“Just a little something you forgot to mention. Right, Driscoll?”
“I didn’t want you blowing it out of proportion.”
“You’d already accused me of being a criminal. How much worse could it have been?”
“I’m the guy who put the cuffs on him. Pushed his face into a table just up the street here.”
“What the fuck, Driscoll?”
The agent raised his hands from the table. “I needed you to think we were on the same team, you know?”
“Jesus. We were on the same team… we are on the same team.” Drake felt himself growing angrier, remembering how Driscoll had brought him into the interrogation room in the Seattle federal building and treated him like he was part of the problem, like he was the one smuggling drugs in from Canada. He reached down and straightened his leg, feeling his kneecap click. “I was shot twice,” Drake said. “How many times have you been shot?”
Driscoll smiled, obviously enjoying this. “Let’s not get into a pissing contest, Bobby.”
“Why are you here, Driscoll?”
“Well, your father is out.”
“Yes, and he served his time.”
“What are his plans now that he’s out?”
“So far his plans seem to be screwing with my life.”
“Look, Bobby, I want to be straight with you here. We made an example out of Patrick Drake. We put him away for a lot of years. But if we could have proved everything we had on him from the start, he’d still be in prison. He did a lot of bad shit.”
Drake took a bite of his maple bar, thinking it through. He didn’t have a clue what Driscoll was talking about or what his father was doing. What his father had planned now that he was out. Coming north on the interstate Patrick had told Drake not to worry about him. It was all covered. “I’m not helping you put him back in prison,” Drake said.
The smile spread across Driscoll’s face again. “I thought you said we were on the same team.”
“I remember now why my wife doesn’t like you,” Drake said.
“You could lose your house, Deputy. That’s as straight as I can give it to you. You’re in trouble, and your father is most certainly the root of your problems.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about the fact that before Sheriff Drake went to prison, two guys were found dead in a gravel lot north of Bellingham.”
“That’s a whole other county,” Drake said.
“Well the thing about it is that they were two guys who had ripped off a lot of money from someone big. Someone your father worked for.”
“Sounds like they had it coming.”
“Who’s saying that?” Driscoll asked. “You or your father?”
“I’m not my father.”
“A lot of money went missing,” Driscoll said. “Hundreds of thousands. It was drug money and—from what I hear—a portion of it was your father’s. So, naturally, a big deal like this gets my attention, and I talk to my sources and they say Patrick was the one who tracked the two men down. Said they stashed the money before Patrick found them. Only I go around and start asking questions from the wives of these guys—real trashy sort of girls. Moss all over their houses, rent-to-own sort of lifestyle. You get what I’m saying?”
Drake nodded. His head turned toward the front windows, just looking at the sunlight outside, wishing he could be somewhere else.
“They say they don’t know anything about the missing money. They admit to everything else. What their husbands were up to, how they did the job, who put them onto it, everything. Only they don’t know anything about the money. Are you following me, Deputy? Twelve years later one of the wives is still living in the same house. She’s paid off her rent-to-own couch, but there’s still moss on her siding, and she’s taking in welfare checks to pay for the kids. The other one isn’t doing as well. Couldn’t make her house payments, lost her place, and is living with her brother’s family, working three jobs, all that horrible stuff.”
Driscoll took a drink of his coffee. Drake knew he’d paused just to push the knife in deeper. A grin on Driscoll’s face that heralded the coming twist of the handle.
“So you might want to ask: where’s the money?” Driscoll said. “Well that’s the interesting part. That’s the part that gets me up in the morning and keeps me watching those two poor widows. Because you know what, that money is gone. It never made it back to the smugglers up in Canada. The widows don’t have it. And little by little I start to wonder where it’s gone and who has it. It’s a lot of money to go missing, a lot of money that most anyone would do most anything to hold on to. And so I go to Monroe to ask your father this question a few years back. I tell him if he knows where it is and he’s willing to point the finger at the people he works for, who sent him to do what he did, he can get out of prison right then and there. Time already served. He’s off the hook. The murders weren’t him, I know that. I just want to know where the money is and who sent it down this way in the first place. Hell, we went hard on him, too hard. And you know what, I don’t think Sheriff Drake was in on it alone.”
“You’re saying my father didn’t kill those men?”
“For now I’m giving Patrick the benefit of the doubt.”
“How much are we talking about?” Drake asked.
“Two hundred thousand. Not much in this day, but twelve years ago it would have been a good amount. Enough to get out of the business. Maybe start a new life. For your father to settle his debts.”
“You think that’s what he was doing?”
“I don’t know,” Driscoll said. “That’s why I’m coming to you. I’m asking for your help on this.”
“Go talk to someone else. I’m certainly the last person my father would tell anything to,” Drake said.
“That’s right,” Driscoll said. “But what I’ve heard and what I keep hearing is that your father and his deputies were pretty tight back in the day. Bend a few rules. Get away with a little here and there. Wasn’t your current sheriff, Gary Elliot, one of his deputies?”
“That’s taking it too far,” Drake said. “Gary gave me my job after my father went away. For Christ’s sake, he lives in a two-bedroom apartment over the Laundromat. He’s not a rich man.”
“I know where he lives,” Driscoll said. “I even know how much money he has in his bank account. Look, we’ve gone through just about everything. Before you gave up being a basketball star and came back from Arizona we even went through your house.”
“And you didn’t find a thing, did you?”
Driscoll laughed. “This is just like old times, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” Drake said. “I’m just waiting for you to accuse me of being a criminal mastermind. You got anything more you want to tell me?”
“That’s it. That’s all there is. I thought I owed you a talk at least. I thought you should hear it from me.”
“Don’t give it to me like that, Driscoll. What is it you really want?”
“I just want you to keep your eyes open. Stay sharp. Weeks from now I don’t want to see you across the table from me in a federal interrogation room.”
“You want me to tell you if my father starts spending ten-thousand-dollar bills.”
“Just be careful, that’s all I’m saying. We’re friends, aren’t we? I’m only asking you to keep your father close for a little while. If nothing comes of it, then I’ll go back to sitting around the office, throwing the tennis ball at the wall. No harm done.” Driscoll slid a card out across the table. “In case you lost the last one I gave you.”
Drake picked up the card and read the title and name: Regional Director, Agent Frank Driscoll. “If you’ve got all this information on my father why didn’t you just threaten him with life in prison for killing those two men?”