“Fat Monte is dead,” Jeff said.
“Did you kill him?”
It was a reasonable question. “No,” Jeff said.
“Did I?”
“Not unless you forced him to shoot himself in the head.”
Matthew didn’t respond for a long while, and then, when he did, all he said was, “Where are you?”
“The White Palace.”
“I’ll need to get a cab. My car is under three feet of snow.”
“No,” Jeff said, “wait, listen. You need to pack some clothes and get out of town for a few weeks. Your sister, too.”
“That’s not going to work,” he said. “My sister can’t just leave school. Do you hear what you’re saying? Jesus. What’s going on?”
Jeff told him what Fat Monte had said, told him about the phone call Jeff made to Biglione, told him that maybe Fat Monte’s wife was gone, too. “I don’t know what’s going to happen next,” Jeff said. “We could all be in danger if the Family decides to make a move.”
“Give me thirty minutes to get my sister up and fill her in,” Matthew said. “Order me a shake.” Before Jeff could protest again, the phone was dead. Jeff made his way to a table and sat down. When the waitress came by, he asked her for a chocolate shake and if she might have a piece of paper and a manila envelope somewhere in the place that he could borrow. The waitress looked at him strangely, but it couldn’t have been the most outrageous request anyone had made of her, particularly since she had a tattoo on her throat that said Robert and one on the back of her hand that said Fuck All Men.
The waitress came back a few moments later with the shake, a padded mailer, and a piece of college-ruled paper. “The manager says I have to charge you for the envelope,” she said.
“Okay,” Jeff said.
“You look familiar to me.”
“I used to come here a lot,” Jeff said.
She cocked her head. “Are you a cop?”
“FBI,” he said, for what would be the last time in his life.
“Are you allowed to say that? Isn’t that supposed to be a secret?”
“Nope,” Jeff said. “That’s the CIA.”
“You all look alike, I guess,” she said. “Enjoy your envelope.”
Jeff took his car keys and cell phone out of his pocket and shoved them into the envelope, then scrawled a note to Matthew:
My truck is parked behind the restaurant. Take it. Pack your stuff up and be out of town before the morning news, if at all possible. Only use my phone. The charger is in the glove box. I’ll call you tonight. Get out of Illinois. Tell your sister I’m sorry and that she’ll be home in a week.
Jeff looked over the note, tried to decide if it was absurd or cautionary or just honest. It didn’t matter in the long run, Jeff supposed, since what was most important here was that Matthew and Nina be safe, but also that the FBI had no ability to scapegoat Matthew. This was weight Jeff was willing to carry, and he had a plan.
He gathered up his heavy winter coat and gloves and walked to the cash register, where he waved the waitress over and handed her the envelope. “In a couple of minutes, another FBI agent is going to walk in here with a young woman. Give him this envelope,” he said. “And the shake, too. That’s for him.”
“Am I on some hidden camera show?” the waitress asked.
Jeff looked around the White Palace. There was a camera above the register, another over the door, most likely a few around the outside of the building, too, everyone and everything captured, just in case anyone wanted to take a look. “Probably,” Jeff said.
He walked out of the White Palace then and stood on the corner of Canal Street and Roosevelt. The FBI’s offices were just two miles away down Roosevelt, a good twenty-minute walk in perfect weather, probably an hour through the snow-drifts that lined the street. Just enough time to get everything straight, so that when he stepped foot back inside the bureau, he’d know exactly what kind of deal he was willing to take.
It occurred to Jeff now, in the backseat of Biglione’s Suburban, that he probably should have held out for a better deal. One that didn’t involve him spending time with Biglione. As it was, agreeing to be fired — he didn’t agree to be excoriated in the press, though he should have expected it — and hired back as an independent consultant with the proviso that the bureau would investigate the leads he’d found into Sal Cupertine’s disappearance was probably more than he could have hoped for, but that was the agreement he made in exchange for not going to the press with any of the information he’d gleaned while on leave. Biglione didn’t even mention Matthew while they negotiated the terms. In fact, it wasn’t until three days later, when Biglione was going over the report Jeff had typed up on the information he’d learned (or, rather, the information he decided to share; Jeff had made a promise to Dennis Tryon regarding Neto Espinoza and he intended to keep it) that Matthew was brought up.
“So, where was Agent Drew in all of this?” Biglione asked. He had his glasses on and was still looking at the report, though Jeff could see he wasn’t really reading it. Jeff knew that Biglione couldn’t afford to find Sal Cupertine yet, which meant unless Cupertine showed up on their doorstep, they weren’t going to go above and beyond to get him into custody. They’d follow the leads they had, because they had to. Fat Monte’s wife was sitting in a hospital with a bullet wedged into her head. Alive, but only barely. Her eyes were open, she was breathing, but there wasn’t much else going on. Just enough for her family to keep her alive and to keep the pressure on the FBI about Fat Monte’s last hours alive.
“I’m not sure I get what you mean,” Jeff said, though he was certain he knew exactly what he meant. The bureau had likely combed through all his affairs from the last few months, and it wouldn’t have taken them long to see that he’d written Matthew checks every month.
“I got a witness at the Four Treys who says he overheard Agent Drew threaten to kill Fat Monte,” Biglione said. “You care to explain that?”
“You line up every person in Chicago who threatened to kill Fat Monte,” Jeff said, “you’d need to rent out Wrigley for the occasion.”
“Let’s not bullshit, okay?” Biglione said. “I know he was working with you.”
“So what?”
“The Family might like him dead,” Biglione said. “And I’m frankly not exactly comfortable with him threatening to kill people while in the company of an FBI agent.”
“Well, that’s been rectified.”
Biglione put the report down on the table and rubbed at his eyes. “I know he was impersonating an FBI agent,” he said. “I could get proof if need be.”
“What would the need be?”
“Newspapers are starting to pile up in front of his door, and his sister is about to miss an important test in her Western civilizations class. She gets below 3.0, could be a problem with her federal student loan,” Biglione said.
“He’s safe,” Jeff said. “He and his sister are on a road trip.”
“Is he looking for Cupertine on this road trip?”
“No,” Jeff said. In fact, Matthew and Nina were already safely at the Marcus Whitman Hotel in Walla Walla, the one town in America Jeff was reasonably sure did not have a tendril of the Family in operation.
“I can’t protect them if I don’t know where they are,” Biglione said. “The Family decides to send a blackout team for them, they’re on their own.”
“Matthew can handle himself,” Jeff said.
“How do you handle yourself when ten guys shoot automatic weapons into your house?”
It was a good question, but the larger issue was that Biglione seemed to know what was becoming more and more evident: The Family had a way to get the names of the FBI players. Jeff doubted there was mole in the bureau. That was some cloak-and-dagger shit that frankly was above the Family’s general purview. Nevertheless, Jeff was sure that there were CIs playing both sides, along with guys doing deep cover who would shovel a bit of helpful information to the Family if it meant keeping their own asses covered. And as it related to Matthew, his association with Jeff was enough to make him the sort of target they’d be willing to go a bit soft on if they didn’t think there was a good chance of him getting hurt. Give up the name of someone inconsequential, basically, just to have the act of giving up information. The same cat and mouse the bureau and the Family had been playing since Capone and Ness.