We were all on first-name basis now. It is an aggressively casual age, more obnoxious in its way than the Victorian married couples that called each other “Mr. Smith” and “Mrs. Smith” in public. And you can’t really screw someone over without calling him by his first name. Maybe I was being unfair to the head fed. Beneath his regulation gray suit, Pham seemed pleasantly oblivious to how much his press stunt had put me in a mess with the sheriff. Would it be wise to curse out an FBI man, much less the special agent in charge? Probably not. Was it possible to do my job without a knife in the back from Kate Vare? No way. All these thoughts were fighting to get out, but I shut up and picked at my salmon Caesar salad.
We sat by the window at Kincaid’s, a medium-fancy expense-account joint on the second floor of the Collier Center downtown. Over Pham’s shoulder, I could see the bulk of Bank One Ballpark. It was Monday, and three days had passed since Peralta’s “within a week” bullshit ultimatum. I had used the time to put in requests at a dozen federal and state agencies for information on George Weed. The bureaucratic wheels grinned at me: “You want it when?” But I was not without weapons of my own. After Kate’s press conference, I leveraged some of my own media events, gathered in my short career as a curiosity, a history professor who carries a badge. Two TV stations interviewed me on the discovery of the old badge and what it might mean. Lorie Pope wrote a story for the
If it was just a media contest, I had faltered in the first lap but then pulled ahead. But it wasn’t.
I did use the TV segments and the article to ask the public for information about George Weed: Call the Sheriff’s Office’s tip line at this 800 number. Aside from the usual psychos and conspiracy nuts, the line yielded nothing. But I did get a call from Eric Pham, promising me lunch.
Across from me, Pham ate the turkey and tomato slices from the shell of a club sandwich-“My wife is making us do the Atkins diet,” he explained-and I tried to figure out my next move. My life had too many moving parts. It seemed like madness not to gather up Lindsey and flee until the threat to her ended. Two weeks were passing and we still couldn’t go home. But what if the threat never went away? And our protector, Peralta, insisted I work on this damned Pilgrim case. Lindsey did, too, sensing I needed something more to do than nervously prowl through the rooms of a stranger’s condo. At least she had found new work, helping the feds track down terrorist bank accounts. A Secret Service type had delivered some kind of super-duper laptop computer, making Lindsey sign for it on multiple forms. So now she sat cross-legged on a big sectional sofa and spied on the secrets of banks in Zurich or Bermuda. Meanwhile, Bobby Hamid in the hallway. Coincidence or something sinister? If we told Peralta, he would send us to the middle of nowhere, maybe just send Lindsey. Too many moving parts.
Pham wrapped his voice in the timbre of calm diplomacy. “Dave, I asked you here today to tell you that things have changed. I have to tell you that we won’t be needing your help on the case after all.”
“I get it,” I said, not unkindly. “If you tell the media the case has been solved, then it really has been. Image becomes reality.”
“It’s not solved,” Pham said, his voice dropping an insistent octave. “Look, this whole thing sucks, OK?”
He stared at me. All the win-win consultant lingo fled from his voice. He spoke so softly I could barely hear him.
“When the badge was found, I had no idea what I was getting into,” he said. “I acted in good faith bringing you in. I wanted this case solved. I’d never heard of it before. But I absolutely wanted to run it down. I knew you’d help us do that.”
He paused and stared at me. I stared back, and after a few beats he continued, his lips barely moving.
“As it turns out, the John Pilgrim case is still a sensitive matter in Washington. My bosses didn’t like the press conference any more than you did. And now they want the whole thing to go away.”
I thought about what Lorie Pope had told me of sealed records and stone walls, even though the case was more than fifty years old. I said, “There’s a chance to solve the murder of an FBI agent, and they just want it to go away?”
Pham nodded slowly.
I asked why.
Pham leaned in as if he were going to share a confidence. It was the kind of body language that makes the listener lean forward, too.
“Phoenix is a strange place, isn’t it?”
There were too many lines to read between. I said, “It’s an acquired taste, Eric.”
“I came here a year ago from Seattle,” he said. “The real estate people said the only place to be is North Scottsdale. So I live behind a wall-‘gated community,’ they call it-and I don’t know any of my neighbors. The homeowners association is like the Soviet Union, watching every aspect of how you landscape or roll out the recycling. The whole front of the house is taken up by a garage door-and this isn’t a cheap house. It’s all strange.”
“I live a mile from here,” I said, “on a real street, with front porches and neighbors who know each other and look out for each other. That’s the side of Phoenix I prefer.”
“I know,” he said, setting his silverware with military precision on the plate. “You live in the same house where you grew up. Although you haven’t been home for two weeks…”
I felt the illogical rush of the paranoid. It must have shown in my face.
“I wanted to check you out, Dave. To know that I could trust you.”
I just looked him over. I had always liked Lindsey’s use of “Dave”; somehow it foreshadowed greater intimacy to come, something I had greatly desired with her. With others, I had never cared for “Dave.” I was not a “Dave.” except with Lindsey.
Pham said, “John Pilgrim killed himself.”
I shifted my weight in the chair. My eyes wandered to other tables. Jerry Colangelo, the owner of the Diamondbacks, was in a hushed conversation with a very tall, expensively dressed black man. The president of Bank One walked by, followed by her pin-striped assistants. China rattled back in the kitchen.
I said, “If that’s true, why did the records indicate this was an open homicide investigation?”
“In J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI, the special agent was supposed to be a superman,” Pham said. “His integrity, above reproach. His steadiness, unquestioned. In reality, John Pilgrim was a problem. He was a drunk and a disciplinary nightmare who was sent to Phoenix to clean up his act. He had symptoms of what we’d call depression. He’d threatened to kill himself before.”
“How do you know this?”
“It’s what my bosses told me,” he said. “Get it? Pilgrim was bad for the FBI’s image. They wanted this case forgotten as quick as possible in 1948, and nothing’s changed.”
“That’s nuts,” I said. “That was fifty years ago. The FBI’s had a few problems since then that are worse than an agent killing himself. Why is this such a big secret?”
“Because it’s a family secret,” Pham said. “And you’re not family. No offense. But you’re not only local law enforcement, you’re unorthodox, and an outsider. I find that appealing. But this wasn’t my call to make.”
“So Pilgrim stands in front of a canal, shoots himself, and falls in?”
Pham shrugged. He had his orders.
“And the badge just floated away,” I said. “Somebody picks it up, and it begins this wondrous journey around the pawn shops, junk drawers, and secondhand jackets of Phoenix.”
“That could be just what happened,” Pham said.
“Don’t you think that if the average person found an FBI badge, he would call the police and report it?”
“Maybe he thought it was a toy,” Pham said, unconvincingly. “Anyway, Kate says the homeless man might not have even known the badge was in his jacket. Kate says he probably got the jacket second- or thirdhand.”
Ah, yes. Kate. Bonnie Kate. I said, “The homeless men I notice are very aware of any fungible wealth they might come into contact with They check every pay phone coin return. And they’re not going to feel something sewn into a Levi’s jacket? The detectives found it first thing when they examined the body in Maryvale. Maybe George Weed had carried that badge around for years. Maybe Weed somehow came in contact with John Pilgrim. He would have been ten years old when Pilgrim was shot.”
“Look.” Pham said. “I don’t like this any more than you do. That’s why I said it sucks.”
I let the waiter take my plate away. “Fine,” I said. “End of story. Maybe Pilgrim doesn’t even have family left, anybody who would care what happened.”
“There is still family,” Pham said.
