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Thursday, Feb. 19, 2015, Vallejo
Keisha Rollings was an attractive woman, Joe Dunbar thought as he followed her into the status-symbol home she shared with her husband and two daughters. But right now, she was also stressed and chattering non-stop to cover it. She’d started talking when she picked him up at the airport, and it had not stopped.
Keisha was dressed in expensive slacks and top — he knew enough to tell that much, and that they were blue. Her shoes were low-heeled sandals, also blue. And her purse was blue too. Her hair was natural, which surprised him a little, and cut just long enough to frame her face. She had dark pink lipstick on. She looked good.
He, on the other hand, had on black trousers, a black V-neck T-shirt, and polished black boots. He had a jacket, also black, more for the pockets than because he needed one down here. Vallejo was many degrees warmer than Seattle — warmer than San Francisco for that matter. But he needed a pocket to carry a pistol. And he needed his backpack for another pistol and a semi-automatic rifle.
He’d checked them all through, using his police ID, and got them out easily enough when he arrived at the Sacramento airport. All very proper. Sacramento was indeed easier to get through than San Francisco would have been, and it had been a quick one-hour drive into Vallejo. Still, he’d left Seattle at 7 a.m. and it was 11 a.m. when Keisha had picked him up.
She hadn’t stopped talking since. He was more interested in what had her so stressed than the chatter.
“So, you’re a friend of Mac’s?” she asked. “Did you know Toby back in the day then?”
“No,” Joe said. “Toby and I have never met. That’s why you introducing me tomorrow to Ping and the others is important. I’m here to help. But....” He trailed off and smiled at her.
She smiled back uncertainly. “Angie just said you were backup like Mac,” she said. “Mac came just like he always does. Just like Toby said he would: ‘If I’m ever gone too long, you send for Mac.’ I almost didn’t. I mean, what is too long? But Toby came by the house, and he told me what to say in a text. I did. Mac sent me a thumbs up, that he was on his way. And so when the cartel men came I knew I could count on him getting my daughters to safety.”
She had paused there and looked at him in the car. “They are safe, right?”
“They are,” he assured her. “Mac’s girlfriend Angie has them at the house — with Michael? Their grandfather?”
She had nodded. She was a competent driver, he noticed. “So Toby came breezing through Tuesday night, packed a bag, and told me to stop talking to people. He said I talk too much? And here I am talking to you a mile a minute.”
“You’re supposed to talk to me,” Joe assured her. “I’m Mac’s backup, and you need to be the one to brief me on what’s going on.”
“I don’t know what’s going on!” she’d wailed. She pulled into the garage and turned off the car. “You probably know more than I do. Is Toby OK? Is he safe?”
Joe smiled at her, trying for reassurance. He hated this kind of thing. Just like the department never sent him into the schools to be Officer Friendly, they didn’t send him to do bereavement calls. God, he hoped this didn’t turn into a bereavement call. “Yes, he’s fine,” Joe said. “He and Mac are just headed into Mexico to talk to the Del Toros.”
She sat there in the dark and tapped her fingers on the steering wheel. “I never wanted a house like this,” she said in a small voice. “I don’t like this neighborhood. It’s full of white people and they don’t like me. Don’t want us here. But Toby? He said he wanted to give me everything.”
“He loves you,” Joe said gently.
“He does,” she agreed. “And he adores our girls. That’s what really started all of this. Belinda came home and demanded to know what her dad did for a living because all the kids in her school laughed when she said he worked in an office. What kind of office? Doing what? And suddenly Toby realized some day the girls would know their father was a drug dealer. I thought it was sweet. About the only friends I have are the wives and girlfriends of his crew, and so I told them that story. They thought it was sweet too. But the men? I guess it spooked them. And someone told the cartel?”
She opened the car door and got out. “So it’s my fault. I shouldn’t have talked to them. But I get so lonely!”
Joe grabbed his bag and followed her out of the car and into the house. It was a trophy house, he thought, as he looked around. Big, beautiful, and completely devoid of any personality — and this woman had personality to spare.
Nothing like the house Toby had grown up in, either.
“You’re going to go stay with Angie, aren’t you?” he said gently. “You’ll like her. She’s a lot of fun. You’ll make friends there.”
“You sound like you don’t think I’ll be coming back here,” she said uncertainly.
He just looked at her. Finally he said, “Regardless of whether you do or not, being friends with Mac’s girlfriend is a good thing, right?”
She nodded, but she looked sad, like she knew. This part of her life was over. Then she took a deep breath. “So let me show you to your room, then I’ll make us lunch, and I can take you into the office, and you can meet the crew. They won’t be there before 2 or 3 p.m. anyway.”
