Good Junk

by Ed Kovacs

  “You’re telling me that these weapons are part of the space station program?” asked Harding.

  “No, I’m just telling you that Mister Chu could have legally shipped them to China if he so chose. But as I said, they were being sent to Peru. In lieu of these facts, I would suggest that at most what we have here is an unfortunate case of mislabeling perfectly legal, exportable goods.”

  Time to punt. Everyone examined Brandt’s documents and took a step back to make cell calls, including Harding. I noticed the Asian driver crush out his cigarette and glance into the back seat of the limo, and I just knew that the mysterious Mr. Chu was sitting behind the opaque tinted glass. If Brandt were such a terror, who was this guy Chu he fronted for?

  I pulled Chief Ritzman aside.

  “Chief, everyone in that limo should have signed in at the gate, right?”

  “That’s required, yes.”

  “Would you mind finding out who the occupants are?”

  The chief turned away and dialed a call as Harding rejoined me.

  “Here’s a little morsel to chew on: Tan Chu is a Chinese intelligence agent.”

  It took a second for that statement to sink in. Chinese intelligence purchasing and shipping prototype weapons to China with the aid of the FBI, Customs and Border Protection, and maybe a dead guy named Del Breaux. And Chu’s onsite rep, Clayton Brandt, wearing a U.S. Air Force Academy class ring, was a man Peter Danforth fingered as the deadliest person in “the Buyer’s Club,” which had likely murdered Del Breaux and Ty Parks.

  “Want to arrest Chu? If I’m not mistaken he’s sitting in the back of the limo.”

  “He has diplomatic immunity. Works out of the Chinese embassy in D.C. as a commercial attaché.”

  “Well, he’s doing commerce, all right. But isn’t his travel restricted?”

  “Supposedly he can’t go beyond fifty miles of Washington, D.C.”

  “So arrest him for that.”

  “His travel has been authorized. By FBI CI-3.”

  “The same counterintelligence people who are giving your boss Gunderson a lot of grief.”

  “Exactly.”

  Just when I thought we might be stepping on the toes of some kind of FBI sting operation, Chief Ritzman quietly interrupted. “Two people signed in from the limo: Clayton Brandt and the driver, Ding Tong, a Chinese national.”

  “Chief, what do we do if there’s someone in that limo who didn’t sign in?” asked Harding, smiling.

  “That’s a security breach and we take that very seriously around here, Agent Harding.”

  “Then let’s take a walk.”

  As Harding and the chief crossed toward the black limo, I glanced at Brandt. A retired air force general shilling for a Chinese agent. Something felt surreal about the whole game. Clearly, regardless of what might happen this afternoon, this ultimately would be resolved in favor of Tan Chu and the forces that supported and abetted his actions, for whatever reasons. So I took a stroll over to the forklift driver because I had a double murder to solve.

  “Do me a favor.” I palmed the guy two twenty-dollar bills without anyone noticing. “When you put all this scrap back into the container, load this one in last.” I indicated the shrink-wrapped pallet with the single sheet.

  “Done,” said the forklift guy.

  Just then, all heads turned, including mine, toward the limo, where Harding and Chief Ritzman faced off with the wiry driver, Ding Tong, who apparently had a short temper and was emphatically barring them from entering the rear of the limo. A couple of Harbor cops headed over to back up Chief Ritzman as I snaked my way around to the other side of the limo.

  “You can no go in car!” shouted Tong.

  “Who’s in the back seat?” asked Harding.

  “No one in back seat! You have search warrant? Huh? You have search warrant?”

  “If there’s someone in the back seat who didn’t sign in, they have committed a crime,” said Chief Ritzman calmly.

  “No crime here, only stupid Americans think they can do anything they want. Show me search warrant, I let you in.”

  I had heard about enough from the Ding Dong Driver. I stood on the opposite side of the limo from all the action and was surprised to find the rear door unlocked, so I jerked it open. I looked into the face of a Chinese man in his forties who could only be Tan Chu.

