The Fixer Upper Part 40

"Turn your head to the right," Harrell said.

I did as he suggested, and spotted the familiar sedan, parked at the curb, three houses down. A hand emerged from the driver's-side window and gave me a little wave.

"Now's good," he said.

I flipped the phone shut and went back inside the house.

"Who was that?" Lynda asked, rinsing out her wheatgra.s.s gla.s.s.

I decided to just tell her the truth. Coming up with a convincing lie this early in the morning seemed like too much trouble.

"Remember that FBI agent who came to see you?"

"Ah yes," she said. "The Fascist Bureau of Investigation. And dear old Agent Allgood." She pursed her lips, and for the first time I realized she'd had a little work done since our last visit. A nip, a tuck, a little dose of Botox. Vegan Botox, probably. "Do you think that's her undercover name? I mean, really, Allgood? Such a cliche. It worries me that our government can't come up with anything more original."

"I don't know if it's her real name," I said. "But I doubt she considers herself undercover. Anyway, she and her partner need me to go with them."

"Why?" She held up the gla.s.s and dried it with a dishcloth.

"Because I've got a meeting set up for Monday with Alex Hodder," I said reluctantly. "And they're going to be secretly taping us."

"Hodder!" she said, outraged. "Why would you have a meeting with that sc.u.m? After what he told the media about you? That you hired hookers and bribed a congressman? A Republican, at that! I swear, Dempsey, I don't approve of violence, but if I knew where that d.i.c.khead lived, I would track him down and personally rip his head off with my bare hands."

"Lynda," I said, taking a step backward.

"I don't care," she said, tossing her blond ringlets. "I'm a mother, and a mother protects her young."

"That's very sweet," I told her. "But I'm nearly thirty, and I think I can protect myself. This whole thing is pretty complicated. And it's supposed to be a secret, so I really shouldn't have told you what's going on. I promise, I'll fill you in when I get back."

"But, our shopping trip," she said.

I grabbed my jacket from the hook by the back door. "Go without me," I suggested. "But if you buy me anything, you might get one size bigger."

"And your hair appointment," she wailed. "It's a very exclusive salon."

"Get yourself some low lights," I suggested. "Knock yourself out. I'll see you this afternoon."

56.

I jogged down the block and slid into the backseat of the waiting sedan.

"Howya doin'?" Agent Harrell turned around from the driver's seat and offered me his big all-American smile.

"Great, just peachy," I said.

Camerin Allgood was in the front-pa.s.senger seat. "You sure do look pretty in pink," she said, barely supressing a smirk. "Love the shoes too. Are they new?"

"A gift from my mother," I said, pulling my denim jacket closer together in an attempt to hide my exposed midriff. "Could we just drop the fas.h.i.+on chat and get down to business? I've got a lot of stuff to do today."

"We've got everything set for the meet," Agent Allgood told me. "You haven't had any more calls from Hodder, have you?"

"No, thank G.o.d," I said. "Where is the meet, by the way?"

"You'll see," Harrell said.

We drove for about fifteen minutes, leaving the Guthrie city limits behind. It was a beautiful early spring morning. The trees were fully leafed out now, and dogwoods bloomed pink and white and pale green. We pa.s.sed a fenced pasture, where cows were cl.u.s.tered around a feeder, and another, where a farmer on a bright green-and-yellow John Deere tractor made pa.s.ses in the newly turned red Georgia soil.

After a while, Harrell turned the sedan off the state highway and onto a b.u.mpy asphalt road called Graham's Crossing. After another mile, we pulled off the road and into the parking lot of a church. The sign out front proclaimed it to be the new macedonia full gospel church of the brethren, pastor: the reverend edsel rucker. Another sign, one of those magnetic boards, said questioning life? G.o.d knows!

"A church? You want me to meet Alex Hodder in a church?"

"What's wrong?" Agent Allgood asked. "You don't like church?"

"I like church fine," I told her. "I just think it's...I dunno, sacrilegious? To take a blackmail payoff in a house of G.o.d?"

"You'll be doing G.o.d's work," Harrell said, getting out of the car and opening my door. "Bringing the evil to righteousness."

