52
While Sandovan was correct about the competence of the Salento crime scene investigators, the one area where they couldn’t compete with their television brethren was in the speed of processing evidence.
Even with the expedited priority, it took two days to get the lab report. There were two latent prints on the flask, but neither was suitable for an ID. Nonetheless, lab tech Terry Patterson was brimming with excitement as he presented his report to Mitchell and Sandovan.
“The prints weren’t useable, but we caught a break. You see how the screw top of the flask is on a stainless steel arm so you don’t lose the cap when you’re shit-faced at a ball game? Well whoever drank from it must have a beard or a mustache or something, because the hinge of that arm pulled a hair out of his face. And lucky for us, the hair had a follicle attached. As a precaution, I also swabbed the mouth of the flask.
“That hair was enough to give us a full DNA reference profile. All we need is something to compare it against. Do you have a suspect?”
“You bet we do,” Mitchell said. “Sandman, any ideas on how to get a sample?”
“Normally I’d suggest we get a couple rookies to do a garbage collection. We might be able to get a hair sample that way. Depends on where this guy Otis lives though. If he’s as rich as the Cap says, he’s probably not taking his garbage to the curb every Friday morning.”
Mitchell paused. “Let’s find out where he lives and see what we can do.”
Otis left his office at nine p.m. after a meeting with the auditors about the fiscal year end for Verdant Florists and Greenhouses. He felt good. It had been another year of double-digit growth for his money-laundering legitimate business and his ever-burgeoning cash crop of marijuana grow houses. He was wearing his favorite suit, custom-tailored by a gentleman on Savile Row in London who also fitted the Prince of Wales and a coterie of Saudi sheikhs. And he was about to take a drive in his Bentley to pick up the choreographer of the Salento Knights football team’s cheerleading squad. After a late dinner, Otis anticipated an epic night of sexual depravity.
He drove the Bentley out of the parking garage and took a left on Carruthers street. Then he took his customary shortcut to get to the Broadhurst Expressway, another left down an alley that would take him all the way to Downey Street without traffic lights. It would shave ten minutes off his travel time. Otis liked efficiency.
As he braked for a car pulling out of an apartment’s underground lot, he glanced in the Bentley’s rear view mirror just in time to see a pizza delivery vehicle plunge right into his rear bumper.
“Idiot!” Otis exclaimed. He was barely shaken, since the pizza guy’s sub-compact would be hard pressed to move his five-thousand-pound-plus car. He reached down to the right side of the carbon-fiber center console, pressed the hazard light button and got out of his vehicle.
“You fool,” he said. “Do you know what kind of car this is?”
Otis noticed the front end of the pizza car was heavily damaged. There was minor damage to the back of the Bentley. The trunk had sprung open from the impact.
“Sorry dude,” the pizza guy said. He was just a college kid. “It’s twenty-minutes-or-free for the pizza, so they text me shortcuts. I shoulda been paying more attention.”
From the front of Otis’s vehicle, a man stepped out of the car that had been leaving the apartment underground. Sergeant Randall Tewks badged Otis and the kid. “Salento PD. Everyone okay?”
“Yes officer. I think this young man will agree that he’s at fault. Listen, I have somewhere very important to be. Can we settle this quickly?”
Tewks appraised the accident scene. He noted the damage to the Bentley’s trunk. He raised the trunk lid and looked down at a large clear plastic package filled with white powder. Beside it was another bag containing several bundles of cash. He looked up at Otis. “I don’t think a quick resolution is going to be possible.”
Tewks drew his gun and pointed it at Otis, who was in shock. He never even carried their own product, and his organization had never dealt in anything other than pot. His remonstrations were sincere. “I have no idea what that is, or how it got in my car!” Otis protested.
The pizza guy leaned in. “Dude, that’s like a key and a half of Peruvian blow. Hey officer, how’s about I take a sleeve of that cash off your hands? You know, with the economy being what it is? You get just as good a bust with what’s left.”
Tewks laughed. “If only it were that simple.”