  His appearance was unremarkable, perfect for an intelligence operative. He wore gray slacks and an inexpensive open-necked shirt. Thick black hair combed straight back but neatly trimmed. He calmly met my gaze through his cheap wire-rimmed glasses, his deep brown eyes showing not the slightest sign of unease.

  “Mister Chu, please step out of the car, right now.” I spoke the words with the kind of authority that left no option open for negotiation. Amazingly, he complied, quickly and without protest. Just as amazingly, as Chu and I stood there sizing each other up, a body came hurtling over the limo’s trunk and slammed me to the ground.

  I rolled clear and found my feet just in time to face my attacker. On pure instinct I blocked a combination of incredibly fast blows from Ding Tong. I vaguely heard shouts in the background. I couldn’t even compute what martial art modality he was using, but it sure felt strange fighting in one of my funeral suits.

  I went offensive out of sheer desperation, wondering if any of the dozen cops watching might jump in and help me out. Then I realized I was pulling my punches. A couple of kicks, if I’d administered them full force, would have taken Tong down. Why was I doing that in a fight with a guy trying to rip my head off?

  I flashed on Bobby Perdue’s face at the same moment that Tong came at me with a blistering combination—man he had fast hands—that sent me to the pavement, flat on my back. I expected the ground game to begin, but thankfully, it never happened. As I lay bleeding and barely conscious I tilted my head in time to see the Harbor cops shoot multiple Tasers into Tong’s body, causing him to go stiff as a board and then fall to the pavement.

  I dropped my head back on the blacktop blinking, thinking, Bobby Perdue strikes again.

  New Orleans has a lot of experience with screwed-up situations and it was right now getting a little more. As EMS bandaged the cuts on my face and the back of my head, a tow truck winched up the limo for a ride to the impound yard. Clayton Brandt had been invited to use his prissy, over-hyped-and-priced i-Phone to call for a taxi. Tan Chu and Ding Tong stood handcuffed, but not under arrest. Turns out they both had diplomatic immunity, the arrogant pricks. They were being detained for questioning as witnesses to a number of possible crimes.

  Doug Simms had ordered the cases of weapons loaded into a second container and stored in a secure Customs facility pending the outcome of the National Security Investigation. The scrap in the green container from Scrap Brothers would most likely be released in twenty-four hours, according to Simms, and would spend the night here in the TDF Shipping yard. I was happy to see that the last pallet back into that cargo container was the shrink-wrapped job I’d grown attached to.

  “Harding, I could use a cold one.”

  “Me too, but I’m still on duty. I can’t be seen drinking.”

  “What, you haven’t been kicked off the case yet?”

  “In a manner of speaking I have, but I can’t get into that right now. Anyway, while you were laid out I got a call from some D.C. puke in CI-3. Before he could get started, I put the call on speaker and asked for the correct spelling of his name. Told him the Times-Picayune reporter next to me would want to spell it right. The line went dead.”

  “Don’t you hate cell-phone dropout?”

  She smiled, maybe the first time I ever saw her do that.

  “Harding, there’s a cold one at my place.”

  If I fell for another woman, it would cause problems in my unusual relationship with Honey. Having sex with another woman, however, caused no problems, as far as I was concerned, anyway. Honey was always accusing me of laying everything except the Atlantic cable, so I might as well be guilty once i
n a while. I never copped to anything, but women always seemed to know. Honey and I weren’t lovers, we had no exclusivity agreements, and hey, I’m a single heterosexual male with a healthy libido.

  So it was that I had Harding spread-eagled on my dining table, her skirt up around her hips. I think she was turned on by the cuts and bruises on my face. As for me, I was turned on by her business suit. Not the “take-me-seriously-just-like-you-would-a-man” jacket-and-pants-thing, but a short skirt and matching blazer, white blouse, nylons, and heels—oh, yeah, the shoes had to stay on—it was a uniform of sorts. Women in uniform, except for Orleans Parish prison jumpsuits, turned me on big-time. I pined for the all-white nurse uniforms of old.