Joe Dunbar knew a good part of the reason ‘the team’ had decided he should come down here was because he was Black. And young, he conceded. Nick couldn’t, for obvious reasons. Rand was too old, too white, too.... he frowned searching for the word. Well, like the FBI SAC had said, he fit in up in the North Cascades. The Bay area? Not so much.
And Stan Warren would be here shortly, fine suits and all, to be the bigwig asshole from the D.C. bureau — a role he played all too well.
So Joe was younger, Black, and he should fit in with a bunch of drug dealers, right? Dealers who were also young and Black. He’d resent it, if they weren’t also probably correct.
But the truth was, he was a middle-class kid. His parents were school teachers. He liked craft beers, marathons, and remodeling his fixer-upper on Queen Anne. He really knew very little about this world. He grimaced.
Well, he didn’t have to. He had given it some thought on the flight down. He was a cop, a buddy of Mac’s, who wasn’t averse to doing a bit on the side to make some real money. Didn’t have to know drugs. He was backup to the contractor they called in when they needed someone killed.
And it freaked him out to know that Mac was that person. The man was a scary son of a bitch just as a reporter and former Marine. He had known Mac had a past — that he’d been a juvenile delinquent, all that came out last fall, as they tried to protect Nick Rodriguez and figure out what was going on.
Andy Malloy was a piece of work.
A dead piece of work.
But Mac had come for Joe when his own fellow cops hadn’t. He owed him — and that was the real reason he was down here.
Mac needed someone to be backup. Well, that wasn’t quite true, Joe thought with a frown, now, as Keisha drove them to the warehouse where Toby Rollings had his office. What Mac needed to know was who was the corrupt cop, and how did they bust his ass so that Toby could walk away as a free man.
Or at least a man who only owed information to the DEA in exchange for a new life somewhere. Joe grimaced.
If the corrupt cop wasn’t in the DEA.
And if there was only one.
That was the thought that gave Joe some concern. He might find a corrupt cop, but not the one they needed to find.
Keisha brought him inside the office of a cement block building — part warehouse, part office. There was a guy up front who looked up when they walked in. Keisha smiled at him, and he softened a bit.
“Hey,” he said gently. “Heard from that man of yours?”
“Nah, having too good of a time hanging out with his cousin and all the others,” she said. And if her smile was forced, the man at the desk didn’t seem to notice. “Ping around?”
“In the office,” he said, gesturing with his head.
“Oh, this is Joe,” Keisha said carelessly. “He’s a friend of Mac’s. Mac thought you all might like some backup with both him and Toby unavailable.”
“Up to Ping,” the man said with a shrug and turned back to his computer.
Keisha walked through the gate at the front counter and headed toward the back. A Black man with glasses was sitting behind a desk in an office that had a half-wall window looking into the hallway. Joe glanced down the hall. He could hear other voices. A break room?
“Ping?” Keisha said. “This is Joe. Mac sent him.”
Ping took off his glasses. He didn’t smile. “Sent you for what?”
Keisha started to answer but stopped when Joe shook his head slightly.
“Whatever you need,” Joe said. “Mac was worried that you all were under threat, and with him and Toby both gone, you might need backup.”
“Backup? The kind of backup Mac provides?” Ping said. He sounded hostile.
Joe nodded slowly. “That’s what I do.”
Ping started to smile. “Well, then. Pull up a chair. We’ve got problems.”
Joe looked at Keisha. “You don’t need to hang around,” he said. “Could you pick me up at 4 p.m.?”
She nodded. “Good to see you, Ping,” she said, and turned around and left.
Joe settled into the office chair. “So what’s going on?”
Craig Anderson pulled down the scope he’d been using to watch the Rollings’ office. Toby’s wife was a pretty woman, he thought absently, giving himself time to think. That hadn’t been one of the Rollings crew with her, however. He knew that man. What the hell was he doing down here?
“And where’s Mac?” he muttered.
Bridgeman had stuck him out here on surveillance again. And if he could read the man — and he could — Bridgeman was getting more and more agitated.
Ben had sent him a text last night; he was fine. Liked working for Mr. Bryant. Craig had smiled at that. He hadn’t seen Mac since he took a shot at him on Tuesday. Had he gone home? If so, why was Joe Dunbar down here? And what was he doing with Keisha Rollings at the Rollings’ warehouse?
Bridgeman had wanted to know if there were any strangers coming here? Well, Dunbar wasn’t a stranger — not to him at least.
