When They Come for You

by James W. Hall

  “I like my Cadburys like anyone else.”

  “Might help if you read up on the subject.”

  “Listen, Jackson, don’t get ahead of yourself. I haven’t signed on for this. I’m just listening.”

  “Okay, let me tell you how she got involved.”

  “Maybe we should cut to the finish.”

  “You need to hear the whole deal. It won’t make sense otherwise.”

  I sighed, said fine, the whole deal.

  “Rachel had this idea, a short documentary film about chocolate. The way cacao was grown, harvested, manufactured, then focus on the high-end gourmet stuff. Nothing controversial, a demo, really, show her skills, her camera work. That’s all she wanted, enter some film festivals, a foot in the door. She loved chocolate, a total chocaholic, so it was a natural. She was researching, looking for a catchy angle, when she stumbled on something, started tugging on this thread, and the more she tugged, the scarier it got.”

  “When did she discover this scary thing?”

  “Two months before she was murdered.”

  “I’m sorry? Your wife was murdered?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And when did this alleged murder take place?”

  “Not alleged, it happened.”

  “Okay, when did it happen?”

  “October, same time as the harvest on the cacao plantations in Africa.”

  “And you reported this murder to the police?”

  Jackson slumped against the padded booth. Wiry guy in his late thirties with ostentatious sideburns, a neck tat of a fancy crucifix.

  “Sure, I talked to the cops and some idiots at the State Department, for all the good it did.” He stared glumly out the plate glass at the midmorning traffic. “No one could be bothered. They didn’t take me seriously. A murder all the way over in Africa. What proof did I even have? Maybe she ran away. Was your marriage solid? Insulting shit like that.

  “After a while I thought, Christ, I keep going the official route, I’ll ring somebody’s alarm, put myself in the crosshairs of the people who killed Rachel. These guys have spies all over. Then I started thinking of other ways to go, and I remembered you, the stuff you write, what a bulldog you are. And I thought, yeah, put it out in public so the law would have to take notice.”

  I was silent, worried Jackson Sharp might be a total whack job. Spies all over—made him sound like a conspiracy nut. Wouldn’t be my first.

  “What kind of work you in, Jackson?”

  “High school teacher. History.”

  “Here in Miami?”

  “Gables High. Look, come on. Let me show you the film so you see what’s what.”

  “I don’t know. This isn’t exactly what I do.”

  “You need to see the goddamn film, okay? Do that, then you can walk away. This whole thing might be too hot for you. These are dangerous assholes, they do whatever it takes to keep their secrets. They’ve got more money than the pope. They killed Rachel; they’d come after you if they knew what you’re doing.”

  Like he was searching for eavesdroppers, Jackson made a show of scanning the restaurant, looking over the late-breakfast crowd, mostly retirees and, three booths away, huddled over pancakes, some party-dressed kids trying to quell their South Beach hangovers.

  I knew Jackson was baiting me with the danger bit, but I couldn’t help myself and said, “Listen, just so we’re clear, risk is not an issue for me. My subjects have to meet certain criteria. So far, this one doesn’t.”

  “Yeah, yeah. You need a Miami connection, well, this has one. Rachel was born and raised here. I’ve been here for twenty years.”

  “This isn’t what I do, Jackson. I go after corruption, political issues.”

  I raised a hand, motioned for the waitress.

  She made a U-turn and came over. I asked for the check, and the woman looked down at my half-empty coffee cup and Jackson’s water glass, shook her head at the big spenders. Jackson stared out the window. I mustered a smile for the woman. She tore off a slip from her pad and let it flutter to the table between us. Miami manners.

  When she left, Jackson planted his forearms on the table, leaned forward, and spoke in a rush: “Film’s only two minutes long, watch it, that’s all I’m asking, the soundtrack is muffled, but I’ll narrate.”

  He picked up the iPad, held it out, eyes pleading.

  I sighed, said fine, two minutes.

