by Tom Fowler
“Got a few here,” Smitty said.
The man jabbed his finger toward the center bay. “The Boxster. I want it back.”
“A young lady dropped it off for service. We just ordered the parts.”
“Sounds like your problem, old man.”
“It could use some work,” Tyler added. “Whoever owned it before didn’t keep up with the maintenance.”
The Latino stared at him. “Did I ask your opinion?”
“Maybe you should before you drive it out of here.”
“Just give me the damn car.”
“I’ll need to see some ID,” Smitty said. “Anyone can come in and say something is theirs.”
“Fine.” The guy fished a wad of cash out of his pocket. A rubber band held it together. In the center were a few cards including a driver’s license. Tyler and Smitty both looked at the name. Rodolfo Espinoza. “We good?”
“I’ll check the registration,” Smitty said. “Wait here.”
Rodolfo glared as Smitty walked away but didn’t say anything. His huge friend remained vigilant and silent. Tyler wondered how many cows died to make the leather jacket he wore. Rodolfo drummed his fingers on the counter. Smitty returned a moment later. “Looks like the car’s yours. Sure you don’t want the work done?”
“I just want the car.” He held his hand out for the keys Smitty carried.
“I’ll back it out for you.”
“I can handle it.”
“No customers in the service bays,” Smitty said.
“Excuse me?” Rodolfo narrowed his eyes and stared. He was a man used to getting his way. Tyler wondered how often he did it without the help of the giant behind him. Rodolfo didn’t possess a lot of charm or personality. Intimidation would be the tactic of choice then, and his stature didn’t lend itself to inducing fear.
“I’ll bring it around. Only be a minute.” Smitty moved back through the door.
“Your boss is kind of a prick,” Rodolfo said without a hint of self-awareness.
“Alice made some good choices about the work she wanted done,” Tyler said. “She’s smart about cars.”
“I wish she were smarter about where to take them. We have a shop we like.”
“I guess she didn’t get the memo.”
Rodolfo leaned across the counter. “You got a problem?”
Tyler wanted to clobber him. He deserved it. The giant would get involved then, and Tyler didn’t have a good solution for him other than the shotgun under the counter. Too messy. He would be diplomatic for now. If this young asshole took a swing at him, all bets were off. “It’s just unusual for someone to pick a car up before we do any work on it.”
“Life ain’t always usual.”
A horn honked outside. Smitty pulled the Boxster alongside the building. He walked in via the front door and handed Rodolfo the keys, which he snatched rather than politely accepting. “Good luck with the car.”
“Piss off,” Rodolfo said. He deliberately bumped into Smitty as he went past him. The large enforcer exited without word or contact. He compacted himself behind the wheel of the Subaru while Rodolfo got into the Porsche. They both drove away, but not before Rodolfo stalled the Boxster the first time.
“I hope we don’t see them again,” Smitty said as he moved behind the counter.
Tyler nodded. “Me, too.” Having met Alice's boyfriend, he wondered again what happened to the young woman.
6
Sara Morrison walked back to her office in the Pentagon. The final meeting in a day full of them finally wrapped up. She looked at the nameplate on her door. Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict. For now, at least, she thought. November meant a new regime regardless of who won the White House. Sara heard whispers of her bosses wanting to promote her to a more “valuable” role.
She liked where she was. Part of the desire to kick her upstairs, she felt, came from an obligation to protect her. A rogue former colonel threatened Sara’s life a few months ago, and if she held a different position, his file never would’ve crossed her desk. She couldn’t prove this of course, and office scuttlebutt didn’t support it. Still, she’d spent enough time entrenched in the old boys’ network to know how they liked to do things.
Finally free from a SCIF and its rigid measures to protect sensitive information, Sara checked her phone. She texted John Tyler earlier. He rarely replied quickly, and today proved no exception. Sara wanted to know if they were still on for dinner. She liked spending time with him, though she found fewer and fewer hours to spare over the last month. Tyler sent a couple messages while she was in her series of meetings. Sorry, busy morning. Dinner is good. Lexi misses you.
Sara grinned. The last part meant he missed her. Lexi might have, too. The girl was nice enough. She seemed focused on her freshman year of college. Sara recalled her own nearly thirty years ago and sympathized. She sat behind her desk and called Tyler. The rush of background noise when he picked up meant he was driving. “Headed home?” she asked.
“Yeah. I need to cook dinner for an important government official.”
“Wow. Sounds fancy. Let me know how it goes.”
“Thankfully, she puts up with my cooking,” he said after a brief pause.
“You going to have any help in the kitchen?”
Another couple beats passed. “I don’t know. Lexi’s not an enthusiastic sous chef.”
“Everything all right?” Sara said. “You seem a little distracted.”
“I’m fine,” he replied.
Sara frowned. Like many former soldiers, Tyler didn’t talk much about his feelings. She grew used to it. Some separation from her work life in this area would’ve been nice, but no one was perfect. The ex-soldier saved her life a few months ago, he was a good guy, and he was trying hard as a single dad to a headstrong girl. She could give him a break. “All right. I’m going to pack up here. See you soon.”
“Come hungry,” Tyler said, and he hung up.
