Harrison sighed and rolled his eyes. “Bikers don't work that way. It's not any enemy of my enemy—they're more like cops, a rat is a rat is a rat.” He was not even attempting to hide his anger or disdain anymore. “Besides, bikers are never subtle; they never sneak up behind a guy and slit his throat; they tie him up, take him to a dump, and blast a cap in his head.”
Meloni didn't let it bother him. “Suppose this guy has other friends?”
Harrison snorted derisively in what Meloni took as an attempt at laughter. “Check the file,” he said dismissively. “Aiken's not just a scared rat, but let's just say he's not exactly gonna cure cancer in the next couple of days.”
Meloni nodded because he knew that was what Harrison wanted. “Okay, I'll get to work on it right away,” he said. “Upton will send me the stuff?”
“Yeah, her or Cervelli,” Harrison answered. “Seriously, Meloni, we'll look very bad if we don't catch someone.”
Meloni nodded in agreement, but his mind wasn't in Harrison's office anymore. As he got up and walked down the corridor to his own office, he had a personal brainstorming session of his own. Everybody knew Kuzik was gay, but Meloni knew that only meant trouble if he was a cruiser or a chicken hawk, and Kuzik would not have been able to hide either from the FBI unless he was way smarter than Meloni gave him credit for. Meloni's dogged adherence to thoroughness ensured he'd check it out, but it wouldn't top his agenda. It just didn't seem likely to him that Kuzik's sexuality caused or even hastened his demise.
Meloni turned his thoughts to Aiken, the guy who ran. The obvious reason to kill Kuzik would be to shut him up. And the fact that the laptop hadn't been touched did not necessarily mean it wasn't a rat . . . it could be one who was scared, or stupid. That's the kind of guy who'd see his FBI contact dead at his desk, step in a pool of blood, and then run away. It might not be what Harrison wanted, but Meloni was going to do his best to track this guy down. Even if Aiken wasn't up to killing Kuzik, he was probably the first person on the scene and that would mean he could answer a few compelling questions.
* * *
Ned woke in extreme pain. He opened his eyes to an unnatural black. A hood had been fastened to his head and his hands were tied behind his back. He was indoors and he was naked. He panicked. He tried to get to his feet and stumbled. As he came crashing down, he heard laughter. He tried again, falling to even more laughter. When he finally got up, he ran into a wall to hoots of even more, very shrill laughter.
He gave up, lying on the ground, gasping for air. He could hear more laughing. As he caught his breath, he could also hear music. His head was swimming, but it seemed as though he was at some kind of party. He could hear laughing and shouting and commotion, almost as if people were dancing. The voices seemed childish to him. And there was a repeated loud non-rhythmic thudding noise.
Finally, someone spoke to him. It sounded like a woman. “Don't feel bad, Gringo,” the voice said in Spanish. “Your turn is coming next.” Then Ned heard the whole room erupt into laughter. He fell still and silent. Not resigned to his fate, just unable to think of anything to help himself.
Suddenly, he heard the crash of a door and a number of men's voices shouting in Spanish. They were yelling at the partiers, asking them what they thought they were doing. Finally, Ned heard one ask, “Is that the gringo?” A sheepish, high voice answered yes, and Ned felt himself being lifted to a seated position. Someone threw a blanket on him. He felt small hands untying the hood and his hands.
The bright light hurt his eyes. As he was adjusting, somebody turned off the music. He could see the hazy image of a man in front of him. The man was ugly, with a wide, pockmarked face. He wore an expensive-looking white cowboy hat and gold chains. “Don't worry, my friend,” he said in English. “We'll get you out of here, some clothes and food, you'll be fine.” He and another man helped Ned to his feet. Then he yelled, “Don't make me tell Poco Loco what you did.”
Ned looked around the room. It was filthy, filled with fast-food wrappers and old beer bottles. Other than the three guys who were taking him away, the other people in the room were all boys, around eleven to fourteen years old. They had a variety of weapons, ranging from baseball bats to handguns. The children were silent, looking at the floor the way guilty children do. Ned could hear some groaning, he looked back to see the fake Federale, the one with the goatee, hanging naked from a light fixture. His body was purple and bruised. He had a cloth covering his eyes. Ned could see he was trying to speak, but the man could not form his words.
