April Smith - Judas Horse

The Rooneys of this world are shy. They never have a date for the movies; they work the concession stand. They are collectors. They store data banks in their heads. Ask them what year Samuel Colt patented the revolver. They shop for groceries at two o’clock in the morning, are semi-intimate with a couple of oddball associates, live in a garage apartment across from Mother, who still makes dinner for them every night. They are fifty-eight years old and their pants don’t fit, and they haunt comic-book conventions because they are lonely for a hero; the kind of loneliness that never bottoms out.

Rooney Berwick may have been all those things, but on home turf in the FBI lab, sporting multiple ID tags, key rings, and belt-mounted eyeglass cases, he projected a kind of arrogant underground status. He had stringy white hair and an ovoid belly that bulged out of a black button-down shirt tucked into dusty black jeans as he sat on a bench with big boots planted, threading a flex light down the barrel of a gold-plated AK-47.

He looked up. “Can I help?” he asked gravely.

I told him I was a new undercover and needed a driver’s license. I asked what he was looking for inside the machine gun.

“Trying to see the rifling.” He cocked an eye down the shaft. “Take a look?”

“I’ve seen rifling, thanks,” I replied, referring to the spiral marks left by exiting bullets.

“She isn’t loaded, don’t worry.”

“It creeps me out to see anyone looking down a gun.”

“Just trying to keep busy. My mom is dying. They’re not saying that, of course. She’s in the hospital, but it doesn’t look good.”

When strangers stun you with this kind of stuff — when you’re waiting on line, or in an elevator — it derails you in the headlong rush to get somewhere, forcing you to see their anguish leaking over everything, like accident victims, beyond propriety. I was touched by Rooney Berwick’s confession. Why would he say this to someone he scarcely knew, except that we are all part of the Bureau family?

“I’m so sorry.”

“She has cancer.”

I hesitated. “That is rough.”

“What they put her through. They keep doing tests, just to justify their existence.”

“I hope they’re making her comfortable.”

“What does that mean?” he asked rhetorically.

“Well,” I said, fumbling, “at least no pain.”

“Uh-huh.”

We abided for a time in the quiet of the lab.

Finally, he smiled crookedly and latched and unlatched the magazine. “What’s the matter? You don’t like my toy? That’s real gold on there.”

“A collector’s item,” I agreed. “I wish I could talk more, but I’ve got to get to a meeting.”

“Everybody’s got a meeting,” Rooney said with spite.

He gave up the weapon, moving heavily, like everything in his soft, bruised body hurt.

“The uc name is Darcy DeGuzman,” I told him gently.

Beyond the quickies we came up with in training, a deep-cover identity is carefully constructed, like a computer-generated creature in a special-effects studio, with input from FBI psychologists and experts in terrorist organizations. You’re trying to create a three-dimensional character that will credibly blend with the target; whose believability will withstand whatever they throw at you. The identity of Darcy DeGuzman, born in a slash of light off a Rexall window in a Virginia mall, had been refined by the focus of a dozen minds to fit the profile of a drifter looking for a cause; someone ripe to be recruited by FAN.

No more blow-dried hair and prim Brooks Brothers suits. Darcy has dark wild curls and an old purple parka that looks as if it has seen many bus stations and campouts. After an abusive childhood in the ghetto tract in Long Beach, she made her way to the Northwest, “where people are real and care about the environment.” Because of her politics, she’s had trouble holding jobs. She was fired from a biotech company for hacking the system when she learned they wrote programs for cosmetic testing on rabbits. She was booked for assault on an employee of the City of Los Angeles Animal Services during a demonstration outside the shelter. It’s all on phony police records for anyone to verify. With the recession going on, things haven’t worked out, and right now the money’s almost gone; Darcy is single, desperate, and emotionally needy.

Rooney Berwick was waiting impatiently behind the ID machine.

“It’s a California license,” I said helpfully. “Darcy DeGuzman just moved up to Oregon.”

“Got it right here.” Rooney Berwick tapped some papers. He knew his damn job. “Look at the little babies now.”

Tacked to the wall was a snapshot of four pug puppies with walleyed faces scrambling to get out of a cardboard box.

“Are those your puppies?”

“Please hold still, Miss DeGuzman.”

The camera strobed.

Rooney said, “Pick it up when you leave.”

But I could not just leave. Searching for his eyes I said, “I’m really sorry about your mom.”

He looked away and mumbled, “Have a great day” in the burned-out monotone of mid-level technical services personnel who inhabit the hidden compartments of the Bureau: doing it thirty years and never seen daylight. Their ideas, and their expertise, make other people famous. Nobody cares about the grunts.

I joined the team in a damp wood-paneled alcove in the basement. Coffee cups, water bottles, and documents marked OPERATION WILDCAT — TRUSTED AGENTS ONLY littered the table.

“The firebomb that blew up Ernie’s Meats is consistent with the explosive that killed Steve Crawford,” Special Supervisory Agent Angelo Gomez told us. “The bomb techs are calling it a signature device.”

Angelo Gomez is a legendary undercover investigator who favors the narco look — slicked-back hair, earring, mustache, Hawaiian shirt (to cover the gun), two-ton Rolex, and chubby pink sapphire ring. One eye is smaller than the other and set at a skewed angle. A kiss from a bullet, rumor goes. Angelo is the case agent, running the show from Los Angeles. Mike Donnato will fly up to Portland as needed.

“How are the bombs the same?” my partner asked.

“Both built the same way, by someone with skills, using the explosive Tovex. Just like in Steve’s case, the TPU was built with everyday materials — cell phone, digital clock, batteries — connected with alligator clips.”

“The alligator clips,” I remarked, “are worthy of note.”

Galloway was looking through files and doing something with a calculator, but he was listening. He had taken the supervisory position on the case because Steve Crawford meant that much to him.

“What’s the significance of alligator clips?”

“It means he’s a lazy bomb builder,” I replied. “Wants to build it fast. Confident, not a perfectionist, doesn’t have to have the wire wrapped just so — just wants to get the job done.”

“What’s the profile?”

“Off the top of my head? He’s a white heterosexual male. The way he builds his TPUs — the alligator clips and ordinary wire — says he’s not high-tech, goes with the classics.”

“Older?”

“Maybe. We can eliminate vandalism or experimentation as a motive. This guy is on a mission.”

Galloway nodded. “Ideology. That’s what our pals at FAN stand for — Free Animals Now.”

“Don’t let the soft and furry animal rights bullshit melt your heart,” Angelo agreed. “These are criminals, bad as Timothy McVeigh. Their end goal is to change society — into what, who knows or cares — but the immediate goal is to put fear in people. Chaos and destabilization — that’s their stock-in-trade.”

I reached past Donnato to sneak a corner of the blueberry muffin he was delicately breaking into crusts. Automatically, he slid it toward me — one of many small, endearing moves during a long partnership in which we often found ourselves sharing the same thought: Doesn’t matter what the boneheads call themselves. They killed Steve.