C T Ferguson Box Set

by Tom Fowler

  “How do you know?”

  “An informant,” I said.

  “This snitch tell you where the girls are?” Norton said.

  “Unfortunately, no.”

  “So you want me to work off the books and help you find these girls?”

  “We might need more than just you,” I pointed out. “The Zhangs could have a lot of men. Right now, we have three. You’d make four.”

  “Given the stakes, I think I can rouse a few people to help me.”

  “Good. How soon can you be at my house in Federal Hill?” I gave him the address.

  “Within the hour,” he said.

  “Drive fast.”

  After I hung up with Captain Norton, I researched which management companies rented warehouses in Catonsville. It wasn’t a long list. Finding one rented by the Zhangs was similarly quick. Property management companies didn’t get targeted by hackers, so they only set up basic security measures. The Zhangs rented a warehouse at 5700 Executive Drive in Catonsville. With few occasions to explore Catonsville, I punched it up on a map and then pawed through my top desk drawer. I looked at my watch. If I hurried, I could make it.

  “Rollins, you’re with me,” I said as I stood.

  “Where are you going?”

  “To check out the building,” I said. “We need to know if the girls are there, or if it’s just a place they’re renting.”

  “Then let’s wait for reinforcements,” Rich said.

  “No time. I want to get in while there’s still a legitimate reason to.”

  Rollins stood ready to go with me. “So what’s your legitimate need?” he said.

  I flashed Rich a fake ID Joey Trovato made for me a while ago. “Building inspector,” I said.

  “You think it’ll work?”

  “I think it’s our best chance.” I told Rich about Captain Norton and when he and what reinforcements he could bring would arrive. “Wish me luck.”

  “I’m not sure I want to encourage you,” said Rich.

  I drove the Caprice like it was meant to be driven. Its souped-up V8 yearned for an eager driver and an open throttle. I provided both. All the way along I-83, onto the Beltway, Frederick Avenue, then Ingleside Avenue, I tore up the pavement, screeched the tires, and zoomed around everyone I could. I collected enough middle fingers to make the world’s most morbid necklace, but I got us there in record time. Lights were still on inside.

  “Wait in the car,” I said to Rollins, “but be ready if I need you in there.”

  “How will you let me know?”

  “I’ll text you. Or you’ll hear gunfire. Hopefully it won’t be me getting shot.”

  “I’d feel better if I could go with you,” Rollins said.

  “Only have the one ID,” I said. “I’ll be fine. Just some smooth-talking and looking around.”

  “I’ll be ready.”

  I went up to the front door. It was locked, so I pushed the buzzer. A voice crackled over the intercom a few seconds later. “Who is it?” Asian.

  “Building inspector,” I said.

  “Building inspector? It’s the end of the day.”

  “End of the day for me, too, pal.” I took care to emphasize the Baltimore accent I always denied having. “I just want to do this job and go home. I’m in, I’m out, and unless you got shit falling down in there, everybody gets a gold star.”

  “Fine, fine. We’ll let you in.”

  Ah, the power of social engineering. People wanted to be helpful. Sometimes, they merely wanted to be rid of you. Either way, the door buzzed a moment later, and I opened it. Someone turned most of the lights off already. The entry closing choked off some ambient light. I stood in a dim lobby. An unused reception desk sat before me. Everything else in the building was a window, hallway, or closed door. One of the interior doors opened. A Chinese man and a large white man walked through it. Both looked at me like they wanted to boot me through a window without opening it first.

  “Building inspector,” I said, flashing them the ID Joey made for me. If they called to verify it, I was cooked. I could only hope to get Rollins in here before they shot me. It was the end of the day, though, and I’d been convincing.

  “Who ordered the inspection?” the Chinese man said. His accent was mild.

  “New lease, new inspection. Them’s the rules. I just play by them.”

  “You make us play by them, too.”

  “I’ll be as quick as I can,” I said. “I want to get home and open a beer.”

  The large white fellow smiled in empathy. The Chinese man stared steadily at me. He studied my ID like it contained a secret code. “Fine,” he said after a moment of getting my pulse elevated. “Be quick. Ollie will show you around.”

  “Swell.” Ollie led me through a different door than the one from which they emerged. Offices lined either side of a corridor stretching to the back of the building. I went into and out of each as quickly as I could while looking like I actually inspected something. I did the same in the two bathrooms at the end of the hallway. When I finished, Ollie led me back up the hallway, out to the lobby, then through another door.

  “Odd the hallways don’t merge,” I said.

  Ollie shrugged. “Ain’t our building.”

  “Mine, either. Just another wonder of design.” I wrote something on my legal pad to make him think I took a productive note. The rooms off this hallway could have been labs or served as a production area. The smallest was at least three times the size of the offices in the other hallway. While none were in use, I could see hookups for sinks, showers, and other industrial equipment. The girls would need showers; these rooms would work. I didn’t see any evidence of recent use, however, and I didn’t think Ollie would let me break out a fine-toothed comb. At the end of the hallway, swinging double doors looked back at us. I started toward them. Ollie coughed.

  “Do you need to go back there?” he said.

