That’s what we did.
Chapter Ninety-Four
We were back at the field office by eight the next morning. Several of the agents looked a little messed-up after the night off. First thing, Director Burns was on the line from Washington. I was pretty sure the Director rarely, if ever, spoke to the troops like this. So why do it now? What was up?
Agents around the room were looking at one another. Brows crinkled, eyebrows arched. No one could fathom why Burns was so involved. Maybe I could. I’d seen the restlessness in him, the dissatisfaction with the ways of the past, even if he couldn’t effectively change them all at once. Burns had started as a street cop in Philadelphia and worked his way up to Police Commissioner. Maybe he could change things at the Bureau.
‘I wanted to explain what happened yesterday,’ he said over the speakerphone. Every agent in the room listened intently, myself included. ‘And I also wanted to apologize to all of you. Everything got territorial for a while. The Dallas police, the mayor, even the governor of Texas, were involved. The Dallas police asked that we pull back, because they didn’t have full confidence in us. I agreed to the action because I wanted to talk it through with them rather than force our presence there.
‘They didn’t want mistakes, and they weren’t sure that we have the right man. The Lipton family has a good reputation in the city. He’s very well connected. Anyway, Dallas was surprised that we listened to their concerns – and now they’ve backed off again. They respect the team we’ve assembled.
‘We will continue our action against Lawrence Lipton and, believe me, we’re going to take that bastard down. Then we’re going to take Pasha Sorokin down, the Wolf. I don’t want you to worry about past mistakes. Don’t worry about mistakes at all. Just do your job in Dallas. I have the utmost confidence in you.’
Burns went off the line and just about every agent’s face in the room wore a smile. It was quite magical, actually. The Director had said things that some of them had been waiting years to hear; especially welcome was the news that he believed in their ability, and wasn’t worried about mistakes. We were back in the game; we were expected to bring down Lawrence Lipton.
Minutes after the phone call ended, my cell went off. I answered and it was Burns himself. ‘So how’d I do?’ he asked. I could hear the smile in his voice. I could also almost see the cocky upturn of his lip when he grinned. He, he knew how he’d done.
I walked away from the group and into a far corner of the room, and told him what he wanted to hear. ‘You did good. They’re pumped to do the job.’
Burns exhaled. ‘Alex. I want you to turn up the heat on this punk. I sold you hard to Dallas as a key member of the team. They bought you, and your reputation. They know how good we think you are. I want you to make Lawrence Lipton very uncomfortable. Do it your own way.’
I found myself smiling. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’
‘And Alex, contrary to what I said to the others, don’t make any mistakes.’
Chapter Ninety-Five
Don’t make any mistakes. It was a hell of an exit line, I had to give him that. Kind of funny, in a sadistic, hard ass way. I was starting to like Ron Burns again. Couldn’t help myself. But did I trust him?
Somehow, I got the feeling that Burns wasn’t that worried about the mistakes, though. He wanted to catch the kidnappers, especially Pasha Sorokin – even if we didn’t yet know who he really was, or where he lived. According to his orders, all I had to do was figure out a way to break Lawrence Lipton down, do it in a hurry, and not embarrass the Bureau in any way.
I met with Roger Nielsen on possible next strategies – we had already resumed surveillance on Lawrence Lipton. It was decided that it was time to put real pressure on him, to let him know we were in Dallas, and that we knew about him. After Burns’s phone call, I wasn’t surprised that I had been chosen to confront Lipton.
We decided that I would go and see Lipton at his office in the Lakeside Square Building at the intersection of the LBJ Freeway and North Central Expressway. The building was twenty stories high with lots of reflective glass. It was practically blinding down on the street as I looked skyward in the Texas sunshine. I walked inside at a little past ten in the morning. Lipton’s office suite was on the nineteenth floor. When I got off the elevator, a recorded voice said, ‘Howdy.’
I stepped into a large reception area with half an acre of red-wine-colored carpeting, beige walls, dark brown leather sofas, and matching chairs everywhere. There were framed, signed photos of Roger Staubach, Nolan Ryan and Tom Landry on the walls.
I was told to wait in reception by a very proper-looking young woman in a dark blue pants suit. She sat self-importantly behind a sleek walnut desk under recessed lighting. She looked all of twenty-two or twenty-three years old, fresh from charm school. She acted and spoke as properly as she looked.
‘I’ll wait, but let Mr Lipton know it’s the FBI. It’s important that I see him,’ I told her.
The receptionist smiled sweetly, as if she’d heard all this before, then she went back to answering the phone calls coming in on her headset. I sat down and waited patiently; I waited for fifteen minutes. Then I got back up again. I strolled over to the reception desk.
‘You told Mr Lipton that I’m here?’ I asked politely. ‘That I’m with the FBI?’
‘I did, sir,’ she spoke in a syrupy voice that was starting to rub me the wrong way.
‘I need to see him right now,’ I told the girl and waited until she made another call to Lipton’s assistant.
They talked briefly, then she looked back at me. ‘Do you have identification, sir?’ she asked. She was frowning now.
‘I do. They’re called creds.’
‘May I see it, please? Your creds.’ I showed off my new FBI badge and she looked it over like a fast-food counterperson inspecting a fifty-dollar bill.
‘Could you please wait over at the seating area?’ she asked again, only now she seemed a little nervous, and I wondered what Lawrence Lipton’s assistant had told her, what her marching orders were.
‘You don’t seem to understand, or I’m not making myself clear,’ I finally said. ‘I’m not here to fool around with you, and I’m not here to wait.’
The receptionist nodded. ‘Mr Lipton is in a meeting. That’s all I know, sir.’
I nodded back. ‘Tell his assistant to pull him out of his meeting right now. Have her tell Mr Lipton that I’m not here to arrest him yet.’
I wandered back to the seating area, but I didn’t bother to sit. I stood there and looked out on magnificent, Technicolor green lawns that stretched to the concrete edge of the LBJ Freeway. I was burning inside.
I’d just acted like a D.C. street cop back there. I wondered if Burns would have approved, but it didn’t matter. He’d given me some rope, but I also had made a decision that I wasn’t going to change because I was an FBI agent now. I was in Dallas to bring down a kidnapper and killer; I was here to find out if Mrs Elizabeth Connelly and others were alive and maybe being held somewhere as slaves. I was back on The Job. I heard a door open behind me and I turned. A heavy-set man with graying hair was standing there and he looked angry.
‘I’m Lawrence Lipton,’ he said. ‘What the hell is this about?’
Chapter Ninety-Six
‘What the hell is this about?’ Lipton repeated from the doorway in a loud-mouth, big-shot way. He was speaking to me as if I was a door-to-door brush salesman calling on his company. ‘I think you were told that I’m in an important meeting. What does the FBI want with me? And why can’t it wait? Why don’t you have the courtesy to make an appointment?’