James Swain - The Program

“Give it back. I’ll rent it to someone else,” Thunder said.

Crutch continued to stare at the phone. He did not like change. It raised every suspicious fear in his body.

“No, I’ll keep it,” he said.

“Take it easy, peckerwood.”

The Latino left the cellblock with the night guard. The steel door shut behind them, plunging the cellblock into darkness.

Sitting on his bed, Crutch powered up the new cell phone. The face was brighter than his previous phone, and easier to read in the dark. Thunder purposely delivered the phones at night, when the surveillance camera could not see into the cells.

He punched in the number Killer X had given him last night and hit Send. Each time he spoke to Killer X, his friend ended the call by giving him a new phone number to call. The numbers were always to payphones. Killer X knew all the angles.

“Hello?” Killer X answered.

“It’s me,” Crutch said. “How was your day?”

“Not good.”

“What happened?”

“The police are hunting for me. I heard them talking over my scanner. They’ve even given me a name. They call me Mr. Clean.”

“You should be proud of yourself. Only special people get names.”

“They tried to trap me.”

“Really? How?”

“With a web site. Someone went to the site, and told the police what fools they were. The police thought it was me. They caught a girl at the public library.”

“A girl? Who is she?”

“I don’t know. I went to the library and watched from a safe spot across the street. Later, I called the library, and told them I was a reporter. A guard answered my questions.”

“That was ballsy.”

“I have more bad news.”

“What?”

“The FBI is involved. I spotted one of their agents at the library. A little blond bitch. She had an FBI decal on the dashboard of her car. She was running things.”

Crutch stared into the darkness of his cell. While Special Agent Linderman had searched his cell this morning, another FBI agent had been chasing Killer X in Fort Lauderdale. He did not believe in coincidences. The FBI were on to them.

“What should I do?” Killer X asked.

“Let me think about this. How is the boy doing?”

“The boy is strange. I don’t think he’s right for the Program.”

“How so?”

“He doesn’t seem angry enough.”

“He fits the profile perfectly. Keeping working with him. He’ll come around.”

“Your voice is fading.”

“We’re having a bad storm.”

“This is different. You sound far away, like at the bottom of a well.”

Crutch’s breathing grew short. Tiny gasps really, clinging at life. The new cell phone had bothered him the moment it had touched his skin. Now, he knew why. The FBI had bugged it, and Special Agent Linderman was tracing the call, and probably listening in as well. There could be no other explanation for why he’d gotten a new cell phone the same day the FBI agent had searched his cell. If he didn’t act quickly, his friend in Fort Lauderdale would be apprehended.

“Are you there?” Killer X asked.

“Still thinking.”

“I don’t want to be caught. I can’t be caught.”

The fear in his friend’s voice was palatable. Crutch imagined himself hurtling down a black, bottomless pit. His body bounced off the walls, crushing his bones and snapping his head like a rag doll. He screamed at the top of his lungs, knowing it would never end.

He pulled himself back to reality. Beads of sweat did a death march down his face. Then, he had an idea.

The FBI was on to him, but he was also on to them. He could use that to his advantage, and turn their lives into living hell.

Fuck them good, the voice in his head said.

Having Leon as a neighbor had its advantages. Drug dealers never spoke normally when they talked business. The spoke in code.

He raised the cell phone to his face.

“You need to take a vacation,” Crutch said.

“I do?”

“Yes. How does that sound?”

His friend hesitated. Then said, “A vacation sounds like a wonderful idea.”

“I knew you’d understand,” Crutch said.

At twelve-thirty, the FBI satellite picked up a call from a slave phone to a 954 area code in Fort Lauderdale, and relayed the call to the FBI’s Jacksonville office.

While the call was being recorded, a stenographer wearing a headset typed the conversation into word processing program. Sixty seconds later, that conversation appeared as text on Warden Jenkin’s computer at the prison.

At the same time, the 954 number was run through a software program designed to trace phone calls. This program instantly determined the 954 number’s physical location, and emailed the address to Linderman’s iPhone, along with a street map with a red arrow showing where the call was coming from.

“Talk about one-stop shopping,” Jenkins said.

Linderman liked the analogy. When the FBI put its mind to something, there was nothing it couldn’t do. He called Vick’s cell phone and heard her pick up.

“We’ve got Mr. Clean in the cross hairs,” Linderman said.

“Yea,” Vick said.

“He’s talking at a payphone at a RaceTrac gas station on the corner of Sunrise Boulevard and State Road 84. Where are you?”

“I’m sitting in my car in a parking lot on Sunrise Boulevard near the entrance ramp to I-95,” Vick replied. “I’ve got three agents with me. Two other teams of agents are parked in other spots around the county.”

“Which team is closest to this location?”

“We are.”

“He’s yours. Get him.”

“I’m already on the road.”

Linderman needed to end the call, and let Vick do her thing. Talking was a distraction. But a nagging feeling needed to be extinguished.

“Do the Broward police know about the sting?” Linderman asked.

“No, sir.”

“What about DuCharme?”

“He’s out of the picture.”

“Glad to hear it. Good luck, Rachel.”

“Thank you, Ken.”

The line went dead. Linderman folded the phone.

“Looks like the text of their conversation is coming through,” Jenkins said, swinging his chair closer to the computer. “Damn, these letters are small.”

Linderman fitted on his reading glasses. The delayed text of Crutch and Mr. Clean’s conversation was running across the screen like an old-fashioned teletype. Reading it, he felt the hairs on his neck rise in alarm. Mr. Clean had spotted Vick at the Broward library, and knew the FBI was chasing him. Mr. Clean was scared and approaching panic mode. Serial killers who went on tilt were capable of incredible destruction. Linderman immediately called Vick back to alert her. A frantic busy signal filled his ear.

“God damn it,” he swore.

Jenkins pointed at the screen. “You better take a look at this. Something strange is going on.”

Linderman followed his finger and stared at the words on the screen.

“Let me think about this. How is the boy doing?”

“The boy is strange. I don’t think he’s right for The Program.”

“Why not?”

“He doesn’t seem angry enough.”

“Your voice is fading.”

“We’re having a bad storm.”

“This is different. You sound far away, like at the bottom of a well.”

“Who’s the boy, and what’s The Program?” Jenkins asked.

“The boy is our kidnap victim,” Linderman explained. “Mr. Clean is obviously putting him through some type of regimen.”

“Lord, I wonder what he’s doing to him.”

The text became frozen on the page. Linderman ripped off his glasses in anger and called the FBI’s Jacksonville office. He started to read the riot act to the agent coordinating the trace of Crutch’s cell phone conversation when the agent stopped him.