Counterfeit Lies

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Jake was driving in bumper-to-bumper traffic on the 101 Freeway when his cell phone rang. He spied the caller ID and turned down the volume on Charlie Daniels blasting from the speakers.

“Hey, what’s up?”

“You were right,” said Trey Bennett.

“About what?”

“The front office hit the roof when they learned the killing was to take place in Vegas. They accused you of setting up the entire episode for a weeklong boondoggle in Sin City. I was ordered to produce copies of the recordings to verify you did this on purpose. OPR even came up in the conversation. I’m not sure your marriage to management is going to last.”

“We’re like fire and kerosene.”

A sense of perverse pride washed across Jake’s face; he knew he was viewed as a bureaucratic liability by those cloistered in the corner offices of the federal building; so quick to exploit his successes but so unwilling to chance failure. Any good undercover agent ruffled a few feathers in the front office, and Jake more often than not upset the entire henhouse. He loved these little episodes because they guaranteed he would never be assigned to a management position in the FBI. He also knew the recordings would exonerate him of any wrongdoing.

“Tell the turd sniffers at OPR if I wanted a boondoggle, I would have set it up in Maui.”

Trey laughed. “That’s what I told them… and then I spoke with Adriana Corbet at the U.S. Attorney’s Office. She says we have both jurisdiction and venue. She doesn’t see a problem and said she and her husband would gladly accompany us on the trip to Vegas to make sure all the legal issues are resolved.”

“I bet she did.” You could hear the smile in Jake’s voice. “A couple of years ago she worked a human trafficking case for us involving L.A., Vegas, and San Francisco. On the trips to Vegas we had to pry her away from the tables with a crowbar. What was even more amazing, she won big every night.”

“As she pointed out, we’ll arrest Reid when he’s in L.A., not Vegas, so it won’t even become an issue.”

“I love it when the feather merchants get their collective panties in a bunch. I’m so glad to stir the pot.”