I was no code breaker, but there’s something that happens when you spend two decades as a trial lawyer: you get adept at untangling facts. Grouping similar things into similar piles, then looking at them up, down, and from every angle.
So first, I grouped the letters together: AdjC.
I had already pegged the code maker, the chief administrator of Chicken Fox Videos, as not just evil, but something even worse. The careful, systematic kidnapping, torture, and even murder of young girls while in the business of making porn videos told me that it had all the markings of a demon-influenced operation. And if that was the case, then it seemed to me that the sin of pride, that ultimate demonic fantasy of achieving god status on the earth, might be buried in that code somewhere. Flaunting it in an exercise of grotesque hubris.
The initials of Adolfo Constanzo—AC—obviously. But also the letters d and j.
Next, I tried to unscramble the numbers in the code: 11162.
It could be an address. A location. Part of an international telephone exchange. Or a date. What if it was a date? It could be January 11, 1962. Or maybe November 1, 1962.
The exercise seemed fruitless. If the federal code breakers hadn’t figured it out in the last twenty-four hours, what chance did we have? On the other hand, Heather and I had the background data on the possible voodoo connection, and real-life on-the-ground experience with the nasty supernatural forces behind Chicken Fox Videos. That ought to count for something.
I sent a lengthy text to Heather summarizing those thoughts and asked for her input. Then I shoved the phone in my pocket and walked into the gym.
At the far end of the Olympian Boxing Club and Gym were two black teens sparring in the ring. A half-dozen other young men were working out on the speed bags.
An Asian man wearing a shirt emblazoned with the gym’s logo approached me. He asked if I was looking for someone.
“Yes, Carter Collins.”
“Busy now,” he snapped.
“I’m a good friend of his.”
“So are all these guys,” he said with a smile, sweeping his hand over the room.
“This is urgent,” I said.
The man looked into my face for a second, then said, pointing over to the far corner of the ring, “Don’t bother him now, but he’s over there.”
I recognized that face, hunched below the corner turnbuckle, eyeing the ring from his position just about even with the canvas. He was yelling, not loudly, but in a calm, powerful directive.
“You guys know English, don’t you? When I tell you to move your feet, you gotta do exactly that. Now keep them moving!”
I stood off from the ring, waiting for an opening. The boxers were standing and jabbing, but not dancing or circling. More yelling from Carter Collins. The young boxers, dwarfed by their padded headgear and big gloves, started picking up the pace and moving their feet. Carter looked pleased.
My cell dinged. I picked it up. A text from Heather.
U nailed it! His full name was Adolfo de Jesús Constanzo. Thus—the letters AdjC. He was born on November 1, 1962. All that gives us: Adj111C62. That’s got to be it. See you in an hour.
Carter Collins glanced momentarily in my direction, then back to the ring. And then back to me for a longer look. He grabbed the little hammer and rang the bell.
“Take a breather,” Carter yelled to the boxers. He grabbed the ropes, pulled himself to his feet, and began walking my way. I tucked my phone away. Carter’s walk was slower, his reddish sandy hair was thinner, and his lean, muscular fighter’s build had put on a few pounds. But otherwise, he looked remarkably the same.
When he was closer, he gave me an easy smile and extended his powerful right hand. “Counselor,” he said. “Good to see you after all these years. Big surprise. Here on legal business?”
“Not practicing law anymore,” I said.
“Too bad. Man, you were fierce.”
“Not fierce enough for your case, sad to say.”
“That wasn’t on you,” Carter said. “That was on the guy who put me away. Dirty tricks. But I’m not looking back. I’m pressing forward.” He pointed to a tiny office in the corner, and I followed him over there.
After Carter Collins closed the door to his office, he dropped into a swivel chair behind an old wood desk. “Something tells me you’re not here to talk about the old days.”
“Maybe I am,” I said.
Carter raised an eyebrow. I explained what Gil Spencer had shared with me about his conversation with Carter in prison.
