Catherine Coulter - Backfire

Harry laughed. “And your point would be, Griffin? Your so-called guesses are almost always right.”

Griffin said, “The thing is, though, our guy-or this Sue-has been in and out of San Francisco for at least a week, maybe longer. That’s long enough to learn how to keep out of sight.

“We’ve got agents canvassing the hotels starting on Lombard and at Fisherman’s Wharf, with his drawing. Thanks to Lieutenant Trolley, we’ve got us a half-dozen SFPD to help.” He nodded to her, and Virginia said, “Our pleasure.”

Harry sighed. “I’m wondering why don’t you just tell us which hotel Sue’s staying at, Griff, so we wouldn’t have to waste all this time?”

This time everyone laughed.

Now that he’d seen Griffin Hammersmith in action, Savich was wondering if he could get him to relocate to Washington. He bit into the last slice of Veggie Heaven, now cold, and said, “Honestly, I don’t think putting that drawing through the facial recognition program will get us anything, what with the ball cap and sunglasses.”

Cheney said, “Maybe we’ll get lucky and Sue will drop the ball cap; then we could try the FRP. One last note: We still don’t have anything about our missing prosecutor, Mickey O’Rourke. We’ve talked to his prosecution team, his co-workers, his family, his friends. We have him on camera leaving the Federal Building by himself late Thursday morning, though he never told anyone in his office he was going out. We’re examining his phone records, his credit card bills, but as of yet we don’t have anything very helpful. His wife, as you can imagine, is a mess.

“Her name’s Melissa. She told us Mickey had seemed distracted the last week or so, but he wouldn’t tell her what was wrong. She did remember he kept asking his two daughters where they were going and when they’d be home every time they stepped out of the door, which makes it sound like O’Rourke was frightened. Because of the Cahills or this Sue? We don’t know if he skipped or if he was taken by someone, but the longer he’s gone, the worse it looks.”

Hoover Building

Washington, D.C.

Saturday afternoon

Agent Dane Carver studied the young man sitting opposite him and Agent Ruth Warnecki Noble in one of the small interview rooms on the third floor of the Hoover Building. Ted Moody was bouncing his leg up and down, and kept his eyes on his bouncing leg, as if afraid if he looked them in the eyes they’d shoot him.

Dane sat with his arms crossed over his chest, his expression hard. “You don’t look like a street punk, Mr. Moody, but I’ve been wrong before. How long have you been doing crap like this?”

The young guy flinched, raised his head, his eyes blinking furiously. “I didn’t do anything wrong, not really. I mean, I don’t know why those agents came and forced me to come with them. I have to get to work or Mr. Garber will fire me.”

Ruth said, “I spoke to Mr. Garber, told him you were assisting us, so your job is safe. But you did do something you shouldn’t have done.”

Dane said, “It’s called a felony, and you’re a criminal, Mr. Moody.”

“No, I’m not, sir, Agent, I’m not a criminal. Maybe you think-no, I-nothing I did was wrong.”

Ruth leaned over the table, put her hand over his and smoothed it out. He had long, slender fingers and fairly clean fingernails today, but his hand was moist with sweat, he was so afraid, mostly of Dane, who looked perfectly ready to shove his tonsils into his sneakers. Good. “Ted-may I call you Ted?”

He whispered, “My mama calls me Teddy even though I’m grown up and even have my own apartment now, since last April, over on Washburn Street. It’s not much, but I pay the rent on it all by myself, and I’ve got a bed and a couch and a TV.”

“Teddy, then,” Ruth said in the same gentle voice she used with her eldest stepson when he lost a ball game. “We really need your help. We need to know who hired you to deliver that envelope into the Hoover Building and recite that story to the security guards.”

“But I don’t know, I mean-is it national security?”

Dane opened his mouth to blast him again, but Ruth gave him a look she made sure Teddy saw, and Dane made do with a silent message to Teddy: Fear me.

Ruth kept touching Teddy’s hands, kept her voice gentle. “Teddy, was it a man or a woman who gave you the envelope?”

Teddy shot a look at Dane, grabbed Ruth’s hand like a lifeline. “All right, ma’am, I’ll tell you. It was a man. Look, I really needed money because I lost most of my pay in a poker game and I didn’t want to have to ask my mom to help me with the rent. He offered me two crisp one-hundred-dollar bills, and all I had to do was deliver that envelope here. I didn’t have to run over anybody or break any laws, nothing like that, which I wouldn’t do anyway.”

Ruth beamed at him, patted his hand. “Tell us about this man. What did he look like? Was he young, old?”

Teddy leaned really close to Ruth. “I never saw him, I swear.”

Bummer. Both Dane and Ruth knew he was telling the truth, so there was no reason for Dane to pound the table and yell at him.

“Then how do you know it was a man, moron?” Dane asked him, sitting forward.

“He sounded like a man on the phone. I mean, why would a woman do something like that? Really, he sounded like a man-honest.”

Dane said, “All right, then tell us how you happened to connect with him.”

Teddy said, “You know I work at the Union Seventy-six gas station over on Bowner Avenue. Mr. Garber hired me because I’m real good at figuring out what’s wrong with a car, so anyway, this guy called me on my cell phone-said he’d seen me work, said he’d heard people say they could count on me, that I was reliable.” Teddy Moody tried not to puff up, but he did. “Really, ma’am, Agent ma’am, I don’t know anything about him, but he said he knew I was good to the bone, and he surely admired responsible young people like me, that’s what he told me, exactly. My mama’s always telling me I was good, but you can’t always believe your mama.”

And that made all the difference, Dane thought. It was strange logic, but he understood it. A nerdy twenty-year-old kid with one shining skill and the guy had the brain to praise him, drew him right in. That was clever.

“So then he told me what he wanted me to do, and I didn’t see anything wrong with it, I swear I didn’t.”

Ruth said, “He called you only once?”

Teddy nodded.

“Did he tell you his name?”

“I asked him who he was, and he laughed. He said people used to call him the Hammer, but his name didn’t matter. He told me he would mail me an envelope inside another envelope, and in the second envelope there’d be two one-hundred-dollar bills and a script-that’s what he called it, ‘my script’-and all I had to do was tell the security guards in the lobby exactly what he’d written on the script.”

“And that was, exactly?”

Teddy closed his eyes and repeated word for word the conversation Ruth and Dane had heard on the security tape.

“That’s very impressive, Teddy,” Ruth told him.

“The Hammer told me to practice the script in front of the mirror until I had it memorized and it sounded all natural, and so I did. That was all, Agent ma’am, I swear.” Teddy’s eyes shimmered with tears. “He promised I couldn’t get into trouble. He said it was only a joke on this Agent Dillon Savich. He said no one would ever even find out who I was. How could they? I’m a law-abiding person, and I could just walk out. I believed him. I was in this knot of tourists and everything happened like he said it would. I simply slipped back into the crowd when the guards were talking about the envelope.” He dropped his head again, studied his hands. “I wanted to believe him, you know? I mean, I really did walk out and nobody said a word to me. And there were the two brand-new hundred-dollar bills-I really needed that money. What was in that envelope? Was it bad?”