Shadow Man (24 page)

Having finished a meal that had been dominated by the woman’s wary stare, Moon wiped his mouth with a linen napkin, leaned back in his chair. “How did you like your grub?”

A little shrug. “It was okay.”

He grinned. “That’s all you can say—just ‘okay’?”

“You are beginning to annoy me.” Special Agent McTeague tossed an olive at him.

Moon executed a deft one-hand catch. “Well, that’s a beginning.”

“Let me be more succinct.” Her tone was acidic. “You are giving me heartburn.”

“I never wanted to do that—what can I do to make up for it?”

“Behave like every other local cop who believes he’s been stepped on by the Bureau. Put up a big fuss, bang your fist on the table, yell about how the FBI has no right to order you off the Blinkoe homicide case.”

“I would if I could—but my heart wouldn’t be in it.”

“Even so. Humor me.”

“Okay, I’ll try to give you some trouble.” He helped himself to an after-dinner mint. “I suppose I could ask you why the FBI has latched on to this particular killing. But that’s no good. You wouldn’t tell me.”

“Perhaps.” She flashed the sunshine smile. “But you won’t know unless you ask straight-out.”

“I’m way too shy for the direct approach. Would you mind if I worked my way up to a guess?”

“I could say yes.” She avoided his level gaze. “But that wouldn’t stop you.”

“Thank you for the encouragement. Here goes: First time I met Dr. Blinkoe was when he came to my aunt Daisy’s place with his lawyer. While my relative entertained Mr. Trotter, me and this potential client had a private talk. Blinkoe claimed he was sure someone had already tried to shoot him that night on the restaurant patio. He wanted me to help him stay alive. When I asked why he didn’t go to the cops on the public payroll, he told me he’d already talked to our local chief of police, who didn’t believe the shooter had intended to put a hole through him. And as far as the feds were concerned, they weren’t. Concerned, I mean. Blinkoe claimed the FBI didn’t care a nickel’s worth whether he got shot or not.” The gambler was holding sorry cards. He hoped McTeague would show her hand.

“Did Dr. Blinkoe tell you
why
he was not the Bureau’s favorite orthodontist?”

Moon played the bluff. “Every cop shop in a dozen states has heard one version or another of the story. But the fact is, when some cold-blooded killer was stalking Blinkoe, he knew the FBI wouldn’t turn a finger to help him. The way he saw it, the feds wanted him behind bars for the rest of his natural life.” He paused. “But seeing as how the U.S. government hadn’t managed to get that done…maybe the Bureau would be satisfied just to see him dead. That way, they could close the case—without making the least effort to find out what’d
really
happened.”

She clenched her hands into fists. “So that’s what he told you. And you believed him?”

Moon shrugged. “I don’t necessarily believe everything a client tells me.” He put on a sad expression. “Even when it looks like he was an innocent victim of circumstantial evidence.”

“Him—innocent?” Agent McTeague rolled her pretty eyes. “That’s a laugh.”

“Sounds like you’ve read his file.”

“Cover to cover.” She tapped a finger on the table. “And we’re talking upwards of two hundred pages.”

“I don’t doubt he’s misbehaved from time to time—most of us have something to be ashamed of.” Moon looked ashamed of some unconfessed sin. “But there’s no hard proof he was mixed up in that
particular
business. From time to time, even the FBI makes mistakes.”

“There was no mistake,” she snapped. “Blinkoe was there, manning the machine gun, when the cartel soldiers were killed in the shootout. The wounded pilot and his partners—by which I mean Blinkoe and the Colombian national—got away in the Humvee and the laundry truck with at least twenty bags of cash.”

Machine gun. Cartel
.
Pilot. Humvee. Laundry truck. Bags of cash.
This was a fit for only one of the felonies he’d heard of during the past decade. Now Charlie Moon knew what Blinkoe had been suspected of—and in all likelihood was guilty of. Suppressing the satisfied expression required all of his willpower. “Well, whoever the pilot’s partners were, that was quite some operation. The DC-3 they swiped from the aircraft museum near Santa Fe was supposed to land just south of the border in old Mexico. But the pilot puts the crate down a few miles
north
of the border, in New Mexico, where some of his buddies are waiting.”

“You are rather well informed.” She arched an eyebrow at the tribal investigator. “Did Manfred Blinkoe tell you about this?”

