by Ralph Zeta
Lowell had intimate knowledge of Baumann’s criminal activities in this country. Kaja Slavic was smart and played his hand extremely well. He performed his magic within the confines of the law, always operating in obscure ways that would stand scrutiny. Marrying his victims was a shrewd strategy. But the master touch was his subjugation of the victims through the use of alcohol and drugs a ploy that gave him complete control of their affairs. His last act before vanishing was to crush their spirits and rob them of whatever dignity remained. Depressed and destitute, his victims faced complete isolation and estrangement from everyone. The product of his handiwork was a sad, broken woman with few options. Alone and in despair, their tortured minds, full of corrosive images and patchy memories, were fertile ground for irrationality. Suicide became not just possible, but also desirable. It was a carefully concocted scheme, the net effect a death sentence. Such an outcome was the perfect exit strategy.
I glanced at Lowell Pinkus, cocooned and limp on the metal table. The talk had helped clarify the nature of his relationship with Baumann. He was well aware Kaja Slavik had been a key player in his country’s much feared Secret Police, an enforcer and a killer. He had agreed to assist Bauman defraud his victims in exchange for what else? Cold, hard cash. Lots of it. After all, Lowell adamantly sated that in his present condition he had considerable expenses and his disability pension was inadequate given what he had sacrificed in the service of his country. He was just trying to make ends meet. He also informed us that the CIA did not know the full extent of Baumann’s criminal enterprise since arriving stateside only that he had left his country with enough stolen cash to live decently well almost anywhere in the U.S. He was always moving, never in any one spot for too long. He was a perfectionist who never delegated any aspect of his life to anyone, and a man who trusted no one. He had a high degree of paranoia and delusions of self-importance, and was prone to frequent bouts of grandiosity. He was a true narcissist with strong psychopathic tendencies. He was the real deal, Emperor Caligula’s lost son, Lowell remarked with a snicker.
“Where can I find Baumann, Lowell?”
“Nowhere... anywhere.” Lowell began to laugh as if he had just made the cleverest joke. “But if you do find him, tell him to please call and check in!” The laughter continued. Lowell did not know Baumann’s whereabouts or his immediate plans. Obviously, the man rarely shared that type of information with anyone. Lowell said he had not heard from the man in weeks. I had extracted all I could out of Lowell and, again, I had hit a dead end. Worse, sooner or later, my search for search for Bauman was bound to raise some eyebrows inside the Beltway.
News of CIA involvement was completely unexpected. That alone mandated a change in strategy. Time for Sammy to quit the scene. I did not want him in their sights. There was also the possibility that Lowell might remember enough of our time together to raise serious concerns back in Virginia. That would bring unwanted attention and perhaps some interference from the agency. Would he remember enough in time to alert Baumann? Maybe. But it was a risk I would have to live with. I was not about to do any more harm to this man than I already had.
It was almost five in the morning when we pulled into the mostly empty parking lot of a large strip mall just west of Congress Avenue in Fort Lauderdale. The shopping area had a large supermarket, drugstore, beauty salons, a gas station and the usual assortment of fast-food chains, and it was close enough to Pinkus’s typical route home from the strip joint to make sense. It also had a liquor store, and I made sure he reeked of booze.
Initially, memories of his brief encounter would be minimal and hazy at best. But with time and coaching by CIA experts, he might be able to remember specific details maybe even enough to identify me. But, at least for the time being, anything we could do to avoid alarming the folks back at Langley was the preferred course of action.
I had pulled into a spot next to a delivery panel van and cut the engine off, then placed Lowell in his chair and began to wipe clean all the surfaces I had touched. I glanced back at Lowell Pinkus, slumped peacefully in his chair, eyes closed, his breathing slow and rhythmical. I wondered if the memories of what I had done to this man would affect my already screwed-up psyche. Everything mattered. For the most part, the distressing nightmares some of us experience at times are the direct result of past actions, questionable acts, wrongful deeds, damage inflicted onto others. Those images are always there, never subsiding. Some play like a bad movie constantly rattling off somewhere in the deep subconscious. Was what I had done to Lowell justifiable? Should the need for justice for my clients trump over Lowell’s basic rights as a human being? Was I really any better than the man I was after? There are no easy answers. We do what we must for our own reasons, demons be damned.
