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DALLAS, TEXAS (Wednesday, Dec. 12, 2012, 6 p.m.) — The Dallas Fort Worth airport concourse was noisy. Mac plugged one ear to better hear as he punched in the telephone number for Stan Warren.
“Agent Warren,” Mac said, when he recognized the voice who answered. “I have something I want you to hear.”
“Mac?” Warren said. “Where are you?”
“Never mind that, I won’t be here long enough for you to catch me,” Mac said. “I hope you’re recording all this.”
Mac pressed the play button on the recorder. The recording was already cued to Springer talking about Joey Hightower and his death. When the words “Joey got physical, Parker pulled a gun and shot him,” finished, Mac stopped the recording.
“Well Agent Warren?”
“Who is that?” Warren said slowly. “Can you verify it?”
Mac laughed. “Only two people know what went down that night, well three, but Joey Hightower is dead. It’s just one man’s word against another.”
“Somehow that sounded like a forced confession,” Warren said.
“Doesn’t matter for my purposes. Cops can’t force a confession, but this isn’t going to be tried in a court of law. I’ll try it in the newspapers as they say.”
“So where are you now?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Mac repeated. “Just thought you’d like to hear the recording. I’ve got a printout of that computer file too. Want to know what’s on it? A thousand names from Parker’s computerized Rolodex. I wonder how many other stories are buried in those names?”
“His Rolodex? Listen, you’ve got to....”
“Sorry, Warren, I’ve got to go.” Mac hung up the phone. He looked at Kristy who was standing at his side. “They called our flight yet?”
She shook her head. “Why do you bait him like that?” she asked as they walked down the concourse to their connecting flight.
“Because Agent Stan Warren is playing some game in all this that I don’t quite understand,” Mac said. “I don’t trust him.”
“Then why talk to him at all?”
“You never know when you just might need a cop. I like having him handy.” Mac grinned and reached for her hand. “Besides, I enjoy baiting him.”
Five miles away in a hotel room off the Dallas Beltline, Stan Warren threw his cell phone on the bed and swore at it. “He didn’t stay on the line long enough again, did he?” he asked the technician who was monitoring the phones this shift.
The technician shrugged. “Actually, he’s here in Dallas,” she said. “That’s all the trace could show. But I can tell you that there’s really only one place that sounds like that — DFW, the airport. I’d bet he was just changing planes and called in.”
Warren swore again. “Did you get his recording recorded?” he asked sourly.
“Yes, sir.” The technician hesitated. “What do you want me to do with that?”
“Give me the thumb drive and forget you ever heard it.”
“Yes, sir!”
“And pack everything out of here. We’re done here. He’s got to be headed to D.C. or Seattle, maybe. I’ll bet on D.C.” Warren reached for his phone, called the travel desk, got a flight booked for later in the evening.
About 50 miles outside D.C. Troy Maxim was having dinner — catfish and hushpuppies — in a down-home restaurant. The food was good; the beer was cold.
Shorty was very explicit the night before. “Mac says you’re probably being followed or at least tracked in the Saturn,” Shorty had said. Troy was to have an early dinner in a town on the train line. Park the car in a visible location. After dinner, he was to leave either with a group where he might not be noticed, or out a back exit — then get on the train for the D.C. airport.
“You need to be at National airport by 10 p.m.,” Shorty emphasized. “Go to Hertz, they’ll have a car reserved for you in your name. Wait at the counter. Mac and Kristy will be joining you there.”
Troy thought it seemed like a lot of hocus pocus, but had given up trying to figure out what Mac was up to. Just do as you’re told, he reminded himself. Not all of Mac’s plans worked — the Lake Charles feint had been a flop — but he’d seen Mac pull off amazing things — in big things like recon missions to smaller things like bringing off a party when everyone was underage or having a ready supply of weed. Besides, his own efforts hadn’t worked out so well. He grimaced.
Troy finished a second plate of food and agreed to a refill. He hadn’t noticed anyone following him, but then, as Shorty had pointed out the best way to track someone wasn’t necessarily with your eyes. Every time he used a credit card, every time he passed a cop car, someone could be taking notice.
Troy could see that, but then how did Mac think he and Kristy were going to get into D.C. without tripping those same computers? He sighed. The young waitress, a pretty black woman with cornrowed hair, put down another platter of food. Troy smiled at her.
