'TRAPS: A Novel of the FBI'
A former FBI agent, Paul Lindsay is the author of five books.
His latest is a thriller centered on an unsolved kidnapping, and the developing partnership between Jack Kincade--a debauched but brilliant street agent with a penchant for gambling and bank robbery--and Ben Alton, who has just lost part of his leg to cancer.
When Alton's daughter is abducted by the prime suspect, Alton and Kincade must race against time to save her, and themselves. Lindsay visits The Early Show to talk about his characters, the bureau and some of the real-life stories he has encountered.
Read an excerpt from the book:
Chapter 1
Occasionally, in the hope of slicing through the ever-thickening Gordian knot of American justice, FBI agents have been known to venture across the deeply rutted line of oath and breach a law or two. While some people might judge the specifics of such violations to be minor, or even admirable in their daring, jurists would undoubtedly pronounce these acts felonies. Earlier in his career, Jack Kincade might have been capable of such dutiful misdirection, but now, as he was about to commit his fourth bank burglary, justice was the last thing he wanted to see served.
His only defense, should one become necessary, was that these were small felonies, in dollars and cents, a few thousand, if that. He had never added them up, he supposed, because he didn't want to know that he was risking so much for so little. Invoking a thief's myopia, he told himself that it didn't matter; there was no way he could be caught. He ran his hand through his thinning dark brown hair several times, absentmindedly measuring its density. It had once been thickly baroque, marquee proof of his genetic indestructibility. He picked out two new casualties from between his fingers and examined them. The roots were still attached; they weren't going to grow back. He leaned over the desk and filled the scarred glass in front of him with vodka.
For the first time since switching brands a month earlier, he noticed a yellow cast to it, like trapped, day-old rainwater. He held the glass up, trying to decide whether the late afternoon light coming through the smeared window of his motel room was the cause, or whether it was simply a consequence of the alcohol's eight-bucks-a-fifth inferiority. He turned the bottle to read its label:
PISTOL PETE'S VODKA
Handcrafted for your drinking pleasure
in Houston, Texas
Taking a measured sip, he let it lie on his tongue in a flat ribbon and inhaled across its surface. It had a slippery, carbonous aftertaste, not unlike what he imagined traces of crude oil might leave behind. Apparently Pistol Pete's was best tossed back in large, blanketing doses that bypassed the taste buds of Friday night cowboys, and not sipped by discriminating FBI agents who were about to violate U.S. banking laws.
He gulped a mouthful. The resulting sting temporarily masked the vodka's flaws, but it was too late. A tiny compulsion had barricaded itself in the back of his head, vowing not to be taken alive.
Strangely, that's the way things were now. Through a carefully administered regimen of neglect and apathy, he had learned to disregard the larger things in life almost completely, but the smallest imperfection could wrap its jaws around him with the accelerating panic of a wounded animal.
He tried to rid himself of this latest threat to his euphoric disorder by reciting an all-occasions mantra specifically developed for such emergencies: Don't give a good goddamn don't give a good goddamn don't give a good goddamn. He looked at his drink again. The discoloration was just as urgent. Pistol Pete's was going to need fixing.
He looked around the room. Some years earlier, when half of the motel's units were converted to weekly and monthly rentals -- a procedure the permanent guests referred to as "going condo" -- tiny kitchenettes were added. The entire modification, while raising the weekly rate thirty dollars, consisted of a waist-high refrigerator recessed under a single three-foot-long shelf. On his counter sat a toaster oven scorched to a spotty black by a succession of frozen-dinner brush fires. Surrounding it were cans of beets, okra, lima beans, and mincemeat, left, maliciously he suspected, by a string of previous tenants. Scattered between them were a few condiments, mostly the kind that came in small packets as part of a carryout meal.
He opened the refrigerator. Except for a single can of Coke, it was empty. He briefly considered the vodka-cola combination, but knew that the soft drink would be considerably more valuable as an antidote the next morning. A search of the envelope-size freezer revealed a single empty ice tray containing only a spiky coating of blue frost.