  “Okay, so, Yacou’s the one they’re rescuing, he’s far left. Nine years old. Snatched from his village, dragged two hundred miles to this plantation where the video is shot.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “So, Yacou, he’s been working on the plantation for years, a slave like the rest of these kids. All of them abducted. So why rescue just Yacou, why didn’t this guy liberate all the kids? I asked Rachel that before she went out there. Answer he gave her, it was too dangerous. One at a time is all Charlie was willing to do. Nothing she could say, it was his show, Rachel just along for the ride, filming over his shoulder.”

  “So the guy she was with, his name was Charlie?”

  “Charlie, yeah, worked for International Global Relief, setting up water-purifying systems, infrastructure out in the boonies. This rescue was like a hobby, ‘his calling’ is how he described it to Rachel.”

  “How’d she hook up with this Charlie fellow?”

  “They started talking in a bar at the Sofitel where she was staying, and she said the magic word, cacao, and I don’t know exactly what went on after that, but she called me before she shot this footage to tell me she was going with this guy Charlie into the jungle, going to film him while he rescued Yacou.”

  “Charlie have a last name?”

  “Don’t know it. I spent hours on the Global Relief website, went over the list of employees. Not a single ‘Charles’ posted in Côte d’Ivoire.”

  “All right. Your wife is tramping around the West African jungle with a guy with no last name who may or may not work for an international relief agency. And then?”

  Jackson Sharp drew a breath and started the video, cocking the tablet so we both could watch.

  Several boys in frayed T-shirts and baggy shorts were squatting in a circle on the ground. Working in a mechanical daze, they held the cacao pods lengthwise in one hand, gave them two sharp whacks with the machete, snapped them open to expose the milky cocoa beans, and shook them out onto the growing pile in the center of the circle.

  “Two years Yacou is chopping pods, spilling out seeds, other risky work, you name it, spraying pesticide, no mask, zero protection. Never been to school, no future, all without any idea what chocolate is.”

  I nodded, warming a little.

  “See those?”

  Jackson tapped the screen and I leaned forward.

  Crosshatching the kids’ arms and legs were shiny scars like the engravings of some horrific tribal ritual.

  Jackson said, “All the kids have them. One wrong swing of the machete. No doctor on the plantation, no medics, these kids are on their own. Disposable.”

  Palm fronds framed the image of the boys. Apparently Rachel and Charlie were hiding in a thicket around thirty feet from where the boys worked. As far as I could tell, the kids were unsupervised.

  “Yacou knows this is the day. Charlie’s been prepping him. Sneaking into this same spot in the jungle, somehow getting Yacou alone and working on him. Kid’s homesick as hell. Finally Yacou builds up his courage, says okay. Plan’s simple. He makes like he has to piss, walks into the bushes where Charlie will be hiding, they make a run for it. Not exactly Mission Impossible, what could go wrong? But watch.”

  Yacou was scrawny. His face narrow and bony, cheeks sunken, and he had a high, wide forehead. On his feet were yellow plastic flip-flops.

  Rachel kept the focus on him as he glanced around the group, then gazed off in the direction of the camera and coughed.

  “That’s the signal,” Jackson said.

  The boy rose, said something to th
e others and headed toward the camera position. In a smooth arc the camera panned to the right and focused on a slender pathway into the dense, green foliage.

  A few seconds later the bushes parted and Yacou appeared. He stood there for several seconds, then winced as if he’d felt a stab of pain.

  A man’s voice said, “What is it? What’s wrong, Yacou?”

  “That’s Charlie talking,” Jackson said.

  The boy raised his hand slowly and pointed at them, swung around and called out in French.

  “Ils sont ici.” Here they are.

  Two Africans in khaki uniforms crashed out of the brush behind him. Following them was a tall man whose blond hair was barbered short and oiled in place. With his blue button-down shirt, striped tie, and pair of black square-framed glasses, he looked ridiculously out of place, like an accounting professor had parachuted into the center of a jungle. There was a fourth man, a white man who showed up at the edge of the frame, a split-second flash of his face, then gone.

  Yacou scrambled off into the bushes.

  The African man in the lead snatched the camera and hurled it. It toppled through the bushes and landed on a patch of earth, still running, still capturing a cockeyed ground-level view past the base of a shrub.

