“Yeah. Like me.”
49
Backus said the story was like a sheet hanging on a clothesline in high wind. Barely held on by a few clothespins, it was ready to fly away.
“We need more, Jack.”
I nodded. He was the expert. Besides, the real trial had already been held in my heart and the verdict was in.
“What are you going to do?” I asked.
“I’m thinking. You had—you were beginning a relationship with her, weren’t you?”
“It was that obvious?”
“Yes.”
Then he didn’t say anything for a full minute. He paced the room, not really looking at anything, all interior dialogue and thought. Finally, he stopped moving and looked at me.
“Would you wear a wire?”
“What do you mean?”
“You know what I mean. I’ll bring her back here, put her alone with you and you draw it out. You might be the only one who could.”
I looked down at the floor. I remembered our last phone conversation and how she had seen through my act.
“I don’t know. I don’t think I could pull it off.”
“She might be suspicious and check,” Backus said, discarding the idea and searching the floor with his eyes for another. “Still, you’re the one, Jack. You’re not an agent and she knows if need be she can take you.”
“Take me where?”
“Take you out.” He snapped his fingers. “I’ve got it. You won’t have to wear a wire. We’ll put you inside the wire.”
“What are you talking about?”
He raised a finger as if to tell me to hold on. He picked up the phone, wedged the receiver into the crook of his neck and carried it with him while he tapped in a number and waited for an answer. The cord was like a leash, containing his pacing to only a few steps in any direction.
“Pack your things,” he said to me while waiting for the call to be picked up.
I got up and slowly began to follow his order, putting my few things in the computer bag and the pillowcase while listening as he asked for Agent Carter and then began issuing directions. He told Carter to call Quantico communications and to relay a message to the bureau jet with Rachel on it. Call the plane back, Backus ordered.
“Just tell them something’s come up that cannot be discussed on the air and that I need her back here,” he said into the phone. “Nothing more than that. Understand?”
Satisfied with Carter’s reply, he pressed on.
“Now, before you do that, put me on hold and call the SAC’s office. I need the exact address and key combination for the earthquake house. He’ll know what I mean. I’ll be going there from here. I want you to grab a sound and video tech and two good agents. I’ll fill you in there. Call the SAC now.”
I looked at Backus with a curious expression.
“I’m on hold.”
“Earthquake house?”
“Clearmountain told me about it. It’s in the hills over the Valley. Top to bottom it’s wired. Sound and video. It was damaged in the quake and the real owners just left it, didn’t have insurance. The bureau leased it from the bank and used it for a sting on local building and safety inspectors, contractors and repairmen. A lot of fraud involving the funds from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. That’s where the bureau came in. Indictments are pending. The sting’s been closed down but the bureau’s lease isn’t up. So it’s—”
He held his hand up. Carter had come back on the line. Backus listened for a few moments and nodded his head.
“Right on Mulholland and then the first left. Easy enough. What’s your ETA?”
He hung up after telling Carter we’d get there ahead of him and adding that he needed the agent’s best work on this.
As Backus drove away from the hotel I made a secret salute to the Marlboro Man. We went east on Sunset to Laurel Canyon Boulevard and then up the winding cut through the mountains.
“How’s this going to work?” I asked him. “How are you going to get Rachel up to this place we’re going?”
“You’ll leave a message for Rachel on her voice mail at Quantico. You’ll tell her you’re at a friend’s house—somebody you used to know from the paper who moved out here—and leave the number. Then when I talk to Rachel I’ll tell her I called her back from Florida because you’ve been making calls and strange accusations about her but nobody knows where you are. I’ll tell her I think you’ve popped too many pain pills but that we need to bring you in.”
I was feeling increasingly uncomfortable about the prospect of being used as bait and having to face Rachel. I did not know how I’d be able to bring it off.
“Eventually,” Backus continued, “Rachel will get the message. But she won’t call you. Instead, she’ll trace the number to the house and she’ll go to you, Jack. Alone. For one of two things.”
“What?” I asked, though I already had a pretty good idea.
“To either try to set you straight. . . or to kill you. She’ll think you’re the only one who knows. She’ll need to convince you that you are wrong about these wild-ass ideas. Or she’ll need to put you in the ground. My guess is that it will be the ground.”
I nodded. It was my guess, too.
“But we’ll be there. Inside with you, close.”
It wasn’t comforting.
“I don’t know. . .”
“Not to worry, Jack,” Backus said, reaching over and giving me a playful punch on the shoulder. “You’ll be all right and this time we’re going to do it right. What you do have to worry about is getting her to talk. Get her on the tape, Jack. Get her admitting to just one part of the Poet’s story and we’ve got her for the rest. Get her on tape.”
“I’ll try.”
“You’ll be fine.”
At Mulholland Drive, Backus turned right as Carter had instructed and we followed the road as it snaked along the mountain crest, offering a view through the darkening haze of the Valley below. We serpentined for nearly a mile until we saw Wrightwood Drive and turned left and descended into a neighborhood of small houses built on steel pylons, their weight hanging out over the mountain’s edge, precarious testaments to engineering and the desires of developers to leave their mark on every crest in the city.
“Do you believe people live in these things?” Backus asked.
“Hate to be in one during an earthquake.”
Backus drove slowly, checking the address numbers painted on the curb. I let him do that while I watched between the houses for glimpses of the Valley below. It was approaching dusk and many of the lights were coming on down there. Backus finally stopped the car in front of a house on a bend in the road.
“This is it.”
It was a small, wood-frame structure. From the front the pylons that supported it could not be seen and it seemed to be floating above the deep drop-off to the Valley. We both looked at it for a long moment without making a move to get out.
“What if she knows about the house?”
“Rachel? She won’t, Jack. I only know because of Clearmountain. It came up during a bit of gossip. Some of the guys from the FO use the place on occasion, if you know what I mean. When they’re with someone they can’t bring home.”