Page 68 of Saltwater Promises
Chapter 28
What was going on with Lenny? He was being strange. Maybe he planned on running off with his cut of the money early?
That wouldn’t work, though. The money would never hit his bank account. The plan to catch them was too tight and too fast. Mike had made sure of it.
After the meeting at the mermaid restaurant, Mike acted quickly, telling Lenny that he was getting called in by the FBI for a surprise drug test.
Lenny didn’t question it. He just waved a hand, grunted, and told him to have a nice time.
It was perfect. Mike went directly to the attorney general’s office, and Joe spent the evening meeting with him and putting everything into place. Thankfully, all of Mike’s recording equipment worked beautifully, and the entire conversation at the restaurant was caught on tape. It seemed like they had everything they needed to secure warrants and involve law enforcement.
Even better, Joe thought that the conversation showed clear intent by all parties, acknowledging that what they were doing was wrong. That would be important when this case went to trial. None of them would be able to argue that they’d made an honest mistake.
Once the tapes were in Joe’s hands, things started happening rapidly. Mike was again grateful that he’d found Joe. The guy didn’t mess around. He’d called up the local FBI office, who he had a good relationship with, to let them know that he had an anonymous tip linking their informant Lenny to new financial crimes. Further, he informed them of Benzini and the issues with the treasurer, David.
Joe wanted to involve the New York office, too. Mike warned him about Ned – that he was a busybody, a know-it-all, and that he would try to shut down any sort of investigation that might make him look bad.
Nothing would make Ned look worse than an FBI office from across the country bagging the head of a mafia family that was in his jurisdiction. But oh well. It had been Ned’s decision to bury his head in the sand.
Joe went far above him and was able to work with the director of the organized crime unit. He was more than happy to take Joe’s tip and prepare the warrants to catch Marco red-handed.
If all went well, there would be multiple, simultaneous takedowns. It was going to be one of the biggest cases in Washington state history.
Mike, of course, would receive no credit, but he was used to that from his undercover days. He didn’t care. He didn’t do it for the glory. Which was unfortunate, really, because at least if he were in it for the glory, he might finally be satisfied this time.
Unfortunately, Mike was never satisfied. He started to notice an old familiar dread creeping up on him. At the end of every case, after the excitement of the final takedown, that feeling came over him full blast.
After weeks, or sometimes years, of being dedicated to playing an undercover role, the sudden, unceremonious ending left him feeling empty. It’s what kept him coming back, again and again. It’s what made him take on more complex and challenging cases, and even drove him to run multiple undercover operations at the same time.
Multiple, simultaneous operations were strictly against FBI rules, of course. But his supervisors never cared – not until Ned – because he made them look good. He got results. It was something he lived for, infiltrating and breaking those cases wide open.
And now what did he have? There wasn’t much else to his life. He knew it was his own fault, but he didn’t know what to do about it.
Pathetically, he’d made all of those excuses to see Lynn. She didn’t need him; she had a full life. She had been an excellent agent and was now an amazing artist. What could Mike offer her?
He pushed the thought out of his mind. They weren’t in the clear yet, and he knew that there was a list of things that could still go wrong.
Still brooding, Mike went back to the safe house to wait for Lenny. He tried calling him a few more times, but Lenny never answered.
When they were on the phone, Lenny sounded stressed out, angry, even. His phone kept cutting in and out. What was he doing? Some early clubbing? Celebrating?
No, he wouldn’t have done that without Mike. It was starting to make him nervous.
Luckily, his laptop could give some answers. Mike popped it open, logged into his secure account, and opened the GPS tracker for Lenny.
What he saw gave him a sinking feeling.
It looked like right after Mike left to do his “drug test,” Lenny had taken off too. Mike tracked the location to Benzini’s building. From there, Lenny came back to the safe house for the night, but then disappeared early the next morning.
Two other issues concerned Mike. First, Lenny didn’t take his beloved Mercedes with him, which meant he somehow had a new ride.
Second, his location looked like it kept dropping in and out. That either meant that the bug was malfunctioning (unlikely), or Lenny was shutting his phone off. Why?
It looked like Lenny’s first stop after waking up that morning was somewhere in Bellingham, though the exact location was lost because the phone was shut on and off. Maybe the battery kept dying?
Mike couldn’t help but jump to the conclusion that Lenny somehow found out about Lynn. He told himself it was illogical and baseless. None of Lenny’s calls or text messages indicated any knowledge of who Mike really was, or even mentioned Lynn. Besides, after Bellingham he seemed to drive off into the mountains. Who knew what that was about?
But the sinking feeling in his stomach was enough to make Mike risk using his undercover cell phone to call her.