  The next few moments were chaotic with a lot of high-pitched talk I couldn’t decipher. A half minute later when the film ended, I winced and looked across at Sharp.

  He was nodding his head, see, what’d I tell you?

  I said, “How’d you get this film?”

  “That’s part of the story.”

  I drew a breath and said, “Play it again.”

  “So you’ll do it? You’ll take it on?”

  More slowly this time, I said, “Play it again.”

  Maybe with some computer enhancement the voices would clarify, but the tones were clear enough. At first Rachel and Charlie lashed out at their captors, then their indignation melted into hopeless groans. A man whose accent was tinged by inflections that might be German countered the two Americans’ protests with a series of cool, clipped replies.

  After more muffled exchanges, the woman, Rachel, made what sounded like a plea for mercy, followed by a series of desperate noes.

  Though I knew it was coming, the final slanted image captured by the lucky positioning of the camera took my breath away a second time.

  Only a foot from the lens of her own camera, a dark-haired woman slammed to the ground. Flat on her back, she stared up at the sky with wide and empty eyes. Her throat slit, blood pulsing in sync with her final heartbeats, pouring down her neck, puddling onto the brown earth.

  Harper sat unmoving, waiting for the chills to fade. After she drew a decent breath, she tapped the keys, sent Ross’s document to Nick’s printer. When the job was done, she paged through the hard copy until she found the “Contacts” page and settled that on top of the stack.

  She packed the printout into a manila envelope and tore off a page from Nick’s pad to jot him a note, let him know where she’d gone. But a few words in, she stopped, balled up the paper, and threw it in the trash.

  She would just drive by Sharp’s place, check it out. Nothing more than that. She didn’t need backup.

  She had to scroll through a long list of contacts on her phone to find the name of the travel agent Ross had used for years. It was typical of her old-school husband to still be hanging in there with Johnny Parker, Happy-Go-Lucky Travel.

  She asked to speak to Johnny, gave the receptionist her name.

  He came on the line with a flood of apologies. For not coming to the funeral, for not sending a card, for—

  Harper interrupted him. “I need to know something.”

  “Anything.”

  “Did Ross make travel plans with you in the last few weeks?”

  “Don’t worry, I canceled them when I read about what happened.”

  “Tell me his itinerary.”

  “He didn’t tell you about it?”

  “Just read me the list, okay?”

  “I don’t even need to look it up. It was such a weird trip. He never said what it was about, just gave me the cities and dates.”

  “The list, Johnny.”

  “Starts in Africa, Ivory Coast, capital city, Abidjan. From there he flies to Zurich. After that, back home.”

  “You canceled everything?”

  “I did.”

  “How long was he planning to be gone?”

  “I can’t believe he didn’t tell you.”

  “How long was the trip, Johnny?”

  “With layovers, six days.”

  “When was he planning to depart?”

  “Today, tomorrow, I can look it up,” he said. “I’m sorry, but is this about his . . . you know, his murder?”

  She closed her eyes. “From now on, Johnny,” she said, “everything is about his murder.”

  He was quiet for a moment, then: “I’ll do whatever I can. Ross and I go way back.”

  “Thanks. I’ll get back to you.”

  She looked again at the list of addresses.

  Number 1. Jackson Sharp. Edgewater Apt, 3-C, CG

  If CG meant Coral Gables, as she believed, then she knew exactly where Edgewater Apartments was. At this time of day, with any luck, she’d be there in five minutes.

  THIRTEEN

  February, Coral Gables, Florida

  It took seven.

  She circled the block twice to make sure no one was following her, then parked on the street across from the three-story apartment complex. It was a twelve-unit holdout from the fifties, a grubby concrete-block building with rusty window air conditioners and mildew-streaked walls. The Edgewater was surrounded by posh condo towers that put it in perpetual shade. The street empty in both directions.

  Across the street between the high-rises, she could see the iridescent shimmer of Biscayne Bay, smell the sea breeze sifting between the buildings, and hear the wild hilarity of seagulls.

