avoiding.
The two men sat in a strained silence until the coffee came and Janie had retired to the other side of the room.
“Tell me again exactly what it is you do?” Tee asked, trying to sound casual as he lifted the coffee cup to his lips.
“Again? I don’t believe I ever did tell you exactly, did I?”
“Not while you were doing it. Now that you’ve stopped, why don’t you tell me?”
“Is this an official question?”
“Come on, Becker. Don’t give me a hernia over this. You’re not doing it anymore, I’m not asking for any secrets. Just give me the outline.”
“You know the outline.”
“I asked around some, yeah.”
“Who would that be?”
“Guy named Hatcher, at FBI. Says he knows you.”
“Hatcher is an anal retentive.”
“I know that-whatever that means. He’s a little prissy, too, but he knows things-or can find them out.”
Becker drank and looked at Tee over the rim of his cup. “And?”
“Is this a guessing game? You going to make me tell you what I know and then you tell me if it’s right?”
“It’s your game, Tee. But I am curious to know what Hatcher found out.”
“You worked for the government, all over the place. At one time or another since leaving the FBI you’ve been listed on the payroll of at least half a dozen agencies, including the Defense Department and the National Security Council staff. This within five years. Right?”
“Right. So?”
“So in each of these capacities you were authorized to carry a weapon, which means, to me anyway, that you were probably performing essentially the same job for each of them. And doing it well since you weren’t dismissed from any of the agencies and obviously had no trouble finding a new place-in fact your GS rating went up each time you moved. You were making some pretty fair change at the end.”
“You working for the IRS, Tee?”
“To me, the pattern looks like you were a trouble-shooter.”
“Very good. Tee. No wonder you’re a cop.”
“Actually, I’m a cop because of you. Or partly because of you. I’m serious about this. When you joined up with the FBI, that made you a hero to some of us. Not only a hero, but glamorous, too. It was an inspiration-don’t grin, I’m serious about this-”
“This isn’t a grin.”
“-a kid from Clamden out doing battle with the bad guys, chasing Commies, whatever it was then. It made an impression.”
“I joined the FBI because I didn’t want to go to Vietnam.”
“Yeah, well, that wasn’t altogether stupid, either.”
“I didn’t want to kill anybody and I didn’t want anybody to kill me.”
“This was reasonable. Anyway, my point is, you were a factor in my applying for the FBI myself a couple years later. Did you know I applied?”
“No.”
“I didn’t pass the test.”
“Many are called but few are chosen. You’re better off.”
“Yeah, well, I made my peace with it a long time ago. The feds don’t get to wear these nifty belts, for one thing. My point is… I forgot my point.”
“You want me to do something.”
“Did I get to that part already?”
“I couldn’t stand the suspense.”
“I understand you’re retired. You put in the twenty, plus you got a disability of some kind. That much Hatcher could find out. There’s a whole lot of other stuff he couldn’t find out. Which is surprising since that’s his job and he’s authorized to do it. Find out stuff. It seems your personnel file is full of No Access signs. Even for someone with Hatcher’s clearance.”
“Hatcher is not very bright.”
“Well, neither am I, John. That’s probably why Hatcher and I get along so well… Look, I don’t know what kind of work you did and obviously you don’t want to tell me. I assume it’s either something very hush-hush or it’s something messy. Either way, it doesn’t matter. You obviously know things. You got access, you know how to do things… John, I need your help.”
Becker placed a napkin under his cup to soak up the coffee that was pooling there.
“I want you to help me find somebody.”
“A missing person?”
“Sort of, yeah. Yeah, a missing person.”
“Somebody from here?”
“Yeah.”
“Tee, you’re a cop. You’re the chief of police.”
“I’m a Clamden cop, John. I’m not even a Hartford cop. How big was Clamden when you left-what’s that, twenty-two years ago? Maybe twenty-seven thousand, twenty-eight? We’re now thirty-five thousand. That’s how much things have changed in two decades. I know how to work this town. I’m good at it, but that’s all I know.”
“Who’s missing?”
“My nephew. My wife’s nephew to be precise. Mick Seeger.”
“Little Mick?”
“Not so little anymore. Mick’s twenty-eight.”
“Christ, how old are we?”
“Whatever it is, I’m still two years younger than you.”
“The whole world is two years younger than I am. How long’s he been missing?”
“He’s been gone for a week.”
“That’s not missing; that’s just absent.”
“Well, I’d agree except he’s not the only one. Two months ago Timmy Heegan disappeared. Timmy’s twenty-six. Six months before that, Larry Sheehan, age thirty-two.”
“People do this sometimes…”
“I know people do this, John. But none of these guys was young enough to run away, they weren’t thumbing their nose at mom and pop, they all had jobs, Mick has a baby.”
“Debts, marital problems…”
“John, I admitted I’m not a supercop, but give me some credit. In Clamden over the past four years, six men have disappeared. Statistically curious, but not phenomenal, I agree. But in Branford, six miles from here, five men in the last three years. In Guileford, eight miles away, three in the last eighteen months. In Essex, one, three months ago. That’s fifteen men in four years within a radius of twelve miles. None of them had been recently fired, divorced, involved in any great scandal or was in any particularly heavy debt. I’m not saying they hadn’t had fights with their women, those that had women, and I’m not saying they were all happy in their work, but fifteen in four years from an area with a total population of just over a hundred thousand-Hatcher tells me that’s statistically significant.”
“Hatcher would know. This is why you were palling around with him?”
“He doesn’t like you, either.”
“But the Bureau can’t help you, right? No federal crime involved, no apparent crime of any kind. Have you tried claiming this is a civil rights case? We’ve shoehorned a lot of things in that way.”
“First of all, I’ve got no reason to contend anybody’s been deprived of anything, but more to the point, all these men were white
… John, one thing Hatcher said-he said it was just rumor, but he seemed to believe it-he said you were
