“Agreed,” I said.
“And if he doesn’t,” Frank said, “then he can’t lead us to a manufacturer.”
“Agreed again.”
Frank looked to Cassie, then back at me. “What am I missing, guys?”
“This DA,” I said, “he’s prosecuted two DUIs as third strikes before, but it’s—” I looked at Cassie. “What would you call it?”
“Speculative,” she said. “Risky as shit. Not tested yet in the higher courts, where it will fail constitutionally. How about that as a tease?”
Frank grinned, but I stayed focused.
“Let’s roll this forward,” I said. “Say wedon’tmake a deal with him. We leave the local DA to try to make the DUI stick.”
“Exactly,” Frank said. “Wells sits around and gets more worried about a life sentence. His attorney calls us, and he spills.”
“But this guy is scared, not worried,” I said. “So he makes a different call. Goes from getting repped by a public defender to a lawyer J. P. Sandoval brings in. It’s a risk for him personally. What happens next?”
“Better lawyer gets him off,” Cassie said. “He tells Sandoval that he was approached by two feds.”
I nodded, picking up where Cassie left off. “Starts to smell like a sting. Sandoval packs up shop.”
“What are we supposed to tell Poulton?” Frank asked.
“The director wanted another C.I. in the fold,” I said. “Nothing more. We find out what Wells knows, and we follow where that information takes us. Poulton was dubious about a domestic weapons manufacturer making ghost guns anyway. So was Kemp at ATF.”
“Wait, so no trip to Baja?” Cassie smiled. “I was hoping I could roll in a Cabo weekend. Get some sun. Couple mojitos, maybe.”
“The reality,” I said to Frank, “is that we seized nine hundred and eighty-one thousand dollars in debit cards before we burned that trailer. If Wells insists on a payment, I had Richie hold back twenty-five grand in case we needed it.”
“You held that back in debit cards?”
“For the case,” I said. “We’re not going to the mall.”
Cassie began laughing, but Frank looked spun. I realized he had not yet read our reports on this investigation.
“Let’s go back in,” I said. “Find out whatD.C.means. We can grab our files for you to read after. Get you up to speed.”
Frank nodded. “Great.”
We turned and went back in to meet with Travis Wells, but he’dthought it over and wanted the public defender back to get his deal in writing first. We pinged the guy and waited ten minutes. When the attorney returned, we moved back into Interrogation.
“Damon Alicante,” the attorney said, shaking our hands.
The local public defender was in his early forties and stocky. He wore a gray suit, but the arms and legs were wrinkled as if someone had slept atop them.
“My client has information he thinks is of use to the federal government,” Alicante said. “To be more specific, Mr. Wells knows of a stockpile of weapons being accumulated near our nation’s capital. If you want the details, we’ll need a walk for him on the third strike, a full purge of his criminal record, a clean drop out of the country, and a payment of twenty thousand dollars.”
“It was ten thousand fifteen minutes ago,” I said.
“Right, well, fifteen minutes ago, it was also a fairly dubious DUI charge parading as a third strike.”
I almost smiled. I ran a team of agents that people underestimated, and I should have known better. I had looked at Alicante and seen a wrinkled bookkeeper. He was clearly far more competent.
Purging Wells’s criminal record was also a new request. Which intrigued me even more.
The lawyer lifted his hands. “Hey. I’m just a local attorney getting my hours in on a Saturday. I can always call in one of the big firms.”
