"Christ, I know you're covering my ass, but go easy on the method acting."
"I'm not acting," Bear said.
"We've got information," Tim said.
Bear said, "You want to work together or you want to play your Feeb games?"
Rich's eye darted around. "You talk to Malane?"
"He's a paper-pushing prick."
"We've been ordered to liaise with the FBI," Tim said. "We're running down some leads. If someone's gotta ride along with us, we'd prefer to deal with a field operator. You can coordinate with your team from there and nail the Prophet. What we want is your intel on the bikers." He crossed his arms. "You get your guy, I get mine."
Rich cocked his head, a fall of hair blocking his good eye. "Why you so hot for Den Laurey? Want a Top Fifteen on your resume?"
Bear said, "He has three."
Rich started to respond, but Tim cut him off. "What's it gonna be?"
Rich held up his hands, a gesture of surrender. "Okay."
"Where's Goat?"
"We're holding him in the Federal Building in Westwood. He's drugged up, under heavy medical supervision. We haven't been able to get shit out of him-he's too scrambled. What's your information?"
"Not yet," Tim said. "I know you've been working Uncle Pete."
Rich bounced his head from side to side as if debating whether to give up the goods. "We intercepted some of Uncle Pete's cell-phone transmissions, but I'm not at liberty to disclose-"
"Then we're not at liberty to take you along." Bear snatched the cuffs from Tim and descended on Rich.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa. We know he's in on the drugs. But we need to let it play out."
"So you can get the Prophet?" Tim asked.
"And because we need material evidence to make a case against Uncle Pete. We need the drugs, or else all we've got are recorded conversations about shit that we can't prove happened."
"You got enough for a warrant?" Guerrera asked.
"Again, not without material evidence to support the recordings."
Bear said, "Maybe we get a warrant. We're tighter with the bench."
Rich laughed. Even in the brighter light, his skin looked yellow. "Dana Lake'll put her pump so far up your ass you'll taste the Gucci logo. And besides, the evidence isn't with Uncle Pete. Or at the clubhouse. He's too smart for that. That's the whole reason he has the nomads. This ain't about warrants and kicking down doors."
Bear made an aggravated noise. Guerrera raised his hands when Tim glanced at him-your call. Down the corridor two prisoners were having a mouth-off in opposing cells, yo' mamas flying like shrapnel.
Rich grew uneasy from the pause-he wanted back in. "Help us get the drugs, and we'll sink Uncle Pete." He eyed Tim. "And you can get Den in the process."
Tim chewed his lip, still deciding. Finally he turned for the door. "Let's take a ride."
Chapter 43
Wisps of steam curled up from Jan's styrocup of McDonald's coffee. She inhaled it, as if trying to snort the caffeine. The skin under her eyes was pouched and gray, and her rumpled blouse sported stains at the right shoulder. New mom and resident agent in charge. Not an easy schedule. She kept walking purposefully through the late-night travelers straggling between the gates of Terminal 1, with Tim, Bear, Guerrera, and Rich moving swiftly to keep up. For the brief public walk, Rich kept between the deputies, his head lowered. Though he had left behind his armband and originals, he still had his shaggy rock-star hair, eye patch, and jail-cell odor. Upon meeting him, Jan had regarded him with a cocked brow, then turned her eyes to Tim with an unvoiced question, waiting for Tim's nod before cutting him in to the conversation.
"Inbound caskets rank right up there with diplomatic pouches," Jan continued. "In other words, they aren't checked."
"What's the real story?" Rich asked.
She gave a quick glance around. "Under the right circumstances, even a diplomatic pouch might require a furtive scan." She pointed to the sheaf of documents in Guerrera's hands. "But now we're in the clear. This is sufficient probable cause to buy us X-rays on all inbound caskets. If we get a hit on body packing, we'll need a warrant to cut open the corpses, but we can cross that bridge then."
"What if they're lead-lined?" Tim asked. "The caskets?"
"They will be, by federal regulation. We'll have to pop the lids and remove the bodies to do the scans. It's invasive. That's why I needed strong probable cause in my back pocket."
"Do we need to worry about private planes?" Rich asked.
"Good luck getting a corpse through here in a private plane. It's against regs-security and health-and we screen all large incoming cargo. But I'll put out a whistle, just to be safe."
She ducked through a doorway, and they followed her down a staircase to an open space on the lower level that had been transformed into a temporary workstation. A few irritable-looking duty agents reviewed paperwork at school-size desks. The desks were oddly arranged, leaving a square of central floor space unoccupied. A tarp draped across the ceiling provided the only separation between them and the restricted-access section of the luggage carousel overhead.
Jan had to raise her voice to be heard over the rumble. "This way."
She led into a separate office and closed the door behind them. The noise reduction was a welcome relief. Through the wide window, Tim watched a duty agent shoving a phone to his cheek, one finger plugging his other ear.
"I see your funding isn't keeping pace with your responsibilities," Tim said.
"They want us doing twice the work with the same resources," Jan said. "We make do." She looked from Tim to Rich. "Like we've all had to."
A sapphire blue Swiss Army suitcase tumbled through the ceiling tarp and crashed onto the empty floor space between the carefully arranged desks. The agents kept working, unperturbed.
"They should file for hazardous-duty pay," Bear said.
Jan directed them to chairs and sat behind a metal desk. "It's a brilliant plan they hit on-especially given the lead lining of tranport caskets. The only way to detect a drug packet in a corpse's stomach is to open the casket, pull the body, and X-ray it. Which, as I said, we aren't technically supposed to do."
"But you have," Tim said.
"Hell, yes. We spot-check. Now and again."
"Cargo from certain airlines and flights stands a higher likelihood of getting X-rayed?"
Jan's mouth arranged itself into a smirk. "Now, why would you say that?"
"Are foreign carriers more thoroughly checked than American carriers?"
"No, but yes." Jan paused, hesitant. "You didn't hear it here, but we might be more inclined to take extra precautions when it comes to foreign carriers. Suffice it to say, if a body's coming in from Jakarta, it's gonna get zapped."
"Racial airline profiling," Guerrera said. "How quaint."
"Wait a minute," Rich said. "Terrorists kamikaze four of our airplanes, and now you're screening Aer Lingus. What's that logic?"
"Our airlines screen our own planes when they take off at any point in the world. For other planes that we can't screen, we're less concerned that people will blow them up than that they'll smuggle something in. So we screen them on our end-for drugs and weapons."
Tim removed the sets of blank film from his pocket and dropped them on her desk. "That explains these."
She pulled out the black photographs and thumbed through them. "What's with the Rothkos?"
"My guess is they sent the film through with the bodies. High-speed film, more sensitive to-"
"Ionizing radiation." Jan thumbed out the negatives and found the first two sets cloudy from the X-ray exposure. "These were foreign airlines?"