Steve Martini - Guardian of Lies

“You’re kidding me,” said Thorpe.

“No, I’m not.”

“If that’s the case, how do we know the lawyer’s not involved with Nitikin? What kind of evidence has your prosecutor got?”

“We don’t know. We’re not sharing with him, so he’s not sharing with us,” said Rhytag. “It’s not just the national security angle. We’ve had to keep the state prosecutor in the dark to protect his case. If we let him partake of our information, we end up contaminating his entire prosecution, especially now with the surveillance warrants, listening in on the lawyers.”

“What’s he like?” Thorpe wants to know about the prosecutor.

Rhytag tells him about Templeton’s disability. “Seems bright, a decent enough guy. Given the fact that we’ve told him next to nothing, I suppose we’re lucky that he’s cooperating with us at all.”

“You may change your mind after you read this,” said Howard.

The telephone on the side table behind Howard rings.

“Here, take a look.” She hands Rhytag some pages of the surveillance transcript as she swivels in her chair to get the phone.

He reads for a few seconds. “Son of a bitch!”

“What is it?” said Thorpe.

“That little sucker, that moral pygmy, sold us out.”

“What do you mean?”

“He’s angry because we won’t talk to him. It was Templeton who invited the defense to file the motion to get the photographs. He told them to do it now. Guess he figures that’s going to smoke us out and give him some information. That little prick! He forced us into court before we could get the surveillance up and running. Damn it to hell,” said Rhytag.

“Maybe we should tell him everything we’ve got,” said Thorpe. “Stink up his case and let the state court dismiss it.”

“Serve him right,” said Rhytag. “If it wasn’t such an abuse of justice, I’d call him on the phone right now and read him the transcript and record the telephone conversation.”

Howard hung up the phone and turned back to the table. “She’s here. I told them to send her in.”

“Good,” said Rhytag.

A couple of seconds later one of the secretaries opened the door to the conference room. In walked a young woman in running shoes, shorts, and a T-shirt. Her hair was disheveled, and she looked somewhat sweaty.

“Please excuse my appearance,” said Daniela Perez. “I thought it might look suspicious if I changed my routine at the jail to shower and clean up this early in the day.”

Thorpe made the introductions since he was the one who’d made the assignment.

Daniela’s true name was Carla Mederios. She was born in Panama in the old Canal Zone to a Colombian mother and an American father. Her dad was an officer in the Army Corp of Engineers. He was killed before her eyes when Carla was fifteen years old. They had been shopping in Panama City when her father was taken by rampaging Panamanian thugs, one of the so-called dignity brigades. He was hacked to pieces by machetes, and his body dragged through the streets. It was a month before the U.S. invasion of Panama and the capture of Manuel Noriega.

Carla moved with her mother to Colombia and remained there until she returned to the United States for college.

It was no surprise that she spoke fluent Spanish. She was also an honors graduate of Pepperdine University, in Los Angeles. After college she spent four years as a lieutenant in a U.S. Army Ranger battalion, two of them in combat in Afghanistan. It was there that she gained the artwork on her body and learned how to deal with unruly people in showers.

She returned from the military and studied law at the University of Virginia, where she graduated second in her class.

Mederios turned down four six-figure job offers from major law firms in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles and instead went to Quantico, Virginia, where she trained to become an FBI agent. For the last three years she’d worked undercover, both in the United States and abroad. She was now considered one of the foremost female agents in the bureau, the reason she’d been picked for this assignment.

“Agent Mederios, have a seat, please.” Rhytag offered her the chair next to him.

“I don’t have much time,” she said.

“Where does she think you are right now?” said Thorpe.

“I told her I had a meeting with my lawyer. After all, I didn’t want to lie to her,” said Mederios. “She thinks I’m at the jail, in one of the conference rooms. Tomorrow we’re going to court together. I’d take her shopping and out to lunch, but we don’t have enough time.” Even Rhytag laughs at this. “She thinks I have a court appearance. I figured I’d put myself on the bus with her and we could talk.”

“Have you gotten anything out of her so far?” said Rhytag.

“I’ve built up some goodwill,” said Carla. “I let her beat me at gin rummy three days running. If you saw us together you’d swear I was her Doberman, on a leash, growling at the gangbangers. But she’s reluctant to talk about her case. Her lawyer has filled her head with anxieties about trusting people in jail.”

“She told you this?” said Thorpe.

“Right out of her lawyer’s handbook,” said Carla. “He told her not to discuss it with anyone, and she listens to him. To hear her tell it, the man walks on water.”

“This would be Mr. Madriani?” says Howard.

“I don’t know his last name. There are two of them. She calls them Paul and Harry.”

“When you say he walks on water, does it look like the normal lawyer-client relationship or do you think there might be something going on on the side?” said Howard.

“You mean a threesome with her lawyers? Now that would be kinky,” said Carla.

“I’m talking about Madriani. That would be the Paul half of the partnership. Do you think she and the lawyer might have been having an affair?”

“There hasn’t been any heavy breathing that I’ve heard.”

“Keep your ear to the ground,” said Rhytag.

“One thing is certain, she’s scared. I don’t think she’s ever been in jail before. She’s a little naive. If I were doing an evil deed, she’s not someone I’d pick to do covert work.”

“That may not be how it went down,” said Thorpe. “She may have been enticed up here by the victim without knowing the reason.”

“You mean Pike.”

“Correct,” said Thorpe. “When she realized what was happening with the photographs, she knew enough about Nitikin to know she was in trouble. So she had to get the photographs back.”

“And to do that she ended up having to kill Pike, is that it?”

“It’s possible,” said Thorpe.

“The prosecutor seems to think she had some help,” said Howard.

“We know she drugged Pike,” said Thorpe. “One of our agents got a glance at a toxicology report. So she’s not as innocent as she looks. Keep one eye open when you sleep.”

“I’ll try to get her to talk about the case, but-”

“Forget the case,” said Thorpe. “Get her to talk about her life down in Costa Rica, her family. About her parents, particularly her mother. Share some intimate details with her about your own family. Nothing real. Make it up. Get her reminiscing about life on the outside.”

“We know now that it was her mother who took the photographs,” said Howard. “We need to know where the pictures were taken and where her maternal grandfather is.”

“Yakov Nitikin. I read the file,” said Carla. “If she’s involved in the way you think she is, she’s not going to tell me anything about Nitikin.”

“She may give you a clue. It depends on who she thinks you are,” said Thorpe. “If she gets in trouble again and she has nobody to lean on but you, and she trusts you, she may.”