I felt like congratulating him for growing a brain, such as it was. Instead I said, “Can I give you a message for Nikki? Tell her I just want to talk with her. Could you let her know?”
He seemed to ponder that within his thick skull for a brief moment, then shook his head, said, “Fuck you,” he smiled, settling back against his chopping block in self-satisfaction.
Chapter 48
My phone rang. I was training myself not to attempt to read the incoming number.
“Haskell Investigations.”
“I have it on good authority you are responsible for the destruction of government property,” Aaron said.
“What?”
“You slit a tire on a couple of Feds?”
“You gotta be kidding, talk about needing a little more street time. I thought I was helping. What, did my close personal friend Kimball call you and complain?”
“Yeah, he was pretty steamed.”
“Steamed? About the tire? It doesn’t bother him they were spotted almost a block away. That they went after me like a couple of Keystone Kops? He’s lucky I didn’t take the damn car. The tire, God, I wish that was my biggest problem. Things are so screwed up on this end I don’t know how screwed up they are.”
“That’s pretty screwed up.”
“I suppose now he wants me to go back over there and show those two clowns how to change a tire, or did they just call AAA on the Bureau plan?”
“Actually, he wants you to come down here and talk.”
“About what?”
“You know, I gotta tell you, I have to work with these people. I don’t like it sometimes, but it comes with the territory and despite what you read in your comic books we do work together. Now, we are in the process of concluding a long-term investigation. I’m hopeful we’ll be able to bring it to a successful conclusion. There’s a lot of man hours, including mine, a lot of money, including the city’s, and maybe you could find time to climb off your high horse and at least listen to the man. Instead of being the pain-in-the-ass distraction you’ve become.”
I thought about that.
“Dev?”
“I’m thinking.”
“Well, think while you’re driving. You can do two things at once, can’t you?”
“You know…”
“What I know is Peters wants to meet with you at five. He’s going to be down here in my office at four this afternoon for a Task Force meeting. I’m hoping you’ll be here too, you know, just to sort of lend support, to me. You might find it interesting to sit in on the meeting.”
“Sit in? That gonna be all right with special agent Tight-Ass?”
“Let’s just say it might be educational for everyone involved.”
“Educational? Yeah okay, I’ll be there.”
“Good, I’ll let him know you’re going to join us. See you then.” Aaron said and hung up.
I hated it when Aaron played the loyalty card.
Chapter 49
I was tempted to be stylishly late, maybe fifteen minutes or so, but I didn’t need Aaron pissed off at me. I was issued my visitor’s badge at exactly eight minutes before four and a blond detective from Vice came down to escort me up to Aaron’s office.
My luck held when it came to the blond. He was about five foot six, needed a shave, and wasn’t too happy about interrupting his day to escort me up on the elevator. If that doesn’t paint a picture his last name was Griswald, which seemed to fit.
“How’s it going?” I asked.
“Shit,” he half growled. That was the beginning and end of our conversation.
When we entered the office area he jerked his stubbled chin in the general direction of Aaron’s office, turned and walked away.
“Thanks,” I called after him, ever the gracious guest, then made my way to Aaron’s corner office. It was empty but there was a handwritten sign taped to the doorframe that read “Conference Room” and an arrow pointing the direction. I found the place in about twenty paces.
The room had a long rectangular table with some sort of light gray Formica top, lots of comfortable looking chairs. Certainly more upscale than the outdated government-issue stuff dumped in Aaron’s office. Aaron sat on the far side of the conference table. Next to him was Hale, the I.C.E. guy that I sort of liked. A couple more faces I didn’t recognize and some that I did. Peters sat at the head of the table, behind two neat stacks of stapled handouts. He had a brand-new yellow legal pad and a freshly sharpened pencil set in front of him. I pulled out a chair across the table from Aaron, nodded at the few faces I recognized, including Hale, who smiled and winked back.
“All right, now that we’re all finally here, we can begin,” Peters said just as my butt hit the chair.
I glanced at my watch, it read two minutes before four.
“Agent Dziedzic, if you’d do the honors,” Peters said to a woman sitting against the wall behind him. He slid one of the two stacks of handouts to the corner of the table.
Agent Dziedzic had dark curly hair and brown eyes that seemed overly pronounced behind her large round frames. She wore the female version of a dark FBI suit, pressed and starched, although it looked better on her than Peters.
She picked up the stack of handouts and began working her way around the table distributing one to every individual, working her way down the opposite side, around the far end of the table then back up toward me. When she came to me she glanced quickly at Peters, skipped me, then handed copies to the three guys between Peters and me.
Peters gave her a perfunctory smile, pushed the second stack of handouts toward her, and she began the distribution process again. The recipients were flipping through the pages as Peters began to drone.
“I’d like to thank you all for coming.” He made a point of giving perfunctory nods around the table, skipped over me, and continued.
“What you have before you is a flowchart of the task force, identifying various local, state, and federal authorities providing a clear and concise chain of command. Please reference this schematic in future reports so that the information you provide can be accessed by everyone with the need to know in a timely manner. This second handout Agent Dziedzic is passing around is the most up-to-date flowchart of the Alekseeva organization up here in Minneapolis and how it interacts with the Kumarin organization down in Chicago.”
Pretty Agent Dziedzic passed me by again, so I looked over at the copy of the fellow next to me. Not only did he not seem to mind, he moved the copy of the Russian organizations toward me. I noticed there was a Vlad Vucavitch listed as a player down in Chicago. The image was grainy and I couldn’t tell if he looked anything like Kerri. For that matter I didn’t know, maybe it was a common name, the Russian version of Smith or Jones. Peters was still droning on about how fantastic and up to date the information was. I noticed that Sergie Alekseeva, late of this world, was listed as the number two in Braco’s chain of command. I didn’t see Tibor listed anywhere.
“… armed with this information we are now able to…”
“Excuse me, Agent Peters.”
Peters gave a brief smile in my direction, suggesting maybe he had some momentary intestinal discomfort then cleared his throat ever so slightly.
“Mr. Haskell, you are here out of respect for our hosts, and my understanding is you are only here as an observer.” Then he nodded in Aaron’s direction. “I would ask that you refrain from interrupting these procedures so that the rest of us might continue with the business at hand. As I was saying, we will now be able to proceed…”
I think the fuse had been lit when I saw him sitting smugly at the head of the table, wearing another neatly pressed subtle patterned suit, nicely starched shirt, tie complimenting everything perfectly. I’m sure he’d taken his wingtips out of some poor bastard’s ass just long enough to polish them. Or maybe it was his ill-advised reference to being in Minneapolis instead of St. Paul. Either way, I smiled back gracefully, then said, “Before you get down too far, I think you’ve missed an organizational adjustment here.”