She smiled.
“I’ll bet. Anyway, I do believe I’m out of my league getting mixed up with a guy like this,” she said, pointing with her chin to the deflated Bronco.
“We all out of our league, Special Agent Carter. That’s why he was so damned effective when he worked for us.”
“I don’t understand. If he’s such a big problem, why don’t you all just gang up and take him in, do some spooky number on him?”
Ransom stopped and looked around.
“You really don’t know, do you?”
he said.
“No, I don’t.”
He looked around again.
“Okay, there’s two reasons. The first is because he’s Edwin Kreiss. Listen, Gerald and me? We were sent to just have us a little talk with the man last night. Just talk, now, nothing heavy.
He don’t come home, and next thing I know, it’s morning and I’m looking for coffee makings. I’m opening a cupboard door and a fuckin’ zoo-ful of goddamn monster-ass lions sound off in that big room.”
“Lions.”
“Fuckin’ right, lions. I never heard a live lion in my fuckin’ life outside of the movies, and I not only knew it was lions but that there was a hundred of them bastards in the house. We talkin’ loud motherfuckers, aw right I mean, we talkin’ a hundred fifty decibels’ worth of roaring lions. Then it was a machine gun, blowing all the windows in the house out, along with our eardrums. I’m talkin’ glass flyin’, bullets blowin’ through walls, dishes breakin’—and it’s so loud, I can’t hear myself screamin’.”
“He shoot at his own house?”
“Naw, he didn’t shoot nothin’—then. My man Kreiss does sounds.
These were just sounds. I knew that—still scared the shit out of me. And Gerald? My man Gerald crapped himself.”
“He does this with what—speakers? Tapes?”
“Tactical sound. It’s a Kreiss trademark. See, if you can hear it but you can’t see it, then your imagination automatically comes up with the worst case monster, right? And if you get your target spooked enough, he’s gonna move in straight lines. He put a rattlesnake tape in a guy’s car one time—rattles, hiss, ground sounds, the whole nine yards. Dude drove it into a tree tryin’ to find that snake. I gotta tell you, I knew all about this, but Gerald an’ me? We both out the fuckin’ door in about two nanoseconds, all that shit starts up, runnin’ for the Bronco, and then, then, here come the crack of doom to split the engine block into four pieces.”
“Okay, so he has a bad temper,” Ransom started laughing.
“Temper? Temper! What are you, Special Agent, a comedienne? Temper! No, no, no, no. Kreiss? He wasn’t mad. He cool as a fuckin’ cucumber when I go up the hill to pay my respects, you know, say hello, see how his morning is goin’. No, no, see: This the kind of shit he does when he just workin’. Now, rumor has it he does have a teeny little problem with rage. That’s when he does the really bad shit, the shit got him retired. And that leads me to the second reason. You sure you don’t already know this?”
“I’ve heard a little bit about the Glower incident, if that’s what you mean. I’m not sure I want to know any more.”
“Well, you better, you be messin’ aroun’ with those executive back stabbers in there. Edwin Kreiss, when he flamed out after the Glower thing, he supposedly said some things. Made some accusations. Like he’d been right about Glower, seem’ as Glower offed himself and his whole family rather than answer to what was comin’. Some other people where I work thought the same thing, only they couldn’t say so, because sayin’ so wasn’t such a healthy thing to do, careerwise.”
“My boss said Kreiss thought there was someone else who had been obstructing the DOE laboratories investigation. Somebody in another agency.”
“But that’s the thing, Special Agent. That’s the reason nobody willin’ to order up a gang bang on Mr. Kreiss. Because, the way the jungle drums told it, brother Kreiss just might have some evidence to back up all those accusations he made. You know, evidenced Like what got you sent down here to East Bumfuck Egypt? Me, I’m just a workin’ stiff, but my guess is there are some senior people in both your outfit and mine who just might be afraid of Edwin Kreiss.”
She stared at the bleeding Bronco.
“Fuck me,” she said quietly.
“Now you talkin’ like a veteran,” Ransom said approvingly.
They headed back toward the building. Janet still felt that there was something wrong with the logic of what Bellhouser and Foster had asked her to do, but she couldn’t put her finger on it.
“So where does a retired FBI agent get his hands on a fifty-caliber rifle?” she asked.
“Probably got it when he was with Agency CE,” Ransom said.
“You gotta remember: Kreiss worked with the sweepers, and those are some serious spooks. Those guys can draw on any kind of equipment the CS-that’s our Clandestine Services—have in the toy store, along with DOD’s toy store. Word is, those dudes go out and get some of their own
shit, ‘cause the operatin’ cash is, shall we say, loosely controlled? When it’s time for them to retire, go raise plutonium somewhere, they turn in the issue stuff, but there’s no tellin’ what kinda shit they got stashed, or where. Ain’t nobody asks ‘em, either.”
She stopped at the door, took a deep breath, and blew it out though pursed lips.
“Maybe I need to go back and talk to Farnsworth. I’m definitely not qualified to do this by myself.”
“Who says you be by yourself, Special Agent? You gonna have some top line backup while you on this little vacation.”
She looked at him. He was smiling broadly.
“You?” she said.
“One and only.”
They went through the door and she stopped again.
“And you just walked up the hill to talk to him?”
“Couldn’t dance, Special Agent. Might as well go see what the man wants, makin’ all that noise. Besides, I didn’t like the sounds Gerald was makin’.”
She shook her head.
“He okay now?”
They started up the stairs.
“I believe Gerald’s had a small change of heart,” Ransom said.
“Brother Gerald has decided he’s going into another line of work. He was in the computer-research end of the CS before he came to the retrieval shop. I believe the Barrett influenced his career thinkin’ this morning. And maybe the lions, too. Hard to say which.”
“Gerald sounds intelligent,” she said.
“So, what was significant about the message you were supposed to deliver to Kreiss?”
He looked down at her for a moment.
“I can’t tell you that,” he said.
“Because I don’t know what it means. What I can say is that it involves something’ way above your pay grade and mine. Now, let’s go look at some of my surveillance toys.”
Kreiss spent the rest of the day checking his property’s perimeter, retrieving his truck, and then cleaning and re stashing the Barrett. Micah Wall wandered up about midmorning to inquire if everything was all right at the Kreiss homestead. His eyes widened when he saw the Barrett.
“Been some years since I heard me a fifty-cal,” he said, looking around for bodies.
“Korea, I believe it was. They didn’t look like that.”
“Unmistakable, aren’t they?” Kreiss said.
Micah eyed the bandage on Kreiss’s neck but said nothing about it.
“Fifty works real good on Chicoms, specially when they bunch up. We gonna have buzzards? You need a mass grave dug or anything?”
Kreiss laughed.
“No, this was just a little domestic dispute. I think we got it all sorted out. For the moment anyway.”
“Hate to hear you do a big domestic dispute, neighbor. Oh, and my dogs was inquirin’ about them lions?”