The Temporary Agent (10 page)

Twenty-Two

“Cahill has founded a bunch of charities,” she said.

Tom nodded. “Boxing gyms for underprivileged youth.”

“Right. The first one was in Detroit. The next was in Oakland, then Chicago, then Camden, New Jersey, and then finally the one here in New Haven. I got the idea to look this up because I know New Haven is ranked as the fifth most violent city in the country. There are a lot of lists like that online, actually, but more than a few list the same five cities in their top ten.”

“Violent how?”

“Gang violence. That doesn’t necessarily mean street gangs, though. It can also mean affiliates of foreign cartels. Russian, Mexican, Serbian, Chechen. That means trafficking in drugs and stolen vehicles and firearms on an international level. Worse than all that, though, it means human trafficking, too. The flesh trade. Sex slaves. Runaways, mainly, but also women brought here from overseas under false pretenses, only to be bought and sold.”

“It’s difficult to imagine someone like him being involved with that.”

“Maybe he’s not part of it. Maybe he was trying to fight it.”

“How?”

Stella repeated what Savelle had told Tom last night. Wherever Cahill opened a school, dropout rates fell and graduation rates rose.

“Gangs have territories, and they prey on those who live within them. That’s how they make their money. The last thing any criminal would want is a stabilizing influence to be introduced into his feeding ground. From what I’ve read, Cahill was clearly a stabilizing influence wherever he went.”

“How do you know this?” Tom said. “About gangs, I mean.”

“My father was concerned that the gang activity in Hartford and New Haven would one day make its way here. He tended to want to teach me everything he knew. Even when I was little, he would do that. Even when my mother thought it wasn’t appropriate. It was our thing, though, you know? He was never shy about his desire for me to go into law enforcement. He had his heart set on his daughter joining the FBI. But when I grew up, it wasn’t what I wanted to do.”

Tom began to understand a little better now why so many of her friends were state troopers.

Or rather, why so many state troopers were drawn to her.

What man didn’t want a true equal?

“Were there any attacks on Cahill in any of the previous cities?”

“No, but it looks like he never stayed in any of those very long. He’d set up the gym, start it with his own money, get it staffed with local boxing instructors and tutors, and once it was self-sufficient, he’d move on. A few months, tops. He’s smart, too, because he not only involved the community’s religious and civil leaders, he also landed corporate sponsorships and integrated each gym with local law enforcement athletic leagues. Kids not only had somewhere to go after school, they were often working out next to cops, building relationships that would have never existed otherwise. The guy made a difference, Tom. He dramatically improved lives and communities.”

“Not really the actions of someone unfit to manage his own affairs.”

“I thought the same thing. And he opened his first gym just six months after the lawsuit was dropped. Would someone really snap back that quickly?”

“Doubtful.”

Stella was quiet for a moment. “You know, there’s a big difference between street gangs and foreign cartels. Street gangs are dependent on the youth of their neighborhoods to increase memberships. Or even just to replenish it when current members are sent to prison or killed. Dry up the flow of new members and a gang weakens and falls apart. But that’s not the case when a gang isn’t homegrown. They import their members from overseas. You can’t dry up a supply of new members by making positive changes to the community.”

“Is there a Chechen gang presence in New Haven?”

“That’s the thing. I went to the National Gang Center website, and none of the linked articles said anything about foreign gangs, just the usual street gang activity.”

“Yet a Chechen hit team was sent after Cahill. And Savelle and I were attacked by Chechens.”

Stella nodded. “So maybe this has nothing to do with Cahill’s charities.”

Tom thought about that. “You said he stayed longer in New Haven than he had in any of the other cities.”

“Yes. He arrived six months ago. Like I said, he left every other city after just a few months. Once one place was up and running, he’d move on to the next.”

“Any idea why he stuck around?”

“I’m guessing it’s the same reason you stuck around Canaan. He saw a woman he couldn’t live without.”

Tom smiled. “Is there anything about her in there?”

“Not much. Just her name. Erica DiSalvo.”

“How did the cops identify her? I mean, her body hasn’t been found, right? Were her prints in the system, too?”

“No. The only car in the motel parking lot that didn’t belong to a guest or employee was registered to Robert DiSalvo. That’s her husband. She went missing the same night Cahill did.”

“She’s married?”

“Yeah, I did a quick search on her name and her husband’s name. She’s a local journalist and he’s a bigwig in commercial real estate and construction.”

“A jealous husband?”

