Prey

Chapter Twenty-Five

Thursday June 6th

Supervisory Special Agent Paul McNulty looked at the five members of his Special Operations Bravo Team-two were lying in rented hospital beds, and one looked like a monstrous reject from a low-budged horror film-and raised his nearly empty beer bottle in salute.

"To the Chareauxs," he said, smiling contentedly. "May they rot in the can for a hundred years."

"Right on!"

"Hear, hear."

"Fuckin'-A."

"You betcha!"

"Banzai!"

McNulty's five covert agents responded from their chairs and beds by raising and then rapidly emptying their own beer bottles. Six more bottles were then lobbed into the general direction of the large plastic trash can that had been set in the far corner of the room, the corner walls showing the effects of several failed bank shots.

In the meantime, Dwight Stoner, their resident mummy, obligingly began to pull the caps off of another six-pack.

"Okay, boys," Marie Pascalaura said as she cautiously opened the door and then came into the room, looking thoroughly professional and absolutely beautiful with her darkly tanned facial features, her patient smile, and her long, dark hair flowing over her crisply white-albeit snug- nurse's uniform. "How's everyone doing in here? Is my house going to survive your visit?"

"Oh-oh, Henry. Watch yourself, it's the nurse," Mike Takahara observed, his face red from the two beers he had slowly but determinedly consumed. "She's probably tougher here than at the hospital."

"Yeah, man, better watch out for your ass," Larry Paxton advised. "That lady packs a mean needle."

"Oh, I don't know, I think she's pretty nice," Stoner said as he started handing out the open bottles, holding three in each thickly bandaged hand.

"I can see it coming, Henry," Carl Scoby warned as he accepted another beer from Stoner. "The monster falls in love with the hero's girl, the girl falls in love with the monster, and they run off into the sunset with each other."

"That's right. Happens in all the best movies," Mike Takahara confirmed.

"Hero, mah ass," Paxton grumbled. "Since when does a hero have to call nine-one-one to get his butt out of trouble?"

"That's a good point, Henry," Carl Scoby nodded. "Here we hire you as our ace crazy man, wild-card agent extraordinaire, and the first chance you get to show your stuff, you take the easy way out."

"Yeah, and then when he's conscious again, all he wants to know is who won some fucking ball game," Larry Paxton added.

"Hell of a disappointment, Henry," Scoby commented solemnly.

"Yeah, especially since Ah had to go out and save my partner's ass," Paxton complained. "And nobody never told me Ah could call nine-one-one to do it, either."

"Paxton, you couldn't save shit in a bucket," Dwight Stoner growled through his swollen and split lips as he made a threatening motion to smack Paxton with a handful of beer bottles. "All you did was walk in, start a bar fight, and then haul ass out the door. Left me there to fight three hundred goddamn drunken redneck cowboys and a flipped-out coon-ass all by myself."

"There were only two hundred drunk cowboys, a couple of Indians, and the coon-ass," Paxton corrected, then drained about half the bottle in one long gulp. "I counted to make sure before I went out to get the cavalry."

"Who immediately proceeded to run you over and throw your ass in jail," Scoby reminded.

"Yeah, well, they don't 'xactly make cavalry rescues like they used to," Paxton conceded.

"Did I come in at a bad time?" Marie looked over at Paul MeNulty, who seemed to be the only halfway sober member of the group.

"No such thing with these fellows, my dear," MeNulty said, shaking his head and smiling. "You are always a breath of fresh air, and we're certainly grateful for your help. I just hope we're not making too much noise."

"As long as they keep on hitting the walls and not the windows, I think the neighborhood will survive," she said as she walked over to Henry Lightstone's partially raised hospital bed and began to appraise her patient's condition.

"So how you doing, sport?" she asked as she reached down and peeled up Lightstone's eyelids, one by one, to check the dilation of his pupils.

"I think I need more medical attention," Lightstone replied with a cheerful leer.

"Yeah, I bet you do," Marie nodded skeptically.

"Shit, he's fine," Larry Paxton complained from the adjoining bed. "Ah'm the one who needs medical attention. And besides, how come he gets the girl?"

"'Cause he's the hero," Carl Scoby explained. "It always happens that way."

"Personally, I think this is starting to sound like an ethnic solution," Mike Takahara said.

"See! There, what'd I tell you?" Larry Paxton nodded. "And that's exactly what it is, too. Ah'm being prejudiced against."

