S
pecial Agent Yeager was holding a BlackBerry against his ear when Danny returned.
“Yeah, it’s me,” he said. “Yeah. Yeah.”
He glanced at Danny quickly, like he was a dead mouse his cat had just brought in. “Well, that’s not going to happen,” he said into his phone.
Yeager waved Danny in without looking at him again.
When the door clicked shut behind them, Yeager ended his call and stuck out a hand. He shook Danny’s hand with a paw like a broken-in baseball glove.
“You’re doing the right thing.”
Danny said nothing.
Like I have a choice
.
“Let’s get your signature on the dotted line so we can get moving,” Yeager said, guiding Danny down the hall. A burnt-toast smell lingered in the air as they passed a break room: microwave, small cube refrigerator, a Keurig coffeemaker, a jumbo box of coffee pods from a discount shopping club. Boisterous laughter came from behind a closed door across the hall. A staff meeting of some sort.
The agent with the shoe-polish hair, Slocum, was sitting at the table in the same conference room where they’d met before. This time he was sorting through a sheaf of papers arrayed in front of him like playing cards in a game of solitaire.
“Well, look who’s back,” said Slocum. “Have a seat. Get comfortable. This is going to take a while. We need to take a complete personal history.”
“For what?”
“For our debriefing report to headquarters,” Yeager said. “We gotta make a case for how we think you can help us.”
“What’s to debrief?” asked Danny.
“Standard procedure for all sn—uh, confidential informants,” said Slocum.
“You almost said
snitches
.”
“Old habit.” He smiled nastily.
“Kind of hard for me to be a snitch if I don’t actually work for the cartel,” Danny pointed out.
Slocum let out a long sigh.
After forty-five minutes and a stack of multipart forms, they’d finished the biographical questions. Then they asked him to sketch out a floor plan for Galvin’s house, or at least as much of it as he’d seen. They asked him to recall as many details about Galvin’s home office as he could: door placement, windows, how many computers, what kind of electronic equipment. Every single item on top of Galvin’s desk. Danny was quietly pleased at how much he was able to recall. The two agents took turns. One asked the questions while the other went for coffee or water or a potty break.
“Why do you need to know all this?” Danny asked at one point.
Slocum, the bad cop, said, “Why don’t you let us ask the questions.”
“Did you ever see him place a call on a landline?” Yeager asked.
“Actually, no. Just his mobile phone. His BlackBerry.”
“And you’re sure it was a BlackBerry? It didn’t look bulkier or different in any way?”
“I didn’t get that close a look.”
“Do you have his cell number? Of his BlackBerry, I mean.”
Danny nodded. He took out his iPhone, went into his contacts and read off Galvin’s number.
“Did you notice whether he did any texting?”
“I don’t think I could tell the difference between texting and making a call,” Danny said. “Why? What do you need to know all this for?”
“We need to know who he’s talking to and what he’s saying,” said Yeager.
“So tap his phones.”
“Brilliant idea,” said Slocum, getting up. “Why didn’t I think of that?” He shook his head in mordant amusement and walked out of the room.
“What makes you think we haven’t done that?” said Yeager. “The problem is, the cartels have gotten too smart. They never discuss business over phone lines that aren’t encrypted.”
“Did it ever occur to you guys that maybe the reason Galvin doesn’t talk cartel business over the phone is because he’s not doing any cartel business?”
Yeager seemed to be suppressing a smirk. “We’ve picked up an encrypted signal going out over one of his landlines, probably in his home office.”
“So?”
“There’s a reason he’s using encryption.”
Danny shrugged. “You guys can’t break it?”
“Not so simple. You’ve been reading too many spy novels.”
“No such thing as reading too many spy novels.”
They asked for his iPhone and installed a couple of apps on it. One was ChatSecure. It used an encryption protocol called Off-the-Record. It allowed them to send and receive text messages securely.
“We’ve given you a Gmail account to use.”
“I already have one.”
“Don’t use it. Not for messaging us. Use this one.” He wrote on a yellow Post-it:
[email protected]
.
“If you want to use Google Talk for messaging, use that account.”
“Jay Gould,” Danny said. “You’ve done your homework.”
“And 1836—”
“Is the year he was born, yes, I know. And what makes you think Galvin’s going to open up to me?”