“You going to eat all of that,” she teased.
“Maybe.” Troy said with a laugh. He glanced at his watch. “I need to catch a train,” he said. “What’s the fastest way to walk from here to the train?”
She shrugged. “On foot? Takes 40 minutes to get there. Unless, you go out the back door and down the hill behind here, then it’ll take you 15 minutes.”
“If you’ll let me out the back door, then I bet I can eat this entire platter of food before I go,” Troy said.
She laughed. “I bet you can.”
“We’ve lost them,” the agent reported to Addison.
“All of them?” Steve Addison massaged his temples. It was nearly midnight. His wife murmured sleepily by his side; he stroked her shoulder to reassure her.
The agent told him the story, Addison sighed and hung up. He got up, pulled on some clothes. He wasn’t going to make the next call from here, or undressed, he thought grimly. Parker was going to be pissed.
He was right about the last.
“How in the hell could three civilians lose trained FBI agents?” Parker demanded.
“Well, two of those civilians are trained Marine recon,” Addison said defensively. “Davis is as devious as they come.”
“What happened?”
Addison sighed. “Things were going pretty good. We’d been tracking the Saturn all across the South. At first we thought they were all together, but then you said no, they’d split up. That’s when we started watching airline tickets. Sure enough, Davis and the girl were scheduled to fly into D.C. today, landing at National at 10 p.m. Maxim and the Saturn stopped for dinner at a catfish restaurant in Virginia. We figured he’s going to pick them up. Two agents have the car under surveillance.”
“Well, what’s the problem then?”
Addison rotated his shoulders. “The Saturn is still in Virginia outside the restaurant, but Maxim’s gone. My agents are white, they stick out there, no one gives them the time of day about the car or the young man who ate there earlier. Nothing.”
“And the airport?”
“Yeah, I had someone waiting there as well. He spotted the two get off the plane, but he’s not sure what happened then. Couldn’t cover all the exits by himself. He found out that they picked up a car at Hertz, under Maxim’s name, but when he checked, the car is still in the Hertz parking lot. Key in the drop box. He figures while he was checking out Hertz, the three took the subway.”
“You continue to underestimate the number of men you need to be using,” Parker said coldly.
“Damn it, Howard, I had two men on stake out at the Shreveport house who have disappeared on me.” Well not exactly disappeared but they weren’t returning phone calls any longer. Addison wished he could find that easy of a way out. “Two agents tailing Maxim, one agent at the airport. One watching Maxim’s apartment complex. And this isn’t even an official operation! What the hell do you expect?”
“Competency,” Parker said. “They haven’t shown up at the apartment?”
“Apparently not. I haven’t heard from that agent at any rate.”
“Hotel? Other friends?”
“Possibly,” Addison said. “I’ll check it out. Maybe you could check with your contacts at the Examiner in the morning to see what they know. Or have someone pull Davis’s chain about bail?”
“I’ll do that.” Parker hung up, leaving Addison with a dial tone ringing in his ear.
Addison hung up the phone. Come to think of it, why hadn’t the agent watching Maxim’s apartment called in? He called his cell number. No answer. With growing dread, Addison finished getting dressed. Time to take a look-see himself.
Addison drove slowly by the Georgetown apartment complex. It was quiet. At 2 a.m. it ought to be, he thought. He saw the car checked out to his agent. A person was sitting in it, apparently asleep. Addison grunted, found a parking spot. Then walked up to the car and opened the door.
“You don’t get paid to sleep on the job,” he growled.
The person who shoved a 9mm in his gut wasn’t his agent.
Mac grinned. “Agent Steve Addison?” he asked, gesturing with the gun. “How about a cup of coffee upstairs?”
Addison sighed. “Why not? You already got one agent up there.”
Mac nodded. He slipped the 9mm back in his jacket pocket, got out of the car and locked it. “Two actually. The last report from your agent at the airport was made from the apartment.”
Addison sighed again in frustration. He walked toward the apartment complex, hands in his pocket. When he passed under the streetlight, Mac stopped.
Addison looked back at him, saw the expression on his face. “You going to shoot me for it?” he asked mildly. “Otherwise, I’d like that cup of coffee.”
