Rope on Fire (John Crane Series Book 1)

by Mark Parragh

  Crane sighed and keyed a command into the laptop. The screen went blank, and the hard drive began encrypting itself with a key phrase that Crane kept only in his head. Upstairs, the tablet would be going through the same process and then shutting itself down, to be brought back to life only with a complicated password.

  He folded the laptop shut and slid it under the chair. Then he got up, stretched, and took a few steps away from the chairs into a more open area of the deck. One of the college girls was staring at him with a look of frank invitation. Crane gave her a smile and an apologetic shrug. He suspected her plans were about to go dramatically off the rails.

  Crane took a deep breath and let it out. And then the glass doors at both ends of the deck flew open, and the space was suddenly full of screaming police officers. Crane stood with legs apart and both hands raised as they swept toward him from both directions with guns drawn, waving back startled tourists and yelling for him not to move. The tourists screamed, covered themselves with towels, fled down the stairs to the beach. Behind them, the manager peered out from behind a doorframe, seemingly terrified by both the potential for violence and the damage to the hotel’s reputation.

  “Get on your knees! On your knees!” a cop screamed at Crane from ten feet away, gun leveled at him. A chorus of other cops echoed him. “On your knees.”

  Crane lowered himself to his knees. How the hell had they found him? The uniforms weren’t PR Police, he noticed. These were local San Juan police, probably the Tourism Police unit that patrolled the upscale tourist areas like Condado. That was something, at least. However they’d found him, Acevedo had put him out to the police in general. That made whatever was going on more visible. And with all these rich tourists looking on, they couldn’t get away with simply executing him and planting a throwaway gun on him. Already, he noticed, somebody had their phone out and was recording the scene. On the other hand, these men probably believed Crane had murdered a fellow officer during a traffic stop, and that was not good at all.

  “Hands behind your head!” the first cop screamed, and again all the others backed him up with an overlapping chorus of commands. He crossed his wrists behind his head, and someone stepped up from behind and slapped him into cuffs. Then he was pushed roughly forward and fell onto the concrete. Hands patted him down, emptied his pockets.

  The hotel guests were starting to protest now. With Crane secured, the manager apparently felt confident enough to come outside and start calming them. He pointed out to one of the officers where Crane had been sitting, and they retrieved his laptop.

  A cop went through Crane’s wallet and slipped the cash inside into his pocket. Then he knelt beside Crane’s face, pressed his cheek hard into the concrete, and waved Crane’s driver’s license in front of his face. “John Crane,” he said softly. “You’re going to have a bad day. A really bad day. Do you understand these rights as I’ve explained them to you?”

  Crane said nothing. He hadn’t spoken since the shouting started. He didn’t resist as two officers grabbed his arms and yanked him to his feet. They frog-marched him through the lobby, past gawking guests and staff. There were at least a dozen cops surrounding him, he’d been thoroughly searched, and his hands were cuffed behind his back. But most of the police still kept their guns pointed at him. They weren’t taking any chances with him.

  They marched him out the front doors, past the valet parking stand, to a van in San Juan police livery, and threw him unceremoniously into the back. The interior of the van was bare metal with no seats, only a metal screen separating the forward compartment and some rings with cuffs attached. Someone sat Crane up and fastened his cuffs to the wall.

  Then the doors were slammed shut, and the van took off. The loose handcuffs clanked and rattled against the wall of the van as it pulled sharply out of the parking area.

  Crane had to admit the cop had been right. It was starting to look like he was going to have a very bad day.

  Chapter 20

  Crane saw the daylight give way to darkness through the bit of windshield he could see, felt the van descend a ramp. They were bringing him into a police station, he assumed to a secure receiving area. Then the van lurched to a stop, and the two cops up front got out. Crane listened to the engine idling and through it the faint sound of voices. It sounded like there was some disagreement about what to do with him.

  Whatever they had planned for him wasn’t good. So far this had none of the elements of a proper arrest, so he assumed he wasn’t going into the system. He wouldn’t be able to make a phone call and bring down the wrath of Josh’s high-powered attorneys. He wasn’t going to see a judge and make his case for self-defense. He was on his own, and he was going to have to get himself out of this. He considered his options and waited for his moment.

  The rear doors finally flew open, and someone unfastened him from the wall and dragged him out by his cuffs. He fell hard onto the concrete. At least half a dozen cops glared down at him. They hauled him to his feet. As Crane had thought, they were in an underground parking structure, but there were no cars, no other people. They could just shoot him here if they wanted.

  Instead they marched him to an elevator where one of them used an override key to call the car. When it arrived, four cops got in with him, and they rode to the top of the building without stopping. They marched Crane down institutional beige hallways, past scuffed doors that led to cell wings, and through a series of security ports. Finally they passed through a door labeled “Special Holding.” There were more cells here, bare cubes made of painted metal bars. Their footsteps echoed as they walked Crane to the back of the space. The cells weren’t entirely empty, Crane realized. There was one man in the last cell—huge and muscled, wearing a prison jumpsuit. He looked at Crane with disinterest as the cops opened the cell and thrust him inside.