“Yeah, well, that was a long time ago,” he said. “Let me think a minute. A lot happenin’ since then. I’m a different man.”
I looked over his head. On the wall behind him was a poster of Christ with a crown of thorns on his head and boxing gloves on his hands, and underneath was the title “Undisputed Champion of Redemption.”
After he’d been quiet for a while, Carter said, “Matamoros. Yeah. Okay. Here’s the deal. In prison there was this guy who was doing some hard time for drug running, kidnapping, and some very bad stuff. He got to be a real high roller, until he got caught. Rolex watches. Fancy cars. He was a Mexican guy. Can’t remember his name. Anyway, there’s this underground, you know, of information that runs through prison. If you know the right people. I got to know the right people. I heard that this Mexican guy was born in Matamoros, and I knew it ’cuz he was always boasting about it. Like that was something that would scare off people who might otherwise be thinking about sticking a shiv in his ribs or something.”
“So that’s the way Matamoros came up?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s it?”
“Mostly, yeah.”
The feeling of defeat was palpable. A bumpy, unlit road at night, and my headlights had just hit the Dead End sign.
“Any mention of a guy named Adolfo de Jesús Constanzo?”
“No, I don’t remember that.”
I asked, “After all these years, why would you remember the fact that Matamoros was mentioned by another con in prison?”
“Because of the meeting I had with your public defender friend . . .”
“Gil Spencer?”
“Yeah, I guess that was his name. At the time, I was just looking for a break, some way to shorten my prison sentence. Grabbing for straws. I don’t think he believed me, and honestly I don’t blame him. My meeting with him never went anywhere.”
“How would this thing about Matamoros have helped you out of prison?”
“’Cuz of the lawyer, you know, who wanted to cut some deal with that Mexican inmate to get him out of prison, and in return, all he had to do was open up some doors so this lawyer could go down there to Matamoros and—oh, I don’t know, it all sounded crazy—but the lawyer wanted to learn about something down there. Some, like, religious cult thing—voodoo, I guess—and this Mexican guy in prison would, like, be a guide or something, or else I guess hook him up with someone who could be a guide.”
“What happened?”
“You gotta understand, not very many guys in the joint knew about those rumors, just a couple of us—a small bunch of Irish guys from Boston and New York mostly, that was our gang—and that’s how the word spread in prison, starting with an Irish guard from the Bronx who told one of our gang . . . Anyway, suddenly this inmate, the Mexican, he’s not there anymore. I don’t mean transferred to another facility. I mean he’s outta prison. Bam. Out on the street. All because he cut that deal with the lawyer, having to do with Matamoros.”
“Carter, no disrespect, but this doesn’t sound right. A lawyer can’t just negotiate someone out of prison like that.”
“Well, there was more to it than that.”
“Tell me.”
“See, the inmate knew some other gangbangers. So the way it went down was that this lawyer was going to make it look like the inmate was giving a huge bit of inside information to the cops about those gangbangers. Then the lawyer would go into court and say that he was a real help to the police
, and that’s why he should get his sentence reduced to time served. That was going to be the talk to the court on the surface. But underneath, all that the lawyer really wanted was to get intros to that weird cult group down in Matamoros. Why, though, I couldn’t tell you.”
“The lawyer who arranged all this, was he a public defender?”
“No, no, no. You know the guy.”
“The lawyer?”
“Yeah, you know him. Geez, you oughta remember him.”
“Why?”
“He was the prosecutor who sent me to prison. The one who prosecuted the case against me at trial.”
My brain went numb. An instant later I put the name out there.
“Vance Zaduck?”
“Yeah, yeah. That’s him. Zaduck was the guy cutting the deal with the Mexican drug dealer. All so’s he could get down there to Matamoros to meet that voodoo cult group.”
The room felt like it was tilting.
