(no subject)

[seymoure]

37.
“Perspective”

“What I have to tell you may be the hardest thing I’ve ever had to tell anyone,” The agent admitted as he lit up an after breakfast cigarette.

“You don’t mean to tell me that they aren’t going to re-open the case, despite what the autopsy found?” Pappy said, sitting forward with great anticipation. This was impossible, as far as he could see it.

“What?” Archie said with a bit of a start, like he had been taken totally by surprise. This was a distraction from his point. After looking in the old man’s eyes for a second and realizing that the question was not said in jest, he responded, “There is not enough evidence, hard evidence, for them to re-open a case they are taking credit for having a hand in solving.”

“They had a hand in . . .?”

“I was there, that counts,” Archie said, “I am a working FBI agent and my presence, no matter how peripheral insures the agency some credit. That’s the way Hoover set it up from the beginning.”

“The fact that you yourself said he couldn’t have done it alone . . .” Pappy insisted.

“Wouldn’t be enough for the suits to endure the political repercussions of the case not being closed. Careers are based, more often than we’d like to think, on closing cases rather than solving crimes,” The Agent said.

Pappy sat back, a bit thunderstruck.

“Hoover wasn’t there when Dillenger was killed, did you know that?” Archie went on, “They went and got him so they could take his picture with the body and get him the credit. That’s the way it happens, and that’s the way it works. I wish it were otherwise, but that’s the truth of Washington.”

Pappy seethed for a moment, and then said, “You said you were an active agent, did they change the records on that too?”

“Yeah, anything that made it seem like they were finally fixing a hole in their record that had been there for so many years,” Archie explained.

“I want to do some more asking around about all of this,” Han said, “And I want to say that I’m doing it for you folks at the bureau. You don’t have a problem with that do you?”

“Not since I believe that you’re right. There is at least one other person out there to find. And as long as you mention the FBI once in a while, we can take credit for whatever you find.”

“And deny giving me the okay if I find nothing,” Pappy said.

“That’s the way the world works,” The FBI man said, and crushed his cigarette in the ashtray.

They sat for a while longer.

Then Pappy said, “What was it that you wanted to ‘fess up too’ then?”

“Let me tell you this without interrupting me, ‘cause I don’t think I’ll get through it otherwise,” He said like a boy going to confession.

Pappy put his hand to his mouth and nodded for Archie to go on.

“I had been out of the bureau for a couple of months. But not for the reason I told you. I had been involved with some evidence that disappeared from the lockers. It came to about $1000 worth of jewels from a multimillion dollar theft.”

The Agent collapsed back into the booth.

“I made a mistake. I thought no one would miss such little pickings. It was the first time I had ever done anything out of bounds. But that was enough. I came here because I thought that if I could crack this case they might let me back in.”

Shelley came by and gave them more coffee. When she was well away from the table Archie began again.

“I let my entire career go down the drain for a few bucks,” He said, and Pappy saw he was fighting back tears.

“I can understand why you didn’t want to tell us that. We would have understood, but you couldn’t have known.”

They drank more coffee in silence.

“So, do you have cancer?” Pappy finally brought himself to ask.

“I thought Mehiabel might look at me differently if she thought I was dying,” He said in the most pitiful voice an FBI man had ever used.

Pappy almost laughed. He was grateful he hadn’t had to shoot the man.

 

© 2005 by C. Wayne Owens