Point of Impact

CHAPTER SEVEN

The funeral was on a Thursday, with all the office guys there, and most of their wives, even some of the office girls, and maybe a few dozen other people from the law enforcement community in which Nick moved, and their wives too. And some people who’d simply read of Myra in the Times-Picayune obit.

There must have been fifty or sixty. They stood quietly in the sunlight, not really moving or talking, but just by their radiance being there with him, trying somehow to help him and do something for Myra. It pleased Nick that so many showed up. Myra had been such a quiet little mouse about her life, taking what she was given; there should be medals for the Myras of the world but somehow there never were, so a graveyard crowd was the next best thing.

The cemetery was out in Kenner, fifteen long miles west of the city, a place Nick had chosen on his own because it was so open and grassy. None of those looming, dark, jungly trees and the soupy ground sheathed in thatches of reeds that seemed everywhere in what passed for “country” around New Orleans, just an expanse of green overlooking some tract houses and, in the far-off, the lake. Nick liked it because it seemed midwestern to him, and he liked all the sun, the grass and the trees that weren’t cypress or fern.

And of course it was a bright and shiny day, a bit chilly, everybody at their best. It was formal in the most meaningful sense; it gave Myra the idea of having counted and being part of some larger, more organized whole, a society.

He even spoke a few words over the bier, after the minister had finished.

“Look, um,” he mumbled, “I wanted to thank all of you and your wives for taking time off to come on out and help me say good-bye to Myra. Uh, she was a terrific gal, as you all know, and it’s real great that you guys came on by. I know it would have made her real happy. So, uh, thanks again for, you know, coming on by.”

It sounded lame but he didn’t care.

Then they filed by and shook his hand and said dumb, stupid things and he nodded and watched them go.

“I’m so sorry, Nick,” said Sally Ellion, one of the pretty girls in the Computer Records Section.

“Oh,” he said, somewhat startled to see her here. “Yeah, well. Uh. Thanks for coming.”

“You were so brave,” she said.

“Huh? Me?”

“Yes, you, Nick,” and then she moved on.

One of the last in the line was Hap Fencl.

“Nick, take some time off, for Christ sakes. You been through a lot. Give yourself a break.”

“Hap, the best thing for me is to get back to work, you know? I’d just get bigger and dopier if I hung around the house. And there’s all the things to remind me. So I’ll see you in an hour or so.”

“Nick, you take care of yourself, you hear?” said Hap’s wife Marlee. “You need any help, you let me know.”

“Sure,” he said.

Then he watched them go, until he was alone with the box, except he could see some old black guys standing way off with shovels. They’d wait and wait until he left, and then they’d lower her and discreetly cover her over. With dirt. That was all. That was it. That was what had to be faced.

Okay, babe, he finally said. The guys with the shovels are here. Time to go. I’ll always remember. Good-bye.

“Now, people,” Hap was saying when Nick showed up, late, still in his dark blue suit, “we’re getting the buzz out of Washington on these Colombians still and DEA all over the goddamn board is howling that we’re not putting them in our loop so – ”

“But if you give it to those guys, it’s all over the street in fifteen seconds – ”

“Okay, DEA has a slightly different agenda than we do, you all know that, they’re going for the quality bust because they don’t have enough guys to burn small fry like us, so once in a while, yes, Mike, they do let a little something loose so as to turn it for something bigger. Still, what I’m giving you is the official word from on high, you guys gotta share with DEA.”

There was a murmur of disapproval from the twelve agents of the New Orleans FBI narcotics squad. Outside, in the bright afternoon sun, the traffic snorted and honked up Loyola Street in front of the Federal Building. Nick slid in next to his partner, Mickey Sontag, who’d held a seat for him.

“I miss -?”

“Same old,” the Mick whispered, “just shit on paperwork flow, on some new buy-money regs due out, some news on qualifications and SWAT applications, the same old same-old.”

“Great,” said Nick.

The meeting continued, the usual early Thursday afternoon ordeal and Nick wondered why Hap didn’t just cancel. But Hap was old Bureau, no matter how much a one-of-the-guys type he pretended to be, with a dad and an uncle having retired as supervisory agents, and so he’d always play rules, rules, rules. That was the FBI way, as Nick knew better than most.

