Callisto (35 page)

Kraus gave the picture back to Deedle then leaned close to me. “This can all go away if you'll cooperate. We want the big fish. You're a minnow, we know that, only it looks bad the way you've been associating with criminals this past week, beginning
with Dean. Either you're part of it, Odell, or you're the unluckiest son of a bitch I ever met.”

“I'm unlucky,” I told him.

“That's what I'd say too,” says Deedle.

I didn't know what to think. Lorraine has been humping Cole Connors, and I just told these guys she's my fiancée. They were right – it looked real bad, like I'm some kind of idiot blinded by love as they say. “I'm unlucky in love,” I told them.

“That's just the beginning of your bad luck, Odell.”

“It could get a whole lot worse,” says Kraus.

They both of them were looking very grim now, like I handed in a lousy report card and have to take some bad consequences on account of it. I needed a friend, but who was there I could call and have him help me out here? Then it come to me who.

“I want to talk to Agent Jim Ricker.”

“Pardon?”

“Agent Jim Ricker from Homeland Security.”

“The folks at Homeland don't generally refer to themselves as agents.”

“Well that's what he said, he's Agent Jim Ricker.”

“And how do you happen to know Agent Ricker?”

“He called me on the phone a few times, and I called him once.”

“We don't have any record of those conversations, Odell. We bugged your phone too and that name does not feature in our recordings.”

“Well, then, you must not have been listening close enough. Pretty soon after I got my phone he called me up and
says he's Agent Jim Ricker and I have to tell him everything about what's happening.”

“This is your new cell phone you're talking about.”

“Uhuh.”

“And this Agent Jim Ricker has held conversations with you on that cell?”

“Two or three times now.”

Kraus gave a nod to Deedle, who got up and strolled over to the window which has got the blinds drawn against the bright sun out there. He took out a phone and starts talking to someone while Kraus keeps looking at me like the report card has gone from D to F minus. “See, Odell, when you got that cell last week, the minute your name and number were registered it prompted an alert, a red flag, you might say, given that you're a person of interest to us. Your conversations on that phone, as well as on the landline out at Dean Lowry's place, have all been monitored, and I have to tell you now, Odell, there's no record of conversations with a Jim Ricker. We'd know if any such thing happened. That's our job.”

“Well . . . he called me, I'm not lying. You can hook me up to a lie detector. It was Agent Jim Ricker. He calls me up once in a while to let me know he's keeping an eye on me with the satellite.”

“The satellite.”

“Uhuh, up there in the sky, a whole bunch of them watching over me.”

“Like guardian angels, Odell?”

“Kinda, yeah, maybe.”

Deedle come back over and says, “Just been talking to Homeland Security, Odell. They don't have any Agent
Jim Ricker, definitely no such person working there.”

“Sure there is. I talked to him two, three times.”

Kraus says to Deedle, “Odell has just been telling me that Agent Ricker keeps a watchful eye on him by way of spy satellites, a whole bunch of them, isn't that right, Odell?”

“That's right, that's what he told me.”

“Even though our intercept failed to monitor any such conversations with any such person. We have the best equipment in the world, Odell, your taxpayer dollar at work.”

“Well, it isn't working right,” I told them, getting kind of steamed about how they aren't believing me concerning this important person.

“What's his number?” asks Kraus.

“Uh, I forget. I had it entered in the phone like you can do nowadays, but the phone's gone and I can't remember the number.”

“The number we'd have a record of if calls ever came through on your phone.”

“The calls did come through . . .Give me a lie-detector test.” Then I thought how they could ask me about did I know where Dean is, like Chief Webb asked me, so maybe I better not get lie-detected after all. “Only you can just ask me that one question, not any others.”

“Hardly seems worthwhile setting up a polygraph for just one question, Odell. We heard you had one of those and burst out crying. We wouldn't want to upset you all over again for one piddling question that we already know the answer to.”

“You do?”

“We do. You're bullshitting us, Odell, and we don't like that.”

