Night and Day (Book 3): Bandit's Moon (9 page)

“Got it,” gravel voice
said.

“You got private dick paper?” the
guy on the left asked.

“Back pocket of my jeans, on the
right,” I said. I felt him fish out my PI ID case.

“So what agency are you guys with?”
I asked.

“We’ll discuss that upstairs,”
gravel voice said. “Just keep your mouth shut and be ready to go when we
say.”

Scratchy voice on the radio. “Okay,
clear.”

“Come on,” the guy on the left
said. He brushed past me and I followed, gravel voice behind me. He went
out of the alley, turned left, then turned left again and disappeared into
an open door.

It was an enclosed stairway that
went up to the second floor of the building just west of the alley. Smooth
voice led the way, with gravel voice behind me.

Smooth voice was tall and thin.
Gravel voice short and chunky. They both wore black ankle-length cloth
coats, black leather gloves and fedoras. They looked like something out of
a 30s crime movie.

Hurrying ahead, smooth voice
reached the top of the stairs and tried the doorknob. “Goddamn it,” he
muttered. “He locked it.”

“Fuckin’ acorns,” gravel voice said
from behind me. Whatever that meant.

The door opened and smooth voice
went inside. A couple of seconds later, I was through it too.

We were in what looked like the
living room of an apartment, maybe the home of whoever had owned the
now-empty shop below. There was nothing in the room except for a ratty
upholstered chair by the window with a pair of binoculars on the floor
beside it. In the back, an open doorway with the soft glow of light coming
from somewhere inside.

Standing in front of me was a
hawk-nosed guy, about my height, wearing the same long cloth coat and
fedora as the other two. His only distinguishing feature other than his
beak was a thin, well-trimmed mustache.

He stared at me for a moment, then
looked past me at gravel voice. “Pirelli, keep watch,” he said. His voice
was very deep.

“Yeah, right,” gravel voice said.
He went over to the chair and dropped into it, picking up the binoculars
and raising them to his eyes. He seemed to be looking in the general
direction of the Floresta.

“Come with me,” the man with the
mustache said. He turned and went through the door in the back of the
living room. I followed, smooth voice right behind me.

The other room had been a kitchen
and maybe dining room as well. The stove and refrigerator were gone. Taken
when the occupant moved out or looted after the war. The fixtures on the
sink were missing too.

In the middle of the room was a
small table, a little larger than a card table, with a single wooden chair
behind it. On the table was a propane lantern, turned down low.

The man with the mustache went
around the table and sat down. Smooth voice stepped past me and laid my
pistol and ID case on the table.

The man behind the table stared at
them for a moment. He ran the tips of his fingers over the barrel of the
Glock, then picked up the ID case and opened it.

“Charles L. Welles,” he said.
“Private Investigator. Night and Day Investigations.” He paused. “What are
you doing here, Mr. Welles?”

“Working a case,” I said. “Who are
you?”

“What kind of a case?”

“Missing person,” I said. I paused
a moment. “And you are?”

He put my ID case on the table and
looked up, his eyes glittering in the light of the lantern. “I’m Special
Agent Robert Eichhorn,” he said. “My associates are Special Agent Pirelli
and Special Agent Brewster.” He pulled an ID case from his pocket and let
it fall open. Little gold badge, ID card. “FBI. And you’re interfering with
a federal investigation.”

Chapter Six

FBI.

There had been an FBI office in the
city before the war, a small one with three agents and a secretary. If
their cases needed heavy lifting, they’d call in more bodies from
Atlanta.

I hadn’t had much contact with the
FBI agents in the local office. Most of what I worked as a cop, uniform or
plainclothes, was violations of state law. Sometimes those offenses were
also violations of federal law, but the feds left the investigation to the
locals. Down the road, a federal prosecutor might file some additional
charges, but that was usually about the level of federal
participation.