He turned to Otis and put a bullet in his chest. Otis fell to his knees. He looked down at a smoking hole that had desecrated the finest wool money could buy. The charcoal grey was turning black with his blood.
Two men emerged from the darkness of the alley. “Okay, it’s done,” J.A. said.
Curtis grabbed Otis by the shoulders just as he was about to fall over. With a gloved hand he pulled Otis’s gun from the shoulder holster on his left side, and put it in Otis’s hand. Then he pointed the gun at Tewks.
“Which side you want it in, Randall?”
“Left love handle,” Tewks grinned. “And don’t forget to miss the vitals.”
Curtis smiled back, then pulled the trigger.
“Damn that burns!” Tewks said. Tears filled his eyes, and he slumped to one knee. He took a few seconds to get over the shock, then he got back to his feet, walked to his car and called it in.
J.A. walked over to the pizza delivery man. “So, Denny, this is airtight. Tewks will guide you through it, just like we said. When all’s said and done, there will be fifty Gs in your college fund. When you graduate, we will find you a job somewhere in our organization. The clean side or the dark side, your choice.”
Denny shook his hand. “Rammi Vargas is a friend of mine. I appreciate the opportunity.”
Curtis nodded. “We knew that Otis’s affection for violence would one day come full circle. So we’ve been preparing to take him out for a year. We’ve planted two more kilos of the cocaine in his penthouse, and as you can see, we have a special relationship with the Salento police. We’ll cooperate fully with the investigation. Then the Montclair brothers are going to take control of the operation and run it the way it should be run. Like a business.”
Tewks limped back over from his car, clutching a towel to his side. “Okay, you guys better go. I’ve got the cavalry coming.”
J.A. and Curtis disappeared into the alley as a choir of sirens announced the approaching ambulance and police black and whites.
53
Good news travels fast. But bad news can cover two furlongs before the good news jockeys are even out of the gate.
Any officer-involved shooting sends a shock wave through the squad, the precinct, the department and the city. Mitchell had gone home to his own place since Mya was living at the office. At half-past midnight Sandovan’s number appeared on his cell phone’s caller ID display. “This had better be good Sandman, I was in the middle of a dream where I was playing the eighteenth hole at Pebble and was on the green in two.”
“Otis Gaverill’s dead! Randall Tewks shot him!”
Mitchell sat bolt upright in bed. “What! How the hell…? What was Tewksy doing anywhere near Gaverill?”
“Pure coincidence. He was leaving his apartment building and witnessed a fender bender involving Gaverill’s car. The guy had a couple of keys of coke in his trunk and Tewks said that when he saw it, Gaverill panicked and pulled a pistol on him. Randall took one in the left side, but he put one center-mass on Otis. The other guy involved in the fender bender corroborated the story.”
Mitchell started to put his clothes on. “Well, that solves one problem.”
“What’s that?” Sandovan replied.
“How to get a DNA sample from Otis.”
They met downtown at the precinct with the rest of the squad. Then they all went over to Salento General and visited Tewks. His wound was a through-and-through, and the bullet hadn’t come close to the kidney or the liver. Nonetheless, Tewks was tired after being interviewed by int
ernal affairs and wanted to get some sleep.
The rest of the detectives went back to the squad room. Hernandez jimmied the lock on the captain’s office door and got a bottle of Bushmills whisky out of the file cabinet. They each took a splash in their coffee mugs.
“Damn, Tewksy’s going to get a medal for this. Then he’ll be insufferable,” Mitchell said.
“Deserves it. Remember two years ago when we were involved in that firefight with the Honduran human trafficking ring? I just about crapped my pants,” Sandovan said.
Nelson took a sip of his whisky. “I’ve pulled my piece, but I’ve never had to fire on anyone.”
Ryerson poured another round of the Bushmills. “You don’t really think about it at the time. It’s after the fact that you either deal with it or let it fester in the back of your mind. Best thing to do is forget all the macho bullshit and take all the counseling the department’s willing to give.”
They toasted Detective Sergeant Randall Tewks one last time, then headed back home for a few fitful hours of sleep before their shift.
