Chapter 9

Authors Note: Before continuing the story a reader reminded and informed me that there are only politically appointed U.S. Marshals. All of the hired help are deputies. To fulfill some of their obligations they often hire "Temporary" deputies. There is a distinction between full-time deputies and temporary deputies. "All" of the marshals referred to within the story are deputies but I often refer to them incorrectly as "real" marshals. It is easier to continue to refer to them as the general public does as marshals rather than the elongated deputy marshal.

I woke at six and remembered that I started work right across the street. I lay there a minute before deciding to go down to the gym and use the treadmill for a bit. I hated those things, but it was necessary.

I put my sweats back on and opened the door. I waved down the hall and said I was going to the gym. A different Marshal was there and was immediately on his radio. He waved me on so I got on the elevator and went down to the fifth floor. The other Marshal was getting off another elevator and walked with me to the gym. After he looked inside I went in and set the treadmill to start me slow and work up to three miles an hour. Not very fast but with one leg, pretty fast. I did the prescribed thirty minutes while watching the news on the built in TV, then worked on the machines doing most of the work on my abs for a change. I figured after the good eating I had been doing, I had better double up on the abdomen.

Back upstairs, I ordered two big breakfasts along with a newspaper and called to the Marshal that when the food got there to come in and eat. He smiled probably because the night guy had passed the word that I fed them. We ate with a minimum of conversation, only vaguely commenting on the day before. Afterwards, I cleaned up and finished my coffee while reading the newspaper. There was only a little blurb that an exercise had been held across the street from the federal building. Even the TV news had nothing about yesterday.

At seven fifteen, I walked across the street to the federal building and showed my badge while the metal detector went berserk. Upstairs, I was surprised to find Sarah at her desk. I went to her and gave her a hug where she sat. I told her how glad I was to see that she wasn't hurt bad.

She said pointing at my cane, "Thank goodness it's not like your injury."

I knocked on the metal stalk saying, "Once you're used to it, it's not a problem."

She said there were donuts, so I asked her if I could bring her a coffee and a donut. She beamed, thanking me for being so thoughtful. When I brought our stuff back to her desk, she said, "Metarie already told me I'm too old for you. I told her that I agreed, but I sure would like to lose a couple of years for a night or two."

I laughed with her but kissed her on the forehead before heading to the back to see if Howard was in yet. He wasn't, but a half dozen other Marshals were. They all greeted me and called me the fair-haired boy for getting the Mustang as a loaner. I told them that it was part of my cover and I was inundated with pencils, pens, and other small objects being thrown at me. Howard came through the door just as a dry eraser hit the door by his head.

He frowned and looked around, but all of us were looking up and away like innocent little kids. "Settle down in here. We have business today since the story didn't get out. We have a day or two to wrap most of this up. Stan, call the bureau and find out where they're at on breaking down the corporate structures. Dave, call DC to get the lowdown on the request we put in yesterday for all payments to all companies that are listed as hiring and training. Let's make hay while the sun shines." Howard looked at me and smiled saying, "Come here, I have something for you to do today."

"Go to work, but I want you to access everything in Jordan's office to see if you can find the corporations he was funneling business through. So far Nardelli isn't talking, but he is getting perturbed because we're keeping him out of touch. His attorney has an appointment with a federal judge for a writ of habeas corpus, but we're still allowed to keep a suspected terrorist thirty days without giving him up to his attorney."

"Get over there and see what you can find. I'll call Metarie to tell her to give you free rein in Jordan's office. If you get any shit from his secretary, call me right away and we'll come arrest her."

After checking out the Mustang, I drove straight to the office with the other Marshal following me. We checked in with Ms. White and she went with us to Jordan's office. His secretary asked us what was up. I told her that Jordan had turned up missing and that we had been directed by the U.S. Marshal's office to look for some information. I gave her Howard's telephone number and she called him. She hung up and said, "Finally, that man has been up to something, but I don't exactly know what it is. He keeps stuff locked on me and won't let me even see certain files. Here, I have a list of the companies he won't let me work the files on. When have you ever heard of that?"

It took a few tries, but I popped the lock on his file cabinet and his desk. The secretary busily pulled the files from the cabinet, while Metarie began looking through his desk. While we were doing this, the Marshal that was my babysitter was accessing the personal files on Jordan's computer.

