“Okay, his name is Arthur Dykes. He and my dad were close friends for a long time. Came up through the Secret Service ranks and worked side by side for quite a few years. He should be able to tell you some things I might not know.”
“Can you give him a heads-up that we’ll be in contact?”
“Yes. But I can’t believe this has anything to do with my father’s past.”
“That’s why we’re checking. To either rule it out or not.”
“Did your father have any enemies?” asked White.
Roe stared directly at her. “In this life, we all have enemies.”
Chapter 69
THEY STAYED OVER IN MIAMI, and the next morning Decker called Arthur Dykes, who had long since retired and was living in Punta Gorda, north of Fort Myers. They made arrangements to meet with him, then left Miami and drove straight to see the retired agent.
Dykes lived in—What else? Decker thought—a golf community. They took the elevator up to his condo and were invited in.
Dykes was medium height and had kept a trim, active figure, though he was now around eighty. He also had a full head of silvery hair. His home was free of knickknacks and the clutter one sometimes saw in the homes of the elderly. He was a widower, he told them, as he invited them in. His four kids were spread out over the country.
Over iced teas as they sat at an outdoor deck, Dykes told them about his time with Kanak Roe and the Secret Service.
“Kanak was driven, focused, wanted to make a career out of it,” he said.
“But he didn’t,” pointed out Decker. “He left nine years short of his full pension. Do you know what changed his mind?”
Dykes looked uncomfortable. “You could retire with twenty years’ service at age fifty, but Kanak wasn’t close to being that old. He wasn’t even forty when he left the Service. He was hard to read. I mean, he was a really good friend for many years, but we came from really different backgrounds. He left his home country when he was a kid, but he saw some crazy shit, let me tell you. And I know it affected him. As good friends as we were, there was a side of Kanak that no one else ever saw, including me.”
“Anything unusual with his Secret Service career?” asked Decker.
“We joined up at the same time. Went through training together. We did normal rotations, worked on protection details for several presidents, including Reagan. Everything was going smoothly. Then, bam, he checked out.”
“So he never talked to you about his abrupt career change?” asked White.
“Not in so many words, but Kanak became…different.”
“When and how?” asked a suddenly tense Decker. “Be as precise as possible.”
“I’ve given it a lot of thought, particularly after I found out you wanted to meet. And I can actually pinpoint it to one specific time.”
“Let’s hear it,” said Decker.
“We were protecting Reagan at the time. This was about eight months after Hinckley shot him. The Service, of course, had changed its protocols to make sure that wouldn’t happen again. Anyway, we’d been on that particular protection detail for about three months. And don’t believe what you see on movies or TV, there’s nothing glamorous about it. It’s just a grind. Tedious as hell ninety-nine percent of the time. The other one percent? You’re screwed if you mess up one little bit.”
“I’m sure,” said White.
“We were in Miami for a speech Reagan was giving. Nothing special, just another fund-raiser. When it was over, we rotated off duty after the president got back to his hotel suite and went to bed. Some of us guys went out for a late dinner and drinks. But Kanak didn’t. He stayed at the hotel. The next morning he…he was different.”
“How?” asked Decker.
“He was normally the first down for the briefing, but I had to go up and get him. He was still dressed in his clothes from the previous night. Looked like he hadn’t slept. At first, I thought he was hungover because he just seemed out of it, but he assured me he hadn’t had a drop. There were no bottles that I could see, and no smell of liquor on his breath or clothes. And he was pretty much a teetotaler, so I believed him. I asked him what was wrong, but he wouldn’t say anything. He…he just looked stunned, I guess.”
“Keep going,” prompted White.
“He pulled himself together and did his job that day. But after that things got weird.”
“How so?” asked Decker.
“He’d get phone calls in the office but would never say a word about them. Who was calling or why. He’d leave early to go meet someone, but he never said who. His work suffered, and he got written up a couple of times. I would have thought he was having an affair, but he wasn’t married back then.”