'I'm Senior Agent Cavalierre. FBI,' Betsey said.
'Senior agent! Let's see, what's the line from all the cop shows on TV? We can do this the hard way or we can do it the easy way,' he said and showed off surprisingly even white teeth. He was wearing black paramilitary pants, off-white shower thongs, no shirt. His arms and upper torso were covered with jailhouse tats and curled black hair.
'I vote for the hard way. But that's just me,' Betsey said.
Brophy turned to a skinny blonde who was sitting on a lime-green retro couch in front of a TV. She wore a loose-fitting FUBU shirt over her underwear.
'You like her as much as I do, Nora?' Brophy asked the blonde.
The woman shrugged, apparently uninterested in anything but Rosie O'Donnell. She was probably high. Her hair was stringy, with the bangs gelled down to her forehead. She had barbed-wire tattoos on both ankles, wrists and around her throat.
Brophy looked back at Betsey Cavalierre and me. 'I take it we have business to discuss. So, the mystery lady is FBI. That's very good. Means you can afford any information I might have.'
Betsey shook her head. 'I'd rather beat it out of you.'
Tony Broph's dark eyes came alive again. 'I really like her.'
We followed Brophy to a lopsided, wooden table in a tiny kitchen. He sat straddled on a chair, the backrest wedged against his hairy stomach and chest. We had to arrive at a financial agreement before he would give up anything. He was right about one thing Betsey Cavalierre's budget was a lot bigger than mine.
'This has to be good information, though,' she warned.
He nodded confidently, smugly. 'This is the best you can buy, baby. Top of the line. Y'see, I met with the man behind those nasty jobs in Maryland and Virginia. Want to know what he's like? Well, he's one cold motherfucker. And remember who's telling you that.'
Brophy stared hard at Betsey and me. He definitely had our interest.
'He called himself Mastermind,' Brophy said in a slow Florida drawl. 'He was dead serious about it. Mastermind. You believe it?
'The two of us met at the Sheraton Airport Hotel. He contacted me through a guy I know from new York. 'Brophy went on,' The so-called Mastermind knew things about me. He ticked off my strengths, then weaknesses. He had me down to a T. He even knew about the lovely Nora and her habit.'
'Think he was a cop? All the information he had about you?' I asked Brophy.
Brophy grinned broadly. 'No. Too smart. He might have talked to some cops, though, considering he knew everything. That's why I stayed and listened to the dude. That, plus he told me this was a high-six-figure opportunity for me. That caught my interest.'
All Agent Cavalierre and I had to do now was listen. Once Brophy got started there was no stopping him.
'What did he look like?' I asked.
'You want to know what he looked like? That's the million-dollar question, Regis Philbin. Let me set the scene for you. When I walked into the room at his hotel, there were bright lights shining at me. Like Hollywood premiere movie lights. I couldn't see shit.'
'Not even shapes?' I asked Brophy. 'You must have seen something.'
'His silhouette. He had long hair. Or maybe he was wearing a wig. Big nose, big ears. Like a car with the doors open. We talked and he said he'd be in touch but I never heard from him again. Guess he didn't want me for his crew.'
'Why not?' I asked Brophy. It was a serious question. 'Why wouldn't he want someone like you?'
Brophy made a pistol with his hand and shot me. 'He wants killers, dude. I'm not a killer. I'm a lover. Right, Agent Cavalierre?'
Chapter Thirty-Eight
What Brophy had told us was scary and it couldn't get out to the press. Someone who called himself the Mastermind was out there interviewing and hiring professional killers. Only killers. What was he planning next? More bank-hostage jobs? What the hell was he thinking?
After I finished work that night, I went to St. Anthony's. Jannie was doing fine, but I stayed another night with her anyway. My home away from home. She had begun calling me her 'roomie.’
The next morning I waded through files on disgruntled former employees of Citibank, First Virginia, and First Union; and also records of anyone who had made any kind of serious threat against the banks. The mood in the FBI field office was quiet desperation. There was none of the buzz and excitement that went along with leads, clues, progress of any kind. We still didn't have a single good suspect.
Threats and crank communications to banks are usually handled by an in-house investigative department. General hate mail is most often from people who are denied loans or have had their homes foreclosed. Hate mail is as likely to come from a woman as from a man. According to the psychological profiles I read that morning, it was usually someone having work, financial, or domestic problems. Occasionally, there were serious threats because of a bank's labor practice, its affiliations with foreign countries such as South Africa, Iraq, Northern Ireland. Mail at the major banks was X-rayed in the mailroom, and there were frequent false alarms. Musical Christmas cards sometimes set off the machines.
The process was exhausting, but necessary. It was part of the job. I glanced over at Betsey Cavalierre around one. She was right there with the rest of us, seated at a plain metal desk. She was nearly hidden behind the stacks of paper.
'I'm going to run out again for a while,' I told her. 'There's a guy I want to check out. He's made some threats against Citibank. He lives nearby.'
