Cold Winter Rain (13 page)

CHAPTER NINETEEN

I checked out of the Tutwiler after retrieving the notes and the memory stick from the safe in the hotel basement and drove the Taurus three blocks to the parking deck behind the Sheraton next to Birmingham’s Civic Center, just north of I-20.

All the way up at the top of the deck, you drive out onto the top floor and suddenly feel like you’re outside again, the only roof the sky.

Today the roof-sky was a leaden gray, producing a cold mist unworthy of windshield wipers.  So much for upbeat weather forecasts.

I backed into a parking space, the rear bumper only a few inches from an eight-story drop to the street below.  Here, I had a view of the entrance to the top floor of the deck.

I locked the doors and pulled the Glock out of the holster and placed it on the seat.  If Matt Damon were playing me in a movie, this would be the place where the obligatory chase scene began, the hero's and villain’s cars careening around the parking deck smashing into civilians’ rides, bullets flying, fake tire squeals filling the theater.

But this was real life, and the only person I saw for fifteen minutes was an old man with a scruffy fringe of white hair who drove his dirty red Toyota pickup around the deck twice before he found the exit.

By then it seemed no new grunters had followed me from the Tutwiler, and I got out, locked the door, retrieved my bags from the trunk, and rode the parking deck elevator down to the lobby.  I paid in cash for one night and showed the Pakistani clerk a driver’s license issued by New Mexico that said my name was Wallace George.

He gave me the card key after the usual spiel about a morning paper and how to find the hotel restaurant.  Birmingham isn’t such a hotbed for conventions, believe it or not, and the hotel didn’t exactly seem overbooked.

I declined the offer of a bellman and found the room after an elevator ride and a quarter-mile hike.  The side of my hand was a little sore, but that was nothing compared to the damage I would have done to myself if I had used my knuckles on my unexpected guest.  I took the ice bucket out, found the ice machine, filled the bucket, then made an ice pack for my hand with the plastic bucket liner.  I sat at the desk chair looking out the window at the view of  industrial plants, and, in the middle distance, the airport.  Now I knew two things I had not known yesterday.  Someone wanted to know something badly enough -- information they thought I possessed -- to send that amateur to my hotel room.  They might send a pro next time.  And if anyone knew of the relationship between Kramer and Sally. . . .

I picked up my cell phone and keyed in Sally’s office number.  No answer, so I tried her cell.  No answer there either.  I left a voice mail asking her to call.

I was just about to head back to the law firm when the hotel phone rang.  I lifted the receiver and answered.

“Slate,” said a voice.  “Leon Grubbs.”  Grubbs somehow managed in three syllables to convey both resignation and exasperation.

“
Hello, Chief.”

“
Deputy Chief Grubbs, Sir, to you.  For some reason, Slate, I keep having to intervene to keep you out of the lockup.  Believe it or not, I’m actually becoming a little tired of it.  So, next time, if there is a next time, and there won’t be, I may not recognize your name, if you understand me.”

“
Understood.  But how did you find me here?”

“
I’m a trained detective.  Slate, I have a couple of people with me who want to talk to you.  I can't imagine why.  Although I have better things to do than visit your hotel room, it’s better that we come up there.  Comprende?”

“
I was just leaving.  Can’t you bring them to Woolf White?”

“
No, I can’t.  We’re here now, and we’re coming up.  You stay put.  But, there is another thing.”

“
What’s that?”

“
Like every crime victim, you have the right to know the identity of your -- uhh -- assailant.  Guy’s name is Billy Royal.  Walker County peckerwood.  No major priors; assault, petty theft, drunk and disorderly.”

“
Known to work for anyone in particular?”

“
Not really.  Funny though.  DA’s office says he’s already hired a lawyer.  May not stay in our jail very long.  Anyway.  We’re on the way up.”

Thirty seconds later Grubbs knocked on the door.  With him were agents Sanders and Alston.