Still a bit unsteady on his feet, Ned couldn't help but feel grateful to the three men who rescued him from the boys. It didn't matter to him who they were. Ned knew at his deepest level of consciousness that they were the only reason he left that room alive. As soon as the door shut behind them, he heard the music start up again.
If he was still in Nogales, he didn't know it. As he was led out the door onto the street, the sunshine temporarily blinded him. The streets were unpaved and filthy, far worse than he had seen before. Children ran everywhere, laughing at this crazy man wearing a blanket. Small dogs joined the excitement, barking and jumping to get a better look. Old people sat and stared in front of the small, cinder-block and concrete houses. This place stood in stark contrast to the old tourist hotel that had been converted to apartments for Holsamex's management staff. He had never thought of it as all that nice a place to live, but compared to this place, it was far more civilized country. As he was being led to an SUV parked out front, he could see a toothless old woman point at him and whisper something to a grizzled companion.
Though still dizzy and cloudy through the pain of his headache and shock, Ned began to assess the situation. The last thing he remembered was being questioned by Federales who did not appear to be Federales. Now he was being led from a house full of armed children into an SUV by some guys he had never seen before.
The guys were players, obviously involved with organized crime. Ned could tell from their flashy clothes, their gold, the bright white Cadillac Escalade, the way they walked, the way the kids fell silent around them and did what they were told without question. They were bad men to be sure, but they had rescued him. And years of experience had taught Ned that nobody in organized crime does you a favor unless they want something in return.
There were three of them. The man in the cowboy hat seemed to be their leader. He sat in the front passenger seat of the Cadillac. The driver was young, maybe sixteen, thin with curly hair. With his Nike hoodie, Atlanta Braves cap, and bright white sneakers, he looked like he could have walked off a street in any American town. He didn't say much, but nodded a lot. In the back seat with Ned was a behemoth, a mountain of a man, maybe three inches taller than Ned and as big around. He had huge jowls and several rolls of fat on his neck, all covered in gold chains. He was red, sweating, and panting, even though Ned had seen him exert no force other than walking from the house to the car.
They were talking in Spanish and Ned understood a great deal of it. They were joking about the guy hanging in the other room. From what they said, he was a member of a rival gang. Ned couldn't quite understand which one, because these guys kept referring to him a “Sonoran,” That didn't make sense to Ned since they were in Sonora, so these men were all presumably Sonorans. He was, as Ned had already expected, a gang member masquerading as a Federale. He was, the men agreed, getting his just desserts for operating within their territory, although the fat man said that he believed nobody deserved to face those kids, who he later referred to as “little monsters.”
Realizing that Ned was listening in, the boss looked at him and asked in Spanish, “How much Spanish do you know, Gringo?”
Ned blurted out “enough” realizing how stupid it sounded even before it left his mouth. Was he really trying to play the tough guy, naked except for a blanket in the back of an SUV with three presumably heavily armed men who had just saved him from a fate he could scarcely imagine? He was relieved when they laughed. He even found h
imself joining them.
The man in charge looked at Ned and put on a “trust me” smile, like salesmen do when they are closing a deal. “Don't worry,” he said. “You'll be fine. We'll take care of you.”
He knew those words were supposed to encourage him, but Ned had been around too long for them not to chill him.
* * *
For three solid days, Meloni read up on Ned Aiken, and made phone calls to verify the information in the files. Because Dave Kuzik, Aiken's contact with the agency, was dead, there was no one to elaborate on their contents.
At first glance, Aiken's story seemed spectacularly unremarkable. A high-school dropout turned biker, he turned state's witness when the heat came down. According to his own testimony, he had done well with the bikers, becoming a full patch quickly and operating his own strip joint that was also a drug distribution center.
