and the bleached teeth to go with it. I had first met him on a case that took me to Vegas and right into the middle of an undercover FBI operation. Forced to work together, we had managed to put aside jurisdictional and agency animosities to a certain extent and we closed the case, the bureau taking all the credit of course. That had been six or seven years earlier. I ran into him on a case in L.A. once after that, but we never stayed in touch. Not because the bureau had thieved the credit on that first case. Because cops and feds just don’t mix.
“Almost didn’t recognize you without the ponytail, Roy.”
He stuck his big hand across the table and I slowly reached out and shook it. He had the confident demeanor that big men often have. And he had the rascal’s smile that often comes with it. The ponytail line had been a crack. When I first met him-and before I knew his status as an undercover agent-I took the liberty of cutting the tail off the back of his head with a penknife.
“How you been? You told Nunez you’re retired, huh? I hadn’t heard about that.”
I nodded but otherwise didn’t respond. This was his play. I wanted to let him make all the first moves.
“So what’s it like being retired from the force?”
“I’m not complaining.”
“We ran a check. You’re a licensed private eye now, huh?”
Big day in Sacramento.
“Yeah, I got a license. For the hell of it.”
I almost gave him the same story I gave Keisha Russell about it being part of the letting-go process but decided not to bother.
“Must be nice to have a little business, make your own hours, work for whoever you want to work for.”
That was enough for me as far as preliminaries went.
“Tell you what, let’s not talk about me, Roy. Let’s get to the point. What am I doing here?”
Lindell nodded as if to say fair enough.
“Well, what happened is that you called up and asked about an agent who used to work here, and doing that sort of raised a bunch of flags for us.”
“Martha Gessler.”
“That’s right. Marty Gessler. So you knew who you were calling about when you told Nunez you didn’t know who you were calling about?”
I shook my head.
“No. I put it together off his reaction. I remembered a female agent who went missing without a trace. Took me a while, then I remembered her name. What’s the latest with her? Gone but not forgotten, I suppose.”
Lindell leaned forward and brought his massive arms together over the closed file. His wrists were as thick as the legs of the table. I remembered the struggle I had putting cuffs on them. Back in Vegas when he was under and I still didn’t know it.
“Harry, I consider us to be like old friends. We haven’t talked in a while but we’ve sort of been through a battle or two together so I don’t want to jerk you around too bad here. But the way this is going to work is that I’m going to ask you the questions. That okay?”
“To a point.”
“We’re talking about a missing agent here. A female.”
“And you’re not fucking around.”
Paraphrasing the warning from Kiz Rider. Lindell didn’t seem to appreciate it.
“Let’s start with the reason you called,” he said. “What are you up to?”
I waited for a long moment, trying to work out how I should handle this. I wasn’t working for anybody other than myself. There was no confidentiality agreement. But I had always been resistant to bending over for the imperialist forces of the FBI. It had been part of the inbred LAPD culture. It wasn’t going to change now. I respected Lindell-like he said, we had been in the trenches together and I knew he ultimately would deal fairly with me. But the agency he worked for liked to play with a marked deck. I had to be careful. I had to remember that.
“I told Nunez what I was doing when I called. I’m just checking out a case that I worked a few years back and that has always sort of stuck with me. There a problem with that?”
“Who’s your client?”
“I don’t have one. I got the private license right after I pulled the pin to keep my options open. But I started looking into this thing for myself.”
He didn’t believe me. I could read it in his eyes.
“But this movie caper thing wasn’t even your case.”