Murder at the FBI Read online

  “I don’t understand,” Chris said. “He just sends his material over the phone?”

  Billie nodded and tried a forkful of cake. She savored it, then said, “That’s right. I really don’t understand all the technical aspects of it, but it’s obviously the wave of the future.”

  “Amazing,” Chris said, “especially when you consider the kind of books he does.”

  “I know,” said Billie, “that’s why he has security devices and only transmits at odd hours.”

  “Can you really protect against somebody tapping in to a transmission?” Bill asked.

  Billie squinted and looked at him strangely. “You should know that, Bill, with all your computers.”

  He shrugged and tasted the cake. “I just know about using them to get out the newspaper. The whole business of security and late-night transmissions is beyond me.”

  Billie earnestly dug into what was left of dessert, and Chris decided to hold back any further questions. It was Bill who brought up Kneeley again. “What does Kneeley have to do to send his written material to you?”

  “All I know is that every Tuesday night—actually Wednesday morning, between two and five A.M.—we have to have somebody on duty to receive what he sends. We have a system called the Gutenberg. It’s some kind of software. Kneeley sends his material over the phone. Our computer receives it and prints it out. It’s perfect.”

  “Fascinating,” said Chris. “You say he only sends his stuff early Wednesday morning?”

  “Usually. Sometimes, he’ll call and arrange for a transmission at another time if there’s something especially important, but most of it comes through on Wednesday morning.” She frowned, then said, “You seem very interested, Chris. Frankly, I never pay much attention to it. I love books, not bits and bytes.”

  Chris smiled. “So do I, but as you said, this is the wave of the future. I suppose anybody who doesn’t get interested in it is going to be left behind.”

  Billie nodded. “I know. The publisher wants all of us to take a computer course at NYU. They’ll even pay for it if we agree to go. I guess I’d better before I find myself replaced by a robot.”

  Bill suggested they all return to the hotel for coffee, but Billie declined. “I’m leaving at six for Cape Cod,” she said. “Things finally calmed down enough for me to grab some vacation time.”

  “I really enjoyed meeting you,” said Chris.

  “Same for me,” Billie said as they parted on the sidewalk in front of Antolotti’s. Bill and Billie hugged, and Chris wondered how close they had been.

  Bill and Chris walked quickly back to the Hotel Inter-Continental. They found a table on the terrace overlooking the expansive lobby, ordered coffee, and looked at each other. “What are you thinking?” he asked.

  “Lots of things, mostly that I’d give a million to see what Kneeley’s working on.”

  “What if I could do that for you? I’d settle for dinner every night for the next hundred years.”

  She smiled and took his hand across the table. “Don’t talk that way,” she said. “It—”

  “It what, Chris, makes you nervous? Good. I decided tonight that I’m all through playing sibling to the woman I love. I want you, and I’ll do anything I have to to make it work.”

  She sighed and sat back heavily in her chair. “Bill, please try to understand that right now, I can’t think clearly about anything except—”

  “Except Richard Kneeley. Fine, let’s get it over with.”

  “Get it over with?”

  “Yeah, let’s see what he’s all about, and where he fits in with this case that has you spinning.”

  “Go on.”

  “If you want, I’ll get a hold of Joey Zoe and set it up.”

  “Who?”

  “Joey Zoe. He’s a Shinnecock, lives out in Patchogue, on Long Island. Joey’s not what you’d call the best public image for the American Indian, but he does have his value. He’s probably the best redskin wire man in the country.”

  Chris sat up, waved her hand, and said with the threat of a giggle in her throat, “Hold on, Bill, wait a minute. Are you telling me that this Joey Zoe can find out what Kneeley is transmitting by tapping his phone?”

  “Exactly. Joey owes me a few favors—”

  “Along with every other Native American, it seems.”

