The Alex Shanahan Series

by Lynne Heitman

  The stillness felt odd. Wrong. The musical accompaniment, small and tinny, made the walls feel close. The nervous beat of the Latin rhythm put my teeth on edge, so much so that I wanted to get out of that stuffy, windowless, inside space.

  I turned to go, moving with some purpose, and crashed straight into a barrier, which turned out to be another warm body. Head-on collision. Full force. It knocked me back and was so sudden it took a few seconds for me to feel startled. When I did, a wave of adrenaline shivers erupted. He had come out of nowhere, this slight man with a goatee and thick, black eyebrows, approaching silently to stand behind me.

  He was about my height. His hair, like his eyebrows, was wiry and dark and it stuck out from under a Speath Aviation cap, the same kind George had given me. I didn’t know his name, but I’d seen him around the shop. He was one of the few employees who hadn’t spoken to me—maybe the only one—which gave his wide-eyed, silent stare the weight of the unknown.

  I asked him if he spoke English. He shook his head. Using my limited knowledge of Spanish, I asked him where George was. He pointed to the hangar, still completely silent. When I stepped toward the door, he moved aside, but his eyes moved with me. And I didn’t turn my back on him. I got such a creepy feeling from him. From the room. From the whole situation. As I went down the hall, I heard the music go dead.

  The door to the hangar opened from the other side before I reached it. My heart slipped out of my throat when I heard their voices—George and Felix—but it flew right back up when they walked through the door and into the narrow hallway and I saw them together. George was his normal, affable self, but next to him Felix looked small, vulnerable, and very young, and it hit me hard how much he didn’t belong there, and how I was the one who had put him there.

  For the first time since I’d met him, George felt dangerous. Not for any reason except that he was standing next to my kid friend, and I didn’t know for sure that he wasn’t.

  “Alex… my word, what are you doing here? I didn’t know you were coming. Did you get my messages?” He laughed at himself. “Of course you did. That’s why you’re here. Did you meet Felix? He’s a software consultant. Boy, this is my week for visitors, isn’t it? Usually we can go for months in this place and only see each other.”

  I smiled at Felix and we exchanged what felt like obviously artificial, overly pleasant greetings. I had expected to see him, but he hadn’t expected to see me—no one had—and he showed admirable restraint when I had popped up in front of him. He stood with his hands clasped in front of him, gazing directly but blankly into my face.

  “We’re going to lunch,” George said. “Felix is trying to sell me a complete systems review. He’s one of the few software people I’ve ever met who knows what he’s talking about.”

  “Does he?” I asked. Felix couldn’t suppress a grin that was equal parts bashfulness and bravado. I had to get him out of there.

  George had a different thought. “Say, I’ve got an idea. Why don’t you join us? We’ll all go. Maybe you can share some of your insights with Felix about our capabilities and our needs. If we’re going to do work for Majestic, we might want to upgrade our systems. What do you say?”

  I checked my watch—two thirty eight. “It’s a little late for lunch, isn’t it, George? I was hoping to get some time with you.”

  “No, come with us, Miss Shanahan. That’s a cool idea.”

  Felix’s big eyes were on me, imploring me, giving me a preview of what it would be like spending an hour in front of George pretending I didn’t know him.

  “I’m sorry, George. I don’t have time, and neither do you. We need to speak in private. Maybe Felix could come back another time.”

  If I hadn’t known Felix, I might not have noticed how all the starch went out of him, how his head sank back into his shoulders. But I did know him and I did notice and it was all for his own good. He managed a smile anyway.

  “Not a problem, Mr. Speath. I’ll go back to my office and work with what I already have. I’ll see if I can scope out a plan for you.”

  “All right. I’ll show you out. Alex, I’ll be right with you.” George put his big hand on Felix’s back to guide him down the hall, much as he had done with me when steering me out of the path of the bomber pigeons. His hand covered almost the entire span of Felix’s shoulders.

  I fell in behind and followed them out. I was determined to see Felix walk out the front door, and was actually feeling a hint of relief until I glanced into the supply room on my way past. Mr. Goatee was there. We locked eyes as he turned away from the door, and something in the way he looked gave me the feeling he’d been standing and listening to every word of our conversation. And that he understood. Maybe he did speak English after all.

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Back at the hotel, I opened up my laptop and sent an e-mail message to Felix. It was similar to all the voice messages I’d left:

  “Call me immediately.”

  “Get in touch with me ASAP.”

  “Do not go back to Speath’s again.”

  “What were you thinking?”

  I tried to reach Jack to tell him how Felix had popped up at George’s, but he was off somewhere looking for Avidor. All I could do was wait. By the time I heard the knock on the door, I’d been swinging between worried and annoyed for several hours. I flew to the peephole and checked. When I saw who it was, I edged all the way over to angry.

  I swung the door open. Felix looked at my face, and said, “Uh-oh.”

  “Get in here.” I pulled him inside and closed the door.

  “You can’t see any of the airport from here. Wouldn’t you want to be on the side where you could watch the planes taking off?” He was already at the window peering through my blinds.

  “Felix, what were you doing at George’s?”