“Not a problem,” Sara said to the empty office.
“Shouldn’t you be cooking, Dad?” Lexi looked up from the laptop.
“It’s in the oven,” Tyler said. “Sara’s driving from DC. We have a little while.”
“All right. What was the name?”
“Rodolfo Espinoza.”
“And why am I looking him up?” Lexi asked as she tapped the keys. The portable PC belonged to a company called Patriot Security, Tyler’s employer before he quit and worked for Smitty. They’d never asked for it back. Designed by a bunch of cyber experts, the machine found information on people despite their attempts to hide it. Tyler didn’t know a lot about computers, but his daughter had become quite adept with this one.
“I’m concerned about him. Something’s . . . not right. His girlfriend dropped a car off and was really excited to get it fixed. I tried to call her today to tell her the parts were all coming, but it went right to voicemail. Today, Rodolfo shows up with a guy who could’ve picked up the car and carried it out of the bay.” He frowned. “I don’t like the situation. It makes me think Alice is in trouble.”
“She was probably busy,” Lexi said. “Who owns the car?”
“He does.”
“Did you give it to him?” she asked.
“Smitty did. Hard not to when his name’s on the registration.”
Lexi turned the screen toward Tyler. “Not a lot here. He’s got a Facebook page, but he doesn’t do much with it. He’s most active on Instagram. He seems to enjoy posting pictures of jewelry and cars and telling people he’s rich.”
“Sounds like a real prince,” Tyler said.
“He’s young. Twenty-two.”
“If you bring someone like this home, I’m shooting him.”
Lexi grinned. “You’d probably need to get in line. Rodolfo here seems like a jerk, but it doesn’t mean something bad happened to the girlfriend.”
Tyler grunted. “What about his known associates?”
Lexi clicke
d a button on the screen. The computer crunched a report for an instant before displaying the output. “Not a lot to go on. He lives in the same neighborhood as his cousin Héctor.” Before Tyler could say anything, Lexi added, “I’m on it.” A new man’s picture stared back at them a second later. Héctor was older than Rodolfo, probably in his thirties, and the photo showed him in a suit.
“What’s his story?” Tyler wanted to know.
“No social media presence for a couple years.” She entered a few commands. “He’s self-employed in imports and exports.”
Tyler frowned. “Sounds like code for drugs.” He hoped it wasn’t. Alice didn’t need to be involved in such a sordid mess.
“Just because he’s Mexican?”
“You know I don’t make those generalizations,” Tyler said. “I served with a fair number of people whose families came from Mexico or parts of South America. They were all good soldiers. A few of them told me coke-running Colombians would come to the States and claim to work in imports. It was a front for drugs.”
“It also sounds like a while ago,” Lexi said.
“It was.” Tyler’s retirement was almost eight and a half years in the rearview. “It worked, though. Why change? I know this guy isn’t from Colombia, but successful tactics spread.”
“You seem awfully concerned about a girl who dropped off a car, Dad.”
“We don’t get a lot of young enthusiasts,” Tyler said. “Most of them are guys with Youtube channels. She loves cars.” He shrugged. “And she seems like a good kid.”
“Don’t let Sara hear you talking about her,” Lexi said, giving Tyler a playful elbow in the side.
Tyler smirked. “She has nothing to worry about.” He smelled the chicken, fingerling potatoes, and carrots roasting in the oven. Depending on how awful Sara’s drive into Baltimore was, she might arrive around the time the food finished. Tyler walked into the kitchen and checked everything. A bottle of wine—which Lexi suggested and picked up as part of her expertise—sat on the counter waiting to be uncorked.
“I don’t see much else about these guys,” she called from the living room a minute later. “They’re good at staying offline for the most part.”
“Let’s hope we don’t need to dig deeper,” he said.
A couple minutes later, the doorbell rang. Tyler opened it, and Sara Morrison waited on his small front porch. She smiled when she saw him, and she owned a good one. Sara was a few years younger than him, sported a full head of black hair, and looked like a woman in her thirties. Tyler beckoned her inside, and they shared a kiss in the entryway.
“Get a room, you two,” Lexi said as she entered the kitchen.
“Hello, Lexi,” Sara said. She nodded to the bottle on the counter. “I presume you picked it out?”
Tyler spread his hands. “You don’t think I could find a bottle of wine?”
“No,” they both said in unison.
Outgunned, Tyler focused on getting dinner plated and onto the table. They enjoyed a meal of frequent and good conversation. He liked how Lexi and Sara got along. They weren’t going to schedule a girls’ day at the spa anytime soon, but the two women shared more than only an affection for Tyler. After dinner, Sara put the dishes in the sink, and Lexi retired upstairs. “She’ll be up there the rest of the night,” he said. “Teenagers.” He dug a corkscrew out of the kitchen junk drawer.
“I like her,” Sara said. “She’s very much your daughter in a lot of ways.”
“Thankfully, she gets her looks from her mother.”
Sara smiled. “You’re not too bad.”
“I aspire for mediocrity,” he said, opened the white wine, and poured them each a glass. Sara accepted it with a small nod. “The army taught me well.”
