Dangerous Games (11 page)

“You’re armed. I don’t see you handing in your firearm.”

“I’m a federal agent.”

“That gives you more of a right to self-defense than the civilians who pay your salary?”

Tess looked away, rubbing her forehead. “Oh, my God, I’m not going to get into this.” The last thing she needed was a gun-control debate.

“You see, from your point of view, only the licensed experts get to deal with crime. Everyone else should step back and get out of your way. Which would be fine—if you could handle the problem. But you can’t. There’s too much crime, and there aren’t enough cops and
federales
to take more than a nibble out of it. So that opens the door for alternative measures—people like me.”

“People like you only make the problem worse,” Tess said through tight lips.

“I didn’t make Madeleine’s problem worse. The system failed her. I didn’t.”

Tess took a moment to calm down. She had decided she disliked and disapproved of Abby, but she couldn’t let her personal feelings dictate the course of the conversation. “And why are you telling me all this?” she asked.

“After Madeleine talked to you, she called me and explained the situation. We agreed we’d better come clean. If Kolb is the Rain Man—”

Tess glanced at her. “How do you know that term?”

“I know some people.”

“In the Bureau?”

“In the LAPD. On a personal basis, you understand. One or two of the rank-and-file types who are a little more open-minded about my contribution to crime prevention than their superiors. Word of the Bureau’s nickname got around.”

“What else do you know about the case?”

“That it’s going nowhere fast. No leads, no ideas, and the clock is ticking.”

A fair summary, Tess had to admit. “You wouldn’t have met me and told me so much unless you had some intention of getting involved.”

“That’s true.”

“What do you want to contribute? A debriefing?” Tess considered the idea. “You may know enough about Kolb to allow us to rule him in or out as a suspect.”

“No, I don’t. If I knew that much, I would’ve told you. My feeling is that Madeleine could be right, or she could be wrong. I have to know more. I have to get up close and personal—again.”

“Renew your acquaintance with Kolb?”

“Why not? There are lots of ways for two old pals to bump into each other.”

“Suppose he knows you helped send him away.”

“He never made me as an undercover operative.”

“You can’t be sure how much he’s figured out.”

“I can never be sure of anything. It’s all subjective, remember? I’m playing the percentages. Odds are, he hasn’t got a clue.”

“If you’re wrong…”

“Then I’d better watch my back. But I would, anyway.”

Tess looked down at the table. “I don’t know. It might be arranged—if we had backup in place, and you were wired…”

“No, no, no.” Abby had both hands in the air like a cop stopping traffic. “That’s not my style. Backup, wires, all that stuff just gets in my way.”

“Well, you can’t go in solo. The Bureau would never allow it.”

“I don’t work for the Bureau. I don’t work for anybody. I’m freelance. Emphasis on
free
.”

“Then what exactly are you proposing?”

“That I reacquaint myself with Kolb, find out what I need to know, and report back to you. We keep it between the two of us, just us girls, our little secret.”

“I’m not working with you in any unofficial capacity.”

“Why not? It’s my butt on the line. You only have to listen to whatever I say. I can find out if Kolb is or isn’t your guy, and I can do it faster and more efficiently than anybody else.”

“You’re talking about a rogue operation.”

“Rogue—I like the sound of that.”

“This isn’t funny,” Tess snapped. “And it’s not going to happen.”

“Give me one good reason. I think we can work well together. I’m the ego; you’re the superego. We’ll be a team, like Cagney and Lacey, only without the overtones of sexual ambiguity.”

“I can’t agree to that.”

“Okay, feel free to add the overtones, if that’s what turns you on.”

“You know what I meant.”

“What I know is that you’re passing up an opportunity to make some major progress. If there’s any evidence linking Kolb to the Rain Man, I’ll sniff it out. I’m a regular bloodhound.”

“Any evidence you found would be obtained illegally.”

“I can arrange for you to find it all over again in whatever legally acceptable way you like.”

“There are approximately a thousand things wrong with that answer.”

“You’re telling me you’ve never colored outside the lines, not even a little? Not even in the Mobius case?”