I made a list of the corporate names and the named contact from each file. Next I had the secretary do the same on all the other files in his file cabinet. I faxed the entire two lists to Howard with an explanation. Ms. White was finding several notes about the various companies with past and future dates for funds transfers. She also found a bankbook with weekly entries right up to last week totaling almost a million and a half. Ms. White whistled when she saw the numbers. I found a telephone list inside his locked center drawer that included a couple of Tampa police department people. I called Howard and he gave me Mike Barnstead's number to call.

Mike first asked me if this was a secure line and I told him I didn't know. He said to consider it insecure and to go outside and call him. I did and told him the names I found within the Tampa PD. He gave me a fax number and asked me to fax him copies of everything of interest I found, including what I had given to the Marshal's office.

The entire morning was taken up copying and faxing information to the two offices. Around noon, Ms. White got a call from Washington, DC, telling her that they wanted Jordan's office sealed and to let no one in until one of the head Directors arrived to look over the office. She told them that the U.S. Marshal's office was already looking through the office and I could hear a man yelling at her. Ms. White held the phone away from her ear as the guy was cursing so loud it was easy to hear him. He demanded to speak to the Marshal, so Ms. White looked at me and handed me the phone.

All I said was, "This is the U.S. Deputy Marshal." The man went crazy yelling and cursing saying we had no authority to be looking through personal and confidential files in the Director's office. I cautiously asked his name and he instantly said Amos Davis and I better remember it because it would be on my termination notice. He said one of his men was on a plane and would arrive by two in the afternoon, so we were to close the Director's office until the man arrived. The other Marshal wrote me a note. "Ask him what the man's name is that is coming. We'll meet him with transportation."

I said, "Mr. Davis, I'll close the office right now. If you'll give me your agent's name I'll meet him at the airport and bring him straight here."

Good ole' Amos wasn't all that smart and said the man's name was John Miller from the DC office. He hung up after cautioning me about removing anything from the files.

I asked the secretary, "Have we copied everything that can be copied?"

She smiled and said, "Yes sir."

The other agent told me, "Call that in, I'm sure they will want to meet Mr. Miller when he gets off the plane."

I went outside and called Howard to tell him of the guy coming. He conferenced us with Mike and it was decided that one of Mike's and one of Howard's men would meet the guy. They would just bring him straight to the office. Howard said, "Have the Marshal there with you set up a surveillance camera in the office. At the first sign of the guy destroying or trying to remove files, arrest him."

Back inside, I told the Marshal what the plan was and he said he was finished transmitting everything in Jordan's computer back to the main office back up system. He would shut the PC down and set up the camera and recorder.

The man was a good tech. He put four cameras around the office so he covered every angle. Anything anyone did within the office would be recorded. We set it up to record on a laptop located in the conference room next door. The secretary was supposed to unlock the door only after the man demanded that she do so. We set up another camera at her desk so we could get that on record as well.

At two forty-five, the three men walked into the secretary's office. The man identified himself as John Miller. The secretary asked for his agency ID, and he felt around in his pockets then said, "Darn, I didn't bring it with me. I have my driver's license with me though."

He showed the driver's license so the secretary acted coy and called Amos Davis's office in DC. Mr. Davis answered, "What do you want?" The secretary said a man was there identifying himself as John Miller, but did not have an agency ID.

She described him and was told, "Let him in the office right now, or I'll have your job too."

When she opened the door, John Miller quickly entered the office and slammed the door. You could hear him turn the deadbolt on the door. We watched him do it on the other cameras. John Miller had a big satchel type of bag that he opened and brought out a typed list. He didn't even try to use a key on the file cabinet but wedged a large straight edge into the drawer and popped the lock. Using his list, he pulled file after file stuffing them into the satchel. When he had double-checked everything, he popped the drawer on the desk and looked through it gathering anything that had a telephone number or name on it.

Meanwhile, on the camera in the secretary's office an event was taking place. The secretary was smiling while she produced a key, went to the door and slowly turned the deadbolt, unlocking it.

John Miller finished with the desk and turned on the PC. He tried to access the password several times using information from the list he had. He finally gave up and began disassembling the case. While he was using a screwdriver on the hard drive, the Marshal watching Mr. Miller called the secretary's desk. He said one word, "Go."

