The Enemy Inside

TWENTY-ONE

We know where he is. We know the general area. And we’re on top of it. Give us twenty-four hours, we should have him.” They had located Alex Ives.

“Where is he?” asked the Eagle.

“Mexico, a small resort town on the Pacific coast. Not a lot of places for him to hide there.”

“Are you sure?” The Eagle wasn’t convinced. “Ives didn’t have a passport. He was out on bail. The court would have forced him to surrender his passport as a condition of release.”

“Yeah, we thought about that,” said the other man. “Then it hit us. Ives’s old man has connections through his business. What if they chartered a flight and flew to a small strip where there’s nobody to check for a passport?”

“Go on,” said the Eagle.

“We haven’t seen him, but we know he’s there. All we have to do is hang tight. The man with him will lead us right to him.”

“Good job,” said the Eagle, “. . if you’re right.”

The guy at the other end smiled as he explained how they did it. They had been using the cell phones belonging to the two lawyers, not only to listen in on their conversations and phone calls, but to track their locations.

Then suddenly both phones went dead, almost at the same time, as if someone had removed the batteries. It happened the night the girl was killed at the gas station, almost within minutes of the event. There was one quick call between the two lawyers and that was it. Both phones remained dead for almost twenty-four hours.

At the same time, incoming calls to the office from an investigator who worked for the firm, a man named Herman Diggs, whose cell was also being tapped, and who generally called in at least once or twice each day, dried up completely. They knew where the two lawyers were. One was in Washington. The Eagle confirmed that. The other was at the office in San Diego. But the investigator, Diggs, had disappeared.

Connecting the dots wasn’t hard. Diggs was babysitting Ives. The question was where?

About the same time that the cell phone traffic fell off, there seemed to be more frequency in the number of deliveries from private mail services to the office. It was hard to miss. DHL, in particular.

One of the more enterprising eaglets decided to go Dumpster diving in the trash bin behind the firm’s office late at night to see what he could find. Among the piles of trash he brought back, they looked for messages but found none. These they figured must have been shredded. But among the items pilfered were the various account numbers for the firm’s private delivery services, DHL, FedEx, and United Parcel.

Account numbers usually appeared on waybills that customers using the service often simply tossed into the trash when they were finished tracking packages that had already arrived at their destination. None of the waybills looked as if they had anything to do with Ives or where he might be.

It was the account numbers for the various carriers that turned out to be the key. With the cutting-edge software they possessed, the Eagle’s minions were able to marry up the Madriani account number for each carrier with the tracking number for each delivery paid for under that account. They didn’t have to go back very far, only a few days to the time when Ives disappeared.

The linkage of account numbers with individual tracking numbers on packages was accomplished by a stick-on barcode slapped on every package by the carrier when the item was first dispatched. The barcode allowed the carrier to use handheld scanners at each point along the delivery route to instantly collect the identifying information and show the location of the package. This information was fed wirelessly to a central computer system and could be used by the company or a customer who possessed the tracking number to go online and track the progress of the delivery from its point of origin to its ultimate destination.

It was the item from Zihuatanejo on the Mexican coast, a place some of the gringos and locals called “Zihua,” pronounced “Zee-wah,” with the name of the sender, H. Diggs, that instantly caught their attention.

For the Eagle, this was the sign that his crew had finally done something right. Before he could ask, they told him that they had already dispatched two men down to Mexico to hang out near the DHL office at that location. They had a picture of the investigator from the P.I.’s state licensing agency so they could easily identify him. If authorized, they were prepared to “scrub” Ives as well as the investigator if he got in the way, the latest in a long line of euphemisms for murder.

Mexico was the perfect cover. You didn’t need a traffic accident to do it down there. Make it look like a drug hit and even if they had to kill both men, it would draw less attention than death by natural causes in most other places. The Eagle didn’t bat an eye. All he said was: “Do it!”

Having gotten what he wanted, the man at the other end hung up.

The light on the Eagle’s smartphone went dark as his eyes returned to the picture window across the street. He was parked, seated in his car in Georgetown across from a small restaurant. Inside he could see the lawyer, Madriani, and another man at a table. They were talking over drinks. Through the open window of his car the Eagle took several pictures with a long-lens camera. He didn’t know who the other man was, but he intended to find out. He wanted no more loose ends.

Before our drinks arrive I realize that Cletus Proffit has been doing his homework, probably burning up the computer cables to LexisNexis, the lawyer’s crystal ball into the unknown. He is not only familiar with my client’s name, he knows that Ives worked for the Gravesite. On Nexis, if you punched in Alex’s name and did a search, no doubt you would find every story ever published under his byline. I am guessing that this must have rattled Proffit’s brain when he first saw it.

“What a coincidence,” he says, “that two people who worked here in Washington should be involved in an accident there.”

I play it down. I tell him that Ives actually worked for the Gravesite out on the West Coast, but still it is a small world.

“Indeed,” he says. If he knows about the story involving Serna, he hides it well. Any thought that his firm was under the glass being studied by Graves for prominent mention in the scandal sheets I would think would have curled his socks right up to his eyeballs. Instead, he changes gears and asks me whether I do very many drunk-driving cases.

I tell him no.

“I was wondering about that,” he says. “Because it would seem to be a very strange case.”

