The Ghost Syndicate

by K R Hill

  Through the workshop they followed the doctor, past long, rusted exhaust pipes, an engine dangling on a hoist. At an old door, their guide stopped and flipped a light switch and fumbled with a ring of keys. After flipping through the keys several times, he asked for help and handed over the ring.

  "You all right?” Bartholomew asked, twisting a key in the lock.

  "Yes, I'm fine. See if you're not nervous after my little presentation.” When the door opened, the doctor pushed his guests out of the way and hurried inside.

  Bookshelves lined the walls. Upon the books sat rolls of paper, photos, and newspaper clippings. Three computers boxes stood on the desk. Four flat-screen monitors hung on the wall above the desk.

  “Has this room ever seen sunlight?” asked Connor.

  “In the day I work on cars. It helps me relax. But at night I do research.” He waved a finger at the screens, walked to a filing, pulled out a sheet of paper, and hurried to a computer. An image flashed on the screens.

  "That's Zakai. He was the timekeeper at the front door.” Connor pointed.

  "Yes.” Dr. Morganstern nodded, turning over papers and books on the desk. When he found a pipe, he cleaned it, packed it full of tobacco, and leaned back in his seat. "I ran a little organization before the wall fell. Zakai was then a professional killer for the Ghrazenko family. Through a strange set of circumstances, I was given a choice: watch him torture a boy, or let six of my operatives be captured and tortured. Oh, Lord, such a memory.” He wiped his face.

  "Well," he sighed, crumpling a piece of paper. "I put the police on to the fiend when I could, but he managed to escape and return to his fatherland. I presume he used his father's influence to join the secret police on Cyprus. He's been in intelligence for many years. He spent the last years of his career in Central and South America, and dropped from sight. I thought he had died."

  The doctor tapped a hand on the desk. "There is no easy way to say this: If he wants to find you, it is only a matter of time. By bringing Zakai back, the Ghrazenkos are taking a huge risk. He is a wanted man. Why would they bring in the big guns for you? What is the connection? What are you involved in?”

  Connor raised a hand. “It’s me. I arranged to buy an art shipment they brought in. It was through a middleman named Saunders.”

  “Not Saunders the art broker?”

  “How do you know about him?”

  “Because the Ghrazenkos are based in Germany. I am German. I keep tabs on them. When the son, Teddy Ghrazenko expanded the family business to LA, I sat up and paid attention. But what you need to know is that Saunders’s hired muscle, a killer named Falsen—” The doctor shot a hand into the air. “That’s it. I remember now. I heard that Saunders’s bodyguard was found murdered. Saunders has disappeared. Falsen must have tried to take over. He must have the shipment and the payment. That is the only thing worth bringing Zakai back to the States.”

  “He tried to kill us— twice.”

  “He thinks you’re going to lead him to Falsen.”

  “I got to get out of here.” Connor marched to the door. “This is too close to home. I need to make sure the women are safe.”

  The old man looked in his pipe. "Maybe I should settle with Mr. Zakai. Perhaps a little game is in order, just like in Berlin.”

  “Zakai just murdered people in Trenchtown,” said Bartholomew. “The police are investigating. Witnesses will place us there.”

  The doctor thumped the armrests of his chair and stood up with a groan. “Ha, that is good. You’ll be at police headquarters most of the night. At least you won’t be murdered there. Get a lawyer. Get your stories straight. When you get out, I want to hear how you are doing with Mr. Teddy Ghrazenko.”

  “Do you mind if I use your computer for a minute?” Connor pointed and slid into the chair.

  “Take your time,” said the old man, waving his pipe as he left the room.

  Connor opened Skype and tried to contact Dalton. Just when he was about to give up, Dalton’s face appeared on the screen.

  “Hey, Connor.”

  “I ran into a firestorm.” He explained the situation with Teddy Ghrazenko and the Russians.

  “Can you take Teddy down?”

  “I’ll find out in a couple of days.”

  “Don’t underestimate Teddy or Mad Dog.”

  “I can handle them.”

  “Remember what happened to the Sanchez family.”

  “I remember.”