“They were divorcing. But maybe, yeah. I mean, men do crazy shit, right? Maybe she wanted out but he didn’t. The guy could afford to hire a team, that’s for sure. And being in construction means he probably knows someone who knows a person who knows a guy.”

Tom took a breath, let it out.

“None of this tells us where Cahill went, though, does it?”

“No. But I started wondering about something.”

“What?”

“Why boxing gyms? Why would Cahill go around setting them up? So I went back and looked at his prep school records, and sure enough, at the age of fourteen, which is apparently when things turned around for him, he joined a boxing team. He boxed all through school and at Dartmouth, too. So it makes sense that he’d pick that as the means of turning other troubled kids around, right? I mean, if that’s what turned him around, he’d want to pass that experience along.” She paused. “But again, those aren’t really the actions of a person whose own family would be afraid of him, right?”

Tom agreed, then asked what prep school Cahill had attended.

“That’s where it gets good. He went to Taft. That’s right here in this state, in a town called Watertown. You said Savelle believes Cahill would have gone to someone close by. Watertown is less than an hour’s drive from the motel where he was attacked. That’s pretty close.”

“Who there would he have gone to for help, though?”

“If his old boxing coach is the man who turned him around, then maybe they’ve stayed in touch over the years. A mentor is a pretty powerful figure in a person’s life. So I tried to find out who the boxing coach was when Cahill was a student there. Maybe the man had some kind of medical training. Or maybe he would know someone who did. Most prep schools have on-call doctors who live on or close to the campus.”

“What did you find?”

“Nothing. My resources are pretty limited, though. I went to Taft’s website and did a Google search with all the keywords I could think of. I bet your NSA friend could help out with that, though.”

Tom looked at Stella but said nothing.

Stella said, “What’s wrong?”

“I’m impressed, don’t get me wrong. But you figured all this out in a few hours and with limited resources. Savelle had to have had these records for a while, right? So how did she or some NSA analyst not find this already?”

Stella shrugged. “Possessing records and combing through them are two different things. I mean, we hear that on the news all the time, don’t we? Some bomber on a watch list slips through the cracks because no one was actually watching him. Maybe Savelle is scrambling to cover her ass.”

Tom nodded but remained silent.

Stella’s eyes narrowed. “What are you thinking right now?”

“I’m thinking that everything almost adds up but doesn’t. You know what I mean? It feels like I’m being asked to build something quickly with guesses or estimates instead of actual measurements. And I don’t like that.”

“These people went to a lot of trouble to get you all this information, only to leave you feeling like you haven’t been given the whole story.”

“Exactly. So either the information itself is incomplete and therefore faulty, or things are being intentionally left out.”

“Neither sounds good.”

“Nope.”

Stella looked at Tom closely. “So what are you going to do?”

“The only one I know I can trust is Carrington. But there are some things with him that don’t add up, either. Those lapses in protocol, his involvement with a man like Raveis. I’ll be honest. My gut tells me that you and I should run. Just go north and keep moving till our trail disappears.” He stopped short.

“But?” Stella said.

“Whatever he’s into, whatever he has become, I owe Cahill my life. That’s a debt I can’t ignore. And what if Carrington is in trouble? We didn’t really get to talk before I was sent to meet Savelle and Raveis. I can’t turn my back on him, either.”

“Then don’t. Can you contact him? Use the review he used to contact you to send him a coded message back?”

Before Tom could answer, one of the two phones on the bedside table began to vibrate.

It was the flip phone Carrington had slipped to him outside the Gentleman Farmer.

Tom looked at Stella, then back down at the phone.

Finally taking it and flipping it open, he pressed “Talk.”

There was no reason for him to bother checking the caller ID.

Carrington began reciting double-digit numbers. After completing them, he asked if Tom needed them repeated.

“No,” Tom said.

Carrington ended the call.

Twenty-Three

Stella retrieved Tom’s Kindle from the desk.

“I’ll pull up the review.”

Tom said, “No, not yet.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Carrington told me that we’d never use the same review twice.”

“But how are you supposed to know what the new one is? And anyway, he hasn’t really followed all of the protocols so far. I mean, you said that’s one of the things about him that doesn’t add up.”

Tom thought for a moment.

“It could be an emergency,” Stella said. “Should we at least go to the review you used before and give it a try? If we come up with gibberish, at least we’ll know he’s working from a new one.”

“Hang on a sec,” Tom said.

“What?”

He recalled what Carrington had said as they stood on the sidewalk outside the Gentleman Farmer.