  “You know how it is in journalism, Chris, you build up the due bills pretty fast. Joey’s spent time in jail and I went to bat for him. He’s really not a bad guy, and I’ll tell you this—he’s a bona fide electronics genius who never took a shot at using it legitimately. If there’s anybody can make it work, it’s Joey.”

  Chris sat back again and slowly shook her head. “An illegal wiretap. That’s insanity. I’m with the FBI.”

  “Yeah, and if you don’t get this thing resolved, you might not be very much longer, which, I’m willing to admit, would make me a very happy man. However, I know it would devastate you, which prompts me to help. You’re concerned about it being illegal? Could you get a legal order?”

  “No. I’d never be able to show cause to a judge.”

  “Next question. Are you telling me that every tap the FBI puts on people is legal, comes through the right channels?”

  She thought of the material in Kneeley’s file at the bureau, much of it obtained with illegal wiretaps of his hotel rooms. She didn’t want to admit Bill was right, but she had to.

  “See?” he said. “Well, what do you say? If Joey’s in town, he’ll do it for me.”

  Chris slowly took in the men and women at adjacent tables, all of whom seemed in high spirits and totally unconcerned with anything being said at their table. She asked Bill, “Why a wiretap? Why not just try to invade his computer?”

  “That’s more legal?”

  “I know it’s not right, but it’s not as bad as a phone tap.”

  “Maybe so, Chris, but you heard Billie. Kneeley’s a paranoid who knows damn well it’s easy to intercept whatever he’s working on. I’m not sure of all the details, but I do know that if he’s added security devices, it’ll be almost impossible to crash his system. The phone lines are another matter.”

  She sipped her coffee, put the cup down in the saucer with determination, and said, “No.”

  He shrugged. “Suit yourself, but I think you’re wrong. You’ve been jerked around by a lot of people lately, not one of whom cares this much about Christine Saksis.” He created a tiny space between his thumb and index finger. “Chris, please listen to me. I can set this up with Joey so that we’ll know exactly what Kneeley’s currently working on. Maybe it has nothing to do with Pritchard or the bureau or anything else, but it would be—well, it would be dumb to not rule it out. Joey can put in the tap, we get what Kneeley’s sending to his publisher, the tap is pulled, and nobody knows the difference. Besides, what’s the big deal about reading his pages? You’re not stealing state secrets, just the writings of an author. You’re not stealing his stuff for some rival publishing house, you’re trying to solve a murder, and that’s a hell of a lot more important than standing on protocol.”

  “Bill, I—”

  “Trust me.” He laughed. “I sound like a Hollywood agent.”

  “Can I ask you a question?”

  “Sure.”

  “Don’t take this wrong, but I’m seeing a side of you that I didn’t know existed. You were always so against the FBI because of the way it intruded into people’s personal lives, its secrecy, the—what did you call it, ‘America’s private police force.’ But here you are suggesting that we use the same tactics.”

  “It’s called pragmatism, my dear,” he said. “The difference is that the personal life of the woman I’m madly in love with has been violated, and you know what happens when an Indian is dishonored by the palefaces.”

  She shook her head and waved for the waiter. “I’d love more coffee,” she said to Bill.

  “Good. So would I. Now, tell me about Kneeley’s computer set-up.”

  “I di
dn’t learn much about it. He’s got an Apple Plus, modems…”

  “Apple Plus?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s an old model.”

  “I guess he’s had it a while.”

  “Hmmmm. I assume he has the Gutenberg software Billie mentioned. He’d have to in order to link up with the publisher’s equipment.”

  “I suppose so.”

  “Any idea of the specs?”

  “Huh?”

  “The specs, specifically the baud rate.”

  “Bill, I—”

  “Forget it, Joey will figure it out. It’s probably three hundred.”

  “If you say so.”

  The waiter delivered more coffee. Bill wiped his mouth and stood. “Let me try to reach Joey now.”

  “Bill, are you sure this is—”

  “Trust me. Remember?”