"So I think I should get the girl," Takahara finished.

"Mah ass!"

"I don't suppose there's any point in asking anybody how many beers these two have had so far," Marie said, looking around the room.

"Uh, three?" Lightstone guessed, mistakenly holding up five fingers.

"Yeah, that's right, 'cause Ah think he drank one of mine," Paxton agreed.

"Uh-huh," Marie nodded, having confirmed her suspicions. "As I recall, gentlemen, the deal we agreed upon was very simple. No painkillers in the morning and the afternoon, and you could have three beers apiece. So what we've got here is a choice. You can either skip on that last six-pack, or you can wait until about six o'clock this evening for your next pain pills. Take your pick."

"Hell, Ah don't need no pain pills." Paxton shook his head bravely. "Ah'm tough."

"And if he's tough, then I'm tough," Lightstone nodded in agreement.

"You're both a couple of wimps," Dwight Stoner smiled as he drained his beer bottle in one gulp and reached for another.

"Okay, guys, you asked for it," Marie Pascalaura said agreeably as she checked her watch. "You are hereby advised that serious drugs will not be available until six o'clock this evening. Any complaints, bitches, moaning, groaning, or whining will be referred to Special Agent Dwight Stoner for arbitration."

"Shit, if it's up to me, they ain't gonna get nothin', period," Stoner growled. "Couple of candy asses, that's all they are. Wanna work in this outfit, they gotta learn to play with pain."

"And on that cheerful note, I think I'm going to go to work," Marie Pascalaura smiled, walking back out the door with a deliberate roll of her muscular hips that left the agent team whistling and cheering in her wake.

"God, I love the medical profession," Henry Lightstone sighed.

"Yeah, well as long as you and me are roommates, and you ain't gonna share," Paxton muttered, "you can just forget about-"

There was a knock at the door, and a familiar face looked in.

"Hey, Counselor!" Henry Lightstone exclaimed, raising his beer bottle in salute. "Come on in."

"Am I interrupting anything?" Deputy U.S. Attorney Jameson Wheeler asked cautiously.

"Nah, just some general bullshit." Lightstone grinned. "Come on in and have a beer."

"Don't mind if I do," the tall and lanky government lawyer said as he entered, shut the door, and then walked over and handed McNulty a note. "But first, the mail run. Office wants you to call in right away. Sounds like they think it's important," he advised.

McNulty looked at the number, nodded, and then quickly disappeared out the door as Wheeler accepted a beer from Stoner and took McNulty's chair.

"So how's Mr. Henry Allen Lightner's highly reputable 'family attorney' doing these days?" Carl Scoby inquired after Wheeler had taken his first grateful sip of the cold brew.

"Well, to tell you the truth, pretty damned good," the Deputy U.S. Attorney nodded. "Fact is, I think I've just received the first official bribe of my entire legal career."

"No kidding?" Carl Scoby laughed. "They make it worthwhile?"

Jameson Wheeler pulled a folded check out of his breast pocket and handed it over to Scoby. "I don't know, maybe I'm not reading it right. What do you think?"

"Holy shit!" Scoby whispered and then passed the check around until it got to Lightstone, who glanced at it briefly, blinked, looked again, and then stared up at Wheeler.

"Somebody's offering you two hundred and fifty thousand dollars?" he said, blinking in astonishment. "What the hell for?"

"Basically, to be your attorney, more or less."

"Oh, yeah?" Lightstone laughed. "Well, if you don't mind my asking, Counselor, just what in hell are you planning on doing for me that's going to be worth a quarter-of-a- million-dollar fee?"

"Looks like you ain't gonna need Marie no more," Larry Paxton guessed. "Can I have her?"

"Of course you have to understand," Jameson Wheeler said, "that this is what we in the legal profession would call a 'retainer.' Just a little pocket change to keep a legal-beagle like myself hanging around on stand-by and twiddling his thumbs for the next few weeks."

"That mean you wouldn't get to keep the money unless you actually did the work?" Mike Takahara asked.

"Oh, good Lord, no," Wheeler laughed, shaking his head in mock dismay. "I'm always amazed that you law- enforcement types have so little understanding of our legal system. What kind of professionals do you think we are?"

"Gimme another beer before I say something I might regret later on," Paxton mumbled to Stoner.