Grubbs turned to the two FBI agents.  “So here he is in all his glory.  Agents Sanders and Alston, Mr. Slate.  Slate, Agents Sanders and Alston.”

“
We’ve met. . . .”  Agent Sanders began, but Grubbs did not seem to hear.

“
I hope the three of you have fun, Grubbs said.  I have some police work to do.”  He was on his way to the door before I could speak, but he stopped with the door open.  “And, Slate?”

“
Yes, sir, Detective Grubbs?”

He held the door for a moment, then shook his head.  “Never mind.  Call me.”  And he walked out, the door closing with a thump behind him.

I shook hands with the two FBI agents, and they sat on the side of the bed.  I sat in the desk chair.

“
I see that you wore the WalMart shoes today, agent Alston.  Just for me?”

Alston left his gaze steady on me.  “No, I upgraded today.  Usually wear the WalMart cap toes.  But these are the Costco wingtips.  My aunt bought me a membership.”

Maybe Alston scored higher on IQ tests than his shoe size after all.  “So how did Grubbs -- Detective Grubbs -- find me here?  I did not give the hotel my real name, you know.”

They looked at each other, and Agent Sanders spoke.

“Detective Grubbs didn’t find you here.  He just agreed to accompany us after we spoke to him first thing this morning.  You’d be surprised what an FBI badge and a recent photograph will do for the memory of a hotel desk clerk.”

“
I see.”  I’d have to remember that when I spoke to Grubbs.  I looked at Agent Sanders with a sudden flash of understanding.  “So, did you two trash my boat?”

“
Mr. Slate, if we had wanted to search your boat, we would have shown up at the dock with a search warrant.”

“
Sure you would.  Unless you didn’t.”

“
And if we had conducted such an unlawful search, sir, not that we would have, sir, you would never have known we were there, sir.”

“
So to make it look like it wasn’t you guys, you searched my boat and trashed it.”

Agent Alston spoke up.  “You two are making my head hurt.  You know we fibbies aren’t that smart, Slate.”

Agent Sanders nodded.  “Look, Slate, we need to work together.  The FBI doesn't usually investigate murders, but we don't ignore them either.  I personally feel a sense of urgency after this last one.  We both need the information on that memory stick, but you don’t have the resources to retrieve it.  I do.”

“
Memory stick?”

Sanders rolled her eyes.  “We do investigate, you know.”

“But how did you know about the memory stick?”

“
Your friend Moeller seems to enjoy a drink with a friendly FBI agent.”

“
I see.”  Herr Moeller.  “Well played, Ms. Sanders.  But I usually work alone.”

“
On this one you need our help, and besides, we were on this before you were, and you know the bureau is the first level of law enforcement in any kidnapping case.”

“
Sure, but what exactly are you talking about?”

Agent Sanders speared me with those unmatched eyes and said, “We think you know, but in any case, we are here to deliver an invitation.”

“I’m invited to an event?  A dinner party?  A soirée?  I don’t believe I’ve ever had an invitation from an FBI agent before.”

She shook her head.  “The United States attorney would like you to come down to the federal building -- with us -- and talk with her about this matter that it seems, whether we like it or not, we’re both working on.”

“You know you work for an unconstitutional agency.”

“
Maybe so,” said Alston, “but we’re hell at solving encryption algorithms.”

“
Well.  I suppose you are, at that.”  I stood, walked to the window and looked out.  In the distance I could see Legion Field, where Paul Bryant had leaned, so effortless and casual, so many years ago, against a goal post, a real-life John Wayne in a houndstooth hat.

A little farther south, on a hill overlooking old steel mill neighborhoods, sprawled the Alabama Southern campus, where I’d found the body of an innocent young girl.

I turned back toward the room and Mr. and Ms. FBI.  “All right,” I said.  “I’ll meet with you and the U.S. attorney.”

“
Good,” said Agent Sanders.  “See?” she said to Agent Alston.  “I told you he’d come around.”