They settled onto the couch. Sara shared as much about her recent few days as she could—Tyler understood the limits of what she could tell him—and he told her about the Boxster situation. “You seem worried about the girl,” Sara said.
“I’m sure you’ve seen intel reports from south of the border over the years. Am I out of line for thinking this guy who’s supposedly in imports is really running drugs?”
“It’s not a politically correct assumption . . . but I also don’t think it’s wrong. I’ve seen quite a few of the reports you mentioned. Your concern is valid.”
“I don’t think Lexi understood,” Tyler said.
“She’s young. She simply wants you to be careful.” Sara paused. “So do I. You don’t need to take on a drug lord, if this guy even is one.”
“The whole situation bothers me.” Tyler frowned. “So do the guys Lexi looked up.” Tyler stopped before mentioning the giant who accompanied Rodolfo. Sara didn’t need any other reasons to worry about him.
“I know what you do when things bother you,” Sara said. “It’s why I want you to be careful.”
“I think you called me a knight-errant a few months back.”
She grinned. “The label still fits.”
It did. Tyler wondered about Alice and if he would soon be tilting at any windmills.
Héctor Espinoza called his superiors in Mexico. His operation in Harford County was the farthest from their base, and he always felt they took it out on him by demanding more updates than those closer. Tonight, Héctor spoke to Tomás Quintero. Héctor’s distant cousin Bernardo led the cartel, but the two rarely spoke directly. Intermediaries always intervened, and Tomás proved the most frequent. He was a lawyer and some kind of lieutenant.
“We think you should be moving a little faster,” Tomás said. “Your output’s been steady for months. You told us you could ramp up.”
“I can. I’ve been laying the groundwork.”
“Are you ready?”
“We are,” Héctor said. “Our operation is as secure as it’s ever been. The men know their jobs. We’ve found more people who will be interested. We could use extra product.”
“If we send you a larger allocation,” Tomás warned, “we expect results. Both the powder and the pills.”
“In this county, we can move both. I know it’s taken a little longer than everyone wanted, but we’re in a good spot here. Lots of bored rich people with too much money on their hands. They’ll be giving it to us soon enough.”
“Your money guy is solid?”
“He’s been great,” Héctor said. “A natural fit into the organization.”
Tomás sighed, coming through the line as a hiss in Héctor’s ear. “All right. Your next shipment will be larger, and we will have room to expand if you can work it.”
“We will.”
“Good.” Tomás paused. His voice took on an amiable tone when he spoke next. “How’s your cousin?”
“I have a lot of cousins,” Héctor said. He wondered if Mexico somehow heard about Rodolfo killing his girlfriend and Héctor needing to clean it up.
“You know which one I mean.” The friendly tone vanished as soon as it came.
“Rodolfo is fine,” Héctor said. “He’s young and brash, but he’s loyal.”
“To you.”
“And through me to the cartel. He’s not a problem.”
“All right,” Tomás said once more. Héctor heard the skepticism in his voice. “We’re past the point of putting up with problems. Your cousin who matters expects you to carry your share of the load.”
“We’re ready,” Héctor said, “and we’ll prove it.”
“For your sake, I hope you do.” Tomás hung up before Héctor could say anything. He slammed his phone onto the couch. They were ready to move more product and make more money. Héctor built the infrastructure and seeded the desire in the county with free or cheap drugs. It was an old tactic but a good one. Rodolfo and his dead girlfriend wouldn’t stop their progress.
Héctor would see to it. He could have any number of bodies cleaned up. As many as it took. The cartel’s interests came first.
7
As usual, Tyler woke early the next morning. He stretched, changed into athletic atti
re, and stepped outside into the chilly fall air. After getting his blood moving with a short walk, the former soldier took off at a run. He bought the house about a decade ago before his final deployment with the army. One of the first things he did was map out a three-mile running course of the local streets. Tyler’s final fitness test with Patriot Security showed he hadn’t slowed much in a two-mile run since going on terminal leave.
About a half-hour later, he entered his house again. Lexi stood in the kitchen, pouring herself a cup of coffee. She smiled and wished him good morning before he headed upstairs to shower and get dressed. Tyler returned to the first floor a short while later, enjoyed his own mug of java, and toasted a bagel. While he waited, he brought the Patriot laptop to the table.
Lexi understood a lot more about how it worked and did better with people and their connections than he ever could, but Tyler knew how to use it for general fact-finding. He didn’t grasp what happened behind the scenes—the machine seemed to go deeper than Google and simple local news—but the computer helped a lot with intelligence gathering. When his bagel popped up, Tyler slathered it in peanut butter and sat back down.
Something in his gut told him Alice was in trouble. Even if her boyfriend’s cousin turned out to be a legitimate retired importer, the young man himself was trouble. He carried himself like he dared someone to get cross with him. Then, he could either shoot them or let the giant break them in half. He didn’t seem happy Alice brought the Boxster to Smitty’s. What might he have done to her?
Tyler entered a few search terms and let the computer do its thing. It provided some results in short order. He scrolled through them until he found a listing which made his blood run cold. Young Woman Found Beaten to Death in Woods. “Shit,” he muttered as he clicked the link. A brief story with multiple sources opened.
* * *