HE TEXT MESSAGE on the phone surprised me at first. I thought, Is he missing me already? Then I realized the message wasn’t from him. A ‘Fortune Cookie’ app I had downloaded one drunken night sent me random ‘fortunes’ all the time, along with little ads for dim sum and other MSG laden treats and I kept forgetting to delete it. This ‘cookie’ said, ‘What if the one you fell in love with was your total opposite?’ They weren’t even fortunes anymore.
The surveillance detail was a watch on a police safe house. We had suspicions about two officers involved. Information about police investigations that had been leaked to high-level suspects happened way too often. Evidence was leaked, compromised and tampered with. Our investigation showed pretty conclusively that these two detectives were a key link in the chain. We had enough evidence to bust them, but it wasn’t a one-off, and we were convinced that there was an organization behind them. We needed to find out who gave them marching orders, and the identity of their buyer.
These two were associates of police Commissioner Paul Butler. His name surfaced in a Saint Louis Anti Corruption investigation, and that was what got me sent to the New York bureau AC unit.
In St Louis, a congressman’s suicide note revealed that he had been blackmailed for political favors. But that wasn’t all.
A young Missouri society girl, and I mean very young, had washed up in the Mississippi. Gina Haddon Tate’s body had been weighed down with an anchor chain, but a current must have disturbed it and she floated to the surface. We knew about the anchor chain by the marks and the residual rust that remained on her body.
Her sodden cocktail dress was certain to have the DNA of the congressman, as well as a number of other dignitaries on it. And a senior cop.
Commissioner Butler, Detective Paul Butler as he was at the time, of the Saint Louis PD was the last person to check the dress out of the evidence locker.
The congressman took his own life under murky and tragic circumstances very shortly thereafter and the case went cold. We never did get to the bottom of whether Butler had been one of the blackmail victims, or if he had some other involvement.
We had a view into the target window from across the street, the apartment was bugged and we had a watch on the street where the occupants habitually approached. So far it had been slow work, and not very productive. All I had to show at the end of each long day was a backache and knots like eight-balls in my shoulders.
We worked in teams of three, in shifts. I was working with Special Agents Daniels and Schultz, two solid, experienced field agents. Both of them were pretty old school and easy to get along with.
To guard against even the slightest chance of alerting the subjects, we took precautions entering and leaving the building. Innocent locals and residents would be apt to notice unfamiliar groups of people who walked like cops.
For undercover work, we were taught to conceal our outward discipline in our dress and manner, but it was hard to maintain, and honestly, it wasn’t usually all that successful. Discipline was too deeply ingrained and it showed.
In the field we had to accept it for what it was. The only sure way of staying undercover was to not be seen.
The stairs of the apartment building were a workout. The temporary surveillance nest was on the seventeenth floor. Our team didn’t risk being seen in the lobby or the elevator, or any public areas of the building. Even in plain clothes, we entered always via the service entrance. In the hallways we kept strict silence, with phones and communicators switched off. We walked in ones and two's and never came out of the stairwell into a public area when anyone was in sight.
At the door of the apartment, I made the distinctive knock to alert the agents inside, and then unlocked the door and slipped inside. Agent Schultz was at the desk with the computers and Daniels sat by the camera that was mounted on a tripod at the window. I hadn’t expected to see our black suited SAC, Special Agent in Charge Damian Crane, and he frowned like he hadn't been expecting to see me either.
He was in his regular black G-Man suit, which surprised me even more. Crane was bent over to Agent Daniels’ ear. He laid a hand on Daniels’ shoulder for a second as he looked back and stared hard at me. He turned abruptly as I pushed the door shut with my back. He was a tough SAC, and I respected that. But he always gave me a feeling that I wasn’t quite on safe ground with him. An uncomfortable edge.
In monthly reviews, he could look up sharply from the tablet on his desk and pierce me with a stare that made me wonder, where are you going with this? Of course, law enforcement officers need to be tough, and they, we, often have to be intimidating. It’s a tool of the trade, so I wasn’t going to be unsettled by SAC Crane’s abrupt manner.
Damian Crane looked every inch the classic FBI Special Agent. The suit, the white shirts that I was sure he had starched, and the pencil-thin black necktie all declared him as an agent. Much of the Bureau’s work was in the open, and agents were often proud to be identified. But it was strange for the SAC to come in such conspicuous dress to a covert surveillance nest.
