"If your Reitzell is Johnny, and has a wife named Glenda, yeah, I know him.”
“And if I called the colonel up and asked about you, what would he say?”
“He’d probably tell you he never heard of Delta and to mind your own business,” Castillo said.
“Yeah, that’s probably exactly what Colonel Johnny would do,” Kramer said.
He got out of his chair and offered his hand first to Miller and then to Castillo.
“As I was saying, Mr. Castillo, what does the Secret Service want to know?”
“You’ve heard about the 727 that’s gone missing from Angola? ”
Kramer and O’Brien both nodded.
“Not for dissemination, anywhere: There’s a scenario that it was stolen by Somalian terrorists who intend to crash it into the Liberty Bell.”
O’Brien’s face showed incredulity at that announcement. Kramer’s face didn’t change, but he took a moment to consider it.
“You wouldn’t come in here with a yarn like that unless you and some other people who can actually find their asses with one hand in the dark believed there was something to it,” Kramer said, finally.
“It’s not even close to being for sure, but it’s all we’ve got at the moment. The same source who told us the airplane was grabbed by Somalians and is probably in Chad—or was in Chad; they’re running that down—said there may be a Philadelphia connection. That’s what we need.”
"Maybe,” Kramer said. “We have some AALs—that stands for ‘African American Lunatics’—in town who would love to see something like that. Right now, all they’re doing is throwing Molotov cocktails at patrol cars, sniping at—correction, shooting at patrol cars; they’re not snipers, as we understand the term—but they’re ambitious. I’ll see what I can turn up.”
"Inspector ...”
“Call me ’Dutch,’ ” Kramer interrupted. “That’s what they called me in Special Forces.”
“I’m Charley,” Castillo said.
“Dick,” Miller said.
“Dutch, we need what you have yesterday,” Castillo said.
“I’ve got some people inside,” Kramer said. “And so does Captain O’Brien—sometimes intelligence and counterterrorism overlaps. There’s four major groups of AALs, and, between us, we’ve got one, two, or three people in each bunch, but they’re in deep, you follow me? We can’t get on the phone and say, ‘Jack, I need what you have on a Somalian connection.’ It’ll take us several hours, at least, to get in touch with any one of them. And anywhere from an hour or more after that to set up a meet.”
“You’re talking about cops or informants?” Castillo asked.
“Cops,” Kramer said. “Good cops who have their balls on the chopping block twenty-four hours a day. We don’t want to blow their cover, and we don’t want them killed. Understand? ”
Castillo nodded.
Kramer said, “Nothing has come across my desk . . .”
“Mine, either,” O’Brien interrupted.
“. . . which could mean there is nothing,” Kramer went on, “or it could mean they’re afraid to say something because it sounds like something that would come from a coke-fried brain.”
“I understand,” Castillo said.
“The fing FBI was in here a couple of days ago . . .”
“The what?” Miller asked.
“A couple of fing assholes from the fing FBI, wanting to know what, if anything, I had on Lease-Aire, Inc.”
“Fing?” Miller pursued.