Backward-Facing Man (12 page)

The safe Fat Eddie told him about was well hidden behind what looked like a circuit-breaker panel. Aiming the flashlight down, Chuck pulled out the card with the combination. Maybe his relationship with the old man could be salvaged. Who cared why his father hadn't told him about it before? The family business was a crypt, full of necessary secrets. Chuck sat on the speckled linoleum floor and ran his hand along the wall, the smell of stale coffee and cleanser around him. It took him a few seconds to locate the tiny notch in the panel, which he pressed and turned with his fingernail, sliding the panel up. Holding the flashlight under his chin, he spun the tumbler. The safe itself was vintage, a relic of ancient industrial Philadelphia. At first, it didn't open. He tried the sequence a second time. Again, nothing. His heart pounded in his chest. His palms and neck tingled with perspiration.

It opened on the third try. Directing his flashlight into the small rectangular opening, Chuck felt a glow—the nearness to his needs being met—similar to what he felt moments before orgasm, or smelling an exquisite meal as it was about to be served. His movements slowed. Chuck reached in. Finally, he would see a payday from this wretched business. He leaned down to examine his cache.

Panic began in his sternum and spread to the inside edges of his skin, the back of his neck, and his temples, as though his blood pressure was rising. Another wave of nausea overcame him as if he had actually fallen from the balcony in his dream. Kneeling forward, he vomited an acidic mix of vodka and mucus. He held himself in that position for what seemed like a long time, his right hand dangling over the small sink, his face contorted. Steadying himself, he looked down in horror, clawing the emptiness.

By the late nineties, the FBI had picked up virtually every fugitive from the sixties with the exception of the Volcano Bomber. It was the case that Special Agent John Russell cut his teeth on and one of the last vestiges of Weatherfug—a thirty-year-plus FBI Special that for all intents and purposes had drawn to a close—that dogged him for his entire career. “This much we do know,” the older agent said, angling a toothpick between his incisors. “The whole frickin' thing was a fluke.” It was the witching hour inside the Stinger Lounge, just after four
A.M.
, when the shift changed and the clean-up crew, such as it was, began its halfhearted workout, mopping down and scraping the grime and grizzle of Friday night off the brown-stained floors. The two agents sat down just as the last suburbanites, pleased to have dipped their sticks into real life, even if only for one night, even if only through a prescription drug and alcohol haze, turned their BMWs with the online rescue systems toward babysitters asleep in sprawling Tudors with rhododendron hedges and meticulous lawns. A thin man whistling a gospel tune swept the stinking shrimp husks into piles outside the kitchen. A depressing shade of gray pressed up against the little rectangular windows where streetlights illuminated leftover Lotto cards and Burger King bags and Septa transfers that blew across Broad Street. As they made their way toward the back of the bar, John Russell III remembered what his ASAC had told him about the younger man.

Eric Dodson was a plebe, one of a half dozen new agents the Bureau had hired in an attempt to upgrade their computer capabilities. He was young, sturdy, and handsome, with fullback features and a neck the size of an ordinary man's thigh. He wore Clark Kent glasses, which only intensified his good looks by conveying a technical proficiency that was well beyond most people's. But Eric Dodson was more than a computer jock. He was a dot-commer with no college degree and lots of money. And though he'd spent less than a year at the Bureau, he was the one who'd been assigned the case John Russell had wrestled for over thirty years.

The older agent led them to a booth in the back—past a woman in her late fifties wearing a slinky black dress and a huge necklace that dripped into her cleavage. She was smoking a thin brown cigarette and talking to a bartender drying shot glasses. If Dodson was uncomfortable here, in the heart of the ghetto, that'd be just fine with Russell; the veteran was pleased whenever young agents called for his advice. Nobody was going to solve this case without help from him. John Russell called for a couple of bourbon and waters.

It was Russell's idea to surveil the girl after the HR manager from Drinker & Sledge called Friday and told Russell she'd called in—or e-mailed at the very last minute—saying she'd been in a commuter train accident. Russell checked with Septa. There'd been no accident. When the ASAC approved the tail, he'd told him to take the new kid and bring him up to speed.

