Authors: Stephen Coonts
his thumb over his shoulder. “That one isn’t too bad. just can’t get it through my head that the military order ‘t apply to him.”
After a hurried conference with General Greer and a look at the map of the city, Jake drove off to FBI headquarters. He picked up Toad Tarkington en route.
Toad sat silently beside Jake and stared at the empty streets and rare pedestrians.
The federal guard at the kiosk at the main entrance of the FBI building telephoned upstairs. Two minutes later a junior agent arrived to them upstairs. “Not many people made it to work today,” the agent told them and gestured toward the empty offices. “We have cars going around picking up people, but we’ll only bring in about half of them.”
Hooper was expecting them. He took them into his office and poured coffee from a coffee maker on his credenza. His clothes were rumpled and he needed a shave.
“What’s your job, exactly?” he asked Jake.
“The general sort of added me to his staff temporarily. I’m really on the Joint Staff, along with Lieutenant Tarkington here and sixteen hundred other people.”
Hooper had no reply. If the military bureaucracy were half as complicated as the FBI’S, further questions would be futile. He glanced at his watch. “I’ve got about a half hour. Then I have to give a presentation to the presidential commission, or the Longstrect Commission, which is what I understand they’re calling themselves now that Chief Justice Longstreet is one of the victims.”
Without further ado he began: “As you may know, the President’s helicopter was shot down with a couple of Stinger missiles. American manufacture. We’re inventorying tilde the Stinger missiles in every ammo depot nationwide and looking at every theft report we have, but we haven’t got anything solid yet. We’ve talked to everybody in a ten-mile radius of the little park on the river that the missiles were fired from, but so far nothing.
“Our best leads are the rifles that were left after the attorney general and the Chief Justice were shot. The rifles
are identical, Winchester Model 70’s, bolt action in thirtyought-six caliber. We’ve tried to trace them both and we’ve gotten lucky. Ten years ago the rifle that fired the shot that hit the AG was sold by a gun store to a dentist in Pittsburgh. He sold it six weeks ago via a newspaper ad. A man called him about the ad, then showed up an hour later, looked the rifle over, and paid cash. No haggling and no name.
“But we got lucky again. Sometimes it goes like that and sometimes you can’t buy a break. The dentist described the man and he had a distinctive tattoo on his forearm. That came up a hit on the national crime computer. Guy name 0 Melvin Doyle, who as luck would have it was arrested three days ago in Sewickley, Pennsylvania, for beating hell out of his ol” lady. Doyle’s done time for grand larceny, forgery, and a variety of misdemeanors.”
Here he handed Jake a computer printout of Doyle’s record. Jake glanced at it, then passed it to Toad, who read it through rapidly and laid it back on Hooper’s desk.
“Our agents talked to Doyle last night. He was threatened with a federal charge of conspiracy to murder a public official, and he talked. He says he acquired three Model 70’s for a guy he knew as Tony Pickle.” He dropped another sheet in front of Jake. “This is Tony Pickle.
“Guy named Pasquale Piccoli, also known as Anthony Tasson. Grew up in the rackets, moved to Dallas in the midseventies. Was involved in SandLs in Texas. Lately been living in Vegas.” He sat and stared at Jake. “And,” the captain prompted.
“And that’s it,” Hooper said. “That’s all the evidence we have.”
“The second rifle? Was it one of the three?””…Don’t know. Doyle didn’t write down serial numbers.”
“Doyle get anything else for Tasson?”
“He denies it. We’re looking.”
“Okay, now tell me what you think.”
“Our Texas office is very interested in Tony Pickle. Seems he was sort of a Mr. Fix-it for some real shady SandL operators, most of whom are being investigated or are under
indictment. It seems that two or three may have stepped beyond the usual bank fraud, kickbacks, cooked books, and insider loan shenanigans. It looks like they got into money laundering. Extremely profitable. Perfect for an SandL that was watching a ton of loans go sour and rotten.” “What does Tasson say about all this?”
“Don’t know. We’re looking. Haven’t found him yet.”
“Who,” Toad asked, speaking for the first time, “were these SandLs washing money for?”
Special Agent Thomas F. Hooper eyed the junior officer speculatively. “For the big coke importers. Maybe, roundabout, the Cali or Medellin cartels. That’s the smell of it anyway. Lot of money involved.” He pursed his lips for a second. “A lot of money,” he said again, fixing his eyes on the picture of Anthony Tasson.
