by Blake Banner
Before she could answer, I cut in. “Miss Njalsen, I get that you are trying to protect your niece and her boyfriend. But we are not the people you need to protect them from. If they were targets in Karl and Christen’s murders, then, until we catch their killers, they will continue to be targets. We are here to help and protect Amy and Charlie, not to hurt them.”
She went very still, like she was thinking. After a moment, she said, “I would like you to leave now. This has been very upsetting for me.” As we stood, she drew breath and, after a short hesitation, added, “I don’t know where they are. They are gone. I believe they are dead.”
Dehan reached in her jacket and pulled out a card. She handed it to Ingrid. “This is my cell. Talk to them, persuade them to talk to us.”
She raised her eyes to stare at her. “I already told you, they are dead.”
We stepped out into the bright morning sunlight and crossed the lawn to the car. There Dehan tossed me the keys and leaned on the roof as I walked around to the driver’s side. I was surprised to see her smiling, and her eyes alight. I paused with the door half open and made a question with my face.
“They are alive,” she said. “And she knows where they are. If anybody knows what happened that night, they do.”
I climbed in the car and she climbed in next to me. I fired up the big old cat and did a U-turn, back the way we’d come. As I did, I glanced at her and said, “That’s a big maybe, but even if you’re right, what are we going to do about it? Tailing her is not an option. We are not in the world’s most inconspicuous car. And in a town with two hundred inhabitants, we can’t exactly stand on the corner in trench coats reading newspapers and follow her discreetly through the crowds.”
“I guess not…”
“But I would give a lot,” I added, “to be a fly on her wall right now and see what she does next: who she phones or where she goes.”
On an impulse, I turned right into Oak Street and, after a hundred yards, did a sharp left onto Hickory Street and pulled into the parking lot of the Hitching Post, out of sight of Ingrid Njalsen’s house. “You didn’t let me finish my breakfast,” I told Dehan and climbed out of the Jag.
As we pushed through the door into the small, empty restaurant, I pointed to a table by the window. “Grab a spot with a nice view,” I said. “You want coffee and pie?”
She didn’t answer, but she smiled and went to sit.
There was a young girl behind the counter. She already had two cups set out and a coffee pot in her hand. She was smiling a big sunny smile.
“I heard you say coffee,” she said. “How d’you take it? Mornin’!”
“Good morning. Black will be fine. You got some pie for us?”
“Sure have! Momma makes ’em fresh every day. You missed the blueberries, but we got apple or we got raspberry. I’m Sally.”
I glanced at Dehan. She mouthed raspberry at me. “Let’s have one of each and a jug of cream.”
She brought the pies out from under the counter and started cutting. “You guys are from out’a town, I guess. Come far?”
“New York…”
“Siddown. I’ll bring it right over. We ain’t got self service here. You pay, we serve. That’s what m’daddy says. You don’t pay, we shoot you!”
She squealed with laughter. I smiled and went to sit. Dehan was watching the window and suppressing a smile. Sally followed a moment later, still chatting.
“I’ve never been to New York. You’re passing through, I guess?”
She placed the pies in front of us and Dehan smiled at her. “We came to visit an acquaintance. We were friends of Ingrid’s sister, and her niece.”
Sally’s eyebrows shot up. She turned on her heel and went away to get our coffee and the jug of cream, speaking as she went. “I’d forgotten she had a niece. I knew she had a sister all right. Like you say, in New York, but I’d clean forgot she had a niece. I never met her, but they used to visit when I was small.”
“They never come and visit now, then?”
She set down our drinks, frowned and cocked a hip. “I call that sad. Family ought’a stay together. And Ingrid all alone the way she is. Must be a good few years since any of ’em come this way. I guess we are kind’a remote. She was pretty, bit older than me.” She blinked suddenly and beamed her radiant smile at us. “Well, I’ll let you have your pie in peace. I’m right here if you need me.”
She withdrew on busy feet back to the counter. From where I was sitting, I had no angle on Ingrid’s house. Dehan was leaning back in her chair with her arms crossed and had barely taken her eyes off it.
