Lost Light

I took. I want you to hold the original-the memory card-in a safe place. I want you to hold an envelope with one of the CDs and a letter from me. I want your private office number. I’m going to call it every night by midnight and tell you I am okay. In the morning you come in and if the message is there, then everything is all right. If you come in and there is no message from me, then you deliver the envelope to a reporter at the Times named Josh Meyer.”
    “Josh Meyer. That name is familiar. Is he on courts?”
    “I think he used to cover local crime stuff. Now he’s on terrorism. I think he works out of D.C. now.”
    “Terrorism, Harry?”
    “It’s a long story.”
    She checked her watch.
    “I’ve got time. I’ve also got a computer.”
    I first took fifteen minutes to tell her about my private investigation and everything that had happened since Lawton Cross had called me out of the blue and I had pulled down the box of old cases off the closet shelf. Then I let her put the CD in her computer and watch the surveillance video. She didn’t recognize Lawton Cross until I told her who he was. She reacted with appropriate outrage when she viewed the section with Agents Milton and Carney. I had her turn it off before Danny Cross came into the room and comforted her husband.
    “First question, were they real agents?” she asked after the computer kicked the disk out.
    “Yeah, they’re part of the anti-terrorism squad working out of Westwood.”
    She shook her head in disgust.
    “If this ever gets to the Times and then onto TV, then -”
    “I don’t want it to get there. Right now, that is the worst-case scenario.”
    “Why not, Harry? Those are rogue agents. At least that one Milton is. And the other is just as guilty for standing there and letting him do it.”
    She gestured toward her computer, where the surveillance video had been replaced by a screensaver that showed a bucolic scene of a house on a cliff overlooking the ocean, the waves rolling endlessly to shore.
    “Do you think this is what the attorney general and the Congress of the United States wanted when they enacted legislation that changed and streamlined the bureau’s rules and tools after September eleventh?”
    “No, I don’t,” I answered. “But they should have known what could happen. What’s the saying, absolute power corrupts absolutely? Something like that. Anyway, it’s a given that this sort of thing would happen. They should have known. The difference here is that that isn’t some Middle Eastern bag man on there. That’s an American citizen. He’s a former cop and he’s a goddamn quadriplegic because he took a bullet in the line of duty.”
    Langwiser nodded somberly.
    “That is exactly why you should get this out. It has to be see-”
    “Janis, are you working for me or should I gather all this up and just find somebody else?”
    She threw her hands up in surrender.
    “Yes, I’m working for you, Harry. I’m just saying that this should not be allowed to just go by.”
    “I’m not talking about letting it go by. I just don’t want it out yet. I need to use it as leverage first. I need to get what I want out of it first.”
    “Which is what?”
    “I was going to get to that but you started in like Ralph Nader.”
    “Okay, I’m sorry. I’m all calmed down now. Tell me your plan, Harry.”
    And so I did.

25
    Kate Mantilini’s on Wilshire Boulevard had a row of high-backed booths that afforded their inhabitants more interior privacy than the lap dance cubicles in the back rooms of any of the strip clubs in town. That was why I chose the restaurant for the meeting. It was very private yet very public. I was there fifteen minutes before the appointed time, got a booth with a window fronting Wilshire and waited. Special Agent Peoples got there a little early, too. He had to walk along the row of booths and look into each one to find me. He then slipped silently and morosely into the space across from me.
    “Agent Peoples, glad you could make it.”
    “I didn’t feel like I had much choice.”
    “I guess you didn’t.”
    He flipped open one of the menus that were on the table.
    “Never been here before. Food any good?”
    “It’s not bad. Good chicken pot pie on Thursdays.”
    “It’s not Thursday.”
    “And you’re not here to eat.”
    He looked up from the menu and gave me his best deadeye stare but he didn’t have the juice this time. We both knew I was holding the high card this time. I