  “My title’s not building-except-for-the-back-rooms inspector,” I said.

  He frowned. “I guess not. OK, come on.” Ollie pushed the doors open, and I followed him. He went through another heavier door, and we walked into an industrial refrigerator. I got an ominous feeling about it and palmed my cell phone in case I needed to fire off a quick text to Rollins. If my phone got a signal in here. They’d filled the refrigerator with boxes, crates, and cartons of varying sizes. None looked large enough to hold a person. At least, not an intact person. I shuddered at the thought rather than the temperature.

  I took more time in the fridge. It’s easy to hide a secret panel, lever, or something to open an area a casual inspection would miss. I learned those tricks in Hong Kong, so I knew what to look for. I didn’t find anything. After touring the refrigerator, Ollie led me back out through the swinging double doors into the hallway. We returned to the main corridor and then to the last part of the building. The final hallway opened into a large storage warehouse. There was enough room to play baseball inside, and the outfielders could check in delivery trucks during a break in the action.

  One trailer sat waiting to be picked up by a truck. I walked to it during my inspection. While Ollie wasn’t looking, I rapped on the side of it a few times. I didn’t hear any noises coming from it. I made my way around it and rapped on it again. Ollie hadn’t said anything yet. If they were keeping the girls in there, he might not have shown me the warehouse, and he certainly would have objected to my knocking on the metal trailer. Silence greeted me every time I rapped. I turned and headed toward the door. Ollie looked at me and pursed his lips.

  “I gotta make sure stuff is sound,” I said.

  “Including a trailer?” he said.

  “Comes free with the inspection. Besides, I can’t resist knocking on those things. I don’t know why.” I offered him a grin I hoped would disarm whatever situation might be developing.

  Ollie shrugged massive shoulders and led me back out. “Everything looks OK?” he said.

  “Looks good to me,” I said.

&nb
sp; “My boss will be pleased.”

  “I didn’t catch your boss’ name.”

  “Have a good night,” Ollie said. He gave me a smile, one encouraging me not to ask again.

  “You, too,” I said, and I walked out, down the sidewalk, and back to my car. Rollins reclined on the backseat. If I didn’t know better, I would have accused him of sleeping.

  “Anything?” he said.

  “They have the room to keep them here,” I said, “but no girls.”

  “So this was a waste,” Rollins said as I started the car.

  “No,” I said. “We know the girls aren’t here. It’s more than we knew before.”

  “You’re optimistic.”

  “Sometimes, it’s hard.”

  “This one of those times?” he said.

  I nodded. “Very much so.”

  “You think they moved them already?”

  “Maybe,” I said. “All I know is the clock keeps ticking.”

  When we got back to my house, Captain Norton waited with two fellow state troopers. The first was tall and stocky with the same blond crew cut he’d probably been getting since he was eleven. The other was Hispanic, also tallish, and wiry. If I were a betting man—and I occasionally am—I would have taken the Hispanic trooper over the other one in a fight. Norton introduced them as Lance Bell and Jose Chavez. A round of handshakes later, and we were all caught up on who was whom.

  Everyone drank coffee. Rich said he made a new pot. Maybe all the wretched coffee Rich choked down in the police station all day made him so generous with my Ninja and its interesting blends. He and Gloria might enjoy a weak coffee brew-off, and I would have jumped off the roof before judging it. I bucked the trend by fixing a mug of tea, and then filled everyone in on what happened at the warehouse.

  “Any leads on where the girls are?” Norton said.

  “None,” I said.

  “What about Rosenberg?”

  “Can’t find him.”

  Bell shook his head, but no one said anything until Norton spoke again. “Rosenberg’s crew?”

  “The party line is they don’t know where he is,” I said.

  “You don’t think they’re involved in taking the girls?”

  “No. I think Rosenberg farmed it out to the Chinese and collected a nice paycheck each time.”

  “These were all families who owed him money?” Bell said.

  “I guess he thought the abductions would speed up payments.”

  “Did they?”

  “According to his financials, no.”

  “You’ve seen his financials?” Chavez said.

  “His accountant was forthcoming with some information,” I said. It wasn’t a huge lie. “I got it verified by someone else.”

  “And?” Chavez said.

  “And he’s barely staying afloat,” I said. “If not for the money he pulls in from these abductions, he might have folded up shop by now.”

  “Be a damn shame,” Norton said.

  “It’s more a shame we have missing girls on our hands,” I said. “Some of them have been gone long enough we’ll probably never get them back.”

  “That’s fucked up,” Bell said.

  We all nodded in agreement with his observation.

  “What’s our next move?” Rich said.

  “Find the girls,” I said. “We have to presume we’re on a twelve-hour clock. It doesn’t give us a lot of time.”

  “When we do locate them?”

  “Once we know where they are and can be sure these assholes aren’t going to kill them all, we can call all your cop friends and have a handcuff party.”

  “I like handcuff parties,” Norton offered.

  “TMI,” I said.

  Rollins left to get some supplies and came back with two large bags on his shoulders. The first was a military-issue camouflage duffel. The second was black with pink highlights and straps. He plunked them both in my living room. It sounded like he dropped a ton of metal on the floor. I looked to make sure they didn’t crash through the floor and wind up in the basement. “In case we have to do any heavy lifting later,” Rollins said.

