Raphael frowned. "So, Bro, the reason you called me on the phone rather than the District Liaison is because you didn’t want me involved."
Gideon shook his head and stood up. "Come on, you know that's not what I meant."
"You know, if you don't want me here, I can just pack up and—"
Gideon grabbed Raphael's arm. "Come here, you bastard."
Gideon pulled him forward, and the two joined in an embrace that was half hug and half wrestling match. After they broke apart, Gideon said, "You could have warned me you were coming. I thought you were assigned to New York."
"I was—am. But your call gave me an excuse to come down and visit. I mean I haven't seen you since
((
"I know," Gideon said, the smile slipping on his face. Not since Dad died. He stood there for a few moments, unsure exactly what to say. For some reason, his older brother's presence here, now, made him uneasy. "So where are the rest?" Gideon asked.
"Ahh . . ." Now it was Raphael's turn to look uneasy.
"Come on, I told you what I needed on the phone. I called you because I thought I'd get a hearing and less interagency bullshit."
Raphael motioned to Gideon's chair and said, "Well, there's good news and bad news."
Gideon felt his heart sinking as he settled back into the chair.
Raphael perched on the edge of the desk. "Here's the bad news. There is no one else. The lead you have is not enough for the Agency to commit any resources. There aren't enough agents to go around, and there are already fifty or so working other angles of this Daedalus case."
Gideon shook his head. "I didn't know why I bothered thinking they might be more help than my own department. Sorry I wasted your time—"
"You're forgetting the good news."
"Yeah, what?"
"You got me." Raphael smiled at him. "I couldn't pull you a team, like you wanted, but I did get permission come down here myself as an official Bureau observer."
"Observing what?"
"What you got?"
Gideon picked up the warrant. "Like I told you over the phone, what I have is an informant named Lionel, and an address."
Raphael nodded. "And you're wondering why the Bureau is reluctant to spend manpower on the word of a two-bit crackhead?".
Gideon chuckled and shook his head, "No, Rafe, I already went through this with my Captain. Why did you think I called you and not the District Liaison? I am sort of curious why you came down—everyone else seems convinced that this isn't going anywhere."
"You have to admit, the Daedalus theft seems out of your guy's league."
Gideon nodded. "In Captain Davis' words, 'He probably saw the damn thing on Nightline. ’ So why are you here?"
"You seem convinced the lead's genuine."
Gideon picked up the warrant and grabbed his overcoat. "I know this much. Lionel might be a small-time street-level dealer, but so much illegal shit happens around him that he's never had to make up tips before. He's getting the same consideration from me if he's telling me about a fifty-million dollar computer or if he's telling me who jacked a car last week."
Raphael slapped him on the back as he slipped on his coat. "The same consideration?"
Gideon looked at his brother and gave him an embarrassed half grin. "Okay, I gave the boy an extra fifty."
Raphael laughed, "Bro, you been conned."
"So they tell me." He started walking past the other desks and said, "Come on, let's get some dinner. I want to get on this stakeout by nine."
As midnight approached, Gideon and Raphael sat in a ten-year-old Dodge sedan about half a block
away from an empty office building just the District side of the Maryland border. Most major city police departments had newer cars for their detectives, but most major cities weren't in the constant financial crisis D.C. was.
Gideon sat in the driver's seat, pointing a pair of binoculars at the building. They'd kept a low profile by shutting the car off, so the only heat came from the open thermos of stale coffee that sat on the seat between them. It didn't do much, because they'd opened the windows to keep the windshield from fogging up.
"It's five past midnight," Raphael said. "When do we give up on this thing?"
"Give it time."
"We've given it five hours already."
For just a moment, Gideon felt an irrational surge of resentment toward Rafe. It was as if he, along with everyone else he'd contacted, just couldn't believe that good ol' Gideon Malcolm would ever get close to something this big. It wasn't just that they believed—Rafe believed—that his contacts were small time. They were convinced that Gideon was small time.
It seemed that he was permanently a step behind his brother. His brother could hack it as a Fed where Gideon washed out during training. The ghost of that failure seemed to follow him everywhere.
Damn it, Gideon thought, stay focused. If something happened and he missed it, that would be much worse than nothing happening at all. He sighed and resumed looking for some sign of anything unusual. .
A gentle drifting of snow didn't do much to change the basic character of the neighborhood. The street was lined with empty storefronts, and the offices stared down at them with blind glassless windows. Even the liquor store next to them was boarded up. Gideon's Dodge might have been as beat up as any D.C. cop car, but here it was exceptional—one of the few cars parked on the street that looked like it ran.
Gideon tried to understand why Raphael wanted to give up the stakeout. If he thought logically about it, he had to admit that he himself had trouble imagining what anybody would be doing stashing fifty million worth of computer hardware in this neighborhood.
Raphael seemed to read his mind. "I told you, you've been conned."
Yeah, your little brother was had by a "two-bit crack-head. " It was easy enough to believe that. But this had gone far enough that he didn't want to admit it. "Lionel hasn't steered me wrong in five years."
"Even drugged-out scumbags are mistaken occasionally."
More likely, perhaps, than your little brother being right about something? "Maybe these guys made us," Gideon said, staring at the building which remained as silent and unremarkable as ever.
"You're still convinced that there's something to the story from this Lionel guy?"
"There's supposed to be a pickup. The guy Lionel heard this from someone who's supposed to hijack a refrigerated semi and meet the guys with Daedalus. Here. Maybe something queered the deal."
Outside, the wind whistled through the empty streets, carrying the smell of urine and spilled beer. A single car drove by them, the bass from the stereo shaking the shocks on the Dodge.
'Today's the day for it," Raphael said. "It just became Friday the thirteenth."
Gideon turned to him, lowering his binoculars. He felt a small chill, almost an evil premonition. "You're not becoming superstitious on me, are you?"
"Who, me? Never?" Raphael reached out and knocked twice on the dashboard.
Gideon returned to looking through his binoculars. The uneasy feeling didn't recede. He hadn't realized it was the thirteenth until Raphael had mentioned it. For all he thought that Lionel had fed him a real lead, he had a strong urge to give in and abandon the stakeout.
After all, he did have to admit that Rafe was right. What they were watching for was way out of Lionel's sphere of operation. Lionel was a street-level punk, the kind of guy who could tell you who sold junk to some OD in the morgue, or who was fencing TVs from the Holiday Inn. Raphael wasn't the first one to question why Gideon believed Lionel knew what he was talking about.
"He's not creative enough to make something like this up," Gideon whispered to himself.
"What's that?" Raphael asked.
"I said, let's wait a little while and see if the guy with the truck shows up. It was supposed to be Thursday night. If he doesn't, we can serve the warrant and see if there's anything in there after all."