TWENTY-FIVE

The television screen flickered colored images of two young guys with nice haircuts, earnestly discussing their feelings for a girl named Brooke, and the camera held on them for a moment, sustaining the drama, until they went to a commercial break. And as the commercials came on, the people in the emergency room of Cardinal Glennon hospital went back to their USes and Entertainment Weeklys.

Joe Klosterman had not taken a seat, but he had checked in with the administrative nurse and had been informed that George Hastings had received a minor contusion on the head and sustained a minor concussion but would be released at any minute.

This was what Klosterman was telling Murph on the cell phone when Hastings came down the hall into the waiting area. There was a goose egg on the back of his head that wasn’t visible for his hair but was tender to the touch.

Klosterman said, “Here he is now. I’ll call you back.” Then to Hastings he said, “You all right?”

Hastings said, “Yeah, it’s nothing.”

“Murph’s down at the train station, picking up what he can.”

“Feds there?”

“Yeah,” Klosterman said. “I guess they took you away before the feds got there.”

“I wish they hadn’t,” Hastings said.

A couple of patrol officers had found him unconscious on the bathroom floor and called for an ambulance. The paramedics looked for a knife or gunshot wound and didn’t find one and eventually located a moist spot of blood on his head where it had been knocked up against the wall. Hastings was coming to when they were putting him into the ambulance but was too weak to make much of a protest. Now, he was feeling better, though still a little unsteady on his feet as he and Klosterman walked out of the hospital into the cold afternoon air. Klosterman gestured to the felony car, which was parked down the hill about a block.

Klosterman said, “Murph said they have no identification on the man you killed.”

Hastings said, “Shit. Well, I guess I’m not surprised.”

“I presume you think it’s related? That he wasn’t just attempting to mug you?”

“No.” Hastings was aware then that no one had yet questioned him about it. “He was with the other guy. A young man in his twenties wearing a black raincoat. Short dark hair, pale skinned, glasses. The John Lennon kind.”

“The man in the raincoat?”

“Yes. He’s the one that picked up the money. The Indian was with him. He led me into the bathroom and the Indian came in behind me. A trap, and I walked right into it.”

“Indian Indian, or American Indian?”

“American Indian.”

Klosterman said, “You don’t say Native American?”

Hastings shrugged. He had played high school basketball with a couple of guys from the Osage tribe: Don Buffalohead and Amos Ribs … Don was okay, a funny guy, but Amos had been a bit of a prima donna who didn’t pass the ball much. They called themselves Indians, not Native Americans. Last Hastings heard, Don Buffalohead was running a small insurance agency in Lincoln, which didn’t surprise Hastings much as Don was a born salesman … shit, thinking of Don Buffalohead now because he’d shot an Indian dead in a bathroom. Maybe he was a racist. Or maybe the conk on his head was messing up his thought process. Hastings said, “He had a Buck knife.”

“I know,” Klosterman said, “Murph told me about it. How close did he get?”

Hastings thought back to the cold nightmare of that bathroom, the knife about an inch away from his stomach. “Pretty close,” he said.

“Well,” Klosterman said, “if he’s within twenty feet of you, it’s a clean shoot.”

“It was clean,” Hastings said. “I’m not worried about that.”

They were up to the car now, a blue Chevy Impala slick-back police unit. Hastings put his hands on the roof for a moment to steady himself.

Klosterman was looking across from the driver’s side. “You okay?” he said.

“I’m fine,” Hastings said. “I just need some coffee.” He got into the car and Klosterman did the same.

Hastings said, “What happened to Gene Penmark?”

“He’s fine. He’s at home now.”

And Hastings said, “Where’s debrief?”

“FBI field office,” Klosterman said. “There’s a chair there with a lot of fingers pointed at it and I got a feeling it’s waiting for you.”

*   *   *

Klosterman drove fast, flashing the high beams on interrupting traffic when necessary to get them to pull to the right, and they were at the field office in less than ten minutes. Klosterman walked in with him and Hastings decided that was okay too.

Then they were seated in a conference room with ASAC Jim Shellow and Agents Kubiak and Gabler and some guy wearing a full suit who just took notes that Hastings believed would go straight to Shellow.

Kubiak and Gabler were still in their undercover clothes: plaid shirts and jeans that looked like they’d been purchased that morning from the Bass Pro Shop.

