The Lion's Game (75 page)

“I thought you said—”

“I lied. I’m a lawyer. I said, ‘Trust me.’ That means I’m lying. How stupid can you be?” She laughed.

I was stunned.

She said, “Have a root beer.”

“I’m going to have a fit.”

She took my hand.

I calmed down and ordered a Virgin Mary.

The First Class meal wasn’t too bad and the movie, starring John Travolta playing an Army CID guy, was terrific, despite a bad review that I recalled reading in Long Island’s
Newsday
, written by John Anderson, a so-called movie critic, whose opinion I trusted to be the exact opposite of mine.

Kate and I held hands during the movie, just like kids in a theater. When the movie ended, I put my seat back and fell asleep.

As often happens, I had a revealing dream about what I couldn’t think of when I was awake. I mean, the whole thing just came to me—what Khalil was up to, where he was going next, and what we had to do to catch him.

Unfortunately, when I woke up, I forgot most of the dream, including the brilliant conclusions I’d come to. It’s sort of like having a great sex dream and waking up realizing you still had a woody.

But I digress. We landed at LAX at 7:30 P.M., and for better or worse we were in California. This was either where we needed to be, or it wasn’t. We’d soon find out.

We deplaned first, went outside, and were met by an FBI guy from the Los Angeles office, who drove us to the police heliport where a waiting FBI helicopter flew us to Ventura, wherever the hell that is.

Everything on the ground looked like Queens, except for the palm trees and the mountains. We flew a few miles out over some ocean, I guess, then along the coastline with some hefty hills just to our right. The sun sat right above the ocean, but instead of rising, like it does on
my
ocean, it was setting. Is this place weird, or what?

Within twenty-five minutes, we landed at a heliport at the community hospital on the east side of Ventura.

A blue Crown Victoria sedan was waiting for us, driven by a guy named Chuck. Chuck was dressed in tan pants and a sports coat and wore running shoes. Chuck claimed to be an FBI agent, but looked like a parking attendant; FBI, California version. But they all
think
the same because they all attended the same Manchurian Candidate school at Quantico.

Chuck asked us lots of questions as he drove us to the Ventura sub-office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. I guess they don’t handle that many international terrorist mass murder cases in Ventura. In fact, Kate had mentioned on the plane that this office had been closed once and recently re-opened, for some reason.

The office was located in a sort of modern office building surrounded by palm trees and parking lots. As we walked through the parking lot, I looked around. I smelled flowers in the air, and the temperature and humidity were perfect. The sun had almost set, but there was still a glow in the sky.

I asked Kate, “What does the FBI do here? Grow avocados?”

“Adjust your attitude.”

“Sure.” I pictured the agents here with blue Brooks Brothers suits, sandals, and no socks.

Anyway, we went into the building, up an elevator, and found a door that said FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION. They had their round coat-of-arms on the door, too, which said JUSTICE DEPARTMENT, and showed the standard scales of Justice, balanced, not tipped, and the motto FIDELITY, BRAVERY, INTEGRITY. Can’t argue with that, but I said to Kate, “They should add, ‘Politically Correct.’”

She’d gotten into the habit of ignoring me and rang the buzzer.

The door opened, and we were met by a nice lady agent named Cindy Lopez, who said, “Nothing new. We have three Ventura agents in the Wiggins house, joined by three agents from the L.A. office. There are two dozen L.A. and Ventura agents in the neighborhood, the local police have been alerted, and everyone is in radio and cell phone contact. We’re still trying to locate Elwood Wiggins. We discovered from papers in his house that he flies for Pacific Cargo Services, and we visited them, but they informed us he’s not scheduled to fly until Friday. But they mentioned he sometimes calls in sick on Friday. We have two agents at Pacific Cargo at Ventura County Airport in the event he shows up there. We’ve also assigned agents to locations where he’s known to frequent. But we’re developing a picture of this man as a free spirit whose movements are erratic.”

“I like this guy.”

Agent Lopez sort of smiled and continued, “His girlfriend is also missing. They are both known to be campers, and it’s very possible they’re camping.”

“What’s camping?” I asked.

Ms. Lopez looked at Ms. Mayfield. Ms. Mayfield looked at me. I said, “Oh, like in the woods. Tents and all that.”

“Yes.”

“Do you have a cell phone number for Wiggins or the girlfriend?”

“Yes. For both. But no one answers.”

I thought a moment and decided that camping out was better than being dead, but not by much. I said to Ms. Lopez, “It sounds like you did a thorough job.”

“I’m sure we have.” She handed Kate a message slip and said, “Jack Koenig called from New York. He’d like you to call him back. He’ll be there until midnight, New York time, then home.”

I said to Kate, “We’ll call him from the Wiggins house. When we have something to report.”

She said, “We’ll call now.”

“How’d you like to be talking to Jack here when Khalil shows up at the Wiggins house?”

She nodded reluctantly and said to Cindy Lopez, “Okay, we’d like to go out to Wiggins’ house.”

“We’re trying not to show too much activity there.”

I replied, “Then we’ll sit quietly on the couch.”

She hesitated, then said, “If you go, we would appreciate it if you stayed at least until the early morning hours.” She said pointedly, “We’re trying to set a trap, not have an open house party.”

I wanted to remind her that none of us would be at this juncture if it weren’t for moi. But I resisted saying the obvious. You see how quickly a case can get away from you?

Kate, always the diplomat, replied to Agent Lopez, “You’re in charge, and we’re not here to get in the way.”

Leaving Ms. Lopez to wonder why we
were
there. It’s all ego, lady. I said, “Ms. Mayfield and I began this case with the tragedy at Kennedy Airport, so we’d like to see it through. We’ll stay out of the way when we get to the Wiggins house.”

