Angels in Heaven

upstate California,” I said. I hoped it was upstate. “A so-far confidential amount of Colombian
cocaine was discovered in the wreck, behind the bulkheads, to be precise, by
Coast Guard officials, but as nothing could be proven against the crew and the
captain had disappeared, perhaps drowned, the case, as far as we were
concerned, wound up in the dead file. He came to our attention again in 1979
and this time we managed to convict him on three counts relating to the
trafficking of drugs, the upshot of which was that he spent three years in a
federal prison in New Mexico, the state in which he was finally apprehended.”
My intercom buzzed once.
    “Excuse me,” I said. I pushed the
listen button. “Washington again,” said Doris’s voice.
    “Oh, good,” I said. “I’ll take it in
there. Keith, I may need you.”
    Keith excused us politely, saying we
might be a minute or two, and we went out to Doris’s office, closing the door
behind us. She gave us a mouthed “How’s it going?” I gave her the thumbs-up
signal and took the phone from her. While I was chatting to Washington, who
certainly wasn’t saying much back, I was hoping that Lt. Esparza, as would only
be human, would check out the papers I’d carelessly left on my desktop, which
were what I’d dictated to the Secretary of the Year earlier, both pages of
which were typed on FBI-headed notepaper, or facsimile thereof, courtesy of we
all know who, and which discussed the intricacies inherent in extradition
procedures and outlined several possible ways to streamline the problems. Words
that the lieutenant could easily understand whether or not he knew any
English—like Mr. Brown, Febrero Segundo, extradition, policy, cooperation ,
and dollars —were of course prominent, and in several cases underlined,
just in case. I was also hoping that Joaquín mayhap might just decide to press
down the listen button on the intercom, so temptingly near his manicured
pinkies, because what he would hear would be me saying in as simple English as
possible how well things were going and that we had made a superior local
connection, one Lt. Joaquín Esparza, subcommandante , a hightly
intelligent, responsible, patriotic officer, and the very devil with the
ladies. (I didn’t really say that last bit.)
    All right. We’d done all our numbers,
laid all our traps, showed all our cards—it was time for the rousing finale.
And when I returned to my desk. I noticed the two directives weren’t quite
lined up the way I’d left them, another hopeful sign.
    “Sorry about that,” I said. “Now.
Where were we?”
    “In a federal penitentiary in New Mexico,” Benny offered helpfully.
    “Thank you, Keith,” I said, giving
him a look. “The question was rhetorical. In 1983, after a massive undercover
operation spanning over five years, which we had code-named Snow Removal, my
organization was successful in smashing one of the largest drug distribution
setups in the country. As a result of which, Mr. Brown was again arrested,
again sent to federal prison, this time in Utica, New York. During a subsequent
riot there, which we suspect was organized and financed by East Coast drug
money, he and nine others escaped, killing two guards on the way and one of our
agents later in a car chase.”
    The lieutenant continued to listen
intently, swinging one of his highly polished boots from time to time. I don’t
blame him, I thought it was a real spellbinder myself. When he finally did
interrupt me, it was to say that he was still uncertain what his role in the
affair might be.
    Then he took his cap off, placed it
carefully on his lap, and ran one hand over his pristine mane to see that it
was still pristine.
    “I was just coming to that very
point,” I said. “There is a way you could be of inestimable help to us, and all
it would involve would be a couple of hours of your time and that of a driver
and perhaps one other. Lieutenant, we of the organization would very much like
to get our hands on Mr. Brown again. He has not only an unfinished prison
sentence to serve up at Utica, but we also want him for suspected murder in
cold blood of a law enforcement agent as well as inciting to riot, car theft,
transporting drugs across state lines, and so on. As far as we are concerned,
the most serious is the brutal slaying of one of our men. It had been a
tradition since the organization’s founding that such cases remain permanently
in the active file until the perpetrator has