Shadow Boys (3 page)

- CHAPTER THREE -

After meeting with Deputy Chief Raul Delgado, I left the Grassy Knoll and headed toward my Lincoln Navigator, a company car. I found my SUV in the Sixth Floor Museum parking lot, then tossed the sack of spent cartridges in the rear and got in the driver’s seat.

My phone, battery removed, was in the console.

I slid the battery into place, powered on the device, and dialed my boss, Theo Goldberg, Esquire, managing partner of Goldberg, Finkelman, and Clark, PC.

I’d never actually met Theo Goldberg. He’d hired me by e-mail, based on my experience as a government contractor and skill set as a former law-enforcement officer. Theo was but a voice on the phone, Charlie to my Angels.

He answered after the first ring. A gruff hello followed by voices in the distance.

“You could have let me know about the deputy chief,” I said.

Kids screaming in the background, a coach’s whistle.

“Do you have any idea how much child psychologists cost?” he said.

This reply was so far from anything I was expecting that I had no comeback.

“Isaac, my youngest, he’s been taking archery lessons since he was in the second grade.”

Theo’s voice was more high-pitched and whiny than usual. He dropped his
r
’s, too—the result of growing up in Boston.

“I thought we had an agreement.” I started the Lincoln. “After the mess in Omaha. You promised to tell me
everything
about a job.”

Omaha had been a simple retrieval (my bread and butter), a misappropriated shipping container full of property belonging to the Department of Energy. Unfortunately, the shipping container was in the possession of a man who owed money to some very dangerous people in Chicago. Theo Goldberg, a tiger in the courtroom, was naïve in the ways of the street, and failed to mention the Chicago connection. Luckily, I was able to keep the body count low and most of the ensuing meltdown out of the media.

“Isaac shot a classmate,” Theo said. “With his bow and arrow. In the buttocks.”

“Anything else I need to know about Raul Delgado?” I slid the transmission into drive.

“Thank God the child he hit is all right,” Theo said. “A minor puncture wound in his privileged WASP ass.”

“Focus, Theo.
Fo-cus.
Let’s talk about this guy in Dallas, the deputy chief—”

“The kid he shot, his father is an undersecretary at Homeland Security.”

I headed toward the exit.

“Homeland Security, one of our biggest clients.” He made a tsk sound. “Not good, Jonathan. Not good at all.”

I gave up on my topic. Best to let Theo get it all out of his system. He’d get back to the reason for my call in due course.

“So what’s with the psychologist?” I said.

“The school. They recommended a therapist to deal with any anger issues Isaac might have. Three hundred dollars an hour.”

From his end of the phone, kids yelled like they were at a soccer game. I hoped it was a soccer game.

“The deputy chief,” Theo said. The background noise got quieter. “This Gonzales fellow—”

“Delgado,” I said. “His name is Raul Delgado.”

“Whatever. Listen, he’s someone we want to keep an eye on. We want to
know
about him.”

Theo Goldberg was in the knowing business, as he liked to put it, knowledge being the currency of power in twenty-first-century America.

“Gotcha.”

“Find his missing whatever,” Theo said. “Establish a relationship.”

Another biggie at Goldberg, Finkelman, and Clark.
Relationships.
The currying of favors. He who has the biggest Rolodex wins.

“That other thing,” Theo said. “You’re gonna take care of that, right?”

“On my way, even as we speak.” I drove past the conspiracy theorists at Dealey Plaza.

Wind noise from the other end of the line. Huffing. Heavy breathing. Footsteps, running. Theo yelled, “Isaac! Put the fucking cat down!”

“You’re busy,” I said. “I’ll let you go.”

He came back on the phone. “Be careful, Jonathan. You’re like the son I never had.”

I was pretty sure we were the same age, in our forties. I didn’t mention this. Instead I said, “What about Isaac?”

But the line was dead.

My assignment from Theo Goldberg this fine spring morning—that “other thing” he’d spoken of—was to facilitate the return of some property that belonged to the United States: a laptop computer. The laptop had been issued to a government contractor who was reluctant to return it.

In Texas, there were two groups of people that you absolutely didn’t screw with, no matter what.

In order of importance, they were 1) Baptists and 2) the Dallas Cowboys.

The computer was in the possession of an ex–Dallas Cowboy named Tommy Joe Culpepper, son of the pastor of the Waco Baptist Church in McLennan County. Tommy Joe’s mother was heir to a Permian Basin oil fortune, to boot.

That’s about as close to royalty as you can get in Texas.

Tommy Joe, who fancied himself an Internet entrepreneur when he wasn’t nailing divorcées at the country club, had an office in a renovated warehouse that housed tech start-ups and IT companies.

The building was on Stemmons Freeway, just on the other side of downtown from the School Book Depository. A few minutes after watching Deputy Chief Raul Delgado saunter away from me down the Grassy Knoll, I parked the Navigator between a Ferrari and a Toyota Prius with a Mister Spock bumper sticker.

I was wearing dark jeans, a black dress shirt, and brown lace-up boots. From the rear of the Lincoln I grabbed a black sport coat and shrugged it on.

Look the part.
A saying of Theo’s. I was trying for Internet-savvy investment banker but likely came across as a Silicon Valley dope dealer. Oh well.

Tommy Joe’s office was on the ground floor at the back, a large open area with polished concrete floors and exposed wiring so it looked all techy.