“Anything?”
She shook her head, sat forward and cut the pie with her fork. She stuck a chunk in her mouth, nodded, and with a grin, she said, “Damn fine pie.”
I raised an eyebrow at her. “Amy was not killed by a trans-dimensional being, Dehan.”
She sipped her coffee, still watching the house through the window. “It’s looking more and more like she wasn’t killed at all. Perhaps she’s shacked up with a dwarf who talks backward.” Without batting an eyelid, she added, “Nahed dna Enots morf edih tsum ew.”
“You’re funny. You know that? Deep down funny, where it’s not like funny anymore.”
“Quit quoting Dashiell Hammett at me. So, partner, while we’re killing time, I’ve been thinking, maybe it’s time you met my family.”
“Seriously? I didn’t think you ever wanted me to meet your family.”
“It was more a case of them not wanting to meet you. But they are kind of resigned to you now.”
I narrowed my eyes and scowled. She glanced at me, then frowned. “What? Hey, don’t take it personally. They wanted me to marry a nice Jewish boy…”
I ignored her. “Tell me something. How many Audi Q7s you reckon there are in this district?”
“I reckon these people have sense enough to buy a Jeep or a Dodge.”
“I agree. Are you armed?”
“Of course. Let’s pay up and go.”
I rose and we went to the counter. Sally gave us her sunniest smile. Before she could speak, I said, “Honey, we are cops.” We showed her our badges. “Some men are about to come in. They will ask you about us. We kept to ourselves and we didn’t talk much. Do not mention Ingrid.” While I was talking, I wrote a number on a paper napkin and slid it across to her. “They give you any trouble, you call. Understand?”
Her smile hadn’t altered throughout. When I had finished, she said, “No offense, mister, but if they give me any trouble, I don’t want the cops to know what I’m gonna do to them.” To illustrate her intention, she pulled a pump-action shot gun from under the counter. “An’ if that don’t scare ’em off, I’ll call my daddy and my two brothers. If we can handle a riled steer, I reckon we can handle a New Yorker or two. Like I said, no offense.”
I smiled. “Damn fine pie.”
“You take care now.”
NINE
Outside, the Audi had pulled into the parking lot right next to my Jaguar. The doors were open and there were two men in dark suits with thin ties and black Wayfarers looking at her. They looked up as we approached. You could tell the shorter one with the gelled hair was the brains of the outfit, because he was chewing gum, and he could do that at the same time as almost anything else. The big one with the designer goatee was just there for the muscle, which he had plenty of. He also had a rueful, intelligent smile on his face, which I figured was the result of a freak accident when the wind had changed direction.
Einstein jerked his chin at the car. “Your vehicle?”
I smiled amiably. “Sure is.”
“Sweet. Jag, huh?”
“Well, you’ve got a nice SUV there. You guys from ’round here?”
Muscle Man just raised an eyebrow. Einstein looked surprised and a little offended. His right knee jerked and he seemed to adjust his neck in his collar. “No, man.” He gave a small laugh. “No, this is Iowa, right? We ain’t from Iowa.”
“Right.
Doing some sightseeing. Well, it’s real nice around here. Hope you boys enjoy it.”
I opened the door and made to climb in.
“New York, right?”
I looked up.
Einstein was smiling at Dehan. “Don’t I know you from the ’hood?”
Dehan narrowed her eyes at him. “Hood? What hood is that?”
“Only one ’hood, sister, that’s the Barrio.”
She gave a smile that would have made a polar bear shiver. “I don’t think so. And I’m pretty sure if we had met, I would have forgotten.”
She climbed in, slammed the door and we reversed out of the lot. I kept my eye on them in the mirror as we accelerated down Sycamore Avenue toward the intersection. They didn’t do anything, they just watched us drive away. When we had turned onto the Vinton Road, Dehan said, “Those were Camacho’s men.”
I made a skeptical frown. “Chupacabras? In Italian suits and a Q7? They don’t look like gang members.”
“No, not gang members, Julio Camacho’s men. It’s different.”
