I stared past the shiny balls at Poulton, thinking about Shooter’s story of the dead ATF informant. The agents who served as pallbearers.
“Freddie Pecos was convicted of burglary,” I said. “A pending assault wrap. He served six years at Polk for—”
“Some case agents,” Poulton interrupted, as if I hadn’t spoken, “they see C.I.s as an extension of their own team.”
“Not me,” I said. “And not you.”
Poulton glanced up, his mouth turning into a smirk. “Oh, you know my feelings on the subject?”
“Freddie Pecos had a habit of beating his girlfriend with a wet towel,” I said. “I put this in my report when I proposed working with him twenty-nine days ago. You signed that report seven minutes after I emailed it over.”
Poulton held my gaze but said nothing.
“So I doubt you feel like Pecos was a member of PAR,” I continued.
The balls kept clicking, and the repetition felt calming. Did others become agitated from the sound?
“You’re right,” he said. “Idon’tcare about Pecos. But you didn’t fly all the way to D.C. to tell me this. Surely you and your band of brilliant fr—”
He caught himself, but I knew the end of this sentence. Poulton had called PAR “a bunch of brilliant freaks” a year ago in this same office, back when he was deputy director.
“Surely you and your brilliantfriendsat PAR know how to deal with an operation gone wrong.”
“We do,” I said.
“So our conversation this morning has been what so far?” Poulton asked. “An appetizer? A test?”
I stared at the director. “This investigation began when money was skimmed from the State of Florida,” I said. “That money was used to purchase weapons for a militia group. Legal gun purchases, but from an illegal source of income.”
“Check,” he said.
“It was our C.I.’s job to track those weapons for us. Where they were being held. When and where they were being shipped.”
“And now you’ve lost both those things,” Poulton said. “Is that it? You have no C.I. And no leads on where the weapons are?”
His statement was true, but it wasn’t where I was going with Poulton.
“The day before Pecos went quiet,” I said, “he and Richie Brancato had an exchange. They discussed two new pieces of intelligence.”
“Okay?”
“A hundred and eighty-six guns were loaded onto a truck. Shipped somewhere.”
“Where?”
“We never found out.”
“And the second thing?”
“Pecos was in a room with J. P. Sandoval,” I said. “He saw an invoice for two thousand firearm kits. Pre-built striker-fired pistols.”
The director’s eyes had wandered to his laptop, but now he met my gaze.
The gun industry had been surging in the last three years, with five major weapons manufacturers selling more than 70 percent of the guns on the market. And as much as the federal government didn’t love monopolies, some had their advantages. Having direct liaisons at these five companies offered law enforcement the ability to quickly track weapons after mass shootings. Even if that action was in the rearview mirror, after the bodies had piled up.
This wasn’t true, however, of what were referred to as PMFs, or privately made firearms. What the media called “ghost guns.”
Those weapons? We tracked less than 1 percent of them. Which made them guns of unknown origin: silent killers.