“Did you find your missing daughter?” Mac drawled walking closer to Addison. Addison looked at him warily. Mac slugged him in the stomach, doubling him over. “Do you know how fucking dirty Puget Sound is? Shit. Didn’t even do it right.”
Addison caught his breath, straightened. “Hardheaded SOB,” he said.
Mac snorted. “Upstairs.”
Upstairs, two agents looked up sheepishly as their boss walked in. Addison waved off their comments. “Save it,” he said wearily. “I just walked into the same ambush.”
“Coffee?” Kristy said brightly. Addison smiled at her and nodded. He took the cup, sat at the dining room table with the other agents.
“I assume you have some point to this besides humiliation,” Addison said dryly.
Mac straddled a chair. “Here’s how it lays, guys,” he said evenly. “You have been acting outside of jurisdiction. Now these two agents claim they didn’t know that. They do now.” He tapped the recorder on the table in front of him. “And their stories are on the recording. With their names and badge numbers.”
Mac nodded at the first two agents. “You can go now.” They didn’t need to be told twice. Troy trailed along behind them to see that they got out of the building.
Steve Addison eyed the tape recorder warily. “If you think I’m going to confess to anything on the record you’re mis...,” he began.
Mac interrupted. “Addison, you don’t have many choices. I can call other FBI agents to come here, listen to the recording and arrest you. I can identify you as the person who came after me. That will probably get you nailed for trying to kill a cop.”
“Whoa,” Addison said urgently. “What cop?”
Mac looked at him skeptically. “Don’t try to bullshit me,” he said. “You broke into my aunt’s house, beat her up so she’d tell you where I was. Then you stole a gun out of my lock box, shot a cop who was profiling me for Parker, knocked me out, pressed the gun to my hands and then dumped me in the Sound. That ring a bell?”
“I had nothing to do with shooting a cop,” Addison said. “I’d do a lot of things for Howard Parker but that’s not one of them.”
Mac turned on the recorder. “You’re Agent Steve Addison and you are being recorded. Do you acknowledge that?”
“Yeah.”
“You and a couple of men broke into my aunt’s house and knocked her around to find out where I was, is that correct?”
“We thought you were home. One of my men had you staked out. Then when we got there, you’d gone — out the back,” Addison said. “Parker had a tight script he expected us to follow. When you weren’t there, we needed to find you fast.”
“So you beat up my aunt to get her to tell you.”
Addison shrugged. Mac went on, ignoring his silence. “You went to Johnnie's with a hokey story and rapped me over the head. Why such a story and why use Kristy’s picture?”
Addison sighed. “Parker figured if Maxim or Brown had been in touch with you, you’d recognize Kristy’s picture. You didn’t seem to, but I couldn’t tell for sure. Parker didn’t want you running around asking questions either. He had a hard-on about a Seattle reporter getting drawn into this. The more he learned about you, the worse he got. That’s when he told us to take you out.”
“Then you went to Donnelly’s house, used my Glock to shoot at him from the balcony.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. None of us went upstairs at your aunt’s place. I didn’t know anything about someone shooting a cop. I knew Parker had a police officer profiling you, and he didn’t like what he was hearing.” Troy came back in, nodded at Mac and took a seat at the table.
“So how did my fingerprints get on the Glock, Addison?” Mac asked. “That gun was clean when it left my lock box.”
Addison didn’t answer. Mac stopped the recorder, backed up to an earlier marker. “Listen to this,” he said, and played a part of Springer’s story.
“Who is that?” Addison asked when Mac stopped the recording.
“No need for you to know,” Mac said. “Pay attention to what’s important here. First, no matter what Parker’s got on you, you’ve got worse on him. Second, you might notice that I had no problem beating up a source to get him to talk. I’d enjoy very much doing that to you.”
“You could try.”
Mac snorted. Looked Addison over briefly. “I’m tougher than my aunt was,” he said.
“Your aunt was no pussy,” Addison admitted. He sighed, gestured to the recorder. Mac turned it on.
“Parker told me to take you out, put you in the car trunk, drive to a certain location and meet a man. We did. The man came up to the car, opened the trunk, looked at you. I would assume he pressed the gun to your hand at that time. We then drove to the dock and threw you in the Sound. Probably why you had time to revive before you went in the water.”
Mac nodded. “Who was the man?”
