if he doesn’t come out in an hour or two, we’ll have to switch to Plan B.”
“What’s that?”
“I don’t know yet.”
Tom shifted in his seat, leaned against the door and sipped his coffee. Victor refused to answer questions last night, and was being coy this morning too. Tom ran through a list of everything he knew about Victor. It was a short list. In fact, what did he know really? He couldn’t be sure that Victor had ever even been in the FBI. It was a story he told, it seemed believable. Tom assumed the company would have checked him out. But Tom didn’t know. He didn’t know anything for sure.
And now he was sitting in a car in a shithole town in the middle of the desert waiting for a guy to go to work who didn’t seem to have a damned thing to do with the reason they were there. Tom thought about the ocean. He liked waking up to the moist air and the smell of salt water. Not that he minded being away from home. He liked to travel as much as the next guy, but this place was fucked and Victor was acting crazy.
“Look man,” Tom said, shifting in the seat again, “you’ve gotta tell me what we’re doing here. Do you really think this guy has anything to do with the oil? Where do you know him from?”
Victor cleared his throat and wiped his nose, but didn’t say anything. He just kept staring at the house, watching it as if the whole structure might suddenly sprout legs and scamper away across the desert. Tom watched him finish his coffee, wanting to push the issue, but not wanting to piss him off. After a few more minutes, he tried again.
“Victor,” he began. But this time Victor cut him off.
“Hey, this is a stakeout.” Victor looked over at Tom. “You have to focus. If you keep talking, we might miss something.” Victor shook his head. “Man, you wouldn’t last ten minutes at the Bureau.”
“Last I checked, we weren’t in the goddamned Bureau. And I might be more willing to sit here and stare at this guy’s house if I knew what the hell was going on. As far as I know, this is just some guy who coaches baseball in this podunk town and he doesn’t have a damned thing to do with the guys we’re after.”
“There’s something going on here.” Victor glanced over at Tom. “Last night, when I was listening on the phone, he was talking to some guy about a payoff.”
Victor kept talking while he watched the house, setting an example for Tom. He didn’t want to miss anything. “Now, if I know this guy—and trust me, I know him pretty damned well—he’s up to something. It wouldn’t surprise me if he’s involved in some kind of oil theft. The payoff may have something to do with that.”
“But we know where he lives. Shouldn’t we be looking for that guy with the oil truck?”
Victor smiled. “I think this guy might lead us to that guy. And besides, if my hunch is right, I think the baseball coach is going to leave the house and go to work at Monarch. It’s the only damned business around here where he could get placed—” Victor caught himself and cut the sentence short. But it was too late, Tom had heard it.
“What’s that supposed to mean? You mean he was sent out here?” Tom sat quietly for a second. Victor could almost hear him thinking it through. Then Tom said, “What do you mean, placed? Like someone got him the job and sent him out here? Wait a minute, like the witness protection program or something? Is that what you’re talking about?”
Victor kept staring at the house. He wasn’t talking about anything now. But Tom kept at it. “Look, man, the cat’s out of the bag now. You might as well tell me. I’m not going to say anything.”
Victor stayed quiet. He’d screwed up. He shouldn’t have said anything. That was secret information. He was obligated to maintain confidences. Breaches of government secrets were taken very seriously. But Tom wasn’t going to drop it. And if Howard Lugano was involved in anything criminal, then there was no obligation to maintain the secrecy of his identity. If that was the case, then telling Tom wouldn’t matter. What difference could it make if Victor spilled it before or after they caught him?