The carnival finally gave way to another day at the office. Havlicek and I agreed to make a round of calls and talk over our angles in the early afternoon. First thing I did, after going through messages and flipping through a large stack of mail, was punch out a number on my phone that got me into the depths of the J. Edgar Hoover Building, headquarters of the FBI. A familiar voice answered on the first ring.
"Ron, Flynn here," I said in my typically warm way. "Still stuck with the weekend shift, huh?"
"As I live and breathe, if it isn't the star of the fucking city," said Ron Hancock, a veteran special agent of the FBI.
I interjected, "I tell you what, first thing tomorrow, I'm going to sign a few glossies for the wife and kids and send them on over."
"I tell you what, I'll lay them down in the cellar, and the dog will piss all over them."
Well now, isn't that sweet. Now that we had the niceties out of the way, I cut to the point, even though I wasn't sure what the point was, but you never show the pink part of your stomach to a federal agent, not when you want to use them as a source of information. For all their feigned disgust with reporters, they're actually a bit afraid of us, and a little information goes a long way, if you know how to use it right.
"That's real nice," I said. "Listen, one question that's been bothering me since I woke up in the hospital fortunate enough to be staring into her pretty face: what's the line on Samantha Stevens?
Good woman? Bad woman? Respected agent?"
Despite the threat to allow his dog to urinate on the likeness of my face, Hancock was a solid man, an even better agent, and a time-tested friend to the news media, or at least to me. He worked in the intelligence division of the FBI, mostly tracking terrorist activity in the country and outside, shaking down informants, keeping watch on suspected international criminals, plugging into networks of wiretapped information that the average citizen couldn't even fathom existed. I had met him a few years earlier, on a basic drug-smuggling case he worked in Boston. Bored with a pretty small-time investigation, he tossed me a few bones. I got things right and made him look good. We kept in touch ever since, and he was always willing to lend a hand.
Working intelligence, he was clued into avenues all over the country.
Perhaps more important, his natural curiosity made him something of an expert on the internal machinations of the FBI. If there was anything going on there, he knew about it, and his general sense of outrage usually spurred him to share what he knew.
He just kind of snickered. "I don't know a whole lot about Ms.
Stevens, aside from the fact that the male agents seem to really like her. The brass must too, if they put her on a case like this."
For the hell of it, I added, "And Kent Drinker?"
"Well, that one's a little trickier. You know his checkered background, yet his renaissance here has been something to behold, and those who have worked with him have few complaints."
I said, "Yeah, his history, to say the least, is complex."
I intentionally left a void of silence open, hoping he would fill it with some information he might not otherwise have felt inclined to offer. An old reporter's trick. But Hancock's too good for that, and probably uses the same trick himself. So instead we just had an awkward pause.
Finally I asked innocently, "You don't even want to know how I am?"
He laughed a hearty laugh. "Next time," he said. "Right now, I've got to run."
I held the phone in my hand for a moment after he had hung up. Then, for a sense of structure, I typed what I knew into my computer. First, there was a gunman who no one really knew anything about, although the FBI immediately, seemingly without any foundation, had reported he was a militia member. Second, there was the matter of this anonymous source, telling me this shooting was not what it seemed, whatever that meant. Third, the outcome of a presidential election hung in the balance, affected one uncertain way or another by this gunman's errant shot.
"What do you think of Idaho?"
That was Martin, bursting my concentration. I slowly, inconspicuously slipped a magazine over the typewritten note as I sprinted around the hallways of my mind, wondering what in God's name he meant by Idaho.
Shit, I realized, the militia leader.
"I don't know," I said. "I've just been trying to piece together the holes we have right now. There are a lot of them."
"No shit. All holes. No answers. We need a break on this, and we need it fast. You think you should just get on a plane, try to break some news on the militia front? If it ends up that these groups are disavowing any knowledge of this gunman, it raises a whole lot of questions. Here's two of them: Who the hell is this guy, and why were the feds so quick to blame the militias?"
Good points, all, stated in Martin's typically concise manner. By now, the bureau had risen fully to life. Phones were ringing. Barbara was calling out messages over the intercom. Reporters were standing at their desks, pacing around, trading insults. I drank it in appreciatively as I sat there weighing my options. I didn't want to jump on a plane for the backwoods of America, specifically the Idaho Panhandle, not now anyway, not with what I had going on. I was due in the Oval Office at noon and at the Newseum at five-thirty that afternoon, for a meeting with my anonymous source that could change the direction of this entire story. Not to be overly dramatic, but it could change my career. On the other hand, suppose my source had nothing new? Suppose he was just another crazy? By heading out to Idaho, I had the distinct possibility of learning something more concrete, and we now had Havlicek working angles here in Washington.
"Why don't we hold off on a definitive plan until we see what happens with Hutchins," I said, finding nice, neutral ground. "We'll see if he makes news, if he throws us in any direction. Then we'll decide if it's worth the trip west."
"That's good, very good," Martin said, satisfied. He turned around and walked away, saying to no one in particular, though I suspect it was meant for me, "Of course, that leaves us with nothing definitive in the works."
My meeting at the Newseum could fix that dilemma, but I wasn't quite ready to share that with him yet.
I quickly picked up the phone and, while poking through my electronic Rolodex, punched out a telephone number in Sand Falls, Idaho, specifically a ranch called Freedom Lake, headquarters for one of the most far-reaching militia groups in America. A young man, sounding no more than twenty years old, picked up on the second ring.
"Minutemen," he said.
I put on my sternest don't-fuck-with-me voice. "Daniel there?" I said, just about snapping the phone wires with my steely resolve.
"Who wants to know?" the kid said, sounding more punkish by the monosyllable.
"Jack Flynn from the Boston Record," I said. I had met with Daniel Nathaniel-yes, it's his real name, God bless his parents-the year before, and we had hit it off in an odd kind of way.
"I'll have Ben call you back when he has time. He handles all of our news media calls."
"No," I said, my voice growing even sharper. "You'll go in and tell Mr. Nathaniel that Jack Flynn is on the line, then you'll transfer the call in when he tells you."