I stood for a moment and took in the scene. New Macedonia had seen better days. Its white clapboard sanctuary hadn't seen a paintbrush in years. The tiny steeple leaned precariously to the left, and in one of the church's two stained-gla.s.s windows there was a gaping hole covered with plywood. Foot-high tufts of weeds grew up through the crushed-sh.e.l.l parking lot, and the small plot of lawn between the parking lot and the church steps was overgrown and weed choked. Off to the left of the church was a tin-roofed pavilion with weather-beaten picnic tables beneath it, and behind that, a huge live oak tree's limbs were spread over a bedraggled cemetery, its modest concrete headstones broken and strewn about the weedy graveyard.

"Come on," Camerin Allgood said, tugging at my arm. "Let's take a look around. Get you acclimated."

The wooden steps were rickety and uneven. Harrell took a key from his pocket and fit it into the church door. It opened slowly, with a loud creak that echoed through the high-ceilinged sanctuary. A wave of musty air greeted us. It had been a while since anybody wors.h.i.+pped at New Macedonia.

Sunlight streaming in through the one stained-gla.s.s window revealed a sanctuary that was bare, but surprisingly beautiful in its simplicity. The floors were worn pine, and the walls were of whitewashed planking. A red-carpeted aisle bisected two rows of crudely made white-painted pews. Red leatherette hymnals were stacked at the end of each row of pews. There was a choir loft at the back of the sanctuary, reached by a perilous-looking set of stairs covered with more red carpeting.

Harrell walked rapidly to the front of the church, and I followed.

The altar looked like a stage, with two short sets of steps leading onto it from either side of the church. There was a tall wooden lectern in the middle, and a high-backed throne-looking chair off to the right of the lectern. A six-foot-tall wooden cross hung from the peaked ceiling.

Harrell bounded onto the altar and patted the wooden lectern. "Right here is where we've got the first camera," he said. "Doesn't matter where you are in this church, the way we've got it set up, you'll be in the camera's view the whole time."

I walked over to the lectern and looked it up and down. "There's a camera? Where?"

He touched the outdated microphone mounted to the lectern. "Right here."

"Seriously?" I leaned in close and examined the mike. It looked like any other, obsolete piece of audiovisual equipment you might find in a country church that had fallen on hard times.

"Come on," Harrell said, going down the altar steps and striding down the center aisle. I followed him, and this time we climbed up to the choir loft. The wooden stairs groaned under the weight of our footsteps, and I clung to the metal handrail, just in case.

A battered upright piano had pride of place at the front of the choir loft, and just behind it were a dozen rusting folding metal chairs. Hooks held faded and dust-covered red choir robes, and more hymnals were scattered about on the floor and chairs.

"There's a camera up here?" I asked.

"Oh yeah," Harrell said. "Can you guess where?"

I touched the bra.s.s library lamp on the top of the piano. "Here?"

"No, but you're close," Harrell said. He patted a stack of hymnals next to the lamp.

"For real? That's pretty slick."

"We got guys can put a camera in a rat's nostril and you wouldn't know it," Harrell said proudly.

I followed him back down the steps to where Cam Allgood was lounging on a pew near the front of the sanctuary. Harrell sat down beside her, and patted the spot beside him.

I climbed over their feet and sat down.

"So," Allgood said. "Here's how we want this thing to play out. When Hodder calls you, tell him you'll meet him here, New Macedonia, whatever, church, at three o'clock Monday. We've checked all the flights out of D.C. and Baltimore and he should easily be able to get down to Atlanta by no later than noon. He hasn't booked a flight yet, but when he does, we'll know about it. Even if there's a weather delay, or a screwup with his rental car, he can easily get to this church by three o'clock Monday."

"We'll give you written directions that you can give him," Harrell said.

"What if he tries something sneaky?" I asked.

"Like what?" Allgood asked.

I shrugged. "I don't know. He's a sneaky guy. I don't trust him as far as I can throw him."

"Relax," Harrell said. "We've got every contingency covered. Right now, there's an agent watching his house in Georgetown, and another keeping an eye on his wife."

"Have you got his phones tapped?" I asked.

"That's not something you need to worry about," Camerin Allgood said.

"What about the money?" I asked. "What if he doesn't bring the money? What if he tries to screw me out of it? He probably thinks he can. He thinks I'm an idiot."

"He went to three different banks yesterday afternoon," Harrell said. "Withdrew a hundred thou apiece from the first two banks, and at the third bank, he accessed a safe-deposit box, so we don't know, but we're a.s.suming he took the balance of your cash from his stash there."