Then they moved to cases, as one by one the agents briefed their pals on what was hot and what was not, all of it standard and routine. The point was that in give-and-taking like this on a formal basis every week, maybe somebody would notice connections between cases, make quantum leaps or free associations, and it sometimes happened. But it didn’t this time: just droning men in their law enforcement-dud voices ripping fast as hell through stuff that nobody else much cared about, no patterns in it anywhere. Nick couldn’t pitch in, having not really leaned into his job since Myra died and that goddamned guy got whacked in the Palm Court Motel. But he made a noise when it came to Questions One and All.

“Questions one and all?”

There were a few, nothing much, and finally Nick got his hand up in symphony with Hap’s glance in his direction.

“Say Hap, on that guy whacked at the Palm Court, what’s the disposition?”

“Not much. DEA has no record on him in the dope loop and NOPD can’t commit any real manpower, thank you, you know how those guys are in throwing bodies at cases that look like they’re not headed to an arrest.”

“So where does that leave us? Guy was trying to reach me, he – ”

“You know, Nick, it’s not really our bailiwick if he’s not fleeing a federal charge or committing a federal crime. I think it’ll end up in NOPD’s I-hope-somebody-tells-us-who-did-this file.”

“Come on, Hap, you know we can ride hard on anything if we can find the angle.”

“Yeah, but it doesn’t look remotely promising. Drugs, maybe, but there’s no evidence anywhere in the system. The guy’s not from here. You say he’s Agency, but the Agency doesn’t say he’s Agency.”

“The Agency never says they’re Agency. According to the Agency, the Agency doesn’t exist. But this guy’s not a Panamanian, Hap. My source told me he was a Salvadoran.”

“Yeah, well, the paperwork doesn’t bear it out. That was a legit passport.”

“Which could mean he’s major league spook.”

“Which probably means he’s minor league nothing. And if he were spook, you damn well know the Agency would be here running a damage control operation. They freak when we’re talking national security, you know how that bends them out of shape. They don’t care. No leads, no nothing. It could be jealous husbands, squabble over profits, family problems, that sort of thing. It’s interesting like a mystery novel, clues, that ‘Rom Do’ bit, yes, I give you that. But there’s gonna be two hundred fifty unsolved homicides in this area this year, and I’m looking at one of them, eh, pardner? It’s just not interesting. You know in D.C. they want body bags to brag about, indictments, convictions, that sort of scalp hunting; so I can’t commit to big maybes.”

“You know – ”

“Nick, I got something for you I think you’d like, you give me a chance to get to it.”

“Well, let me just throw a fast possibility at you. Okay? I’ve been thinking it over.”

“It’s late, Nick. And there’s some other – ”

“Please!”

“Oh, go ahead. Shoot. Fire away.”

Nick cleared his throat.

“First, I have to ask myself, how’d those guys get in that room. The hitters? Guy was scared, guy was on the run, guy thought he’d been made, guy was sending out signals of catastrophe. But he’s only in the room maybe ten minutes before they’re on him?”

“Maybe he ordered out for room service and – ”

“No room service in a crappy joint like the Palm Court. Plus, he wouldn’t have. No way. He was just going to sit tight until he talked to somebody he trusted, that being me, because he had my name from a guy he knew in DEA. Me, Bureau, rather than somebody in DEA, because, like we all know, DEA isn’t tight. We just joked about it a few minutes ago. They’re not tight, he doesn’t trust them, doesn’t that tell you the guy knows what he’s doing?”

“Okay, so go on,” said Hap.

“Here’s a second thing. He asks for, no he demands, a room next to all the Coke machines. Very weird, you have to admit. Now why would he do this? I mean really, Coke machines?”

“Maybe he liked Coke, Nick,” somebody said.

When the laughter died, Nick said, “The Agency says he’s not one of theirs? But let me tell you something very interesting. Not two weeks ago, this Agency which doesn’t exist, it puts out a routine what’s called Technology Memo for field usage, about the useful properties just discovered in vending machines that would especially help a guy on the run in an industrialized city. I went over to the Coke company a couple of days ago. Coke machines, especially the new, powerful ones, guess what? They put out a low-frequency electromagnetic force field. Enough to screw up a TV, radio, a small appliance. Or a parabolic mike for acoustical penetration.”

He looked at them, let it sink in.

“He knew he was being hunted by pros. Pros who’d have the latest audio stuff. The Agency had just told him how to beat it. Don’t you see?”

“Nick, I – ” started Hap.

“But it gets even more interesting. Know why? See, they had very good stuff. Not crap stuff, like we have, but state-of-the-art eavesdropping gear. So he thought he had them beat, but they had him beat. And that’s how they got in.”

