Eddy's Current (19 page)

“Okay, you’ve made your point. I blew it, and in more ways than one.”

“Let’s meet, Mr. Warwick.”

The meeting was set to be held in the Dallas regional office of the USFIA. River arrived first. Downing made sure he arrived ten minutes late.

“Warwick, what do you have on Hernandez?” Downing asked, as he entered the meeting room, and before he shook hands with River or even introduced himself.

“Only that we believe that he’s a bad guy. But I don’t have particulars. I have to find out facts. We don’t want to speculate,” River said.

“Look, Warwick, I want to cooperate with you, but don’t you think it’s a little too late to try not to speculate? You all over there have determined that he’s a bad guy — without the facts to prove that he’s a bad guy — yet you say that you ‘don’t want to speculate’?”

“I know, I know, it seems that we have already speculated, but I really mean it. We want to investigate in order to determine if there exists grounds to go after him.”

“This is going in circles, Warwick. I plan to file a formal complaint against you with the USFIA. I wanted to tell you that to your face. You and the other screwball cops over at your office really messed up. There is just no excuse for it.”

“Are you ticked off because you feel that we have no grounds, and therefore no right to investigate, or are you upset because you caught wind that we believe that you are protecting a corrupt agent and the politicians are protecting you?”

“I will not honor that nonsense with a response, Warwick. My complaint against you will be filed, just as I said it would be, except that I will file my complaint and request for an investigation of USFIA with Congressman Perez’s committee.”

“Do what you feel you need to, Mr. Downing. Have a nice day,” River said. He stood and walked toward the exit door, stopped momentarily at the door, and motioned out to the parking lot, towards Downing’s car.

Things had gotten dicey. River’s investigation of Hernandez could be stalled before it even began in earnest. River’s nine o’clock report to Albert would not be glowing. He drove back to Houston, arrived late that night, slept for a few hours, then went to the office to meet with Albert.

“Thanks for the update, River. The good Mr. Downing lied to you. He knew about Hernandez. He was trying to scare you. He hates you,” Albert said, after River informed him of his meeting and discussion with Downing.

“Downing doesn’t even know me. Why would he hate me?”

“He knows that you work for us and he knows that one of our jobs is to keep an eye on him and his people. You really did screw up with the carpet cleaner fiasco, though. Where did you get that idea? From an episode of the television hit comedy series,
The Incompetent Investigators
? Seriously, who dreamed that up? If we had been investigating a violent criminal ring, your life wouldn’t be worth a dime right now. They would find you and destroy you. I still have faith in you, but you’re going to be on a short leash from now on.

“From now on, our once–daily meetings will be twice–daily—nine each morning and four each afternoon. Our first four o’clock meeting will take place this afternoon. You need to get to work.”

River was happy to get out of his mess with a few sarcastic darts thrown his way. If that was to be his punishment for his bungle, so be it. It was time for him to get moving again and not look back, or even think back, on this setback. Still, he would not forget the lesson learned.

Hernandez now knew of the investigation, of course. He also knew that only a couple of people at USFIA could nail him, and he knew that the FBI would protect him. He visited his closest personal friend, Jason Forrest, to talk things over.

“I never should have served those guys, Jason—never. I went to the top of the rung to try to get the finances needed to pay the bills. That’s all. He would not be alive right now if I hadn’t gotten the money. He and my wife are the only people who mean more to me than the FBI. Now I’m in deep; I’m completely entangled with Peterson. Do you understand?” Hernandez asked, explaining the actions he took to secure the money to pay for the cancer treatments needed to save his father–in–law’s life.

“No, I do not understand. What if you’re caught?” Forrest said. “The cancer didn’t kill him, but if you’re caught in the scheme that produced the money that paid for his treatment, he’ll die of a broken heart. You should’ve avoided this like the plague. And what in the hell are you doing telling me and others about it? You should’ve kept your mouth shut. You’re now a bad guy. The USFIA won’t give a damn why you did what you did, they’ll just see the huge payoff and presume that you’re evil incarnate from hell. Do you understand me?” Forrest said in a way that made his last sentence sound more like a definitive statement than a question.

“I understand. I understand. I just don’t know what I’m going to do about it. I’ve got to get out of this now.”

“I want you to listen to me, and get this next series of statements absolutely clear because I’m not going to repeat them: You are in big trouble. You could come clean and hope to be considered redeemable, except that redemption happens in the pulpits of churches, during idealistic sermons, and no where else. You could ignore this nightmare, except for the fact that it will not end, no matter how long you bury your head in the sand.

“And, finally, you could — and in my opinion, you should — take action that will sacrifice others and save your own skin. You’ve got to. You’re not going to turn yourself in, and you can’t ignore a nightmare. It’ll just wake you up every night.

“Here’s what you’ll do but, other than this advice, I’m out of this whole thing. After my advice today, I can’t say another word to you or to anyone else about this.”

“Okay, okay, enough with the lecturing; just tell me what to do.”

“You are going to hang one of those jerks over at USFIA out to dry. Plant evidence of a bribe in their office, or some other wrongdoing, directing an investigation at one of their own. But you’ve got to do it soon, and I mean soon—not next week, not tomorrow, not today, YESTERDAY,” Forrest emphasized. “Do you understand me clearly?

“The planting of that evidence will place them on the defensive. They will have no choice except to focus an investigation on their own agent. If they claim to be investigating you after that, they will have no credibility. Downing has already committed to contacting Perez’s committee with an official complaint against Warwick and a request for an investigation of him. So their investigation of you will be assumed to be an attempt to scapegoat an innocent FBI agent in order to shift attention and blame from one of their own. I’m telling you, if you do this right, you’re home free. It will polarize them. They will not be able to continue against you. It might even result in one of their agents going down.