“
Did I have a choice?”  I asked.

“
No,” Alston said.

“
When is this meeting proposed?” I said.

“
Now,” Sanders answered.

“
The government at work on a Saturday?”

“
You’d be surprised,” Sanders said.

“
I’ll get my coat and hat,” I said.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Tweedledee and Tweedledum, uhh, that is, Agents Sanders and Alston, escorted me out of the hotel, and we walked shoulder to shoulder up Richard Arrington Boulevard and underneath I-20.

I felt like explaining to other pedestrians that this was not a perp walk, but I doubted that my escorts would appreciate the humor.

Agent Sanders held a cell phone to her ear with one hand and hoisted an umbrella against the cold mist with the other.  Alston trudged along beside me, occasionally bumping into my shoulder, no doubt to assert his jurisdiction.

Our ten-minute walk took us past the Birmingham Museum of Art, the Jefferson County Courthouse, the Tutwiler hotel, and the headquarters buildings of Birmingham’s major banks and law firms.

On the damp streets, a few men and women, most in some kind of rain gear, walked quickly, coats and umbrellas held close, eyes squinting against the wind and rain.

As we passed the front doors of One Federal Place, a modern eleven-story building of gray granite and blue-tinted glass, Alston held up one hand and spoke into my ear.  “Let’s duck in here for a second,” he said.

“
What’s going on?” I said.  I nodded at the blue-tinted windows of the building’s lobby restaurant.  “You have a sudden craving for chicken salad?”

“
Lay off the smart comments for once, Slate.  I’m trying to do you a favor.”

Alston turned to his partner.  “Go ahead to the offices and get the lawyers ready,” he said.  “We’ll be right behind you.”

Sanders nodded and walked on past the fountain in the building’s plaza and toward the federal reserve branch bank on the corner.

I followed Alston into the building.  “Come on, Slate,” he said.  You’re going to thank me for this.”

He walked past the elevator entrance at the rear of the large lobby.

Behind the elevators, a smaller alcove partially concealed the doors to the lobby restrooms.  In front of the men’s room sat a cleaning cart with a yellow “Temporarily Closed” banner.

Alston sidestepped the cart and pushed the frosted glass door completely open.

Inside, an attendant wearing iPod headphones swabbed one of the stalls.  I hung back with no idea why we were here.

Alston tapped the attendant on the elbow and held out his FBI identification wallet.  “We need privacy for a few minutes, friend,”  he said.  “Take a break.”  The attendant nodded, said something that might have been “Yep,” and disappeared out the door.

Alston moved the cart inside and closed the door so the cart blocked the door from anyone trying to enter.

“All right, sport,” he said.  “You’re carrying two items that you don’t want to be carrying when we see the marshals at the U.S. attorney’s building.  One inside the jacket, one on the ankle.”

“
You’re good,” I said.

“
I can be even better,” Alston said.  “You can just hand me the items.  I’m not going to take them off you.  I’ll carry them through the metal detector and keep them on me till you leave the building.  The marshals know I’m carrying so they won’t say a word to me.  But since you’re a lawyer, I’m sure you know it’s a federal offense to show up at the door of a federal facility with a weapon.  The marshals might look the other way since you’re with me, but what’s the point in making them decide?  And even if they did, they won’t hold them for you, and I will.”

I couldn’t argue with his logic, and I had no doubt that Alston would return the guns to me as he promised.  Otherwise, I could complain to his partner, Strangeeyes.  Or the U.S. attorney.  Or the president.  He surely wouldn’t cling to my guns.

I handed over the guns.  He stuck the Glock in his jacket pocket, strapped the Ruger on his ankle, nodded, and we walked out.

The office of the United States attorney for the Northern District of Alabama resides in a nondescript, or, more precisely, ugly brown brick building on Fourth Avenue North, diagonally across Eighteenth Street from the Hugo L. Black federal courthouse, named for the state’s only United States Supreme Court justice.