"As a member in good standing of the District of Columbia and the Idaho State bars," Jameson Wheeler went on, still smiling, because he and Paxton had known and worked with each other for the past sixteen years, "I would certainly be allowed to keep my retainer whether I worked my butt off on behalf of my client or did nothing much at all. In fact, as I understand the situation, in the unlikely event that I might actually do something halfway significant in this particular case-say, for example, pass gas at an appropriate moment when the opening counsel is trying to make a point to the jury-I can expect to receive another check of similar if not greater value."

"I take it all back, Henry," Paxton said comtemplatively as he sipped at the cold beer. "You better stick with Marie. At least she ain't gonna run off with your wallet afterward."

"Which brings us to the basic question," Lightstone said. "Who the hell's offering to pay the freight on this deal?"

"Alex Chareaux, if you care to believe that," Wheeler shrugged.

"What?" Lightstone blinked in disbelief

"Hey," Jameson Wheeler smiled as he brought his thin shoulders up in an exaggerated shrug, "all I know is that you and Roberto Jacall are being offered the use of one of the top legal firms in Washington, D.C., at no cost to yourselves, and I'm being offered a quarter of a million dollars to step aside and keep my mouth shut. And if that makes any sense to any of you here-" he raised his beer bottle in salute, "-then you're way ahead of me on beer."

"Sure as hell don't make any sense to me," Stoner said.

"Quite frankly," Wheeler confessed, "it's almost enough to make me wonder what I've been doing with my career all these years."

"Well, I should fucking well hope so," Paxton muttered.

"Uh, I'm not sure I'm following all this," Lightstone said, his eyebrows furrowed in confusion beneath the tape and bandages. "You mean that these people, whoever they are, don't even want you to be my attorney of record?"

"Absolutely not. Co-counsel at best, and even that in name only," Wheeler said emphatically. "As I understand it, there would be twelve trial attorneys from the firm, who would actually handle the case."

"Twelve fucking attorneys, for me?"

"For you and Alex, Butch and Sonny and Jacall," the Deputy U.S. Attorney nodded. "Package deal. I understand it works out so much easier that way."

"And Alex Chareaux is offering to pay the bill?" Lightstone laughed. "Come on, Jameson, you're trying to tell us that Alex Chareaux and his brothers have been making money like this from taking people out on illegal guiding trips?"

"Not unless they've been dealing cocaine in kilo lots on the side," Carl Scoby commented.

"That's exactly right, and, no, I'm not trying to tell you that," Jameson Wheeler said. "But what I am telling you, my friends, is that the firm of Little, Warren, Nobles and Kole does not come cheap. If for no other reason than the fact that they have a high overhead. The fact is, the senior partners can count on raking in a seven-figure income, clear, and a straight partnership is supposed to be good for at least a mid six. So you add up the cost of twelve criminal lawyers of that caliber over a period of several weeks, if not months, and figure out where that puts you."

"Never-never land," Lightstone grunted.

"And that doesn't even begin to count the support troops," Wheeler added. "Just as an example, I don't know what they pay Walter Crane, their chief investigator, but it has to be a bunch because I'd say he's probably more aggressive than the five of you put together."

"Sounds like a real nice guy," Stoner commented.

"To give you an idea of how nice a guy he is," Jameson Wheeler smiled, "I can tell you that if Walter Crane focused his team of investigators on Henry's cover, which I happen to know is pretty decent because I helped build it, I don't think it would take more than two days-maybe a week at the outside-to figure out two things: one, that Mr. Henry Allen Lightner does not exist; and two, that yours truly has been working as a poor but honest government lawyer in Denver for the past twenty years."

"Two days?" Scoby blinked.

"At best," the Deputy U.S. Attorney said. "I'm telling you, the man is good."

"So what does that do for our case?" Scoby asked.

"A very good question," Jameson Wheeler nodded, impressed by the realization that all five of McNulty's agents, who had been about half drunk and cheerfully celebrating when he'd walked in, were now stone-cold sober and listening carefully.

"First of all, it certainly forces us to move quickly in terms of Henry's cover if Paul wants to keep him working in the area. Fortunately," the Deputy U.S. Attorney added, "we don't have to expose Henry as an agent to prosecute the Chareauxs because, as much as I hate to admit it, managing to get himself shot like that and then making that nine-one- one call were strokes of pure genius."

"His fellow agents would prefer to think of it as dumbshit blind luck, but don't mind us," Larry Paxton smiled.