You remember what John Locke wrote in his
Second Treatise on Government
?

He recalled, too, the answer he had given.

Less than a minute later, Tom had found the e-book in the Kindle store and was scrolling through the recent reviews.

He didn’t have to go far before he found what he was looking for in the title of a review posted just the day before:

“The First Law of Nature Is Self-Defense.”

Using the list of numbers, Tom parsed the message quickly.

“What’s it say?” Stella said.

“He wants me to meet him this afternoon.”

“Where?”

“That’s the thing. He didn’t use any of the predetermined locations.”

“What did he say?”

“He highlighted three words for the location:
Washington’s
,
spy
, and
rest
.”

“What does that mean?”

“A man named Benjamin Tallmadge was Washington’s spymaster during the Revolution. All Carrington’s other locations were Revolutionary War landmarks in and around New York, so this fits.”

“So you have to figure out some place in New York that has a connection to Tallmadge.”

“I don’t think it’s in New York.”

“Why?”

“Tallmadge settled here in Connecticut after the war. In Litchfield. He died there.”

It took Stella only a moment.

“His grave,” she said.

Tom nodded.

“Litchfield is just twenty minutes south,” Stella said.

A quick Google search showed Tom not only photographs of Tallmadge’s headstone but the address of the cemetery where it was located as well.

“At least I won’t have to go far this time,” he said.

“I’m coming with you,” Stella announced.

“No, I need you to stay here. Just in case.”

“In case of what?”

“In case of anything. Please, Stella. Humor me here. I need you to stay out of sight, okay? I need you to do that for me.”

She was displeased but didn’t press the matter.

“I’m thinking that we should move to a different motel,” Tom said. “In theory, anyone monitoring Carrington’s phone could determine our location now. Since we don’t know what’s going on, I’m taking every precaution.” Tom looked at her. “I’m sorry, Stella. Just a few hours ago some madmen tried to burn me and two other people alive. I have to know that you’re safe.”

“I get it, Tom. I do. But you’ll have to do me a favor.”

“What?”

She nodded toward the .357 on the nightstand. “Take that with you.”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“First of all, I don’t have a carry permit.”

“Likely neither will the men who might try to kill you.”

“Second, that was your father’s service revolver, right?”

“Yeah.”

“And I’m assuming that when he gave it to you, he transferred it to your name.”

“Yes.”

“So if I were caught with that, or had to use it, or lost it, you could end up in jail for having given it to me.” Tom shook his head. “Anyway, I’m not about to leave you unarmed. I don’t care how many of your trooper buddies are waiting outside the door.”

Stella waited a moment, then said, “So what time are you supposed to meet Carrington?”

“Two.”

“Good. That gives me time.”

“Time for what?”

“To call Conrad,” Stella said. “I want him to grab something for me.”

“I’m thinking we should leave him out of this.”

“I trust him, Tom. Like you trust Carrington. Anyway, you can agree it would better for him to go back to our place and get what I need than for us to.”

It still took him a moment to give in. “Yeah. But it would be better if you used the landline.”

Stella nodded. “He should be on duty by now, so I’ll call his cell.”

Tom asked Stella to have Conrad meet them at the motel so she could relay in person what she needed and where they were going. Then Conrad could catch up with them later at a location that only the three of them would know about. They couldn’t be too careful at this point.

A total of ten minutes had passed when a state trooper’s four-door sedan pulled into the parking lot.

Tom dropped the key at the manager’s office while Stella and Conrad spoke—Conrad still behind the wheel, Stella standing with her arms folded across her stomach by the driver’s door.

Conrad looked at her in that stoic way of his, then glanced through the windshield at Tom as he was leaving the office and walking toward his pickup.

Looking back at Stella, Conrad nodded and said something Tom couldn’t hear. She reached in through the open window and touched his shoulder in thanks, then stepped back as the four-door reversed, turned around, and exited the lot.

Tom asked if everything was okay.

Stella told him everything was fine.

Though he sensed something was off, he didn’t press the matter.

“Before we leave, we should turn off all of our electronics.”

Stella nodded. “Okay.”

Minutes later, Tom was leading the way in his pickup, Stella following in her vehicle.

He watched the rearview mirror as much as he watched the road ahead.

Five miles south, there was another roadside motel.

Tom got a room, paying for it with cash.

Then he unlocked his pickup’s bed-mounted toolbox, removed a duffel bag, and led Stella toward their room.

“What’s in the bag?” she asked.