“No idea. We sat in the car looking forward. The man was only a shadowy figure in the rearview mirror. I didn’t want to be there, didn’t want anything to do with it. I was counting all the ways I regretted getting sucked into one of Parker’s missions.”
“So why did you get sucked in?”
Addison shrugged. “Nothing so entertaining as that other tape. Years ago, I was a young Marine assigned to the Pentagon. I worked for Parker. He...,” Addison hesitated, looking for the words, “he’s a very charismatic man. He believes in what he’s doing. I was very loyal to him. He needed a courier. Although it most certainly wasn’t in my job description, I was more than glad to be a courier for him. Flattered that he trusted me.”
“And?”
“And, I got stopped coming out of El Salvador in 1995. Stopped me as a spy. Tossed me in jail. Parker got me out. I was grateful. When I left the Marines, he helped me get into the FBI. I figured I owed him.”
“What were you carrying when you came out of El Salvador?”
“Nothing coming out, thank God, or they probably would have shot me,” Addison said. “I don’t know what I took in. A packet. Money, maybe. Intelligence? Parker was into a lot of things in Central America and I didn’t want to know.”
“Did it ever occur to you that Parker got you into trouble? Rather than being grateful he got you out?”
Addison laughed. “Yeah. Years later. Believe me it’s been occurring to me a lot lately. But see, he kept it off my record. It’s not on my resume at the FBI either.”
“Ah.”
Kristy poured more coffee for Troy and Addison. She handed Mac a Mountain Dew. While Mac paused to take a sip, Troy injected a question, “Did you send those goons after me at the office?”
Addison shrugged. “You could be charged with violating the security act,” he said mildly. “They were just doing their job.”
“Bullshit,” Troy said belligerently. “Since when is it their job to drug me and hold me captive?”
Mac interrupted. “That security act line is a bunch of bullshit,” he said. “You all keep trying it, but whistleblowers are protected — and Troy is an aide to a Senator. If he has knowledge of wrongdoing by a federal official it is his obligation to investigate and report.”
Addison smiled and shrugged. “It works,” he said.
“Who were those agents?” Mac asked. “They the same ones who tossed the house in Shreveport and kidnapped Kristy? What the hell were you thinking of?”
“I didn’t have any part of that,” Addison said. “Thank God. I located another agent who admired Parker, and who had the same lack of scruples Parker has. He took over that part of the operation, beginning with detaining Maxim. Then he got the bright idea that kidnapping Ms. Brown here would somehow work in our favor. Went to shit in a hurry though.”
“So that’s when Kellerman got pulled in?”
Addison hesitated. “Yeah. What happened to him anyway? He seems to be out of the picture, and Parker isn’t talking about it.”
Mac ignored that question. “Which agent is Gravel Voice? The agent you found to do Parker’s dirty work? Long-time smoker voice?”
Addison shook his head. “I’m not ratting out others,” he said. “Me fine. I’ll tell you what I’ve done, but not others.”
Mac shrugged. They’d find out eventually. “Was Gravel Voice with you the night you tried to kill me?”
Addison thought that over before answering. “No,” he said slowly.
“He knew what he was doing, right? He worked directly for Parker, knew these orders were not coming through chain of command?”
“He knows that, yes.”
“Could he have been the shooter at Donnelly’s?”
“Donnelly is the cop?” Addison hesitated, shook his head, then shrugged. “I don’t know. I can’t imagine it, but... I don’t know. Seattle is Parker’s turf. It would stand to reason he’s got plenty of connections there.”
Mac thought of the long list of connections he was waiting to go through. Might pay to do a search by location. He set that thought aside.
“Anyone else who has been working directly with Parker?” Mac asked. “I don’t care about agents who were doing what they were told, not realizing the orders were unauthorized.”
Addison thought that over. “I don’t know for sure,” Addison said slowly. “The agent you call Gravel Voice knows he’s taking orders from outside the Agency. I think there may be someone else. Just things. Parker knew you had rousted my agents in Louisiana, for instance. I didn’t tell him that. Hell, I didn’t know until he told me. Just knew they weren’t returning my calls. I don’t know how he knew.”
Mac tipped his head up at that. Not too many sources for that information. Something else to think about.
“So, you wouldn’t mind telling the Seattle cops and courts that I was under FBI surveillance at the time and therefore could not have been the shooter at Donnelly’s place?” Mac ventured.
