Molly O'Keefe – Undercover Protector (страница 3)

He turned and hit a button on his remote and the screen on the right wall was illuminated with the face of the handsome Hispanic man who’d been all over the newspapers and television in the past few days.

“Caleb Gomez was released from the naval hospital in San Diego four days ago,” Curtis said and Maggie sat back, wondering what a Pulitzer-prize winning hostage survivor had to do with one of the most brutal gang lords in Los Angeles. “According to his press release, he is planning to spend time recuperating in New York City.”

Curtis clicked the remote and a bad surveillance photo of Gomez dressed out like an East L. A. native standing in front of a taco stand with Delgado filled the screen.

“What’s Delgado doing with a journalist?” Gordon voiced Maggie’s thoughts. “That’s like suicide for Delgado.”

“Or the journalist,” Maggie added.

“That’s what we’re wondering, too,” Curtis said and jerked his thumb toward the screen. “This photo was taken three and a half years ago. According to Gomez’s editor at the Los Angeles Times, that’s about when Gomez stopped taking assignments and was working on what he called his ‘next Pulitzer.’ The Times had commissioned Gomez’s mystery story to run in the fall of 2003, but when Iraq really started heating up, Gomez requested to be embedded with the troops near Baghdad. He spent the better part of two and a half years over there before the kidnapping.” He shrugged, a nervous tick he had, as though he was uncomfortable in his skin and constantly wanted out. “The details of what happened to him there will be in your files.”

Maggie swallowed. The whole world knew many of those details—he’d been brutalized over there. Beaten. Tortured. For three days.

But their files would hold classified—and much more grisly—information, thanks to the military and medical personnel who had assisted in Gomez’s escape and recovery.

Her stomach turned.

Professional detachment could only take you so far in the face of the evil man could do.

“You think he infiltrated the Delgado gang?” she asked, shoving thoughts of torture aside. “You think that was his mystery story?”

“Three years ago, Delgado was just entering our radar. It was before he murdered Hernandez and took over his syndicate in East L. A.” Curtis shrugged a massive shoulder and clicked ahead to the next photo. A closer image of Gomez and Delgado in front of the taco stand. Delgado was clearly smiling at something Gomez was saying. “Delgado was far more accessible then. He was just a soldier in the Hernandez syndicate. If a good journalist was going to get in on the ground floor, that would have been the time to do it.”

“Good and crazy,” Gordon muttered and Maggie had to agree, but things still didn’t add up.

“That’s a huge conclusion to jump to,” Maggie said. “Maybe they just happened to be in line together at a taco stand.”

“Well.” Curtis grinned like the Cheshire Cat her colleagues claimed she was and clicked onto the next image—mug shots of two of Delgado’s top men. “Hernando and Boyer were spotted in New York City yesterday outside of the apartment Gomez used to rent.”

All the short hairs on Maggie’s neck stood straight up.

This smelled like a break in the case.

She could see Gordon beside her, grinning in the half dark. “Delgado must think Gomez knows something or why would he send his two best thugs all the way to New York?” Gordon asked.

Curtis nodded.

“So where is Gomez?” Maggie asked. If he was in that apartment, he was as good as dead; however, a certain gleam in Curtis’s eyes indicated that wasn’t the case.

“Summerland, California.” Curtis turned and smiled at her while he advanced onto a photo of a stucco house behind high hedges. “He’s renting a house in the foothills.”

Curtis set down the remote and turned on the light behind him. Maggie could feel the electric hum of excitement radiating off him. It filled the air and she breathed it in with relish.

This was a gift. A break. A possible crack in an uncrackable case.

Now, if only it didn’t require her to go undercover again, then things would really be looking up. But she didn’t get called into this kind of briefing to do surveillance or research.

She was undercover. And she was supposed to love it.

He lifted the three files from the corner of Walters’s desk and handed two of them to Gordon and Maggie. The third he handed to Walters.

“What’s our angle?” she asked.

“Well, Delgado is going to find out he’s got his two dogs standing outside an empty apartment in New York City and start looking elsewhere.” He arched an eye-brow. “And we know it won’t take Delgado long to find him.”

