Abuse of Power - Michael Savage [59]
Karras got to his feet now. “I mean it,” he insisted. “I don’t want anything to do with whatever you’re into. You need to get out of here.”
Jack stopped pacing and turned to him. “Fine, but one last thing. Would you be able to hack into an airline and pull up their flight manifests for the last week or so?”
“Sure, but that doesn’t mean I want to.”
“I’ll triple your fee.”
“Hey, money isn’t every—”
“What about some intel about Maxine?”
Karras hesitated. “What kind of intel?”
“Coming to you was her idea,” Jack lied. “She has all kinds of regrets and if she finds out you went that extra mile for us she’d probably be real appreciative.”
“Really?”
“Haircut and a shave and—who knows?”
He could see that the prospect excited Karras. The guy hesitated a moment longer then sat back down. “Quadruple the fee.”
“Done.”
“What airline do you want to start with?”
“What else?” Jack told him. “British Airways.”
* * *
It took Karras a while to find what Jack was looking for, but his instincts had proven right and they didn’t have to leave the British Airways network to prove it.
There was a flight out of LAX to London the day after the carjacking, and Abdal al-Fida was one of the first class passengers. The ticket had been charged to the British embassy’s travel account. This didn’t mean al-Fida was still alive, but the possibility existed and that was enough for Jack to hang his hopes on.
Twenty minutes later he dropped Tony off at his car outside Maxine’s with promises that they’d reconvene at the Sea Wrighter after he’d picked up Eddie. But as he drove toward his apartment he decided to take a detour to the Arco station on Mission, the place where Jamal and Leon had first seen al-Fida. It was nighttime; the same attendant might be on duty.
The guy at the register was nodding off, a travel magazine in his lap, open to a story about Amsterdam.
Jack rapped on the countertop and he came awake with a start. “Uh?”
“GNT News,” Jack said, showing him his expired credentials. “Were you working here the night of the bombing?”
The counterman blinked a couple times to clear the cobwebs, then hastily set the magazine aside. “Uh, yeah. Yeah, I was here. Why?”
Jack brought out a copy of al-Fida’s personnel photo that Karras had printed out. “Do you remember this man? He would’ve stopped for gas shortly before midnight.”
The counterman squinted at it. “Do you know how many people come in here every night? I guess I coulda seen him but I don’t remember.”
“What about surveillance video?”
The man looked up like he was Eddie asking for more spaghetti. Jack had expected that. He flipped a twenty onto the counter. The man laid a hand on it and swept it off like a croupier.
“It’s on a forty-eight-hour cycle. It would’ve been erased by now.” He paused. “But it’s funny you ask, because the feds were in here looking for it last night, right after my shift started.”
Jack was surprised. “Did they say why?”
“Just that they were looking for a suspect in a bank robbery. But they didn’t show me any pictures or anything. They made me play the video back, like they thought I was lying.”
“And you’re sure they were FBI?”
He looked at Jack blankly. “The head guy flashed a badge.”
“Did you look at it closely?”
His expression told Jack it was obvious he hadn’t.
Typical.
“What did they look like?”
He shrugged. “Like feds. What are they supposed to look like?”
“Did you see what kind of car they were driving?”
“I think it was an SUV of some kind.”
“An Escalade, maybe? Black?”
He shrugged again. “Could be. Don’t quote me.”
“I won’t,” Jack promised. “Thanks for your time.”
He pocketed the photo then went back to his car and sat for a while. He had been hoping to get confirmation that the man Jamal and Leon had seen really was Abdal al-Fida, but he’d known it was a long shot. Leon had sounded sure on the phone, but Jack wasn’t completely comfortable hanging an entire theory—as thin as it might be—on the word of a grieving teenage carjacker. Any good attorney would tell you that eyewitness testimony