“What the hell is this?” I said.
“Take it easy. You just assaulted two federal agents. Jesus, Eddie, those are my guys.”
The agent who’d held the flashlight got up slowly, his index finger pointing in an unnatural direction. Baring his teeth, he snapped the digit back into place. I hadn’t broken anything. Just dislocated his finger. His pal looked a lot worse. He was pale and sweaty. Both agents made their way to the couch on the opposite side of the room from the file cabinets.
“They’ll be okay,” I said. “They might have to wipe their asses with their other hands for a week or so, but they’ll live. Can’t say the same for you unless you tell me what you’re doing breaking into my office. Oh, and by the way, it’s not assault if you’re defending your person or property from a trespasser. Thought they might’ve taught you that in Quantico. You got a warrant?”
I slipped off the brass and let each piece fall onto a stack of documents on my desk. Kennedy shifted his feet to the floor, picked up a set, and slipped them on one hand, feeling the lethal weight against his knuckles.
He drew the brass from his fingers, let it fall onto the pile of pages on my desk, and said, “Brass knuckles, Eddie?”
“Paperweights,” I said. “Where’s your warrant?”
Before he answered, he began to scratch at the back of his hand. That told me all I needed to know; Kennedy worried a lot and took out his anxiety on his body. The skin around both of his thumbnails appeared swollen and red, where he’d worked at his cuticles with his teeth and nails. He hadn’t shaved, and he looked as though he could use a shower, a haircut, and a good night’s sleep. His normally brilliant white shirt had faded to the same color as the bags under his eyes, and the skin on his forty-year-old face had thinned. From the inch of room around his collar, I guessed he’d lost a lot of weight.
When I’d first met Kennedy, I’d been representing the head of the Russian mob, Olek Volchek. The trial went south, big-time. Volchek had taken my ten-year-old daughter, Amy, hostage and threatened to kill her. In the five months that had passed since that trial, I’d tried to forget those desperate hours. But I couldn’t. I remembered it all—my agony at the thought of someone hurting her, taking her young life, and that it would be all my fault. The mere thought of it made my hands sweat.
Kennedy had almost died, but I’d managed to get him to a medic before it was too late. His wounds had healed well, and he’d even helped smooth things out for me when the dust settled on the Volchek case. A lot of what I did over the course of those two days was highly illegal. Kennedy had made it all go away. But in reality, he didn’t know the half of what I’d done, and I hoped he never would.
After he’d recovered from the shooting, he’d invited me and my family to a New Year’s party at his place. My wife, Christine, had said she didn’t want to go; things had been bad between us for a while. I’d been thrown out of our house, deservedly, about eighteen months ago, because I spent more time in bars, night courts, and drunk tanks than I had at home. I’d gotten clean and things had calmed between Christine and me, until the Volchek case.
Christine thought I’d put Amy in danger—that our daughter had been taken because of me. She was right. But in the past few weeks her anger had begun to fade. I’d been able to see Amy more often, and last Wednesday when I dropped her off, Christine had invited me inside. We’d split a bottle of wine and even laughed a little. Of course, I messed up when I tried to kiss her on the doorstep before I left. She’d turned away and placed a hand on my chest; it was too soon. I’d thought, on the drive back to my office, that someday it would be okay. Someday I might get my girls back. I thought about them every hour of every day.
I had gone to Kennedy’s party alone, drank Dr Peppers, ate pork and salt beef, and left early. Defense attorneys don’t usually mix well with the law-enforcement crowd, con men even less so. But I actually kind of liked Kennedy. For all his worrying and pigheadedness, he was a straight-up, conscientious agent with a good track record, and he’d put all of that on the line for me. I saw that stone-faced morality in his gaze as he sat on the other side of my desk, in my chair, chewing over my question. In the end I decided to answer it myself.
“You don’t have a warrant, do you?”
“All I can say for now is that this little party is for your benefit.”
Scanning the office, I saw four hefty-looking metal suitcases stacked in the corner and, beside them, what looked like sound equipment.