I didn’t think she believed me, but she said, “I would advise you to wear body armor. I have extras here I can loan you.”

I had the urge to strip and show Ms. Lopez that bullets just passed through me with no effect. I said, “Thank you, but—”

Kate interrupted, “Thank you, we’ll borrow the body armor.” She informed Ms. Lopez, “Never ask a man if he wants a bulletproof vest or a pair of mittens. Just make him put it on.”

Ms. Lopez smiled knowingly.

Well, I was feeling really special now, surrounded by nurturing, caring females who knew what was best for dopey little Johnny. But then I thought about Asad Khalil, and I hoped they had a vest in my size.

So off we went into their locked armament room behind a steel door. Inside the room were all the goodies—rifles, shotguns, stun grenades, handcuffs, and so on.

Ms. Lopez said, “You can try the vests on in the men’s and ladies’ rooms, if you wish.”

Kate thanked Agent Lopez as she left.

I took off my tie, jacket, and shirt, and said to Kate, “I won’t peek.”

She took off her Heinz ketchup jacket and her blouse, and I peeked.

We both found our size and strapped on the body armor. I said, “This is just like a scene in the
X-Files
—”

“Stop with the fucking
X-Files
.”

“But doesn’t it bug you that those two never get it on?”

“She doesn’t
love
him. She respects him and he respects her, and they don’t want to lose or complicate that special relationship of trust.”

“Say again?”

“Personally, I think they should be fucking by now.”

We exited the armory and thanked Agent Lopez. Chuck, who had picked us up at the community hospital heliport, escorted us back out to the parking lot and drove us toward the house of Mr. Elwood “Chip” Wiggins.

A lot of thoughts ran through my mind as the car moved west toward the left coast. I’d come a long way to be here, but Mr. Asad Khalil had come a much longer way. His journey had begun in a place called Al Azziziyah somewhere in Libya, a long time ago. He and Chip Wiggins had, for a few brief minutes, shared a point in space and time on the night of April 15, 1986. Now, Asad Khalil wanted to repay the visit, and Mr. Wiggins didn’t know he had company calling. Or, Chip Wiggins had already met Asad Khalil, and the business was finished. In that case, no one would show up at the Wiggins house, ever. But if Wiggins and Khalil had not yet met, I wondered who would be the first to come walking up the driveway.

The sunlight was almost gone, and the streetlights had come on.

As we approached Wiggins’ neighborhood, Chuck radioed ahead to the stakeout units around Wiggins’ house, so that they didn’t get nervous or trigger-happy. Chuck then used his cell phone to call the agents inside the Wiggins house for the same reason, and I said, “Tell them to put coffee on.”

Chuck didn’t pass this along, and I could tell by his end of the phone conversation that the agents in the house weren’t thrilled about the unexpected company. Fuck ’em. It’s still my case.

Anyway, we drove through the long, straight streets of a suburban neighborhood that Chuck said was near the ocean, though I didn’t see or smell the ocean. All the houses were on undersized lots, and the houses themselves were all single-story stucco boxes with attached garages and red-tile roofs, plus at least one palm tree per house. It didn’t seem to be an expensive neighborhood, but in California, there was no way to tell, and neither did I care. I said to Chuck, “Were these houses always here, or did they come down in a mudslide from the mountains?”

Chuck chuckled and replied, “They slid down from the last earthquake, which preceded the wildfires.”

I liked Chuck.

Happily, I didn’t spot any of the stakeout units, and more happily, I didn’t spot any kids around.

Chuck said, “That’s the house on the right—second from the cross street.”

“You mean the white stucco with the red-tile roof and the palm tree?”

“Yeah ... they all ... second from the end.”

Kate, riding in the rear, kicked the back of my seat, which was some sort of signal, I guess.

Chuck said, “I’ll stop, you exit, and off I go. Front door is unlocked.”

I’d noticed when I got in the car that the interior lights had been disconnected, just like on the East Coast, which was reassuring. It was possible these people knew what they were doing.

The car stopped, Kate and I got out quickly, and without running moved up the broken concrete walkway. To the right of the door was a large picture window with the Venetian blinds shut. In my old neighborhood, the whole block would have been hip to the strange goings-on by this time, but this block looked like a scene from a 1950s B movie where everyone is dead from atomic radiation. Or maybe the Feds had evacuated the neighborhood.

So, I opened the door, and in we went. There was no foyer, and we found ourselves in a combination L-shaped living room/dining room, lit only by a single dim table lamp. A man and a woman stood in the middle of the room, wearing blue slacks and shirts, FBI nylon windbreakers with creds attached. They had big grins on their faces, and their hands were outstretched in greeting. Not really.

The man did say, “I’m Roger Fleming, and this is Kim Rhee.”

Ms. Rhee was Oriental, now called East Asian, and by her name I guessed she was of Korean ethnicity. Roger was white bread and mayonnaise. I said, “I guess you know our names—I’m the one called Kate.”

Agent Fleming did not smile and neither did Agent Rhee. Some people get all serious when they’re waiting around for a deadly shoot-out. Cops tend to yuck it up, probably to cover their nervousness, but the Feds take
everything
seriously, including, I’m sure, a day at the beach.

Agent Rhee inquired, “How long will you be staying?”

I replied, “As long as it takes.”

Kate said, “We don’t intend to become involved with the actual apprehension of the suspect, if he shows up here, unless you need us. We’re here only to help identify him, and to take a statement after he’s apprehended. Also, we will escort him back to New York or Washington to answer a variety of Federal charges.”