“I believe ya’ll find the bank’s serial numbers on the bills, suh. Don’t you think so, Sherlock?”
“Oh yes, I surely do, Agent Forge.”
“Take me away, Ms. Sherlock,” Dillon Savich said, came to his feet, and stuck out his hands.
She handed Porter back his SIG. She faced Savich with her hands on her hips, a grin on her face. “Why would I handcuff you now, sir? You’re dead. I’ll get a body bag.”
Savich was laughing when she walked away to the waiting paramedic ambulance.
He said to the mayor of Hogan’s Alley, “That was well done. She has a nose for crooks. She sniffed me out and came after me. She didn’t try to second-guess herself. I wondered if she’d have guts. She does. Sorry I turned the exercise into a comedy at the end, but the look on her face, I just couldn’t help it.”
“I don’t blame you, but I doubt we can use you again. I have a feeling this story will pass through training classes for a good long while. No future trainees will believe you’re both a new coach and a crook.”
“It worked once and we saw an excellent result. I’ll come up with another totally different exercise.” Savich walked away, unaware that his royal blue boxer shorts were on display to a crowd of a good fifty people.
The mayor began to laugh, then the people around him joined in. Soon there was rolling laughter, people pointing. Even a crook who was holding a hostage around the throat, a gun to his ear, at the other end of town looked over at the sudden noise to see what was going on. It was his downfall. Agent Wallace thunked him over the head and laid him flat.
It was a good day for taking a bite out of crime in Hogan’s Alley.
3
SHE MET WITH COLIN PETTY, a supervisor in the Personnel Division, known in the Bureau as the Bald Eagle. He was thin, sported a thick black mustache, and had a very shiny head. He told her up front that she’d impressed some important people, but that was at Quan-tico. No one working here in Headquarters was impressed yet. She was going to have to work her butt off. She nodded, knowing where she’d been assigned. It was tough, but she managed to pull out a bit of enthusiasm.
“I’m pleased to be going to the Los Angeles field office,” she said, and thought, I don’t want anything to do with any bank robberies. She knew they dealt with more bank robberies than any field office in the Bureau. She guessed it was better than Montana, but at least there she could go skiing. How long was a usual tour of duty? She had to get back here, somehow.
“L.A. is considered a plum assignment for a new agent right out of the Academy,” Mr. Petty said as he flipped through her personnel file. “You originally requested Headquarters, I see here, the Criminal Investigative Division, but they decided to send you to Los Angeles.” He looked up at her over his bifocals. “You have a B.S. in Forensic Science and a Master’s degree in Criminal Psychology from Berkeley,” he continued. “Seems you’ve got a real interest here. Why didn’t you request the Investigative Services Unit? With your background, you would probably have been escorted through the door. I take it you changed your mind?”
She knew there were notes about that in her file. Why was he acting as if he didn’t know anything? Of course. He wanted
her to talk, get her slant on things, get her innermost thoughts. Good luck to him on that, she thought. It was true that it was her own fault that she was being assigned to Los Angeles and there was no secret as to why.
She forced a smile and shrugged. “The fact is that I just don’t have the guts to do what those people do every day of their lives and probably in their dreams as well. You’re right that I prepared myself for this career, that I believed it was what I wanted to do with my life, but-” She shrugged again. And swallowed. She’d spent all these years preparing herself, and she’d failed. “It all boils down to no guts.”