I moved Lowell back into the driver’s position, secured his chair in place, and buckled his seat belt. I wiped clean the last surfaces I had touched and I got out of the van, locked up, and walked toward the waiting SUV.
After almost three full days of following Baumann’s trail of deception throughout Florida and breaking a few dozen federal and state laws in the process, the stark reality of the situation dawned on me: I wasn’t any closer to finding Baumann than when I started.
Twenty
I awoke with a start. A loud thumping, then silence.
More thumping. I glanced at my new bedside clock. The old one had met with an untimely demise, I had yet to explain. It was almost one in the afternoon. I had overslept. Shit.
The thumping again, this time louder, more urgent. Someone was banging on the main cabin door. I stumbled upstairs to the main living area.
Someone was calling my name... Sammy’s voice. I opened the door and let him in along with an unwelcome blast of sunlight.
“Been calling you for hours, chief,” Sammy began. I closed the door. “Your phone’s off.”
“I overslept.” I needed coffee. I stalked back toward the galley. “What’s up?”
“Bad news, J. J.”
I squinted at Sammy but said nothing. I already had that feeling of dread.
“It’s Amy.”
“What about her?” I swallowed.
“She’s in the hospital. Someone beat the living shit out of her last night.”
I stared at Sammy. His face gave the answer away before he uttered the words.
“It’s not good, Jason.”
***
Amy was in a semiprivate room on the second floor of St. Mary’s Medical Center in West Palm Beach. I drove there, with Sammy following at a safe distance. On the way, I called him, and he explained what he knew.
Amy had slipped away unnoticed and drove in her rented car to her mother’s house last night. There was something else she wanted to get from the house before the bank took it over. Some small box with a few old pictures and notes she had written to her father. The box had been hidden somewhere in her playroom, she had said. Also in the box was a rosary her father had given her when she was a child. He had told her that whenever she felt scared, she should take it out and pray to the Good Lady.
Amy never made it inside the house. She was found in a pool of blood near one of the side porches. A jogger heard screams and summoned the police. Mercifully, a black-and-white had been nearby and was able to respond almost instantly. That saved her life. Amy told the police she had no idea who her attacker was. She had not seen his face. He was wearing a hooded sweatshirt, and it was dark.
I had seen my fair share of carnage, but for me at least, it always seemed much worse when it happened to an innocent noncombatant. Her face, what little wasn’t covered by bloody bandages, was a horrible purplish mess. She seemed asleep, but when I pulled a chair up to her bedside and sat down, she stirred. Her bruised and puffy left eye opened to barely a slit. The right eye was stitched up and so swollen, it would be days before she could open it. A feeble smile formed on her dry, swollen lips. I tried to keep the dismay from showing on my face. The pale, thoughtful, delicate form that used to be her young face was n
ow gone, turned by a merciless beating into something resembling a pile of ground liver. Her left arm was bandaged and in a sling, and her chest was wrapped in bandages. A tube protruded from her left side of her chest. Broken ribs, a collapsed lung she was lucky to be alive.
She whispered something I couldn’t hear. I stood up and fixed her hair. Seeing her like this stirred something dark and sinister inside me a feeling I didn’t like. A tear welled out of her barely opened eye. I took her unbandaged hand in mine and told her she was safe now. She tried to nod, then winced in pain from the effort.
“Was it Evan?” I asked.
She gave the barest nod.
“Why did he attack you?”
A battered, bandaged face can’t reveal much in the way of emotion there’s simply no way to understand a disfigured and swollen face like hers. Through her only good eye, a blue orb savagely encased in crimson capillaries, she watched me, studying my face, somehow hiding away her pain and sorrow as best as she could.