Once I had been waved off a case by
the local special agent in charge. Big drug case that the FBI and DEA had
been jointly working for months. I was late to the party, drawn in by an
especially violent dealer named Tear who had a little thing he did with
competitors that involved gasoline and matches. He wasn’t important to the
federal case they were building, but I think they were afraid he might lead
me in the direction of somebody who was.

So they sat me down and we talked.
They promised that Tear was mine if he was still standing after the dust
cleared from their arrests. He was. Unfortunately somebody got to him
before I did. With gasoline and a lit match.

I could feel a wave-off coming from
Special Agent Robert Eichhorn of the FBI.

“So, you guys reopen the office
here, or are you out of Atlanta?”

“We’d prefer to keep this friendly
and unofficial, Mr. Welles,” Eichhorn said. “I’m sure you didn’t
deliberately set out to compromise our investigation.”

“I wasn’t even aware of your
investigation, Agent Eichhorn.”

“Aware or not, your presence on the
street could draw unwelcome attention. What are you doing down
there?”

“Same as you,” I said. “Watching
the Floresta.”

Eichhorn glanced at smooth voice,
Agent Brewster, then back at me. “Why do you say that?”

I grinned. “Okay, maybe I’m
assuming. Maybe you’re interested in that fire hydrant in front of the
Floresta.” I paused. “Saw a stray mutt sniffing around it earlier. He one
of yours too?”

“You’re not being very cooperative
and forthcoming, Mr. Welles,” Eichhorn said.

“Neither are you. You’re set up at
the window to watch something. The only thing to watch is the Floresta.
Like I told you, I’m working a missing person case. I have reason to
believe that the woman I’m looking for is at, or has been at, the Floresta.
So I’m staking it out.” I paused. “So what are
you
doing here, Agent
Eichhorn?”

He was silent for a moment, then
said, “Yes, we have an interest in the Floresta. I can’t tell you the
nature of that interest for reasons of national security.”

Maybe he was telling the truth,
Maybe he wasn’t.

The FBI was a federal agency, and
wasn’t directly under the Vees. The federal government had departments and
agencies. The Vees had administrative areas, and everything ran through the
Governor General or the Area Governors.

It didn’t mean that the federal
government in general and the FBI in particular didn’t work with the Vees.
They did. I don’t believe they had a choice in the matter. But when it came
to matters of national security, it was unlikely that the FBI would be the
lead agency. Or even involved. Vees liked to keep the big things in-house.
And when you’ve got a whole world that hates and fears you, national
security is one of the bigger things.

So maybe Agent Eichhorn and his
buddies weren’t FBI at all. IDs or not. The only thing I was pretty sure of
was that they were human. It was cold in that apartment, and they were
dressed appropriately. If they were Vees, they wouldn’t care about the
cold.

“All right,” I said. “You need to
watch the Floresta for national security reasons. I need to watch it for my
own reasons. How about we join forces? You get an extra pair of eyes, I
stop peeing in a mayonnaise jar.”

He shook his head. “Not
possible.”

“Then what do you suggest?” I
asked.

“You get in your car and you
leave,” he said. “Take off, and don’t come back.” He paused. “And that’s
not a suggestion.”

FBI or not, I wasn’t going to win
this one. They had the numbers and maybe they had the authority. I’m not
the smartest guy, but I know not to double down on a losing
hand.

“All right,” I said. “I’m certainly
willing to cooperate with the FBI. But how about you show me a little
cooperation as well. I’m looking for a woman. Around 30 years of age. Short
blond hair. Have you seen her going in or out of the Floresta?”

“No,” Eichhorn said quickly. “We
haven’t seen anyone matching that description in the vicinity of the
Floresta, and we’ve been on-site for three days.” He paused. “It sounds
like your information is wrong, Mr. Welles. Your woman doesn’t seem to be
there.”

Interesting. I hadn’t expected a
straight answer. I figured he’d blow me off. Instead he’d answered my
question. With a lie. And a poorly-told lie at that.

