The Hearing Read Online Free PDF

said, “Hollowpoints, .357 Magnum.”
    Gus stuck his other hand into the locker and removed the piece of paper the bullets had been standing on. He turned it over,
     and his face went hard. Carl looked, opened his mouth, but didn’t speak.
    The paper was a color photograph of the front lawn of Gus’s house. Gus and Michelle were walking across the lawn, holding
     hands. They were laughing.
    His eyes still on the photograph, Gus said: “Get help.”
    Carl jogged to a bank of pay phones at the end of the concourse. Three minutes later a Montgomery police sector car cruising
     the area, hearing a radioed “assist officer” code,responded with siren screaming. Five minutes after that, the airport filled with Montgomery police, crime-scene units, ABI
     agents, FBI, DEA. DEA agents took the suitcases into custody, the money, the photograph, the .357 hollowpoints.
    Standing by Gus’s car, Carl said, “Michelle?”
    “I’ll tell her.”
    “You want me to come?”
    “No.”
    “This is for real, Gus.”
    “I know that. I’ll call if I need anything.”
    “Let me send some agents with you.”
    “It’s okay. I’ll call you.”
    Michelle was in the kitchen, stirring something in a bowl.
    “Got a minute?”
    She looked up, saw his eyes. “What is it?”
    She put the spoon in the sink, and they sat at the kitchen table.
    “This isn’t as bad as it’s going to sound.”
    “What is it?”
    “You know I told you about the lawyer who visited me? Wanted to give the impression there’d be great things in store for me
     if I should happen to blow the suppression hearing?”
    “Yes.”
    Her eyes looked ready for anything.
    “Well, there’s been a little follow-up. Carl and I were just out at the airport looking in some luggage lockers. Someone sent
     me the keys.”
    “Go on.”
    “Well, one of the lockers had three million dollars in it.”
    She sat back, as if he’d pushed her.
    “Whose money is it?”
    “Who do you think? Ernesto Vicaro’s, I would guess. Right?”
    “What about the other locker?”
    “That’s the problem, Michelle. I don’t want you to be alarmed. There were some bullets.”
    Maybe if he didn’t tell her there were two. And if he left out the part about the photograph.
    But he could tell from her eyes, from the tilt of her head and the slight parting of her lips, that she knew.
    “How many bullets?”
    “It doesn’t matter.”
    “Two, right?”
    “Yes. Two.”
    “Is that all?”
    He walked over to the sink.
    “What else, Gus? Please tell me everything and get it over with.”
    He sat back down.
    “There was a photograph of us on the front lawn.”
    He leaned toward her.
    “It’s just intimidation, Michelle. These people never carry through their threats. If they’re really going to do something,
     they don’t warn you first. They’re just bullies. When you stand up they back off. It’s intimidation.”
    She said, “Like, what’s his name, Alfredo something—like him?”
    Alfredo Guzman, a Colombian informant, had gone home from a meeting with Carl and found his wife and three children stabbed
     to death in the living room. That night a police lieutenant in Medellin called to tell him his grandparents, an uncle, and
     three cousins had been shot to death.Two weeks later Alfredo was blown away by a shotgun blast on the street outside the hotel he was hiding in.
    “That was different, Michelle. He was one of them, a traitor. They’ve never hurt an American prosecutor.”
    “Not yet.” Her eyes began to tear. “I’m sorry. I know you have to do this. I’m glad you’re doing this. I just—it’s just hard,
     that’s all.”
    Gus said, “Do you want to move?”
    “No! This is our home. I’m not moving.”
    “I’ll ask Gus to send over a couple of agents. Maybe I can get some marshals. The cops’ll put the house on their watch list.”
    “I don’t want any of that, Gus.”
    “I know you don’t. It’s not your choice.”
    Ten days later a federal magistrate