Inside Outt

I’m going to check it out now. Leave me alone for a while and I’ll let you know what I turn up.”
    “That’s your idea of interagency cooperation? I knew you were CIA.”
    “Look, I’m under a lot of pressure. It’s the best I can do right now.”
    “Fine. You can explain while I’m booking you in the Orlando field office.”
    “You want to know something, Paula? I like you. You’re smart and you’ve got balls. But if you make a move to arrest me, you’re going to wind up like your buddies Bob and Drew. The only difference might be that with you, I could feel bad about it after.”
    She watched him for a moment, amused or seething he couldn’t tell.
    “You’re right,” she said, with that sweet, soothing tone that he was beginning to think sounded like a rattlesnake’s tail. “You’re a hard man. Even if I arrested you, I bet I couldn’t get you to cooperate. Guess I’ll just have to interview Wheeler myself. When she mentions someone has already been to see her, I’ll say, ‘Really? That’s awful. Who was he? Did he tell you he was FBI?’ ’Cause I know you didn’t just waltz into her house and tell her you were CIA. ‘He did? No, ma’am, he wasn’t FBI. I don’t know who he was, we’ve never heard of him. But impersonating an FBI agent is a crime punishable by no less than ten years in a federal penitentiary. I’d like to assist you in registering a complaint with the Bureau so we can conduct a formal investigation into who this man could be. We’ll need to release a description to the media, too.’ That kind of thing.”
    “You’re bluffing.”
    “Then call.”
    He watched her. She didn’t blink.
    He asked himself why she wouldn’t do it. And couldn’t think of a single good reason.
    “All right,” he said, “we need to visit a private investigator in Orlando. But your pals Bob and Drew stay behind, got that? They need medical attention, for one thing. For another, I don’t want to have to worry about one of them stewing over what happened, and doing something stupid to get his mojo back. They don’t strike me as the bygones-be-bygones type.”
    “No, they’re not. So, yes, we’ll make it just the two of us. But give me their guns first.”
    Ben looked around. “Hand me your purse.”
    She did. He held it under the table and slipped Drew’s and Bob’s weapons inside it, then put it on the table. She went to take it back, but he didn’t let it go.
    “I’m still armed, Paula,” he said, looking into her eyes. “And I’d hate to have to shoot you just as we’re getting to know each other. I really would feel bad about it.”
    She smiled and patted his hand. “I’ll bet you would, sugar. I’ll bet you would.”

CHAPTER 9
Some Kind of Military Spook
    H arry McGlade’s office was located in Orlando’s Parramore district, home of the Amway Arena, a U.S. federal courthouse, police headquarters, and a number of other state buildings. The area was awake and bustling when Ben and Paula arrived. At nightfall, Ben knew, the daytime population would roll away like drops of mercury, revealing a sad substratum of winos, whores, and madmen beneath.
    Paula had called McGlade from the road and told him she had a case, that she’d heard he was highly recommended though she couldn’t say by whom, that she needed to see him right away. McGlade was amenable.
    The building was a ramshackle second-floor walk-up with a stairway that smelled like someone had been using it for a toilet. Paula went in first. McGlade was just beginning to stand from behind an enormous metal desk when Ben followed her in. Crestfallen would be too strong a word for the look on his face, Ben thought, but not by much. His age was hard to guess—ballpark, sixty—and he was overweight in a way that looked more liquid than fat, with Gollum-pale skin that suggested this squalid room was as much a cave to him as it was an office.
    “Didn’t realize there were two of you,” he said, in a nasal voice.
    “I’m sorry,” Paula said. “I didn’t want to say too much over the phone.”
    Ben looked around. The place was like an experiment in entropy. Papers so scattered that but for the settled-in stink of sweat and tobacco you’d think a wind had blown through. Two overflowing ashtrays. An algae-covered aquarium with no visible fish. It was hot, too, and Ben realized the guy must be too cheap or too destitute to use the air conditioner.
    There was a pair of metal folding chairs in front of the