  “I presume those are all legally owned and registered firearms,” Norton said.

  “They are. Too bad I left all the paperwork in my third duffel, though.”

  “I think it all looks in order.”

  “You said Rosenberg has an accountant?” Rich said.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “And the accountant doesn’t know where he is.”

  “So he says.”

  “You think he knows where the girls are?”

  “Didn’t come up in any of our conversations,” I said.

  “Might be worth finding out,” Rich said.

  “His office is in Fells Point. Why don’t we go see where he goes when he leaves?”

  Norton grinned. “We’ll sit on his place. I like it. Bell, Chavez, and I will go. Give us the address. We’ll let you know when he leaves and what direction he’s headed.”

  “OK,” I said. “I’ll see if I can find out anything more about what the Zhangs are up to in our fair city.” I gave Norton Eisenberg’s business card. He called the number on the card and hung up quickly.

  “Good, he’s still there,” Norton said. “Nothing like a hard-working accountant.”

  “And it’s not even tax season,” I said.

  “This guy might be doing taxes for his cellmates when it’s all over,” Bell said.

  The Zhangs didn’t leave a lot of tracks. They rented the warehouse in Catonsville and a suite in a downtown hotel. The latter wouldn’t be big enough to hold the girls, and a hotel made a poor place to stash a bunch of kidnapping victims. The Zhang family was as slimy as a newborn lizard, but I couldn’t pin anything to them with what I found.

  On a lark, I looked into Jiyang Chen. He had put down some temporary roots, renting a basement apartment in the county and buying his car from a local Carmax. He also formed a limited liability company with Edwin Zhang which professed to be in the shipping and receiving business. I imagined they told all manners of lies about what goods they trafficked if asked. I wanted to know if this shell LLC had any holdings.

  The company leased a shipping container at the Port of Baltimore and a small warehouse on Key Highway. The container was not currently at the Port. Now we were getting somewhere. Rich perked up when I leaned forward in my chair. “What’s going on?” he said. “Did you find something?”

  “Maybe,” I said. I explained what I found about Chen, the Zhangs, their phony company, and its local holdings.

  “Sounds promising,” said Rich.

  “It does. The last thing we thought was promising turned out to be a dud, though.” I kept looking into the shipping container and small warehouse. The warehouse lease expired at the end of this month with an option to renew, which no one yet exercised. The shipping container bore a bunch of paperwork, including what I guessed to be a bogus manifest, but it also listed a departure date of tomorrow morning. A little over half a day remained until someone oblivious to what he was doing would load the container onto a cargo ship bound for China. Then Katherine Rodgers and however many girls were stashed in there with her would never be seen again.

  “You want to roll out on it?” Rollins said.

  “Not just yet,” I said. “We have a little time. Let’s see what Norton and his troopers turn up.”

  Fifteen minutes later, Casey Norton called my cell phone. “Your accountant is on the move.”

  “Good. Where’s he going?”

  “We’re tailing him out of Fells Point right now. Looks like he’s headed down Light Street.”

  He could take it to Key Highway if he wanted to stop by the warehouse, or he could get to the Port easily from there, too. “There are a couple of possibilities for where he might go, I think.” I said. I filled Norton in on my research.

  “Looks like he’s headed for Key Highway,” Norton said.

  “Let us know. We can be ready to move
in a couple minutes, and it isn’t far.”

  “I don’t think he’s going to the port.” He paused. “No, he’s not. He just turned into an industrial place. Looks like a rundown building for junk storage.”

  “Has to be it,” I said. “Can you park somewhere you can keep an eye on things?”

  “This isn’t my first rodeo, you know,” said Norton.

  “I know.”

  “Are you on your way?”

  “We will be in a minute.” I hung up and told Rollins and Rich what Norton said.

  “Let’s roll out,” Rollins said. “This is the most involved bodyguard gig I ever signed on for.”

  “But the most interesting, too. Where else do you get to take down Chinese sex traffickers?”

  “It’s a nice perk,” he admitted.

  Chapter 16

  Rich, Rollins, and I donned Kevlar vests. Rollins brought enough armor for everyone, Norton and his crew included, and enough guns to make a militia envious. I packed my .45 with two extra clips and took another .45 and spare magazine from Rollins. I hoped the first gun and resupply would be more than enough. Rich borrowed a few handguns. Rollins carried a handgun and a small machine gun. I doubted he held my preference of not using it.

  We repacked the excess into Rollins’ duffel bags and loaded them into the trunk of the Caprice. I capitalized on the performance engine and made it to the warehouses on Light Street in a matter of minutes. Norton and his fellow troopers were parked on the street. I pulled the Caprice behind them. They wore their own vests, but each of them took a backup weapon in case things got ugly. Bell took a shotgun and smiled like he used one in a similar situation before. Norton chose his men well.

  Once everyone was armed for war, we drove to the row of warehouses and parked near the entrance. Rollins scanned the front of the warehouse. “Drive around,” he said. “Might help to know what’s going on out back.”