As with every case, though, there were complications. While Aiken was in witness protection, another biker testified that he had seen him kill someone and had helped him dispose of the body. But when Meloni looked into it, he found that the witness was a drooling psycho whacked out on years and years of meth and coke abuse. After accusing his old pal of murder, the guy—Dario Lambretti—had told his doctor that they should let him go because it wasn't him that committed any crimes, that it was Duane. Duane turned out to be his cat. Although it was unlikely that talking to this wing nut would yield any answers, Meloni realized it had to be done.
He had two agents at his disposal—Javier Tovar and Carly O'Malley. Both were competent and thorough agents, but Tovar always struck him as a little more tolerant in nature, so Meloni decided to send him.
What was interesting to Meloni was how ambitious Aiken seemed to be, but also how self-defeating. He dropped out of high school, but he built a pretty impressive living as a biker and dealer. Once he sought protection, the agency put him in a menial job that he seemed unable or unwilling to do with any level of competence, but then when he assumed a management position—one that Kuzik's notes said that he found himself—he excelled, earning praise and a quick promotion. It was a legitimate job, too. Aiken had been in charge of shipping and receiving for a big air-conditioning supply factory. And Kuzik had nothing but praise for Thor Andersson, the man who owned the company.
Meloni knew that name from somewhere. He looked it up on the agency's database. Apparently, Andersson was a Swedish national who had acquired a Green card and then U.S. citizenship years ago after coming to the University of North Dakota on a hockey scholarship. He had set up shop in Delaware and had never gotten so much as a speeding ticket. But he had been questioned by the agency twice on the day Kuzik's body was found.
There had been a shooting at the Javits Convention Center on Manhattan's West Side. Two people had been killed, but the perp managed to flee. It was a heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning trade show, and Andersson had been in attendance as an exhibitor. He didn't have much to say about the shooting other than the usual “it all happened so fast” and “I couldn't tell what was happening” that a thousand other witnesses also said.
But there was one complication that set him apart from the other witnesses. During the confusion—after the shots were fired, the conventioneers stampeded like cattle—Andersson ended up with a girl. It's not that uncommon for kids to become separated from their parents when crowds got crazy, but this was different. The child didn't speak a word of English, and nobody ever stepped forward to claim her. She didn't match any file on the missing-children register. Andersson recognized that she spoke Georgian, a language that's nearly impossible to recognize unless you speak it. He claimed that although he traveled to that part of the world frequently on business, he wasn't fluent, so the Georgian consulate on 44th sent a translator to the Midtown South precinct. She told a story of coming across the ocean on a ship, meeting two men at the port and being driven around all over America on a motorcycle before ending up at the convention. The Georgian authorities couldn't find any parents for her (she claimed to be an orphan) so she stayed in the United States as the mountains of diplomatic and legal paperwork was being sorted out.
Andersson was never accused of any wrongdoing—in fact, he was praised for rescuing the girl in such a violent situation—but even he was at a loss to explain what she was doing with him. Meloni knew he had to track down the girl. Her story seemed fanciful, but it may have changed over the year since she was discovered. That thought led Meloni to look at the date. The shooting in the Javits and the discovery of the girl had happened on August 20 of the previous year. Meloni didn't have to look at the other file, but he did anyway, just to be sure. It was also the same day Kuzik's body was discovered, and the same day Aiken was last seen.
He was now sure that, in order to find out who killed Kuzik, he had to find Aiken. He would start with the girl.
* * *
The Cadillac pulled up at a ranch house outside of town. It was well maintained and large, surrounded by what had probably been farmland, but was now little more than a giant lawn of sorts. It was a dry land, and the only vegetation Ned could see for miles were small, scrubby bushes and short, hardy-looking trees. Someone had planted and maintained a few flower beds in front of the pale-blue house's large veranda, and the splash of color looked out of place in the desert.
Even more color—actually a ridiculous cavalcade of many colors—could be seen at the side of the house where a number of SUVs and customized pickup trucks were parked. When they arrived in the house's driveway, the young driver got out of the car and rummaged through the cargo area. He returned with a T-shirt, a plaid collared shirt, jeans, socks, and cowboy boots. He threw them in the back seat to Ned and told him to get dressed.