  “I don’t want to see something like that happen again. Can you take them or not?”

  A woman’s hand appeared on Dalton’s shoulder. “Give me a minute,” he said, and stepped away from the computer.

  When Dalton returned to the screen, he said: “Go ahead with the plan. If you need supplies, go see Ted. I’ll let him know you’re coming.”

  Dalton’s window vanished. Connor booted down the computer and walked out into the warehouse.

  “We’ll come back tomorrow,” said Bartholomew.

  At the door, Dr. Morganstern placed his hand on Connor’s shoulder. “I have two bits of advice: Don’t go home. They’ll be watching your place. Also, get fake passports as quick as possible. When you’re working something like this, you may need to leave the country at the drop of a hat.”

  “I know a guy for that,” said Bartholomew, and shook the doctor’s hand.

  "Promise me you will not visit friends,” said the doctor. “Make no mistake, Zakai is hunting you.”

  Chapter 19

  When Lieutenant Harry Deutz clicked the wiper lever, the sprayer shot a stream of fluid over the top of the car. “Perfect,” he said, turning off the wipers.

  He turned onto a street jammed with firetrucks, ambulances and squad cars. Emergency lights flashed, casting shadows on the apartment buildings along the street. Patrolmen walked about stringing up yellow ribbon barriers. Others shouted at the crowd and motioned for people to move onto the sidewalk.

  Deutz rolled forward a few inches and turned on the siren for a second.

  A dumpy beat cop looked up, waved, and pulled the barricade to the gutter and allowed Deutz to drive past.

  Once inside the barrier, he turned into a driveway and straightened the wheel so that one of the front wheels climbed up on the curb. Parked with half the car on the sidewalk, Lieutenant Deutz climbed out, left the door hanging open, and stood in the street stirring his coffee with a finger.

  “This is a bad one, Lieutenant.” The sergeant took off his hat and wiped beads of sweat from his forehead.

  “The dispatcher said there’d been a shooting.” Deutz licked his finger and snapped the top on his steaming coffee.

  The sergeant nodded and flipped a thumb over his shoulder. “Oh, there’s been a shooting all right. All total we have three bodies. But only one was shot. One of them was stabbed with a beer glass. That’s where most of the blood came from. And the last guy, by the back door… well, we haven’t established the COD. The strange thing is, the dead guys look like pros.” He shook his head. “You have to keep me filled in on this one. I’d really like to know how three pros get taken out in an African bar?”

  Deutz pointed at the bar sign. “Jamaican, not African,” he said.

  “Come again?”

  The lieutenant clapped the sergeant on the shoulder as he walked past. “You a Bob Marley fan? ‘No Woman, No Cry,’ did you ever hear that song?”

  The sergeant shook his head and put on his cap. “No, sir, I can’t say I have.”

  Deutz walked toward the entrance of the bar. “Trenchtown is a neighborhood of Kingston, Jamaica,” he said over his shoulder, but the sergeant was already halfway across the street by the time he finished the explanation.

  Harry Deutz inhaled deeply and turned a circle, looking up at the clouds and the blue sky. “Well,” he whispered. “It’s now or never.”

  He stood in the doorway and sipped his coffee while sweeping his gaze over the scene. Three bar stools lay on the floor. Around them, spilled beer and pieces
of glass reflected the lights and camera flashes of the investigators in white coveralls. In the middle of the barroom lay a dead man, a pool of blood surrounding his head like a black halo.

  The investigator standing over the body snapped a few photos and looked over. After a moment he walked through glass to the front door, looked up at Deutz, and pulled off the white hood.

  “This is a strange one, Harry.”

  “Were all three Latin?”

  The CSI nodded. “I’m thinking a crew. Each one carried one of these.” He handed stiff new passports to the lieutenant.

  Deutz fanned the documents apart. “Swiss passports. That’s a good neutral country. If you’re carrying a Swiss passport, you have money. It also means you can get in and out of almost every country in the world without bother. What about fingerprints?”

  “I haven’t gotten to those yet.” The investigator pulled the hood over his head and walked to the dead man. He lifted an arm and looked at the fingers.