“Forgive our ignorance,” Jake Grafton said. “But howmuch money does the FBI consider to be a lot?”
“Over a billion. At least that.”
“That’s a lot,” Toad Tarkington agreed. “Even over at the Pentagon that’s a lot.”
After using every minute of Hooper’s half hour, Jake and Toad left the FBI building at about the same time that Deputy Sheriff Willard Grimes pulled his mud-spattered cruiser up to the pump at the gas station-general store at Apache Crossroads, New Mexico. The deputy swabbed the windshield in the wind and bitter cold as the gas trickled into the cruiser’s tank.
When he had the nozzle back on the hook, Willard Grimes went inside.
The wind gusted through the clapboard building as he forced the door shut. “Whew,” he said, “think it’ll ever get warm again?”
““Lo, Willard,” the proprietor said, looking up from the morning paper. “How many pllons?”
“Sixteen point six Willard said, and poured himself a styrofoam cup full of hot, steaming coffee.
The man behind the counter made a note in a small green book, then pushed it over for Willard to sign. Willard scribbled his name with a flourish. He put twenty-six cents on the counter for the coffee. “How’s crime?” the man behind the counter asked. “Oh, so so,” Willard told him. “Gonna be trolling for speeders over on the interstate today. Sheriff told me to write at least five out-of-staters. Damn county commissioners are on him again to bring in some more fine money.”
“You know,” the proprietor said, “the thing I like most about living out here is that there isn’t any real crime. Not like those big cities.” He gestured toward the copy of the Sante Fe newspaper lying on the counter.
Deputy Grimes glanced at the paper. There was a drawing right below the headline. Someone’s face. “That the guy who supposedly took a shot at the VicePresident?”
“Yeah. The President, the VicePresident, and half the cabinet. Cutting a swath through Washington, this one is. Making Lee Harvey Oswald look like a goldfish. And you know something funny9 When I first saw that picture on TV last night, I said to the wife, I said, ‘Dam if that don’t look like Henry Charon, that lives up in the Twin Buttes area.” Crazy how a fellow’s mind works when he sees a drawing like that, ain’t it?”
“Yeah,” said Willard Grimes, sipping the coffee and looking out the window at the lowering sky above the arrow-straight road pointing toward the horizon. He got out a cigarette and lit it as he sipped the coffee.
Oh yeah, now he remembered. Charon. Sort of a nondescript medium-sized guy. Skinny. Real quiet. Drives a Ford pickup.
Grimes ambled back to the counter and stared at the artist’s drawing on the front page of the paper. He squinted. Naw.
“Couldn’t be him, of course,” the proprietor said. “Ain’t nobody from around here going to go clear to Washington to gun down politicians. Don’t make sense. Not that some of em couldn’t use a little shootin”. The guy who’s doing it is probably some kind of half-baked commie nut, like that idiot Oswald was. But Henry Charon? Buys gas and food here pretty regular.”
dn’t be him,” Deputy Willard Grimes agreed. Now if a fellow had it in for dirtball politicians,” the etor said, warming to his theme, “there’s a bunch that shootin’ a lot closer to home. Remember down in Albuquerque . .
Five minutes later, with another cup of coffee in his hand, Deputy Grimes was ready to leave for the interstate when a game warden drove up to the gas pump and parked his green truck. He came inside. Willard lingered to visit.
The game warden was eating a doughnut and kidding the proprietor when his eyes came to rest on the newspaper. “Don’t that beat all,” he exclaimed. “If that isn’t Henry Charon I’ll eat my that.”
“What?” said Willard Grimes.
“Henry Charon,” the game warden said. “Got a little two-by-four ranch up toward Twin Buttes. I’ve chased that sonuvabitch all over northern New Mexico. He’s a damned poacher but we could never catch him at it. That’s him all right.”
“How come you didn’t say something yesterday?” Willard Grimes asked, his brow fuffowing. “That picture must have been on TV a hundred times already.”
“My TV broke a month ago. That’s the first time I laid eyes on that picture. But I’ll bet a week’s pay that’s Henry Charon. Sure as God made little green apples.”