“We don’t think that,” Yeager said. “Of course he won’t.”
“So what do you need me for?”
“For this.”
Slocum’s voice, triumphant. He’d appeared in the doorway, a white cardboard box in his hand instead of a cup of coffee. He swooped in and put the box on the table in front of Danny. It looked like a bakery box, like it was intended to hold pastries, maybe a half dozen cupcakes. He opened the flaps and pulled out a little sculpture. A cheesy-looking repro of Rodin’s
The Thinker
, the kind of thing you’d find at a flea market. It even had a fake patina of green over black to make it look like the bronze original in the Musée Rodin, oxidized from decades of Paris rain. It was meant to be used as a bookend. It was a curio. It was a piece of crap.
“What’s this?” Danny said.
“A gift,” Slocum said. “You’re going to give it to Galvin as a token of your gratitude for the generous loan.”
“A . . . bookend? Is it at least part of a pair?”
“What you see is what you get,” Slocum said. “It’s a room bug. There’s a GSM listening device built in. Transmits over cellular service.”
Yeager said, “Since we can’t decrypt the phone signal, our best hope is to plant a listening device in the room itself. Listen to his end of the conversation at least. We’ll monitor it for thirty days. Then we’re required to report back to the court.”
“A single bookend,” Danny said. “Why would I give him a bookend? That’s weird.”
Yeager shrugged. “It’s a . . . a thing. A piece of art or whatever. It’s what the technical boys came up with.”
“You guys are serious about this? I’m supposed to give him this garage-sale, flea-market piece of junk as a thank-you gift? You think he’s going to put something like this on his desk? You must think he’s some goombah out of
The Sopranos
. The guy has sophisticated tastes. He’s not going to put this on his desk. This is an embarrassment. It’s not even a good copy.”
“He won’t want to offend you,” Yeager said. “He’ll keep it on his desk in case you look for it next time you visit.”
“He barely knows me. He’s not afraid of hurting my feelings. He’ll toss it before I pull out of his driveway.”
“Possibly,” conceded Yeager. “Or not.”
“You got a better idea?” said Slocum, a challenge.
Danny shrugged. “At least make it an eagle.”
“An eagle.” Slocum gave a scornful laugh.
“The Boston College mascot.”
“That’s a thought,” Yeager told Slocum. “Not a bad idea.”
“That’ll delay us a couple days at least,” Slocum replied. “The tech boys have to locate an eagle and then fit it.”
“It’s worth the wait,” Yeager replied.
“Forget it,” Danny said. “He isn’t likely to put it on his desk anyway.”
“I’m inclined to agree,” Yeager said. “This is going to take some rethinking in any case.”
“Why do you need me anyway?” Danny asked. “Don’t you have a team that can do some sort of covert entry into the Galvins’ house one night when they’re out and plant listening devices?”
“That option was considered and discarded,” said Yeager. “Galvin’s house is never unoccupied, even when the family’s gone. There are always servants. Plus a state-of-the-art security system.”
“And you guys can’t get around that?”
“It’s not feasible,” Yeager said. “No way to do a B&E without detection in that house. Plus, the moment they suspect an intrusion, they’ll have the place swept and sterilized. Whenever you do an operation like that, you have to be extremely careful about the law of unintended consequences.”
“Meaning what?” said Danny.
“Sometimes things go to shit,” said Slocum.
Danny swallowed hard. “You don’t want me doing this. It’s way too risky. Talk about unintended consequences. You want a professional. I don’t have the right skill set.”
“Actually, you’ve got the single most important qualification,” Yeager said. “Access. The man seems to trust you.”
“My only ‘qualification,’ as you put it, is that my daughter’s a friend of his daughter’s. But frankly, if what you say is true, I don’t like the idea of her spending time over there anymore.”
Yeager leaned over and placed his catcher’s-mitt hand on Danny’s wrist. “Absolutely no changes. This is crucial. It’s extremely important that you don’t alter any patterns. If you suddenly won’t let your daughter go over to the Galvins’, he’ll get suspicious.”
“And what happens if he catches me planting some bug in his office—what then? What if he somehow discovers the transmitter? What happens to me? What happens to my
daughter
?”
“So don’t get caught,” said Slocum.
Yeager said, “Nothing’s going to happen to your daughter.”
