Going Dark(53)
“ME agrees? That’s how you’re calling it, accidental?”
“Would be. Except for one thing.”
“Which is?”
“First tell me why the feds are interested in this punk.”
“Bendell was a snitch. He was inside a group we’re interested in.”
“An informant?”
“Low-rent tipster.”
“You’re not going to tell me what this group is?”
“If it becomes relevant, but right now, no. Sorry.”
“Typical. You want what I got, but I don’t get a peek the other way.”
“It’s an ongoing federal investigation, okay? Now what’s the one thing that suggests Bendell’s death was other than accidental?”
Alonzo was quiet for a moment, weighing his options. Then he sighed. “You know what electro gel is?”
“Why don’t you tell me, Detective.”
“Let’s say you were going to climb up a ladder and fuck around with the power line running through your backyard. Before you climbed up that aluminum ladder, would you smear it with an electrical conducting agent?”
“On the ladder?”
“Same stuff they coat a cardiac patient’s chest with before they shock him back to life.”
“No, I don’t think I would,” Frank said.
“Me either. But this Bendell fellow, he apparently thought it was a good idea.”
They talked awhile longer, Frank getting nothing more of substance, then he asked Alonzo to keep him abreast of developments. Alonzo said sure thing and hung up.
Frank tried Nicole’s cell again and got the robot and hung up on the bitch.
At two, he met with the five SWAT guys he’d picked, told them to keep their calendars clear for a week from today, seventeenth through the nineteenth. Explained where they were headed, that the operation plan hadn’t yet been charted out, but as soon as it was, he’d let them know and they’d have a longer sit-down.
All of them had done force-on-force drills before, and none was thrilled at the prospect of doing another. Even super–gung ho Billy Dean Reynolds, the shortest but toughest guy on the team, red hair, green eyes, freckles, the kind of dude if you hit him in the forehead with a sledge, he’d go down, pop back up, and you hit him again and he’d pop up again and after that. The guy you wanted along, the guy who didn’t quit.
Billy Dean stood in Frank’s doorway after the others had drifted back to their cubicles and said, “The power plant, that place is a joke, Frank. My mother and her bridge group could knock that place over.”
“It has to be done,” Sheffield said. “We’re trying to keep them honest.”
“They’re not honest to start with. Game is rigged. We could test them from now till the corn is tall and they’d never improve. Those security guys, I met a couple of them, they couldn’t handle Barney’s job in Mayberry.”
“It’ll be fine. After it’s done, we’ll all go out and have a pizza and down some cold ones, wash it all away. Keep the bounce in your step, Billy Dean.”
Frank, the cheerleader, not believing a word he was saying. He felt himself rising out of his own body, looking down at himself, thinking, Who the hell is that guy conning Billy Dean? Is that me? Really?
Marta was in a blue pants suit today, one from her endless collection. After Billy Dean left she came in with the files for the Chee brothers, Cameron Prince, and Claude Sellers. She set them on the desk, stepped back, and gave him her secret smile.
He should never have told her about Nicole. Now he was going to get that smile all day, every day. Marta wanted him married. Worried it would shorten his life span if he stayed single. There were statistics about that. She’d cut out newspaper articles and left them on his desk. Single guys died early. Worse than smoking. What was he thinking?
Frank picked up the four folders, weighed them one-handed, and dropped them back on the desk. “That’s it?”
“The Chee boys have been playing nice. Pauly’s military record is thin, which to me is suspicious. You don’t spend six years in the navy and have such a flimsy file unless you were doing something covert.”
“You evaluated the files?”
“I evaluate everything,” Marta said. “Does that make me bad?”
“Anything else?”
“NSA rejected the satellite-surveillance request, got too many military uses in play, tracking terrorists in Yemen, same old same old. Miami-Dade said if you wanted to rent one of their drones, you needed to call and discuss.”
“And the boat?”
“Park Service would also like to talk to you, find out what you have in mind and how you plan on paying for it. The number is on the Post-it there.”