He gave Daniels’ shoulder another squeeze and bent down for another word in his ear, then turned smartly on his heel to greet me.
He stood close, making me look up. His voice was low and confidential.
“Agent Cross, I just briefed Daniels that our subjects are expected to receive a visitor between three and five this afternoon. The visitor is an informant involved in a separate on-going investigation, which is highly sensitive. So, as I explained to Daniels and Schultz here, surveillance needs to be suspended between those hours. All cameras and recording equipment need to be shut off. You may as well stand the detail down for that time. Take a break. I’m sure you’ve earned it.”
I nodded. “Sir, in Saint Louis, situations like that were not uncommon. We would just tag those sections of recording as ‘not for distribution,’ and redact. Then we would continue observation, in case something unexpected might occur. Which it did…” I was about to relate a story but he cut me off.
“I think I’ve been clear, Agent Cross.” His voice was still low and he moved closer, making me uncomfortable. “You’re not in St Louis now. This is the New York, and I’m in charge of this office, and this surveillance. Is that all clear enough for you?”
“Of course, sir.”
When Schultz and Daniels turned to look at the SAC, their heads were bent low and their faces were in shadow. Crane left an atmosphere in the room as he left. We had about another hour and a half before the time Crane said we should shut down, and we didn’t talk about our instructions. I had the sense that Crane’s directive didn’t sit any better with the other agents.
Since the day I joined the New York Anti-Corruption office, Agent Don Schultz had always been friendly towards me. His presence was like a big, kindly arm around my shoulder. He was flirty, too, but in a way that was more playful than serious. I have no doubt at all that, if I’d been down for it, he would have been happy to take it further, but still I felt it was more genuine friendliness than anything else. So, that day, I think he was trying to lighten my mood after my abrasive encounter with Crane.
“Any time, baby, night or day,” I felt him close behind me, covering me like a warm rug. “I’ll park my car down the street from your house. Leave the back door open on the driver’s side. Any time, Vesper baby, you just climb on in.”
“Wouldn’t that be risky?” I lifted my eyebrows innocently, my eyes wide and an ‘O’ of shock on my lips. He smiled at my expression, “Here in the dangerous Big Apple, the citadel of crime?”
“Don’t tell anyone, Vesper,” he grinned and lowered his voice, “But I’m a federal agent.” With a grin like his, Schultz could get a shot at any woman in New York. “I may look slow,” he said, “But I’m a tough son of a bitch. Anyone who messed with my car, they’d find God and pray for forgiveness before I was through with them.”
I made the innocent face again. “But, Agent Schultz,” I put a finger to my open mouth, “You’re so strong and handsome.”
“Yeah. And old.”
It was cute. I often wondered how far it would go if I encouraged him. But I wouldn’t ever do that. Not with an Agent in the same Bureau office, and certainly not one on the same team. I think he knew that, and I think he respected it, too. I was sure that he just wanted me to feel better about the day, and I liked him all the more for it.
Just before three, without any discussion, we switched off all of our equipment and made our way separately out of the building.
I watched as Schultz and Daniels parted and left in different directions. They had worked as a team a long time before I came to New York, so when they didn’t even take the unscheduled coffee break together, I took it as a sign that they weren’t any happier with the turn of events than I was.
My SAC in Saint Louis, my father figure in the agency, was Special Agent Lou Gaines. He was the one who had sent me to New York in the first place. In a situation like this, he would have taken the team for a briefing. He would do that routinely over far less serious issues. He would say to all of us, regularly, “If you aren’t happy with something, anything, whether it’s operational or not, I hope you can come directly to me. But, in case you can’t, I’ll always have a channel of communication open for you that goes over my head, just in case you need it.” He valued openness and a free-flowing exchange of information of all kinds, especially intelligence.
New York was not Saint Louis, though, just as Crane told me. It was clear to me from the start.
All of that afternoon, I was able to think about just two things. How I should do more yoga to make up for all of the days that I spent hunched over cameras and field binoculars on low tripods. The hours and days spent crouched and still, staring out of windows for a highly resolution view of nothing happening. That was one thing.
The other was him. The guy with the salt beef on rye and the dark patch in his eyelash.
Back at the stakeout, when it was time for the night detail to take over, I was thinking about a bar downtown. The kind of a place he’d likely fit in.