Keisha Rollings came back out quickly, and she didn’t look around as she headed to her car. She sat there for a moment and thought. Upset about something?
Surveillance was like watching a movie without a soundtrack. You had to do a lot of guessing. He’d say that was a woman under a lot of stress. He wondered why. Where was her husband?
He wondered if Bridge had any answers. And if he could get them out of him without giving away more information than he got. His phone vibrated. Speak of the devil.
“Yeah,” he said.
“So there’s a new player in the game,” Bridgeman said. “You see him?”
Craig’s eyebrow arched. “Yeah, some Black guy just walked into the building with Keisha Rollings. If you’ve got a mole why do you need me sitting out here?” he asked. “I could be digging flower beds for Jesse.”
Bridgeman snorted. “Because my mole isn’t an expert shot with a rifle,” he said impatiently. “He’s there to gather information to put those dealers out of business. You’re there in case I need a more direct intervention.”
“I told you Bridge, I’m not a shooter,” Craig protested.
“I suspect that would change if the price is high enough,” Bridgeman said. “Like to protect Jesse? Or Lucy?”
“If someone had a gun pointed at their head,” Craig said cautiously. “But even then, Jesse could probably take care of herself better than I could.” He hoped.
“Well, maybe you won’t have to find out,” Bridgeman said. “What’s the new guy look like?”
“Like the other guys who go in and out of there,” Craig said, keeping his voice easy. “Black, fit, young.”
“Not much help.”
“Well your mole probably got a closer look at him than I did,” Craig pointed out.
“Maybe,” Bridgeman said. “But never hurts to get a second opinion. Pack it in, Craig. Don’t want you to be spotted.”
No, that wouldn’t be good, Craig acknowledged. He put away the scope and hiked down to where he’d parked today. Did Joe know Craig was down here? He might have to break down and call someone. Rand? Rand might work.
Stan Warren found that the D.C. FBI headquarters made him itch now that he’d been out of them for six months. He thought about it, maybe longer than that. Truth was, they’d made him itchy before that. He just hadn’t had any way out. No place to go. No reason to leave D.C. His bosses still couldn’t believe he’d voluntarily left for Seattle. Yeah, they got that he had a woman friend out there, but leave the center of the universe? And it wasn’t even New York or L.A.!
Stan probably would have thought the same five years ago. But he could read the handwriting on the wall. D.C. was toxic and only going to get worse. He wondered if he would have time to look up Rebecca Nesbitt at Georgetown while he was here.
To be honest, he wasn’t even sure why he was here. There wasn’t anything that he needed to be here in person for. Nothing that couldn’t have been handled over the phone.
But his former boss had wanted him here, and if he was going to get the assignment he needed to go into Vallejo, he was going to have to go to D.C. to get it. He sighed. Getting too old for cross-country flights, he thought ruefully. He was stiff, and he wanted a shower. Instead, he had a meeting in 10 minutes, and a return flight out this evening.
Crazy. Even for this outfit.
He presented his credentials at the checkpoint, and then went up to his old boss’s office. His secretary sent him down the hall to a conference room. He groaned. It was going to be a meeting. He hated those.
He might not have gotten completely acclimated to Seattle, but one thing he appreciated was that Bill Noble did not like meetings any more than he did.
Stan tapped on the door, and entered when someone called come in. He had a moment of deja vu, it had been a meeting like this that had sent him back out to Seattle to rescue Janet a year ago. But there was no Rebecca Nesbitt in this meeting.
No, just his former boss, and two men he didn’t even think were FBI.
“Stan,” his boss said. “Did you have a good flight?”
“There is no such thing as a good flight,” he said lightly. “Good to see you, Mike.”
“Have a seat,” Mike DeFazio said. “These two men would like to brief you on the situation in Vallejo. We believe we have an opportunity to turn things around there.”
Stan sat down. “Don’t believe we’ve met,” he said to the two of them.
“George,” one said briefly.
“Caldwell,” the other said.
“And what agency are you representing?” Stan asked. Be damned if he was going to discuss Vallejo with a couple of no names from an unspecified agency.
“I fail to see why you need to know that,” Caldwell snapped.
Stan stood. “I’m not going to discuss a sensitive situation with men I don’t know,” he said. “Not even on Mike’s good word. When you decide you want to share information, starting with name and agency, have Mike buzz me. In the meantime, I’m going to find some lunch.”
“Sit down,” DeFazio ordered. “No need to get huffy, Stan. They have good reason to want anonymity.”
“And I have good reason to want to know who I’m talking to,” Stan said. He didn’t sit down. “We’ve got a task force that went tits up because of leaks. It jeopardized a rare chance for intel for the DEA. And I want to know who I’m talking to.”
