Buried Secrets by Joseph Finder Page B
Authors: Joseph Finder
Tags: Fiction, Literary, General, Suspense, Thrillers, Mystery & Detective, Suspense fiction, Crime, Mystery Fiction, Missing Persons, Kidnapping, Boston (Mass.), Criminal investigation, Corporations, Investments
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clandestine, as mine does, you learn the power of a secret. Knowing one can give you leverage, even control, over another, whether in the halls of Congress or the halls of high school, in the boardroom or the faculty lounge or at the racetrack.
Most secrets are kept to conceal crimes, abuses, or failures. They can destroy a career or undermine an enemy, and they’ve brought down quite a few world leaders. In Washington, where you’re only as important as the secrets you know, secrets are truly the coin of the realm.
It was time to spend some of that coin.
When I worked at Stoddard Associates in D.C., I did a project for a freshman congressman from Florida who was fighting a nasty reelection battle. His opponent had got hold of a copy of the lease on an apartment in Sarasota he’d rented for his girlfriend, a hostess at Hooters. This was news to his wife, the mother of his six children, and definitely inconvenient for the congressman, given his strong family-values platform. I did some cleanup work and the whole paper trail disappeared. The waitress found new employment in Pensacola. Her landlord had no recollection of renting to the congressman and declared the deed a forgery. The congressman won the election in a squeaker.
It wasn’t a job I was proud of. But now the congressman was the ranking member on the House Judiciary Committee, which oversees the FBI. He didn’t owe me any favors, since he’d paid well for Stoddard’s “research services,” but I knew certain things about him, which was even worse. I reached him on his private line and asked him to make a call for me to the Boston field office of the FBI.
I told him I needed to talk to someone senior. Now.
A PARKING space was about to open up on Cambridge Street directly in front of the FBI, which is roughly as common as a solar eclipse. I double-parked and waited for the woman in the Buick, who’d just switched on her engine, to pull out.
But she was taking her time. First she had to touch up her lipstick; then she had to make a phone call. I allowed her ten more seconds before I gave up.
In the meantime, I called Marcus. “Marshall, what did the police tell you?”
“The police? Oh, you know, the usual nothing. If she hasn’t turned up by tonight, I can file a missing-persons report.”
“Well, we’re not waiting.”
“Do you know anything?”
“No,” I said flatly. “I’ll tell you as soon as I do.”
I gave up on the woman in the Buick and drove on.
15.
The FBI’s Boston field office is located in One Center Plaza, part of the hideous Government Center complex, which some architects praise as “imposing” but most Bostonians consider a blight, a concrete scar on the face of our beautiful city. The only positive thing I can say about Government Center is that it once inspired a decent song by the proto-punk band the Modern Lovers.
When I got out of the elevator on the sixth floor, I saw a huge gold FBI seal on the wall and a Ten Most Wanted poster. In a small waiting area were a metal detector gate and a portable baggage X-ray machine, neither in use. A couple of receptionists sat behind bulletproof glass.
I pushed my driver’s license into a slot like a bank teller’s, and they made me surrender my BlackBerry. In exchange they gave me a badge that said ESCORT REQUIRED in red.
One of the women behind the glass spoke into a phone and told me someone would be out in a few minutes.
I waited. There was nothing to look at but a photo of the president, in a frame that hung askew on the wall, and an array of pamphlets advertising careers in the FBI. No magazines or newspapers. Without my BlackBerry I couldn’t check my e-mail or call anyone.
I waited some more.
After half an hour I went back to the lady behind the glass and asked her whether I’d been forgotten. She apologized, assured me I hadn’t been, but gave no explanation.
When they make you wait ten or fifteen minutes, it’s probably because a
Most secrets are kept to conceal crimes, abuses, or failures. They can destroy a career or undermine an enemy, and they’ve brought down quite a few world leaders. In Washington, where you’re only as important as the secrets you know, secrets are truly the coin of the realm.
It was time to spend some of that coin.
When I worked at Stoddard Associates in D.C., I did a project for a freshman congressman from Florida who was fighting a nasty reelection battle. His opponent had got hold of a copy of the lease on an apartment in Sarasota he’d rented for his girlfriend, a hostess at Hooters. This was news to his wife, the mother of his six children, and definitely inconvenient for the congressman, given his strong family-values platform. I did some cleanup work and the whole paper trail disappeared. The waitress found new employment in Pensacola. Her landlord had no recollection of renting to the congressman and declared the deed a forgery. The congressman won the election in a squeaker.
It wasn’t a job I was proud of. But now the congressman was the ranking member on the House Judiciary Committee, which oversees the FBI. He didn’t owe me any favors, since he’d paid well for Stoddard’s “research services,” but I knew certain things about him, which was even worse. I reached him on his private line and asked him to make a call for me to the Boston field office of the FBI.
I told him I needed to talk to someone senior. Now.
A PARKING space was about to open up on Cambridge Street directly in front of the FBI, which is roughly as common as a solar eclipse. I double-parked and waited for the woman in the Buick, who’d just switched on her engine, to pull out.
But she was taking her time. First she had to touch up her lipstick; then she had to make a phone call. I allowed her ten more seconds before I gave up.
In the meantime, I called Marcus. “Marshall, what did the police tell you?”
“The police? Oh, you know, the usual nothing. If she hasn’t turned up by tonight, I can file a missing-persons report.”
“Well, we’re not waiting.”
“Do you know anything?”
“No,” I said flatly. “I’ll tell you as soon as I do.”
I gave up on the woman in the Buick and drove on.
15.
The FBI’s Boston field office is located in One Center Plaza, part of the hideous Government Center complex, which some architects praise as “imposing” but most Bostonians consider a blight, a concrete scar on the face of our beautiful city. The only positive thing I can say about Government Center is that it once inspired a decent song by the proto-punk band the Modern Lovers.
When I got out of the elevator on the sixth floor, I saw a huge gold FBI seal on the wall and a Ten Most Wanted poster. In a small waiting area were a metal detector gate and a portable baggage X-ray machine, neither in use. A couple of receptionists sat behind bulletproof glass.
I pushed my driver’s license into a slot like a bank teller’s, and they made me surrender my BlackBerry. In exchange they gave me a badge that said ESCORT REQUIRED in red.
One of the women behind the glass spoke into a phone and told me someone would be out in a few minutes.
I waited. There was nothing to look at but a photo of the president, in a frame that hung askew on the wall, and an array of pamphlets advertising careers in the FBI. No magazines or newspapers. Without my BlackBerry I couldn’t check my e-mail or call anyone.
I waited some more.
After half an hour I went back to the lady behind the glass and asked her whether I’d been forgotten. She apologized, assured me I hadn’t been, but gave no explanation.
When they make you wait ten or fifteen minutes, it’s probably because a
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