I could hear Potter’s voice in my head as I typed. Good lord, no. Not unless someone goes swimming in my septic tank.
Sphinx 3000: Gross, Potter. I love it.
Sterling 66: Well, if U have checkbook in hand.
Wolf: No. We’ll wait on this. It’s too soon, Potter. We’ll get back to you. As always, I’ve enjoyed our talk, but I have other matters to attend to.
Wolf signed off. He was gone. Shit. He’d come and gone, just like that. The mystery man as always. Who was this bastard?
I stayed on-line, chatting with the others for a few minutes – expressing my disappointment at the decision, my eagerness to make a purchase. Then I left the site too.
I looked around the operation room at my colleagues. A few began to clap, partly mocking me, but mostly it was congratulatory. Cop-to-cop stuff. Almost like old times. I felt marginally accepted by the others in the room. For the first time, actually.
Chapter Eighty-Three
We waited to hear from the Wolf again. Everyone in the overcrowded room wanted to take him down in the worst way. He was a complicated and twisted killer, but, besides that, the FBI needed a win; a lot of people working their asses off needed it. Snaring the Wolf would be a tremendous victory. If we could just find him. And what if we could get all of the other sick bastards too? Sphinx. ToscaBella. Louis XV. Sterling.
Still, something was bothering me a lot. If the Wolf was as powerful and successful as he seemed to be, why was he involved in this at all? Because he’d always been into lots of kinds of crimes? Or because he was a sex freak himself? Was that it, the Wolf was a freak? Where could I go with that line of thinking?
He’s a freak, and therefore?…
Except for a couple of hours when I went home to see the kids, I remained inside the Hoover Building for the next day and a half. So did a lot of other agents on the case, even Monnie Donnelley who was as emotionally invested in this as anybody. We continued to collect information, especially about Russian mobsters in the States, but mostly we waited for a call from the Wolf’s Den to Mr Potter. A yes or a no, a go or a no-go. What was the bastard waiting for?
I talked to Jamilla several times – good talks, also to Sampson, the kids, Nana Mama. I even talked to Christine. I had to find out where her head was at about little Alex. After our talk, I wasn’t sure if she knew, which was the most disturbing thing of all. I began to detect an ambivalent tone in her voice when she spoke about raising Alex, even though she said she was prepared to sue for custody. Considering all she’d been through, it was hard for me to stay angry at her.
I would rather have given up my right arm than my little boy, though. Just thinking about it gave me a headache that throbbed continuously and made the long wait for a solution even worse.
The phone on my desk rang around ten on the second evening and I picked up right away. ‘Waiting for my call? How’s it going?’ It was Jamilla, and though she sounded close, she was all the way across country in California.
‘Sucks,’ I said. ‘I’m stuck in a small, windowless room with eight smelly FBI hackers.’
‘That good, huh? So I take it the Wolfman hasn’t called back with an answer.’
‘No. And it’s not just that.’ I told Jamilla about my phone call with Christine.
She wasn’t nearly as sympathetic as I was. ‘Who the hell does she think she is? She walked on her little boy. She was for all that time.’
‘It’s more complicated than that,’ I said.
‘No, it isn’t, Alex. You always like to give people the benefit of the doubt. You think people are basically good.’
‘I guess I do. That’s the reason I can do my job. Because most people are basically good and they don’t deserve the shit that gets heaped on them.’
Jamilla laughed. ‘Well, neither do you. Think about that. Neither does little A, Damon, Jannie, Nana Mama. Not that you asked for my opinion. I’ll shut up now. So what is going on with the case? Change the subject to something more pleasant.’
‘We’re waiting on this Russian hood and his creeped-out friends. I still don’t understand why he’s involved in a kidnapping ring.’
‘You’re at FBI headquarters, the Hoover cube?
‘Yes, but it’s not exactly a cube. It’s only seven stories on Pennsylvania Avenue, because of the D.C. building codes. And eleven stories in the back part of the building.’
‘Thanks for sharing that. You’re starting to sound like a Feebie. I’ll bet it feels weird to be in there.’
‘No, I just figure I’m on the fifth floor. Could be in either part of the building.’
‘Ha, ha. No, working the other side, the dark side. Being in the J. Edgar Hoover Building. Being a Feebie. Just thinking about it makes me shiver.’
‘The waiting is the same, Jam. The waiting’s always the same.’
‘At least you have good friends to talk to some of the time. At least you have some nice phone pals.’
‘I do, don’t I? And you’re right, it’s easier waiting here with you.’
‘I’m glad you feel that way. We need to see each other, Alex. We need to touch each other. There are things we have to talk about.’
‘I know that. As soon as this case is over. I promise. I’ll be on the first plane.’
Jamilla laughed again. ‘Well, get cracking, boy. Catch the big bad Wolf psycho bastard. Otherwise, I’ll be on my own plane East.’
‘Promise?’
‘Promise.’
Chapter Eighty-Four
A dozen or so agents had been sitting around eating thick roast beef sandwiches, German potato salad, and drinking iced tea when contact with the Wolf’s Den was made again. ‘Roast beef’ has a special meaning inside the FBI, but that was another story. The Wolf was calling.
Potter. We’ve made a decision on your request, the e-mail said. Get back to us.
The group continued to eat. We agreed there was no need to get back to the Wolf instantly. It would raise his suspicions if Potter was there waiting for the call. An agent was already playing the part of Dr Homer Taylor in Hanover at Dartmouth. We had spread a lie that the professor had the flu and wouldn’t be conducting any classes for the next day or two. Occasionally, ‘sightings’ of Professor Taylor were arranged at his house – sometimes looking out windows, or sitting out on the front porch. To our knowledge, no one else had inquired about Taylor at Dartmouth, or at his house in Webster. Both locations were being watched closely by agents.
I hoped that the agents in the field knew what the hell they were doing. At this point we had no idea how careful the Wolf was, or whether his suspicions had already been aroused. We didn’t know enough about the Russian. Not even if he had someone in the Bureau feeding him information.
It was agreed that I would wait an hour and a half, since I hadn’t been on-line when he established contact, and the Wolf would know that. During the past day we’d been unsuccessful in trying to connect the Wolf’s Den to an owner or even to one of the other users. This probably meant that a high-level hacker had protected the site well. The Bureau’s experts were confident they would breakthrough, but it hadn’t happened yet.
Homer Taylor had been transported to D.C. again, and we used his eyes for the retina scan. Then I sat down at a computer and began to type. I was following the model of communication to the Wolf’s Den provided by Homer Taylor as part of our deal.