Chapter 9

It wouldn't be just me. My ex-wives and daughter could become targets used to get to me. If I wound up having to go into Witness Protection they couldn't possibly come with me. My parents would be lost to me as well.

If I did my job really well, if I collected enough evidence to put them all away, to bring down their organizations, my reward would be that I lost everything.

I knew what I had to do. I would need Lily's help. I called her.

"What do you mean I never tell the Lieutenant what you found out? What do I tell him? Jonathan was on vacation; he was just fooling about being undercover."

"Let me finish. There's a whole lot more to my plan."

I explained it in considerable detail. I had to. The plan was completely worthless without the detail. I waited for Lily's reaction.

"That's far and away the craziest plan I ever heard; no second place. The thing is, I can't decide whether it's idiotic or brilliant. I know one thing: if it doesn't work, neither of us will be a cop when it's over."

"I guess it had better work," I said.

I parked in a spot Lily had reserved for me. I could exit quickly. It was around quarter to ten. It had taken me a while to finish being made up.

I walked through the front door of Har Zion Synagogue. I opened my talis bag and took out a knit, designer yarmulke and secured it to my hair with a bobby pin. Then I took out the talis, drew it over my shoulders and wrapped it around my arms. I put the bag in my coat pocket.

I had been given a moustache and a full, bushy beard and a pair of glasses that didn't do anything but help obscure my identity. I was also aged with some wrinkles.

I entered the door to the sanctuary and stood at the back to survey the room.

The Bar Mitzvah boy had just taken his place in front of the open Torah and was ready to read. The gabbai sang out announcing the first aliyah. The boy's aunt and uncle sang the prayer and he began to chant the first part of his reading.

I walked down toward the front. I leaned over to ask a man who appeared to be in his forties, "Are you Mr. Feldman?" I pointed to the boy up on the bima. "His other uncle?"

"No," he said as he shook his head.

I walked back around a dozen rows to a white-haired man.

"Are you Mr. Feldman?" I again pointed to the boy. "His grandfather?"

"No," he said. "I think the grandfather is up front, but his name is not Feldman."

"Sorry," I said. I walked further toward the back.

I leaned over to another man.

"Are you Mr. Feldman?"

"No," he said.

I shrugged like I had failed in my mission.

"Good. Follow me out in around thirty seconds."

He came out the door I had just exited.

"Come with me," I said.

"Look —" he said.

"Just do it. You'll get your information."

We walked casually to the car I had parked there. I got in the driver's seat. He was the passenger.

I took a right out of the parking lot and turned left onto Hollow Road. I sped to the bottom of the hill and turned left onto River Road. He probably didn't see Lily pull the barricade across the road. If he had agents following him, they wouldn't have left soon enough to see her deploy the barricade; it couldn't have taken more than fifteen seconds to get to River Road.

I pulled into the strip parking lot. People parked there to walk around and enjoy the scenery or to fish from the shore.

"Leave the keys to your car on your seat," I said.

I popped the trunk.

"Here, put on this coat," I told him. I put on a coat as well.

We walked down to the riverbank. I stepped into a boat that was tied there. He hesitated.

"Come on," I said. "I'm just making sure you don't have anybody following us."

"We need to establish a little trust here," he said.

"My experience with the FBI hasn't given me an awful lot of confidence."

"I gave you my word."

"An oral agreement isn't worth the paper it's written on."

"An oral agreement," he said, exasperated, "isn't written on..." He understood.

I had called the Philadelphia office from a pay phone two days before and asked for the SAC — Special Agent in Charge. They were all Special Agents. Nobody was an Ordinary Agent.