In the morning, Captain Ramsey once again found himself staring down a phalanx of reporters, microphones and cameras at the obligatory press conference. The men in the Eighth Precinct were counting the “FYIs” as the captain fielded questions. So far there were six.
At the moment, a trench-coated tenderfoot was attempting to do his best impersonation of Edward R. Murrow. “Captain Ramsey, given that Otis M. Gaverill is one of Salento’s most prominent citizens, what special measures are you taking in this investigation.”
“Well FYI, we handle every shooting in this city with the same meticulous methodology. Sergeant Randall Tewks is a very well regarded detective with fifteen years of commendation-filled service to the taxpayers. But we do not close ranks on our own. Every detail will be scrutinized by an independent panel of investigators. Mr. Gaverill’s closest colleagues, Curtis and J.A. Montclair, are cooperating fully with the investigation as well. They have mentioned that there seemed to be some changes in Mr. Gaverill’s behavior over the past few months, but we are following up.”
A bottle-blond showing too much cleavage asked a follow-up. “Captain, can you confirm that it was cocaine in the trunk of Mr. Gaverill’s car?”
“There were two substances found in Mr. Gaverill’s trunk. The first was easily identified—it was twenty-two thousand dollars in cash. The second is being analyzed.”
She pressed him. “You mean the detectives couldn’t ascertain what it was?”
“FYI, we don’t slice open the bag of dope with a pen-knife and take a little taste. Real police officers don’t do that. FYI cocaine doesn’t have a flavor. You might be able to taste whatever it’s cut with, but your last thought is likely to be, ‘Damn, they cut this stuff with arsenic.’ Regardless, you know the department has a thorough drug-screening program and anyone who was ignorant enough to taste seized substances would end up on suspension when the metabolites from the drugs showed up in a specimen. The powdered substance in Mr. Gaverill’s trunk is being tested with a reagent kit downtown and will be confirmed with mass spectrometry.”
The detectives switched the TV off when the number of FYIs reached fourteen. Mitchell poured coffee for Sandovan and himself, then pulled his chair away from the desk and put his feet up. “I’m still kind of pissed that we couldn’t shake something out of Curtis Montclair when we sprung that dope package on him,” he said.
Sandovan nodded in agreement. “Yeah, pretty unflappable dude. Sounds like he and his brother are throwing Otis under the bus, hey?”
They turned their sympathies to Nelson, who had inherited Tewks’s duties as the lead for parade security as Pyotr Ptushko’s visit loomed. Together they read over the finalized plans, emergency response contingencies, and agendas for the festivities.
“This stuff is the least of our worries,” Nelson said. “Seems like people are forgetting there’s still a bunch of nutters out there knocking off grow ops.”
“Might be a blessing,” Sandovan said. “Gives us a bit of time to do our jobs.”
The captain’s news conference was also of great interest for the Colonel and his men. They watched it on Diego’s laptop and marveled at the crush of reporters. “What does this mean for our mission tomorrow night, Commandante?” Luis asked.
The Colonel weighed the question. “I believe if anything, it should help us,” he responded. “I doubt this was an accident. It shows there is dissent within Gaverill’s organization. And where there is dissent, there is usually uncertainty.”
They went over the assault plan again. It was simple, like all their tactics. As Barros the mechanic always said, “The fewer moving parts, the less can go wrong.”
54
Barros’s saying was being proven in the war room at the advertising agency of Dunn, Burgess & Taylor. With fourteen different scenarios playing out on the screens, the team was on the verge of sensory overload. Thankfully the four front-runners were distancing themselves from the pack. This allowed them to each occupy one of the big screen monitors.
The building mural “Zealots Rule The Jean Pool” was complete, and the artists were being interviewed by media outlets ranging from Communication Arts to Vanity Fair. They had made an appearance on a national TV talk show and were being commissioned to do other large-scale murals by cities across the country.
The Yoga Hottie was now a bona-fide celebrity. He had been videoconferencing with the Dalai Lama, was being offered his own series of fitness DVDs, and the number of marriage proposals was now up to thirty-seven. “The dude has basically created his own reality show,” Arlo said. “It’s fucking brilliant.”