“So Gomez as bait? We just wait for Delgado to find him? Send some guys to kill him and hope we can implicate Delgado?” She hated even saying the word bait. Putting an innocent man in grave danger was an ugly way to break a case. And the odds of its success weren’t high. Delgado’s men wouldn’t roll on Delgado.

“That’s one option.” Curtis nodded.

“What’s the other?” Gordon asked.

“We find out what Delgado is clearly ready to kill Gomez to keep hidden.”

“Does that mean going undercover?” Gordon grinned like a kid being taken to Walt Disney World.

Maggie felt an inevitable tide at work here and she tried not to fight it. Tried to get excited about her role, her job. She looked down at her hands.

One more time, she told herself. For your brother. You can go undercover one more time.

For Patrick she would do anything.

She would sell off a little bit more of her soul.

“That’s the plan. Gomez has called a housecleaning service and is interviewing candidates today. We’re sending in two decoys and then we’re sending in Fitzgerald.” Curtis tapped her folder.

“Why two decoys?” Gordon asked.

“To make Fitzgerald irresistible.”

“Thanks a lot,” Maggie groused.

“In any case, you get in and during the interview, you plant three surveillance bugs. Hopefully you also get the job, allowing us broader access to Gomez.”

She nodded and bit her lip against a satisfied smile. Finally, finally she was getting close to nailing the man responsible for her brother’s death.

“Sounds good.”

Walters leaned back and ran his hands over his thick brown hair and laughed, though the sound was not funny. Maggie’s satisfaction dimmed and Gordon’s smug smile fled.

Walters was going to give them a reality check.

“Before you kids start thinking you’ve cracked this case, let’s look at what you are up against.” He took a deep breath through his nose and it seemed to Maggie that he sucked all the air out of the room.

“Three years ago,” Walters continued, “in the span of a week, Delgado takes down every drug dealer, racketeer, arms dealer and money launderer in Los Angeles who poses any kind of threat to him. He murders Hernandez and takes over his syndicate, has every Latin King from here to San Diego bowing to him.”

He paused as if waiting for confirmation and Maggie, Gordon and Curtis all nodded.

“And now, thanks to this journalist, we’ve got two options. One, baiting a trap with Caleb Gomez in the hopes of maybe, possibly catching Delgado.

Or two, finding out what information Gomez has that Delgado is ready to kill for then somehow using it to bring him down.”

“That sounds about right,” Curtis said. “It’s the biggest break we’ve had in the case in a year.”

“What do we know about Gomez?” Walters asked and Maggie could have sworn Curtis got red under the collar.

“Not much,” he admitted. “He was brought in for questioning regarding a burglary ring about six years ago. He’d gotten some information from one of the men for a story he was doing on the federal penitentiary system. When the Bureau tried to subpoena him, he raised such a stink he was labeled uncooperative and that the whole thing was dropped.”

That’s not good, Maggie thought.

“What kind of stink?” Gordon asked.

“Op-ed pieces in every major U.S. paper regarding the FBI and the swiftly diminishing civil rights of Americans.” Curtis cleared his throat. “It wasn’t good.”

“That’s our guy?” Gordon asked, almost laughing. “He’s going to love us going undercover in his house.”

“Well, that’s why I brought in Fitzgerald.” Curtis nodded, though the director seemed very unconvinced. “She’s good.”

“She better be or he’ll be dead and we’ll be no closer to catching Delgado.”

“Yes, sir,” Curtis said and Maggie and Gordon stood.

“You have one week,” Walters said, “to turn up anything that proves this isn’t a wild-goose chase and then I’m pulling the undercover operation. After that, we’ll plant some protection outside his house.”

“We’ve tried that, sir, and it doesn’t work. Six months ago the female witness was killed in the safe house with two armed guards right outside her door,” Curtis said. “The assailants had killed one guard and disabled the other and slit the witness’s throat. The Bureau, the LAPD and ATF had huge mud on their faces for that one. We ended up with more bodies and no evidence. There’s every likelihood that the Gomez case would end the same way.”

“Or not. Either way you’ve got the Bureau out on a limb going into this guy’s house. He’s a public figure right now, a public figure with no respect for the necessary investigative measures the Bureau takes. This has the potential to go bad in a big way. You got me?”