From outside, the building housing the offices of the U.S. attorney might be mistaken for a document depository or an unsold renovation.  Closer inspection revealed the inevitable presence of the metal detector and X-ray machines just a few feet inside the entrance, staffed by a phalanx of United States marshals, if a couple of aging and none-too-fit gentlemen perching on what looked like cheap bar stools amounted to a phalanx.

The present United States attorney for the Northern District, Katherine Parker, was the third female U.S. attorney in a row for the district.  Back in 2000, George W. appointed a former state court judge to the post.  The former judge’s husband, a wealthy businessman, had donated bushels of money to the Republican party.

Barack Obama appointed a long-serving assistant United States attorney to the job.  Her grandfather had served for two terms as chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court.  An uncle serving on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals had died in 1989 when he attempted to disarm a man who walked just in front of him thorough a revolving door into the courthouse lobby in Houston, pulled out a gun and began firing at random.  A federal marshal stepped out of the elevator, drew his weapon, and killed the lunatic with two shots.

United States Attorney Katherine Parker did not keep me waiting.  When Alston and I reached Parker’s outer office, Sanders was seated on a black tufted leather couch against a wall opposite a secretary’s desk.  Otherwise, the room was empty.

Sanders looked up at us.

“They’re ready,” she said.

At the same moment, the door to the inner office opened.  A pretty young black woman, her hair held in back by some sort of leather and dowel contraption, came through and closed the door behind her.

“Good morning, Agent Alston,” she said.

“
Good morning, Molly,” Alston said.  Molly glanced at me.  “This is Mr. Slate,” Alston told her.  He made it sound like an apology.

“
So I expected,” said Molly.  She nodded at me.  “Mr. Slate.”

“
Molly,” I said.

“
I apologize, Mr. Slate.  I am Molly Blevins, U.S. Attorney Parker’s legal assistant.  Ms. Parker and the others are ready to see you now.”  She opened the inner office door and gestured with her other hand for us to enter.

Katherine Parker had arranged her office much like a number of judges I knew arranged theirs.  Her desk sat on the diagonal in a corner of the room.  Perpendicular to the desk were two conference tables arranged end-to-end to create one conference table around twelve feet in length.

The walls were covered with bookshelves and prints of famous lawyers and presidents and a green felt wallpaper that would not have been out of place in a men’s club in London.

Around the table sat three young assistant United States attorneys, and, seated at her desk, the United States attorney herself.

Parker stood after we had entered the room and Molly Blevins had closed the door.  Agents Sanders and Alston took seats at the table on my right.  Parker wore a dark gray suit over a red silk blouse with vertical tuxedo pleats.  She held gold-rimmed reading glasses in her left hand and wore minimal makeup.

“
Mr. Slate, my name is Katherine Parker,” she said.  “I am the United States attorney in this district.  Thank you for coming in for this meeting.”

I nodded.  “Thank you for the. . . .” I glanced at Alston.  “The invitation.”

“Please understand, Mr. Slate, that the leaders of my task force on this case were prepared to meet with you whenever you were ready.  This office has committed substantial resources to this case, and your involvement represents a significant development.  I hope Agent Sanders and Agent Alston made that clear.”

She looked at Sanders, who raised her eyebrows slightly.  “Well,” Parker said, sitting down.  “Let’s get started.  Mr. Clark?”

One of the attorneys on my left sat forward.

“
Mr. Slate, Thomas Clark.  The former U.S. attorney in this office appointed me to head this district’s task force on corruption in government.  Ms. Parker kept me in that position.  The task force. . . .”

“
Stop,” I said.  “Task force?  Government corruption?”

Clark nodded.  “Yes.  The task force was formed five years ago. . . .”