“I'm not lying! He really called me . . .Maybe he's got one of
those . . .those machines that make you not be able to understand what he's saying . . .”

“A scrambler?”

“A scrambler, yeah, he must have one of those.”

“Odell, our ability to suck it up on landline and cell and satellite calls is unparalleled. We can listen in on any conversation, anytime, anywhere in the world. You did not receive calls from any Jim Ricker. You received calls on Lowry's phone and your cell from Donnie D, Chief Webb, Lorraine Lowry and Chet Marchand and that's all. We've looked into Chet Marchand and he's told us he came out to talk with Dean about his conversion to Islam. He came out again when he learned you'd been impersonating Dean, and he took pity on you because he thinks you're a disturbed person, Odell, so he gave you a cell phone to help you build up your customer base and mow more lawns. If there's anyone watching over you like a guardian angel, Odell, it's Chet Marchand and his boss, Bob Jerome. Those two have got an interest in you based on their religious faith and belief in good works. We know Mr Marchand invited you to attend a big revival meeting in Topeka on July Fourth, that's an invitation that isn't extended to just anybody.”

All of a sudden I understood! It was so clear it's like a light turned on inside my head. “I'm bait . . .” I said.

“Excuse me?”

“Jim Ricker told me I'm bait for flushing out Dean . . . That's why they want me at the big Topeka meeting, because Senator Ketchum is gonna be there to make a speech . . .and Dean wants to kill him . . . so maybe you think I'm gonna help Dean do that . . .?”

Kraus was looking kind of pissed now. “Nobody told you you're bait. Dean wouldn't come within a mile of you, Odell, not unless he's retarded, which clearly he isn't. Messed up, maybe, but not retarded. Jim Ricker told you nothing because Jim Ricker doesn't exist. Most people, Odell, they give up their imaginary friends by the time they're six or eight.”

“He's not my imaginary friend. He's got a daughter, a nine-year-old daughter that's got the same ring tone on her phone as I picked for mine, he told me – Greensleeves.”

“Greensleeves?”

I started whistling it for them but quit when they gave each other this long look that says I don't whistle so good.

“Odell, listen up. Your friend Jim would need to have equipment of incredible sophistication to evade our scanners. No such conversation about his daughter took place because we have no record of it. This man does not exist, so let's move on.”

“He
has
got incredible equipment, or how else could he know what kind of ring tone I had on my phone?”

“That'd have to be something pretty new on the market,” says Deedle, “and we know about everything that's out there, all the gadgets. Odell, we
invent
most of whatever is the latest and greatest, and what you're describing is something out of a James Bond movie. Don't tell us about equipment, we
know
.”

“You guys invent stuff?”

“Not us directly, the National Security Agency, they're the backroom boys that come up with all the sniffers and scoop-ers, all the filters and fine-tuners. Nothing gets by their equipment, Odell, so don't try and bluff us into thinking someone can. No more bullshitting.”

“Well, I wasn't.”

“Sure you were,” says Kraus. “No more fairy tales, Odell. You're holding something back and we want to know what it is. Nobody walks into the life of a terrorist with car trouble and gets to be such an instant friend he gets roped in to take care of business while the terrorist goes off somewhere with his cell buddies to plot against a high-level member of the United States government. That just doesn't happen in the real world, Odell, so start telling us the real story. You are in a world of shit, son, only you don't seem to realize it.”

“Am not.”

They looked at me like two judges at a dog show, only the dog has gone and peed on their shoes so now he has got no chance for a blue ribbon at all. The truth is, I was real upset about how they are not believing me even though I didn't tell them a single lie so far. And I'm not the only one in trouble here – Lorraine has gone and been found out about the drugs and this will finish her career as a prison guard. Cole Connors I didn't care about, or Donnie D, they knew what they're doing, but now Lorraine will hate my guts. But then she must not have cared about my guts anyway because she's been humping Cole all along . . .

