I was startled when the phone rang on the desk next to me in the empty squad room.  I glanced at the clock, it was almost 5:00 pm on Christmas eve, I was getting ready to head home to Jackie and the kids for a nice Christmas eve dinner of beef tenderloin, roasted potatoes, and to open stockings - long a family tradition.  I usually worked the week of Christmas, I could catch up on reports, as it was often quiet in the small FBI office during the holidays, plus it was near blizzard conditions outside and freezing cold.  I picked up the phone on the third ring, “FBI Madison, can I help you?”  A recorded message played in my ear, “this is Inmate Solutions, you have a collect call from an inmate at the Dane County Jail, if you accept the charges, press 1 now, if you do not accept the charges, press 2 now, and you will be disconnected.”  I knew that occasionally inmates from the county jail called the FBI office to offer intriguing bits of information about nefarious activities they professed to know about.  Their offer, always with more details to follow - if only you would get them out of jail and back onto the streets so they could obtain the promised information, which rarely happened.

 

I pressed 1, and after another brief message from Inmate Solutions, advising that the conversation was being recorded, a quiet male voice came on the line, “my name is James Dawson, I’m trying to reach Agent Steve Marshall.”  “Who is this” I asked? now wary at the mention of my former FBI partner who had died 12 months earlier in a freak accident at home.  “My name is James Dawson,” the man replied, I’m at the Dane County Jail and Steve said to call him right away when I got out.”  “Uh, Steve doesn’t work here anymore” I told the caller.  “I have to get a message to him,” the stranger replied, with a sense of urgency in his voice.  “Steve arrested me six years ago, and he told me when I got out to call him, and I could get right back to work for him - can you get him a message? ... today? … now?!”  This piqued my curiosity, I asked what James had been arrested for, and he replied matter-of-factly “bank robbery, “as if he had just told me his favorite television show.

 

Steve, my former partner, had a real talent for identifying and working with confidential informants, although sometimes things with sources could go sideways fast.  Once, a guy on the East Side of Madison, armed and barricaded himself with his baby mama in a dreary no-tell-motel named the “Mayflower,” causing a hostage standoff which tied up traffic for hours.  The hostage taker told the police negotiator, he didn’t want to hurt anyone, and he would gladly surrender, “but only to Steve at the FBI.”  Turns out the bad guy was a former informant of Steve’s.

 

On another occasion - Steve, who liked to read the Chicago Tribune every morning in the break room, showed me a frontpage story about a guy who entered a Chicago bank carrying a dummy hand grenade, demanding cash – the bank robber had also apparently been an informant of Steve’s, who went back to Chicago to quote “go straight.”  As Steve rushed out of the break room, spilling coffee, newspaper still in hand, Steve muttered “I better call the front office and let them know about this before they get a call from the Chicago Special Agent in Charge.”  “Yea, good idea I offered shaking my head.”  There was a reason we jokingly referred to Steve as “The Shit Magnet” he just seemed to always find himself “in the shit” as we liked to say, and that was always an interesting place to find yourself as an FBI Agent.

 

I thought about all of this and my old friend Steve, whose memory caused me to tear up when I thought about him, his wife and two small daughters left suddenly alone when he died just before Christmas the year before.  “James, give me your full name and date of birth, I’ll call you back at the payphone you’re at, give me the phone number.”  I hung up and typed “James Dawson” in the computer sitting on my desk.  Sure enough, James had been arrested a number of years earlier by Special Agent Steve Marshall.  James had robbed a local bank using only a hand-written note, no one had been injured, he got away with less than three thousand dollars, and was arrested the same day.  Scanning some of the case reports about James, it also looked like he had provided some information to the FBI which resulted in a significant reduction in his bank robbery sentence, but the information James provided was not listed.  I then noticed a corresponding “137-A file number” which indicated James had been a highly valued and protected Confidential Human Informant.

 

I dialed the pay phone located in the lobby of the Public Safety Building, and it was picked up on the first ring, “this is James.”  “James, my name is Josh, I worked with Steve and I’ll be working with you now.”  “If you can give me a number to contact you at and the address where you’ll be staying, I’ll get ahold of you after Christmas and we can set up a time to meet, ok?”  After a pause, James said “I don’t have an address to go to, or a cell phone right now.”  “I was supposed to stay with my Sister, but her husband decided I wasn’t welcome there,” James said quietly, in a voice tinged with defeat.  “Steve told me many times, that when I got out I should contact him, he would help me get on my feet, and I could work for him again.  James pleaded - please sir, just call Steve and ask him about me, I’m being straight with you sir.”  “James, when was the last time you spoke with Steve?” I asked.  “Well, he came to visit me in prison about a year and a half ago, and then I got moved to Terre Haute, referring to the dangerous, overcrowded federal prison at Terra Haute Indiana, and I haven’t spoken with him since,” James replied.  “I wrote Steve some letters in the last few months, but never heard back from him, there was silence on both ends of the line.  I recalled seeing some envelopes from various prisons addressed to Steve, when we cleaned out his desk in the squad room twelve months ago.

 

“James,” I said - "Steve died a year ago, it was an accident, my voice trailed off, and after what felt like a couple of minutes, I could hear James crying on the other end of the phone.  “he was a great guy, and always treated me fairly even when he arrested me,” James said sobbing, “getting arrested by Steve was the best thing that ever happened to me, I promised him I would never go back to prison.”  I could feel warm tears running down my cheeks.

 

“James, sit tight – I’ll come get you and we’ll figure something out.  I’ll be driving a blue Chevy Tahoe, it will take me about 20 minutes, the roads are getting bad.”  “Steve drove a blue Tahoe,” James replied sniffling.  “Yes, just like Steve, blue Tahoe, I’ll be there as soon as I can.  Oh, and don’t say anything to anyone I said, that jail is full of snitches,” I hung up.   I stared at the phone, the large framed picture of Steve on the office wall, and the Christmas decorations around the office – and I thought to myself, it’s Christmas eve, it’s snowing like hell, I should be going home to be with my family, instead now I’m going to the jail, then hopefully to a shelter with James, and I’ll end up giving James some cash which I likely won’t get back.  

 

I called Jackie to tell her I’d be a little late.  I got into my Bureau issued blue Chevy Tahoe, headed downtown to the jail, like my friend Steve.