I thought about how he helped cut me loose from the FBI interrogation in New Orleans. It must have all been for show. And his cooperation in lining up my interview with the New Orleans housing official, Lawrence Rudabow—Vance Zaduck’s unusual local contact in New Orleans. He had to be in on it with Zaduck. Rudabow—perhaps the last person on earth who had seen Henry Bosant alive in Port Sulphur before Henry was found dead, in a setup made to look like a suicide. They must have learned that Henry had spilled his story to me and needed to shut him up. The whole picture was forming.
But that was instantly followed by a tsunami of dread. Heather had my cell, and I had left a message for Zaduck from that number. What if he connected with her?
Carter must have been oblivious to it, because he just kept talking. “But like I said, I’m looking forward, not back. Prison broke me. When I got out, a boxing friend introduced me to Jesus. After that, Jesus fixed the broken parts.”
I was hit with a second wave. A sense of certainty. About what I knew to be true. I knew who was in charge of the universe, and that included Washington, DC, New Orleans, and wherever my daughter was at that moment.
I grabbed his hand, gave him a warm handshake good-bye, and told him that Jesus had fixed my broken parts too. Then I apologized for having to run. But I motioned to the poster in back of him and said, “You and I, we have something in common. We have the Champ in our corner. But we’ve also got the devil in the ring. That’s why I have to fly out of here right now.”
66
The instant I was outside, I dialed my own cell phone number to reach Heather. No answer. I texted her. No response. I called again and left a voice message. “This is urgent. Take no calls on my cell from anyone except me. Especially no calls from Vance Zaduck. Stay away from him. As far as you can. I’ll explain later.” I sent her the same message as a text.
I jumped into the street and flagged down a taxi.
When the cabbie asked me where I was going, I hadn’t the faintest. Heather and I hadn’t decided on that yet. I told him to start driving toward the Mandarin hotel.
Bullet prayers all the way to the hotel. I was pleading with God to keep Heather safe. Once I had her with me, I needed to get her out of town. Then I would find a way to face Vance Zaduck. And stop him somehow.
The driver must have heard me praying. “Are you in trouble?” he asked.
“No, but my daughter might be.”
“I’m sorry.”
“So am I.”
He asked, “I help you?”
“I don’t think so. . . .”
“How about I pray for you? And your daughter.”
“Yes. Good idea. Pray for us both.”
He asked for both of our names, and I told him. My driver turned his radio down as he maneuvered his way through Washington during five o’clock rush hour. He began, in broken English, to pray for us by name, imploring the God of heaven to bring his angels down and surround us both with “miracle power.”
Seconds after the taxi driver had finished praying, my TracFone rang. I picked up, hoping that it was a miraculous answer to prayer.
But the voice on the other end wasn’t Heather’s. It was a man’s voice. He didn’t tell me who he was at first, just spoke to me in an odd way as if I had broken into a conversation that he was already having with me. It took me only a few seconds to realize who it was, and when I did, I was sickened inside.
The caller said, “So the point is, you have been a busy little bee. Buzzing around town. Talking to Gil Spencer. Who sent you to your boxing friend.” A long, theatrical sigh. “Trevor, I’ve got digital surveillance everywhere. You should have figured. That I would hear you buzzing. I’m way ahead of you. Have been from the beginning.”
“Vance Zaduck,” I replied. “It’s you.”
A laugh at the other end.
“Vance, please tell me, where is Heather?”
“You know, normally Starbucks coffee—which of course contains a high-octane dose of caffeine—ought to wake people up. Strangely, though, your daughter, Heather—oh, such a pretty and charming girl—anyway, when she had that cup of coffee with me a while ago, she just sort of slipped away . . . actually, semiparalyzed by now, it looks like.”
“Tell me where she is!”
My driver was glancing at me in the rearview mirror. I could hear him praying quietly.
Vance was yelling back. “You’re in no position to make demands. You don’t realize it, do you? How you’re so very screwed. No matter how you look at it. Which way you turn. But maybe, just maybe, you can still cut your losses.”
