his skills?”
“What, you mean as a mercenary?” asked Walsh.
“Yeah, that sort of thing.”
Walsh and Tucker looked at each other, then back to the FBI agent. “It’s possible,” said Walsh.
“Would he be concerned about the nature of the target?”
“I would say not,” said Walsh.
Howard looked at Tucker for confirmation. The ensign nodded in agreement. Howard paused, tapping his pen on his notebook. “This last question is hypothetical, and I wouldn’t want it repeated outside this room. But I have to know exactly what I’m up against, I have to know what Lovell is capable of.” Both men stared at Howard, waiting for him to finish. “If he was paid enough, would Rich Lovell shoot the President?”
“Jesus Christ,” whispered Tucker.
“Based on what I’ve read in his file, I would say it’s a possibility,” said the lieutenant.
“Oh yes,” said Tucker. “Definitely.”
Rich Lovell’s BUPERS file listed his last address as an apartment block on the outskirts of Coronado, a ten- minute drive from the SEALs training compound. Howard sat in his car, read through the file, and examined the photograph of Lovell. The former SEAL had an unnaturally thin face as if giant fingers had pinched his head at birth. He wasn’t surprised to find that Lovell no longer lived at the apartment. His knock on the door was answered by a teenage girl with dilated pupils and the spaced-out stare of an intravenous drug user. A Grateful Dead record was playing in the background. Realising that the girl would probably freeze if she knew that there was an FBI agent on her doorstep, Howard slipped his credentials back into his pocket and told her that he was an old friend of Lovell’s. In a slow, faraway voice she told him that Lovell had left a year ago, that she’d never met him and that mail had stopped arriving about six months earlier.
“Did he leave a forwarding address?” Howard asked. He heard a voice from within the apartment and a bearded man appeared at the girl’s shoulder. He also had blank eyes and smelled like he could do with a bath.
“Who are you?” he asked, sticking his head forward.
“He’s a friend of that guy who used to live here,” the girl explained.
“He looks like a cop,” said the man.
“A lot of people say that,” said Howard.
“Yeah, well he doesn’t live here any more,” the man said and moved to close the door.
Howard put his foot against the door and kept it wedged open. “Did he leave anything behind?”
“No,” said the girl.
“That’s a cop’s question,” said the man, pushing harder.
“If I was a cop, I’d be in there with a warrant,” said Howard, coldly. “And if you don’t stop behaving like an asshole I’ll make sure they do pay you a visit.” The man mumbled something incoherent and moved away. Howard smiled at the girl. “Who’s your landlord?”
“Why?” she asked, frowning.
“I just want to know if the landlord has a forwarding address, that’s all.”
The furrows on the girl’s brow deepened as if she was having trouble understanding him, then she nodded. She left the doorway and disappeared back into the apartment. Howard slowly pushed the door open with his foot. The apartment was a mess, with clothes strewn across the furniture and dirty plates and fast-food cartons piled high on a table. The bearded man was sprawled on a sofa, one arm across his face as if shielding his eyes from what little sunlight fought its way through the grimy windows. The girl returned with a piece of paper torn from a notebook on which she’d scrawled a number. She thrust it at him and closed the door.
According to the BUPERS file on Lou Schoelen, Lovell’s diving buddy lived with his parents in a section of Coronado best described as belonging to poor white trash. The house was a single-storey building which was badly in need of repainting. A rusting Ford pick-up was standing in the driveway, its tailgate held closed with string. The untidy lawn, which was parched and turning brown in places, was surrounded by a chain-link fence. On the fence was a large, handwritten sign warning ‘Beware of the Dog’. Howard slowed his car as he drove by and a large Rottweiler sitting on the grass stared at him. Howard decided not to go knocking on the door, instead he drove to a telephone booth and called the number in the BUPERS file. An old woman answered and Howard guessed it was Schoelen’s mother. Her accent was Germanic and she spoke slowly as if she had trouble forming sentences. Howard told her he was an old friend from the Navy and Lou had always insisted that he drop by if ever he passed through Coronado. The woman was apologetic and said that her son was working in California and that she wasn’t expecting him back for at least three months. Howard asked if she had a number for him but she said he was moving around. When she asked for his name, Howard pretended not to hear her and hung up. He had several more quarters so he called Lovell’s former landlord from the public phone. He wasn’t surprised to find that Lovell hadn’t given a forwarding address.
Before catching the plane back to Phoenix, Howard telephoned the office to tell Kelly about Lovell and Schoelen and to give her the names and account numbers of the banks into which the Navy had paid their monthly salary cheques. He doubted that the two men would have been foolish enough to continue using the accounts, but he couldn’t afford not to check. It was surprising how often it was the little things which ended up with a name being crossed off the bureau’s Ten Most Wanted list.
“Bad news about the Peter Arnold and Justin Davies credit cards,” she said.
“What’s the problem?” asked Howard.
“I asked for a breakdown of the purchases and they’ve just arrived. Gold jewellery, television sets, video- recorders, stereo equipment. Not the sort of things that a terrorist would buy.”
“But exactly the sort of shopping list a homeboy with a stolen card would have,” said Howard.
“Just what I was thinking,” she said. “Sheldon says we should just pull them in.”
“I agree,” said Howard. He told her when he’d be back in the office and hung up. He ran a hand through his hair, mentally cursing Kelly Armstrong. It seemed that every time he left the office she took the opportunity to go running to see Jake Sheldon. She was one hell of an ambitious woman and Howard had the feeling she didn’t care overmuch who she had to step over to get to the top.
He made one final call — to his wife. She wasn’t at home and so he left a message on the answering machine telling her which flight he’d be on and that she wasn’t to worry, his car was at the airport and he’d drive himself home.
Mr Oh handed the old woman a receipt and wished her a good day. As she carried the Nintendo game system out of the shop, Mr Oh saw the two black youths standing at the window, looking in. They were pointing at a portable CD player, the latest Panasonic. They were wearing brand new black leather jackets and expensive Reeboks and had lots of gold chains and bracelets. They looked too young to be pimps, thought Mr Oh. More likely they were drug dealers. He sighed and waited for them to decide if they were going to buy or not. Mr Oh didn’t like his customers much, even though he depended on them for his livelihood. He didn’t have enough capital to open a store in the more prosperous areas of Los Angeles so until he could amass enough savings he was restricted to the black areas to the east of the city. Premises were relatively cheap, though security was a problem. Mr Oh had been robbed at gunpoint twice, and now he kept a small automatic taped under the counter.
His wife sat behind another counter at the far side of the shop reading a Korean newspaper. She glanced up at the two teenagers as they walked into the shop and then she returned to her newspaper.
“How can I help you?” asked Mr Oh.
One of the teenagers nodded towards the window. “Yeah, we wanna see the boom box in the window, the one with the CD player.”
“It’s $649,” said Mr Oh.
The teenager thrust his chin forward. “We’ve got money,” he said. Mr Oh went to the window display. “These fucking Koreans, they’ve got a real attitude,” said one of the boys.
“Yeah, you don’t get no respect, that’s for sure,” said the other.
Mr Oh snorted. He wanted to tell them that respect was something that had to be earned, and that it was hard to respect people who did nothing more productive than hang around on street corners, sell drugs and shoot each other. Mr Oh hated East Los Angeles with a vengeance. His shop had been looted during the 1992 riots and he had given serious thought to moving to the East Coast, where race relations weren’t as heated as they were in LA. If his eldest daughter hadn’t been in her second year of law school the family would have probably moved. Eventually he had decided to stay put, to refurbish the shop and restock it, but he had never got over the bitterness
