Sugar and Spice Ch. 03

I continued: "Interpol and the Russian FSB and SVR have been investigating Colin Esterson's organization for blackmail and fraud with regard to those carbon credits, but the American Government has not cooperated and is essentially shielding Esterson and his partners from being extradited. Jack Muscone says our own Federal law enforcement agencies are aware of the Estersons's activities, but they're low on the totem pole of the things the Feds are having to deal with."

"Wow." Teresa said. "What did I walk into, down there? And what about Robert Edwards?"

I replied "He's a very typical Establishment Republican lawmaker. He's all about crony Capitalism. He's been suspected of taking bribes and giving bribes, but he's very slick and nothing actionable on him has been found. From what I gathered, he's typical for Louisiana politicians, and unless he gets egregious about the money involved or gets caught up in something like drugs, they're not going to waste a lot of time on him."

Teresa said "I was wondering if he was preying on sweet young interns. Or is that all too common, too? Well, never mind all that. You said that Mariko doesn't tell my husband things?"

"And Todd's aware of it." I said, turning on my anti-bugging device again. "You either know or have figured out that Todd's company has worked closely with Japanese and Israeli companies. Nothing wrong with that, nothing treasonous, a lot of companies have foreign partners."

Your Iron Crowbar: "What you may not know is that Ichimoku Industries in Japan and Zion Dynamics Technologies in Israel, Todd's foreign business partners, work closely with their Governments and their militaries, just as BOW Enterprises works more closely with our military than Todd lets on."

Your Iron Crowbar: "Mariko's real job is to protect Todd personally... as she did by alerting everyone to the Sakai threat... and to ensure the safety of the classified projects in all three companies. Ergo, when she first perceived the threat that Jen Sakai possibly represented, she did what she was supposed to do... tell her father."

"But to not tell Todd of the possible danger?" Teresa asked.

"Before y'all got down there," I replied, "I'm not sure anyone was aware that there was a threat at all. Only after you spotted that person with the sign saying 'Burke' did anyone realize it. Benny and Melina acted quickly to intercept that, not realizing you were close enough to see it, and them, though you didn't recognize them. Oh, and on that score... you need range time, my friend."

Teresa half-grinned, and said "Would you have done better?"

"Oh yes." I said. "I would've spotted the eyes in the back of Melina's head." That made Teresa laugh out loud.

She then said "Todd did wonder out loud if the man was Benny, so give him some credit. But yes, I was pretty shocked when Benny and Melina intercepted us at the restroom at the Picnic. So, do you and the Feds have anything on who the perps were?"

I said "Owen Lange is keeping me in the loop as a courtesy, since Todd is my nephew and you are my Iron Wolf and one of my Angels. The perps are not a part of the Bayport Rogue Seal Team, but are enforcers for a Houston-based Chinese spy ring. They intended to kidnap Todd, maybe both of you, and extract everything he knew about the Mutanix, and also whatever Todd knew about his mother's operations in Israel. I understand that my sister has become a real thorn in the side of those who wish to spy on and do harm to Israel."

As I tapped a text on my Police iPhone, I continued: "The FBI is picking off a few Chinese spies, and I doubt I'll hear any more about that, nor do I really want to. As to Jen Sakai, she still had an apartment in Houston, and is there now, and there is no unusual cellphone traffic coming from her. I'm betting she goes dormant."

"Is there a threat to the rest of my family?" Teresa asked.

"No." I said. "And I'm not sure what to advise you on how much, if anything, you should tell any of them---"

There was a 'commotion' outside my office, and Robert Kalsu and Daniel Patrick appeared the door. "We're ready, sir." said Kalsu.

"Thanks, guys." I said. "Commander, come with me, please."

Teresa and I followed Kalsu and Patrick to Classroom 'E'. Already there was the Chief, my other Angels, Joanne Warner, Julia Rodriguez, Penny Scott, Terry Halston, and several other Police Officers that had served in the military.

"What's this about?" Teresa asked.

"Let's watch some TV." I replied loudly. Tanya hit a button on her computer, and the YouTube video of the Fox report of Teresa singing at DFW Airport was shown. Teresa was stunned that her action had made a national newscast.