  “There aren’t any prints, are there?” asked Deutz.

  “No,” said the investigator. He lowered the dead man’s arm and walked to the second corpse. “None on this guy either,” he called.

  “And not one passport will check out.” Deutz tapped the documents. “What about the guy at the back door? You got a COD?”

  Glass crunched as the investigator walked to the back door. When he reached the body, he looked it over, searching for a bullet hole or a knife wound. With a hand under the dead man’s chin and one at the back of his neck, he lifted the guy’s head. “Oops, there’s no mystery here. His neck’s broken.”

  “Okay.” Deutz sipped his coffee. “So, a well-funded crew comes in, but why? It wasn’t a robbery. The register is closed and full of cash. What were they doing here? We have a guy at the back door with a broken neck, a professional killer stabbed with a beer glass, and another body shot through the heart. I’m guessing he was shot to the heart anyway, by the position of that bullet hole. What were the dead men after?”

  The investigator called: “I told you it was a strange one. We got a witness out there who says another guy was guarding the front door with an assault rifle.”

  Deutz walked out into the fresh air and climbed into the squad car where he called in the numbers on the passports. It didn’t take the dispatcher long to get back to him and tell him that the passports checked out. As he was listening to the report about the passports, Captain Troken walked through the crowd.

  He held out some photos to Deutz. “We have multiple witnesses that place these two men at the scene.”

  Deutz took the photos and looked at Connor and Bartholomew. “Well, if it isn’t my two favorite PIs.”

  Troken took the passports. “These look like quality work. They might even be issued by the embassy. Swiss passports like these mean serious money.”

  Deutz nodded. “This crew looks top-notch as well, new black pants and shirts, laser-equipped firearms, serial numbers drilled out. And body has had their fingerprints removed. They can’t be traced. To hire a team like this, to put out that kind of money to look for two PI’s, it doesn’t make sense. I know this Connor guy had a run-in with the Russian mob, but the Russians don’t sub out their work. They take pride in getting revenge.”

  “A piece is missing. We don’t know the motive,” said Troken. The captain tossed the passports onto the seat of the squad car.

  Deutz nodded to the group of witnesses. “What about them? Can we make a case against the PI’s?”

  The captain shook his head. “No, one of them says the bartender shot the guy. Another one says it was the time-keeper. We got nothing.”

  The dispatcher’s voice interrupted: “Lieutenant Deutz.”

  He picked up the microphone and answered.

  “Sir, there is a Mr. Connor Marin here with his attorney. He is asking for you, and says that he would like to make a statement about the shooting in the Trenchtown bar.”

  “Tell Mr. Marin that I’ll be there shortly.”

  “Wait a minute.” The captain took the microphone out of his hand. “Harry, let’s stall this guy. Let forensics do their thing before we talk to him. That way we’ll have more information about what happened here tonight.”

  Deutz drank some coffee. “This is stretching it, but listen to this: I had a tip from a CI that Marin had been in contact with that art dealer who disappeared. Remember the case? His bodyguard was found murdered.”

  The captain scratched the stubbles on his cheek. “I remember. Get to the point.”

  “It’s the only way this makes sense.”

  “Harry. Spill it.”

  “What if that art dealer went rogue and ran off with the money and the art? If the buyer that got ripped off was an organized crime big wig, that’s the worst thing that can happen to a mob boss who rules by fear. He’d have to squash the thief, so he calls in the big guns, and that’s what happened here.”

  “You lost me. How are the two PI’s involved?”

  “Maybe they were looking to retire with some black-market artwork. Or maybe they’re brokering a deal for a client with deep pockets.”

  “And two PI’s took out a professional crew? That’s a huge stretch.”

  “Hey.” Deutz turned away and raised his hands. “My source tells me that Marin was Special Forces.”

  “Fuck,” snapped the captain. “Your source better not be that space cadet, Kreutzfeld.” He jabbed Deutz with an index finger. “That’s a hell of a story. Great imagination. But I can’t take theory to the Chief. Facts, Lieutenant, I need facts. Find out what really happened.”