“My methods of operation aren’t the issue here.”

“No, the issue is nabbing a bad man who’s killed two women and intends to kill more.”

Tess didn’t like where this was going. She leaned back in her seat, realizing too late that Abby would read her body language as a signal of discomfort. “What’s your interest in this, anyway? Do you expect to be paid?”

“Well, I’m hoping you’ll pick up the tab for my soyburger.” She grinned. “Joke.”

Tess wasn’t smiling. Abby didn’t seem to care.

“I’m not in it for the money,” she went on. “Kolb is unfinished business. I don’t want to leave him that way.”

“You could do this on your own, without my participation.”

“But I’ll have an advantage if I know what you know about the case. My sources in the LAPD can’t tell me everything. Information is what I need to work this job.”

“What kind of information?”

“I need to see the case file.”

“You don’t know what you’re asking for. Even
I
haven’t seen the case file yet.”

“You haven’t?”

For once, Tess had the advantage in the conversation. “The case file is every scrap of information collected by every agent working the investigation, collected in a binder the size of a phone book. Actually, several binders equaling several phone books. In a case like this, there could be five or six volumes by now.”

“Not exactly the kind of thing you can smuggle out under your coat. Okay, so if you haven’t seen the case file, what
have
you seen?”

“The FBI report,” Tess said, then regretted the answer.

“That’s the
Reader’s Digest
version?”

“It’s a summary of the evidence.”

“And you’ve got a copy of this report.”

“Yes…”

“Care to share?”

“No, I don’t. It’s a violation—”

“Of policy, procedure, protocol. I’m sure it is. But if I’m going to be effective, I need to see the data.”

“I’m sorry. I just can’t permit it.”

“Sure you can. Once you take the first step down that slippery slope, the rest of the trip is easy.” Abby waved off Tess’s frown. “Just kidding.”

Tess tried to reason her way out of a situation that made her increasingly uncomfortable. “What you’re proposing isn’t even necessary. With a warrant, the Bureau can toss Kolb’s apartment and get any evidence that’s in there.”

“Who’s to say Kolb has anything incriminating in his apartment? He may have learned his lesson from last time. He may have stashed it somewhere else.”

“If he has,
you
won’t find it, either.”

“Oh, yes, I will. That’s why they pay me the big bucks.”

“You act as if you’re better at this than we are.”

“It ain’t bragging if you can back it up.”

Tess shut her eyes. “You’re annoying, you know that?”

“Been called worse.”

“I’m sure you have.”

“The cat’s got claws. So what do you say—is it a deal?”

A deal with the devil
, Tess thought. “I don’t know. I need to think about it.”

“Fair enough. Here’s my number for when you decide.” Abby handed her a business card, blank except for a local phone number. “In the meantime, why don’t I give you those e-mails? That is, after you pay for our meal.”

“Didn’t you tell me you were joking when you said I should cover the tab?”

“All humor has a basis in truth.”

Tess put down enough bills to cover the meal and the tip. She left the Boiler Room with Abby, who led her to a red Mazda Miata parked down the street.

“My wheels,” Abby said. “You’ve gotta have a convertible in southern Cal. It’s a law, I think.”

“Why would the law matter to you?”

“Touché.” She retrieved a package from the car and handed it over. “Bedtime reading. Enjoy.”

“I don’t think I’ll be able to work with you, Abby.”

“Afraid of what the other sisters will say if word gets around the convent?”

Tess was really getting tired of the nun jokes. “I have principles,” she said.

“So do I. Mine are just more elastic than yours.” Abby turned serious. “Look, Tess—I appreciate the fact that this is unfamiliar territory for you. To be honest, it’s unfamiliar to me, too. I don’t go around having a hamburger with a federal agent every day of the week.”

“You had a soyburger,” Tess corrected.

“Yeah, well, it tasted like hamburger.”

“Did it?”

“Not really. The point is, this is new for both of us. And there are risks—for both of us. But there’s also a chance to cover a nice solid lead in a red-hot case. If Kolb’s not guilty, then no one gets hurt and no one ever has to know about your walk on the wild side. If he’s our guy…well, we can figure out some way to bring him to the attention of the authorities without getting ourselves in hot water. I’ve done it before.”