After the report ended, Terry Halston came forward with a large bouquet of roses and carnations. "On behalf of all of us that were Rangers," Halston said, "we'd like to give you these for the respect you gave Ranger Myers."

"Aww. Thanks, guys." Teresa said as she took the flowers. "It was my honor to do that. I didn't even know who he was. So he earned the Silver Star?"

"He was an outstanding soldier, ma'am." said Ranger Patrick. "I knew him, and I wasn't surprised to hear that he died when he covered his squad's retreat, and got them all out alive."

"I was in his unit, ma'am." said Terry Halston "He took care of his people, like you take care of us. He deserved that Silver Star."

Teresa was struggling not to shed tears. She said "I'm sorry for your loss. And if I haven't said it before, or enough, I'm grateful to all of you for serving in the military for our country. Especially those of you that jumped out of perfectly good aircraft while in flight. Right, Cindy?"

"When in a deep hole..." Cindy said in the form of a quotation as everyone else laughed...

Part 14 - Snips and Snails

10:00am, Monday, July 6th. FBI Special Agent in Charge Jack Muscone, Special Agent Tim Jenkins, and DEA Supervisory Special Agent Dwight Stevens came to my office. They had brought with them another guest: DEA Special Agent in Charge Rutherford Lyndon. As a result, we moved the meeting to the Main Conference Room, and I invited Chief Moynahan to attend.

"I came into brief you on some things, and to be briefed and ask questions on some things." said SAC Lyndon as we got down to business. "First, Operation CHICAGO SPICE has been formally and completely shut down by the Washington brass. They're no longer accepting new data on it. Agents and analysts are being reassigned, and are being told to write their final reports."

Lyndon: "Second, the Infinity Circle gang is being shut down as an entity. It's been used in many places nationally to present the appearance of a gang to conduct sting operations, and was used to sell the heroin and fentanyl to the Block House Boyz. The problem is that the DEA did not authorize the sale of that product to the Block House Boyz at all, so we believe it's been compromised and misused."

Lyndon: "And third, our investigation of those large drug batches found in St. Louis and Kansas City is raising a lot of flags, but providing few answers. Both batches had been found in warehouses based upon anonymous tips, and were seized and taken to our evidence warehouses in those areas. The initial record of the tips and the investigation that led to finding the batches exist; however, both batches have vanished completely. We cannot find the batches now, nor any record that they were destroyed. The records of them being brought in no longer exist, though we do have the receipts given to the Agents that brought in the batches."

Lyndon: "We interviewed both the current employees and those that had been there at the time... the ones we could find. None of the current employees remember ever seeing the batches in question, and they all passed polygraph tests. There was a lot, and I mean a lot of turnover and reassignments right after those batches were brought to the two facilities."

Lyndon: "Two employees were still there, and they denied any knowledge, passed their polygraphs, and nothing against them was found. We found two reassigned employees... in Seattle. They refused to take polygraphs, leading to their suspensions. We checked their finances, and there's nothing unusual there, and they had good clean records prior to that time. The only thing that's out of place is their refusal to take polygraphs, which Commander Troy would assert is their right."

"Yes I do." I replied flatly.

Lyndon went on: "They're now suing over their suspensions, too. Anyway, two other employees resigned from the DEA and now we can't find them. They'd been assigned to those facilities only a week before the big hauls were brought in."

Lyndon: "Upon finding these results, I formally submitted a report that the batches had been stolen, and a full investigation of the criminal thefts needed to commence immediately. That request was approved at every level up to the Administrator. And then... nothing. I was told the Administrator requested the FBI investigate the thefts, but the FBI says they never got a request. And then the Administrator was told that it was being investigated, but he was to say no more about it, by an official in the National Security Agency... Dr. Robin Isley."

"Consider me 'less than surprised'." I said. "And it fits."

"What have you found?" asked Lyndon.

"First of all," I said, "I've gotten great cooperation from SSA Stevens, Special Agent Morales, and the FBI guys, and I appreciate that very much."

I went on: "When we first found the L-sugars in the Block House Boyz raid, we had the State Crime Lab run all the drugs in evidence in the entire State for the L-sugars. We also ran the drugs from the Marcie Harper bust for them."

"You still have all that stuff?" Dwight Stevens asked.

