John Gilstrap - At all costs

Harry Sinclair realized he probably should have mentioned his suspicions to Thorne. Truth be known, he’d been expecting the call since the news first broke yesterday, and while entirely unsure how he could be of much help, he remained committed to doing whatever he could.

He hadn’t counted on the Justice Department, however. Periodically, they put taps on his phones, but never before at a time when they could do any real harm. Thankfully, Harry knew when the taps were to go into place, courtesy of a well-placed associate in the Chicago District of the U.S. Attorney’s Office. Harry grew up with the guy’s father back in the old days on the South Side and invested a few bucks in the deli he owned downtown. When the friend got hammered by the Health Department on some technical violations, Harry made a couple of calls to the Mayor’s Office and got him off the hook. Even fronted the money to make the necessary repairs. Kids from the old neighborhood still knew what loyalty was all about.

The timing of Travis’s call could not have been worse. As soon as Thorne told him who was on the line-and after he got over the shock of it being a kid-Harry knew they’d lit a short fuse. How short, exactly, he couldn’t tell.

As Thorne brought the news, Harry instinctively checked his watch. “How long has he been on the line?” he asked.

Thorne shrugged. “Three minutes, maybe?”

Harry nodded. “Okay, scramble the call for a couple of minutes, then bring it up on the digital phone.”

Over the course of the next three or four minutes, the kid’s call would be transferred electronically all over the world, ultimately ending up on a private line in Harry’s Dallas office-officially listed as the residence of a priest-and his staffer there would transfer the call at random to one of four digital phones at the house whose crystals were changed every four days, making them virtually impossible to track. Such precautions were a pain in the ass, but Harry had learned the hard way just how adept his competition was getting at electronic eavesdropping. Just two years ago, in fact, he’d lost a billion-dollar communications contract by a margin of less than a thousand dollars to a wiseass Texas redneck, and he knew then that the rules of engagement had changed. Now this business of call-scrambling was more the rule than the exception. That it also frustrated the occasional eavesdropper-with-a-badge was just so much icing on the cake.

The phone tap shouldn’t have been a surprise, he supposed. God knew they’d slapped them on before, with far less cause. Nothing pissed off the Justice Department quite as much as the act of making a lot of money while employing thousands of workers. If you could do that, then you had to be doing something illegal. Unless you contributed to the president’s reelection campaign, of course, and Harry would light a bonfire with his fortune before he gave a dime to that S.O.B. He’d already slept in the White House, thank you very much, and truth be told, the Four Seasons was a hell of a lot more comfortable.

The instant he got word of the tap, he’d set his lawyers to work getting it quashed. These things took time, though, and the FBI had undoubtedly snagged a recording of the kid’s call being accepted by Thorne. That could be a problem. Didn’t take much these days to establish enough probable cause to cut a warrant, and with that paper in hand, they’d tear his place apart looking for Sunshine. He sighed. The Justice Department lived for moments like this.

Harry’s war with the feds dated back to the midseventies, when Chicago’s congressional representative woke up one morning and realized to his horror that Harry was buying up much of the most valuable real estate in the city and that every penny of the tycoon’s generous campaign contributions was going to the wrong party. Alleging unfair competitive practices, the congressman told an all-too-sympathetic president, who in turn whispered a few words to the attorney general.

And so it was, a few years later, that Harry Sinclair was sentenced to federal prison for income tax violations that would have netted anyone else in the country a wrist slap and a fine.

As outrageously unfair as it was, the experience proved a real eyeopener. Five years was a long time to live in a concrete room, denied privacy and sunlight, while choking down the double-fried slave shit they called food-although not nearly as long as the eight they’d slapped him with initially. Those were years that he’d never get back; places he’d never visit, deals he’d never close.

These days, Harry enjoyed the simple pleasures, rarely making an appearance in his palatial offices downtown. When the mood struck, he’d take a float in the pool or maybe indulge in a round of golf. He had managers now to handle the day-to-day crap. The time had come for him to reap the benefits of his empire.

Freedom meant everything to Harry; he wouldn’t wish jail on anybody. Now his Sunshine’s freedom was at risk again, and he couldn’t bear the thought. He felt an emotion boiling in his gut that he hadn’t felt in years-not since he’d stepped away from the negotiating end of the business. He felt himself bracing for war.

When he heard the chirp of a digital phone, Harry stood from behind his desk and strolled to the blue leather sofa along the opposite wall. Always a man of considerable girth, there was a jiggle now to his ample gut, where once it appeared to have been made of stone.

Thorne handed him the telephone. “Thank you,” he said, then motioned for the other man to stick around. Pausing a moment to find the proper demeanor, he punched the connect button. “Yes?”

“Is this Uncle Harry?” a boy’s voice said from the other end of the line, frustration growling in his throat.

“It is.”

“Finally!” Travis blurted. “God, I thought I’d never get through to you. Jeeze!”

Harry said nothing while the boy ranted, waiting instead for him to settle down to listen. He caught on quickly. The flurry of words ended, replaced with an uncomfortable silence.

“Hello?” Travis asked. “Are you still there?”

“Are you finished?” Harry’s tone carried a stern rebuke.

“Huh? Oh, yeah, sorry. I just…” Travis stopped himself in midsentence, and as he did, Harry watched in his mind as the boy calmed himself and got to the business at hand. “Okay, Uncle Harry, I’m Travis Brighton… No, I’m not, dammit… oh, sorry… I’m Travis Donovan. You don’t know me, but…”

Harry interrupted. “I know who you are, son. Now, tell me what you want.” Another deep breath from the other end and then a nervous chuckle. Finally, the kid found the handle for his tongue, and he recited the information that his folks had given him.

Two minutes into the monologue, Harry stood again and began to pace the carpet. This was the craziest thing he’d heard in a long, long time.

Paul Boersky slammed the phone down hard enough to knock a book off the desk. “They lost the call.”

Irene, on the other line with the West Virginia State Police, told them to hold on for a minute. “Come again?” she said. I dare you went unspoken.

Never a great one at temper control, Paul launched a trash can across the conference room with his foot. “They’re onto us. As soon as they took the call, they scrambled it. I don’t know how, exactly, but they busted the tap. We got nothing.”

Irene set her jaw, then shook it off. Murphy’s Law governed all investigations to one degree or another, but never before had she handled one where Murphy was this much in command. She said nothing to Paul, whose tantrum seemed to have peaked, and turned her attention back to Sergeant Bower in West Virginia.

“I’m sorry, Sergeant,” she said heavily. “We just got a bit of bad news on our end. Here’s your opportunity to cheer up my day. Found the number yet?”