“Shoot, man.”

The familiarity McCaleb had put in his voice had apparently worked. He remembered Rufus and had never been much impressed with his intelligence. This was reflected in the poor upkeep of the federal fleet.

“I found a gas card on the floor up here and it’s supposed to be in somebody’s car down there. Who’s got card eighty-one? Can you look it up?”

“Uh… etty-one?”

“Yes, Roof, eight-one.”

There was a spell of silence while the garage man apparently looked through a log.

“Well, that’s Misser Spence. He got that one.”

McCaleb didn’t respond. Gilbert Spencer was the second-highest-ranking agent in Los Angeles. Rank notwithstanding, McCaleb had never thought much of him as an investigative team leader. But the fact that he was meeting with Jaye Winston and her captain and who knew who else at the Star Center came as a shock. He began to get a better idea why he had been kicked off the case.

“ ’Lo?”

“Uh, yeah, Rufus, thanks a lot. That was eighty-one, right?”

“Yuh. Tha’s Agent Spence cah.”

“Okay, I’ll get him the card.”

“I don’t know. I see his car ain’ here right now.”

“Okay, don’t worry about it. Thanks, Roof.”

McCaleb hung up the phone and immediately picked it up again. Using his calling card number, he called Vernon Carruthers in Washington. It was just about lunchtime there and he hoped he had not missed him.

“This is Vernon.”

McCaleb blew out a sigh.

“It’s Terry.”

“Man, where the hell you been? I tried to give you a damn heads-up on Saturday and you wait two days to call me back.”

“I know, I know. I fucked up. But I hear you got something.”

“Damn tootin’.”

“What, Vernon, what?”

“I gotta be careful. I get the feeling there’s a need-to-know list on this and your name’s-”

“-not on it. Yeah, I know. I already found that out. But this is my car, Vernon, and nobody’s going to drive away without me. So you’re going to tell me, what did you find that would bring the assistant special agent in charge of the Los Angeles field office out of his little room and into the field, probably for the first time this year?”

“ ’Course I’m going to tell you. I got my twenty-five in. What are they going to do to me? Kick me out and then have to pay me double-time witness fees to testify in all the cases I got lined up?”

“So give it to me then.”

“Well, you really stuck your dick in it this time. I lasered the slug this Winston gal sent me and got an eighty-three percent match on a good-sized frag they dug out of the head of one Donald Kenyon back in November. That’s why you got the A-SAC’s nuts in an uproar out there.”

McCaleb whistled.

“Damn, not in my ear, man,” Carruthers protested.

“Sorry. Was it a Federal FMJ-the one from Kenyon?”

“No, actually, it was a frangible. A Devastator. You know what that is?”

“That’s what Reagan got nailed with at the Hilton, right?”

“Right. Little charge in the tip. Bullet is supposed to fragment. But it didn’t with Ronnie. He got lucky. Kenyon wasn’t lucky.”

McCaleb tried to think about what this might mean. The same gun, the HK P7, had been used in the three murders, Kenyon, Cordell and Torres. But between Kenyon and Cordell the ammunition had changed from a frangible to a hardball. Why?

“Now, remember,” Carruthers was saying, “you didn’t hear this stuff from me.”

“I know. But tell me something. After you got the match, what did you do, go to Lewin or do some checking first?”

Joel Lewin was Carruthers’s by-the-book boss.

“What you’re asking is if I got anything to send you, am I right?”

“You’re right. I need what you can send me.”

“Already on the way. Put it in priority mail on Saturday before the shit hit the fan around here. I printed out what was on the computer. You got all the internals coming. Should be there t’day or t’morrow. You are going to take me on one hell of a fishing trip for this, man.”

“Absolutely.”

“And you didn’t get any of that stuff from me.”

“You’re cool, Vernon. You don’t even have to say it.”

“I know but it makes me feel better.”

“What else can you tell me?”

“That’s about it. It was taken out of my hands. Lewin took over everything and it went high-level from there. I did have to tell them why I put the push on it. So they know you were looking into it. I didn’t tell them why.”

McCaleb silently chastised himself for losing his temper and control with Arrango after the hypnotism session. If he hadn’t revealed the real motivation behind his investigation, he might still be a part of it. Carruthers had not revealed the secret, but Arrango certainly had.

“You there, Terry?”

“Yeah. Listen, if you pick up anything else about this, give me the heads-up.”

“You got it, man. But answer your fuckin’ phone. And watch yourself on this.”

“All the time.”

After McCaleb hung up he turned around and almost walked into Buddy Lockridge.

“Buddy, come on, you gotta give me room. Let’s get going.”

They started walking to the car, which was still parked at one of the pumps.

“The desert?”

“Yeah. We go back up and I see Mrs. Cordell again. See if she’s still talking to me.”

“Why wouldn’t-never mind, don’t answer that. I’m just the driver.”

“Now you got it.”

On the way up to the desert, Buddy warbled on a B flat harmonica while McCaleb used some self-hypnosis techniques to relax his mind so that he would better recall what he knew of the Donald Kenyon case. It had been the latest in what had seemingly been a long line of embarrassments to the bureau in recent years.

Kenyon had been president of Washington Guaranty, a federally insured savings and loan bank with branches in Los Angeles, Orange and San Diego Counties. Kenyon was a golden-haired and silver-tongued climber who curried favor with deep-pocketed investors through insider stock tips until he ascended to the president’s office by the shockingly young age of twenty-nine. He was profiled in every business magazine. He was a man who instilled confidence and trust in his investors and employees and the media. So much so that over the period of three years that he was president, he was able to siphon a staggering $35 million from the institution through bogus loans to bogus companies without so much as raising an eyebrow. It wasn’t until Washington Guaranty collapsed after being thoroughly hollowed out and Kenyon disappeared that anyone, including federal auditors and watchdogs, realized what had happened.

The story played in the media for months, if not years, McCaleb remembered. Stories on retirees left with nothing, stories on the ripple effect of businesses failing, stories on alleged sightings of Kenyon in Paris, Zurich, Tahiti and other places.

After five years on the run Kenyon was found by the bureau’s fugitive unit in Costa Rica, where he had been living in an opulent compound that included two pools, two tennis courts, a live-in personal trainer and horse-breeding facilities. The thief, now thirty-six, was extradited to Los Angeles to face charges in federal court.

While Kenyon sat in the federal holding facility awaiting trial, an asset and forfeiture squad descended on his trail and worked for six months looking for the money. But less than $2 million was found.

This was the puzzle. Kenyon’s defense was that he did not have the money because he didn’t take it, he only passed it on under threat of death-his and his entire family’s. Through his attorneys he averred that he was blackmailed into setting up corporations, loaning them millions from his S amp;L and then turning the money over to the blackmailer. But even though he faced the potential of years in a federal penitentiary, Kenyon refused to name the extortionist who had taken the money.