Addison laughed. “Yeah, I suppose so.”
“Is that what Parker is framing you for?” Addison shook his head. “He’s getting too convoluted in his plotting. Should have just stuck to one thing.”
Mac snorted. “Yeah, kill me or frame me, but trying to do both might have been his undoing.”
“Or maybe he didn’t expect you to die, just have an unexplainable gap in time and no memory of touching a gun,” Troy suggested.
Mac nodded. Possible. Still too complicated to be successful.
“So, yes, I can vouch for you, but if you think I’ll have any credibility or a job or anything left after Parker knows I’ve talked, you’re incredibly naïve,” Addison said.
Mac flipped off the recorder. “You got vacation time coming?”
Addison half-shrugged in agreement.
“I suggest you and your wife take a trip to the Caribbean or some nice warm place for the next two weeks. Leave now. Call her from here, have her pack you a bag, and we’ll take you to the airport,” Mac said.
“I have to come back eventually,” Addison protested. But he took the phone.
“Parker won’t be a threat much longer,” Mac said. “You’ll be able to come back. Call your wife. Then you need to call a certain Detective Rodriguez in Seattle and explain your surveillance of me and why I am not the shooter they’re looking for.”
“Surveillance? Is that what you’re willing to call it?”
“I am, for now,” Mac said. “But if I see you in my space again, I will kill you.” He shrugged. “And who knows? Maybe someday I’ll need a favor from a Fibber and give you a call.”
“You and Parker,” he muttered.
“What about me?” Troy said indignantly. “He had me kidnapped. Kristy was kidnapped. He beat up your aunt. You’re going to let him walk?”
“He was following orders,” Mac said coldly. “Orders he should have refused. But I don’t want him, I want the man who gave the orders. I forgot that fact when Kellerman shot Danny, and I was wrong. I’m willing to do whatever it takes to get Parker. The first step is to cut him off from his network. El Paso is severed. His Marine connection is dead. This cuts a major portion of the FBI off for him. I want him to call people and have them hang up without saying a word. I want him alone, helpless. I want him to pay.”
“Shit, you can be ruthless,” Troy said in the silence that followed.
“You bought into this mess,” Mac said. “Kristy and Aunt Lindy trouble me — they didn’t ask for all this crap. I guess you could say, however, that Parker paid them for Addison’s crimes.” He looked at Kristy. “What do you think?”
Kristy looked at Addison. “Who was the man who kidnapped me?” she asked. “Give us his name and I’ll call it square.”
Addison looked at her, his face sagged. He looked at Mac. Mac raised one eyebrow but said nothing. Addison looked back at Kristy. “His name is Bill James. He’s stationed here.”
She nodded. “Turn him loose,” she said.
Mac handed Addison a cell phone. “Call Rodriguez first,” he suggested. He gave Addison the number.
Addison took a deep breath, let it out slowly. Then he dialed the number. “You do realize what time it is?” he said, as the number rang.
Mac grinned. “Yes.”
Rodriguez answered the phone sleepily. Addison explained who he was, repeating the information patiently. He told Rodriguez about his surveillance of Mac the night Donnelly was attacked. He listened.
“He wants to talk to you.” Addison handed him the phone.
“Yeah,” Mac said.
“Is this for real? What the fuck does he mean surveillance?”
“You remember what I said happened that night? We’ve agreed to call that surveillance.”
Rodriguez hesitated. “This agent will stick to this story? I’ll use what I’ve got to get the charges dropped. But who knows? Who did shoot Donnelly? This Addison guy?”
“He says no,” Mac replied. “I’m working on finding out who that was. I’ll get back to you on that.”
“You will.” Rodriguez snorted. “How about not at 3 a.m. in the morning next time?” and hung up.
Mac handed the phone back. “Call your wife,” he said. “Troy will take you to the airport.”
Addison looked at the phone in his hand. “You really think you can take Parker down,” he asked.
“Yes.” Mac’s voice was level, cold. Addison looked at him, nodded. Then he called his wife.
“One more thing,” Mac said, after Addison was finished. “I want all the phone numbers you have for Parker.”
Addison blinked, but didn’t protest. He pulled out his wallet, took out a piece a paper, handed it over to Mac. “Keep it,” he said. “I don’t plan to need it again.”