“By setting fires.”

“I’ll come up with something more original this time.”

Tess let a long silence pass while she weighed the envelope in her hand as if it represented the decision she’d been called on to make. “I can’t give you an answer,” she said. “Not yet.”

Abby nodded. “Think about it, that’s all.” She walked around to the driver’s side of the Miata. “But think fast. There’s rain in the forecast.”

Tess stood on the sidewalk and watched the red sports car speed away into the night.

8

It was ten fifteen when Tess got back to the hotel and found Michaelson waiting for her in the lobby by the piano bar.

“I was wondering when you’d show up,” Michaelson said as he rose from his seat, abandoning his half-finished martini.

“Been waiting long?”

“Long enough. I came back from City Hall, expecting to find you at the FBI office, but Larkin said you’d left. Which surprised me, given that you have a lot of work to do on a tight deadline.”

“I’m coming in early tomorrow. You’ll have my report in plenty of time for the supervisors’ meeting.”

“Well, that’s very reassuring. I shouldn’t have doubted your work ethic. Then again, I wouldn’t have thought it was necessary to doubt your loyalty to the Bureau, yet you managed to disappoint me with your behavior downtown. If you were trying to make me a look like a fool—”

“I wasn’t.”

He ignored her. “Since you’d already checked in, I assumed you would be in your room. Care to tell me where you went?”

“A diner. Had a burger. Want to smell my breath?”

He scowled at her. His gaze strayed to the manila envelope in her hand. “What’s that?”

She could hardly tell him that it contained evidence pertaining to a secret STORMKIL lead. “Reading matter from Denver.” She offered it to him. “We did this wiretap that picked up some extraneous—”

He brushed off the envelope. “Spare me.”

It was surprising, really, how easy it was to lie to Michaelson. She thought she should do it more often. “Anyway, you wanted to see me?”

“Goddamned right I did.”

“You could have called my cell.”

“There are some conversations that need to take place face-to-face. I am not pleased with you, McCallum. You hung me out to dry, and if I hadn’t been quick on my feet, I could’ve been humiliated in front of the entire Los Angeles media corps.”

“Quick on your feet? You told them my plane was delayed. Not exactly a high-water mark of creative fiction.”

“It was sufficient to salvage the situation, and to save the Bureau from embarrassment.”

“To save yourself, you mean.”

“Inasmuch as I represent the Bureau, I would say it’s a distinction without a difference.”

Tess shrugged. “That’s one way to look at it.”

“If you recall, I made it clear at the conclusion of the Mobius case that I never wanted to work with you again.”

“If
you
recall, I made it equally clear that the feeling was mutual.”

“And yet here you are. I would think you’d want to make the best of a bad situation.”

“I would think you’d want to use me as something more than window dressing.”

“You see, that’s your problem, McCallum. You don’t understand that there is a chain of command here, and I am at the top. You don’t question me, you don’t confront me, you don’t disobey me. You do what you’re told. You keep your head down and your mouth shut, and you play the game like a good little girl, and before long you get to go back to your little fiefdom in Colorado, which you can run any way you like. That’s your turf. This is mine. Have you got that?”

“Like a good little girl?” Tess echoed. She hadn’t made it past that part.

“I asked if you understand what I’m saying, or do I need to make myself still more explicit?”

She sighed. “Yes, Richard, I’ve got it. I hear you loud and clear.”

“If I were you, I would lose the attitude.”

“You don’t like a little sass in your underlings?”

“I do not.”

“Why am I not surprised?”

Michaelson started to walk away, then turned to face her again. “You know, it wasn’t my call to bring you in. I argued against it. The decision was made in DC. They thought it would be a good idea, public relations-wise. I warned them you wouldn’t play along. I told them you’re not a team player, and you’re overrated, to boot. That Mobius thing—anybody could’ve broken that case. You just happened to be in the right place at the right time.”

“You were in the same place at the same time. How come you didn’t clear the case?”

“Maybe I was too busy trying to clean up the messes you made along the way.”