Masked Prey (Lucas Davenport #30)(24)
“Then you know what I’m talking about,” Lang snapped, pointing a yellow pencil at Lucas’s chest. He leaned back, took a breath, got a grip, and smiled again. “Anyway, that’s really . . . for another discussion. I will try to help you hook up with the 1919 organization. I do want to speak to them myself, though. They have kept themselves, whoever they are, very carefully secret. I find that intriguing.”
* * *
—
GIBSON, WHO’D SAT QUIETLY through the rant, showed Lucas out of the house. At the door, he said, quietly, “Charles is doing important work. When he’s gone, which I hope won’t be for many, many years, people will look back and wonder why they didn’t listen to him in his prime.”
“It’s a thought,” Lucas said.
His phone buzzed in his pocket, and he took it out as he was walking down the walkway to the car. Jane Chase. He poked Accept and asked, “Did something happen?”
“No, I wanted to find out if you’d come up with anything new,” she said.
“Jesus, it’s not even noon.”
“You’re a fast worker.”
“Let me get in my car,” Lucas said.
He got in the Cadillac, started it, punched up the air-conditioning, went back to the phone, and said, “I’m at Charles Lang’s place. He’s a fuckin’ Looney Tunes. So’s his assistant. You got anything on a guy named Stephen Gibson? He’s worked for Lang for thirteen years?”
“I haven’t heard the name, but I’ll look. Is Charlie going to help out?”
“He’s already put out the word for a 1919 contact. I’m not holding my breath on that. He’s going to try to hook me up with a group called the American National Militia, ANM, and the Greene Mountain Boys.”
“I’ve heard of those. The Greene Mountain Boys are not harmless—they’ve participated in a couple of marches that got ugly. They weren’t the instigators, but they were out there swinging signs. The ANM is something different. We’ve heard about them, tried to get inside, but no luck so far. They’re pretty picky about their membership. They don’t let anyone in that they don’t know about, a lot of times through family connections. Their leader is supposedly called Old John. No last name. We’ve heard that the movie Fight Club is a cult film with them—that’s where they want to go.”
“Love that movie,” Lucas said. “But I guess you could take it the wrong way.”
“No kidding. Anyway, if Charlie hooks you up with the ANM, tell me. We’ll want to cover you.”
“We’ll see,” Lucas said. “I’m not an FBI agent . . .”
“Lucas . . .”
“Lang said there are rumors in the alt-left that the ANM has killed some people,” Lucas said. “He has three or four examples, if you could get me what’s available on those killings.”
He told her about the Erie, Pennsylvania, developer, the two Michigan shootings, and the execution shooting of the alleged rapist in Ohio. Chase said she was familiar with the rapist killing, from news stories, but the FBI hadn’t been involved in the case. She hadn’t heard of the Pennsylvania or Michigan shootings.
“Why do you think the ANM might be involved with 1919?” Chase asked.
“Lang suggested it. That they could have created a fake site to hang the blame on the alt-right, while they take advantage of it. They are apparently willing to shoot, if the rumors are true. And they’re at least somewhat media-aware—they have a PR woman. Lang’s going to try to get me in touch with her.”
“Keep me up on that.”
“We’ll see,” he said again. “Another thing: I hate to say this, but there’s something not quite right about Audrey Coil and her story about finding 1919. I don’t know what to do about that.”
“What’s wrong with her story?”
“I don’t know, but something is. She was lying to me about something, but I can’t think what it might be.”
“Audrey and I had a little talk away from her mother, and—keep this under your hat—there’s been a little sexting going on there,” Chase said. “With her friend Blake and probably some other boys at the school. But she knows a lot about the workings of the internet and she’s been careful not to let any really identifying . . . stuff . . . get out there. Bare breasts, maybe some below-the-waist stuff, but not anything that you could say, ‘That’s Audrey Coil.’ At least, not unless you’d visited the neighborhood in person. She told me that she was completely aware of the problems sexting could cause downstream in her life, and was careful. I believed her.”
Lucas said, “Huh.”
“That was a skeptical-sounding ‘Huh,’” Chase said.
“No, that could be it. I’m an older male, talking to her with her mother present. There may have been subjects she really wanted to avoid.”
* * *
—
LUCAS DROVE BACK toward the Watergate; on the way, he phoned Richard Greene, but got no answer. After six rings, Greene’s phone kicked over to an automated answering service, and Lucas left a message.
* * *
—
WITH NOTHING MUCH TO DO BUT WAIT, he went to his room, took off his suit and put on jeans, and started picking through the FBI files again. Jane Chase called and said she was forwarding a brief file on Gibson and longer files on the Greene Mountain Boys and the American National Militia. Lucas opened the files on his computer, using the encryption code Chase had given him.