“I bet he stays in there,” said Leah. “Especially with more than three dozen crazy-ass chicks wanting to drag him to the altar.”
“I bet he moves to Utah and marries all of them,” Sisha replied. “Then they live in a cult compound, happily ever after.”
“I suppose you can’t get much more attention for a brand than creating your own cult around it,” Mya sighed. She was fatigued. She missed Mitchell and his home cooking.
“Oh this is awesome,” said Arlo.
“What’s that?” Mya said.
“You know Jake Bodanovich?”
“No.”
“He’s the New York football quarterback whose photo you see when you search ‘publicity whore’ on the Internet.”
“Go on,” Mya said.
“He is saying that he’ll donate fifty-thousand to our ‘Charm My Pants Off’ lady if she will meet him for a date wearing those jeans.”
“The ones with the stitches that pop open, like on her app?” Sisha asked.
Arlo ignored her. “And she’s getting another offer from Playboy magazine. That’s one hundred thousand dollars for her charity and a ton of publicity.”
“Has she said what she’s going to do?” Mya said.
“Nope. This is pretty shrewd of her…she is asking fans to vote on whether she should do either, by texting a yes or a no to CHARM, or 24276. Every text is worth another fifty cents to her charity. The lady’s a natural.”
Sisha clicked through to the CMPO website. The counter said that the app had been downloaded 377,690 times. She brought up the calculator on her smartphone. “Holy crap, at a buck ninety-nine per download, that’s over three quarters of a million bucks!”
“I’m telling you, sex still sells,” Arlo said.
Leah gave them an update on the pair of jeans in the block of Lucite set in the center of Salento’s Founding Fathers’ Boardwalk. “So far they’ve been filled with donations and emptied twenty-six times, for a total of one hundred and sixteen thousand dollars raised to support fair trade, organic clothing manufacturing. And that’s not all. The Organic Cotton Growers of America have said they’ll match the amount, so that brings it up to a quarter of a mil.”
“Damn, who knew?” Mya said.
Back in Russia, all the media and viral buzz generated by the Zealot Jeans campaign was attra
cting the attention of Yasmine. She prided herself on going above and beyond what Pyotr asked of her—whether in the boardroom or the bedroom. She watched the Internet chatter in amazement. She was a secret fan of Yoga Hottie, although she was deathly afraid of spiders. Snakes didn’t bother her, unless they were the corporate species. In that case Pyotr usually squashed them.
Every hour of their schedule in America was now spoken for. Some hours were more formal than others, but it would be a very frenetic trip. No one suspected that the death of the dockworkers’ union leader was anything other than a tragic accident, and she knew the police investigation had been closed. The new union leaders and Port Authority executives had been well taken care of. All that remained there was the photo op. She knew one of Pyotr’s PR flunkies had set up a media event whereby he would be photographed in the cab of one of the port’s cranes as it unloaded a fifty-foot metal container full of machine parts.
Their private plane was fueled. In two days they would be airborne, en route to the three-ring circus that was America.
55
Andre was in position in his sniper’s hide. The ghillie suit had once again disguised his movements as he slipped past the wireless camera network hidden in the trees. He had a 180-degree view of the fence line and the buildings beyond.
The Colonel and his men knew from watching the greenhouse facility that the last vehicle admitted into the late Otis Gaverill’s money-processing building arrived just before eight p.m. Barros, Arturo, Diego and the Colonel had gone in on the spur road in one of their vans, fitted with Salento Gas and Power truck decals. They moved carefully through the back woods on the path Andre had prescribed to circumvent the cameras. With fifty yards to go they stopped and waited for Andre’s signal.
A mile from their positions, a small panel van marked “Verdant Fertilizers” entered the lane to the greenhouse complex. It would follow the road for two minutes before emerging from the wooded drive and approaching the front gate to the greenhouse complex. As it rounded a corner, the driver saw a man lying in the center of the roadway. Beside him was a mountain bike. The man wore a hydration backpack, as if he’d been out for a lengthy ride. He wasn’t moving.
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