I said "No, most of it has been destroyed. What we did is take a small sample of every brick of product that we seized, enough for a few analysis runs if needed, then we destroyed the rest under a lot of watchful eyes. So the Crime Lab ran tiny bits from the small evidence bags we retained."

Your Iron Crowbar: "I'll make a long story short by telling you that virtually none of the Marcie Harper drugs had any L-sugars, which I found mildly surprising... I'd expected to find bits of contamination here and there, but it was 'no joy'. The Crime Lab did find L-sugars in a few other seized batches, especially in The City, and I forwarded that data to the DEA for analysis... which has now been discontinued."

Your Iron Crowbar: "I also concentrated on those two batches seized in Kansas City and St. Louis. Dwight made a comment early on that I found interesting... that someone had said the batches were not part of the original Operation CHICAGO SPICE operation. I talked to Dwight about it, and he found the report that said it, but it was just a line in a memo filled with lines from 'unnamed sources'."

Your Iron Crowbar: "I dug further, because I really wanted to know who'd said it was a separate thing... and how he or she was able to make that assertion. We can't distinguish one batch of L-glucose from another, and these batches were laced with L-glucose, so how did that person know?"

Your Iron Crowbar: "There are only two possible answers: the person making the assertion had prior knowledge that it was not from CHICAGO SPICE... or else that person was lying, and it was part of the CHICAGO SPICE batch."

"Wow, I totally missed that." said Dwight Stevens. "It makes sense, though."

"Don't berate yourself." I said. "It was one line in a long memo, and I realized it because I was looking for it. Let me explain: someone had also asserted that DEA Agents introduced the L-sugar to the heroin that was in the hands of the drug pushers, but I explained earlier why I thought that was not likely and that the DEA had made big batches of the sugar-laced smack and sold it to the pushers."

Your Iron Crowbar: "So it occurred to me that these two batches of Missouri product might have been part of the batches the DEA made up. I began looking into that, and found that not all of the batches had been put into circulation; some of it was still in DEA hands, in reserve. I went looking for those batches, and I found that some of them went missing from a storage facility in Texas.."

"So," I said, "it stands to reason that those Missouri batches were from the missing batches that weren't sold into the system. And it follows that whoever tried to tell everyone the Missouri batches weren't part of CHICAGO SPICE not only knew that it was part of the operation, he or she was complicit with whoever stole the stuff. Unfortunately, it has been 'no joy' finding out who the source of that memo line was."

Your Iron Crowbar: "I next looked into the source material for what Infinity Circle delivered to the Block House Boyz. I should say that nearly every Infinity Circle operation has been very well documented, since the operations often end up in Court cases. But a few haven't been documented well, and in some cases not at all. I'm not blaming poor recordkeeping; I suspect that outsiders were using the Infinity Circle name when they weren't supposed to... 'off the books' operations, or outsiders pilfering Infinity Circle's good name."

Your Iron Crowbar: "The Block House Boyz operation appears to have been started as a legit operation, but then went 'off book'... recordkeeping stopped. I suspect that happened when someone decided to make the deal with Jacquez Wilson to sell him product on the cheap, pocket the money, then let their US DOJ Civil Rights Division allies hammer the TCPD if and when we moved against Jacquez Wilson."

"That sure didn't work out for them." said Rutherford Lyndon. I couldn't tell if that was sarcasm or said seriously.

"Anyhoo," I said, "I did get a name... of the DEA Agent who requested product under the Infinity Circle operation... Kevin Pitts....

Part 15 - End Around

1:30pm, Monday, July 6th. Paulina Patterson came to my office, and her lovely face was a mask of furious anger.

"Miriam cut off my funding for prosecuting the 'Jacquez 200'!" she all but shouted. The 'Jacquez 200' was our colloquial name for the 200 perps we were charging with first degree murder in the commission of felonies.

"What happened?" I asked.

"I just got an email from the D.A. Office's bookkeeping department." Paulina said. "It said that the funds for my cases had been cut off and diverted to other cases! I'm going to go over there and tell Miriam that she's breached our agreement, and I'm going to reinstate the racism lawsuit!"

"Before you do," I said, "will you give me a few minutes to find out what's going on?"

"Isn't it obvious?" Paulina said. "She's trying to end-run the agreement by cutting off my funding!"

