Page 25 of Lies He Told Me

And now Marcie’s having all this trouble.

It can’t be a coincidence.

TWENTY-TWO

SPECIAL AGENT FRANCIS BLAIR, at his desk in the FBI field office in Chicago, leans back in his chair, eyes closed, as he listens to the contents of the wiretap through his earbuds, two men talking.

“I got three tickets to the show tonight.”

“What time does it start?”

“I’ll probably get there about six thirty.”

The “ticket” is a pound of meth. The “show” is the meet, the drop-off from the manufacturer to the distributors.

Blair doesn’t work narcotics; he’s still in Organized Crime. And the conversation on the audio recording isn’t taking place in Chicago but nearly twelve hundred miles away in Tampa, Florida, a city far removed from Blair’s jurisdiction, a city that otherwise would hold no importance for him other than this simple fact:

It is now the home of Michael Cagnina, the mob boss released from prison only five months ago. And these two men on the wiretap? Former associates of Cagnina.

He takes out the earbuds just as his supervisor walks past his office and stops, greets Blair with a how-ya-doin’.

“How’s the task force treating you?” asks the supervisor.

The task force that Blair got roped into, he means— an operation run by US Customs to catch a ring of cargo thieves.

“I’m going in for the initial meet today,” he says.

“Is that what you’re listening to?” His supervisor nods, gestures toward the earbuds Blair just tossed. “They’ve got wires up?”

“No, this isn’t the task force shit. These are from DEA out of Tampa.”

Blair’s supervisor, only a year from retirement now, makes a face. “DEA? Tampa? The hell are you doing listen — oh. Oh, don’t tell me this is about Cagnina.”

Blair lifts a shoulder. “Just checking to see if he’s getting back in the game.”

“And is he?”

“Not as far as I can tell,” Blair concedes.

“You gotta let Cagnina go,” says his supervisor. “What’s done is done. He’s down in Florida now, and he’s retired.”

“Right, right, I know,” says Blair. “I took my shot and missed.”

“Missed? Thirteen years in the pen isn’t ‘missing,’ Frankie. Who cares if it was tax evasion? You put him out of business.”

“Yeah, maybe, but not for the shit that would’ve put him away for life. Guy murders three witnesses, and nobody lays a glove on him for that.”

“Well, hey, least you’re not bitter.” His supervisor taps the door but points at him before leaving. “Frankie,” he says, “leave Michael Cagnina alone.”

TWENTY-THREE

IF ONLY I KNEW fifteen years ago what I know now. If only the partner I worked for, Howard Shimkus, hadn’t been so busy with other cases.

You don’t have to go alone,Howard told me in his spacious partner’s office as paralegals and assistants packed his trial bags.Really, Marcie. Silas can wait until this trial’s over, and then I’ll go with you. The trial should be over in three weeks.

The feds had just made their formal plea offer to Silas in return for testifying against mob boss Michael Cagnina, and normally Howard and I would have delivered that plea offer to Silas personally. No phone calls or emails were allowed — those were traceable forms of communication, and the government was determined to keep Silas’s whereabouts a secret. Only clandestine in-person visits were permitted. But Howard, in demand as a high-profile defense lawyer, had a fraud trial about to start in federal court insouthern Illinois, so he couldn’t afford the full day it took to visit Silas — two-hour blind drives to and from the undisclosed location where Silas was held, plus the visit itself.

Howard sensed it, I knew — sensed that Silas had gotten under my skin the first time, the only time we’d met up to that point. But the last thing a young associate like me wanted to do was confirm as much, make the senior partner think I couldn’t handle my stint in the big leagues.

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