  “We tried again all last night to get past the wall. I decided to try another thing we sometimes do which is go in and pretend to be a software consultant or salesman. Sometimes if you offer a free upgrade to their system, they’ll give you anything. Anyway, I started with the lady, Margie. She wouldn’t give me anything. But then I met with Mr. Speath and he was so cool. He showed me a bunch of stuff. I think I could have gotten in there if you… well, you know. If I’d had a little more time.”

  “Why would you do something like that? These are dangerous people we’re dealing with. You have to appreciate that. We’re—Jack Dolan is a professional. He does this for a living, and he has most of his life. You and I, we don’t.”

  “I just did what you did, Miss Shanahan. You went in as someone else to get information. That’s what I was trying to do. I was trying to help.”

  “I know you were. I’m not a professional, but I’ve got good reasons to be taking risks like that. Felix, you don’t. You have no stake in this at all. You have no reason to risk anything for me or for Jack or for John McTavish. I want you to be safe.”

  He started to respond and stopped short.

  It was a soft brushing against the door, a sound that felt like cold fingers across my skin. He had heard it, too.

  It was quiet, and then the brushing sound again.

  Signalling Felix to stay back, I crept forward as quietly as I could. I moved in front of the door and latched my right eye onto the peephole.

  There was no one out there.

  I angled to scan left and right. The emergency exit was across from my room and half a door-length down, so it wasn’t easy to see it, but when it happened, I saw it. The door moved. I fixed on the dark crack where the door was slightly open and saw four fingers, the four fingers of the person who was standing on the other side, holding it ajar. An icy tingle crept up the back of my neck because there was no way past him. There was no way out.

  I turned around and stood with my back to the door. I thought about Mesh Man. I thought about the kidney car. I thought about Vanessa and Arturo and Jimmy and George and Damon and God knows who else who might have a reason to want to do me harm. Reaso
ns I didn’t even know about. And then I thought about a scene from an old Burt Reynolds movie where a woman was cut almost in half by a shotgun blast—right through the closed door of her apartment. She’d been looking through the peephole.

  Quickly, I fled inside toward the bed and the telephone.

  “What’s going on?” Even when he stood still Felix looked hyper. It was the way his face constantly changed expression based on whatever he was feeling at that moment.

  “Someone is out there,” I said. “Across the hall in the stairwell. I saw him.”

  “Really?” He headed for the door at warp speed.

  “Felix, don’t go over there.” I was trying to punch the buttons on the phone and pay attention to him. “Stay inside here.”

  Too late. He was looking through the peephole. “Hey, there is. It’s—”

  I hung up, followed him over, and pulled him into the bathroom with me. The two of us cocked our heads and listened. “Señorita, por favor.” The voice was barely audible.

  “Miss Shanahan, it’s just this little dude with a baseball cap and a goatee and—”

  “He has a goatee? What else did you see?”

  “He’s got black hair and he’s not that tall. That’s about what I saw.”

  “Stay here, Felix. I mean it.”

  I crept back over to the door, and back to the peephole. The black cap filled the line of sight at first. But then he tipped his head up and I saw his face. It was the man from George’s stockroom. Only this time he didn’t look menacing. He seemed more fearful than furtive. Behind his heavy eyebrows and neatly trimmed whiskers, he was more frightened than I was.

  “Who are you?” I called, trying to air out my throat.

  “Julio Martín Fuentes.”

  “What do you want?”

  He responded by ripping into an impassioned and seemingly profound explanation of himself and his presence in my hotel—in Spanish. I motioned Felix to join me. He listened as Julio rambled. Whatever Julio Martín Fuentes was saying went well beyond my high school español vocabulary. I did, however, comprehend a number of references to señor George sprinkled throughout the hyperactive monologue.

  “What did he say?”

  “He works for George, and he wants to talk to you.”

  “Why?”

  “He thinks you’re an auditor and he wants to come in right now. He’s scared to be standing out there in front of your door.”

  “What do you think?”

  Felix asked a question and Julio responded. Then Felix nodded for me to open the door.

  “What did you ask him?”

  “I asked him if he was here to hurt us and he said no.”

  Great. I felt better.

  “Ask him,” I said, “to step back against the wall.”

  While Felix did that, I watched through the peephole. Julio had taken off his cap and was glancing and blinking in the direction of the elevator. He still looked as though he wanted to melt into the carpet. When he stepped back, I didn’t see any firearms, at least not any obvious ones, so I turned the knob and opened the door.

  Julio came as far as the doorway and stopped. That’s when I saw the tattoo. He had sleeves on his shirt, but they were short, and I saw it poking out below the hem. It was a cross of some kind. Julio was Mesh Man. He stood working the black cap with nervous fingers until I realized he was waiting to be invited in.

  “Come in, please, señor.”

  Felix ushered him into the room. The two of them sat in the chairs at my tiny table. I closed and locked the door and joined them, settling in on the bed with my feet up. They were already deep in conversation. Words were flowing swiftly and they talked over each other a lot. What I could tell from Julio’s animated and emphatic gestures was that whatever they were talking about, it mattered a great deal to him. He ended the conversation with multiple repeatitions of “muchas gracias.”