"Give me a few minutes." I said. When Paulina went back to her office, I took out my personal iPhone and made a call...

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

2:00pm. Without bothering to knock, I went onto Miriam Walters's office. She was sitting at her desk alone. Without speaking, I picked up a chair and brought it next to hers and sat down, Michael-Corleone-style.

Miriam had said nothing to this point, but said "What is this?" when I put a piece of paper in front of her.

"That," I said, "is an accounting statement, showing funds being diverted from Paulina's prosecutions of the perps at Jacquez Wilson's Block House the night he blew himself up. It looks very much to me like you're trying to do an end-around of your agreement with Paulina by cutting off her funds."

I watched Walters most very carefully as she picked up the paper and examined it. "I never authorized this!" she finally said. "And I'm not trying to end-run Paulina, either."

"Fortunately for you, I believe you." I said. "Savannah Fineman is the one behind this. And may I suggest you barbecue her before Paulina barbecues you by reinstating the racism lawsuit against you?"

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

"Yes, I diverted those funds." Savannah said to Miriam as Sheriff Griswold and I watched from Miriam's conference table's seats. "I need them for drug prosecutions of the Block House Boyz, and there's no way in hell Patterson can win those ridiculous murder cases, anyway."

"You did this without my authorization." said Miriam. "Just so you know, I called and had the funding for Paulina's cases restored, and made sure they understand that any more diversions had better be cleared with me first. Consider this a verbal warning not to do that again, or the Police might take interest in it."

"Why?" Savannah said. "I did nothing wrong."

"Oh, I dunno." I said. "Misallocating government funds is a felony offense. And if you do that to Paulina again, I'll ask the SBI-OER to do a full investigation. You'll go to jail, and Ms. Walters here can kiss any hopes of re-election goodbye."

"Bring it on." Savannah snarled. "It's not illegal."

I turned to the Sheriff and said "I dunno. I dunno. Maybe I'm not making myself clear."

"I guess not." barked the Sheriff as I got up.

I went over and towered over Savannah as I said venomously: "Then I'll make it clear. What I see is you fucking with Paulina's prosecutions, and if you haven't figured it out, I get really, really pissed when people fuck with the mother of my child. Furthermore, anyone with more brains than a Betta fish can see that you tried to make it look like Miriam diverted the funds, and to do an end-around of her agreement with Paulina. If I were Miriam, I'd bust your sorry ass down so bad that you'd never sit in the Solicitor's chair... but fortunately for you, it's her call, not mine."

"That's a load of crap." Savannah said angrily. "And I sure as hell am not staying in here and listening to this filth." She turned on her heel and left the office.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

A few minutes later, Paulina came in to brief Walters, me, and the Sheriff on her prosecutions. "Judge Watts denied bail for all of them, and I've been giving him lists of those that can be given bail and ankle monitoring. The worst 50 or so are still at County Jail."

Paulina said "Gwen Munson has been representing them en masse, but started filing Motions to Sever. Judge Watts said that anyone granted a Motion to Sever could not be represented by a lawyer representing any of the other 199 accused. So that slowed all that stuff down considerably."

"Anyone asked for a plea deal?" asked Miriam.

"We've had a number of contacts about that." said Paulina. "A few are even agreeing to plead guilty to all other charges as misdemeanors, if we'll drop the murder charge. I've flat out refused, and said the murder charges will be prosecuted, especially for those we have solid video or photographic proof that they were there at the time of the explosion."

"Here's what I need to know." said Walters. "In every case you have to try, you run the risk of just one Juror refusing to vote to convict because of Identity Politics... just like the McCombs case. Can you get any convictions?"

"I very strongly believe I can." said Paulina. "And once we get a few to start, I believe others will start agreeing to plea deals for stiff charges. And if we don't... I'll have to reassess at that time."

"All right, then." said Walters. "Do what you have to do."

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

The Sheriff said he would walk to Police Headquarters with me. As we walked out onto Courthouse Square, he said "So Walters wasn't involved in that diversion of fund end-around?"

"So my source tells me." I said. My source had been the most powerful person in our Town & County: Adele Peabody, the Intendent. It was to her that I'd made that phone call.

"You know I love you like a son, Crowbar." said Griswold. "But if you'd done what Savannah had done, I'd have fired you."