“Why is that?”

“From what I understand, your client’s blood alcohol level was well below the legal limit.”

The only way he could know this is if he had ordered up a copy of the police report. It answers one question: Someone at Proffit’s firm is keeping tabs on our case. That could be a problem if they decide to wade in, to push the prosecutor for sterner action.

“That’s true,” I tell him. There is no sense lying about it.

“Then how do you account for it? The accident, I mean?”

“It’s a mystery,” I tell him.

“Emm.” This sets him to chewing on a sliver of ice from his highball.

“What can you tell me about Serna?” I ask.

“Wonderful woman,” he says. “Hard worker. Always there when you needed her.”

“What type of work did she do?”

“You don’t know?”

It’s an irritating practice that some people develop, answering questions with a question. Proffit has it down pat.

“No.”

“Mostly she worked legislation. Up on the Hill. Sometimes the White House but mostly Congress. She did some admin law, appearances before the regulatory agencies when we needed it. Mixed bag.” He says it like this is a description of the woman herself. “She’ll be missed.”

Yes, but not by Proffit, unless I miss my bet. “You make her sound dynamic.”

He looks at me over his drink, chuckles a little, and says, “She had her moments.”

“What did she do before she came to the firm?”

“Legislative staff.” He takes a sip, Jim Beam over ice. Like a deposition, he offers nothing more.

“What did she do there?”

“Worked for the Senate Finance Committee. Later I think, if I remember right, she went to Senate Banking. She seemed to have a good head for figures. And a photographic memory. Everything she read she retained instantly,” he says. “A mind like a steel trap.”

“The way you say it, makes it sound like perhaps you got caught in it?” I smile at him.

“No. No. On the contrary, we got along very well. In fact, I was the one who put her up for partner,” he says.

“How long ago was that?”

“Two years,” he says. “And there was no opposition. Everyone agreed she deserved it. She lived for the firm.”

“No family life?”

He shakes his head. “Lived alone, I believe.”

“Did she have many friends?”

“Oh, she belonged to her share of organizations. Women’s groups mostly. Professional associations. So I’m sure she had friends.”

“But you didn’t know any of them?”

“No. We weren’t that close. Not socially,” he says.

“I’m told she had a boyfriend at one time.”

This gets his interest. “Really?” he says. “Where did you hear that?”

“I don’t remember,” I tell him. “But somebody I was talking to mentioned it.”

“Emm.” He sits there waiting for me to offer more. When I don’t, he says, “Do you remember the guy’s name?”

“What guy?” Two can play this game.

“The boyfriend,” he says.

“Oh, that. It was a while back. Betz, I think was the name. Yeah, Rubin Betz.”

If he recognizes it, he doesn’t show it.

“Do you know what she did before she was on congressional staff?” I ask him.

He shakes his head. “No. That’s going back a ways. Before my time.”

“I doubt that,” I tell him.

“What I mean to say is that was some years before I met her.”

“I see.”

I am beginning to think that we have exhausted all the topics when suddenly he looks up at me and says, “Do you know whether they knew each other?”

“Who?”

“Your client and my partner,” says Proffit. “Had they ever met, before the accident, I mean?”

“I don’t think so. What would make you think that?”

“I don’t know, I’m just wondering,” he says. “They ran in the same circles. Washington politics. Maybe they knew each other.”

Suddenly it hits me. What Proffit is concerned about is the chance that Ives and Serna might have been meeting at some remote location so that she could feed him information on something. Maybe she was one of his sources. I begin to wonder if Ives has been straight with me.

“I’ll have to ask him,” I say.

“I’d be curious,” says Proffit.

I’ll bet he would.

“Do you know what your client was doing way out there?”

“You mean where the accident happened?”

“Yeah.”

“Says he can’t remember,” I tell him.

“Really? Musta been one hell of a collision.”

“It was.”

“What about her? Do the police know why Olinda was out there?”

“If they do, they haven’t shared it with me,” I tell him. “Do you know?” I turn it on him.

He shakes his head vigorously.

“What was she doing in California?” I ask.

“We’re not sure,” he says.

“So she wasn’t there on business?”

“It’s possible,” he says. “She pretty much ran her own operation. From the firm, I mean.”

“So she didn’t have to clear travel with anyone?”

“No.”

“What about her calendar?” I ask. I look at him and realize from his expression that this is getting too close to the corporate bone. No doubt if I subpoenaed her calendar, Proffit’s firm would object on grounds of attorney-client privilege.

“I’m not sure. I’d have to look,” he says. “Funny thing about Olinda. I don’t think she used a calendar much. Kept everything pretty much in her head.”

I’m getting the sense that if there was anything on a calendar, Proffit’s probably going to go home and burn it.

“I take it she didn’t have any family in that area?”

“Not that we know of,” he says. “We’re still checking. How did your other meeting go?” He slips it in without missing a beat.

“Oh, fine. Fine,” I tell him.

“It’s good you were able to get so much accomplished on one trip,” he says.

“Yes.”

“I hope Mr. Graves was able to help you.”

I look at him, son of a bitch! “How did you know who I was meeting with?”

“In this town,” he says, “it’s impossible to keep anything secret.”

I sit there looking at him, wondering if he had Graves’s office bugged.