I accelerated, still keeping one eye on the mirror. “Explain.”
“Julio and Feliciano were sent over many years ago from Mexico, by their father. They were in their late teens, early twenties. He wanted them to take control of the gang. Julio was a total psycho, and by the time he was twenty-two, he had established himself as the patron by hanging the previous patron from a meat hook and disemboweling him with a blunt kitchen knife. That was in Detroit.”
“Nice.”
“But he has ambitions. Being the patron of the Chupacabras in Detroit was not his idea of where he wanted to be in life. He and his daddy had bigger ideas for him and his brother. They knew—and know—that gang bosses die early, usually hanging from a meat hook in an abandoned warehouse. They also know that the big money, and the big power, lie in bringing coke and smack from south of the border and selling it to people who can pay, in cities like New York and Los Angeles.
“So they do the smart thing: they moved to the Bronx and used the gang like…” She searched for the word for a moment. “Like troops, foot soldiers, to distribute, to sell on street corners, to maintain order. Some of the smarter ones they use to open up new markets.”
“Like Feliciano with Pamela.”
“Right, but that was a bit classy, Feliciano pushing coke to the glitterati. I’m talking about heroin on the streets. As their market increased, so they started to increase their orders from Mexico, and they built good relationships with the cartel. They were selling a lot and the cartel was happy. And then it was time to start distancing themselves from the gang.”
I frowned at her. “How?”
“Just the way you saw it with Feliciano. First, you select your best boys from the gang. You dress them up in nice suits. They’re your private bodyguard. They’re there to protect you, first and foremost, from your own gang. You treat them extra good, give them privileges, and they are extra loyal to you.
“Next, you start to whitewash your money. There are banks and high profile accountants who specialize in that. I am talking household names here, Stone. This is an industry which is worth many billions of dollars every year—the laundering industry—it launders drugs money, illegal arms money and prostitution money. So if you have ten million bucks to launder, you will find an accountant and a bank with the will and the skill.”
She paused, nodding. I watched her carefully. “In rough terms, twenty kilos of coke has a street value of two and a half million bucks, heroin is more, because it is much more addictive. Heroin you’re talking about three and a half million. I’m talking rough figures. They are largely different markets in different types of neighborhoods, but if you are shifting ten or twelve shipments of coke and heroin a year, you are talking about an annual turnover of around sixty to seventy-five million. And believe me, shifting 20k of coke or heroin in a month is not hard. It’s not hard at all.
“So now we have Julio and Feliciano Camacho suddenly becoming respectable pillars of the community, living in respectable suburbs of New York and New Jersey, with no apparent connection to the old gang anymore. The gang is being run by lieutenants, and Feliciano and Julio get their laundered money through apparently legitimate interests, filtered through their ‘investments’.” She pointed back toward Garrison. “Those boys were from Julio Camacho’s private bodyguard.”
I frowned, watching the road ahead and glancing in the mirror. “Dehan, why have you so much detailed knowledge about these people?”
She gazed out the side window for a moment. “I told you I took an interest in the case.” Then she turned to frown at me. “How did they know we were here? And what was it about our investigation that made Julio follow us?”
I didn’t answer for a bit. When I did, I said, “They’re not following us.”
She frowned. Then her frown deepened.
I repeated, “They are not following us. Right now, they are not following us. They are not behind us. And they didn’t follow us. On our way here, nobody followed us. So how did they know where we were?”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
“It does. You remember Feliciano asked for your cell number, so he could call if he thought of anything? He said he wanted a good relationship with the cops, yadda yadda. He’s tracking the damned GPS on your phone. He isn’t—his brother is.”
She exploded and smacked the dash with the heel of her hand. “Hijo de la gran puta! He told his brother we’d been to see him, now his brother is using us to find Amy and Charlie…”
“Maybe.”
“What do you mean, maybe?”
“I mean we don’t know. I mean…” I shook my head and turned to look at her. “We just don’t know—anything!” Then I added, with a little more bitterness than I intended, “And apparently I know less than you.”
