The First Billion

It was eleven-thirty in Washington, D.C., and outside the temperature registered a sweltering ninety-two degrees. From his office on the second floor of the J. Edgar Hoover Building, Howell Dodson, chairman of the Joint Russo-American Task Force on Organized Crime, could see the early lunch crowd making their way to the mall in hopes of staking out shaded benches or dipping their big toes in the Reflecting Pool. It wasn't much of a view. The prime offices were on the opposite side of the building, facing south and offering a panoramic vista of the Capitol, the Washington Monument, and Mr. Thomas Jefferson, fellow Son of Virginia. One day he hoped to gaze out at the Lord of Monticello, but good views required good politicking, and good politicking required a cunning he did not possess.

"What do you say, Roy?" Dodson asked in a slow Williamsburg drawl, his voice the texture of cured tobacco. "Mr. Gavallan talking prudent business practice or did we just hear collusion among conspirators?"

"That depends on Mercury, sir. If the business is legit, I'd say we listened to a bunch of execs who want to stop someone from bad-mouthing their stock. If not, we just tuned in to a group of criminals discussing murder. Me, I opt for the latter. I think we caught some crooks red-handed."

"So the Private Eye-PO is correct? Mercury's nothing but 'a scam dog with mucho fleas'? That what you're saying, Roy?"

"We're getting the same information from our informant in Moscow. Why shouldn't we believe it?"

Dodson couldn't help but chuckle. Three years in the Bureau and Mr. DiGenovese still considered an informant's cant the holy scripture. The boy was a greenhorn. Yes sir. Nothing but a big-city hick. Dodson himself wasn't so much interested in whether what the Private Eye-PO said was correct as in how he came to be in possession of the information. And for that matter, just who in the hell he was. "What's the latest on finding this boy? Mr. Chupik have any luck?"

Lyle Chupik was the Bureau's in-house webhead and the man who'd been charged with tracking down the Private Eye-PO.

"Nothing yet, sir," said DiGenovese. "Says he's close to nabbing him, though."

"Close?" Dodson lifted a thumb beneath his suspenders and let them slap on his chest. "Close don't count but for horseshoes and hand grenades. Isn't that right, Mr. DiGenovese? Mr. Gavallan seems to think he'll have him located today. That leaves us one step behind. And I don't like stomping through another horse's droppings," he whispered, with just a smattering of menace. "Follow?"

"Likewise, sir."

"Good boy. It's time we considered using an outside source. Find me the name of that odd fella does some consulting for us. If I'm not mistaken, he doesn't live too far away. Get him in here this afternoon and put him to work. Here's a dollar. Go buy Mr. Chupik a couple of those chocolate Yoo-Hoos he's so fond of, and tell him better luck next time."

Howell Ames Dodson IV was a Son of the South and ever proud of it. He was tall and lanky, with a shock of brown hair that fell boyishly into devilish blue eyes that teased the world from behind a scholar's half-moon glasses. He favored poplin suits in the summer, worsted gabardine in the fall, and the finest manners all year round. He liked smartly striped shirts, exuberant ties, snazzy cuff links, and pocket squares. He was foppish and a bit of a dandy, and if anyone cared to say a word about it, he'd point them to his unmatched arrest-to-conviction ratio, the commendations he'd received from the President of the United States, and a certain article in the Washington Post he kept tucked away in his desk for just such occasions.

The article described the shooting of four Georgian mafiosi by an unnamed FBI agent in a sting gone sour in the city of Tbilisi late last summer. The article was sketchy in parts. It failed to mention that the agent had shot the men after escaping from their custody or that he'd pulled off the feat fifteen minutes after having two fingers on his left hand severed with a carpet knife.

Sliding the digital recorder toward himself, Dodson listened to the pirated conversation again. "So, Roy," he said when the recording ended. "Think our boy isn't content with a little innocent fraud? That why you asked for this crash meeting? According to you, Mr. Gavallan's joining the big leagues. Premeditated murder is moving up the ladder p.d.q., wouldn't you say?"

"Sir, the Mercury offering is for two billion dollars," answered DiGenovese, leaning across the desk. "Leagues don't get much bigger than that."

"No, son, they do not," said Dodson, rocking in his chair, tapping a pencil on his weathered shipwright's desk, a nineteenth-century antique on loan from the Dodson Family Collection. "Just wish that damned recording didn't make them all sound like robots. Hard to tell if Gavallan's joking or if he's serious."