“Nope.”
You did.
“It was a pretty big deal at the time. There were stories in the newspapers, and on the TV. And from what I recall, the DC-3 jockey and his buddies were never found.”

“Your information from the popular media is incomplete.”

He grinned. “Then fill me in.”

She hesitated, then: “The pilot—a Mr. Hitchcock—was mortally wounded in the firefight. Manfred Blinkoe and his Colombian pal—a Mr. Pablo Feliciano—loaded the pilot into the laundry truck with the stolen money, but he died before they arrived at their destination. They disposed of the corpse in an arroyo somewhere in the Gila Wilderness. Hours later, they concealed their ill-gotten gains at a prearranged location.”

Moon performed a rapid calculation: Three minus one minus one more equals one. “Of the three fellas who allegedly set up the hijacking, the pilot died that same night. On the reasonable assumption that Dr. Blinkoe did not inform on
himself,
Señor Feliciano must have been the guy who talked.”

She smiled at this faultless piece of deduction. “Only a few weeks after the incident, Pablo Feliciano was arrested in Sonora on a murder charge. He made a deal with the
federales.
In hopes of having the charges reduced to manslaughter, he agreed to rat out his U.S. partners in the hijacking. A team of DEA and FBI agents interviewed him in the Hermosillo
calabozo.
”

“And he implicated Dr. Blinkoe?”

“Of course.” She gave him an expectant look. “This is where you ask me why Manfred Blinkoe was never formally charged by the Department of Justice.”

“Okay. Why was Dr. Blinkoe never formally charged by the Department of Justice?”

“Before the DEA could obtain a legally deposed statement, someone detonated a charge of high explosive against the cell-block wall. Three prisoners died as a result, but about two dozen others escaped during the confusion—including Mr. Feliciano. There were several rumors floating around about who had set up the jailbreak. Would you like to hear the one I like best?”

Eager to please the lady, Moon nodded.

“Okay, here’s my favorite: According to this theory, the Colombian drug cartel was behind it—they blew up half the jail just to get access to Feliciano. This score-settling scenario is supported by reports of his subsequent death, but his body hasn’t turned up.”

“So Hitchcock is dead, Feliciano is either dead or in hiding, and all you’ve got on Dr. Blinkoe is hearsay evidence from a known felon.”

“Sadly, that is about the size of it. It would have helped to have Feliciano’s sworn testimony in a court of law that Manfred Blinkoe participated in the theft of the cartel’s money-filled laundry bags.”

He thought it would be fun to twist this she-cat’s tail a couple of more turns. And just maybe, crank out some additional information. “That’s not the way I heard it,” Moon said. “The word going around was that Dr. Blinkoe was clean as a brand-new butterfly wing. In fact, he was in North Carolina at the time, attending a medical conference. The shootout was actually between two gangs of Colombian drug dealers who—”

“What you heard from your doughnut-munching police-station buddies were baseless rumors. According to Mr. Feliciano’s informal testimony, Blinkoe and Hitchcock were his partners in the hijacking. On top of that, Blinkoe was the machine gunner. Without provocation, he shot down several Colombian citizens. The fact that they were drug runners is quite beside the point—Blinkoe was a cold-blooded murderer.”

The Ute looked troubled. “It is bad form to speak ill of the lately deceased.”

“Spare me the pithy proverbs. Alive, Blinkoe was a rotten apple. Now he is a dead rotten apple.”
If he’s actually dead…

“You are a tough lady, McTeague.”

“That may be. Do you want to hear—as the famous news broadcaster Mr. Paul Harvey might say—the ‘rest of the story’?”

“You bet. I have my ear to the radio.”

“The Colombian who ratted out Blinkoe also told us where the bags of cash were cached.”

“You have a way with words, Agent McTeague. But from the sad look on your pan, I’m gonna guess that when the feds got to the spot, those bags of greenbacks were gone.”

“Of course they were gone. Manfred Blinkoe had undoubtedly heard through the grapevine about the leak south of the border. But this wasn’t some story Feliciano made up—forensics evidence of the presence of the loot was found.”

“Forensics evidence—what are we taking about?”

“A single twenty-dollar bill. Beside President Jackson, it featured a dime-sized smirking smiley face, sketched in red ink.” The FBI agent looked as if she would like to bite a railroad spike. “It is obvious that Dr. Blinkoe left this item behind to taunt the federal authorities.”

