“Good morning!” said the lead agent, cheerful, like he’d gotten a good night’s sleep.
“’Morning,” I said and went to the table and sat with them.
The agent tapped his coffee cup. “We helped ourselves. Hope you don’t mind.”
“Hey, my house is your house,” I said.
“That’s how we like to look at it.”
“What else did you help yourselves to?”
“Nothing yet. We just arrived.” He sipped from his cup. “It would be nice to say that we were surprised that you weren’t here, but that would be a lie.”
The kitchen was warm. I wondered what the agents would do if I laid my head on the table and went to sleep. “You did a lousy job of following me last night.”
The lead agent lifted his eyebrows just enough to tell me I was an idiot. “Didn’t matter. We knew where you went. You know, transporting stolen goods over state lines is a federal crime. It’s good for a couple years in jail.”
“How about breaking into a man’s house and helping yourself to coffee? That’s got to be worth a couple of months.”
One of the other agents, the heavyset guy who Lucinda had decked, picked up his cup. He glared at me. Then he flung the cup at the kitchen sink. It smashed against the tile backsplash.
That woke me up. “Vandalism,” I said. “A couple more months.”
He pushed his chair back and stood like he was coming after me, but the lead agent put a hand on his arm and he sat down. “We can take you in now for crossing the state line, or we can let it slide. Up to you.”
He’d mentioned nothing about the meeting with the gang representatives. I wondered if he knew about it too. I shrugged and stood. “It was a long night. I’m going to bed.”
He stayed in his chair. “We want you to work with us.”
“Like you said yesterday.”
“We say it again today. Plus we say we’ll pay you.”
“And?”
“What else do you want?” he said.
“Protection. Total immunity.” Bill Gubman said he wanted to keep the Feds out of the investigation. But when the Feds showed up in my kitchen at dawn and helped themselves to my coffee, I needed to calculate the risks of staying quiet.
“We can protect you-at least some. We can’t promise immunity.”
“You can promise me anything you want.”
“Not that.”
“You should talk to my lawyer. His name’s Larry Weiss. I’ll give you his number.”
“Fuck your lawyer.”
“Fuck my lawyer?”
He nodded.
“Well, then, fuck you.” I turned to go to bed.
Three chairs scraped against the floor. I spun, thinking they were coming for me. They weren’t. They went to the kitchen drawers, pulled them out, and dumped them on the floor.
“Now that’s foolish,” I said.
They shuffled the silverware and dishtowels with their feet like they were looking for something. Then they opened the cabinets and cleared the pots and mixing bowls. The lead agent went to the pantry and swept the food off the shelves.
“What are you looking for?” I said.
“A reason to arrest you on charges that will get you more than a couple years.”
“We’ll find something sooner or later,” said the agent who’d smashed my coffee cup.
“Or if we don’t,” said the third, “we’ll bring something in from our van.”
“Do you have a search warrant?” I said.
The lead agent stopped knocking things onto the floor and looked me in the eyes. “Now who’s being foolish?”
I watched them wreck the kitchen for awhile. Then they went into the hall and headed for Jason’s bedroom.
I followed them down the hall. “You don’t screw around with a kid’s stuff. You go in there and I’ll kill you.”
They came back up the hall and the lead agent looked at me long and hard. I looked at him the same. Then his face softened. “Okay,” he said.
I breathed out, relieved.
The other agents brushed past me, heading back toward the kitchen.
Then, one of them turned, grabbed my arms from behind, and shoved me against the hallway wall. The other drew his gun and held it against my head.
The lead agent went into Jason’s room. Drawers fell from the dresser. Toys knocked to the floor. Books tumbled from the shelves. He spent ten minutes destroying the space Jason had made for himself with me, away from his mom and everything he’d known for eleven years.
My muscles tightened. A 9 mm pistol pressed against the back of my head. My back and the insides of my legs sweated. I said nothing.
When the lead agent finished with the room, he came into the hall and got close to my ear. “You were right,” he said, soft. “That was a waste of time.”
I spun. My fist caught him in his face and blood burst from his nose. The 9 mm slipped from the back of my head. The agent who’d held it regripped it and pointed it at my chest, a look of panic on his face.
Fury rose in the lead agent’s face. “You fucking idiot.” He turned and went down the hall to the bathroom.
I slumped against the wall. “First time you’ve done this?” I said to the man with the gun.
He said nothing.
“You can relax now,” I said.
He said, “One call to DCFS, and we can take the kid away from you.”
Water ran in the bathroom sink and a minute later the lead agent returned with a bloody towel pressed against his face.
“There’s your charge,” said the agent who’d smashed the cup. “Assaulting a federal officer.”
The lead agent ignored him. “Let’s go back to the kitchen,” he said to me.
We kicked the food and pots out of the way and sat at the table.
“You like working with Earl Johnson?” he asked.
I shrugged. “Beats some of the company I’ve been spending time with.”
“Do you know who he is?”
I’d known Johnson since we went to the academy together. “What do you mean?”
He mopped his bloody nose with my bathroom towel. “He might be involved in more than you think he is.”
I considered that. Maybe Johnson really was running a side operation of the kind that Bill Gubman was fabricating. Maybe he was pulling a double scam, one against the police department and one against the rest of his crew. Maybe Bill’s plans to set him up were unnecessary because Johnson was already guilty. He wouldn’t be the first thief who dipped his fingers into his friends’ pockets.
I smiled.
“What’s funny?”
“Nothing,” I said. “Tell me about him.”
“The day that you shot our informant at Southshore Village, he reported that he’d found out something important about Johnson. We wanted to ask him about that when we met with him after the robbery. Thanks to you, we never got to meet. Do you know what he found out?”
I shook my head. “I’d never met your guy when I shot him.”
He nodded. “And you’ve seen nothing interesting about Johnson since then?”
I had suspicions about Johnson, no more. “I’ve seen a lot that’s interesting. But no.”
“Would you tell me if you did?”
I thought about that. “I don’t know.”
He stood and pulled a card out of his wallet, said, “Call when you’re ready to talk-or if you need help.”
I looked at the card. It had two phone numbers, one for his field office and one for his cell. It said FBI in bold letters. It also gave his name-Stuart Felicano.
“Is that your real name?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Sure.”
I gestured at his two partners. “How about these guys?”
“Just telephone me.” He pressed my bathroom towel against his bleeding nose. “Can I borrow this?”
I shrugged. “My house is your house.”
They let themselves out through the back door.
I sat for a few minutes at the kitchen table and considered what to do.
I should call Bill Gubman and tell him about the FBI. I should call Larry Weiss and ask for his legal opinion about how to avoid screwing myself more than I’d already done. I should call Lucinda and see how she’d spent her evening after Peter Finley escorted her to her car in Wisconsin. I should call Corrine and tell her I loved her. I should call to check on Jason at the hospital. I should sweep the mess from the kitchen floor and put the pots and pans where they belonged. I should pick up Jason’s room so he would never know an FBI agent ransacked it. I should pack a suitcase and drive south until the air warmed and my memory dulled.