Chilled to the Bone

“I’m sorry, Rusty, but Dick Arnold has found some very strong backers within the administration. I’m afraid that there is nothing that we can hang an investigation on at this time.” I could hear the strain in Zulu’s voice even over the phone.

“OK, so I can’t use any Bureau resources, but you aren’t saying that I can’t look into things on my own are you?”

He sighed and took a moment before answering. “Your time is your own to do with as you please, when you are not otherwise on assignment…”

“Good. I’ll keep the Bureau out of this until I come up with something substantial.”

“Rusty…”

“It’s OK. I’m getting pretty damn good at keeping things separate when they need to be, I’ll be careful.”

“Rusty, you need to listen for a moment. This has gone higher than I would have thought possible. I tried everything I could do to get Arnold indicted as part of the cleanup of the Omega Project. But this Arnold has allies at the highest level of this administration. They worked behind the scenes to quash all of my efforts. The firm that represented him is chock full of former prosecutors and Justice Department policy makers, many of them from my former staff. Instead of getting indicted, Arnold has come out of this affair looking like a hero. I don’t know that you are going to be able to bring the Bureau in on this case at any point, especially if you result to any extra-legal means of gathering that evidence.”

“Well, I do know that he is back in business and that he needs to be stopped. Have you seen that damn commercial, that Bone Financial commercial?”

He sighed again. “Yes. It’s playing in every major media market in the country. I am hearing that there are offices scheduled to open in each of those markets within the next 90 days.”

“There’s something really fishy with this whole Bone Financial business. I know that prick, El Diablito, is involved in this as well. I don’t understand how they claim to be making any money at this whole post-mortem mortgage thing, do you?”

Zulu cleared his throat before he spoke. “I’ve seen some of the documents that they filed with the SEC, but I can’t claim to truly understand how this whole scheme works.”

“Can you at least tell me what you do understand?”

“Yes. I’ll e-mail you a summary of the key points of their various products and the spin they place on them in the SEC filings. The information is publicly available, so there is no concern in sharing it with you. Before I hang up though, I want to make it very clear to you, Rusty, that you need and your friends need to be exceptionally careful with any investigation that you engage in. Dick Arnold knows about you and I’m sure that he is taking precautions against any intervention that may attempt. Arnold may well have suspicions about me now. I’m quite sure that Arnold has the money and connections to employ agents of his own who will prove to be formidable adversaries. You will not have the backing or the support of the Bureau, so be careful. I will not be able to bail you or your friends out of any jams. Do you understand?”

“I do. Don’t worry, Boss, we can handle ourselves just fine. Oh, before I go, I do want to give you a heads up about something as well.”

“Oh?”

“You’ve read our report on Drake’s demise, right?”

He paused again. “Yes.”

“Well, I’ve had the task of hearing his damn story, and I can tell you that we’re going to be hearing from his father, Dracaar, sooner rather than later. I’m going to send you a message about some artifacts that are being held in various museums around the world. You might want to see that some extra security is quietly put in place at these places. I don’t know if we’ll be able to prevent them from being taken at some point, but we’re going to need to know when this stuff starts disappearing. That will be among the first signs that Dracaar is getting his bearings and is starting to make his move.”

“I see. I’ll be waiting for that report then. Good night, Rusty.”

“Take care.”

I closed the phone carefully. It was so thin that I had to be very gentle with it. I had already gone through two previous models in recent months. I slipped the phone into the pocket in which I normally kept it and zipped the pocket closed.

I stood up and walked back to the kitchen door of old farm house in Salem Township, a rural area on the edge of Metro Detroit’s suburbs, which I had purchased a few months back. I opened the door and stepped out into the night air.

The moon was full and bright, its shine bathed the wooded landscape in soft white light. Looking towards the west, I noted a storm brewing as a mass of clouds that obscured the stars crawled inexorably closer.

Winter was coming.

The question was, as always, how long and hard would this winter be?