  On the bottom floor each unit at the Edgewater had a small patio. Some were decorated with ferns, bicycles crowded others, charcoal grills, mismatched furniture. Code violations for the Gables good-taste police.

  She decided on a closer look. A quick walk by, nothing more.

  She took the stairs on the north end. Met no one. Smelled meat cooking, a stew. 3-C was on the far end. Rap music thudded from 3-B next door. Beneath her feet, the walkway vibrated to the beat. She ran her hand along the concrete parapet.

  Cold waves prickled across her shoulders. Not fear, not alarm. But a growing certainty that she was precisely where she was supposed to be, doing what she was meant to do. A resolve she hadn’t felt in ages.

  The door to 3-C was shut. The single window was cranked open, but its blinds were closed. A breeze off the bay rattled the aluminum slats, and she saw that a couple of them were bent inward around the hand crank. She stooped, and through the gap she made out a sliver of a tiny kitchenette, countertops littered with pizza boxes and take-out Chinese, dishes piled in the sink, a couple of glossy roaches reconnoitering. On a flimsy table sat a half-empty jug of wine.

  She leaned closer, peered in, and saw a man in the kitchen, opening and shutting drawers, rifling through cabinets, pulling out cereal boxes and spices and bags of rice, letting them fall to the floor. He was around six feet tall, rugged with sandy hair. He had long, thick-wristed arms and a supple physique accentuated by a tight yellow polo shirt, skinny blue jeans. He drew open the oven door, stared inside, slammed it shut.

  Was this Jackson Sharp? He looked too buff to be the same guy who’d eaten all those pizzas and egg rolls and left the boxes for feasting roaches.

  The man turned her way.

  Harper swung back, pressed her shoulders against the wall, waited to a count of five, then took a deep breath and stooped and peeked from that slanted angle. The man had his back to her now, and as he moved deeper into the kitchen, she saw past him into the living room, a lamp fallen to the floor, the glitter of broken glass on the tile, a loun
ge chair cocked all the way back, a man in gym shorts and white T-shirt sprawled in the recliner. Muttonchop sideburns, a gaudy crucifix tattooed on his neck.

  It had to be Jackson Sharp. His eyes were shut, his head thrown back, arms clutched to his gut. His hands coated in blood.

  The rapper from the apartment next door continued to throb through the cement walls. “Every day I’m muscling, every day I’m muscling . . .”

  Another breeze clattered the blinds and swelled them inward. Harper took a backward step. Legs soft, uncertain.

  As she turned to get the hell out of there, the blinds snapped open and the man stared at her. Blondish flattop, face impassive.

  She ran. Heard the apartment door slam. Ran faster.

  At the end of the landing, the stairway a few feet ahead, an iron hand caught her by the collar and yanked her to a stop. A hard, unmistakable object nudged her spine.

  “Easy now, Harper. We’re walking back to the apartment.”

  No. Never let your enemy choose the field of battle.

  It was a simple move, one she’d practiced hundreds of times, rehearsing it daily on sweat-stained mats—a compact torso swivel, a windmill swing, and a chopping blow, the blade of her hand cracking against his wrist.

  His pistol clattered to the cement as she continued the move, straightening and coming up with a fast, hard elbow. The blow glanced his cheekbone, knocked his glasses over the balcony rail.

  It stunned him, left him open to two fast chops to his nose then throat. Which sent him backpedaling, coughing. The guy had dropped his guard. Maybe he was a fighter, maybe not, but he’d mistaken Harper for a pushover, and that would cost him.

  It surprised her that she retained the choreography of the junkyard aikido that used to be her specialty. She was stiffer now, less polished. And she’d forgotten the required speed. Way faster than she’d revved her body for years.

  The man was slumped over, dazed, hands on his knees, panting. As she stepped forward, he grunted and cut to the right and his hand flashed out, a blur, and landed a crushing blow to her right breast, emptied her lungs and staggered her against the apartment wall. Hands gripping her shoulders, he spun her around, got her by the right wrist, yanked her arm up, pressuring hard against the elbow. Over her shoulder she slashed at his face with her free hand, but he pulled away.