Sphere Of Influence (22 page)

"Me neither," Reynolds admitted, not willing to meet Beamon's eye. "It was a smart play. But smart plays aren't always enough."

"What I want to know is," Laura continued, "if we go forward with this, can you stay objective?"

Beamon thought about that for a moment. "I don't know."

A long breath escaped her and she leaned back on the dash again. "Okay. I think we're clear on Mark's position. And I agree with him, but not for the same reasons. Getting hold of the man behind Chet's death isn't going to bring him back. But if we have a chance, no matter how remote, of getting a lead that will take us to that launcher, we have to take it."

"This just gets worse and worse," Reynolds said. "Mark just admitted that he doesn't know if he can stay objective--"

"What's your vote?" Laura said.

"Shit. . . . If we do this, I'm going to have to call Chet's wife and lie to her--tell her that he's okay. Shit. . . ." "What's your vote, Scott?"

"Okay. . . . Yes. I'm with you."

Chapter
27

THE house was a serious dump, a tiny cube covered in peeling paint and topped with a bowed roof. It looked appropriately anonymous in this low-income neighborhood on the outskirts of L
. A
. but probably didn't fit into the lifestyle Carlo Gasta had grown accustomed to.

Beamon finally had to admit to himself that renting the conspicuous gray Lexus had been a mistake and considered just driving by. There just wasn't time, though: Trust had to be quickly conjured from thin air, and one thing that promoted trust was punctuality. He slowed the car to avoid a child on a rusted bicycle pedaling across the street and then turned into the dirt driveway.

Taking long, slow breaths of the cool air inside the car, he shut out the memory of Chet, the rocket launcher--everything. He was Nicolai, and Nicolai cared about only one thing: money.

Aware that someone was probably watching, he stepped out of the car and hobbled toward the front door, which opened before he could knock. The man on the other side, standing so he couldn't be seen from the street, looked nervous. Actually, he looked scared.

Beamon crossed the threshold and reached into his coat pocket, causing Mikey to freeze. He looked relieved when Beamon's hand reappeared with only a set of keys. "Get someone to move my car. It'll attract attention."

Mikey nodded and Beamon continued through a narrow hallway, feeling the sweat starting to roll down his back in the stifling heat. The room he came to was a littl
e
cooler and a lot darker, the windows having been covered with old towels held in place with nails. The inevitable odor of garlic filled the air.

"Nicolai. Right on time."

As near as he could tell from Gasta's steady voice and smooth stride, he was stone sober.

"Carlo."

"Can I get you something cold to drink? We've got iced tea." He pronounced each word a little too carefully. Fear. "Sure."

Gasta motioned to Tony, who was sitting at the vinyl-topped kitchen table, but the gesture turned out to be a dismissal and not an order. Gasta poured the tea himself as Tony disappeared into the hall.

"You doing all right? Anything you need that I can get you? Anything at all?"

Beamon shook his head and sat down at the table, ignoring the map spread across it.

"Thank you for coming," Gasta said, setting the glass in front of Beamon. "I think you'll be glad you did."

"I wonder."

"You're still going to help me out, right? Sure you are: You wouldn't be here otherwise. . . ."

"The police are interested in me," Beamon said. "I told them I got mugged, but it was a tough sell with a wallet full of money."

Gasta scrunched up his face. "You'll never hear from them again--trust me. If you don't make a stink, they'll be just as happy to go back to the doughnut shop and forget all about it."

He was almost certainly right. The questions the cop who had brought him to the hospital asked led Beamon to believe this kind of thing wasn't all that uncommon. As far as local law enforcement was concerned, he was just another guy from out of town who had messed with the wrong hooker or gotten a little too obnoxious in a strip club. "We were talking about ripping off some Afghan heroin dealers . . ." Beamon prompted. Nicolai wasn't one for small talk.

"Yeah."

"I seem to remember not being able to figure out why you would want to do something so stupid."

"After the thing with Chet, I'm going to have to disappear for a while. That's going to cost money and I'm cut off from my businesses. . . ."

"Oh, I understand why you're going to do it now. But why were you going to do it last week?"

Gasta didn't answer immediately. He was obviously being a little more careful in choosing his words than he normally was. "I have information that they're shopping for other buyers--that after this deal they're going to cut me out. I want to teach them some respect."

"By killing them and taking their product?"

"It makes a point."

Beamon took a sip of the cold tea, staring over the glass at Gasta. He couldn't remember ever wanting someone dead so badly. "What point is that, Carlo?"

"If they try to fuck me, they end up dead. If they deal straight with me, they make a lot of money. That's the kind of thing these people understand. They understand strength. You have to make them respect you."

Beamon shrugged. "I guess it doesn't matter. As long as I get my money."

"You'll get it. I promise."

Beamon tapped the map on the table. "I take it you have a plan?"

Gasta nodded and pointed to a barren section of desert outside L
. A
. "This is where we're meeting--where they want to make the exchange. It's a place with big rock walls on three sides--"

"A natural amphitheater."

"Yeah--a natural amphitheater. Anyway, you turn off the highway here and drive along a shitty dirt road that's not on the map to get to it."

"Uh-huh."

"So we get there early and then, when they show up, we take 'em out."

Beamon stared at him, waiting for the rest. After about thirty seconds Gasta became uncomfortable and started talking again.

"So then we, uh, drive their van out and take it to our warehouse."

Beamon remained silent.

"Then, you know, we break it up and cut it, and then we can distribute it."

The widely held opinion that this man was a complete idiot was starting to look overly charitable.

"That's it?"

Gasta shrugged. "What do you mean? Yeah, that's it. What do you think?"