Kubiak told his part of the story and Hastings was glad to hear that it was mostly straight. Kubiak even acknowledged fault in allowing Penmark to board the train without him, saying that the responsibility had been his and his alone. He avoided the “mistakes were made” terminology common to most bureaucrats and politicians and Hastings started to wonder if the guy was perhaps tolerable on a good day.

Then Hastings told them what he remembered, Gabler questioning him here and there, though not in a hard fashion. Klosterman was asking him things too and none of the federal agents seemed to take issue with this.

And when it was done, Jim Shellow said, “Gentlemen, this sounds like it was poorly planned from the beginning. We have a man who escaped with two million dollars. We have a dead alleged assailant who we can’t identify. And we have received no word that Cordelia Penmark has been released. Lieutenant, I do not hold you solely accountable for this. This was an FBI operation and it was not one for which you had been trained.”

If this was supposed to make Hastings feel better, it did not. Hastings looked Jim Shellow up and down. A man, not much more or less, who was only a few years older than Hastings. He could accept Shellow’s comments quietly and just wait for it to end. And if he’d been smarter, he probably would have.

Hastings said, “Pardon me, Mr. Shellow. Is this something you can train for?” He said it in a tone that you couldn’t quite call insolent.

Jim Shellow said, “Excuse me?”

Klosterman said, “What the lieutenant means, sir, is that even the FBI can’t draw up a plan for every contingency.” Klosterman turned to Hastings as if to acknowledge the obvious. “Right?”

Hastings suppressed a smile. Few could do bogus respect like Klosterman. “Yes,” Hastings said.

“That’s not the point,” Jim Shellow said. He wasn’t going to have these two hicks twist him around. “In my view, you cowboyed this thing.”

Hastings said, “How did I do that?”

Shellow said, “You shot and killed one witness and let the other one get away. And the one you killed wasn’t even armed.”

“He was armed, sir. He had a Buck knife.”

“You don’t just shoot someone with a knife,” Shellow said. “You order him to drop the weapon.”

“Sure, if there’s time.” Hastings paused, wondering if this jackass was for real. “Are you—”

“Jim,” Gabler said, trying to head off this confrontation, “let’s be fair to the man. We weren’t there and he was. He said the assailant was charging him with a knife and I think we should take him at his word.”

“Sure,” Shellow said, “what else can we do? One witness dead and the other on the run with two million dollars.” He was talking now the way a small man talks, petty and sarcastic.

Hastings took a breath and tried to think things through. Then he said, “If you want to blame me for what happened today, go ahead. I don’t answer to you, so it makes no difference to me what you think. Every shooting in the line of duty is investigated by my Department. So I’ll answer to them when the time comes. But I think we should move on now, if you don’t mind.”

Jim Shellow said, “You’re not running this, Lieutenant.”

“I’m not trying to. I want to find the girl. I do that and I’ll find the murderer of Tom Myers.”

Shellow said, “What were you doing there, anyway?”

For a few moments, nobody said anything. Hastings felt uncomfortable all of a sudden; he didn’t want to name names or point fingers. But it was taken care of when Gabler spoke up and said, “I asked him to assist us, Jim. It’s joint task.”

For a second, it seemed like ASAC Jim Shellow didn’t know what to say. He looked at Agent Kubiak, but Kubiak was not giving him anything back. Then he returned his attention to Gabler.

Shellow said, “You guys didn’t clear that with me.”

Gabler said, “You didn’t indicate that we had to, Jim.” His tone was respectful, almost soft.

Jim Shellow took another look around the room. An experienced bureaucrat, he knew when to quit, and no one in the room was really surprised when he stood up and walked out of the room.

After the door was shut, Klosterman said, “Well, that was pleasant.”

“He’s a good man,” Gabler said, giving something of a sharp look to Klosterman, the outsider. He wasn’t going to form alliances against one of his own. Not yet, anyway.

Klosterman gave Gabler one of his forgive-me gestures. Which helped, but Hastings was still uncomfortable.

Hastings said, “Look, I’ve been worrying about this for a while, so I’m just going to say it: are you guys hacked off at me over this thing with your old SAC?”

Gabler said, “What?” He was smiling now, genuinely surprised. “You mean Frank Cahalin?”

