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

decided to be the bigger person and ignore the Monday-morning quarterbacking. But six months later the most vociferous of his critics, an Ivy Leaguer named Ashton Brown, became the new Director of the Boston Field Office, Frank’s direct boss. Frank briefly considered requesting a transfer, but his stubborn Italian upbringing and sense of personal pride overrode the impulse.
    Why should I leave? This is MY home. Screw him.
    He thought back to his mother’s advice about always trusting in God and decided to stick it out. Besides, he had only a few years left until retirement.
    Ashton Brown made Frank’s life uncomfortable from his first day as the bureau’s youngest field office director. He ranted and raved at every available opportunity about how the bureau needed to undergo a fundamental transformation if it was to meet the demands of the twenty-first century and how they couldn’t afford to teach old dogs new tricks. Brown listened to no one and typically ended meetings with provocative, morale-killing expressions like “Get on board or get out.” The environment had become toxic to all but a few agents who silently agreed with Brown while trying to play both sides of the fence. The rest of the staff criticized Brown behind his back. Frank tried to act prudently, but eventually his impatience and dissatisfaction began to get the better of him.
    When Brown intimated his support for a failed bureau operation known as Operation Fast and Furious, Frank almost lost his mind. During that operation, ATF agents allowed illegal firearms to fall into the hands of criminals with known connections to Mexican drug cartels. They intended to track the weapons but ended up losing track of them, and one of them was later used to kill a U.S. Border Patrol agent assigned to a checkpoint that Frank had guarded years earlier. As Brown explained the story and the rest of the agents sat silently, Frank dropped his forehead onto the conference table with a loud thud.
    “Is there a problem, Tagala?” asked Brown.
    He answered without raising his head from the table. “Yeah. Our mission is to take guns away from bad guys. Our mission is not to give guns to bad guys. There was a time when this very simple concept was well understood.”
    “Well, the world is a lot more complex these days, Tagala. Maybe too complex for someone as simple as you.”
    Frank raised his head and forced a smile. “It makes no sense to me, but I barely graduated from a state school. I guess you need an Ivy League degree to understand why facilitating the transfer of guns to narco-terrorists is a good idea.”
    All but a few managed to stifle their chuckles, but the humor was quickly replaced with semi-horror when Brown doubled-down.
    “The only problem with the operation was a lack of proper planning and field leadership. And while the concept may seem like a bad idea to the creatively bankrupt, it’s an excellent example of thinking outside of the box. We need more bold operations like Fast and Furious, not less.”
    Frank left the office shortly thereafter and spent the rest of the day at a bar in the North End. When he woke up the next day at noon, alone in his bed at home, he had no recollection of when or how he had gotten there. When he finally stumbled downstairs, he found his furious wife with one hand on her hip and pointing out the window with her other hand at his car, which was parked in the middle of the front yard.
    Frank had always drunk his fair share of alcohol, but what agent didn’t? The job is highly stressful and involves frequent life-and-death decisions. Surely the agents were entitled to a few drinks. While Frank had had a few rough patches over the years when he fell into binge drinking, he had always been able to snap out of it before jeopardizing his job and family life. But that delicate balance collapsed under the emotional pressure of Brown’s directorship. Special Agent Frank Tagala had climbed into a bottle, and several years