“Wait,” I held out a hand.  “I appreciate that you have a presentation to make, Mr. Clark.  But I didn’t sign on to any task force on government corruption.  I’m not in politics, and I’m not interested in taking scalps from politicians.  I’m just a simple guy who tries to help clients with problems.  I was hired to find a missing girl.  That’s all.”

Katherine Parker spoke.  “We understand and appreciate your position, Mr. Slate.  All of us here, well, except Ms. Sanders, are lawyers.  Ms. Sanders’ background, as you may know, is in forensic accounting.  I’m sure we would all someday like to return to basics and lead uncomplicated lives.  But when a person chooses to practice law or accounting, he or she leaves simplicity behind.  I think you need to hear us out.  I think you would show us that professional courtesy.  Your reputation indicates that your behavior towards other professionals, other lawyers, has always been more respectful than your rhetoric.  In any event, we can help each other here.”

“I behave in a more civil manner than I talk.  Some might say it’s the other way around.  But, all right, Ms. Parker, you win.  This time.  I’m here.  Might as well listen.  I might learn something.”  I thought of Don Kramer’s comment to me about knowing how to listen.

“
Indeed you might, as we may as well.  Mr. Clark?”

“
Yes, thanks.  Well, as I was saying, Mr. Slate, five years ago, Ms. Parker’s predecessor formed a task force on corruption in Alabama state government.  Initially, that task force focused on corruption in the two-year college system, and its work led to indictments and prosecutions.  After we discovered the connections among the persons of interest and defendants in that investigation and gambling interests, the office of the U.S. attorney for the Middle District of Alabama launched an investigation into the influence of gambling money in state government.  As you know, that investigation also led to indictments of gambling kingpins, lobbyists, and legislators.  Even a few  confessions and pleas of guilty.”

“
And several not guilty verdicts.”

“
Yes.  But information turned up by that task force caused us here in this district to regroup our two-year college task force and start a new investigation into inroads made by elements of organized crime into state government.”

Clark paused to take a sip of water.

“And then our investigation took an unexpected turn.”

He looked up from his notes and looked down the table at me.  “You know where I’m headed now, don’t you?”

“The oil and gas business,”  I said.

“
You got it.  Nearly everyone in Alabama has heard of the Exxon case.  The State of Alabama sued Exxon for breach of contract because, it alleged, Exxon charged unrelated costs against Alabama’s share and cheated the state out of royalty payments.  The Cunningham, Bounds firm out of Mobile represented the state and won a multi-billion dollar verdict.”

“
Most of the damages award was reversed on appeal,” I said.

Clark nodded and sipped more water.

“Yes.”  He shrugged.  “And that case had no relation to organized crime.  But that is not our interest here.  After the BP oil spill in the Gulf, the entire oil and gas industry viewed itself as having a target on its back.  And maybe it did.  Also not our interest.”  He raised a palm.  “Not our present interest.”

I said, “So, let’s get to it.  What is your present interest, and what does any of this have to do with finding Kris Kramer?”

Katherine Parker answered the question.  “Mr. Slate, this is confidential and off the record.  Do I have your agreement on that?”

I nodded.

“We believe you may have in your possession information which would assist the United States in its investigation of corruption in government related to possible bribery of state officials in Alabama and other Southern states by entities in the oil and gas business.  And yes, we think it may be related to Ms. Kramer’s disappearance.  As you know, these FBI agents and others are working night and day on that case as well.”

“
The memory stick,”  Alston said.

“
And possibly more,” Parker added.

“
Have you convened a grand jury?” I asked.

“
That is not only confidential, but secret, but for purposes of discussion in this room only, you may assume that we have convened or will soon convene a grand jury on this case,” said Parker.

“
Then why didn’t you just issue a subpoena to Woolf White?”

Clark answered.  “We would have gotten there.  We -- ahh -- we had information that Kramer was working on the case from the civil side.  Nevertheless, the firm had not filed a lawsuit.  And we knew we would face a barrage of objections on grounds of various privileges.  Then Kris Kramer disappeared, and her father was killed.”