“Did I interrupt band practice?” I said.
“We were doing you a favor, sweeping your office for any listening devices.”
“Listening devices? In the future, don’t do me any favors without asking me first. Out of interest, did you find any?”
“No. You’re clean,” he said, standing and stretching his back. “You always carry paperweights around?”
“Office supplies come in handy from time to time. Why didn’t you call and tell me you were coming?”
“There wasn’t time. Sorry.”
“What do you mean there wasn’t time? I heard your buddy over there mention the word ‘target,’ so I want to know what you’re really doing here.”
Before Kennedy could answer, I heard footsteps. The door to my back office opened, and a small man who looked like he was in his fifties, with a gray beard and black-rimmed glasses, stepped into the room. He wore a long black overcoat that stopped at his ankles. Blue shirt, dark pants, graying curly hair swept back over a thin, tanned face.
“Protection,” said the small man, answering the question I’d directed at Kennedy.
He stood with his arms buried in his pockets, confident and in charge. He walked casually past Kennedy and sat his butt down on my desk before smiling at me.
“Mr. Flynn, my name is Lester Dell. I’m not FBI. I’m with another agency. The Bureau are here because they’re part of a joint task force that I’m heading up. We have a job for you,” he said, nodding.
“Great. So what are you? DEA? ATF? The cable guy?”
“Oh, I work for the agency that doesn’t officially carry out operations on US soil. That’s why the FBI and the Treasury Department are handling all the manpower. As far as the State Department is concerned, I’m here as a consultant,” he said, and as he smiled, the brown skin above his beard developed deep lines that tapered toward his eyes. Lines that didn’t quite seem a natural fit for his face, as if smiling were an unusual thing to do. His accent seemed a little off, because his pronunciation was so precise and clean.
I didn’t need to ask where he worked—the smile said it all. He told me anyway. “Unofficially, Mr. Flynn, this is my operation. And I can tell you’ve already guessed who I work for. You’re correct—I work for the CIA.”
I nodded. Clocked Kennedy. He was watching me closely—judging my reactions carefully.
“We’re tight for time, so you’ll forgive me if I’m brief and to the point. We’re here to take precautions. To make sure no one but us will hear this conversation. I have a proposition for you. In fact, I have a case for you,” he said.
“I don’t do government work. That goes double for the kind of governments that break into my office.”
“Oh? I thought you might welcome some paid employment. I see you’ve got a sofa bed in back, clothes, TV, a toothbrush in the bathroom, and a stack of paperbacks. But I don’t need to make any assumptions from this: I know all about you. Every little thing. You’re broke. You’re living in your office. In fact, you have twelve hundred dollars in your checking account, your office account is thirty grand in the red, and the work is slow.”
I hit Kennedy with a look. He folded his arms and nodded at Dell, telling me I should listen.
“Mr. Flynn, here’s my situation. I’ve spent five years investigating a group of very bad individuals. To be plain about it, I’ve come up empty-handed. I got nothing. Until yesterday, when all my prayers were answered. It turns out that a friend of those bad individuals got arrested for doing a very bad thing. He will be tried and convicted; it’s an open-and-shut case. I’m hoping this man might be persuaded to make a deal with me, one where he gets to walk out of jail while he’s still young and I get to arrest his friends in exchange. Problem is, this man’s lawyers don’t quite see it that way. I want you to take over his case. I want you to represent this guy, and I want you to persuade him to cut a deal. It’s in his best interests, and yours.”
Checking his watch, he said, “You have forty-eight hours, precisely, to get yourself hired by your new client, force him to plead guilty, and we’ll make him a deal. If you do this, the federal government will do two things for you.”
From his coat he produced a hip flask, cranked it open, and poured a measure into the empty coffee cup sitting on my desk. He didn’t ask if I wanted any, just poured and handed me the mug. He sipped lightly from the flask, then continued.
“First, we will pay you one hundred thousand dollars. Cash. Tax free. Not bad for a morning’s work. Second, and more important for you, do this for me and I won’t send your wife to a federal prison for the rest of her life.”