in his time. No one wanted to come right out and ask for illegal weapons.
“Well, I don’t usually deal in party favors,” he said, trying to help her out. “You mean something like Chinese firecrackers?”
“Chinese or whatever,” Stockton said. “Whatever you can get your hands on right away.”
“Oh, a rush order,” Farrigian said. “There’s a delivery charge for that, okay?”
Stockton nodded irritably, but not because of the money. The man had no patience for the obvious. Rudeness never bothered Andre, as long as the customer paid. “We’re looking for something in plastic,” Stockton said purposefully. “Dog told me you found him some plastic, too.”
Farrigian scratched his chin. This was getting a little too close for comfort and moving a little too fast. “I am sure I can help you,” he said. “But I’ll have to call a distributor or two that I know. Give me a number and I’ll call you back. An hour, no more,” he said in response to Stockton’s impending objection.
Stockton nodded and handed him a piece of paper with a phone number on it. They shook hands and Stockton and Diana walked out.
Jack and Diana walked casually out of the warehouse and into the narrow parking lot on the inside of the fence. They hopped into Jack’s SUV and drove slowly out of the gate, turned on a side street, then made another turn onto Pico.
“Do you think he’ll call back?” Diana asked.
Jack nodded. “If he’s suspicious, he’ll make a few calls. We’ve covered everyone we can find connected to Dog Smithies, so any of those people will back up our story.”
“How long can you keep those people under your thumb?”
“Not long. Rumors will start flying, but by tomorrow night it won’t matter anyway. We don’t know what kinds of sources Farrigian has. I doubt he’s all that sophisticated, but if he is connected and has a way to check out the cell number, it’ll come up as James Baker, giving Tom Stockton as an alias. That’ll make us more believable.
“I’m not worried about him checking us out, though. I want to know who his people are.” Jack tapped a phone number into his cell while keeping one eye on the road. Henderson answered immediately, sounding a little surly about working so late.
“Christopher, I want to get wiretaps on this Farrigian character. He’s going to start making calls right away, and I want us to trace them.”
There was a moment of faint white noise. “Jack, Chappelle has to authorize all wiretaps and surveillance.”
“Well, let’s get him to authorize it!” Jack urged.
Henderson made a noise. Something more than a grunt and less than an actual word. Whatever it was, its meaning was clearly miserable. Jack waited. There was some shuffling and several clicks, then Henderson came back on. “The District Director is on the line with us,” Henderson said simply.
“What?” Chappelle snapped.
Jack told his story. To his credit, Chappelle listened without interrupting once. When Jack was done, Chappelle actually agreed. “Don’t sound so damned surprised, Bauer. You play by the book and I’ll back you one hundred percent. You’re following a lead, you got a suspect’s name, you investigated and got probable cause.” Jack was indeed surprised by Chappelle’s cooperation. “As far as I’m concerned, though, this is LAPD, CTU, and NTSB investigating, not the CIA. But I’ll let your people sort this out when the time comes. I’m fine authorizing your wiretap. Just get the paperwork to me in the morning and we’ll proceed.”
Jack’s heart sank. “In the morning? No, I need it right now. Not the paperwork right now, the wiretap. Right now!”
“Never happen,” Chappelle said matter-of-factly.
“There’s me, there’s the judge, then the actual surveillance guys to do the wiring. We’re looking at mid- morning, tomorrow evening at the latest.”
Jack squeezed the phone till his knuckles turned white. “You don’t seem to get the urgency.”
“And you don’t seem to get that the plot has been stopped!” Chappelle snapped back. The moment of cooperation vanished. “We need to make arrests, but we have some of the plotters and we have the plastic explosives! You even found the few bits left over. So get them, but get them by following procedure! Henderson, deal with this jack-off before I have to deal with you!” The phone clicked.
“That went well,” Henderson quipped.
“I think he’s warming up to me,” Jack agreed. “Don’t worry about it, Christopher, I’ll take care of everything.”
Harry Driscoll was used to knocking on doors after midnight, but usually all the cops were on the outside when he knocked. This time the cop was on the other side.
Driscoll didn’t know Don Biehn. He thought he’d met him once or twice, at the funeral of a slain police officer, maybe, or the retirement party for another. But he’d never worked with Biehn and couldn’t have told anyone a thing about him… except that his son’s diary had been found at the scene of a priest’s murder, and that, according to that diary, the priest had molested Biehn’s son repeatedly.
Driscoll held up his hand, balled into a fist, but hesitated. He stood there for more than a minute, reluctant. No good, no satisfaction, would come from knocking on that door. That door would open on nothing but horror and politics and most likely the destruction of a fellow badge. Harry wanted no part of it. The man, the father in him protested that justice — real justice by any definition he could muster — had been served the minute that child- violating son of a bitch had his face blown off. The man, the father in him told him to lower his hand and walk away. Leave the door unopened.
But the cop in him replied that there were rules and laws, and those laws allowed the just to live among the unjust with the belief that they were shielded from iniquity. But the only way for that shield to work was for men to pin it to their chests and walk around day and night, enforcing the laws it represented, opening the doors that did not want to open. All the doors.
Harry knocked.
To his surprise, the door opened almost immediately. The man standing before him looked like the victim of a car wreck. His face was battered and swollen. Three fingers on one hand were splinted together with tape, and the fingers of the other hand looked like a dog’s chew toy.
“Detective Don Biehn?” Harry said.
Biehn nodded.
“You’re under arrest for the murder of Father Frank Giggs.”
Biehn didn’t panic, nor did he look relieved at being caught. He nodded matter-of-factly and said, “I figured as much. Won’t you come in?”
Driscoll was nonplussed. Procedure told him not to, of course. Take control of the suspect; don’t give him any control. But this battered man was no threat of any kind. Even so, Driscoll motioned to the two uniforms behind him, and all three walked into the house together.
Biehn walked them into the living room. He didn’t seem to mind at all when the two uniforms took up positions at right angles to each other — positions that would allow them to draw and fire without risk of hitting each other. Only Driscoll sat down, in a seat opposite Biehn’s.
“Is your wife home, Detective Biehn?” Driscoll asked. Biehn shook his head. “Hospital. Our son is in critical condition.”
“I’m sorry to hear—”
“He tried to kill himself a couple of hours ago. He was tormented by the idea that his priest had been sodomizing him for the last three years.” Biehn delivered the message with a dryness more vicious than any venom. Driscoll steeled himself against sympathy.
“I’m sorry for your trouble,” he said weakly. “But you’re still under arrest. I need you to cooperate with us, Detective. You’re in no condition to resist.”
Biehn smiled. “I want to do more than cooperate. I want to make a deal.”
Pope John Paul sat by himself in the first pew of the chapel of St. Monica’s. The chapel would have been empty at that hour in any case, but at his request Giancarlo had positioned Swiss Guards at each entrance.