Eichhorn was too quick with his
reply. In his place, I would have taken my time answering. Maybe consult
with the other two agents, if they were agents. Make a show of trying to
help. And only then suggest that maybe Schleu wasn’t there.

But Eichhorn was too anxious to get
rid of me and make sure I didn’t come back. And in his hurry to send me on
my way, he’d told me what I wanted to know. They were aware of Katarina
Schleu. And they’d seen her around the Floresta.

“Okay,” I said, making sure I
slipped a little disappointment in my voice. Best if Eichhorn believed his
wave-off had been successful. “Guess I’ll go back to the office and figure
out what’s next.”

“Yeah, it’s a tough business,”
Eichhorn said. “Good luck. Hope you find who you’re looking
for.”

That remained to be seen. But I
hadn’t been lying. I did need to figure out what was next.

Eichhorn held out his hand and I
shook it. There was warmth there, even in the cold room. He was indeed
human. “Thanks for your cooperation, Mr. Welles.”

“My pleasure,” I said. “So, I just
go back to my Jeep and take off?”

He checked his watch. “They’ll be
changing shifts in about eight minutes,” he said. “Be in your car when it
happens. When they’re distracted with the change, you leave.”

I jerked my chin at my pistol and
ID case on the table between us. “My stuff?”

He smiled and pushed my pistol
across the table with the back of his fingers. That was interesting too.
And something I’d seen before.

The reasoning went that once the
gun was gone, you had no control over what it might be used for. Your
fingerprints on it could cause you problems later. So you never put your
hands on the gun.

Of course, that wasn’t a cop’s
reasoning. Most cops didn’t care because they’re straight. But I’d first
seen the back of the fingers thing with a slightly-bent cop working the
Drug Squad at 83
^rd
Street, when he gave a clean throwaway gun to
one of his snitches for ‘personal protection’. When I asked him about it
later, he said that he didn’t trust the snitch not to use it for something
other than personal protection. And he wanted no physical evidence that
proved he’d ever been within touching distance of that pistol.

It was just another thing that
didn’t add up about Eichhorn.

I shoved the pistol into the
shoulder rig and put the ID case in my back pocket. “See you around,” I
said.

As I walked out of the room, I
heard him say, “Let’s hope not.”

Pirelli was still at the window,
the binoculars raised to his eyes as he stared through the window at the
Floresta. “Be good,” he said without lowering them.

“I’ll try.” I opened the door and
left the apartment.

It was easy enough getting back to
the Jeep without attracting attention. The burned-out box of the truck
blocked me from the eyes at the front door of the Floresta, and I slid into
the car from the passenger side.

It was the same two sentries who’d
been there when I left. According to Eichhorn, reaching the end of their
two-hour shift. They were still looking around, but it was clear that they
were a lot more interested in getting back inside. For every glance at the
street, there was a glance at the door.

I put the key in the ignition and
got ready to crank the wheel to the left and ease out from behind the
truck.

The front door of the Floresta
opened and two men came out. I cranked the Jeep. No reaction. Everybody
talking, nobody listening.

I kept my eyes on them as I turned
the wheel, threw the Jeep in drive, and rolled into the street, quickly
turning the wheel to the right. I don’t know if my move was smooth enough
to make it look like I had come down the street, because I kept my eyes
forward and the headlights off.

Nothing happened. Nobody yelled,
and the Jeep wasn’t hosed down by an automatic weapon. I kept my speed
steady and turned on 59
^th
, half a block beyond the Floresta.
Only then did I put on my headlights.

Running into Eichhorn and his
associates had been helpful. I could have sat watching all night and not
seen Schleu. Leaving me wondering if it was worth it to burn another day
staking out the Floresta. But Eichhorn had pretty much confirmed that
Schleu was there, or at least had been there. So I could move on to the
next step. Just as soon as I figured out what that was.