I blew back at him. “Where—?”
But he screamed, “You want your daughter? You can have her. After I’m through with her. She won’t be much to look at. Oh yes, she’ll be very, very dead. Now, if you want her alive, then you better do exactly what I tell you.”
“Okay, okay. What do I do?”
“Get to the Washington Monument. Make your way through the crowd at the bottom. There’s an incident going on, so, well, you just better make it inside, and without telling the cops that you and I have been talking. Otherwise, she’s dead.”
“Then what?”
“Call me the second you’re inside the monument. Oh, and you’ve only got fifteen minutes. If you’re late, I’ll send her down to ground level. Very fast.”
The call went dead.
I yelled to the driver to hurry up to the Washington Monument. “This is life or death.”
“Traffic very bad,” he said. “Constitution Avenue jammed. Do my best . . .”
“Pass everything in front of you,” I pleaded. “I have to be at the foot of the Washington Monument in fifteen minutes or she’s going to die.”
“That means we get there in ten minutes,” he said. “A few minutes for you to run from the street to the monument.”
He swooped into the center lane marked with an arrow for turning left, gunned it through the yellow light, and swung back into the travel lane in front of a Mercedes that blasted its horn. Another light had turned yellow, and up ahead we saw dead-stop traffic on Constitution. The cabbie hammered his horn and cut in front of traffic to turn onto Seventh Street.
The cabbie was narrating his route. “This way to Independence Avenue and then north on Fifteenth, that will get you closest to monument.”
“Yes, go, go, go!”
A few minutes later he was racing past the reflections of the Tidal Basin and then turning onto Fifteenth. He slammed the taxi to a halt.
When I grabbed for my wallet, the driver yelled, “No pay, no pay, just run!”
I was at a full sprint, coattails flying as I ran over the grounds toward the famous white obelisk towering 555 feet over me. By then I could already see that a ring of Metro and park police had cordoned off the bottom. In the distance I could hear sirens approaching.
When I reached the police line, I spotted an officer who looked like a sergeant. I yelled, “My daughter is in danger here at the monument!”
“What’s her name?”
I told hi
m my name and Heather’s, showed my driver’s license, and gave a rapid physical description of her.
The sergeant stepped aside and spoke to someone on his radio. I checked my watch. It had been thirteen minutes and a few seconds since my talk with Zaduck. “Hurry,” I pleaded.
The sergeant stepped back to me. “Someone is up there with her,” he said. “A federal official. Trying to coax her back. We don’t know how this happened. But we don’t want to scare her into doing something stupid.”
“She’ll want me up there,” I cried. “I can keep her safe.”
Another call on the sergeant’s radio. Another look at my watch. I now had less than a minute to get inside the monument.
I wasn’t waiting any longer. I broke through the ring of police and started sprinting to the ground-level doorway. At first the sergeant called for me to stop. Then put the radio to his ear again. I picked up the pace, now only about thirty feet from the doorway to the monument stairwell. Two other cops were now chasing after me.
But the sergeant yelled for them to let me go, waving me toward the monument entrance with both hands.
Once inside, I called my cell phone number. It rang seven times. I held my breath. “Dear God, rescue us,” I prayed.
Eight rings.
Then Zaduck picked up.
“It’s called Rohypnol,” he said. “Technically called flunitrazepam. Ten times more powerful than Valium. Not allowed by the FDA yet. But readily available in Mexico. Could be worse.” He chortled. “Just be glad it wasn’t Calabar bean extract.”
“Picked that up on your trip to Matamoros?” I said. “Was that before or after you partnered with voodoo priests and demons?”
“Let me tell you something,” he screamed. “I’m a general in my outfit. You’re just a buck private in yours, you little puke bucket.”
“I want Heather.”
“Come and get her,” he said. “Oh, and sorry, you’ll have to climb the stairs.”
The Empowered Page 29