  It was a short visit; Harding had to go. Sure we were attracted to each other, but the sex had been fast, furious, and perfunctory, a needed feel-good physical release absent of any true affection. There were no complaints on either of our parts, though, as she hurried off, and I fully expected that we might schedule similar conferences in the near future. I felt good. So good I had forgotten to ask Harding how she knew Tan Chu was Chinese intelligence. She’d only said that “in a manner of speaking” she was off the case. So it seemed like I had a good reason for a follow-up session with Harding.

  After Harding left, it struck me that Tan Chu must be one of the remaining people in Danforth’s Buyer’s Club. I checked the copy of the weapons receipt Harding had gotten from Clayton Brandt, allegedly showing that Tan Chu had purchased the weapons legally for export. I’m not an ATF agent and as Doug Simms had hinted, leafing through the ITAR regs was like trying to find your way out of the Atchafalaya Swamp. The weapons seller was an outfit called Global Solutions Unlimited out of McLean, Virginia. Since Global Solutions possessed numerous State Department permits and current FFLs, including a Title 20, it seemed that Chu’s purchase of the weapons for export was indeed legal. So the questions became: Who is Global Solutions and where were they getting the weapons from? A quick Internet search revealed zip.

  My next step was to call in a guy to pull a twelve-hour shift, replacing Kendall in the surveillance van still parked at the Walmart. I wanted to keep it close to the port, just in case.

  I had intended to run down Decon tonight, but the wild events at the port necessitated another course of action. So I grabbed a few hours of sleep, then drove off in the Bronco wearing all black, since I was about to do some bad things.

  I made short work of climbing the concrete flood wall, set back on the south side of Tchoupitoulas, and entering the port area. There was no traffic on the Clarence Henry Truckway, so my biggest worry was any long-range security cams that may or may not be monitored. I made it into the TDF Shipping yard; the security guy in the guard shack had his nose in a DVD player. Dozens of other cargo containers, including green ones, had arrived in the TDF yard today, but the GPS signal led me right to my target.

  I picked the hockey-puck-type padlock. Generally, there is no quiet way to open a steel cargo container, but I sprayed WD-40 on the hinges and lever mechanisms and rotating tangs, and that helped. I think the movie soundtrack coming from the guard shack helped even more. Inside the container, I quickly cut through the shrink-wrap and extracted the materials sample which felt incredibly lightweight. I secured it into my black Pacsafe backpack.

  Twenty minutes later I cruised past Ms. Mae’s bar on Napoleon then hung a right and parked. Terry Blanchard lived in the house around the corner. I’d gotten the address from Honey, who got it from the DMV. She’d sent some uniforms to his neighbors who stated that he was divorced and lived alone. Blanchard wouldn’t be happy to see me, but I had a few questions.

  He answered the door and I barged in past him, noting on my way through that the guy wore pajamas with rabbits on them.

  “Hey, you can’t just come into my house and—”

  I put him into an arm bar. Customs agents don’t usually have to get physical in the line of duty, and Blanchard was rusty with his defensive tactics.

  “I’m in a hurry, okay?”

  “You’re assaulting a federal agent!”

  “No, I’m assaulting a corrupt dirtbag. Now tell me who you called today!”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know what I mean. The deal still holds; we’ll protect your sorry ass, but you have to give it all to us, Terry. Who did you call to warn them, and how much are they paying you?” I applied more pressure, and it didn’t take much to get him talking.

  “I get a thousand a month in cash.”

  “How?”

  “An envelope. Put in my mail slot in the front door.”

  “How are you told which containers to protect?”

  “I log into an e-mail account. Check the Saved Drafts folder.”

  “Terrorists use that technique, Terry. Share the same log-in info and communicate via unsent e-mail messages. So who was it you called when the shipment got stopped?”

  “I don’t have a name. Male, American. If there are ever any issues on what’s been previously arranged, I’m to call that number.”

  I released him with a shove. “Write the number down for me and the e-mail log-in info.”

  As he complied, I counted out ten one-hundred-dollar bills. He gave me the jotted-down information and I stuffed the Benjies into the chest pocket of his bunny pjs.