There was silence. “Gentlemen,” Stan said, and he headed to the door. He got all the way to turning the knob, when one of the men sighed.
“Fine,” he said.
Stan turned around.
“I’m Homeland Security, and he’s Customs and Border Protection,” said the man who had given his name as George.
“CBP is Homeland,” Stan said without turning around.
“Yeah,” George said. “But I’m in the main agency, he’s in CBP.”
“And I thought this was a DEA mission,” Stan said. DEA was part of the Department of Justice, as was the FBI. What the hell was Mike up to now?
“It is, it is,” Mike said quickly. “But there’s an opportunity here, and these two are here to brief you on it.”
“How do they even know about it, Mike?” Stand turned around now and looked at the three men. Caldwell looked uncomfortable. “Looks like there are more leaks than just an interagency task force in Vallejo.”
“Information sharing,” George corrected smoothly.
“Oh?”
“We were alerted by a member of the taskforce that we might have a chance to insert an undercover agent into one of the Mexican cartels,” George said. “I was informed that DEA had requested your assistance in investigating the taskforce leak. I wanted to make sure that we didn’t get crosswise of each other, here.”
Stan slowly took a chair. “I’m listening,” he said slowly. That task force had been leaking in all directions apparently. “How do I know that your source isn’t the person who leaked the taskforce’s raid to the drug dealers and allowed them to escape the raid?”
George glanced quickly at Mike, then back to him. “We aren’t involved in anything on the ground in any way,” he said quickly.
Stan looked at him. “No one from Homeland or CBP was on the task force,” he observed.
“Shared intelligence from another agency,” George countered.
Stan waited. No one said anything. Finally Stan sighed. “Your meeting,” he said. “I assume you have something to say? You didn’t call me clear across country to stare at me, did you?”
Damn, Stan thought, Bill Noble is wearing off on me. That was almost as blunt as he would have said it.
George glanced at Caldwell. Caldwell pursed his lips. “As you’re probably aware, DEA had a drug distributer contact them, wanting witness protection in exchange for intel on the drug cartels, and the drug pipeline into the States,” he began. “DEA was salivating over this particular possible source. Tuesday, he got up and walked out of negotiations. He is now on his way down to Guadalajara in the company of members of the Del Toro cartel. DEA is quite alarmed. They turned to us in CBP to assist them in retrieving their potential asset. There is some concern in my agency that their ‘asset’ is going to sell his info to the highest bidder — and quite frankly the cartel would win that bidding. So far, our efforts to retrieve the man in question have failed. So have our efforts to remove him from the game board.”
Stan’s eyes narrowed. They had attempted to kidnap or kill Toby Rollings? Whatever for? What did that man know?
“DEA was concerned,” Stan asked. “Or your source?”
There was silence and George and Caldwell looked at each other. DeFazio had a half-smile on his face. So he wasn’t completely sold on these two men, either. Good to know.
And this was why he hated D.C.
“Gentlemen?” Stan asked. “If DEA is concerned, why isn’t someone from DEA in this meeting? That most certainly is who I expected to see here today.”
“We have another source,” Caldwell said cautiously. “A local police officer. Highly respected. He communicated his concerns.”
“And did he tell you that the man in question had walked away from DEA?” Stan asked, leaning forward intently. “Or did you tell him?”
Caldwell considered that. “Does it matter?”
Stan shrugged. “It might,” he said. “But I don’t see how this impacts the request that was made for me to come in as an outside investigator. I am to investigate what went wrong in the task force — to see if there was truly a leak, if the leak was deliberate, and if so, by whom?”
“No it won’t impact that at all,” Caldwell said earnestly. George grimaced but he didn’t say anything. Cat’s out the bag now, Stan thought humorously.
“No?” Stan said.
“No. We will eventually retrieve DEA’s asset for them,” George continued.
“Has DEA asked you to?” Stan asked.
There was silence. “Well, our source says it’s urgent,” Caldwell said.
“And what does DEA say?” Stan continued his questions. This stunk all the way to heaven.
“We haven’t discussed it with them,” George admitted. “We were more interested in the other man, to be honest. Oh, we’ll do a favor for our source, and retrieve Rollings if we can. But in the process of tracking him, we became aware that his cousin who is traveling with him is Del Toro family. You know him. And we want him as an undercover asset in the Del Toro cartel. He could provide us with immeasurable information.”
Stan stared at him. Well this conversation just went off the rails, careened into the gully, and exploded in his face, he thought. Were they talking about Mac?