  ***

  Deutz tried to reach into his pocket as he drove. He fumbled, disconnected his seatbelt, raised up and shoved his fingers into his pants pocket. There he found the crumbled piece of paper he was looking for. He turned it one way and then the other, and tried to open it the best he could with one hand on the wheel. He read an address on 10th Street.

  Deutz drove by the address to check things out. The building had three old storefronts with big windows on the bottom, and smaller ones framed in wood on top. The windows of the middle unit were covered with newspaper. The unit on the corner was the one with the address he wanted. The person who lived there had hung sheer lace panels over the windows with maroon drapes behind those.

  He turned up a side street, parked in a handicapped spot, and set his police identification badge on the dashboard in case any overzealous meter maid happened to be passing. Deutz backtracked along the street to the address, but before he knocked on the front door, he walked around back and checked out the patio. Back there, he saw nothing but a broken-down fence and two junk cars.

  The instant he knocked, Kreutzy jerked the door open and waved him in, grabbed his arm and pulled him inside.

  The floor was bare concrete with lines that revealed where linoleum tiles had once been. Along one wall hung a shelf of plywood and two-by-fours. Flat-screen monitors and circuit boards with fans whizzing behind them, sat upon the shelf.

  Three members of the hacker’s club stood in front of Deutz, blocking his path.

  Kreutzy introduced everybody.

  “The key word here is cop,” said a short white guy whose arms seemed too short for his soft-in-the-middle body.

  “Well, that’s something you need to forget about,” said Deutz. “I’m here like anybody else. I need research done, and I can’t go through conventional channels.” He walked over to the shelf and slapped down a stack of hundred-dollar bills.

  Another member of the club, a big guy with dark skin who was built like a Sri Lankan rugby player, ran his hands over the front of his cashmere sweater. A moment later he rushed over and rifled through the bills. “Green is always a good color to begin with,” he said with a thick accent.

  “Kreutzy here says you guys can get the information I need.” Deutz lifted up a piece of paper and shook it. “This is a list of names, along with Social Security numbers and police rank. I need to find any mysterious banking
transactions these people have made.”

  The four members of the hacking club looked about the room.

  Kreutzfeld threw his arms up in the air and shook them about as though he was having some kind of an attack. “Listen, getting into a bank’s system is nearly impossible. Not to mention a serious crime.”

  “How do we know we’re not being set up?” asked the guy with short arms.

  “Think it through. I’m taking a huge risk. I’m a cop starting an investigation outside of his own department. Those names are officers I work with. If this goes sour, I lose my pension. I’ll be looking at prison time as well. All I want you guys to do is to get in and do a quick sweep of their financial records. Somebody is taking payoffs, and I have to find out who. I can’t go through my own department when I suspect someone’s dirty.”

  Kreutzfeld sat in front of the computer terminals and picked up the stack of cash.

  “That’s five thousand dollars,” said Deutz. “It’s untraceable. It didn’t come out of any bank account. There’s no record of it. You never call me. When I need to meet, I’ll meet you here. Is that understood?”

  The members of the club looked at each other and walked to the rear of the storefront apartment. When they reached the back, one of them called Kreutzfeld, and he jumped up and hurried over.

  After about a minute, Deutz said: “Gentlemen, do we have a deal, or do I take my money and go home?”

  Soft-in-the-middle guy, a pencil resting above one ear, walked toward Deutz. “The other half of the money will be delivered when we have the information you need, right?”

  “Absolutely.” Lieutenant Harry Deutz shook his hand. “You get final payment, and we never see each other again. This never happened.”

  “Wait a minute.” Kreutzfeld rushed to the center of the room. “We need to get really clear about something. There’s no way we’re getting the actual bank records. You gave us a list of four names. If they bank online from home, then we’re in. But if those names are old-school and physically go to the bank for transactions, we’re screwed. That would mean hacking into one or more financial institutions. That’s impossible without running a major operation that would take months to set up and might turn to crap in an instant. But what we can do is calculate where the cash is going. We check the mortgages, how much cash they’re throwing around, what kind of car they’re driving, monthly payments, school tuition, gambling habits. Then we’ll add up the figures and see if everything is kosher.”