“We're not sure how he'll do,” the assistant special agent in charge had told Russell when Dodson first came to Philly. “But he impressed the hell out of them at Quantico, and not just with computer stuff. Con law, personal safety, defensive tactics, even firearms. He was off the charts. Only problem is he's green. No field experience. No sense of history.” Russell winced. It was a brittle bone he was being tossed, and Russell knew it. How could a kid who wasn't even born then manage a case that originated in the sixties? The future of the Bureau was sitting across from him in a blue blazer, an open Oxford shirt, fresh-pressed Dockers, and Cole Haans, while in six months, everything—his caseload, the contents of his desk, all his clearances, and his institutional memories—would be gone and his career with the FBI would be over.

“Anybody who's connected to a fugitive goes missing,” Russell had said as they left Center City, “you pay attention.” He'd been following the mother and daughter for years, waiting for Keane to make contact, asking a few of her neighbors and each of her employers to call him with anything out of the ordinary. The woman in the black dress pretended to swat something aside. “Not on your life,” she told the bartender, shaking her finger and laughing. The two agents sat across from each other in silence, Dodson's hands on the table, his back to the entrance.

“What brought you to law enforcement?” Russell asked him in the car.

“I never pictured myself doing this,” Dodson said, as if he was talking to his uncle at a cocktail party. “I spent my early twenties traveling, you know, various projects and assignments. One summer, I came home to visit and wound up at my dad's country club in a foursome with a retired G-man. At the end of the round, he took my number, and, I don't know, maybe a year later, I got a phone call.” He turned his hands up and shrugged. “Next thing you know, I'm at Quantico.” How nice, Russell thought. No waiting for the mail, no agonizing interviews, no torturous psych evals. A fucking phone call. Russell didn't like a single thing about the new, improved Bureau with its casual Fridays and its emphasis on computer programmers and hot shits. He knew, even if
they
didn't, that of all the problems the Bureau faced, it was lack of discipline that would hobble them.

Dodson's FBI career thus far consisted of three months doing lab work in D.C. before being shipped out to Denver, where he spent his first year tailing a special agent and playing intramural softball. As they drove up Broad Street, Dodson went on about how easily he made friends on account of him being an extrovert and how happy he was for the opportunity to move east. “The day I got here, I found this awesome sublet. I can actually walk to work.” All his other cases had something to do with cyber-crime.

Russell disliked Dodson from the moment they met. What pissed him off most was not how easily things had come to Eric Dodson or how little the young man knew about the sixties or even how Russell, who'd tracked the Volcano Bomber unsuccessfully for thirty years, was now supposed to tell this kid everything he knew about the sixties' most elusive radical. What got under his skin was how untroubled the kid was, how trusting and confident he looked sitting across the table, waiting to be briefed. Even here now, at four in the morning in the heart of North Philly, with an old whore and a junkie bartender and a washed-up special agent with no manners, Eric Dodson had faith. And why shouldn't he? Had Dodson been more articulate, he would have said his life was like a time-lapse photograph of a bouquet of flowers opening, a series of fortuitous coincidences, strung together like chemical reactions, resulting in his being secure in whatever moment he was in, assured that the ground he stepped on would support him, that those around him who could, would help him when he needed it.

The two men sat in silence nursing their drinks. Russell flicked his toothpick onto the floor. Dodson rubbed the bridge of his nose. Dodson held the older agent's gaze as long as he could and then took his glasses off and spoke. “So what was he like?”

“Never start an interview like that,” Russell said immediately. “Unless you want to be bullshitted, you don't ask something outright before establishing rapport.” Dodson nodded. If he was insulted, he didn't show it. “Since we're both professionals, why don't you try out an idea of your own,” Russell said, sipping his drink. “That is, if you have one.” Dodson smiled but said nothing. After another long, uncomfortable silence, Russell looked toward the ceiling and said, “I can see you're gonna need my help.” He opened his napkin and wiped the table in front of him.

“What did you mean, the whole thing was a fluke?” the young agent said quietly. His hair, spiked with gel, appeared in silhouette against the window.

Russell finished his drink and folded his arms across his chest, feeling the familiar bulge under his arm. He would miss a lot of things about this job. Wearing the badge, carrying a weapon, maintaining that practiced vigilance even when he wasn't on a case, especially the long hours in surveillance, with nobody breathing down his neck. Everything but the red tape and the bullshit approvals you needed before you could get anything done. Without answering, Russell stood up and walked toward the bathroom. He let himself into the small closet, unbuckled his pants, and then turned his head away.

