"He might have had help," McNulty reminded. "You use his description?"
"No, I just went with the operators," Scoby said. "Asked them if they'd connect me to his room. Figured we didn't want to take a chance with the desk clerks. Knowing Chareaux, he's probably paranoid enough to have at least a couple of them working on a retainer."
"What about Sonny or Butch? You ask about them, too?"
"No. I didn't want to risk that just yet either," Scoby said. "They're still hanging around Bozeman, and anybody but Alex rings their room, everybody's gonna start getting jumpy. I didn't figure that Henry needed that kind of confusion right now."
"Yeah, you're right," McNulty agreed. "We'll stay clear of the motel lobbies for a while unless we get something specific. What about license plates?"
"We've got four knowns, but they like to switch vehicles a lot," Scoby said. "Dwight and Larry are going to check the parking lots anyway, but I figure if they're worried about the Lear, they're probably going to use something we haven't seen before."
"Makes sense," McNulty agreed again.
"So what's the plan at your end?" Scoby asked, watching as Dwight Stoner and Larry Paxton worked themselves into their shoulder holsters, their normally animated faces now somber. They were experienced field operatives and could sense that something had gone horribly wrong with the Chareaux investigation. Something that most likely involved a careless rookie agent named Len Ruebottom.
"I've got a five-o'clock flight out of Stapleton," McNulty said. "I'll pick up a car at the airport and meet you at the motel."
"You going to rendezvous with Mike when you land, and help him check out that plane?"
"No, I don't think so. Too risky. If these guys are paying attention, they're going to put a tag on Mike the moment he steps foot inside that plane. No sense in burning two of us right off the bat. Which reminds me, you better get him a room in another motel, just in case."
Scoby hesitated for a moment.
"We can probably reserve a couple of rooms at the Prime Rate," he finally said. "It's right across the Interstate. Easy to keep an eye on things."
Paul McNulty had not risen to the position of supervising a covert operations team by being insensitive to the moods of his agents.
"Something the matter?" he asked.
"I guess that's what we're wondering," Scoby answered carefully. "I guess we're all wondering why you've got us jumping through so many hoops to work a bunch of low-lifes like the Chareaux brothers. Comm links, message switching, motel cutouts. Christ, you've even got Mike looking over his shoulder. He must have swept this place for bugs at least three times in the past half hour."
Carl Scoby paused, as if hoping that McNulty would break in and offer some sort of explanation, but he didn't.
"Look, Paul," Scoby went on, "we all know that the Chareauxs are dangerous and that this deal with Len Ruebottom is rough, but those guys aren't exactly the KGB either."
"No, they're not," McNulty finally said in a quiet voice. "But I've been picking up some quiet rumblings from the Washington office the last couple of days."
"About what? Our investigation?"
"No, I don't think so," McNulty said. "It's something else. Nothing I can really put my finger on, but there's a bunch of people who are getting awful curious all of a sudden about what kind of cases we're working. Law Enforcement in general, and Special Ops in particular."
"You mean people in the Service?"
"Them, and Interior, and maybe even higher up," MeNulty replied evenly. "The last guy I talked with was one of the PR types. He got a little more specific. He wanted to know if we were working anything interesting in Idaho, Montana, Colorado, or Wyoming. Looking for some background stuff, so that he could brief the local senators, was the way he put it."
"You're shitting me."
"Then I got a call from one of my old Marine buddies who happens to be one of the top headhunters for the J. Edgar team. He wanted to know if I was bucking for some kind of political appointment. Figured it had to be one hell of a deal to justify a priority screening."
"Somebody's running a background on you?"
"On the two Special Ops teams," MeNulty said. "All ten of us," he added pointedly. "And apparently a bunch of other people, too. Law enforcement types from the other Interior agencies. Park police and park rangers especially. My friend wouldn't say, but I got the impression that it's a pretty big list."
"So it's just some sort of overall departmental sweep?"
"Maybe," MeNulty said. "Let's put it this way, you ever been to Terry Grosz's place?"
"You mean his rib joint? Yeah, sure. Why?"
"I'm sitting in Terry's office right now."
"Oh, yeah? I didn't know they were open on Sundays."
"They aren't," MeNulty said. "I talked Terry into lending me a key. And while I was at it, I made arrangements for Martha to stay with them for a while, until I get back. That's why I had Mike switch the alert phone to Terry's house."
"You moved Martha out of your house?" Carl Scoby blinked in surprise.
"We had an interesting caller yesterday while I was at the office," MeNulty went on calmly. "Guy in his mid-thirties coming around asking for donations, some kind of environmental fund."
"Your typical yuppie activist," Scoby chuckled sympathetically. "We get our share of those, too."
"Yeah, well, according to Martha, this one looked a whole lot more like the lead man on a SWAT team."
Carl Scoby felt a cold chill run down the back of his neck.
MeNulty didn't have to explain the significance of his statement. Everyone on the team knew that Martha McNulty's older brother had recently retired as commander of the Los Angeles Police Department's Special Weapons and Tactics Unit. The McNulty household had been a social gathering point for many of LAPD's finest when Paul McNulty was senior resident agent of the Fish and Wildlife Service's Long Beach office.
And having served more meals to more special agents, game wardens, cops, narcs, and SWAT team members than she cared to think about, Martha McNulty often claimed that she could walk into a room and pick out the covert operators almost immediately. Something about the set of their shoulders, and their eyes, and the way they moved.
"That doesn't necessarily mean anything," Scoby suggested cautiously.
"No, it doesn't," McNulty agreed. "But Martha remembered that the guy had personal checks from a couple of our neighbors on his clipboard, so this morning I went around and talked to the people in our cul-de-sac. Seems that he made his pitch to three houses before us, but nobody after us."
"Okay, but-"
"And before I forget," McNulty interrupted, "tell Larry that I made similar arrangements for Dasha and the kids. They're getting on a plane for Jamaica tomorrow morning. Going to stay with the grandparents for a couple of weeks. I told her it was a surprise from Larry, to make up for him being gone all the time."
"What the hell's that all about?"
"Same guy showed up at Dasha's place Saturday afternoon. Same description and same pattern. Three houses before, none after."
"Jesus," Scoby whispered after a long moment. "What the hell did we trip over?"
"I don't know," McNulty said. "Maybe nothing. Hopefully nothing. For all I know, this may be nothing more than a routine sweep. Update on our security clearances. Something like that."
"You think the Chareauxs might be involved in all this?"
"First thing I thought of, but I don't see how," McNulty answered. "If they're looking at us as a team, it's got to be one of two things. It's either the specific individuals that we're targeting, or the fact that we're a covert team, and therefore represent a potential threat."