I felt the knot of anxiety gnawing in my belly. It was back, despite all Lynda's purification and visualization.

"What if he's got a gun?" I asked, my anxiety growing. "I mean, I don't think he's violent, but you never know. He sounded pretty angry on the phone."

"He can't get a gun past airport security," Agent Allgood said. "And we'll have somebody on his tail, from the minute he leaves the house in Georgetown to the minute he lands in Atlanta and picks up a rental car to head down here. Our people know this guy, Dempsey. He's no gunslinger. You are in absolutely no danger whatsoever."

I swallowed hard. "So, what now?"

"You meet him here on Monday," Harrell said. "Get here a little early, say, quarter of. You'll have the golf scorecard, and an empty satchel, for the cash."

"And where will you guys be?"

"Around," Allgood said. "You'll be on camera, and we'll also have people in the vicinity, for backup."

"What if the cameras goof up?" I worried. "What if he figures out I'm wearing a bug?"

"You won't be wearing a bug," Harrell said. "If he wants to check you out, let him. He won't find a thing."

"I'm not letting him check me for bugs," I said indignantly. "I'm not letting that slimeball so much as touch me."

"Whatever," Camerin said lazily. "We've got microphones that will pick everything up, no matter what."

"Where?" I asked. "I need to know, just in case something happens."

"Nothing's going to happen," she said impatiently. "Can you relax? We know how to do our job, and if you'll just listen, we'll tell you how to do yours."

Allgood glanced at her watch. "Okay, let's talk specifics. You meet Hodder here in the church, on Monday. He'll want to take a look at the scorecard. That's fine. Let him look. But you make sure he has the cash. Okay? Get him to show it to you."

"Right," I said. "Show me the money."

"This next part is really, really important," Allgood said. "You need to get him to talk about what he's paying you for. Not just the scorecard, but what that scorecard means. You don't have to use the word 'bribe' or 'payoff,' or anything like that; in fact, don't say those words at all. It could spook him. But do try to draw him out about the trip to Lyford Cay. You know, kinda like you did on his phone call to you. So, let's do a little role-playing, all right?"

"What do you want me to say?" I asked impatiently.

"Oh," Allgood said, "we wouldn't dream of telling you what to say. But Jack and I are just gonna kind of give you an example of how we'd handle it, if it was us."

She got up and walked to the middle aisle of the sanctuary. Harrell went around to the back of the church, and strode purposefully up the middle aisle.

He looked around the church, walked over to the front pew, and looked underneath it as though he was searching for hidden cameras or microphones.

Allgood stood perfectly still, right in front of the lectern, her hands on her hips. "What are you looking for, Alex?" she said. "Bugs? Cameras? This isn't the movies. This is Guthrie, Georgia. It's just you and me, partner."

Harrell looked annoyed. He did it very well. Working with Camerin Allgood, he probably had a lot of on-the-job training. "Did you bring it?"

"Bring what?" Allgood asked.

"You know what," Harrell snapped. "Don't play games with me."

Allgood pantomimed reaching into the pocket of her jacket and bringing something out. It was actually a half-empty bottle of water. She held it up for Harrell to see. "You mean this?"

Harrell walked over and pretended to examine the pretend scorecard. "This doesn't even look like my handwriting," he said.

"It's yours," Allgood a.s.sured him, smoothly putting the bottle back in her pocket. "Now, let's talk about what you've got for me."

"It's all here," Harrell said. He reached into his jacket and brought out a folded-up newspaper, which he extended to her.

Allgood took the newspaper. She unfolded it, and carefully looked through it. "You know, Alex, if you hadn't thrown me under the bus the way you did, this wouldn't have had to happen."

"I don't know what you're talking about," Harrell said gruffly. "Are we done here? I've got a plane to catch."

Camerin Allgood pretended to pout. "You're kind of hurting my feelings, Alex. I'm taking all the heat for you, and yet you just want to walk away, as if none of it ever happened. You set me up, didn't you? Had me make all the arrangements for the hotel, the golf, the dinners, the hookers. Had me call the 'wakeboard instructor' to set up the session with Licata, and then, as if that wasn't bad enough, you had me book a 'ma.s.sage' with a known hooker-and charge all of it to my company-issued credit card. That way, you'd look clean, no matter what happened."

"You knew perfectly well what you were doing," Harrell said. "What did you think we were really down in the Bahamas for-choir practice?"