Ned put on the clothes as quickly as he could. It was awkward, changing in the back of an SUV, even a big one, and the clothes were all the wrong sizes. The shirts were too small and the jeans so huge that Ned had to hold them up with his hands. At least the boots were close to a fit.
Once outside the Cadillac, Ned followed his rescuers up to the house where they were greeted at the door by two men with assault rifles; one of them was wearing a Sonora state-police-uniform shirt and pants with cowboy boots and a baseball cap. They grinned and shot the breeze with Ned's group and the one in the uniform said something in Spanish about Ned that was just a little too quick for him to catch. All the others laughed. Ned assumed it was about his clothes.
Inside the house, Ned felt a brush of air-conditioning. In the front vestibule, a couple of chatting teenagers fell silent the moment they saw Ned's party walk through. They entered a main room, which was dominated by a group of six men playing poker. Each player had a couple of bottles of beer in front of him, and one man was smoking a cigar. Ned noticed the Cuban label that hadn't been removed. The table was littered with piles of U.S. currency, enough to buy a small house in the suburbs. There were two young women sitting on a couch behind the table. They pointed and giggled when Ned came in.
All the men started talking in Spanish. Finally, the man at the head of the table silenced them with a hand gesture. He was unremarkable looking. Short and ugly with a very prominent set of eyebrows that Ned guessed probably made him look angry even when he wasn't. He barely glanced at Ned, instead looking at the fat man, who was panting from standing for so long. “Ratón, you know what to do,” he said angrily.
The fat man then grabbed both of Ned's hands and pulled them behind his back. The other man from the car, the one in the cowboy hat, then put handcuffs on his wrists. They led him back outside and around the house into a large field. They took him to an area roughly the size of a bedroom that had been cleared of shrubbery. Beside him, he saw a freshly filled-in hole, about eight feet by eight feet. His stomach sank as he realized it was almost certainly a recently filled grave. He looked around. The fat man, El Ratón, was right behind him. With him were five other young men, one wearing a Federales uniform. They were all armed, three with assault rifles, two with handguns.
El Ratón pushed him down to his knees. One of the guys with a handgun ran in front of him and pulled out a lime-green Flip video camera and started recording. “My face isn't in the shot, is it?” asked El Ratón. The young man assured him it was not.
Then El Ratón hit Ned in the back of the head and barked: “What is your name?”
Ned answered instinctively. “Alfredo Duncan.”
“Liar!” shouted El Ratón. “Who do you work for?”
“Ho-Holsamex.”
“Not the DEA?”
“No, Holsamex!” Ned was shouting now, too.
El Ratón smacked him in the back of the head again. “Liar! We know how to find out the truth!” he shouted, growing hoarse. “Who do you work for? The Sonora Cartel? The Caro Quinteros?”
“No, Holsamex.”
Ned could feel the barrel of a gun pressed against the back of his skull. Another interrogator had taken over from El Ratón. “We know you work for the DEA!” This new, much more malevolent-sounding voice shouted. “Just tell us you work for the DEA!”
“I don't! I don't!”
As the gun's barrel pressed deeper into the back of his skull, Ned heard a dull, electronic rendition of a popular Mexican disco song. The guy in front of him, who had been recording everything, reached in his pocket and pulled out a cell phone. He answered it, listened for a few moments, his eyes on Ned's the whole time. “Okay,” he finally said. “El Orangután says he's okay. That he is for Poco Loco.”
One of the men offered his hand to Ned, and helped him back to the ground. They didn't say anything to him, just led him back to the house.
Chapter Two
Driving all the way to Brooklyn with Agent Carly O'Malley was not too bad, Meloni thought to himself. Unlike most other agents, she didn't talk about much aside from what they were working on, and that was okay with him. She was very serious about her work, and he respected that. O'Malley had been something of a rising star in the agency, until a child pornography case her task force had been investigating for six months fell apart because one of her agents had gotten a bit rough with the ringleader. She took the blame and the fallout was enormous. Since then, O'Malley had been working her way back up the food chain by taking lesser assignments and working for progressively more senior agents. That she and Meloni were seen as outsiders made them natural allies, and he was relieved to be working with her, rather than having to watch his back all the time.
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