Chase got upand walked to a liquor sideboard, as if she’d done it before, glanced back at Mallard, and asked, “Tequila?”
“A small one, I think. Lucas? Andres?”
Lucas shook his head and a second later, Devlin did the same.
As Chase poured the liquor, she said to Lucas, “I’m not pissed off at you anymore, Lucas. Don’t trust you to do the right thing, but I never did trust you all that much.”
Lucas said, “I try to do therightthing. Not always the court thing.”
“We’re supposed to be a country of laws,” Chase said.
“And what we are now is a country of special interests and influence,” Lucas said.
“Don’t argue with him,” Mallard said to Chase.
“You’re taking his side?”
“Only because he’s right,” Mallard said, taking the short glass of straight tequila from Chase. “Though I still resent being clubbed like a baby seal.”
“Odd how you get clubbed like a baby seal and you still manage to become the most important professional cop in the United States,” Lucas said.
On Mallard’s porch,waiting for an Uber, Devlin said, “Well, that went well. We sandbagged one of the most influential guys in the Justice Department and you get in a fight with Jane Chase, wholooks to me like a big-time nut-crusher who might be banging the most important guy. I’m thinking of crawling under my bed and not coming out until it’s all over with.”
“A little secret, Andres. When we—Bob and Rae and I—fuck with the FBI, there’s a little thrill that goes around the Marshals Service,” Lucas said. A bug that was circling the porch light collided with his forehead, and he brushed it away. “People know about it. If you’d planned to transfer to the FBI, that wouldn’t help. But if you plan to stay in the Marshals Service... people will speak well of you. The director will know your name and might even ask about your kids, even if you don’t have any.”
“All right.” Devlin hitched up his pants. “Though my long-term plan is to spend five more years in the service, get a solid vesting in the retirement plan, learn everything I can about how cops and prosecutors work, then go to law school and become a defense attorney working the federal courts and get really fuckin’ rich.”
“Good plan. In the meantime, you want the people in the service to speak your name in awe.”
“Do they speakyourname in awe?”
“I expect they do,” Lucas said. “Especially since the people who work with me fly business class and stay in separate rooms, usually in suites.”
“That’s awesome, all right,” Devlin said. “Though, I have to say, I never heard of you until Rae pulled me in on this.”
They were overnightat the Watergate and took the early train into Manhattan’s Penn Station and caught a taxi to the GrandHyatt above Grand Central Station. On the way, Lucas took a call from Mallard, who said, “You get your way.”
“I hope you were sweetly persuasive.”
“No more than a gentle whisper in the AIC’s ear,” Mallard said. “A virtual zephyr.”
Manhattan always smelled like week-old sour buttered popcorn to Lucas, but he usually visited in late spring or early autumn; on this day in January, with the temperature hovering around twenty, it smelled like week-old sour cold-buttered ice.
Lucas and Devlin grabbed sandwiches at the Hyatt’s deli and took the elevator to the twelfth floor to meet with the Manhattan assistant agent in charge, whose name was Loren Duke. Weaver and two other supervising agents were waiting with Duke. The room was small and stuffy, and one of the agents stood next to a drawn window shade, peering past the shade as if he might actually see something important on the street below. Weaver looked like he was suffering intense gas pains.
Duke: “I’m here for the AIC. He hates you two, by the way. You sicced Louis Mallard on him and the conversation was not a pleasant one. Ten or twenty kilos will probably make it on the street because of you guys and I’d be surprised if a couple people didn’t die from it.”
“Nobody’s forcing anyone to shoot up that stuff. If they do and die, well, tough shit, what did they expect?” Lucas said. “The important thing is, we’re following the money. That’s what we’re doing, right?”
“If we can spot the prime distributors before they spot us,” Duke said.
“They better not spot you,” Lucas said, “or Mallard will rip your AIC a new one. Mallard’s got some exposure here, too. He’s the one who approved the whole task force.”
“We have some damn good FBI surveillance guys down in Florida,” Devlin chipped in. “They could handle that. Are your people less good?”
“Our people are good,” Duke snapped. “None better. But we’re doing this the hard way, and we’re putting some of our people at risk.”
“Sort of like the junkies. This is what they signed up for,” Lucas snapped back. “So—since we’re going after the money, what’s the plan?”
