner; the other one was of the same guy, but a full-on head and shoulders shot with him wearing a suit and tie.

Beneath the two photographs were the words "100% MATCH." And beneath that was the identifying data for Jacob Miller, twenty-five years old, with a D.C. address, and whose employer was listed as the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

"Holy shit," the passenger said. "What the hell are we supposed to do now?"

The driver was dialing a number on his cellphone. He put it on speaker. A man answered on the first ring. "Go."

"The target is meeting with an FBI agent," the driver said.

"Where?"

"A diner on 11th Street in Northwest."

"Is the agent alone?"

"He doesn't appear to have a backup team," the driver said.

The man on the other end of the line was silent for a moment. Then he said, "Pick him up."

"You're talking about the target, right?"

"Yes, goddamnit, the target."

"What about the FBI agent?"

Another silence. Then the man said, "Don't let him interfere."

The line went dead.

"What the fuck?" the passenger said.

The driver shrugged. "You heard the man."

***

Jake sighed and shook his head. This was even worse than he had imagined. "Mister...What did you just call yourself?"

"Favreau. Andre Favreau."

"So which is it?" Jake said. "Because on the phone you told me your name was Henri Broussard."

"I apologize for the deception. Henri Broussard was a nom de guerre I was forced to adopt because I did not want to use my real name on the telephone. But you have my word, Agent Miller. My true name is Andre Favreau. That was the name my parents gave me when I was born."

"Which was where?"

"Corse," the man said. "Corsica to you. Where Napoleon was born. An island in the—"

"I know where Corsica is."

The man nodded.

"Favreau it is then," Jake said. "But I have to inform you, Mr. Favreau, that in this country lying to an FBI agent is a serious crime. A felony actually, punishable by up to—"

"It wasn't a lie so much as a precaution," said the old man with the ponytail.

But Jake wasn't in the mood to play patty-cake with this whack job, so he talked right over him. "Punishable by up to ten years in federal prison." Jake glanced at his watch. The Redskins game was starting in...Whoa. Wait just a minute. He stared at the Rolex's date window, magnified by the small Cyclops lens attached to the crystal.

The number "20" stared back at him. November 20. Two days before...Jake did some quick mental math: 1963 to 2000 was thirty-seven, plus thirteen, equals...fifty. In two days it would be November 22, 2013, the 50th anniversary of the death of John F. Kennedy. Under normal circumstances, the JFK assassination was a siren call for lunatics, like UFOs, the Loch Ness Monster, and Big Foot. And this year, the 50th anniversary, was bound to bring out even more crazies than usual.

As Jake eyed the man across the table, the man who had insisted on this meeting, his first reaction was anger. The Redskins where making a rare appearance on their old home field at RFK Stadium for a game that had been sold out for months, a game to which Jake had managed to get his hands on three tickets, and his girl, really the girl he wanted to be his girl, was either already at the game or at least headed that way, in the company of Jake's horn-dog roommate, Chris; yet here he was stuck in a diner on the other side of town, talking to a basket case about the Kennedy assassination.

Why couldn't this guy have called in with his fake French accent during normal work hours? Then whatever agent happened to be unlucky enough to answer the phone would have had to deal with him. Let somebody else solve the JFK case. Jake wanted to be at the game with Stacy.

Jake's Blackberry vibrated. He pulled it out of his jacket pocket and checked the screen. It was a text message from Chris, "40 min 2 k off. Stac is smokin HOT:)"

Son of a bitch. Was this...? Could he have...? No. No way. But maybe. What if this wasn't a coincidence? What if Chris set this whole thing up so he could go to the game with Stacy and cut me out? But Chris wouldn't...The hell he wouldn't.

Chris was a nice guy and Jake's best friend, but he could be a weasel when it came to women. He had proved that at the Academy, where male trainees outnumbered females four to one and the competition for weekend female attention was fierce. Jake had never been able to get a date for even one of the twenty weekends he'd spent at Quantico. Chris, on the other hand, had a date almost every weekend. Chris also knew the duty agent roster and the protocols for dealing with calls, even calls from crackpots.

Jake couldn't help himself. He laughed.

"What's funny?" the old man asked.

"You're good, Mister...whatever your name is," Jake said. "You're really good. Except for the accent. That was a bit over the top. But other than that...You must be an actor, right?" As he spoke his fingers tapped out a message on his cellphone. "Is this your A-game? JFK? The grassy knoll? Pathetic! B there in 30. Keep your hands off."