Internal Affairs Ch. 10

"The FBI planning to sleep here with me," Roger asked. Sometimes we need a place to crash and this is it. Don't worry their wont be anybody here for the next couple of days," Pelham informed Roger. "The Marshall's deputy assured me you would be gone by the weekend."

"Since this is hardly a five star hotel, I will look forward to the improvement in my living conditions," Roger said.

"And I will look forward to your smart ass moving on," Pelham said with a smile.

Roger spent two days with the FBI on a very short leash before the ID guru showed up. He had only a five minute warning, but it was enough since the only thing to do at the garage was to memorize the details of his back story.

"Roger how are you?" he asked. "They told me about the excitement you were involved with. I'm sorry you wound up in the middle of a domestic issue."

"What are you talking about," Roger asked.

"It looks as thought Janet and Tate were far more than colleagues. Janet planned to run off with him to the Caribbean. Something happened because Tate called it off. Janet killed him then went to the Caribbean alone. They picked up her trail in Miami as she tried to board an international flight," Seth informed him.

"She just left her family," Roger asked.

"Yes Love is a terrible disease," Seth said.

"So I hear. I must be immune," Roger said. "Guess that comes from never belonging anywhere."

Seth asked roger several things about his new identity. Roger must have passed because Seth handed him another flash drive. "This is your new life from 2006 to present. Seth said. "You memorize it while I figure out where to drop you. Do you have any preference?"

All of Roger's ideas where not to go, so he answered, "Not really."

For a couple of weeks life was pretty miserable. Pelham kept him inside the garage until Seth returned.

"Hello Roger I am glad to see you are alive and well. I would hate to think I wasted all this hard work," Seth said after twelve days absence. He passed Roger another flash drive.

"I had no idea it took so long to create a new ID," Roger said as a criticism.

"Life is life that. You can do it fast or you can do it right. Since your life depends on how good this ID is, I thought you might prefer it done right.

"Truth is I do want it done right, or I would have paid a couple of grand for some papers that would stand up to a quick online search. It would have been much less trouble."

"Yes but you probably could never work again. At least not at any anything you would want to do," Seth said.

"You know the first thing I'm going to research is my last run in with the law, so why not tell me what happened?" Roger demanded.

The official story is that Janet was having an affair with Tate. He tried to end it but she didn't want to have any of it. She had already decided to kill him and walk out the door, so she contacted Paco before she killed him, then left the door open for Paco's men. His hit team got delayed at the front desk. Before they could get up to the room, you called the cops and had Tate's gun. The whole time the cops were on the scene Paco's team was in the hotel. It was truly a cluster fuck. Now you know more than anyone outside the investigation team."

"She had to contact Paco to sell me out. He couldn't have known I was in town otherwise."

That's right that was why it was so poorly planned. Paco had less than a day to arrange it. His team were street thugs. She passed on the name of the hotel and the suite number. Ther she left the door ajar for them. They were supposed to be waiting in the stairwell and rush into the room and shoot the place up.

The problem was by the time the information got down to the junkie thugs, someone had lost the suite number. That's what they were trying to get from the clerk, when the cops rolled in sirens roaring. Like I said it was a cluster fuck."

"Have they got Janet in custody?" Roger asked.

"No, but they are doing a 'calling all cars' kind of thing." Seth informed him.

"What?" Roger asked.

"Didn't you ever see an old black and white movie? Never mind," Seth said. "So are you ready to find out my plan for you?"

"Sure give me the information. I will attempt to assimilate it," Roger agreed.

"When you leave here no one will use your real name, or your short term cover name. As of the moment you step into the terminal, you will be Peter Sims. I assume you know your background by now?" Seth said.

"It's been three weeks, of course I know it right up till today. I came back from the middle east to join the FBI. I worked there for the past eight years in the research department. I have decided to move on the work is just too detailed for me. Not to mention too boring," Roger said.

"Good, those false facts are pretty close to the real fact, except for the boring part. I expect boring would be nice right now," Seth suggested.

"You better believe it would. I'm ready to be just plain Pete Sims," he said.

"Take your final flash drive on the plane with you. You can familiarize yourself with it there. Your ticket is in the envelope. There is also a thousand dollars in there. I know you have ten thousand of you own, but that is immaterial. There is an address on the flash drive and the apartment key is in the envelope. So good luck Peter and I mean that," Seth said. "Do your shopping when you get to your new home."

Roger extended his hand, then said. "I hope we never meet again. No offense intended."

"None taken," Seth said, then walked out of the garage.