“And what if the word gets out that I’m cooperating with the goddamned DEA? If you guys have a leak? What if someone blabs to someone and Galvin gets wind of it? And he finds out I’ve planted a bug inside his house?”
“Don’t borrow trouble,” said Yeager. “We’ll worry about that if and when it happens. But it won’t. Everything will be fine.”
“What happened to the law of unintended consequences?” Danny said.
Both DEA agents fell silent for a long moment. A smiled played about the corners of Slocum’s mouth.
“There’s absolutely no reason to worry,” Yeager said.
But even he didn’t sound convinced.
T
he text came two days later.
On his laptop, actually. A tritone sounded, reverbing fuzzily like a vibraphone. A window opened on his laptop’s screen, asking whether he’d accept a digital fingerprint, an encryption key. The window was full of gibberish, a block of meaningless characters.
The sender was [email protected].
He clicked yes, and then a text message popped right up:
7 p.m., IHOP, Soldiers Field Rd, NE corner pkg lot.
A meet had been set for the parking lot of the International House of Pancakes in Brighton.
Danny had already begun to hope the DEA had lost interest in him. That they’d finally realized it wasn’t such a good idea to press such a rank amateur into service. Too risky. Too many unintended consequences.
With a sense of foreboding he typed
OK
, and clicked
SEND
.
• • •
He knew he couldn’t tell Abby about the DEA.
She was a teenager, a member of the Oversharing Generation who documented their every move on Facebook or Twitter or Instagram. She could never be expected to keep a secret like this. Her best friend’s father was a financier for a Mexican drug cartel? Her own dad was being blackmailed into gathering information on the Galvins? She’d be incredulous, then outraged, and most of all buzzing with excitement. Her need to tell Jenna would be an uncontrollable reflex.
Lucy was a different story. She was the soul of discretion. He trusted her absolutely. She’d never gossip; she knew how to keep a secret.
But when he called her that afternoon, he found himself unable to tell her the astonishing latest.
“Luce, baby, I’m going to be late for dinner tonight.”
“What about Abby?”
“Home, as far as I know. Not at the Galvins’.”
The complexities of their living arrangements had been worked out over time. With her son, Kyle, away at Bowdoin, Lucy was an empty nester. She disliked rattling around her Brookline condo, making dinner for one. She preferred spending time as a family with Danny and Abby on Marlborough Street.
She wasn’t Abby’s mom, and she wasn’t a substitute. She was Daddy’s girlfriend, not an authority figure. Yet in a sense she was Abby’s girlfriend, too: kind of a big sister. What might have been awkward in another family seemed to work fairly well, maybe because Lucy was a psychiatrist and knew where the land mines were and how to sidestep them.
“Okay,” she said. “I’ll fix something with Abby, then. What’s up?”
He was ready with a lie. “An old friend of mine’s in town and wanted to pick my brain. He’s got some idea for a book. I think he wants publishing advice, which generally means how he can get an agent.”
“Who’s that?”
“You don’t know him—guy named Art? Art Nava?”
“I don’t know the name. From Columbia?”
“Nah, I met him through Sarah. A million years ago. Anyway. You two just go ahead and have dinner without me.”
Art Nava was a high school friend of his from Wellfleet, someone he hadn’t talked to, even thought of, since high school graduation. Why he’d chosen that name, he had no idea.
All he knew for certain was that he wanted to protect Lucy from the dangerous swerve his life had taken, to keep her innocent and uninvolved. To take this on alone and not endanger the woman he loved so much. It felt like the right thing to do.
But it was the first time he’d ever lied to her, and he was sure it wouldn’t be the last.
• • •
At five minutes before seven that evening, Danny was sitting in his car in the parking lot of the International House of Pancakes in Brighton. The lot was mostly empty: The pancake chain’s “eat breakfast for dinner” campaign had never worked in a big way—but a steady trickle of cars came in and out. The white noise whoosh of traffic from Soldiers Field Road was rhythmic, almost lulling. Or it might have been lulling, in another setting, at another time.
Because he didn’t know what to expect, and he hated uncertainty. He was to park in the northeast corner of the IHOP lot by seven o’clock.
They would find him.
He waited. A few spaces away, a red Jeep Grand Cherokee was parked. It probably belonged to an employee, maybe a manager. The other cars in the lot were clustered much closer to the restaurant.
