Resurrection Walk

“Relax,” he said. “If I’d wanted to put you down, you’d already be down.”

I steadied myself, tightened my fists, and moved closer. But not close enough for him to reach out to me.

“Then what’s with the mask?” I said. “And who the fuck are you?”

He lowered his feet to the foot rail of the bar chair and turned away from the view.

“I thought you were smarter than that, Haller,” he said. “I obviously don’t want you to see my face.”

I suddenly realized who he was.

“The elusive Agent MacIsaac,” I said.

“Bravo,” he said.

“Something tells me you’re not here to tell me you’ll testify.”

“I’m here to tell you I will not and that you need to stand down on that.”

“I’ve got an innocent client and I think you can help me prove it. I can’t stand down.”

“Helping you prove it doesn’t necessarily mean me testifying.”

I thought about those words for a long moment as I stared at the eyes behind the oval cutouts in the mask. Before I could come up with my next question, he asked one.

“Why do you think I can’t testify? Why is the U.S. attorney willing to defy a federal judge if it comes to that?”

“Because the Bureau will be embarrassed by what is revealed in court: that the FBI was willing to let Lucinda Sanz go to prison as long as it didn’t come out that its agent’s actions got her ex-husband killed.”

MacIsaac laughed. It was muffled behind the mask, but I heard it and it made me angry.

“You’re going to deny it even here?” I said. “Sanger watched you and Sanz meet. An hour later he was dead, and Lucinda goes down as the fall guy. Meanwhile, the Bureau — and you — look the other way.”

“I want to help you but you don’t know shit about what went down,” MacIsaac said.

“So school me, Agent MacIsaac. Why won’t you testify and what’s with the fucking mask?”

“Can we just go inside? I don’t like talking out here in the open.”

“No, we’re not going inside. Not until you tell me why you’re really here.”

“If we’re staying out here because you want to keep me on camera, that’s not happening.”

I turned and looked up at the Ring camera I’d had installed under the roof eave after the break-in six months earlier. There was a Dodgers baseball cap hung over the lens.

“What the fuck?” I said.

“I’m not even supposed to be here, okay?” MacIsaac said. “I came because I understand what you’re doing. But your case is more than five years old. We’ve moved on and I’m working on something else, something that cuts across lines of national security. I can’t appear in court because I can’t take any risks with that case. People could die. Do you understand?”

“You’re telling me you can’t show your face because you’re working undercover.”

“That’s part of it, yes.”

“There are no cameras in the courtroom. We could even arrange for you to testify in the judge’s chambers. You could wear your mask, for all I care.”

He shook his head.

“I can’t go anywhere near that courthouse. It’s watched.”

“By who?”

“I’m not getting into that. It’s got nothing to do with your case. The point is, I need you to stand down. We can’t have this blow up in the media. There might be photos out there they could use. If that happens, I’m dead and the case I’m working is dead.”

“So I’m supposed to just let my client rot in prison while you go on about your national-security business.”

“Look, I thought she did it, okay? All these years I was mad at her because killing him ended the investigation. But then you come along and I’m following the case and I start seeing what you’re seeing. I think you might have something, but I can’t help you in court.”

“Then what can you do for me? For her?”

“I can tell you that Roberto Sanz was no hero, but in a way, he was trying to be.”

“The shoot-out at Flip’s was no ambush. He was ripping those guys off. Tell me something I don’t know.”

“He agreed to wear a wire. That day we met, he said he would do it. We were going to take down the whole unit. And then an hour later, it was over.”

“Because Sanger saw you two.”

“I didn’t know.”

“Obviously. Let me ask you something: Did he come to you or did you go to him?”

“He came to us. He wanted to clear his conscience, try to make things right. The clique he was in was taking things too far.”

“Just tell me this. He got killed right after you met with him, so how could you think it was his ex-wife?”

MacIsaac seemed to consider the question for the first time.

“Arrogance,” he finally said. “We’re the FBI. We don’t make mistakes like that. I thought the meeting was clean. I had a backup and they didn’t see anybody shadowing him. And then when I read about the evidence against your client, the GSR and all of that, I guess I believed what I wanted to believe. We shut down the investigation and moved on to the next one.”