She looked as though she was about to answer, but instead she reached in her pocket and pulled out her phone. I saw her go to settings and then location services.
“What are you doing?”
“Disabling the GPS.”
“Don’t.”
She stared at me a moment. “What are you thinking?”
“I’m not sure yet. But if we know they know where we are, but they don’t know we know they know, that gives us a small advantage.”
She crossed her eyes. “…OK…”
We pulled into the parking lot at the hotel and went through reception into the bar. There, we had a clear view of the parking lot. We ordered a couple of draft beers and sat in the corner with them. I turned mine around on the table a few times before speaking, studying the rings it made on the dark wood. Finally, I said, “By now, they have phoned Camacho and told him they’ve found us.”
“Agreed.”
“So he has told them one of three things.” I raised my thumb as number one. “Eliminate them.” I raised my index finger as number two. “Find out why they are there, or three.” I raised my middle finger. “Do nothing, just keep watching.”
“OK, what’s your money on?”
I thought a moment, then shook my head. “He won’t want to eliminate us, not yet anyway. He’ll want information. He’ll want to know why we were asking his brother questions about the Redferns, and he’ll want to know what we are doing out in Garrison. So he needs to decide whether to interrogate us, which is a pretty drastic option, or keep following us.” I thought a moment longer. “My bet is he won’t want to show his hand yet. He’ll wait and see what we do.”
She nodded. “I agree. But, Stone, there is no way we can go back to Ingrid now.”
I smiled and pulled off half my beer. “There is no way that they can see us with Ingrid. Not quite the same thing. I have a feeling Ingrid may be getting in touch with us before very long.”
Dehan picked up her glass, then put it down again. “There is something else. Sunny Sally at the Hitching Post. She will have been over the road like a shot as soon as Laurel and Hardy were out of there. So she will be aware now t
hat not only is the NYPD looking for Amy and Charlie, but some bad guys are too.”
I grunted and nodded. “Exactly. So either she will clam up completely, or she’ll seek our help.”
She made a face of skepticism. “That may be a little optimistic, Stone.”
“It may be, but the real question is what do we do now?” I jerked my head at the window and she turned to see a dark blue Audi Q7 pulling in a few spaces from the Jag.
“About as subtle as a ring pull on a bikini.”
I thought about it a moment. “Things we are more or less sure of: I think we can say that we are fairly certain Amy and Charlie came here in her parents’ Chevy, and that Ingrid is keen to hide that fact for some reason. We can also say that we know Julio Camacho is interested in our investigation. So I think our next step is very clear. We need to enlist the help of the sheriff’s department to see if we can locate the Impala, and squeeze out some information about Amy and Charlie, before Julio decides to take matters into his own hands.”
She pulled out her phone again, made a quick search and dialed a number.
“Good morning, Sheriff. This is Detective Carmen Dehan of the New York Police Department. I am here in Vinton with my partner, Detective John Stone, and I wonder if you could spare us a few minutes of your time… I appreciate that. We’ll be there in about fifteen minutes.”
We gave Julio’s men another couple of minutes to check in and go up to their rooms, then we walked out of the bar. In reception, Dehan handed her phone to the spotty guy with the leering eyes and told him, “Keep this safe till I get back, will you, pal?”
“Why sure, yes, of course.”
“Don’t put it in the safe. Just leave it there, behind the desk. Don’t lose it.”
“Yes, no, of course.”
Outside, I asked her, “What if somebody tries to call you?”
“It’ll be forwarded to your cell.”
It was a short drive to the sheriff’s office, up SK Avenue and then right, down East 3rd Street to a vast, red brick fortress that looked as though it might have been designed with World War Three in mind, or the advent of Skynet. We parked out front and climbed the concrete steps to the entrance. Once through the steel and glass doors, a deputy on the front desk told us to follow him. He didn’t talk, or comment on the weather, he just led us through a spacious room with half a dozen empty desks to a door with a brass plaque on it that said Sheriff Rod O’Brien. He knocked, opened the door and announced us. Then he went away.