  While he was gone, Chris’s thoughts turned to Ross Lizenby. He’d undoubtedly return and expect her to be waiting. She dreaded seeing him, knew she’d have to tell him about the weekend in New York and the rekindling of her affair with Bill. Under any circumstances, that would have been difficult, but there was that side of Ross that instilled in her an added fear, especially after what she’d been told about his ex-wife. She forced herself to dismiss that kind of thinking. It was ridiculous, and she felt mildly embarrassed at creating scenarios that were more appropriate to a dreamy high school girl with an overactive imagination.

  Bill bounced back to the table. “I got him. It’s all set.”

  “It is?”

  “Yup. I’m meeting him tomorrow. He was a little shy about talking on the phone.”

  “I don’t wonder.”

  “The only question is where you want to be when Kneeley starts transmitting. I could rent equipment here and set up in the room. No, that’s no good. The hotel operator will break in on a line that’s open too long. We can do it in Washington, right at your apartment.”

  “Really?”

  “Sure. All Joey has to know is what number to hook up to the tap on Kneeley’s phone.”

  She thought of Lizenby again. “Maybe my apartment isn’t such a good idea, Bill. It’s too close to home.”

  “Whatever you say. Just decide before I meet him tomorrow.”

  “If it is my apartment, do I have what we need?”

  “No, but I’ll pick it up in Washington. It doesn’t take much. You have an Apple IIe, and a printer.”

  “Yes.”

  “And a phone.”

  “Of course.”

  “Got plenty of roll-feed paper?”

  “None.”

  “I’ll get that, too. Your printer takes roll-feed, doesn’t it?”

  “Sure.”

  “That’s it. I’ll pick up the Gutenberg program, too. Just leave it to me. We’ll do it in your place?”

  “All right.” She’d decided she didn’t want to extend the time in New York and could make whatever plans were necessary to be alone—alone with Bill—between the hours of two and five on Wednesday morning.

  As they waited for a check, Chris asked more about Joey Zoe.

  “A remarkable type,” said Bill. “Dropped out of junior high, bummed around, ended up in the Air Force, where he picked up a ton of electronics experience. He was booted out with a dishonorable discharge for playing with the computer at the PX. He had listed himself as a vendor and received payment for goods delivered. There weren’t any goods.”

  Her eyebrows went up.

  “He was lucky he didn’t do time for it. He came out of the service and hooked up with some mobsters who used his electronics skills by tapping into a bank’s computer and siphoning off a couple of hundred thousand dollars before it was discovered. Joey did time for it, his bosses walked free. It’s funny what happened to him in jail. He ended up being assigned a work detail with the prison’s computer set-up, which was hooked up to a statewide network. He swears if they’d kept him on that job for another couple of weeks he could have released half the prisoners in New York.” They both laughed. “It turned out somebody reviewed his file and that was the end of his computer assignment. He spent the next two years in the kitchen.”

  “I’m having second thoughts,” Chris said.

  “Don’t,” he said. “Besides having a streak of larceny in his heart, Joey’s an absolute charmer and has a strong sense of duty to our people. He did a tap for me on the New York State Bureau of Indian Affairs. I got a hell of a story out of it.”

  “You’re impossible,” she said as they walked to the elevators.”

  “Impossible… and adorable. Oh, and let’s not forget sexually irresistible.” Which he proceeded to prove.

  22

  Beth Pritchard was almost a half an hour late, which set Saksis on edge. She’d started to wonder whether the teenager had developed second thoughts about getting together. She was relieved when the room phone rang.

  Beth was dressed in baggy jeans, a sweatshirt with a picture of Boy George on it, and sneakers—hardly the outfit for an elegant breakfast at the Hotel Inter-Continental. But no one looked askance as they went through the buffet line, found a table on the terrace, and started eating.

