So what changed? It’s hard to say. Was it as simple as seeing those severed cords hanging from the bed frame?
I don’t need to look at the menu, but I do anyway just to have a prop in hand. The waitress comes over in a black tee and khaki skirt, her ribbed black socks pulled halfway over her knee. She tells me what’s good, then shrugs when I order the unadventurous fish and chips.
“When in Rome,” I say, glancing up at the timbered ceiling.
Wilcox doesn’t smile. “You want to tell me what I’m doing here?”
“You chose the place.”
“What I mean is, why is it that you can call out of the blue and I drop everything? That’s what I don’t understand. Does it make me a masochist?”
“You’re getting a free meal out of it.”
“We both know you owe me more than that.”
There’s a crack in the wooden table that suddenly takes on a fascinating aspect. I scratch at it with my nail, not wanting to see the expression on his face. “Listen, I wouldn’t have called if it wasn’t important.”
“Important to you, you mean.”
“And you.”
He coughs into his hand. “Why do I doubt that?”
Driving over, I tried to tell myself his voice sounded pleasantly surprised over the phone. Maybe he’d even be happy to see me again. Wrong. I have no choice but to spit it out.
“What do you know about a guy named Joe Thomson?”
He ponders the question awhile. “Why are you asking?”
“He came to me with an offer.”
I tell him the whole story, only leaving out the setting. He knows about the Paragon, and the last thing I need is a lecture. The further I get into the story, the more interested he becomes. His mussels arrive and he leaves them untouched, his eyes fixed on me.
“I said the odds were slim, but Thomson told me to come to you specifically. He said you’d be interested in what he had to tell. Was he right?”
Wilcox sniffs. “He wasn’t wrong. I can’t make any promises, Roland, but this is something my people would be very interested in. I’m not sure having you involved is going to work for us, though.”
“It was me he came to. Take it or leave it.”
“Setting that aside for a moment, are you telling me you don’t know who this guy is?”
“He looked familiar.”
“For a detective, you don’t pay much attention, you know that?” He shakes his head, like he’s remembering what it was about me he never liked. “Joe Thomson used to be one of the worst guys in the department, the kind the psych evaluations are supposed to weed out. We’ve got a thick file on him in IAD, full of excessive-force complaints going all the way back to his rookie days. Before I transferred, Internal Affairs was looking at him in connection with a couple of different cases. Planting evidence, making threats against fellow officers, we’re talking a seriously bad dude.”
“I got that vibe off him. But you said he ‘used to be’ bad?”
“Well,” he says, dragging the word out. “About a year ago, he requested therapy. Of his own volition apparently. He patched things up with his ex-wife. They ended up getting remarried. As part of the therapy he started taking art classes – ”
“Art classes?”
He rolls his eyes. “Yeah, I know. But I guess he really got into it. Does some kind of sculpting I guess. Anyway, we’re talking about a pretty significant change in the guy.”
I imagine a pottery wheel spinning a lump of wet clay in endless revolutions, my uninvited table guest of the night before hunched over, applying gritty fingers to the task of shaping. Or maybe taking a hammer and chisel to a block of marble, I don’t know. For someone like me, a skeptic when it comes to the power of therapy, it’s hard to credit the kind of transformation Wilcox describes. Cleaning up his act, reconciling with his estranged wife, and now coming clean about whatever corruption he’s witnessed on the job. If only it were that easy to change course, to hit the reset button and become a good man again.
“What prompted this change of his?” I ask, suddenly thinking of Coleman, the supposed prison convert we rearrested at the George R. Brown. “Let me guess. Did he find Jesus?”
“You’re not going to like this,” he says, cracking a smile. “What changed Thomson was finding himself a new role model. Thomson left the gang unit and started working for Reg Keller.”
Keller. Some messiah.
If I have a nemesis at HPD, it’s Keller, the man who’s been dogging my steps for the past fifteen years or more. I tried to bring him down once and failed miserably.
“The Homeland Security thing?” I ask, keeping my voice even.
He nods. “The Golden Parachute Brigade.”
“So that’s how he knew I’d be hooked: Keller’s involved. You know, I was talking to one of Keller’s guys the other day. Remember Tony Salazar?”
“Sure.”
“One of his CIS wandered into our cars-for-criminals net.”
“Salazar’s on our radar screen, too. He paid cash for a nice boat a while back, and since he jumped to Keller’s camp, he’s been living way above his means.”
“Well, I respect the guy personally. He’s a sharp detective.”
“Maybe,” Wilcox says, meaning not so much. “But getting back to Thomson, I think Keller had a talk with the man. Told him to get his ducks in a row, that kind of thing. If you look at Keller’s roster, you’d think he was running some kind of halfway house. He recruits the worst disciplinary cases, then turns them into model detectives.”
“By pointing them to the real money?”
“Yes,” he says. “That’s my theory anyway. If I could prove it, I wouldn’t be sitting here.” He pauses. “I’ll be right back, okay?”
He slides around the table and heads upstairs to the restroom. As soon as he goes, the waitress comes by to refill my water glass. I take a bite of fish, surprised that it’s gone cold.
I met Reg Keller a long time ago, when we were both still in uniform. I was on patrol and he was an up-and-coming sergeant about to make the jump to plainclothes. We rode a shift together one night and something happened. He put me in a bad spot. It took a long time for me to work out the truth, not until I made detective myself. Once I did, though, I was at his throat, and for a while it looked like I’d nail him.
But I missed my chance.
My career rocketed into the stratosphere, burned bright a little while, then tumbled back to earth. My life in general went off the rails. Meanwhile, Keller racked up promotion after promotion, storing favors away for a rainy day, until he was too far up the line for a rank and filer like me to so much as touch.
Sometime after the Dubai Ports World scandal back in early 2006, when the administration tried to hand over American ports to foreign control, including stevedore operations at the Port of Houston, Keller somehow managed to get the green light on a special unit whose official remit was to assess security threats related to the port and Bush Intercontinental Airport. Even a longtime opponent like me had to admire his cunning. There were already a number of agencies doing the work, so Keller’s team was superfluous from the start, but the assignment would look great on a résumé and no doubt lead to lucrative security work once he retired. Hence the nickname Golden Parachute Brigade. Nice work if you can get it.
“You look angry,” Wilcox says, resuming his seat.
“I am angry. It’s all coming back to me, the whole thing with Keller. You’re telling me you can’t touch a guy like that in IAD? Are they even trying?”
“I’m not going to comment on any ongoing investigations. But let me make something clear. For Thomson to get what he wants, this blanket immunity, we’re going to need more from him than the shooters from your multiple murder. If he can give us something on Keller, on the other officers in the unit, then we can talk. You have a problem with that?”