It turned out they were. He listened to them as they explained what they wanted.
“I don’t see the role you envision for me,” Stan said finally. He hoped his poker face was as good as it had been. “This seems completely outside my brief to review the Vallejo task force.”
“Well for starters, we need the task force to go away,” George said impatiently. “We need you to find that no leaks occurred. We want the task force to shut down. And then we want you to contact Mac Davis and bring him in.”
“Bring him where,” Stan said, lost now. “And why does the task force need to shut down? Why shouldn’t the leaks be investigated?”
“The leak will lead to our source,” Caldwell admitted. “And we would lose a valuable asset in Vallejo.”
“Your source is the leak?” Stan demanded. “He’s the corrupt cop that sold info on the street? And you know? Have you shared this with DEA? Obviously not,” he answered his own question. “Or DEA wouldn’t need me. Wouldn’t need anyone.”
“The task force isn’t important,” George said, his voice raising. “Can you focus on the priorities here?”
“That is my priority,” Stan pointed out. “My immediate supervisor, the Seattle SAC, has assigned me to conduct an investigation into the failure of the task force, and to discover and apprehend the cop who sold out the task force. I must say this will make my investigation much easier, since you appear to know who it is already.”
“Tell us about Mac Davis,” George said, and he sounded a bit desperate to regain control of the conversation.
Stan shrugged. “You should know him,” he said. “He’s the reporter that shut down Howard Parker’s nomination for Secretary of Homeland Security. You must have read that story.”
There was silence.
“Shit,” George said in disgust. “We’ve got a possible in with the Del Toro cartel and he’s a goddamn reporter?”
Stan looked at his former boss, and they both grinned at each other.
“Yup,” Stan said cheerfully. He’d been through this — almost word for word, actually. “And I can tell you right now, he’s not going to be willing to spy on anyone for Homeland Security or CBP or the DEA. When the FBI offered him a job two years ago, he looked like he was going to puke. So good luck with all of that.”
George and Caldwell looked at each other. “Retrieve or remove?” Caldwell asked. “Both of them?”
George shrugged slightly.
“Wait,” Stan said. “Are you two talking about trying to take out Mac Davis and Toby Rollings?”
“If we can’t turn him into an asset, then he’s just another member of a goddamn drug cartel,” George said coldly.
“You’ve not proven that,” Mike DeFazio observed.
“He’s in Mexico with the son of the Del Toro capo, headed to the cartel headquarters,” George answered. “That’s all the evidence we need.”
Stan opened his mouth, reconsidered, and shut it. “If that’s all, gentlemen, I think I’ll see if I can grab some lunch and talk to my contact in DEA about the task force investigation.”
“We want you to shut that down,” George reminded him.
Stan shrugged. “You’re not my boss,” he pointed out. “You’re not even in the right chain of command. I’m in the Department of Justice, and so is DEA. You want DEA to call off the investigation, you know who to talk to, right?”
Stan stood up again. This time no one stopped him when he walked out. He stopped in the hallway. He needed their source, he thought grimly. For starters. Since he was in D.C. he might as well see if he could meet with his DEA contact face-to-face.
And then he needed to talk to someone about the mess Mac was in now. Rebecca, he thought. Drug cartels weren’t her expertise, but she was still one of the smartest people he knew. He grimaced, because the other person on that list was Janet Andrews, and she was not going to be amused when she heard this.
Over lunch, he’d make a list of what he knew, what those two knew and didn’t know, who he needed to talk to, and what questions needed to be answered. Better yet? He’d call Rebecca and invite her to lunch. Heartened at that idea, he pulled out his phone and gave her a call.
Rebecca said she’d be delighted.
He hoped that was still true when he told her what was going on now. And after he talked to her, he was going to tell the DEA that Homeland already knew who was their leaker, and they considered him a valued source.
Wasn’t that just fine? The leak on the taskforce had connections to the drug dealers, to CBP, and, if he read things correctly, to the cartels. How else was CBP able to reach into Mexico to ‘retrieve or remove’ anyone — much less two men who were traveling with cartel members themselves?
He grimaced. Lunch, he thought. He wondered if his prescription for Prilosec was still good. Mac Davis had a way of making his ulcer act up.
As he walked into the Blue Nile, an Ethiopian restaurant Rebecca liked in Adams Morgan, he stopped. If they wanted to take out Mac or his cousin, all they needed to do was let the Del Toro cartel think Mac was already an undercover agent.
He was still missing a piece, he thought. Probably more than one. But this couldn’t wait. He was already talking to Rand on his phone as he walked across the restaurant to Rebecca’s table.