Mack bent over, rubbed his leg. “No, he’s been off with an injury,” he said through clenched teeth. “You know the type. They get a hangnail and they take two weeks’ sick.”
Wu looked at me then at Mack, and nodded as if he did know the type.
“He’s not here for the Karl Drago thing. He’s jumpin’ into the Sandy Williams and Elena Cortez snatch.”
“Well, good luck with that. I heard tomorrow, or the day after at the latest, you guys don’t get any results, we’re comin’ in to take it over.”
Mack turned, walked away, and said over his shoulder, “You can have it, Wu. Catch ya later.”
I hurried to catch up. “What the hell’s going on here?”
Mack chuckled. “We’ve been working this Karl Drago thing, and we hadn’t been set up here for eight hours when some mope burglarized one of the FBI cars, took a gun and a laptop with high priority info. They had to splinter off two agents on the down low just to chase down the-”
“No, you know what I’m talking about. Who’s Karl Drago?”
He stopped at the motel room door marked 126, raised his hand as though poised to knock, and continued on as if he hadn’t heard me. “To chase down the crooks who took their shit. Real embarrassing.” He knocked on the door. “You know the FBI, they won’t get burned again, so now they’re taking turns watching their own cars in the parking lot. Your hard-earned tax dollars at work. Well, not yours, not anymore.” He smiled.
“Who’s Karl Drago?”
“I’m on the Violent Crimes Team, remember? The team was set up on Drago when all this other shit went down, the first kidnapping, then the second. They pulled me off Drago to work the kidnapping. I’m just using this as a home base because the room’s already paid for.”
“With the FBI in the next room? Are you crazy?”
The motel room door opened. A woman in denim pants and a long-sleeve blue shirt with a Glock in a black nylon shoulder holster smiled back. A gold FBI badge hung from a chain around her neck. She turned and walked back around a large screen. The screen, aluminum frame with black material, blocked anyone in the parking lot’s view into the motel room. Mack stepped around it. Like the rabbit going down the hole, I followed.
All the furniture in the room had been moved, stacked, and shoved into one corner. Computer monitors sat on tables set up in a U-configuration. One computer screen, divided into a quad, depicted four different images: a car in a parking lot, a motel room door-not The Valley Suites at street view-the inside of a motel room, and a bed with someone sleeping in it. A large someone with just a sheet covering him. Two other computer screens showed maps with two little red dots, both on Valley Boulevard. As far as I could tell, the location was right down the street from where we stood. This had to be the Karl Drago thing he was talking about.
A black agent sat in a chair next to the woman who let us in. Both looked bored to death.
“Hey, you guys,” said Mack, “this is Leon Johnson, the guy I told you about. Leon, this is Mary St. John, you can call her Mary Beth, and Willard Godfrey. You can call him Will, but he doesn’t like it, prefers Willard, like the rat in the movie.”
I shook their hands.
“If he’s not part of this operation, then he shouldn’t be in here,” said Mary. “And if he is going to stay, he needs to have some ID displayed.”
Mack reached into his pocket and pulled out a Los Angeles County Sheriff’s badge already on a chain, and hung it around my neck. Heavy emotions welled up in me, clogged my throat. For two and a half decades, the sheriff’s star had defined who I was, how I lived. For the briefest of seconds I was ready to forsake all else to get the star back, to wear the uniform again for real. Then the urge quelled as I remembered my family waiting for me. And most of all, the look in Marie’s eyes when I’d left.
Mack was going way out on a limb to run with me as I impersonated something I wasn’t.
Mack said, “Come on, Leon, I can tell when we’re not wanted.”
“Brilliant observation,” said Mary. She smiled again at Mack, and this time I read the look. Her eyes said she possessed a desire she couldn’t have. Mack had turned her down recently and she still felt the rejection. That wasn’t like Mack, to bypass a pretty woman. Something was going on with him.
Willard, the rat man, said, “Don’t go away mad, just go away.”
Outside the motel room, we moved down the walk a few doors to Room 136. Mack took out a key and handed it to me. “This is you.”
I took it and opened the door.
He said, “You have two hours, then I’ll be back to pick up your happy ass.”
I needed to know what was going on but was too tired to argue. I went in, closed the door, and fell on the bed.
Two minutes later I woke to pounding. I got up and stomped to the door. That sorry son of a bitch. Why did he have to play these silly, childish games? I opened the door to bright morning light and brought my arm up to shield it. John Mack shoved his way in. “I said two hours. That meant you were to be up, showered, and ready to go. I gave you an extra hour and this is the way you treat me?”
“Good morning to you too. Any contact yet?”
“No, I’ll go get some coffee and doughnuts, you hop in the shower.” He turned to leave.
“Hey,” I said. He stopped.
“How come the FBI doesn’t just set up another camera in this parking lot to watch their cars?”
Mack smiled. “And that’s all you got after three hours of quiet time thinking about this case? I thought the great Bruno Johnson would have this thing solved by now.”
I waited for the right answer.
“Okay, their boss is a real ballbuster and two agents on the team are off the grid, while the others cover their shifts. They’re out there trying to track down their stuff so they won’t have to formally report it to the ballbuster. Back in the day, you and I would have done the same thing. These guys aren’t like the regular FBI. They’re okay.”
“You go get the coffee. I’ll think on our case in the shower and have it solved by the time you get back.”
He laughed. “You have any cash?”
“Come on?”
“No, really, I’m a little tapped out until next payday.”
I pulled out a money clip, peeled off three twenties, and handed it to him.
He handed back two twenties. “No man, I said coffee, not the buffet at the Hilton.”
Thirty-five minutes later, we rolled out of the parking lot in the T-Bird and onto Valley Boulevard. I opened the cup of coffee and sipped it. Mack handed me a paper bag. He’d picked up four Sno Balls. When I saw them, my stomach gave a little lurch. I needed some protein, not more sugar. “Can you drive through someplace and get me something healthy, like a fried egg sandwich with some of those deep-fried hash browns?”
I might as well live it up. When I returned to San José, Costa Rica, Marie would put me back on vegetables and fish.
Mack held up a Sno Ball. “You had these last night, I thought you liked ’em.”
“Get back on the freeway and head east to Yucca Valley.”
Mack shrugged. With his free hand, he tore open the Sno Balls and stuck half of one in his mouth and mumbled, “This one of those leads we’re going to track down?”
I nodded. From Valley he turned south on Citrus and pulled into an independent taco place called Albertos. “This okay?”
Ten minutes later we hit the freeway, with the fat “kitchen sink” burrito in both hands. The beast had everything but the kitchen sink in it, double wrapped in tortillas, and large enough for two men and a boy. I took the first bite, closed my eyes, and savored the warm greasy taste.
I hadn’t noticed the heat the day before. This was summer in SoCal and, at seven in the morning, the warm air blew in the open windows. In less than twenty minutes’ time, we reached Whitewater, where windmills, scattered for miles across desert hilltops, rotated slowly in a warm, lazy breeze. I could only finish off a third of the burrito before my stomach surrendered. Too bad-the greasy food tasted fantastic and was now determined to make me sleepy. “Okay,” I said, “tell me about this Karl Drago thing.”