  Saksis was filled with conflicting thoughts as she sat across from the young girl. There was something very vital and alive about her, the sort of spirit only the young seemed to possess. Beth played out all the quirks of her age, trying very hard to be sophisticated, yet betraying herself by using the jargon of her peers, overreacting at the wrong times, missing the point at others. Saksis felt very much the big sister. But that could get in the way, she knew. She wasn’t her big sister, and was with her only because she wanted her to talk about her mother and father, to give information, to help Saksis resolve her own problems. There were those fleeting moments when Saksis wondered to what extent she could use Beth, play on her teenage naiveté to reach her own goals, get inside her for her own selfish reasons. But Beth took her off the hook, in a sense, by saying after she’d cleaned her plate, “I want to talk to you about what happened to my father.”

  No need to con this kid, Saksis thought. She’d come to breakfast ready to talk. Saksis said, “I’d like that very much, Beth, because, frankly, I’m in the middle of a mess and don’t have the answers to help me out of it.”

  “Are you in trouble?” the girl asked, her face serious and concerned.

  “No, I don’t want you to think that, but your father’s death has caused a lot of problems for me, and for other people.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, because he was who he was, a respected member of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. There’s intense pressure to find who killed him, and any of us who are working on it naturally feel that pressure.”

  “My mother killed him.”

  Saksis stared across the table. Beth’s lips were pressed tightly together, and Saksis saw that she’d clenched her fists into tight balls. She started to say something, but Beth said, “You don’t believe me, do you?”

  Saksis shook her head and looked around the terrace, leaned over the table, and said in a stage whisper, “Beth, you do realize what you’ve just said?”

  “Of course I do.”

  “You—you have no doubts about it?”

  “No.”

  “Do you have proof?”

  “Yes.”

  Saksis sat back and twisted a strand of hair at her temple as she desperately tried to formulate a sensible comment, question, anything. Finally, she said, “Tell me about the proof.”

  “My mother was there the night he was killed.”

  “I know that, although she denies it. But you told me the first time I met you that your mother had been home that evening.”

  “Of course I did. If I hadn’t, she would have killed me, too.”

  “Beth, do you—Beth, I don’t want to sound as though I doubt what you say, but you’re accusing your own mother of not only killing your father, but of being capable of killing you.”

  “That’s ri
ght.”

  “That’s—”

  “I don’t care what you think.” Her eyes filled up and she was obviously fighting against making a scene. She pushed the edge of her napkin against her eyes and held it there for a long time. Saksis wanted to come around the table and wrap her arms around her, tell her that everything was all right and to make her forget about her father’s murder. Had Beth continued much longer in the battle against her tears, that’s exactly what might have happened. But she lowered the napkin, stuck out her chin, and said, “I just told you the truth, Miss Saksis.”

  “And I believe you, Beth. It’s just that such a serious accusation has to be backed up with some pretty hefty proof.”

  “I told you I could prove it.”

  “Go ahead, I’m listening.”

  “I don’t want to talk here.”

  Saksis nodded. “We’ll go to my room.”

  Beth shook her head. “I don’t trust anyplace, or anybody, not after what happened to my father.”

  Instead they walked east on Forty-ninth Street to First Avenue, then took a right until they stood in front of the United Nations. Flags of member nations rippled against a gun metal gray sky that threatened rain. Two small Hispanic boys wrestled with each other despite their mother’s admonitions to stop. A young couple necked on a bench, the music from a large portable cassette player blaring what Saksis considered the antithesis of erotic music.

  “Let’s sit over there,” she said, indicating a bench far removed from the others. When they were seated, she said, “Okay, Beth, let’s get it over with. What you told me at the restaurant is shocking, but I believe you. Ever since your mother lied about that night, I’ve had to consider her a prime suspect in your father’s murder. Can you tell me why she might have killed him?”

  Beth looked at Saksis and screwed up her face. “See, you don’t believe me.”

  “Beth, you have to understand that I can’t simply accept what you say without asking questions.”

  “You just said, ‘might have killed him.’ She did!”