Jack measured his own chances. He was back on with Karen because she saw he was trying; the best way to keep it going was to cash in his twenty, grab his pension, get out of L.A. The next two months would be a sprint dodging bullets: the reopening, what Patchett and Bracken had on him. Odds you couldn’t figure–for a sprinter he was scared and tired–and starting to feel old. Exley had sprint moves in mind–late dinner meets weren’t his style. Bracken and Patchett might deal his dirt in; Parker might quash it to protect the Department. But Karen would know, and what was left of the marriage would go down–because she could just barely take that she’d married a drunk and a bagman. “Murderer” was one bullet they both couldn’t dodge.
Three hours in the air; three hours pent up thinking. The plane touched down at Puget Sound; Jack caught a cab to McNeil.
Ugly: a gray monolith on a gray rock island. Gray walls, gray fog, barbed wire at the edge of gray water. Jack got out at the guard hut; the gatekeeper checked his ID, nodded. Steel gates slid back into stone.
Jack walked in. A wiry little man met him in the sallyport. “Sergeant Vincennes? I’m Agent Goddard, Prison’s Bureau.”
A good handshake. “Did Exley tell you what it’s about?”
“Bob Gallaudet did. You’re on the Nite Owl and related conspiracy cases and you think Cohen’s cell might have been bugged. We’re looking for evidence to support that theory, which I don’t think is so farfetched.”
“Why?”
They walked bucking wind-Goddard talked above it. “Cohen got the royal treatment here, Goldman too. Privileges up the wazoo, unlimited visitors and not too much scrutiny on the stuff brought into their tier, so a bug could have been planted. Are you thinking Goldman crossed Mickey?”
“Something like that.”
“Well, could be. They had cells two doors apart, on a tier Mickey requested, because half the cells had ruined plumbing and you couldn’t house inmates in them. You’ll see, I’ve got the whole row vacated and closed off.”
Checkpoints, the blocks–six-story tiers linked by catwalks. Upstairs to a corridor–eight empty cells. Goddard said, “The penthouse. Quiet, underpopulated and a nice day room for the boys to play cards in. We have an informant who says Cohen got approval on the inmates placed up here. Can you feature the cheek of that?”
Jack said, “Jesus, you’re good. And fast.”
“Well, Exley and Gallaudet carry weight, and the powers that be here didn’t have time to prepare. Now check the goodies I brought.”
On the day room table: crowbars, chisels, mallets, a long thin pole with a hook at the end. On a blanket: a tape recorder, a tangle of wires. Goddard said, “First we tear this tier up. I admit it’s a long shot, but I brought a recorder along in case we find tape.”
“I’d call that a maybe. Goldman and Cohen got paroled last fall, but they got bushwacked in July and Davey got his brains scrambled. I’m thinking if he was the one monitoring the tape then maybe he was too wet-brained to pull the machine.”
“Enough gabbing. Let’s dig.”
o o o
They dug.
Goddard plumbed a line from the heat duct in Cohen’s cell to the heat duct in Goldman’s, marked a line on the ceilings of the two cells in between, started probing with a mallet and chisel. Jack pried a protection plate off the duct on Mickey’s wall, banged around inside the chute with the hook device. Nothing but hollow tin walls, no wires just inside. Frustrating: it was the logical place to plant a microphone. Heat boomed out the duct; Jack changed his mind, Washington was cold, the heat would be on too much of the time, drowning out conversation. He checked the walls and ceiling for other conduits–nothing–then the area around the vent. Irregularly applied spackling dotted with pinholes right by the protector plate; he smashed his mallet until half the wall came down and a small Spackle-covered microphone dangling off a wire came loose. The wire jerked from his hand, straight back into the wall. Five seconds later Goddard stood there holding it–attached to a tape recorder covered with plastic. “Halfway between the cells, a little hidey-hole right off the vent. Let’s listen, huh?”