The Devils Teardrop

from the Post said Kennedy didn’t visit anybody. They were going to op-ed him on it.”
    “No, no, he went to the families who wanted to remain anonymous. He’s been doing it all day.”
    “Oh, he has?”
    It was amazing what $25,000 could buy you, Jefferies thought.
    Phillips added, “That was good of him. Real good.”
    “Don’t overdo it,” Jefferies warned.
    “But what do I do for footage? I mean, if the story’s about him at the hospitals—”
    Jefferies snapped, “Just show the same five seconds of tape over and over again like you guys always do. I don’t know, show the ambulances at the Metro.”
    “Oh. Okay. What about the fuckup part? Why do you think there’ll be a fuckup?”
    “Because in situations like this there’s always a fuckup.”
    “Okay, you need somebody to point a finger at. But not—”
    “Not the feds.”
    “Okay,” said Phillips. “But how exactly do I do that?”
    “That’s your job. Remember: who, what, when, where and why. You’re the reporter.” He took Phillips by the arm and escorted him down the hallway. “Go report.”

14
    “You don’t look good , Agent Lukas.”
    “It’s been a long day.”
    Gary Moss was in his late forties, heavy-set, with short-cropped kinky hair, just going gray. His skin was very dark. He was sitting on the bed in Facility Two, a small apartment on the first floor of headquarters. There were several apartments here, used mostly for visiting heads of law enforcement agencies and for the nights when the director or dep director needed to camp out during major operations. He was here because it was felt that, given what Moss knew and whom he was soon to testify against, he would survive about two hours if placed in District custody.
    The place wasn’t bad. Government issue but with a comfortable double bed, desk, armchair, tables, kitchen, TV with basic cable.
    “Where’s that young detective? I like him.”
    “Hardy? He’s in the war room.”
    “He’s mad at you.”
    “Why? Because I won’t let him play cop?”
    “Yeah.”
    “He’s not investigative.”
    “Sure, he told me. He’s a desk driver, like me. But he just wants a piece of the action. You’re trying to catch that killer, aren’t you? I saw about it on TV. That’s why y’all’ve forgotten me.”
    “Nobody’s forgotten about you, Mr. Moss.”
    The man gave a smile but he looked forlorn and she felt bad for him. But Lukas wasn’t here just to hold hands. Witnesses who feel unhappy or unsafe sometimes forget things they’ve heard and seen. The U.S. attorney running the kickback case wanted to make sure that Gary Moss was a very happy witness.
    “How’re you doing?”
    “Miss my family. Miss my girls. Doesn’t seem right, when they’ve had a scare like that, I can’t be there for them. My wife’ll do a good job. But a man should be with his family, times like this.”
    Lukas remembered the girls, twins, about five. Tiny plastic toys braided into their hair. Moss’s wife was a thin woman, with the wary eyes you’d expect of someone who’s just watched her house burn to the ground.
    “You celebrating?” She nodded at a gold, pointed hat with happy new year printed on it. There were a couple of noisemakers too.
    Moss picked up the hat. “Somebody brought it for me. I said what was I supposed to do with half of Madonna’s bra?”
    Lukas laughed. Then she grew serious. “I just called on a secure phone. Your family’s fine. There’re plenty of people looking out for them.”
    “I never thought anybody’d try to hurt me or my family. I mean, when I was deciding to go to the FBI aboutwhat I found at the company. I figured I’d get fired but I never thought people’d want to hurt us.”
    He hadn’t? The kickback scheme involved tens of millions of dollars and would probably result in the indictment of dozens of company employees and city officials. Lukas was surprised that Moss had survived long enough to make it into federal protection.
    “What were you going to be doing tonight?” she asked. “With your family.”
    “Go to the Mall and watch the fireworks. Let the girls stay up late. They’d like that more than the show. How ’bout you, Agent Lukas? What’d you have planned?”
    Nothing. She had nothing planned. She hadn’t told anybody this. Lukas thought about several of her friends—a woman cop out in Fairfax, a firefighter in Burke, several neighbors, a man she’d met at a wine tasting, someone she’d met in dog class