The envelope containing the lab reports from the Sanitary Bakery warehouse case had lain in the in-basket for four hours before Special Agent Freddy Murray had the time to open it. He read the documents through once, then settled in to study them carefully. Finally he pulled a legal pad around and began making notes. The corpse of one Antonio Anselmo, white male about fortyfive years of age with a partial dental plate, had been found in Harrison Ford’s locked room at the FBI barracks on the Quantico Marine Corps base. The forward portion of his skull had been crushed. Death had been instantaneous. When the field lab people saw the body at eleven a.m.
Wednesday, they calculated that Anselmo had died between midnight and four a.m.
Hair, bits of flesh, and minute quantities of blood were found on the landing of the stairwell nearest to Ford’s room. Blood type was the same as Anselmo’s. Threads of clothing and one shirt button had been recovered from the stairs. Marks on the lineoleum in the corridor that might have been made by a body.
Wallet-now this was interesting-both the wallet and a motel key bore partial prints of Harrison Ford.
A shotgun lay beside the body. It also had Ford’s prints. And there was a minute comoil stain on Anselmo’s shirttails stain of gun oil. No other weapons in the room.
The second report went into great detail about the warehouse, with its six bodies and cocaine processing laboratory. Murray flipped through uninterested
He settled on the report concerning Freeman Mcationally’s house. One body in the living room. Fifty-one-year-old white male named Vinnie Pioche. Shot three times, 9-mm slugs, two that entered the back and one that penetrated his right side, apparently while he was lying down. Accor) 1 to the coroner Pioche had been dead when the third shot struck him-no bleeding.
Then this ringer: the pistol that fired the slugs that killed Pioche was in the weapons room and contained no prints.
The report carefully detailed where each of eighty 9-mm rounds had struck in the lower floor of the house. Refrigerator, TV, bathroom-it was quite a list. There were diagrams and Murray referred to them several times as he read.
Cars outside the warehouse. One of them contained stains of human blood on the backseat. The blood matched Pioche’s. The ignition key for this car had been recovered from Harrison Ford’s pocket.
Now Freddy Murray went back to the report on the ehouse. He looked again at the coroner’s detail of Freeman Mcationally’s injuries. Scrotum partially ripped from the body, severe injury to the right testicle incurred just ,bbf death stopped the heart. Death caused by a bullet
the heart, a shot fired into his back from about four away.
Mcationally-half strangled and severely beaten, but the cause of death was internal bleeding in the brain caused when his nose bone was shoved into the cranial cavity. Billy Enright … Freddy sat back in his chair and whistled softly. Jesus. That was the only word that described it. Jesus!
He was still making notes an hour later when Tom Hooper came into the office and sagged into a seat.
“Mcationally?” con”Yeah.” ‘What do you think?” Hooper asked as he took off his shoes. “Well was Freddy said slowly as he watched Hooper knead his righ; foot. “I’m struck by the many points of similarity between the Mcationaily mess and the massacre over at Teal’s.” t Hooper didn’t look up. “Bullshit,” he said. 11, “No, I mean it, Tom.” t Hooper dropped his right foot and worked some on his 4 left. Then he put them both flat on the floor and looked at Freddy. “No.”
“I admit there are a lot of dissimilarities too, but it really looks to me like another gang wipeout. We are just damned lucky our undercover officer survived with only one bullet in the back.” Hooper pointed at the pile of reports. “Look at the one for Ford,” he said. “Read me the analysis of the clothes the emergency room people took off him.” Freddy took his time. He found the passage, perused it, then said, “Okay, there’s some blood, three different types, some brain tissue-was con’ationow where in hell do you suppose he got that on him?” ‘Tom, in places in that warehouse it was on the walls and in puddles on the floor. He rubbed against it somewhere.” Hooper put on his shoes and carefully tied the laces. That chore completed, he said, “You and I both know that Ford went into that warehouse and gunned those men. He beat
one to death with his bare hands. He went there to do it. No other reason.”
“Now you listen a minute, Tom. We got a ton of facts here but no story. A clever man could string all these facts together to tell any story he wanted to tell. I guarantee you that the lawyer Harrison Ford ends up with will be a damn clever man. If he gets indicted, even I am going to contribute to his legal defense fund.”
Hooper said nothing.
Murray charged on. “You think it isn’t going to come out that the bureau sent him in undercover? Ha! The defense is going to make us out to be a bunch of incompetent paper pushers who couldn’t prosecute Freeman Mcationally and are now trying to hang our own undercover operative. My God, Tom! The next hundred people we try to recruit to go undercover are going to laugh in our faces!”