The Quality of the Informant

Chapter 19

Carr stepped into Norbert Waeves's office. Waeves was sitting behind an oversized desk covered with disassembled pipes, tobacco-stained rags, and pipe cleaners. Without looking up, Waeves scraped tobacco sludge off a pipe stem and wiped it neatly on the corner of a rag.

'You wanted to see me?' Carr said.

'Sit down,' Waeves said without looking up.

Carr remained standing.

'Tell me about your proposed trip to Ensenada,' Waeves said in the tone of a grade-school teacher.

'I have a couple of leads on LaMonica,' Carr said. 'I need to check some things out down there.'

'I take it you're aware that the operations manual requires headquarters' approval for any investigation outside the continental limits of the United States,' Waeves said. He still hadn't looked up. He took a penknife and dug into a pipe bowl shaped like a man's head.

'The manual also gives the agent in charge the authority to send agents out of the U.S. on any case he designates as a priority investigation,' Carr said.

'The word priority has different meanings to different people,' Waeves said.

'I'm sure headquarters will approve the trip,' Carr said. 'LaMonica is a federal fugitive. He murdered one of our informants.'

Waeves rapped the pipe on an ashtray. 'Headquarters requires an operations plan for such trips.'

'I'm not asking to go to Mongolia. Ensenada is a two-and-a-half-hour-drive from Los Angeles. I'm told that the police there are cooperative.'

Waeves lifted a pipe stem to his lips and blew. Using a corner of a rag, he dabbed at the device and then examined the stain on the rag. 'For the time being I'm going to disapprove the trip,' he said.

'Why?' Carr asked angrily.

Waeves looked at him disdainfully. 'I'm going to deny travel permission because it sounds to me like you're going off…uh…half-cocked, shall we say?'

Carr turned and walked out of the room. He returned to his office and fell into his desk chair.

Kelly was writing a report. He put down his pen. 'What did he want?' he said.

'He refused to let us go below the border,' Carr said, looking at the wall.

'Let me guess,' Kelly said, holding an arm out in traffic-cop fashion. 'He quoted the manual, right?'

'Right.'

'Which means, one, that he doesn't want to go to the trouble of writing an operations plan; and two, he won't deem the case a priority. That figures. He doesn't know how to write an operations plan because he got his promotions by kissing ass in D.C. while he was an instructor in Agent Training School. He probably wouldn't recognize an operations plan if one jumped up and bit him. As far as deeming the case a priority investigation, no way. That would mean taking a stand on something, choosing one way or the other. Therefore, what you see is what you always get. No waves.'

Carr picked up a partially completed form titled 'Request to Use Government-Owned Vehicle for More Than One Calendar Day' off his desk. He tore it in half and tossed it into the wastebasket.

Kelly's face turned red. 'Of all the briefcase-carrying, useless-as-tits-on-a-bull bureaucrats living on the face of the planet Earth, No Waves is the worst. I really believe that. One minute after I retire I'm going to walk right into his office and sock him in the goddamn mouth. I'm going to knock every one of his teeth out.' He slammed fist into palm.

Carr got up from his desk and walked to the window. It was rush hour. Buses and cars were lined up at entrances to freeways. People couldn't wait to get out of the city.

It was daybreak.

Jack Kelly sat at a tiny table next to the kitchen window and finished off his usual three eggs and six slices of bacon. He was dressed in Levi's, boots and a flannel shirt.

The first rays of sun glistened off the dew collected on the sides of an olive drab pup tent pitched in the backyard. Next to the tent, an L.A. Rams pennant topped a broomstick flagpole.

'The boys didn't get to sleep out there till midnight,' Rose Kelly said. 'They were roughhousing.'

Kelly chuckled.

'Will you be back for late Mass on Sunday?' Rose said, speaking to the stove. Her long red braid twitched back and forth on her shoulders as she labored. She wore a housecoat. Rose Kelly was the kind of woman who would not allow her husband to leave the house without eating. Perhaps for this attribute alone, Jack Kelly would have chosen her for a wife.

'I'll sure try,' he said.

Rose Kelly refilled his cup from a steaming coffeepot, then sat down at the table. 'You haven't been fishing in years,' she said.

'Spur of the moment idea,' Kelly said, staring into his cup. His hand drummed fingers.

'Just you and Charlie Carr?'

'Uh, right,' Kelly said.

'Isn't Mexico kind of a long way to go for fishing?'

A horn honked. Kelly jumped up. He pulled a baseball cap out of his back pocket and pulled it on. Rose stood up, kissed him on the lips, and gave him a hug. 'I know it has something to do with your job,' she said apologetically as she nuzzled his neck.

'God bless you, Rose,' Kelly said.

She followed him to the front door. Outside, Carr sat behind the wheel of his sedan. Fishing poles protruded from a rear window.

'Please be careful,' Rose Kelly said as her husband walked out the door and down the driveway.

LaMonica dropped pesos into a pay phone hanging on a wall next to the hotel's reception desk. He told the operator to make the call collect from Roger Brown. After a minute or two, Omar T. Lockhart clicked onto the line.

'Have you considered my client's offer?' LaMonica said.

'Yes, we have,' Lockhart said.

There was a silence.

'Are we going to be able to go any further?' LaMonica said. He held his breath.

'I have been authorized to meet with you once more,' Lockhart said. 'I'd prefer to have the meeting here in Houston.'

'Sorry,' LaMonica said. 'You'll have to come back down here. My client demands this.' Another silence.

'Very well,' Lockhart said, sounding angry.

It was siesta time. LaMonica and Lockhart sat at one of the poolside umbrella tables, Sandy between them. A sunburned young woman in her early twenties splashed around in the shallow end of the greenish pool with a man of the same age. They swam away from and then toward one another lazily, like goldfish in a bowl.

Lockhart had neither smiled nor so much as touched the margarita sitting in front of him during the entire hour or so of half whispered, half spoken negotiations.

'Fifty thousand is my last offer,' Lockhart said. 'It's a company decision and it's final. I have been authorized to tell you that you can take it or leave it.' Rivulets of perspiration extended from the fat man's sideburns to his jawline.

'I'll take it,' Sandy said. 'But I'm getting screwed and it's just not right.' Haughtily, she folded her arms across her chest.

The fat man dug a handkerchief out of his back pocket and unfolded it. Covering his face with the cloth, he wiped from side to side. He looked at the hanky and stuffed it back into his pocket. 'My employer insists that the transfer itself take place in the United States.'

With eyes closed, Sandy shook her head. 'No way,' she said.

'We're not going to negotiate on this point,' Lockhart said, 'because I'm sure you don't really expect us to bring fifty thousand dollars in cold cash across the border.' He stood up and straightened his wrinkled trousers.