Stuart Woods - Orchid Blues

"Does John live out at the lake with the group?" Harry asked.

"My impression-and nobody actually told me this-was that he didn't, that he was visiting. It was the first time I'd seen him there, but it's possible that he lives there, but had been away and had just returned."

Eddie spoke up. "We've got some faces," he said. "Come take a look."

Everybody gathered around the computer screen. Faces were materializing, some clear, others still filling in. Most of them were front and profile shots of people holding numbers under their chins.

"Same general types," Eddie said.

Ham pointed at a photograph. "Isn't that a woman?" he asked.

"Yes, but she answers the description," Eddie replied, "and she turned up, even though I specified male."

More pictures became clear, and Eddie slowly scrolled through them, more than two hundred. Then he stopped at the last frame.

"What does that mean?" Ham asked. The frame was empty and had the word "restricted" stamped across it.

"That means it's a face somebody doesn't want us to see," Eddie replied. "Could be someone in the witness protection program."

"John said he was retired, like me, and I asked him if it was from the military. He said not exactly. Could the restriction be because the guy worked for one of the civilian intelligence agencies?"

"Maybe. If so, his records would be in another database, one we don't have ready access to. The people in this one are people who have been arrested, done time or, at least, are suspected of a crime."

Eddie turned to Harry. "There's a file number here, Harry. You know somebody who might give us access?"

Harry was staring at the blank rectangle and rubbing his chin. "All I can do is try," he replied.

Holly played hostess and cleared the dishes away from the coffee table, and the empty cartons that had once held Chinese food. Doug put on a pot of coffee, and they waited for Harry, who was on the phone in the den. Finally, he came back.

"Here," he said, handing the computer-generated picture of John to Eddie. "E-mail this to the address at the bottom of the page."

Eddie did as he was asked, then came back. "What now?"

"We wait," Harry said.

"Are we going to get access to the file?" Holly asked.

"Not exactly," Harry said.

"What does that mean?" Ham asked.

"It means we're not going to be able to penetrate the restriction on this photograph and download this guy's file. I'm not sure that even a court order would produce it."

"Then what are we waiting to hear?" Holly asked.

"I know a guy who agreed to look at the picture," Harry said. "He can probably get a look at the file, and if he's had enough to drink, he might tell us some of what's in it. I got him at home, and he'd already had at least one Scotch."

"And who is this guy?" Ham asked.

Harry wagged a finger. "Don't ask."

"Oh."

"Yeah."

"Harry," Holly said, "I'm beginning to get the impression that nobody in the federal law enforcement community talks to anybody else outside his own agency."

"This guy's not in the law enforcement community; you might say he's quietly in the law-breaking community, in his way. But you're right: the level of interagency cooperation only tends to rise when somebody can recognize some self-interest in a situation. If this guy helps us, then I'll have to help him sometime, ignore a regulation or two, and I probably won't like doing it."

They fell silent for a while, watching the flames from the driftwood fire. Nobody seemed to want to add another log.

"What's your best guess on this John guy, Harry?" Holly asked.

Harry shook his head. "No point guessing; he could be anybody. And if my buddy won't help, and if the guy has never been arrested, then we're going to have one hell of a time figuring out who or what he is."

"I could maybe get his fingerprints," Ham said. "You know, steal a glass he's used, or something like that."

"It might come to that," Harry said, "but I don't want you to take the risk, unless it's the only way. Anyway, if his photograph is restricted, it's very likely his prints will be, too."

The phone rang, and everybody sat up. Harry went into the den to answer it, and he didn't come back for twenty minutes. When he did, the group was all ears.

"Well, I don't know how much help this is going to be," Harry said, when he had settled into his chair once more. "My guy was able to access some records, records that even he was not supposed to have access to, so this one is going to cost me."

"Come on, Harry," Holly said, "spit it out."

"All right, he worked for one or more government agencies as an independent contractor-always paid in cash, no social security number involved, no paper trail, except in those inaccessible files."

"You mean he was, like, a government assassin?" Holly asked.

"No, not that. I'm not even sure those sorts of operators exist anymore, if they ever did."

"They did," Ham said quietly. "I knew some."

"Anyway, the name on the file-and this doesn't mean it's his real name-was Alton Charlesworth."

"Has to be his real name," Ham said. "Who'd pick a name like that?"

"You have a point," Harry said. "But Charlesworth was involved in technical and financial stuff, breaking into bank records, tracing the movement of money from bank to bank and country to country. It was wet work, involving burglary at the very least, and maybe much worse."

"Any specific examples?" Holly asked.

"My guy wouldn't give me any. He did say that if you wanted to hide some assets or launder some money, Charlesworth would be your man. He hinted at darker deeds, too, but he wouldn't be specific. My guy said he wouldn't want to meet him in a dark alley-or anyplace else, for that matter. He made the man sound thoroughly unpleasant. He also mentioned that there would be no criminal record-or, if there had been one, it would have been quietly expunged from all the relevant computers. The guy sounds like a rollover."

"What's a rollover?" Holly asked.

"A rollover is somebody who gets caught doing something naughty, and the people who catch him realize he might be more valuable doing naughty things for them, rather than being put in a prison cell. So they roll him over-give his background a shampoo and a haircut, and he belongs to them."

"Until he retires," Ham said.

"There's no pension plan for people like this," Harry said. "In fact, my guy said that if I ran across Charlesworth in person, he'd like to hear about it. He was real casual about it, but what this says to me is that Charlesworth bailed out of whatever program they had him in, and that they would either like to have him back or give him a new haircut, starting at about the Adam's apple."

"Well," Holly said. "This is wonderfully murky. We never ran into stuff like this in the MPs."

Everybody laughed.

"I don't get it," Ham said. "What would a guy like this be doing involved with some half-baked gun nuts like these folks out at the lake? You think they're robbing so many banks that they need somebody to launder the proceeds?"

"I wouldn't think so," Harry said. "We tend to notice when somebody starts robbing a lot of banks, even if they're spread out all over the country. Bank robbers always have a modus operandi, and they stick to what works for them. So far, we've got a pattern of only two, separated by a number of years. If the same group did both jobs, then they've more than likely got the proceeds salted away and are spending it on groceries and plumbers and orthodontists and car repairs."

"And weapons," Ham said.

"There is that," Harry said. "And if, as you say, this guy John has been away for a while, then where has he been?"

"Laundering money?" Holly ventured.

"I really don't think they've got that much money," Harry said. "What occurs to me is that maybe John is a traveling man, going from place to place and, maybe, from group to group."