  “He works at Speath Aviation,” Felix said. “He’s a bookkeeper there. He’s seen you around with George and he knows you’re an auditor.”

  “What’s his story?”

  “First of all, he wants you to know how much he respects his boss. He’s in awe of him. Julio used to be a mechanic, but when Mr. Speath found out he was trying to become an accountant, he took him off the line and gave him a chance to go to school.” Felix leaned in and lowered his voice. “I think it’s sort of a father-son deal there.”

  Julio had clean fingernails—the hands of a number cruncher, not a mechanic.

  “This is the best job Julio has ever had, and he doesn’t want to get Mr. Speath in trouble. He’s good to his people, and he tries hard to run a good business. Every Christmas he—”

  “Felix, the more good things you say about George, the more worried I’m getting. Is George laundering dirty parts? Is that what he came to tell me?”

  “No.” Felix’s voice became quiet enough that I could hear a thread of tension running through his usual irrepressible enthusiasm. “Mr. Speath is using his business to launder drug money.”

  I sat up and edged to the side of the bed. I didn’t want to make any quick moves. Julio offered a polite smile, but his forehead gleamed with perspiration, and both knees bounced as if he were trying to run somewhere sitting down. I knew the feeling. I wanted to call Jack, but I didn’t know where he was, and looking at Julio, he wasn’t going to want to hang around after he’d told his story. I found my notebook and opened it up.

  “Drug money, Felix? Is that exactly what he said?”

  The two of them nodded in stereo. Julio obviously knew a little English. Probably about as much as I knew Spanish.

  “Does he sound as if he knows what he’s talking about?”

  “For sure. And he’s way depressed about it. At first, he wasn’t certain since he’s new at this, but he’s been paying attention and keeping good notes. Now he’s sure.”

  “How is George doing it?”

  Felix turned to Julio and they were off and running again in another high-speed dialogue.

  Julio seemed excited that we were so interested. Felix was beyond excited.

  “Mr. Speath plays with the inventory accounts and makes it look as if he’s bought more than he really has. They make up the difference with laundered cash, and because parts are so expensive, Julio says they can wash a lot of cash with only a few fake transactions.”

  He paused, and I thought he was going to check with Julio again, but the pause turned into a full stop. “Felix?”

  “I was just thinking, no wonder we’re locked out of his system. This is what Mr. Speath is protecting behind his firewalls. I wonder how I can get around them.” Julio’s knees were still churning, and I thought soon he might start rattling the lamps with his nervous fidgeting. He could hardly keep himself in his seat.

  “Felix, ask him why he’s so scared.”

  Julio responded to Felix with another blast of accents and tildes, and somewhere in there, I heard the secret password, maybe the word that would unlock the whole case, answer all the questions, and bring all the loose ends into a tight bow.

  “Get this, Miss Shanahan.” Felix was on his feet now. “It’s money that belongs to this dude Ottavio, who’s a big drug lord down in Colombia, which is where Julio is from, which is why he’s so scared because he has family there and he’s afraid if the word gets out that he’s informing, his relatives will be wiped out. This Ottavio is some vicious dude who has all kinds of corrupt officials looking out for him. Wow! This is… this is unbelievable.”

  “Ask him if he’d be willing to talk to the authorities.”

  I didn’t need a translation to understand Julio’s response. His face turned so pale I could see all the individual wiry whiskers of his goatee. He had gone as far as he would go—I could see that—and told Felix that if asked to repeat the accusations, he would deny them.

  “Ask him why George would do such a thing.”

  He did.

  “He says he doesn’t know, but he thinks Mr. Speath is und
er financial pressure. He has a whole stack of unpaid bills and they’ve been having cash flow problems.”

  No wonder George was so anxious for the Majestic business. “Felix, did he tell you who George is working for? Who represents Ottavio here in Florida?”

  Julio didn’t know, but I thought I might. I’d only met one money launderer while in Florida on my great adventure.

  “They did change outside accountants about six months ago,” Felix said. “He thinks that’s when it started. He gave me the name. In fact—” I could see Felix slipping into his hacker’s trance. He stopped in front of Julio and asked him a few questions, to which Julio responded.

  “I am so psyched, Miss Shanahan. He just told me enough that I might be able to get into Mr. Speath’s vault. I can’t wait. Can I go?”

  “No, you can’t go and if there’s any chance they can find out you’ve been in there and trace it back to you, I don’t want you screwing around with it. We’re talking about drug traffickers here. In fact, ask Julio if they have a way of tracking back to you if you try something like that.”

  “I don’t think he’d know if they did.”

  “Ask him anyway.”

  Julio responded with a shrug and a blank stare. “He doesn’t know, but I think I can figure that out once I get in. Anything else?”

  I looked up at the sprinkler head in the ceiling of my room. It was a good place to focus.

  “Speath Aviation is a repair station that we now find out is being used to launder—but drug money, not parts. Right, Felix?”

  “Right.”

  “Who’s the drug launderer in this little scheme we’ve got going here? It’s not Jimmy. Jimmy is parts. It’s Vanessa. Ask Julio if he knows that name. Vanessa Cray.”

  He didn’t.