Stephen Leather - The Long shot

Once Jake Sheldon had obtained the necessary legal approval for the monitoring of the telephone line at Lou Schoelen’s parents’ house in Coronado, the details were passed to an agent, Eric Tiefenbacher, on the fourth floor of the FBI’s East Indianola Street offices. He in turn liaised with a fifty-year-old technician in the phone company’s headquarters, a man who had been as closely vetted as any FBI agent. It was his job to arrange for the line to be monitored and he did that by pressing a few keys on his computer terminal and sending the signal along a dedicated line to the FBI building. He did it while on a second line to Tiefenbacher and sent a test signal down the dedicated line to ensure that the link was good. At any one time the technician was responsible for up to sixty telephone taps, most of them for the FBI and the DEA, and he had enough information to destroy a host of long-term investigations into organised crime and corruption. He was positively vetted every year by the Bureau, but the technician would never in a million years consider trading the information he had. His granddaughter had died five years earlier, knocked down by a getaway car driven by three black teenagers who had just robbed a liquor store. For him, wire-tapping was a personal crusade, a way of helping the forces of law and order against the vermin who ruled the streets.

Three walls of the office in which Tiefenbacher worked were lined with tape-recorders. The machines were voice-activated and the reels only turned when a call was made. In the centre of the room was a teak veneer desk and a chair at which Tiefenbacher chain-smoked while he monitored the tape-recorders and replaced the tapes as necessary. Each hour, on the hour, he picked up a clipboard and went from machine to machine, noting down the digits in the tape counter next to each line. The notation was a back-up check because the time of each call was electronically recorded on the tape, along with the number of the phone on the other end of the line. Call-tracing with digital exchanges had become a simple matter of computer programming.

Tiefenbacher alternated his shifts with three other agents, all of them heavy smokers, and between them they ensured that the office was occupied twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Some of the tape-recorders had red stickers attached, signifying that any calls had to be immediately reported to the agent involved, the rest were checked on a daily basis. Most of the agents in the building referred to the surveillance room as The Tomb and the four agents had long been nicknamed The Living Dead. All four had in one way or another offended someone high up in the Bureau. Being assigned to The Tomb was not a good career move for an ambitious agent.

Eric Tiefenbacher’s transgression had been to allow his partner to take a bullet in the chest during what was supposed to have been a straightforward arrest of a bail-jumper. He had been in The Tomb for five months and was already applying for other jobs outside the FBI. When the Schoelen tape began to turn, Tiefenbacher stubbed out his cigarette, picked up a pair of headphones, and walked over to the machine, which had a red sticker on it along with the names of two agents: Cole Howard and Kelly Armstrong. He plugged the headset into the machine and listened. The old lady made only a few calls, usually to local stores who delivered, or to the vet who had been treating her dog. The red sticker had the home telephone numbers of the two agents so that they could be contacted outside of office hours. Kelly Armstrong had visited the surveillance room soon after the phone tap was arranged, and she’d asked that she be called first if there was anything of interest. She’d told him a little about the investigation as she perched on the edge of his desk, leaning forward to give him a glimpse of cleavage. She was one hell of a hot babe, Tiefenbacher thought, with breasts that he just ached to touch. She had class, too; her clothes were stylish and he noticed that the watch she kept looking at was a gold Cartier. She was wearing a wedding ring but he was giving some thought to asking her out for a drink after work.

He listened to the conversation. The old woman was obviously talking to her son, Lou Schoelen, the man the agents were interested in. The display below the tape counter listed the number of the telephone number the old woman was talking to. The digits would be recorded on the tape at the end of the call, but Tiefenbacher scribbled them down on his clipboard so that he could tell Kelly Armstrong right away. Maybe if he impressed her, she’d be more amenable to a date.

Lisa Howard carried two mugs of coffee into the sitting room and placed them on the table, being careful not to disturb her husband’s papers. “Thanks, honey,” he said, looking up and smiling. “How are the kids?”

“Fast asleep,” she said. “They’re growing up so fast. Eddy asked me if he could start playing golf today; can you believe that?”

“I bet that’ll please your father no end,” said Cole. Theodore Clayton was a scratch golfer, and Lisa had been playing for years. She was good enough to turn professional, though she only played for fun.

“Daddy wants to buy him his own set of junior clubs.” She sipped her coffee.

Howard put down the yellow marker he had been using to underline paragraphs of interest in the papers he was reading. “Hey, if Eddy wants golf clubs, I’ll get them for him. His birthday isn’t far off, they’ll make a great present.”

Lisa smiled thinly. “Actually, I was playing with Daddy today and he’s already bought them.” She saw that her husband was about to protest, so she rushed to speak first. “I know, I know, but there was nothing I could do. You know how strong-willed he is. It’s just a set of golf clubs.”

Howard scowled. It was more than just sports equipment, it was yet another sign of his father-in-law’s interference. Howard had always strived to maintain his independence, to do the best he could to support his family, but no matter how hard he worked, no matter how many hours of overtime he put in, he could never hope to compete with Theodore Clayton’s immense wealth. Howard knew that it wouldn’t stop with the golf clubs. Down the line there’d be offers of horses, cars, college tuition, vacations, anything the children wanted. Acceptance would become easier as time went on, and he didn’t want his children to grow up thinking that everything would be handed to them on a plate. “If my son wants to take up a sport, I’d rather be the one who sets him up. .” Howard began, but he stopped himself when he realised how petty he sounded. “Does this mean he’s gone off baseball?”

Lisa smiled and shook her head, her long blonde hair spilling around her shoulders. “Of course not. He just wants to be able to play golf with me, that’s all. And he’d love it if you played with us.”

Howard picked up his marker again. “Yeah, right,” he said. “Me on a golf course.” He could feel an argument building, so it was with a sense of relief that he heard the telephone ring. “I’ll get it,” he said. It was Kelly Armstrong. Howard frowned and looked at his watch. She must be phoning from home, he realised.

Kelly told him about the call Lou Schoelen had made to his mother, and that the telephone company had identified a pay phone in Long Beach as the source. “Cole, I think I should go out there and co-ordinate the search,” she said. “I don’t think the Justin Davies credit card was a diversion, I think they really are on the West Coast. The President is due in Los Angeles in ten days, I think that’s what they’re planning for.”

“Well. .” said Howard.

“There’s a plane leaving in forty-five minutes, I’ve already booked a ticket. I’ll call you from our LA office.”