Whenever a car pulled in, he looked up, watched to see if it was headed toward him. By 7:05 he’d watched a total of five cars enter the lot and three leave. None of them came anywhere near. The agent he’d talked to on the phone—Yeager, the less obnoxious of the two—had been emphatic about punctuality. He’d give them another five minutes and then leave.
His cell phone made a strange bling sound. It displayed the words
ENCRYPTED CHAT RECEIVED
. He unlocked the phone and read the message.
Look to your right,
it said.
Take the side door. No key necessary.
He looked to the right, saw no one and nothing.
For a moment he didn’t understand. Then he saw, maybe twenty feet away, a motel. The
CHA
RLES RIVER MOTEL
, a sign said. A black side door with white trim. He hadn’t paid any attention to the building, but there it was, closer than the IHOP.
Then another bling, and a new text message:
Room 126. First room on your right.
He got out, slammed the car door, looked around briefly. A low set of concrete steps leading into the motel, bracketed by hedges. You were supposed to insert a key card into a slot to open the door, but when he pulled the handle toward him, it came right open. Someone had jammed the door lock. The hallway was dim and smelled of diapers. He could hear babies crying, multiple babies in multiple rooms. He wondered if this was one of those hotels that the state had taken over for overflow low-income housing. The first door on the right was numbered 126. He knocked once, and it came right open.
Slocum, the one with the Just for Men Jet Black hair and the pointed face of a fox, at the door. Danny entered, and Slocum closed the door behind him without saying a word. Yeager was sitting in the corner. The curtains were closed, and the only light came from a single desk lamp.
“Daniel.”
“Seven o’clock sharp, huh?” Danny said. “I guess you meant government time.”
Yeager shook his head slowly, and said, “The precautions are for your own safety.” He held out a small, dark blue velvet bag.
Danny took it. Something heavy but small was inside.
“Careful,” Yeager said. “It’s just been calibrated. We don’t want it to get out of whack.”
Danny tipped out a large metallic disc that looked like a coin. It was a bronze medal that bore the inscription
C
OLLEGIUM BOSTONIENSE
.
“Look familiar?” Yeager said.
Danny nodded. “I think so.”
“It’s an exact replica of the Boston College President’s Medal he’s already got, only it’s made from resin.”
He weighed it in his palm. It was heavy and cold, even felt solid, like a real medal. “This is a transmitter?”
Yeager nodded once. “A GSM-based monitoring device. Sound- activated. Calls us when it detects sound in the room so we can listen in. But you get the hard job. You have to swap it for the original.”
“How am I supposed to do that?”
“Figure it out,” Slocum said.
Danny turned and said to Slocum, “I’ve been in the guy’s home office exactly once. Call me crazy, but if he really does cartel business in there, I have a feeling he might not want me wandering around in there by myself.”
Slocum gave a sour smile and looked away like he was bored.
Yeager said, “It shouldn’t take you more than a few seconds. You just need to find the right opportunity.”
“Simple as that,” Danny said. They were an odd duo, he thought, the two DEA agents. Yeager’s manner was studious to the point of affectation, but beneath it, like traces of old paint, a palimpsest, was something rough-hewn, crude, and nasty.
“Notify us when you’ve placed it,” Yeager said.
“How?”
“Secure text message. Use your Jay Gould account. We’ll reach out to you the same way.”
“Then am I done?”
Slocum folded his arms. “If we get what we need, sure.”
“And what if he catches me?”
“Don’t get caught,” said Slocum.
“Thanks,” said Danny. “But I’m an amateur. I’ve never done anything remotely like this.”
“It’s not difficult,” Yeager said. “We’ll give you step-by-step instructions.”
“Wonderful,” Danny said in a flat tone. “But you still haven’t answered my question. What if I get caught?”
“I wasn’t kidding,” Slocum said. “Try real hard not to get caught. These Sinaloa guys, they’re careful and they’re ruthless. There’s a reason Galvin’s driver doubles as his bodyguard.”
“That guy’s his bodyguard?” Danny said. “Who’s Galvin afraid of?”
“The competition,” said Yeager. “Other cartels. These guys don’t screw around.”
“Just be prudent,” Slocum said, “and you have nothing to worry about.”