4

MOST OF THE FBI offices at 11000 Wilshire Boulevard were purely functional, with only a few homey touches — a picture of an agent’s family, a baseball signed by the Dodgers at a special game — thrown in. But Supervising Agent William Forrester’s of- fice was filled with photographs of Hollywood stars. As Jack and Oscar sat in his office waiting while Forrester droned on and on with a call to Washington, Jack looked at the pictures behind Forrester’s desk. There was Supervising Agent Forrester with Arnold Schwarzenegger back in his superhero days. And there was Supervising Agent Forrester with Clint Eastwood, on the Line of Fire set, and there he was again, in all his glory, with Harrison Ford on some Tom Clancy project. His arm around the leading men, his phony smile plastered on. It occurred to Jack that Forrester might actually think he was a leading man and that all the other agents at 11,000 Wilshire were just small, supporting players. There to support the one-and-only Forrester, the most dedicated, the most brilliant, the most photogenic agent anywhere.

Finally Forrester slammed down his phone and looked across his perfectly neat teakwood desk at Jack.

“Good morning. Perhaps you know why I’ve called you two in for this little talk.”

“Let me guess,” Jack said. “You want to congratulate us for catching Karl Steinbach.”

Oscar scrunched up in his chair a little. He didn’t believe in provoking assholes. Especially when the asshole in question was your boss.

“Afraid not,” Forrester said. “I brought you two in here to tell you that a full investigation into the City National Bank robbery is proceeding apace.”

“Hmmm . . . Proceeding apace,” Jack said, turning to look at Oscar.

Not able to help himself, Oscar let a jagged smile break across his wide face.

“Keep it up, you two,” Forrester said, getting up, walking to the wall and straightening out a picture of himself with his arm wrapped around Rambo.

“Keep it up. But one day — and that day will not be long in coming — you both will take the fall, along with your partners Zac Blakely and Ron Hughes. That I swear to you.”

“Bullshit,” Jack said. “You know we never touched that money. We were only backup in that case, anyway. We wouldn’t have been there at all if we weren’t down so many agents.”

“So you say.” Forrester dusted off a picture of himself holding Julia Roberts in an awkward embrace. The look on Julia’s face was that she would have rather been hanging off the rack in an Inquisition prison than be in a clinch with Forrester.

“But,” Forrester went on, “I know how you people think. Like Robert Hansen did. The Bureau is old hat, has lost its powers, and you are here to turn it into your private investment firm. But that will never happen. I’ve called you in here today to give you one more chance. Blakely and Hughes are going to be indicted for stealing $200,000 and you will go down with them, unless you maker a deal before they do. You know how this works, Jack. You and Oscar can still save your own butts and I would strongly advise you to do so, before it’s too late. Turn in the money now and you will be doing yourselves a huge favor.”

Jack felt his temperature rising.

“Let me ask you this, Forrester: If you’re so sure we stole that money, how come you haven’t stripped us of our badges, taken our guns, and put us on suspension. That’s what usually happens when bad agents are discovered. They disappear.”

“Well, maybe we will do that,” Forrester said. “I mean, if you’re so anxious for it to happen. Then why not?”

“Okay, do it,” Oscar said. “You play that game and we’ll open a civil suit against you personally and the Bureau that will be so freaking big that ——”

Oscar was so exasperated, he couldn’t even finish the sentence.

Forrester cleared his throat a little but, other than that, seemed unmoved.

“We are gathering evidence. It’s my job to rid the Bureau of any and all subterfuge, and I intend to do exactly that. There are over fifty agents in this building, and only a handful of them have compromised the integrity of the Bureau. I’m going to root them all out, starting with you two and your criminal mentors.”

“Criminal mentors,” Jack repeated.

“Man’s got a really extensive vocabulary,” Oscar said.

“Very impressive,” Jack said. “You mind if we go back to work now, boss?”

“You’re both excused. But the investigation is ongoing. If you have anything to tell me, you better do it before it’s too late.”

He turned and dusted off a picture of himself with Daniel Craig, sighed, and then answered his phone.

“Yes? . . . Who is it? . . . Oh, Steven Spielberg . . . well, please put him on.”

Jack and Oscar walked out of the room, past Forrester’s secretary, Sue, an older dumpy woman who dressed in funereal black.

“Why does he think Blakely and Hughes took the money?” Oscar asked.

“I don’t know,” Jack said. “But we’ve got to distinguish the man from his job.”

“What do you mean?”

“Look, just because the asshole is a buffoon and a starfucker doesn’t mean he isn’t dangerous to us. Lesser assholes than him have ruined people’s careers before. He really thinks that Blakely and Hughes took the dough. He really thinks we might have helped them. He’s a maniac when it comes to internal affairs, and he’s coming after us. We have to find out why.”

“You think they really could have taken the money?” Oscar said.

Jack thought of all the ways Blakely had schooled him when he was new in the department.

“I don’t like to think it,” Jack said. “Man, I really don’t. But we got to ask around.”

“Okay,” Oscar said. “I’m going to get into it. But personally, I would totally vouch for both those guys. I just don’t believe it.”

Jack nodded his head. “I read all the reports. They logged in the money, but two days later, when the evidence steward looked for it, it was gone.”

“And nobody had checked it out?”

“Nope. But somebody said they’d seen Blakely down there near the locker.”

“So why wasn’t he busted?” Oscar said.

“Because . . . because he passed a lie-detector test, and there was no evidence against him. I got another question, though.”

“What’s that?”

“Why is Forrester so anxious to pin the stealing of the evidence on Zac and Ron?”

Oscar gave a low whistle.

“Funny, I was thinking the same thing. You know, when I was in training, they always taught us that when somebody went bad, they almost always got caught by living the high life. Cars, secret bank accounts . . . hanging out with a fast crowd.”

“Yeah,” Jack said. “And who likes to do that more than Supervising Agent William Forrester?”

“Maybe we ought to have a look at Billy-Boy’s bank accounts,” Oscar said.

“Uh-huh,” Jack said. “Maybe we should. But I got a feeling he’s defended them with some serious firewalls.”

“Yeah,” Oscar said. “But we’ll figure out a way around that, because we are superagents who brook no shit from pendejos with pictures of movie stars in their office.”

“This is true,” Jack said. “There’s no denying it. We fucking rule.”