Beamon laughed and drained the rest of his tea. He considered it a personal insult that the FBI had never been able to nail this asshole.

"What about the cops? I mean, you start shooting a mile from the highway and somebody with a cell phone might just make a call."

"It's kind of a rural highway--not all that busy. And it'll be late at ni--"

"What if the Afghans have a chase vehicle--a bunch of guys with machine guns hanging back, just in case?" "Well, I--"

"What if they have guys set up in the rocks with rifles? What if one of those fat-asses you have working for you gets in front of a bullet? Then you've got a dead body to deal with that's going to leave blood at the scene that can be traced back to the bleeder."

"It was just an idea," Gasta said angrily. "That's why I asked you here. I thought you could help me tweak it. You know, polish it. So, you gonna help me or not?"

"Well, if I don't, I'm sure as hell never going to get my money. Though I won't have to worry about killing you. The Afghans will do it for me."

Beamon shook his head and pulled the map off the table, holding it closer to his face. Like most FBI agents, he'd always been fascinated by the thought of being on the other side. There were people who thought he was one of the best investigators in the modern era of law enforcement. Did that mean he'd also make one of the best criminals? His eyes slowly scanned the map, examining the blank areas that represented empty desert and the narrow line
s
that represented the myriad roads, ramps, and bridges that connected the millions of people settled around L
. A
. "Tell you what, Carlo. Let's see if we can come up with something a little more elegant."

Chapter
28

"WHERE'S Laura?" Beamon said, wadding up the cigarette pack in his hand and throwing it on the ground in disgust. He was up to three and a half packs a day, and despite the vivid warning labels, he wasn't dying. Goddamn false advertising.

"She didn't come," Scott Reynolds said. "She went back to D
. C
."

Beamon nodded and watched the wind take his discarded pack and send it rolling across the dark, barren landscape. He suddenly wanted to be home, to be back at his crappy job, to sit on his own sofa, to see Carrie again, to forget Chet Michaels. Mostly he wanted to escape Nicolai before he lost Mark Beamon.

"Can't we meet in a bar like normal people? I hate this fucking desert."

Reynolds ignored the question.

"I don't know how to say this, Mark, so I'm just going to say it. We talked to the Director and he said no."

"No? What do you mean he said no?"

"I mean, we told him what happened and he went through the ceiling. It wasn't too hard to predict--bringing you in on this without approval, following a line of investigation no one knew about. Honestly, if it wouldn't cause a huge PR problem, Laura would probably be finishing out her career in the Anchorage office."

Beamon opened his mouth to speak, but Reynolds held up a hand and silenced him. "A young agent's dead and you heard Gasta give the order, Mark. The Director isn'
t
interested in speculation about someone on the other end of a phone line. He isn't willing to take the chance on losing Gasta."

"Son of a bitch--"

"Look, Mark. He's worried. The FBI's gotten a lot of black eyes lately, and now he's sitting on a terrorism investigation that isn't going anywhere. You can bet he's going to play this one right down the middle."

Beamon couldn't think of anything to do but laugh. "Gasta's a nobody--a thug. We both know that--"

"The other thing we know is that Gasta's been an embarrassment to law enforcement for years. Getting him is going to be a major coup and it's going to divert some of the attention away from everything else that's going on."

"Goddamn it!" Beamon shouted to the empty desert. "We bring down Gasta and my cover's blown. His boss is going to disappear into thin air. And what about the Afghans? Instead of diverting attention from the fact we can't find the rocket launcher, why not actually get out there and find it? You can't possibly agree with this."

Reynolds hesitated. "I understand that this is how it's going to be."

"What about Laura?"

"Laura understands that too."

"Fuck!" Beamon turned and walked aimlessly for a few moments, finally stopping at the edge of a dry ditch and looking out into the dark. "We can't just let this go, Scott." "It's over, Mark. A swing and a miss."

"No. No way. Look, this drug deal is going down in a few days--I don't know exactly when, yet, but soon. We grab Gasta there along with Laura's Afghans."

"We already suggested that. The Director thinks we've got an entrapment problem that's going to muddle our case against Gasta."

Beamon spun around to face Reynolds. "Does nobody give a shit about the fact that we've got a rocket launcher floating around the country?"

"Face it, Mark, we've got nothing on this Mohammed guy that could connect him to the launcher other than the fact that he appears to be from roughly the right part o
f
the world. With the millions of Middle Eastern people in the country, what are the chances that he's linked to any of this?"

"Okay, let's forget the fucking rocket. Everyone agrees that these Afghans are driving around with a truckload of heroin, right? That's still illegal, isn't it? We take them all out at the buy--it's the only logical decision."

"The buy when? A `few days' from now? A lot can happen in that time, Mark, and you know it. We still don't know how Chet's cover was blown. Yours could be next. Then Gasta just makes himself disappear and we look like a bunch of idiots."

"Get the Director on the phone. I want to talk to him." "No way. He specifically said that the discussion was ended. That this was a direct order."

Beamon threw his half-finished cigarette down and stomped on it violently, instantly regretting the act. It had been his last one. "Bullshit! You want me to blow an opportunity like this so you can bust a guy who wears silk tracksuits and spends his time shaking down strip clubs?" "Gasta was directly involved in Chet's death, Mark." "I know that," Beamon said. "But who was behind it?" "Don't get cute here, Mark. I know you've gone up against management and won in the past, and I know you're friends with Tom Sherman. But you can't win this one. You'd be protecting the guy who had Chet killed--that's how the Director would spin it. Right or wrong, the rest is too complicated to make good TV. It'll be your job and your reputation . . . what's left of it."