The Burning Wire

knuckle or two, the pressure of fear.
    Fear breeds respect. Just the way of the world.
    “Now here’s what we’re doing. This’s important. You got a date coming up, I’m recalling.”
    A hearing, about leaving the jurisdiction. Dellray didn’t care about losing him. Jeep’s usefulness was pretty much gone. That was the nature of CIs; they have a shelf life of fresh yogurt. Jeep-Jim was going to appeal to the New York State parole board about permission to move to Georgia. Of all places.
    “If you’d put in a word, Fred, sir, that’d be great.” And he turned big soupy eyes the agent’s way.
    Wall Street should take a lesson from the confidential informant world. No derivatives, no default swaps, no insurance, no cooking the books. It was simple. You gave your snitch something of X value, and he gave you something equally important.
    If he didn’t produce, he was out. If you didn’t pay, you got shit.
    And all so very transparent.
    “Okay,” Dellray said. “Whatchu want’s on the table. Now ’bout what I want. And what I have to say up front is it’s time sensitive. You know what that means, Jim?”
    “Somebody’s gonna get fucked and pretty soon.”
    “Rightie-ro. Now, listen close. I need to find Brent.”
    A pause. “William Brent? Why would I know where to find him?” Jeep-Jim, Slim-Jim, asked thiswith too much rise in his voice, telling Dellray that the snitch had at least some idea where to find the man.
    Dellray sang, “Georgia’s on my mind.”
    A full sixty seconds passed while Jeep did some negotiating with himself.
    “I mean, maybe I could . . . the thing is, there’s a possibility . . .”
    “You gonna finish those sentences or can I eat ’em?”
    “Lemme check something.”
    Jeep-James-Jim rose and walked into the corner of the place and began texting, leaving Dellray amused at the paranoia about overhearing a text message. Jeepy boy would probably do well in Georgia.
    Dellray sipped water the waiter had brought. He hoped the skinny guy’s mission would be successful. . . . One of the agent’s biggest successes was running William Brent, a middle-aged white guy, unathletic and looking like a Wal-Mart checker. He’d been key in bringing down a very nasty conspiracy. A domestic terrorist group—racists and separatists—had a plan to blow up a number of synagogues on a Friday evening and blame Islamic fundamentalists for it. They had money but not the means, so they turned to a local organized crime family, who also had no love of either Jews or Muslims. Brent had been hired by the family to help and he’d fallen for Dellray’s twitchy character—an arms dealer from Haiti selling rocket-propelled grenades.
    Brent got collared and Dellray turned him. Surprising everyone, he took to confidential informing as if he’d studied all his life for the job. Brent infiltrated high up in both the racist group and the family and brought down the conspiracy. His debt to societypaid, Brent nonetheless went on to work with Dellray in various personas—a mean-ass hired killer, a jewelry and bank heist mastermind, a radical anti-abortion activist. He proved to be one of the sharpest CIs the agent had ever run. And a chameleon in his own right. He was the flip side of Fred Dellray (some years ago it was even suspected, but never proven, that Brent had run a network of his own snitches—inside the NYPD itself).
    Dellray ran him for a year until he got overexposed and Brent retired into the comfy quilt of witness protection. But word was that in one of his new personas he remained well connected, a player on the street.
    Since none of Dellray’s usual sources had come up with anything about Justice For or Rahman or the grid attack, the agent thought of William Brent.
    Jimmy-Jeep returned and sat down on the squeaking bench. “I think I can make it happen. But what’s this about, man? I mean, I don’t want him to clip me.”
    Which was, Dellray reflected, one fairly significant difference between Wall Street and the CI business.
    He said, “No, no, Jimmy boy, you’re not hearing me. I’m not asking you t’turn inta a little fly on the wall. I’m asking you to play matchmaker is all. You get me a sit-down and you’ll be eating peaches down in Georgia in no time.”
    Dellray slid forward a card that contained only a phone number. “This’s what he should call. Go make it happen.”
    “Now?”
    “Now.”
    Jeep nodded toward the kitchen. “But my lunch. I didn’t