  “Since you’re for rent, I want a piece of you. You’re on retainer. I wasn’t joking earlier today. I’m expecting calls from you to inform me of any pertinent contact or event relating to all of this. And you keep our little arrangement to yourself. You got that?”

  He lowered his head and nodded. The guy looked pathetic, repulsive actually; I didn’t bother to close the front door behind me.

  Out on the street I fired up a cigarillo and dodged mud puddles as I angled toward the Bronco. I was coming up in the world; I had a fed on my payroll.

  As I drove off I decided Decon could wait until tomorrow. I felt hungry and thirsty. After making certain I wasn’t followed, I stashed the stolen top-secret exotic-materials sample in an abandoned warehouse at Soraparu and Rousseau. It was the second piece of sensitive, U.S. government-owned technology I had illegally obtained in as many days. Maybe I’m not the smartest guy in the room, but at least I’m curious.

  The kitchen was open late at the Bulldog on Magazine so I stopped in for a beer and a burger. I sat at the end of the bar, lost in thoughts of recent events. After mentally prying myself away from a growing obsession with the case, I reflected on why I had pulled my punches with Tong. Something in me was afraid. Afraid that in an all-out fight, I might accidentally apply lethal force. Which meant I was questioning my skills, second-guessing myself in real time as to how I applied physical violence. Strange that at the same time I fought to control an unbridled rage over the whole Bobby Perdue mess, that same anger suddenly had a governing device placed on it when I got into a fight. No solution to the conundrum came to mind, so I sloughed it off, simply happy that I was no longer the frozen man. Not frozen, but maybe half-baked.

  I’d killed seven people in my life. I figured that didn’t put me down there with Pol Pot but didn’t put me up there with Mother Theresa, either. When you put on the badge, there’s room for compassion, but not for pacifism, and that carried over to my work as a PI. You become an instrument of justice, and sometimes that justice is meted out quickly, on the street. The problem lay in administering that righteous street justice, instantly, under extreme stress and in life-or-death scenarios. I took the responsibility very seriously.

  I never used lethal force except as a last-ditch defense in the face of extreme potentially terminal aggression, either directed at me or some innocent nearby person. I can remember very clearly the details of each of my prior killings, the where’s, why’s, who’s, and how’s. Little details like a blistering breeze blowing with a scent of magnolias or the sizzle and smell of bacon from some nearby fry pan are as real to me now as they were then.

  I’m not an automaton. I had to deal with guilt a
nd depression and second-guessing my actions in every instance. Even though I took down bad people who deserved to go, there was no escaping the feeling that you had somehow sullied yourself. Why was it me who had to kill this person; why not another officer? Why are people thanking me when all I have done is to take a human life? The aftermath of a killing wasn’t pleasant, but none had ever affected me the way killing Bobby Perdue had. Before, I had processed the emotions and moved on. I had acted responsibly, without malice in the spur of the moment to save a life or lives, including my own. I had slept pretty well at night.

  The most abysmally stupid armed criminal understands the old credo “Live by the gun, die by the gun,” even if they think it won’t happen to them. Sometimes the world kills back.

  And every mixed-martial artist, male or female, who stepped into the octagonal fight cage understood that things could go bad and they might not be breathing when all is said and done and the bell rings. But not because your opponent had been trying to kill you.

  I understood all of this intellectually. But after I killed my seventh person about a month ago, I no longer slept well at all. Thoughts of Perdue were no longer all-consuming, but I had a long way to go to escape his clench.

  CHAPTER TEN

  The heavily armed security guards at the front gate of the FEMA trailer site at Independence Park didn’t seem too surprised when the SWAT team and a convoy of vehicles pulled up at 6 AM. But then I knew that FEMA site guards handled rapes, robberies, burglaries, assault, drug-dealing, and shootings on an almost daily basis. The criminal dynamic that existed before the Storm now operated in the microcosms of the FEMA trailer parks, which often housed some of the most violent offenders. Ironic that taxpayer-funded security operators stood guard for the sleeping gangbangers, thugs, and killers, mixed in with the good folks.