“What’s the eavesdropping have to – ”

“Only way they could get in without a struggle or leaving pick marks on the lock or any physical evidence of entry is with the magic two words. The magic two words were ‘Nick Memphis.’ Eduardo Lanzman or Lachine or whatever he calls himself, he calls the office, asks for Nick Memphis, leaves a message. Ten minutes later knock comes at door, somebody says, ‘Nick Memphis.’ Eduardo opens, they’re on him very fast, and they whack him. Fair enough? So how’d they get my name?”

The guys looked at him silently. Mike Farthing lit a cigarette. Hap was making like a couch potato. Mickey Sontag, another bruiser but a young one, scratched his nose.

“They couldn’t run a tap, they didn’t have time. How’d they get my name?”

“Okay, what’re you saying?”

“They had to have a parabolic mike. They acoustically penetrated his motel room. It wasn’t hard-sealed, of course. But they could beam through the electronic interference of the Coke machines and hear what he was saying. Okay? It’s the only adequate explanation of the event.”

They were looking at him.

“And the significance of that – if their equipment is that good, then it’s one of those jobs that costs out at about two hundred thousand dollars. We’re talking an expensive piece of equipment. We don’t even have one, you guys know. If we want one, we have to petition Washington, make the case that our bust is that important, and they send it over from Miami or down from St. Louis, in a van with two technicians, that is, if we can get the highest approval. So what’s a piece of the space age like that doing being deployed in some low-ranking drug hit? I’m telling you guys, the signature all over this one is that it involves some big-time heavy hitters, some intelligence people maybe, or at the least some very, very big drug operators.”

Hap considered.

“Nick, it’s thin. You don’t have any hard evidence, you have nothing to take to court. You only have your interpretation. And the word of some guy from Coke.”

“Hap, just give me a week or two, it’s the silly season, and if now and then it runs thin I’ll drift over to Robbery Detail or shag paper for Bunco-Fraud or run stakeouts here on narc so these guys can take a day off now and then.”

“What’s your angle?”

“I want to ride the mike thing. Who makes these things, how are they dispersed, who owns them? How would people get hold of them? We can justify it by saying that it’s a possible stolen government equipment thing, if you get any heat on it. But just let me attack it through that angle, and in a week or so, I’ll let you know what I’ve come up with.”

“Ahh,” said Hap, “it’s not making me happy, Nick, I have to answer to Washington and you know what pricks they can be. Tell you what, you do me a favor, I’ll do you a favor, and we’ll see how we shake down end of the week.”

“Name it.”

“Well, your favorite Mickey Mouse outfit, our old pals in the Secret Service are – ”

A chorus of groans. Secret Service personnel were arrogant, reputedly the best shots in federal service, very showy, very touchy, and always hard to deal with because they put their agenda up front of everything.

“ – hold the cheers, girls – anyway, they’re sending a security detail down because, in, um, three weeks, Flashlight is coming. Yep, the man himself. Anyway, Washington wants us to cooperate up the kazoo with Secret Service and the bad part is the people on Pennsylvania Avenue are sending a heavy hitter down to run the liaison because yours truly doesn’t quite carry enough weight. But we have to provide support. So I need a gofer to run errands for this big guy and keep him out of the office’s hair and make my life easier. So here’s the deal, Nick, you fill this guy’s coffee cup for him and kiss his butt just where he likes it to be kissed, and dovetail with the assholes from Secret Service, and I’ll cut you some slack to run this investigation.”

It was a deal Nick couldn’t say no to, and so he said yes, happily, but the happiness only lasted a second.

“Yeah, now I got you, buddy. Guess who the Washington shot is?”

Nick had a presentiment of tragedy.

“No.”

“Sorry. Yeah. Guy’s a comer, what can I say. It’s Howdy Duty.”

Howdy Duty was the nickname of Howard D. Utey, special assistant to the Director, former head of counterespionage, staff director of counterterror, former assistant director of organized crime, one of the hardest-charging law enforcement executives in the Bureau and a man much loathed and feared by all who knew him.

But especially Nick, for in 1986, Howard D. Utey, Howdy Duty, on his way up fast, had been supervisor of the Tulsa office. Howdy Duty had been on the other end of the mike when Nick took his shot.

Howdy Duty was Base, howling in his ear as he blew out the spine of the only woman he’d ever love.