Chapter 48

Before I went out to walk on the morning of my meeting with Borscht, the assistant Director of the FBI, I had to do all my morning things. The first was to get my ass out of bed. I had not slept well at all the night before. It was simple anxiety, which I didn’t anticipate. I wasn’t at all surprised by its arrival. I got up, went to use the bathroom, then came back and went into the kitchen to heat the double double hot chocolate. I heated it just enough to take the refrigerated chill off that crap.

Then I swallowed my new cocktail of Tylenol and Motrin pills, and washed them down with the warm coco. Then I had a bran muffin helped down by the last of the warm coco. While I pulled on my hiking outfit, Mikah had her morning treat. A very hard chew bone. I had a bottle of designer water, brought into the house by Thia. Each bottle had a total of five calories. I decided to carry it on my walk that morning as a test, it turned out not to be awful.

Everything went normally right up until we went to the Accent to drive to my Virginia meeting with the FBI chief. I had explained that I didn’t want to be photographed walking into the FBI offices, so we set the meeting outside the office. The Accent was making a lot of noise from the second I turned it on. So much so that I doubted it would make it out of town. I drove down to the local auto rental office, instead of to my Virginia meeting.

While I drove the new midsize Chrysler to Virginia, I thought about the Accent. Even a super spy has to take care of the details, I decided. I liked the little car, and I might well need it, even if I bought a more reliable newer auto. A spare was always a good idea. If I still had the Metro pickup, I could have saved an hour and a few bucks.

I drove into the motel parking lot while having my last car thought ‘I miss my metro truck’. I pulled around to the door at the rear of the motel. When I knocked, Borscht of the FBI came to the door. I was surprised to find Gray there as well.

“We have decided that Agent Gray will receive your information in person, we will never, ever use an open phone line. The burner phones will only be used to set up meetings, or dead drops. You will be responsible for your own security measures.”

“I can do that, but the price just went up for the information,” I informed him. “My information is that if you hit these five locations, you should confiscate over one hundred thousand in cash. It may go up to a million. You will be able to verify enough of the information to secure warrants on all of the locations. What I want is ten percent of the cash recovered during that raid. There should be information on the computers to tie Super Pimp to all of the operations.”

“We have to advance you the money, but we can do that,” Borscht replied.

“Fair enough,” I said. “You can take the wholesale price of that Dodge truck out of the payment for this information.”

“Okay, we have a deal,” Borscht said.

“Good enough, Gray here will be our postman. We already worked out his cover ID, so we just gave him a promotion,” I said. Borscht agreed of course. Gray and I didn’t want to be seen together, so Mikah and I had our lunch in the park. We had chicken nuggets and a small order of french fries.

I got on the smart phone and began looking for an automobile. I decided that for the amount of hassle involved, it would be easier to buy a car from Enterprise Car Rental agency. So I at least had an afternoon plan. I had already handed off my first package, so I was going home to await the outcome of the operation.

I knew that The Hammer had expected the operation to close down the Super Pimps immediately but it took two weeks. The super pimp’s operation made the nightly news national edition. Well on Fox anyway. Since it was my news channel of choice, I had no idea how the liberal news channels covered the take down. I mean super pimp was a minority member. Their coverage might have accused the FBI of entrapment, or some shit.

During the two week waiting for the operation to terminate, I went to the Durham Co-op often. I’m sure some people welcomed my acidic comments, and some didn’t. Nobody asked me to stop showing up, so until the operation ended, I showed up before noon and left before three.

The trip was as much a test for my rebuilt accent, as anything else. The little car got a partial engine rebuild. I Had it done in a real quality garage. The bill was almost half the blue book value of the car, but since I didn’t want the hassle of the shopping for a new car, I paid it gladly. While it was in the shop, I used the metro pickup. Which was a good thing, since I identified a couple of things that needed fixing on it as well. The man who had built the Metro Pickup was good at the building, even if it looked like shit. He had built a structural steel roll bar for the rear of the tiny front compartment. Once I drove it, I discovered that I wanted the Geo back. I could carry a kayak in it, by simply leaning it against, and securing it to that roll bar.

Jon would be graduating high school in the spring, so maybe a new car was in his future. If so I would be happy to contribute to it, in order to get the Metro back. It made the fifty plus mile one way trip to Durham a couple of times while the accent was in he shop. Each time I spent the night there and drove pack the next day.

On both of those trips, I went to see Janet at her MMA workout. I even got to watch her get her ass kicked on the last of those visits. But I’ll say this for her, she stayed in the fight till the end. She even wore her black eye and swollen check bone with pride. I spent the night at Tonya’s apartment both times. Janet didn’t mind that because she had her MMA instructor to keep her company.