“’Cause he’s a sick bastard.” Her whispered words came out slow and slurred, as if her tongue were twice its normal size.
I asked her if she’d like some water, and she said ice. I put a chip of ice on her lips, and she licked it till it was gone. I dried her mouth with a clean towel.
“Can you tell me what happened?” I asked her.
“I went to the house.” She paused to swallow. “Someone was there. It was dark. But there was a light on inside. That was strange I made sure all the lights were turned off the other night. The light was in my mother’s study. I walked down the side of the house, hoping to look through the window. That’s when he jumped me.” She grimaced and swallowed. I gave her a little more ice.
“Then what?”
“I wanted to talk to him. He said the time for talk was over. I told him I wanted some things back family things, stuff that wasn’t his to take. That he could keep the money, for all I cared. I told him I wouldn’t call the police or the FBI if he just returned those things; otherwise, he’d have a problem.” She paused again and licked her battered, swollen lips. I gave her another chip of ice.
“Go on,” I said.
“He laughed, then said the only one with a problem was me. That’s when he grabbed me by the neck, pinned me against the wall, and started beating me. He kept his hand on my mouth so I couldn’t scream. Then, when the pain was too much, I guess I passed out. The next thing I remember, I was on the floor and getting drenched in cold water. I opened my eyes and saw Evan standing above me, a garden hose in his hand. It was as if he was looking at a rabid dog or something. Like I was some worthless piece of shit.” She began to sob. I offered her more ice, but she shook her head and went on. “He kicked me hard several times. Then he… peed on me!” She sobbed some more.
I decided not to push her. She needed time to process and sort through the nightmare on her own. The trauma of such an experience to her delicate psyche had to be significant. I remained silent.
“Last thing he did was stomp hard on my stomach with his big foot. I started screaming as loud as I could. He kept kicking me. I was sure he was going to kill me. Next thing I remember is waking up here.”
“Amy, you should have called me or Sammy.”
“I know and I’m sorry I didn’t,” she said with the feeblest of smiles. “But I’ll be all right. It doesn’t hurt much anymore.” It didn’t hurt much now, because of the morphine in the IV solution going in her arm. She would be in pain for a long time.
“What did you tell the police?”
“Nothing.”
“Why? Why didn’t you tell them about Evan?”
“I thought about it,” she said, and asked for more ice. I gave her another piece. “I didn’t want to bring in the police. Not yet. That might lead them to what you’re trying to do for me. I don’t want to mess things up for you. I’ve been thinking hard about all this. What if what my dad hid in the tapestry is stolen or something?”
“What if it is? What will you do?”
She thought about it for a moment before answering. “I guess if that’s the case, we’ll figure something out. Maybe there’ll be a reward of some kind. Maybe it’ll be enough for me to finish school.”
I smiled at her. “You continue to amaze me, Amy.”
“Amaze you? How?” she said. “I mean, look at me: I’ve hit rock bottom. I didn’t have much left when we met. There’s even less now. But I had to go back to the house. He’s taken everything else from me. Do you understand?”
“I understand,” I said, stroking her hand. The soft skin of her hand felt warmer now, as if it belonged to a living soul. I then told her, “But you took an unnecessary risk. Nothing material in this world is worth risking your life like that. You’re lucky to be alive.”
She smiled.
“I’m sorry to say there’s good news in all this,” I said. Her gaze fell back on me. “It means the bastard is close by. He made a mistake. I’m going to find him.” This time it was her hand seeking mine.
She gave my hand a weak squeeze and said; “Please be careful, Jason. I don’t want anything bad to happen to you, okay?”
I had to smile. I kissed her gently on her bandaged head and said, “You just worry about getting better and getting up and out of here. I’ll take care of the rest. Your stepfather, too.”
On the way out, I arranged with the hospital to give Amy’s room around-the-clock security, on my dime.