The plan was for Roger to leave right away for the airport. He found the tube of superglue then used it to disguise his features. Cameras are not three dimensional, so a two dimensional scar, or a few painted on moles fuck up the facial recognition software. He did a nasty looking scar on his forehead and several moles. Then he wore a baseball cap and a wig all courtesy of the FBI. Roger planned to dump all of them after he arrived at his destination. He was almost enjoying the cat and mouse game. Well at least till he remembered that his life was the prize.

Roger had two hundred dollars in the pockets of his new cargo pants. He and Janet had purchased them at Walmart. Janet had purchased them two weeks before and he never worn them. He also had a new wallet, filled with all kinds of new identification papers. It was stored in one of those big pockets. In another of the big pockets he carried the mini tablet supplied by the FBI for reading, during the flight. The file was all about his new home.

His back pack also contained ten thousand eight hundred dollars. He had the money rolled inside a long sleeve sweat shirt, three sets of underwear and his tooth brush inside the back pack.

I'm as ready to go as possible, Roger/Peter thought. The flight was very routine as far as Peter could tell.

"Please Place your seats in the upright position, we will be landing at the Detroit Metropolitan international airport in five minutes. The local time is 10pm and the temperature is twenty two degrees," the blonde female flight attendant announced.

Well the weather would almost match his clothes, Peter thought. For sure it would give him an excuse to pull the hood up on the heavy navy blue wool coat. The hood over his head, and the scars and glasses would take care of the cameras. For sure it would in a broad random search perimeter. If they pared down the search perimeter, it would be anyone's guess.

The well thought out instructions called for him to take a taxi to a suburb of Detroit. It was supposed to be a rather artsy neighborhood On the edge of the downtown area of the city. Seth's information had it well away from the many blighted areas.

The taxi dropped me at the Don Juan Apartment building. It was a masonry building of eight floors. It neither looked like a project, nor like a nice apartment building. It was more a blue collar stop over place. It had to have been built in the World War two era. Peter went up the stairs to the third floor carrying his back pack. He easily found the door to apartment three ten. The key from Seth's envelope fit so he went in. Inside he found one large room with a tumor on the right side containing a bathroom and huge closet. There was a window over the tub. The tub had one of those European external pipe showers. The large closet area just outside the bath had numerous handing rack and shelves. Along the rear exterior wall was an area with a stove, refrigerator, sink, and cabinets. That wall also contained the only other window in the place. Both of the windows were small and seemed to have a sheet of Plexiglass over the interior to kill the drafts. Those storm windows seemed to be held into place by some type of spring clips in the corners.

It was late and peter was bushed. Since there was no bed, or any other furniture in the place, Peter curled up on the floor. He used his back pack for a pillow and his coat for a blanket. It was actually worse than the garage by a bunch.

The next morning he hailed his very first cab ever. It was just outside the apartment building. "Take me to the nearest Walmart," he demanded of the middle eastern man. The drive took him past a long line of empty retail stores. There were a lot more re purposed stores as well. Restaurants turned in Internet gambling centers, or ethnic convenience stores.

The price for the ride was almost ten dollars for the ride so Peter decided to buy some kind of transportation at his first opportunity. Inside Walmart, he bought an air bed, a tiny TV, a folding chair, a folding table, one giant bath towel, two Deli type sandwiches and a dozen donuts. He would liked to have more but the three story climb changed his mind. He had no desire to ride in a hundred year old elevator. He made a compromise by buying an urban hand truck. It was a basket on two wheels he could get most of the items up in one trip.

He watched the route of the minivan taxi as it drove the five miles back to the Don Juan Apartments. When he got out to load the handcart, he found that if he had a place to store his items, he could have made two or three trips up the stairs dragging the hand truck behind. That is going to be a real asset, he thought.

During the after noon he went for a walk. He pulled the and truck behind him a while then he pushed it as a care a while. He felt sure since he needed everything, the cart would be a good idea. He wasn't interested in looking cool. He passed a consignment store. With the Detroit economy he expected there would be a lot of those around.

In the dark and dreary store he bought a blanket and comforter. He decided to hold out for new sheets and towels. Since the proprietor sold dry goods as well as consignment items. Peter bought a twelve pack of soap and some toothpaste. He also bought an electric tea kettle so that he could make coffee.

By the time he arrived back at the apartment it was time for dinner. The deli style ham and cheese sandwich from Walmart won out over the roast beef and cheese sandwich also from wall mart.

After dinner he wasn't quite sure how to do it but he went in search of a wifi signal. He found a network called Don Juan. He tried and found that he didn't need a password, it was sort of like an internet cafe. His browsing was a terrible experience with only the mini tablet to view things.

According to his information file, he was supposed to go an office building in downtown the next day. Since he couldn't fine a working map on the internet that was tablet friendly, he decided to trust a cab driver. Then took a shower and went to bed.