“I’ve got to go now, Fred. You’re on your own. Get on with it, and get on with it now!”

At the conclusion of his consultation with Hernandez, Jason Forrest slipped out and became one of the thousands of faces walking the sidewalks in downtown Houston. He blended in well with the crowd, never again to single himself out as an advisor to Hernandez, or as a person who even knew Hernandez at all.

Hernandez returned home and replayed his idea in his head several times during the next two days. He refined it, then perfected it. Agent Warwick would go down. Forrest was right, though. The entire thing had to proceed without delay.

Hernandez went to one of the suburban branches of the Houston public library to use one of the four dozen computers there connected to the Internet. He signed on to several web sites, concealed his identity using every means available to him as an FBI agent working undercover, and created hundreds of charge account transactions for total credit card debt of more than two hundred seventy–five thousand dollars. The transactions were backdated randomly over the past three years. They would appear to have been billed by the credit card companies to Warwick’s various credit cards during the three–year period. The majority of them were large cash advances.

Hernandez accessed each credit card company’s records and made certain that he placed late fees for under–payments on Warwick’s records as well. Warwick’s accounts had to show accumulated late fees, penalties, and the like as a clear and irrefutable transaction record. Like a lot of people, Warwick had been receiving his credit card bills online and had been paying them online as well, so he had no paper trail for the original bills.

Four hours after Hernandez began, Warwick was in financial ruin. His credit card billing history was immutably changed, reflecting total credit card debt of $277,683.02.

Hernandez believed that altering Warwick’s home phone records would prove somewhat more difficult than the credit card history. With all the necessary information in hand, Hernandez was anxious to get to work on it.

It was four o’clock in the afternoon, and school students were flooding into the library to do their Internet research. Hernandez was forced off of the computer by the library computer gestapo agent who had already warned him twice that he was pushing the allowed time well beyond the three–hour limit. He had tried to argue that, because there were other computers open at the time, the three–hour limit did not apply. He could no longer make that case. He erased his site access history — the gestapo agent would later notice that when she went in to snoop through the sites he had accessed — and left the library.

He went directly to another branch of the library and was able to get onto a terminal after waiting forty–five minutes. He spent his waiting time browsing the books. He had begun to read an old book by his favorite author, John Steinbeck, when he was called to the desk to be told by another library computer gestapo agent that he would be allowed to access a terminal. She informed him that, at this time of the day until closing, the limit was one and one–half hours. No exceptions.

Warwick had also been paying his phone bills online. And there was even more good news for Hernandez. Warwick never produced, either electronically or in printed form, details of his phone calls made or received during the past three years. Furthermore, the phone company had not included detailed call billing in Warwick’s monthly e–statements.

So this would be easy after all. Almost too easy.

Using similar scrambled access procedures he used for the credit card company records, Hernandez accessed Warwick’s cell phone company records and entered the phone numbers of the foreign agent who had been so generous to Hernandez. Random times were used for calls made to, and received from, the foreign agent, but they somewhat matched the timing of the huge credit card cash advances entered on Warwick’s credit card records.

Hernandez was careful not to be too exact. Cash advances and corresponding exact phone records would be too good to be true. It would be kept loose. As long as the phone calls seemed to be made and received a few days before or after Warwick’s credit card advances, it would all fit together just fine. It would appear that Warwick was taking the cash advances to pay extortion payments to the foreign agent.

Warwick’s calling plan cooperated as well. His plan allowed for unlimited domestic and foreign long distance calling to Europe. The foreign agent lived in Paris, though he was not French.

Hernandez signed onto the computer and had accessed two web sites needed to begin his work. Just then, a student approached the computer. “Sir,” she said, “I was just on that terminal doing research for a paper I have to turn in tomorrow. I forgot to look up one piece of information. Could I go back on, just for a minute?”

Hernandez hid his irritation. “Of course. Let me sign off and I’ll let you back on,” Hernandez said as he signed off.

“There, go ahead.”

“Thank you,” the middle school student said sweetly, “I really appreciate it.”

The girl spent about five minutes on the terminal, then signed off, thanked Hernandez and left the library. Hernandez signed back on and went to the web site he needed to begin his work.

Hernandez needed only forty–five minutes to complete his work at this library branch. Things had gone so well that he was afraid he had overlooked something. He reviewed the details of his plan to make sure he hadn’t forgotten anything. He erased the login history for six web sites he had signed on to, signed off of the computer, got up from his seat and proceeded to the exit. He waved to the attendant behind the counter, walked to the door and waited for it to open.

The door didn’t work well. It stalled. There was frequently a delay between the time the person approached the motion sensor and the time the doors actually opened. Hernandez did not like these types of unexpected delays. In his business, occurrences such as stalled automatic doors were signs that something more sinister was going on.

In twenty years as an FBI agent, Hernandez had managed to avoid mistakes. A mistake was a mistake — there was no such thing as a minor one — and a successful agent did not make mistakes. Waiting by the door, Hernandez let his guard down. Rather than keep his eyes focused on the ground, he rose his head up and looked slightly to his right, to have a look at the sensor and the tops of the doors. There was the surveillance camera, pointed directly at his face. Worse, he looked directly into it for a second or so with the look a deer gives the headlights of an oncoming car in the dark of night. Then he did something else he also knew never to do. He looked away quickly.

Then, for a third time Hernandez did what he knew not to do. He hurried out the door, his walking pace accelerated well beyond the average pace of two and one–half miles per hour he was trained to stay within at all times, unless he was running for his life, running to save the life of another, or chasing a suspect.

He felt as if he had just left a video record of a bungling amateur who was the offspring born to a cross between the Keystone Cops, the Three Stooges and several of Mel Brooks’ law enforcement characters. Who in the world could view his actions — of simply walking out the door! — and not draw the conclusion that he was up to something?