“Yes.”

“You mean because you’re the one that caught Frank Cahalin?”

“Well,” Hastings said, self-conscious now, “yeah.”

And Hastings heard Craig Kubiak laughing now, a sound he’d never heard before.

Gabler said, “You thought there were hard feelings over that?”

“Well, I—”

Kubiak was still laughing.

Gabler said, “George, no offense, but apart from a handful of candy-ass agents, just about everybody here hated Frank. We were only sorry that we didn’t catch him.” Gabler looked down the table at the other agent. He shared a smile with him and said, “I guess if we gave it any thought, we should probably thank you for it.”

They were ribbing him now and the only thing Hastings could do was say, “Okay, okay,” meaning, he got the point.

Kubiak said, “Let’s get some coffee. This could be a long night.”

After the agents had left the room, Hastings said, “Hmmm.” He had been worried about it, flattering himself that they had an ax to grind against him all along. But they hadn’t. He had imagined it all.

Klosterman put a consoling hand on his shoulder. “Cheer up, George,” he said. “Maybe there’s somebody out there who’s mad about it.”

*   *   *

They walked down the hall to a small office that Kubiak and Gabler shared with two other agents. The file was open on Kubiak’s desk, photos of the dead man spread out. Shots taken close up and at distances, the slumped corpse on the bathroom floor. Clinical-looking and lifeless, even to Hastings, who had been there when it happened.

Kubiak said, “Well, Lieutenant, does he look familiar to you?”

“No,” Hastings said. “I saw him for the first time today.”

Kubiak said, “No identification on him. And we can’t match his prints to anything we have in our database. You seem to have killed a ghost.”

Hastings didn’t respond.

Gabler riffled through the photos, the ones that were taken later at the medical examiner’s office. He found what he was looking for and centered on the desk a photo of a tattoo on the man’s back. It was a couple of triangles laid in a horizontal manner, the lower triangle forming a sort of fulcrum—like a seesaw, yet on the other side was a semicircle arcing over a dot.

Gabler said, “I did a little Internet search while you were napping and I believe this thing here is a bird. The symbol of a bird. If he was one of the southwestern tribes, this could mean that our man here was carefree and lighthearted.”

“Hmmm,” Hastings said, remembering the grim determination of the man with the knife.

“But that,” Gabler said, “is a shot in the dark.”

“It’s not all we’re doing,” Kubiak said. “There’ll be faxes and e-mails going out to all our field offices within an hour. Maybe someone’s seen this guy before.” Kubiak was looking at Hastings now. He seemed to hesitate, only for a moment, and then he said, “Do you want to look at the dispatch before I send it out?”

It was a small thing, but in a way not so small. The agent was acknowledging Hastings’s role in this and perhaps something more, but there was never going to be anything more dramatic than that. And for that, it was important for Hastings not to dwell on it.

“Sure,” Hastings said, as if it were routine.

Kubiak left them and then Klosterman drifted off for a cup of coffee.

It was then that Gabler turned to Hastings and spoke in a low voice.

“Listen,” he said, “I’m sorry if I let you down earlier.”

Hastings frowned. “What are you talking about?”

“The whole thing happened so fast,” Gabler said. “We didn’t know he’d get on that goddamn train and—well, we weren’t ready for it.”

“Well, that’s what I was trying to explain to your boss. You can’t be ready for everything.”

“Yeah, but we’re expected to be.”

For a moment, Hastings wondered if the we meant law enforcement or if it meant FBI. He decided that Gabler had meant FBI and the local Metro guys were not included. You could interpret it any way you wanted, up to and including not being ready for 9/11. But doing that after the fact was an easy thing and all too often a convenient game for politicians.

“The point is,” Gabler said, “we put you on that train by yourself. Between you and me, it’s our bad.”

“Forget it.”

Gabler nodded. He was not comfortable with the conversation and it was obvious to Hastings that he wanted to end it as soon as possible. Yet something was still bothering him. Gabler said, “Still, I think you handled it pretty fucking well. Craig does too.”

“Does he?”

“Yeah.” Gabler gave him a look. “Don’t write him off, George. He’s a good agent.”

“Okay,” Hastings said.

Gabler said, “We’ll catch these fuckers, George. They’re smart, but they’re not smarter than we are.”