I left the hospital through the emergency entrance and headed for the parking lot, where I was surprised to find my car boxed in by a large, gleaming black Ford Excursion with dark windows. In retrospect, it should not have been all that surprising.
I was not going anywhere. As I approached my car, a tall, heavy-set man got out of the mammoth SUV. Everything about him, from the dark suit and darker sunglasses to the utter absence of social niceties, had that unmistakable and very sterile government air. Easily two inches taller than me, he looked to be in his late fifties, with short gray hair and a graying goatee.
“Mr. Justice?” The man said, taking a couple of steps toward me.
I came to a stop. Something about this man sent my internal alarms into overdrive. His air of supreme self-confidence reminded me of other hard-ass types I had met in faraway places. He also had that prepackaged, institutional look about him probably from an institution domiciled in Langley, Virginia. How the hell had they found out so soon?
“Do I know you?” I asked in a tone of chilly indifference. To test the waters, I put my hands in my pockets. Almost immediately, two more large men, in dark suits and darker sunglasses, burst out of the SUV, hands inside their jackets. The two men, blond and muscular, resembled an Arian security detail. I had to smile.
“I’m going to need you to come with us,” the stranger said in a tone that seemed to expect full compliance.
“Says who?”
“I do,” he said, and took another step toward me. “My name is Richard Kellerman. I believe we have a mutual acquaintance. A Mr. Pinkus I’m sure you remember him. He remembers you well.”
Shit. That didn’t take long.
There was no need to beat around the bush with this guy by now they knew as much about me as I did. And they obviously knew about last night. I had illegally interrogated one of their guys, used drugs on him, broken God knows how many laws. So why wasn’t the FBI here? If they were really interested in filing formal charges or prosecuting me, they would have called on someone with jurisdiction, which they didn’t have on U.S. soil. That provided me with some latitude.
“Am I under arrest?”
He spread his arms wide so I could see inside his jacket. There were no badges and no guns. “Do I look like law enforcement to you, Jason? Can I call you Jason?” His grin looked a little too white to be natural.
The answer was obvious. I was Jason and he was not a cop. I said nothing.
“You really need to come with us.”
“If I’m not under arrest and you’re not a cop, then
we’re done here. Now, move your gas hog out of my way or I’ll call a real cop.”
The smile vanished from his lips. “I’m afraid you don’t have a choice, Jason. I don’t want a scene, but whether you like it or not, you’re coming with us. Now.” He nodded, and his two goons came forward.
“That is not such a good idea,” I said with a deadpan stare that I hoped would convey that I meant it. My right hand went inside my shirttail, to the small of my back a move designed to telegraph that I had come prepared and wasn’t going without a fight. “If you really know who I am, you must also know I am capable of tapping you twice in the chest before these two meatheads of yours take another step.”
“Kill me?” he asked with a hint of derision. “But you’ll be in so much trouble, son.”
“I’ll manage.”
Kellerman kept his gaze on me. My fingers reached the reassuring contours of the .45 caliber Glock semiautomatic.
Kellerman raised his hand, and the goons froze in place. My cell phone rang in my pocket. I took it out with my left hand, never taking my eyes off the three large men glaring back at me, and put it on speaker.
“Hello, Mr. Agent,” said Sammy’s voice.
“Who’s this?” Kellerman replied.
“Who I am doesn’t matter much, sir. If you’ll please take a moment to look down just to the right of your pocket, you will notice a tiny jiggling red dot. In less than a second, that dot could suddenly grow much bigger. I will be painful. Messy, too. That would ruin everybody’s day, now, wouldn’t it, sir?”
Kellerman and I both looked, and sure enough, there was a little red spot, quivering at center mass. I had no way of knowing whether Sammy was hunkered down in a ghillie suit with a sniper rifle aimed at Kellerman or had simply placed himself where he could unobtrusively aim a harmless laser pointer at the stranger. Always nice to have Sammy watching my back.