LaBrava Read Free

Islamorada, LaBrava wanting to try bonefishing and Maurice wanting to show him where he was standing when the tidal wave hit in ’35. LaBrava would remember the trip as the only time Maurice ever asked him questions, ever expressed an interest in his past life. In parts of it, anyway.
    He didn’t get to tell much of the IRS part, the three years he’d worked as an investigator when he was young and eager. “Young and dumb,” Maurice said. Maurice didn’t want to hear anything about the fucking IRS.
    Or much about LaBrava’s marriage, either—during the same three years—to the girl he’d met in accounting class, Wayne State University, who didn’t like to drink, smoke or stay out late, or go to the show. Though she seemed to like all those things before. Strange? Her name was Lorraine. Maurice said, what’s strange about it? They never turn out like you think they’re going to. Skip that part. There wasn’t anything anybody could tell him about married life he didn’t know. Get to the Secret Service part.
    Well, there was the training at Beltsville, Maryland. He learned how to shoot a Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum, the M-16, the Uzi submachine gun, different other ones. He learned how to disarm and theoretically beat the shit out of would-be assassins with a few chops and kicks. He learned how to keep his head up and his eyes open, how to sweep a crowd looking for funny moves, hands holding packages, umbrellas on clear days, that kind of thing.
    He spent fifteen months in Detroit, his hometown, chasing down counterfeiters, going undercover to get next to wholesalers. That part was okay, making buys as a passer. But then he’d have to testify against the poor bastard in federal court, take the stand and watch the guy’s face drop—Christ, seeing his new buddy putting the stuff on him. So once he was hot in Detroit, a familiar face in the trade, they had to send him out to cool off.
    He was assigned to the Protective Research Section in Washington where, LaBrava said, he read nasty letters all day. Letters addressed to “Peanut Head Carter, the Mushmouth Motherfucker from Georgia.” Or that ever-popular salutation, “To the Nigger-loving President of the Jewnited States.” Letters told what should be done to the President of the USA, “the Utmost Supreme Assholes” who believed his lies. There was a suggestion, LaBrava said, the President ought to be “pierced with the prophet’s sword of righteousness for being a goddamn hypocrite.” Fiery, but not as practical as the one that suggested, “They ought to tie you to one of those MX missiles you dig so much and lose your war-lovin ass.”
    Maurice said, “People enjoy writing letters, don’t they? You answer them?”
    LaBrava said usually there wasn’t a return address; but they’d trace the writers down through postmarks, broken typewriter keys, different clues, and have a look at them. They’d be interviewed and their names added to a file of some forty thousand presidential pen pals, a lot of cuckoos; a few, about a hundred or so, they’d have to watch.
    LaBrava told how he’d guarded important people, Teddy Kennedy during the Senator’s 1980 presidential campaign, trained to be steely-eyed, learned to lean away from those waving arms, stretched his steely eyes open till they ached listening to those tiresome, oh my, those boring goddamn speeches.
    Maurice said, “You should a heard William Jennings Bryan, the Peerless Prince of Platform English, Christ, lecture on the wonders of Florida—sure, brought in by the real estate people.”
    LaBrava said he’d almost quit after guarding Teddy. But he hung on and was reassigned to go after counterfeiters again, now out of the Miami field office, now getting into his work and enjoying it. A new angle. He picked up a Nikon, attached a 200-mm lens, and began using it in surveillance work. Loved it. Snapping undercover agents making deals with wholesalers, passers unloading their funny money. Off duty