“Mostly petty stuff. Did ten months for assault, but that was twenty years ago. Pretty clean since. I did a search through Southern Poverty Law Center, and got hold of some articles Haldemann wrote for Southern Ranks Militia’s monthly newsletter. He was pretty high up there, a Founding Tactical Commander or something like that.”
“And the articles?”
“Typical stuff. The government’s trampling our constitutional rights, the IRS is unfairly harassing hard-working Americans. Ruby Ridge — and lots of conspiracy garbage on 9/11.”
Uzi lifted the phone receiver. “What’s the number?”
She scrolled down her screen and read it off to him.
Uzi dialed and let it ring four times before a man answered.
“Brady?”
“Who wants to know?”
“A friend of ours suggested we meet before he… expired. I’d like to talk with you about the same things you discussed with him. I think you know who I’m talking about.”
“You didn’t answer my question. Who are you?”
“Let’s just say I’m a friend. More than that I can’t say over the phone. Let’s meet. Judicial Square Metro station. By the big lion on the left as you face the sign. How about twenty minutes?”
“Come alone.” The line went dead.
Uzi checked his watch. It was approaching 11 PM, thirty minutes since he had spoken with Brady Haldemann. But he figured the guy was at least as paranoid as Bishop was, and the best thing he could do was to stay put, look nonthreatening, and wait him out.
He leaned against the lion and glanced across the street at Hoshi, who was observing from a darkened ground-floor window inside the adjacent building fifty feet away.
Five minutes later, a bearded man approached wearing a baseball hat and canvas fishing jacket. Uzi waited till his contact was within ten feet, then slowly pushed himself off the statue. He didn’t want to make any threatening moves.
Haldemann stopped a few steps away and thrust both hands into his deep coat pockets.
Normally, such a move would heighten Uzi’s paranoia a notch: Did the man have a weapon secreted away? He fought to keep his thoughts in check and said, “I see you found the place okay.”
“I’m here. Why, I’m not sure. But you’ve got five seconds to tell me who you are.”
“Name’s Uzi. I’m with the Bureau. Like I said, I was a friend of Bishop’s.”
“He never mentioned you.”
“He never mentioned you, either.”
“I thought you said—”
“He was working with me on some things that might involve your former group. Your name… came up.” Telling Haldemann he was with Bishop at the moment he was killed wouldn’t put the man’s mind at ease. “I’d like to continue that relationship you had with him.”
“I don’t talk to Feds.”
Uzi pulled a pack of Camels from his pocket. He didn’t smoke anymore, but he wanted to look relaxed, as if he couldn’t care if Haldemann cooperated or not. More importantly, he pegged Haldemann as a smoker, and sharing a hit of nicotine seemed a good way of finding common ground. He offered the man a cigarette, and he took it.
Seconds later, a smoke cloud hovered around them. “You’re no longer with SRM,” Uzi said.
“I didn’t like the merger, didn’t approve of what they were doing. But Lewis had his reasons.”
“Lewis.”
“Lewiston Grant. Guy’s fucking brilliant. Born leader. Ex-Green Beret.”
Grant… An ex-Green Beret. Interesting. If true, how come we didn’t know that? “But you didn’t see eye-to-eye with him.”
Haldemann took a long drag. “He’s also a snake. You know much about Southern Ranks and how it became ARM?”
Uzi shook his head. Even if he knew the whole story — which he didn’t — an insider would provide a different take.
“Southern Ranks used to be about guys getting together because they didn’t like the way the government was taking away our constitutional rights, telling us how to live. What chemicals we could use to fertilize our lawns, which guns we could or couldn’t own. Didn’t seem right to me how they could just take away our freedoms like that, how they could use affirmative action and NAFTA and shit like that to take away our jobs.”
He dragged again on the Camel, left it dangling from his lips. “I saw a flyer on my windshield one day back in late ninety-two, just after Ruby Ridge. It said the same stuff about the government that I thought. So I called the number. It was Lewiston Grant, he was starting up a group to watch out for citizens’ rights. I went to a meeting, and the guy really knew what he was talking about. Said he’d been to some big leadership gathering in Colorado, and it made him think long and hard about things. He wanted to start a group of his own. I mean, I sat there listening to Lewis, and I thought, Finally. Somebody who understands what I’ve been saying all these years.”
Uzi leaned back against the lion and examined the cigarette. “So you two started Southern Ranks.”
“It took off real fast. Lewis had all these great ideas. Pretty soon we had a couple hundred members and started having regular meetings. Lewis even wrote a book. America’s Second Revolution. People started calling in from all over the country wanting to buy a copy. The guy worked at a cannery during the day, then soon as he got home he went to work on his computer. He was a freakin’ machine. And a great speaker. You got goosebumps all over, he really got your blood going. Like a preacher. I mean it, he got you all revved up. Pretty soon, you’re nodding your head, agreeing to do things you never thought you’d be doing.”
“You’re talking about him in the past. Is he dead?”
Haldemann chuckled. “You can’t kill a guy like Lewiston Grant. I’m sure he’s alive and kicking. He faked his death a few years ago, changed his identity, some shit like that. Nelson Flint’s his lackey, a figurehead. People don’t take Flint seriously, so they don’t take ARM seriously. A blip on the radar, just the way Lewis wants it. Behind the scenes, Lewis is the brains.”
This confirmed Uzi’s suspicions and fit with the intel DeSantos had assembled before their first visit to ARM. “You said you agreed to do things you never thought you’d do. What kind of things?”
“You think I’m stupid? I answer that, I’ll find myself rotting away in some federal prison.”
“We’re off the record here. I’m investigating the assassination attempt on the VP. That’s it.”
“So you think I should trust you guys, just because you tell me to.”
Uzi looked the man in the eyes, then took a drag. “Yeah. I got that.” He stuck the Camel in his mouth, pulled open his jacket, and lifted up his pullover sweater. Haldemann looked down at his bare skin. “No wires,” Uzi said. “No recordings. Just two guys talking about things.”
Haldemann looked away, blew some smoke from his mouth. “Lewis said we had to find a way to pay for everything. He said until we had some money behind us, we couldn’t get our message out to enough people. So SRM hit an armored car. That bankrolled our raid of a couple of weapons depots. Took in a ton of arms and explosives before two of our guys got killed.”
“That was ’97 or ’98, right? Shootout near Fort Decatur. Three officers were taken hostage and killed, another infantryman was paralyzed.”
Haldemann’s eyes narrowed. “Yeah, ’98. February sixteen. That was the last job we did. I’m sure the Feds figured it was SRM, but they didn’t have anything tying it to us. I kept saying, too close a call, Lewis. Too close.” He took a long drag. “Finally — reluctantly — Lewis agreed with me. Started looking at other ways of increasing membership. But the economy was good, and it’s easier to get peoples’ attention when they’ve lost their jobs and things are shitty.”