My mind raced through what I might find inside: some shadowy mastermind of a presidential assassination attempt. Perhaps Assistant Director Drinker. Maybe, in the best case scenario, my anonymous source. Probably some nameless thug ready to carry out someone else's dirty work. But I knew, standing here, that I really had no choice. I wasn't going to leave a helpless dog inside to fend for himself. I had brought myself into this whole situation. The dog was just an innocent bystander.
So without more thought, and perhaps without enough thought, I snapped the lock, threw the door open, and burst inside, holding the shears ahead of me in a way that would allow me to stab anyone in the neck who posed any danger. For a fleeting moment of dangerous glory, I felt like Don Johnson.
"Freeze," I yelled.
The warm air of the house hit me in the face. So did the unmistakable smell of Fritos. Sitting on my couch with his feet on the coffee table and my telephone up to his ear, Steve Havlicek calmly said, "Hold on one second, honey." To me: "Boy, am I glad I'm not some overgrown bush."
At the same time, Baker bolted up from a sound sleep, squinted toward the rear of the house, and ran into the kitchen, barking at the back door. Wrong way, pal. I made a mental note to get his ears flushed out.
I let the shears fall to my side, closed the door behind me, and said breathlessly, "What the flying fuck are you doing in here?"
Havlicek said into the phone, "Honey, I'm sorry. I've got to run.
Jack just got in. Seems a bit out of sorts. Yeah. Yeah. I'm at his place. Yeah, we just have to have a chat. Tell Mary I said I'll make it back for her playoff game. Good. Yeah. I love you too."
He hung up the phone, pulled a few Fritos out of the bag beside him, took a sip from a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer, and said, "Howaya, slugger?"
"How am I? Jesus Christ, I'm almost dead from a fucking heart attack.
How the hell did you get in here?"
"Just a little trick I learned from my days growing up in Dorchester.
You don't have a deadbolt on your back door. You might as well just leave the thing open with a sign that says "Come on in, but bring your own beer.""
By now, Baker had trotted back out into the living room with a confused look on his face. I knelt down and rubbed behind his ears, relieved that he was all right.
"You scared the hell out of me," I said to Havlicek.
"Sorry about that. Hey, before you sit, grab yourself a beer. I've got some Pabst in the fridge. We've got to talk." As I walked into the kitchen, he called after me, "Grab me another too."
I didn't think anyone drank Pabst anymore, though I noticed I was now the owner of a case of it. Of course, I didn't think anyone outside of grade school ate Fritos either, so I guess I had a lot to learn.
As I slumped down into a chair with a can of beer, Havlicek held out the bag of Fritos in front of my face.
"No, thanks," I said.
"No, really, try some. I bought the pounder."
"No, really, I don't want any."
"You eat dinner?" he asked.
"Where do you think I'm coming from?"
"Good point," he said. He seemed to consider this for a moment, opened his fresh beer, though I don't know if you can ever really call a Pabst fresh, and said, "We've got to talk."
My heart was still pumping, which might explain my frustration. I said, "I thought that's why you were here."
"Right. I'm dying to know what you learned."
Given all the bullets flying around over the last week or so, I didn't particularly like his description. But I put that aside and walked him through every crucial detail of my trip. I told him of the Pigpen, of my discussions with Sammy Markowitz, of the cryptic remarks by Diego Rodriguez, of my deduction about the federal witness protection program, and the confirmation that Markowitz provided.
"So we've got an armored car robber by the name of Curtis Black in the federal witness protection program," I said. "We're told we need to find out his relationship with the president that was just shot.
Black's a fellow crook of a guy by the name of Paul Stemple. Stemple's pardoned by the president in the middle of a campaign season."
That summary was followed by a moment of thoughtful silence. Well, almost silence, and probably not all that thoughtful. Havlicek kept crunching on Fritos and swigging his beer. Baker was on the floor between us, snoring. I mulled over our immediate future.
"I know a thing or two about the witness protection program, having covered some issues within it a couple of years ago," Havlicek said.
"It's a hell of a well-run government operation. It began about twenty-seven years ago when the feds were trying to bust La Cosa Nostra, and they couldn't break the code of silence. It ends up, it wasn't that these mob underlings were so loyal. It's just that they were scared for their lives. Since then, the marshals have protected about 7,500 witnesses, most of whom, like Curtis Black, are themselves criminals. It's not a squeaky-clean process. It's not even a pretty one. But everyone familiar with it tells me it works."
Havlicek was on a roll and kept going. "The way it goes is, if you have something worthwhile, you cut a deal with the FBI to enter the program. Before a trial, you're given intense protection, typically in some safe house or a hotel suite. You're brought to the grand jury or to court with an army of agents around you. Once you do your thing, or once the other side pleads guilty because they know you're waiting in the wings to testify, that's it, you're given your freedom and a different identity, and you go off and become someone entirely new."
Havlicek looked at me. "Literally, Jack Flynn would cease to exist.
Your house would be sold along with just about everything in it. Your dog would be given a new home. You'd pack up a few personal things, some clothes and the like, and the marshals would cart you off in some armored van to a national complex over in suburban Virginia. You get to pick the region of the country where you want to move. They'll help you buy a new house or pay for a new apartment. They might help you with some job retraining and the like so you can get work. They'll get you started on getting new identification, like a Social Security card and a driver's license. You come up with your own personal history, some story of who you are and where you're from. And that's it, suddenly you're out on your own, a whole new person. I'm told that only about three people in the entire marshal's service ever get to learn your new identity-that's how closely held the secret is."
"So the odds of us learning who Black became and where he went are not exceedingly good," I said.
More crunching. He said, "Except for the obvious. Suppose Black is actually dead now. Suppose he's the one sitting in that morgue, the unsuccessful assassin. Suppose it looks like the feds gave a free pass to some armored car robber more than twenty years ago, supplied him with money and a whole new life, and he turns into some sort of presidential assassin."
"The damned question is, why does some robber flunky from Chelsea, Massachusetts, end up shooting at the president, especially after he's taken a ride on the federal gravy train. How does point A lead to point B? And what's the role of Paul Stemple?"
Havlicek replied, "Maybe it was a hired hit. Maybe the guy's in the program. He's settled into his new life. He's working in some menial job, not making the money he was used to making when he was hitting banks and Brink's trucks back in the early eighties. And along comes this offer. Or maybe he seeks it out. You know, calls his old contacts. Maybe it's so good it makes him rich for life."
From the limited knowledge I had of Black, it didn't sound like him.
Here was a guy who was always the ringleader, always gliding above the fray, letting others do the dirty work, telling them how to do it but never doing it himself. He was smart, savvy, even worldly. No, he wouldn't be the type to pick up an automatic rifle and take that kind of risk at Congressional just for the cash. He was smart enough to find another way.