“Here you go, Agent Jefferson,” the com clerk said, handing over the faxes from State and INS. They had arrived almost simultaneously.
His eyes read down the reports as he walked back toward his desk. Frankie was at hers, just hanging up the phone.
“How’s Sullivan?” she asked.
“He makes a better drunk than he does a human being.” Art laid the faxes on his desk and leaned back against the divider wall. “Anything on the car?”
Frankie nodded. “These guys are pros, Art. We ran the plate, came up with an address, and checked it out. Nice blue Lumina parked right in the driveway with — guess what? — no plates. LAPD set up a perimeter and called the residents out on the P.A. Not our suspects, if you haven’t guessed already. Just some bewildered guy and his girlfriend wondering why the cops had their guns on them. Hell of a way to spend his day off. And he was just as surprised to learn that his plates were gone.”
“Did Mrs. Carroll take a look at the car book?”
“Pointed right to the Lumina,” Frankie confirmed.
“Smart,” Art commented. “They get a car — rented or stolen — then get plates from a lookalike car and ditch the others. How many people would notice their license plates missing?”
“Cops wouldn’t be too concerned, either,” Frankie added. “The car was new. The guy said he bought it two months ago. No plates is pretty normal under those circumstances.”
It was a clean move, Art thought, agreeing with Frankie’s belief that the suspects were real pros. And pros didn’t like to leave jobs unfinished. “Our jerk in there might still be in danger, you know.”
A loud, forceful breath escaped from Frankie’s lungs. She was tired, the lack of sleep from the night before catching up with her. It had been a thirteen-hour day already. “Anything useful from him?”
“Nothing Bill didn’t already fill us in on. I think Bill cut him loose. I was in the room when he called in. Hey, tough decision, but we both saw…the guy is a basket case when he’s lubed up.”
“Guess so.” Frankie gestured to the faxes. “Anything?”
Art handed them over. “INS has diddly. Just the standard stuff when he came over, except he didn’t request any help from the exile community. That’s kind of strange. Most of them coming over do. He did request a meeting with a representative of the government, though.”
“Doesn’t say here whether he got one or not,” Frankie noted.
“We’ll check on that later. I hear a lot of asylum seekers try and offer something for sale, and Portero at least had the background to know something.”
“The tape, maybe,” Frankie said.
“Yeah. Maybe he was going to the paper with it because he couldn’t get anyone in the government to hear him out.” That was worth looking into further. “Sullivan said that Portero kept insisting he had something terrible to share, something that could affect millions, he said.”
Frankie looked to the State Department fax. “He wasn’t lying to Bill, either.”
“Nope,” Art said, looking down the hallway to ensure that the door to the interview room was still shut. “Portero apparently was an assistant to Castro’s interpreter back in the early sixties. Russian language, it says.”
“A really busy time back then,” Frankie said, no real memories of the crisis in her consciousness. She had been in diapers then.
“My senior year in high school had just started.” Art looked away, remembering the time. “My grandma was worried to death. Hell, no one knew if we’d wake up the next day. Scary time, Frankie. Busy doesn’t do it justice.”
“Anyway,” Art went on. “State says they’ll try some other avenues tomorrow to get the proper classification of Portero.”
“Like what?”
Art smiled knowingly. “Once you’ve been through these hoops as many times as I have, you’ll learn that the term ‘share and share alike’ means little in government. Every agency and department has their own way of doing things, and their own sources of information. They’ll probably ask a liaison officer to ‘pull a favor.’ Happens all the time.”
Frankie’s head shook at the stupid bureaucracy, then yawned deeply, her arms stretching out and up. “Man, I am beat.”
Art looked at the wall clock. “You want to knock off? I can set Sullivan up with a sitter and get him bedded down.” As a material witness, one who saw the shooters pull the trigger, George Sullivan was a valuable witness. He was also a person the suspects obviously had an interest in, most likely because they thought he had something which they wanted. Something they had proved they were willing to kill for. For these reasons he would now be under Bureau protection, tucked away under constant guard.
Not really, but… “I think Cassie might want to see her mommy before she turns eight. You mind?” Cassandra was the jewel of Frankie’s life, the beautiful product of a marriage that had ended when her ex took to loving the bottle more than her.
Art’s phone rang before he could answer. “Jefferson.”
“Art, Dan. We have your tape ready, but there’s a problem.”
“Yeah?”
“It’s in Spanish and another language, sounds like Russian or something. We don’t have any Russian speakers at all, and my lone Spanish speaker left with the nine-to-fivers. Is Aguirre still here?”
Art pulled the phone away, pressing it into his chest. “Sorry, Frankie. Your genes are needed.”
She looked at her partner with a funny expression. “Jeans?”
“I’ll explain on the way down.” He brought the phone back up. “We’ll be there in a minute.”
The agents gathered their notebooks and headed not for the elevator, but for the interview room.
“You doing okay in here?” Art asked, poking his head in.
Sullivan pulled the hands away from his puffy face. His hair, a mass of thinning brown strands, was tousled and matted by sweat. What green there had been in his eyes was overcome by the fine rivers and tributaries of red that had subsided somewhat from earlier. “Wonderful.” How would you feel if you’d lost your job and had guys out to kill you?
“Good. Stay here, we have to check something out downstairs.” Art gave the man as comforting a smile as his humanity would allow. “We’ll get you to a nice, safe place in just a while.” He saw Sullivan nod with little interest and pulled the door shut.
“He’s feeling pretty low,” Art said, turning for the elevators, his partner alongside.
“At least he’s alive,” Frankie offered. “If he weren’t such a lush, he might have been on time for his meeting with Portero.”
“You calling it a redeeming quality?” Art asked, looking with some shock to his partner, the same one who had kicked her alcoholic husband out of the house and her life two years before, having had enough of his shit. “That’s mighty generous of you.”
“Not really,” Aguirre responded, the subject bringing an unpleasant past to her mind again. “ ’Cause he’d never admit that his problem saved his life. He doesn’t have a problem, remember.”
Art pushed the glowing “down” arrow at the twin elevators. “They never do, partner. Never do.”
Sullivan’s eyes were fixed on the off-white wallpaper as his hosts left, trying to pick out the tiniest specks of discoloration. The exercise hurt his already throbbing eyes tremendously, but he had to focus on something. Something to occupy his mind. Just anything that would not allow the thoughts to get in, just to keep them out. Out! Out! Out! OUT!
His fist balled up tight and came down on the table hard. The impact sent his Styrofoam cup of coffee tumbling to the floor.