Despite his recent health problems, John Russell had aged well. His hair was silvery white and thick enough on top to hold its form all day. Without much effort, he'd stayed trim enough to be asked to pose in an ad for a retirement community. Even up close, the mirage held. His teeth were good; the skin on his hands and face, tan, tight, and supple; and his features, thin and sculpted, patrician-like. Except now, after sixty-two years without as much as the flu, he was pissing blood.

John Russell didn't see himself as an aging G-man with malignant cells and incontinence. In his mind, he was the kid from Cleveland who busted his ass for an appointment letter from J. Edgar Hoover and six months later, a badge, a regulation Smith & Wesson Model 10 revolver, and a $12,500-a-year salary. Back in the days before there was an academy—before the Hoover Building, before Efrem Zimbalist Jr. put a face on the FBI—Russell and thirty other guys went rushing downstairs in the DOJ Building, stripped down, butt to butt, for defensive training. They sat together in their starched white shirts and laced wing tips in academics and ate cheeseburgers at the Globe and Laurel, hurrying back by curfew to sleep on cots, twelve to a room. This was before there were voices in his head other than his supervisor's and doubts in his mind about good and evil, and which he was destined to become. At twenty-five, Jack Russell became Special Agent John Russell III, Esquire, smart and fit, ambitious and handsome.

At first, he came across as a guy with charm, ambition, and intelligence. With a law degree, no wife or girlfriend, and no kids to tie him down, he had none of the attachments that distracted the younger agents and, in many cases, limited their careers. During his first few months, his supervisors thought he'd be promoted fast. But that was in the beginning, when he mastered his assignments and managed to show up consistently in the right place at the right time.

After his training, Russell was sent to the Boston office, where he was attached to Special Agent Lou D'Mitri. From the get-go, he was commended for following procedure, being quick on his feet, and reading between the lines. One day that summer—it was 1968—he picked up an Airtel from Chicago. A very unusual kind of incendiary device had gone off in Oneonta, New York, killing a kid and severely burning three others. That same day, Selective Service Headquarters in D.C. got one of those letters composed of cutout newsprint that read, “Peace Erupts Now.” No signature. No attribution. No rumors from informants. The bomb data center drew blanks, but the Chicago office suspected Weather Underground. By luck, Russell remembered a strange incident at Fenway Park involving the same type of explosion. It was the beginning of his involvement in a case that would stretch forward some thirty years.

John Russell was transferred from Boston to Chicago, then Denver, then Philadelphia, where he became an expert on the Weather Underground. In 1972, he played a key role leading to the apprehension of Mark Henry and Diana Applegate. In the mid-seventies, Russell solved some cases involving the Mob and counterfeiters, but his career languished. In the late seventies, he was transferred again. While his peers showed their talent for training new agents and handling paperwork, John Russell was a one-trick pony—an extraordinary hunter—capable of devoting himself to a single task like the pursuit of fugitives without distraction. The problem was what to do between stakeouts. He became easily bored and irritated; he drank too much and spent too much time at the track. Unless he was in pursuit, he was hot-tempered and unpredictable.

Shortly after he arrived in Philadelphia, people at work learned to keep their distance. John Russell seemed a bit cardboard, his personality contrived, as if something sinister was fighting his manners for control. He was erratic. He was obstinate with his superiors. Some days, he was like a ghost, a vaporized version of a real person, or a person who hadn't fully formed. In the late eighties, after an interview and a Minnesota Multiphasic, he overheard the shrink at the Bureau tell his ASAC that he thought John Russell might be dissembling. By the mid-nineties, Russell understood deep down that although as an agent he might have been viable, as a human being he was failing.

In recent years, he had moved himself and his mother into a spacious twin in East Falls, and for the first time in his life, he opened and read his retirement account statements. Nights after work, leaving her in front of the TV, he'd walk to McCabe's and order the prime rib, then sit there watching television and drinking himself into a stupor. Once in a while, for exercise, he'd hit on one of the neighbor girls, somebody's recently separated wife, the single woman who lived next door. Other nights, he preferred to lease company for a few hours, though never at the house.

Russell returned from the bathroom and ordered himself another bourbon. He'd doused himself with cologne from a bottle he carried and slicked back his silvery hair. Like an old gumshoe, it was his way of welcoming the new day. “It was a cool night in September,” Russell began. “No rain. No humidity.” It took Dodson a second to realize that Special Agent John Russell was going to tell him the story of the Volcano Bomber from the very beginning.