Hidden Agendas

'Is there anything that ties his crimes together?' Michaels asked.

Winthrop nodded. 'Victim profiles. Two things jump out. All ten of the people he assaulted, including the two cops in Miami, were African-Americans. Their average weight was over two hundred and ten pounds. The guy he thumped in New Orleans was a linebacker for the Saints — he went almost three hundred pounds.'

'Wheew,' Gridley said. 'The guy is a racist. He beats up on black men.'

'Big black men,' Fiorella said. 'No indication of martial-arts training?'

'None,' Winthrop said.

'Well, isn't this lovely?' Gridley said. 'We got an arm-breaker turned computer wizard, who somehow managed to snare all kinds of secret passwords and entry routines, then used them to break into the most sophisticated systems in the country. And he's smart enough to put a big fat red herring in our way so he's got us running around looking for Danish terrorists. I'm with Toni. This doesn't scan.'

Michaels nodded, and rubbed at his eyes. 'All right. So Platt has help. If we find him, we'll ask him to tell us who that is. What are we doing to find him?'

Gridley said, 'We're electronically crunching all car rentals, airports, and bus and train stations in a hundred-mile radius of the house, looking for single males who did business there in the last twenty-four hours. FBI has the picture and description and is checking hotels, motels, and rooming houses in the area.'

'Which includes all of Atlanta,' Fiorella said. 'Good luck.'

'He's probably not so stupid as to keep using the Platt name, but maybe his face will ring a bell somewhere,' Gridley said.

'Of course, he could be in Polar Bear, Canada, by now,' Winthrop said.

'Okay, everybody take a break,' Michaels said. 'Go home, get some sleep, get back here early as you can tomorrow. And Jay — that doesn't mean sacking out on the couch in your office for two hours. If you aren't rested, you become part of the problem and not the solution.'

'Copy, Boss.'

'Thanks, people. You've all done good work.'

Michaels got to his feet. The meeting was over.

In the hall, Julio leaned against a wall, favoring his bad leg. 'Going back into the trenches?' he asked Joanna.

'Nope. Boss says go home and get some sleep.'

'Sounds like a good idea.'

'Yeah, it does, but I'm too wound up to relax. I'll probably be up until dawn.' She looked at him, gave him the faintest of grins. 'You know anything I can do to relax, Julio?'

He grinned back at her. 'Yes, ma'am, I believe I can offer some exercises you might try. They always put me to sleep pretty quick.'

'All right. Come on then. You can show me at my place.'

He straightened up, stood at attention, then gave her a snappy, crisp salute. 'Yes, ma'am. Anything the lieutenant says.'

'Anything? Big talk for a beat-up old sergeant.' 'I have hidden talents.'

'We'll see about that.' They headed down the hall.

Chapter Thirty-Four

Sunday, January 16th, 6 a.m. St. Louis, Missouri

Platt's clean phone beeped, the little European police siren hee-haw, hee-haw tone he'd set up that meant the bank guy was calling.

'Yeah?'

'It's done,' the bank guy said. Peterson was his name. Jamal Peterson. And it wasn't Iowa or Minnesota, he was from South Dakota. Platt knew that, but he liked to pretend he was dumber than he actually was around Hughes. Never know but how that might give him an advantage someday.

Old Jamal had scammed a couple hundred thou at the place he'd worked at up in the Dakota territory, which was why he was working for Platt and Hughes. The feds had got that money back, but it was peanuts. That wasn't the point. The point was, when it came to pulling a money rascal, Peterson was the man.

'Any trouble?'

'No. I had two hours after you let me in. I laid mines, pulled up drawbridges, and bollixed trackers during all the commotion. I got it from more than five hundred large government and corporate accounts, no chunk big enough to raise eyebrows from any one of them. By the time they notice and get panicky, the transfers will have run through the filters. Even if they get past Grand Cayman and both Swiss accounts — which they won't — they'll never get by Denpasar Trust in Bali until somebody comes up with a real big bribe. By then, the e-trans'll be long gone, if our principal collects as he is supposed to.'

'How much did you get?' Platt asked.

There was a second's pause. 'One hundred and eighty million, just as we agreed.'

Platt shook his head and grinned unseen at Old Jamal. The son of a bitch was lying, sure as he was born. The deal was, Hughes needed a hundred and forty, and Peterson was to get twenty, which left twenty for Platt. But he'd bet his twenty against a bent nickel that the bank boy had bled himself a little extra. Or maybe a lot extra. Which was stupid. How much did a man need?

Thing was, Peterson wasn't a real criminal. He didn't have the right mind-set. He didn't know the real problems that came from stealing large money.

Because when you tapped a big score, it wasn't the police dogs you had to worry about — it was the wolves.

'All right,' Platt said. 'Go where I told you to go. I'll be in touch tomorrow.'

Platt broke the connection. Poor bank boy. He was hooked and cooked, any way you looked at it.

As Platt made a call to make certain Peterson had been at least partially straight with him, he thought about bank boy's unhappy future.

Back when he'd been running with Jimmy Tee, the old man had told him a story about a robbery in his home town. Seems a guard who'd been working at a bank for twenty years — everybody loved and trusted the guy — grabbed the manager one morning early when he came in, tied him up, and walked off with four million and change in unmarked twenties and fifties. Got away clean. Or so it seemed.

Thing was, the guy didn't know how to keep a low profile. The cops found him three months later, dead as an old white dog turd. Somebody had snuck into his new house in Cancun and slit his throat.

There was no sign of the stolen money.

A pro, Jimmy Tee said, would have set up an identity months, or even years ahead of time. Given himself a background, met his neighbors, had a good reason to show up there one day to stay permanently. Like he'd taken early retirement from some kind of job nobody local was ever likely to wonder about. To make sure nobody else would accidentally show up one Sunday at the local bar to ask embarrassing questions like, 'Hey, you remember old Mayor Brooks? Or that time when the City Council guy got caught with that hooker? You know who I'm talking about, don't you? What was his name?'

You didn't need some thread like that to unravel, so you had to think about stuff like that in advance.

And there had to be a way to launder all that cash too. You couldn't just whip out a few hundred thousand in fifties to buy a house, and even getting a car for cash was hinky. You sure couldn't stick it into a bank, not all in one chunk. Hell, anything over ten grand got reported to the IRS. They didn't care where you got your money, as long as you paid taxes on it.

There were a lot of ways to do it, clean your money, but most of them involved things that honest people never thought about.

You needed the cover, see? The cops, if they caught you, they were just gonna toss your butt in jail, but as soon as you hit the road with four million in your pocket, the bounty hunters would be right behind you. The wolves. And the bounty they'd collect if they caught you was everything you had, up to and probably including your life. If they got you, they'd put a gun in your ear and you'd give it up. And if they didn't feel like killing you, but just walked