I walked in without knocking and found the Dallas Cowboys’ third-string wide receiver (in 1993) hunched over his desk, tamping a nugget of crystal meth into a pipe.

“Hello, Tommy Joe.” I smiled.

He looked up, mouth agape. He was a big guy, six-three or -four, most of the football muscle having gone to fat. He wore a starched white button-down, a gold Rolex, and the Super Bowl ring he got for sitting on the bench and keeping an eye on Michael Irvin’s cocaine stash.

“My name is Jonathan Cantrell. I’m with the law firm of Goldberg, Finkelman, and Clark.”

“Whuh?” He frowned.

“We represent the government of the United States.”

He put the pipe down.

The room smelled like burnt ammonia, so it was a safe bet that this wasn’t going to be his first hit of the day. Partially packed moving boxes lay scattered about.

“You signed a contract,” I said. “With the Department of Immigration and Customs, remember?”

Several computer-nerd friends of Tommy Joe’s had developed an algorithm to spot likely illegal-alien crossing points. Tommy Joe had formed a company and sold the idea to Uncle Sam. Unfortunately, neither the nerds nor Tommy Joe could deliver. Probably because the algorithms didn’t work out. Too many variables, not enough data points. Who knows? A contributing factor might have been that Tommy Joe was pond scum.

“The laptop,” I said. “The one they provided you. I need it back.”

The computer contained government protocols and encryption data for federal contractors, information to be kept secret and returned upon request.

The Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement had retained my employers to retrieve the laptop after Tommy Joe had ignored their letters and phone calls.

He stood up. “I don’t gotta give nothing back.”

“Yes, you do. Your contract is null and void.”

His nostrils flared with each breath.

“Paragraph two, sub-paragraph C,” I said. “Quote: ‘In the event of this agreement being terminated, all properties provided to the contractor are to be returned forthwith.’ End quote.”

“You know who I am?”

“You’re the big man on campus.” I shook my head. “But they don’t care about any of that in DC.”

Tommy Joe came around the side of his desk, face contorted with rage.

I held up a hand. “Stop.”

He stopped.

“I know what you’re thinking right about now, Tommy Joe.”

He began to hyperventilate. Face purple.

“You’re thinking you’re a badass and there’s no way you’re gonna let some cat like me waltz in here and tell you what to do.”

He didn’t say anything.

“Maybe back in the day you were a badass. Maybe back in the day you could have stopped me.” I lowered my voice, barely above a whisper. “But not today, Tommy Joe.”

He might as well have sent a press release to announce his next move. His right hand clenched and unclenched several times. He finally made a fist, reared back.

“Don’t do it, Tommy Joe. I do not want to hurt you.”

He swung anyway, a roundhouse toward my jaw, the kind of punch that looked impressive in the movies but was totally impractical in real life.

If you see it coming you have oodles of time.

I caught his wrist, yanked it forward and then up behind his back. Then I kicked his feet out from under him and slammed him to the floor, face-first.

He roared like a grizzly bear and bucked against me.

Astride his back, I grabbed his other arm and brought it to meet the first, then cuffed him using a plastic zip tie from my jacket pocket.

“Where is it?” I said.

“Screw you, ass-munch.”

I sighed. Then I twisted one of his ears until he screamed.

“The d-d-desk d-drawer!”

I let go. Dragged Tommy Joe to the wall and rolled him upright with his back pressed against his bound hands, legs spread. Then I walked around the desk and opened the largest of the drawers.

The laptop was there, resting on top of a small plastic bag containing six or seven pencil-eraser-sized chunks of methamphetamine and a pint bottle of vodka.

I dumped the meth into an ashtray, added an ounce or so of vodka, and lit the whole thing on fire with Tommy Joe’s lighter.

“See you around.” I tucked the laptop under my arm and headed for the door.

“You are fucking toast.” Tommy Joe tried to sound menacing. “I’m gonna hunt you down like a—like a—”

I stopped. “Like a wild dog? A feral pig?”

He didn’t say anything, so I left.

Dallas police headquarters

1981

Raul Delgado, eleven years old, closes his eyes for a moment. He tries to erase the image of blinding light and the thunderclap that seared itself into his brain and left a constant ringing in his ears.

Even with his eyes shut, however, the light and the ringing remain. The only result is that the smell of urine and cigarette smoke becomes stronger.

He’s still wearing the same clothes he had on in the backseat of the police car, the ones he peed in when he became so scared.

When the cop pointed the gun at him.

Right before the huge explosion that changed everything.

He opens his eyes.

The cigarette smell comes from a man in a light-blue, Western-style suit, a Dallas police badge clipped to the jacket pocket. His face is cratered like the pictures of the moon Raul has seen in school.

The man is smoking Pall Malls and drinking coffee. He is also leafing through a folder, which Raul imagines has something to do with himself and his brother, Carlos.

The two of them are alone in a small room. The room is furnished with a metal table and three metal chairs. The walls are brick, painted a pale green. The floor is gray concrete.

The man with the pockmarked face sits across from Raul. He hasn’t spoken other than a gruff hello when he entered a few minutes ago.

Raul rubs his nose with the back of his hand. His face and shirt are still speckled with blood. Raul can’t quite figure out why. He knows he isn’t hurt, not cut anywhere. He’s pretty sure the two cops who were in the front seat, the red-haired one with the gun and his bald friend, weren’t hurt either.

Therefore the blood must be from his brother, Carlos.

But that makes no sense.