Joe Haldeman - Work Done for Hire

She was agent Sara Underwood, who had been “partnered with” James Blackstone. She asked me whether I had any information about him.

I was tempted to say that if the federal government couldn’t keep track of its own people, how are they going to track down the bad guys? “No, not since our interview last week. I called his office once, but he wasn’t in.”

“What business did you have with him?”

“He asked me to call in if I had a change of address. He wasn’t there, though.”

There was a long pause. “Agent Blackstone has died, under odd circumstances.”

“Oh, my god. I’m sorry.”

“Yes. We’re calling everyone who had contact with him recently. You were not a person of interest in any of his ongoing investigations, but you did speak with him the afternoon of the seventeenth. About a sniper rifle?”

“Yeah, we called on Tuesday last week, I think. Someone left a weapon in my car, the sniper rifle that I thought I’d gotten rid of, with a suggestive note.”

“Yes, we know that from his desk report. I’m afraid we have to confiscate the rifle now.”

I tried to respond but my throat had closed up.

“Mr. Daley? We need that rifle. You don’t have to ship it to us. We can pick it up now.”

Sirens outside. A black-and-white screeched to a stop in the side street. I signaled Kit and she stepped into the ladies’ room.

“I—I don’t have it.”

“Where is it, Mr. Daley?”

Two uniformed cops banged into the store. The black one had his hand on his gun, the Hispanic on a Taser. I raised my free hand. “The police are here.”

“ Where is the gun? Mr. Daley.”

“In the trunk of a car in St. Louis. Airport parking lot! That’s what I told—” The cops towered over me. I covered the phone. “I’ll be right with you,” I said. “Talking to the FBI.”

“Put down the phone,” the black one said. “Right now.”

“I mean Homeland Security,” I said.

“We’ve recovered that car,” Sara Underwood’s voice said, and then she said something else, but I couldn’t hear it because the Hispanic officer had snatched the phone away.

“Are you going to cooperate?” he said.

“I’m already cooperating! Talk to the lady on that phone!”

He opened the phone and looked at it. “Says ‘call blocked.’”

“Yeah, of course.” I stuck out my wrists. “Let’s go.”

“We don’t do it that way,” the Hispanic one said. He grabbed my arm and hauled me out of the chair and had my hands cuffed behind my back in about one second.

“Take it easy, for Christ’s sake!” One held me while the other patted me down roughly.

“Homicide,” the black one said, in explanation, as he goosed me. “Up in Indiana or someplace.” I almost said “Illinois,” but decided to leave him uncorrected.

At least they didn’t get both of us, I thought, and didn’t look at the door to the ladies’ room.

They stuffed me in the back of the patrol car and managed to belt me into the shoulder harness with both hands behind my back. Maybe my one phone call would be to a chiropractor.

It didn’t last long. We went a couple of blocks with the siren going, the black officer driving slowly while the other said incomprehensible things into the radio. Then they pulled over and helped me out of the car, took off the cuffs and gave me back my cell phone.

“Be careful now,” the black one said by way of apology, and they drove away.

If something like that happened in Iowa City, I’d go down to the station and get on their case. False arrest, harassment, intimidation. Not in the Big Easy, I think.

I walked back down St. Charles for a few blocks and then sat down at a sidewalk café to think.

Was I being watched? Not obviously. Wouldn’t make any difference anyway, if it was just Homeland Security and the FBI and the New Orleans cops. But how far behind are the ones who gave me the rifle, twice?

A pretty black waitress came out, looking bone tired. End of the night shift. I ordered white coffee and a beignet, playing knowledgeable tourist. After I ordered it I chastised myself. Black coffee and a doughnut would have saved me three bucks.

I talked to an operator and then a secretary in the Springfield Homeland Security office, and got a call back from Sara Underwood. “What on earth is going on down there? You’re in trouble with the New Orleans police?”

“You tell me, Ms. Underwood. My girlfriend and I are getting jacked around six ways from Sunday, and all we’ve done is try to cooperate with the authorities. I was just now handcuffed and thrown in the back of a police car, and then released, all without a word of explanation. You tell me what’s going on!”

There was a long silence, with some clicks. “I don’t know what kind of trouble you might be in, down south. You’re in some trouble here in Springfield.”

“What do you mean, trouble ? I haven’t done a damned thing illegal.”

“That may be, Mr. Daley. But this is a homicide investigation now, and you are more than a ‘person of interest.’ You were interviewed by Agent Blackstone, with negative results. Agent Blackstone was found dead this morning.”

It was a sunny clear morning, but I could feel walls closing in on me. “I didn’t do it. I couldn’t have done it. How could I? I’ve been in New Orleans for a week!”

“Well, you were in New Orleans a week ago and you’re there now. You could have gone to Singapore and back in between.”

“Yeah, I’m sure you guys wouldn’t notice. But you said you got the car?”

“The car?”

“Before New Orleans’s finest picked me up. You said you’d retrieved the car from the airport in St. Louis.”

“We did, yes.”

“Then? You were about to say something else.”

There was a sound like papers being shuffled. “I was going to ask you… about firing the rifle. You did do some shooting with it.”

“Just a few rounds. As I told Blackstone. Just to zero it in.”

“Why?”

“To zero it in.”

She sighed. “I mean why would you want to zero it in if you never planned to use it?” That blocked me for a moment. “Hello? Doesn’t that seem odd to you?”

“The note… there was a note!”

“We found a note, crumpled up on the floor of the car.” She paused. “It says, basically, you’ll be paid $100,000 to kill someone, and there’s a down payment in the rifle stock. Nothing about zeroing the weapon.”

“No, I’m wrong. I’m sorry! It wasn’t the note; it was a phone call right afterwards—a woman told me to take the rifle down to the Coralville dump and zero it in. Then police up the brass and targets.”

“What about the police?”

God, was this happening? “ Police. It’s a verb. It means to clean stuff up. I was supposed to pick up the brass from shooting it. The spent cartridges.”

“So was it a phone call or a note? Or was it both?”

“Both. It was both.” I took a deep breath. “Someone put the rifle on my doormat back in Iowa City. Put it there while I was asleep, and rang the bell and drove away.”

“And you didn’t call the police then because?”

“We told all this to Agent Blackstone.”

“And he’s dead now. You didn’t call the police?”

“There wasn’t time! I opened the box and while I was looking at the rifle, the god-damned phone rang. A woman warned me not to call the cops, and then said to take the rifle out to the Coralville dump and zero it.”

“She actually said ‘Don’t call the cops’?”

“I don’t remember her exact words. But she threatened to kill Kit if I didn’t cooperate.”

“In so many words? ‘We will kill Catherine Majors’?”