“Not a smart thing to do.”

“I hope you will remember that. But the main point is that your recently deceased client had removed the laundry bags filled with twenty-dollar bills. Dr. Blinkoe probably deposited this very considerable fortune in several foreign bank accounts.”

“Well, that’s an interesting story. If those bags of money aren’t fiction, somebody must’ve made off with ’em. But except for some tale told by a felon locked up in a Mexican jail, there’s no proof my client had anything to do with—”

“Your
former
client, Charlie. And I’m not interested in hearing an account of his protestations about being an innocent bystander or whatever.” She had twisted her linen napkin into a knot. “I
hate
it when bad guys get away.”

“I hate to mention money. But what was the take?”

“An estimated eighty million dollars.”

Moon made a low whistle. “That much?”

She nodded. “I am authorized to tell you that the Department of the Treasury is offering a substantial reward for information leading to the recovery of the cash.”

“How substantial?”

“Ten percent of the amount recovered. So if you should happen to come across any information that might assist the government—such as numbers to foreign bank accounts—it would be well worth your while to pass such information on.”

“Seems unlikely to come up, but for the sake of discussion, let’s say it did. I’d have to think about what I should do.” He leaned back in his chair. Thought about it. “I don’t know, somehow it just wouldn’t seem right to turn that drug money over to the Treasury.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Well, that cash came from private U.S. citizens who were buying crack and heroin and Mary Jane and the like. Seems to me like the money ought to be returned to those poor, addicted souls.”

She stared. “Tell me you are kidding.”

“Okay, I’m kidding.” He grinned at her big eyes. “But there is another problem.”

“I don’t want to hear about it.”

“Suit yourself.”

“Oh, go ahead. Tell me before you burst.”

“We rural westerners don’t burst. We bust.”

“Okay, cowboy. Tell me before you bust.”

“If I knew where eighty million in unmarked cash was stashed, why should I settle for a measly ten percent?” He leaned forward, elbows on the table. “Why not take it all?”

She flashed a charming smile. “Because I would have a low opinion of a man who did such a thing?”

“But how would you know?”

“If you should buy up eighty million dollars in prime ranch land and purebred cattle and shiny red pickup trucks, I would become mildly suspicious.”

“Yeah.” He sighed. “There is that.”

She suddenly looked very tired. “I will not rest until this mess is sorted out.”

“Look, McTeague—don’t take your work so personal, or it’ll get you down. That drug-money heist happened quite a while back. Whoever was responsible, odds are ninety-nine to one against the stash ever turning up—or anybody going to jail.” He took a sip of tepid coffee. “But let’s get back to more recent times, and the issue of who took a shot at Dr. Blinkoe—and when that didn’t take him out, blew Blinkoe’s houseboat sky-high with a charge of dynamite. Does the Bureau figure it had something to do with that DC-3 hijacking?”

Her lips went thin. “That possibility has occurred to us. It is possible that the drug cartel has decided to get even with the only survivor of the team that hijacked their stolen aircraft, mowed down their soldiers like grass, and hauled away several bags of their ill-gotten gains.”

“Well, I’m more than happy to let the FBI and DEA deal with the drug cartel.”

She pitched him a hardball. “So who is your lady friend?”

Moon caught it, felt the sting. “Which lady friend?”

“The one you gave my roses to.”

“Oh. That was Miss Atherton.”

“Is she good-looking?”

Moon thought about it. “She’s what I’d call
cute.
”

The FBI agent closed her eyes, frowned, scanned the pages. “Are we talking about
Phyllis
Atherton? Your eighty-year-old schoolteacher?”

He stared. “How did you know about her?”

“I have what is commonly known as a photographic memory.” She laughed at him. “You have a pretty thick file too.”

This is an amazing woman.
“And you’ve read it all?”

“Every page, including footnotes.” She winked at her date. “I know every bad thing you’ve ever done. All of your former girlfriends’ names.”

Charlie Moon was trying to think of a suitable response when the waiter arrived with the check, smiled benignly at the diners, departed like a wisp of fluff in a summer breeze. Moon noticed Big Tony heading into the kitchen, probably to nag the hired help. He produced his wallet, cracked the pocket where he kept his greenbacks. “Dang!”