Gone (Michael Bennett 6)

Parker took out her phone. She smiled mischievously as she waited for the line to get picked up.

“What’s so funny, Agent P.?” I asked.

“This goose chase that jackass Bassman sent us on,” she said. “How hilarious would it be if we just found the one that lays the golden egg?”

CHAPTER 48

AS IT TURNED OUT, we did strike gold out here in California.

After Emily called back to the task force with our hunch, Bill Kaukonen, the LA County assistant district attorney on call, came to the hospital, and a deal was quickly struck.

Captain Scricca made out like a pirate. He would get a suspended sentence and a six-month stint in rehab for his role in the vehicular homicide if his information led to the capture of Perrine.

It was a sickening arrangement, I thought as I watched Kaukonen leave. The young woman who had been killed was only twenty-eight. But with Perrine out there trying to turn Southern California into the Vietnam War Part Two, it was easy to see that these were desperate times that called for some pretty desperate measures.

After the ADA left, we went back into Scricca’s cell and got his statement. The gist of it was that a little after noon, he had spotted Perrine in Marina del Rey, on a deep-sea fishing boat called Aces and Eights owned by a man named Thomas Scanlon. Scanlon was a sketchy character, he said, and it was an almost open joke among the fishermen down at the marina that he was involved with drug running.

Scricca’s story seemed to pan out further when we went back up to our HQ at Olympic Station and Emily put Scanlon into some of the Big Brother federal databases she was privy to.

Scanlon was, in fact, a sketchy character. In 1995, he had gotten booted from the Navy SEALs for a hot drug test. Soon after, Mr. Scanlon’s passport started appearing in some pretty strange places: South America, the Netherlands, Central Africa, the Middle East. It was a lot of world travel for a man who didn’t seem to have any visible means of support.

“This guy was in Qatar for a year and a half,” Parker said over the diner takeout piled on our desks. “When was the last time you went to Qatar, Bennett?”

“Went to Qatar?” I said, cracking the lid of my coffee. “I can’t even play one.”

“Then Scanlon just disappears off the grid for five years, and pow! Out of the blue suddenly pops up in SoCal as a deep-sea fisherman?” Parker said. “How’s that work?”

“You’re right. Overall, this guy seems pretty fishy,” I said.

Agent Parker tossed a sweet potato fry at me, which I deftly caught without spilling my joe. I took a bite and then, remembering it was a vegetable, promptly chucked it into the wastepaper basket.

“So what now?” I said.

“Now we call the bosses in to see how quickly they can spin our gold into straw,” Emily said.

“Ouch,” I said with a smile as Emily started texting people. “That sounds like something a burnt-out, jaded NYPD detective would say after a bottle of twelve-year-old Irish wine.”

“You’re a bad influence on people, Bennett,” Emily said, smiling broadly without looking up. “You should seriously think about talking to somebody about it.”

All the bells and whistles started going off after Emily and I sent the info up both the civilian and military chains of command. Wiretap subpoenas for all Scanlon’s phones were immediately put into motion, as well as round-the-clock surveillance for Scanlon’s boat and his house in Brentwood. The head FBI honcho working with the CIA and military folks up at the air base seemed especially excited, as the Tijuana tip they’d been following had dug a hole as dry as the Mexican desert.

A massive task force meeting was called for eight the next morning. It would be teleconferenced with the military folks at the air base. In the meantime, Emily’s immediate boss, the assistant special agent in charge of the FBI’s LA office, Evaline Echevarria, ordered us to Scanlon’s house for the first shift of surveillance.

Though we’d been running pretty hard since the a.m., we both leaped at the assignment. I know I was pretty jazzed. After being out of commission, out in the sticks, I had a deep store of untapped adrenaline to run on.

As we drove over to the FBI HQ to get a better surveillance vehicle, it was my turn to start laughing.

“That’s a real personal gigglefest you’re having over there, Mike,” Emily said. “You losing it on me already? If you want, I could swing you back to Metro State Hospital for an eval. I noticed the rubber room next to Scricca was free.”

“Not yet,” I said, finally getting myself under control. “It’s just that I pictured Bassman’s face when he heard the news about our little gold strike. That obnoxious bozo is going to be so freaking pissed.”

CHAPTER 49

SCANLON’S HOUSE WAS IN Brentwood, on Chaparal Street, a quiet, high-hedged lane behind an all-girls private school. It was an old, tasteful brick Tudor house hidden behind a lot of shrubbery, with a wrought iron gate across its driveway.

There weren’t too many parked cars on the secluded street, and, even with the silver Mercedes crossover we were using for an unmarked, it definitely wasn’t the best setup for surveillance.

“Nice crib for a chum chopper,” I said from where we parked, a couple of houses down.