Wrong Town: A Mark Landry Novel by Randall H Miller Read Free Book Online

network of informants across the city that bewildered his superiors. Got a problem with the Irish criminals in the South End? Talk to Frank. Need information on Latino gang leaders? Talk to Frank. Wondering who was responsible for last night’s drive-by shooting? Ask Frank. If he doesn’t know already, he will soon.
    Frank’s intuition and reliability were showcased early in his career, on a Saturday afternoon in Boston’s Chinatown district. He and his partner had been working undercover on an arms deal with some Asian gang members when Frank sensed that they had walked into an ambush. When one of the gang members pulled a large revolver, Frank drew his pistol and dropped him along with two other would-be assailants before they could access the rifles they had hidden under their long trench coats. The other three opened fire from across the street and a fierce exchange followed. Two of the assailants were killed; the third got away after putting two 9mm rounds into the midsection of Frank’s partner. Thanks to Frank’s crucial first aid, the injured officer survived, although the physical and psychological impact of the incident caused him to retire.
    Frank was commended for his performance under fire, and the incident became a case study for agents across the country. ATF instructors started seeking his counsel, and he was often asked to visit other field offices to talk about the incident and about crisis response strategies. The director knew him by name and his place in bureau history seemed solidified. That was the first half of his career. The second half was much different.
    Like all organizations, over time the bureau began to change. The senior agents and deputy directors who knew Frank by name left, replaced by a younger crop of leaders who, as Frank later reported to the retired brass, “had absolutely no fucking idea how the real world worked.” As a consequence, the rulebooks got thicker and the wide discretion that agents once enjoyed gave way to bureaucratic checklists and pussyfooting. These so-called leaders seemed much more concerned with protecting their own rear ends than the bureau’s actual mission.
    What exactly is our mission?
    After the September 11 attacks, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms tacked the word “Explosives” onto the end of its name; the addition made sense, but the agency’s responsibility for alcohol and tobacco regulation was shared with other federal institutions. The identity crisis was intensified by tremendous overlap and territory disputes with the Drug Enforcement Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the U.S. Marshals, the Department of Homeland Security, and U.S. Customs and Border Protection, as well as local and state police.
    To make matters still worse, the new generation of leaders to whom this bureaucratic redundancy all seemed normal could barely contain their disdain for the old-school agents like Frank, viewing them as loose cannons who needed to be closely managed. Frank was accustomed to getting evaluated solely on the results of his labor; now the neatness of his reports and strict adherence to regulations took precedence, and every action was questioned and second-guessed.
    Frank handled the cultural shift grudgingly but adequately until his actions in the Chinatown shootout came into question. In a series of training memos, the firefight was dissected and picked apart by several agents who didn’t even have driver’s licenses when the episode occurred. The younger agents questioned Frank’s reflexive actions and posited that perhaps the fight could have been deescalated or avoided. Frank contemplated answering the revisionist history with memos of his own, but a colleague talked him out of it. “Don’t bother, Frank. You’ll just come off looking defensive and it’ll start a feeding frenzy with these assholes. The people who matter know you did the right thing. That’s enough. Let it go,” the colleague said.
    So Frank