"Understandably," Wheeler chuckled. "Anyway, we obviously can't let Henry Allen Lightner go on trial, nor can I possibly put myself in a position to establish any sort of co-counsel relationship with the Little, Warren, Nobles and Kole team. As it is, I think we are dangling on the very precarious edge of confidentiality with respect to the client- attorney relationship. Judge Wu is pretty open-minded for a circuit-court judge, and he wasn't the least bit pleased when Paul told him about the probes on your team, but I can't see him allowing us to carry out this little game much further."

"So how do you figure it?" Scoby asked.

"Henry Allen Lightner completely disassociates himself from the Chareauxs and their attorneys and then offers to plead guilty to knowingly taking part in an illegal hunt, because there isn't any evidence to tie him into any other part of the case," Jameson Wheeler said offhandedly. "The U.S. Attorney and I agree to probation, with no requirement to assist the prosecution, and Henry Lightner simply disappears. Another satisfied customer of our criminal justice system."

"You think it'll work?"

"I don't see why-"

At that moment, Paul McNulty shoved the door open and entered the room, the furious expression on his face causing even Stoner to back away.

"They want to talk with you," McNulty growled at Wheeler.

"Me?"

"Yeah, you," McNulty nodded. "Right now."

McNulty waited until the puzzled Deputy U.S. Attorney had left the room, then looked over at his team.

"They want to drop the case," he said.

"What?" five agents yelled in unison, causing Paxton to wince in pain and Lightstone to grab at his head as McNulty held up his hand for silence.

"Who's 'they'?" Carl Scoby demanded.

"The Department of Interior, for one."

"Any particular reason?"

"Pretty much the classic reasons," McNulty shrugged. "Failure to follow proper procedures. Concern that Special Ops is running amok. Perception that severely limited resources have been devoted to a relatively minor case. Clear need for better oversight. It goes on, but I think you get the drift."

"You mean that somebody in the Department of Interior actually cares about the Chareaux brothers?" Lightstone asked.

"Apparently," McNulty nodded.

"Who do those bastards know?" Larry Paxton muttered.

"What about those three characters you guys took out on the hunt?" Mike Takahara suggested. "Any way they might be a reason?"

"I can't see how or why," Henry Lightstone shrugged. "They aren't even charged with anything. Why the hell would they care?"

"I don't know," Takahara admitted, "but somebody cares."

"That's right," McNulty added, tight-jawed. "Somebody cares a lot. The Department now thinks that two Special Ops teams may be one too many. So it's going to dismantle one team. Guess which one."

"Bravo team," Carl Scoby whispered.

"Can they do that?" Henry Lightstone asked.

"Oh, yeah, they sure as hell can," McNulty nodded. "It's called 'priority management.'"

"Can we fight it?" Lightstone asked.

"Sure we can," McNulty told him. "We can pull all of our stats together, document our cases, write it all up in one big, summary report. And then demand a hearing."

"So when do we start?" Lightstone demanded.

"Right after we get reassigned to the New York office," McNulty replied evenly.

"Oh, God, no," Carl Scoby and Larry Paxton whispered in unison.

"Either that," McNulty shrugged, "or we can go along with the program…"

"Yeah?" Lightstone said suspiciously.

"… and receive immediate and permanent transfers to the duty stations of our choice."

"What?"

"For example," McNulty went on, ignoring Lightstone's exclamation, "they've offered me the Region Seven SAC job in Anchorage, where Martha and I had hoped to retire in a couple of years. Carl would get the training coordinator's position that just opened up at Marana. Larry drops into a newly created agent-pilot slot in Miami. Dwight would get-"

"Goddamnit, we're being split up and bought off!" Lightstone exploded just as Jameson Wheeler came back into the room, closed the door, and looked at McNulty with a grim expression.

"What'd they offer you?" McNulty asked.

"Chief of the Lands and Natural Resources Division if I decide to be cooperative," the Deputy U.S. Attorney replied evenly.

"And if you don't?"

"Newark office, working toxic-waste dump sites."

Larry Paxton muttered something unintelligible.

"See, the thing is, Henry," Carl Scoby said in a voice tightened with barely controlled rage, "what we're being offered is the carrot or the stick. New York and Newark are the sticks. And they are big mothers, let me tell you."

"So fuck 'em," Lightstone said. "How bad can New York be?"

"Henry," Deputy U.S. Attorney Jameson Wheeler said softly, "before you fellows take a vote on this, which I have no doubt you will, why don't you let me tell you a few things about the New York office?"