I felt very bad about that. I had gone and let myself fall for an unsuitable person. Again. Why am I like this? And now everyone will know about my stupidass ways and how dumb I have been regarding all this that has happened here. A giant ear has been listening to every dumb thing I said, practically listening in to my brain thinking stuff, so now the only secret I have got left is about Dean being dead and where he's buried, which is another big worry on top of all the rest. If I
got blown out of the house as far as the cottonwoods, that means there must have been cops and rescue workers all around those trees, right where Dean got covered over. But that was two days ago now, and Kraus and Deedle are not acting like they know where Dean is, so maybe nobody noticed that fresh soil that slid down into the wash. So I have still got this one ace up my sleeve.

Kraus's phone rung in his pocket. He has got a very ordinary ring tone. He brung it out and listens, then he closed it and says to Deedle, “Go down to the front desk, there's a fax coming through for us. Our eyes only.”

“Got it.”

Deedle got up and left the room. Kraus says, “I'm waiting, Odell.”

“I expect he'll be back soon.”

“I'm waiting for
you
to tell me something I need to hear.”

“Well, I don't know what that might be. And anyway, you wouldn't believe me even if I told you something, so why bother?”

“That's not the right attitude, Odell. That kind of an attitude is only going to sink you deeper in the poop than you already are. You're running out of friends fast. Agent Deedle and I came here prepared to be your friends, but you've treated us like enemies, told us untrue things and got us thinking you're deliberately withholding important information. This is something serious you've gotten yourself involved in here. Now, look, I can understand how you might've gone over to these people because you fell for Lorraine, but that's no excuse in the eyes of the law. You don't strike me as the lawbreaking type, Odell, so I'm prepared to
give you the benefit of the doubt, but you've got to deliver something we can use. Will you do that?”

Well, I wanted to, but then I'd be confessing to murder, which I was prepared to do last Sunday because Chet made me feel bad about not being a decent Christian and so forth, so I wrote that letter to Condi, only now I don't want anybody knowing about that so it's a good thing I didn't mail the letter because I see everything different now. Maybe it was still in among the floor mess in the truck and got blown to smithereens like the phone, so I'm safe about that so long as I keep my mouth shut. Being a murderer and body hider as well as being mixed up in drugs is not what I need right now to improve my situation. And why did Agent Jim Ricker tell me lies?

“So, got anything you want to say to me?” asks Kraus.

I didn't have one single thing, so I crossed my arms over my chest, which hurt the hand that's bandaged but I kept it there so he knows I have got nothing to say about what he wants to know. That's how things stayed till Agent Deedle come back in with a sheet of paper which he showed to Kraus, who reads it twice then looks up at me very sharp around the eyes.

“Odell, are you a letter-writing kind of guy?”

“No.”

“Only I've got a letter here with your name on it.”

“Well, I don't see how.”

He showed it to me. It's a fax copy of the letter to Condi.

“I didn't write that.”

“You haven't read it yet.”

I pretended to read it then gave it back to him.

“I didn't write that.”

“A handwriting expert will find out just by comparing this with an example of your own handwriting.”

I held up my bandaged hand. “Got a problem.”

“That'll mend. You aren't going anywhere, Odell.”

“Why would I write a letter like that to Condoleezza Rice that says I killed someone. I'd have to be totally crazy to do that.”

“Uhuh. Did you expect a reply by return mail?”

“No.”

“Maybe later in the month?”

“I didn't expect any kind of a reply because I didn't write it.”

Kraus gave me this look says he's disappointed in what I'm saying. “Odell, when you got pulled out of the wreckage there your clothes got cut away at the hospital they're so torn up and filthy, and we took a peek inside your wallet, that's our job, and guess what we found. Well, you wouldn't need to guess, would you. A picture of Condoleezza Rice. Now that is an unusual thing to carry around, wouldn't you say? What's your interest in the Secretary of State, Odell? Is she a target in some assassination plot, or maybe she's the object of your affection, which is it?”