The two men walked in the door while the guy was unscrewing the hard drive. They held up their badges and the Marshal held up his gun. The guy acted like he was reaching for a shoulder holster when realized he didn't have it on. They read him his rights and arrested him on the spot. We locked the office back up and the two guys transported Mr. Miller.

On a hunch, I called Amos and when he answered all I said was, "Done." He said, "Get back here right away but lose that stuff as soon as you're out of the office. I'll see you in Jamaica."

I went outside and called Howard to tell him about my call to Amos. He congratulated me on the deception and said, "I'll have to call DC. It's time to get the brass in on this. Amos Davis is like one step under a cabinet position. I want you to get done whatever you need to do, then get back here where we can watch you. You're hot property right this second."

Ms. White went upstairs to my office with me and my shadow, the tag along Marshal. She accessed a list of reports on my PC and we began with each one, filling in the necessary and required information. It only took about an hour as I only had the one out of office appointment, unless we counted the craziness that had been going on. Instead of sending to Ms. White for her approval, she coded them as reviewed by her and the Director, one and the same, and sent them off. My internal mail had the proofs for the ad in it, so we looked them over and called the advertising agency that handled the accounts. That was done.

Ms. White told me, "Go, get out of here. I'll see you Monday unless you have something to do there. It's almost scary to have you around the office when the whole thing is up in the air. I didn't tell anyone what you told me about Jordan, so no one here knows. That's why the newspapers and TV are so quiet. I would just as well have them in the dark about all of this, but it will come out one of these days. Just to be on the safe side, I'm going to bring up one of the other outside employment people to handle calls for you Monday. Any one of them will love your office now that it's all cleaned up and neat."

The Marshal and I left, drove back to the garage and walked to the office. Before we went out on the street, he looked up and down the street very thoroughly before we walked to the office. As soon as we walked in the door, Howard was waving at us from his office.

"The Marshal in DC just took Amos Davis into custody. From here on out, this thing is big time political. He had a bunch of stuff from his office packed up, with airline tickets to Jamaica. Too bad we don't know who they were meeting down there. We'll have a guy that looks like Amos on the plane, but I doubt we'll make contact."

Howard looked at me and said, "Right now through this next week, I don't know what to do with you. I've already been told that several of the companies listed in your information gathering this morning are owned by what used to be called the Mafia. The Chicago guys and the New York guys are involved. We don't know how Jordan was working both of them at the same time or whether it was someone higher up."

"Then there is Jordan's family. We went out to his house and the place is as if it were in hibernation. The place is closed up like a summer home with sheets over the furniture and almost everything shut off. The boys looked for any signs of where his wife and kids were but couldn't find anything. Now that we think Jamaica was a destination, we might want to go there. The girl you replaced who was talking, clammed up. Now she won't talk to anyone."

"For now, just go over to the hotel and stay calm. Invite some friends over for dinner, but stay in. Don't go out. Ask the guy on your floor for anything you need. He'll get it. Ask him for some games or take one of our laptops and play on the internet, anything, but just stay in and stay loose this weekend."

I went out to Sarah's desk to see how she was doing. She said she was fine and would be even better when the bandages came off. I asked her about a laptop and she asked if it was business or pleasure. I said probably pleasure. It's for a long weekend's entertainment. She went to a cabinet and pulled a box out and checked the laptop inside. She opened it, plugged in the transformer, and turned it on. It booted up with XP and instantly hooked up to a wireless router in house somewhere. She checked the programs on it and said, "This is a good one, it has no agency stuff on it. It's clean. Enjoy."

"Hey, before you go, you have to sign your time sheet for this week. Since you're confined over at the hotel this weekend, you'll be on duty like twelve to fifteen hours a day. You might as well get paid for being locked up."

I signed the time sheet, patted her on the back and left for the hotel after telling my shadow where I was going. He came right along and checked the street before I went out and radioed the downstairs man at the hotel. We were told we were clear and went across the street.

We walked through the hotel scanning people in the shops, at the concierge desk, in the restaurant, and at the main desk. We went to the penthouse elevator and pushed the button. When the elevator got to the lobby it didn't open. We pushed the button again but nothing happened. The Marshal pushed me away from the elevator and radioed upstairs. The man up there answered saying that it was all clear. The downstairs guy said, "Something is wrong with the elevator. Push the call button up there, but don't get close to the thing when or if it opens."