  The cell door slammed shut, and then the cops turned and walked out the same way they’d brought him in. Crane watched them go. He heard the door close behind them, and Crane was alone with his new cellmate.

  His arms were still cuffed behind his back.

  He smiled at the huge man, who stood looking him up and down. “You having a bad day too?” Crane asked.

  The other man stretched a bit and cracked his knuckles. He had a blond buzz cut and a scar on his chin. “Could be worse,” he said. His accent was thick, Slavic.

  “I’m Emil,” he said. “You’re John, yes?”

  Crane assessed his tactical situation. The big man would be slow, but that wasn’t much help in a confined space. And Emil looked like he was used to shrugging off punches. Punches Crane wouldn’t be delivering with his hands cuffed behind him.

  “You’re a cop killer, huh?” said Emil. “Real tough guy.”

  Crane shrugged. “Don’t believe everything you hear.”

  “Me, I never liked cops. Shoot all the bastards. Fine with me. But they’ve got plans for you, so that means we have to talk before they come back.”

  “I see. What would you like to talk about?”

  “The easy way is you draw me a map. Your contacts, who you report to, who they report to. Right up the chain. Companies, trusts, targets, the way the money moves. Don’t leave anything out.”

  What the hell was he talking about? “Can you give me a little, um…context there, champ?”

  The punch was a roundhouse from the side opposite Crane. Emil pivoted his hips to get his body behind it and drove his fist into Crane’s side, hard. Crane went over and hit the floor. He lay there gasping for a second. Great, he thought, the guy wasn’t even slow.

  Emil stepped closer. As he bent down to grab Crane’s arm, Crane launched a kick at his knee. He felt it connect, but Emil shifted his weight and let the leg go back with the energy. He ended up dancing a few steps away as he regained his balance, but there was no serious damage.

  “All right, let me get you started. Who was your contact in Bremen? The business at the Airbus plant? Who was that?”

  Emil was the muscle, Crane th
ought. Whoever he worked for had to be the same one who had Acevedo and his cops on the payroll, the one who wanted Melissa’s project killed for some reason Crane still couldn’t guess. But they thought he was someone else entirely.

  Crane was still trying to figure out how to use that information when Emil launched a kick that knocked him across the cell. He felt himself picked up by his handcuffs, and a stab of agony ran through his shoulders.

  He tried to get his feet under him, but Emil swung him around and slammed his head into the cell bars.

  “Shaller,” Emil said. “Casse. Those names mean anything to you?” He ran Crane’s skull across the bars, and Crane felt blood dripping from his nose.

  Then Emil dropped Crane on the floor. “You should talk to me. I’m the only friend you’ve got in this place.”

  “Yeah,” said Crane, “I’m feeling it. There’s a lot of love in this room.”

  “At least I need you alive for now.”

  Crane had to admit he had a point. “Okay,” he said. “Tell me what you already know, and I’ll fill in the gaps.”

  “Not how it works,” said Emil, “but I’m fine with doing this the hard way if that’s what you want.”

  He grabbed Crane’s arms again and hauled him to his feet. Crane was tensing his muscles to try head-butting him when they both heard the door across the room open.

  Emil hissed in annoyance. He pushed Crane away and stood with his arms crossed as a group of men walked quickly down the cells—a half-dozen cops led by a man in a suit. He looked angry.

  “What the hell’s going on back here?” the suit snapped. “Get this man out of here!”

  A cop opened the cell door, and Emil moved back into a corner as they extracted Crane.

  “You’re bleeding,” said the suit.

  “I tripped,” said Crane. “The balance is tricky with your arms like this.”

  The suit turned to the nearest cop. “Get those off him.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Crane flexed his arms as the cuffs were removed, feeling the pain of returning circulation.

  The suit did a head check toward Emil. “Who is that prisoner, and why is he here?”

  Nobody answered.

  “Jesus Christ.” He turned to Crane. “Who is he? Did he do this to you?”

  “Emil? Lord no, he’s the only friend I’ve got in this place.”

  The man sighed. “Take him to interrogation room three.”

  ###

  They left Crane alone in the interrogation room. It was about what he’d expected. A small room with a one-way mirror on one wall. A small, scarred table and two battered chairs. There was a box of tissues Crane used to clean his face.

  After a few minutes, the man in the suit entered and closed the door. “My name is Roberto Arias,” he said as he sat across the table from Crane. He handed Crane a business card. Plain white stock with gold ink, a star-shaped logo. “I’m an investigator with the Special Investigations Bureau.”

  The SIB was a unit of the Puerto Rican Justice Department, Crane recalled. It handled organized crime, prison gangs, terrorism, and police corruption. There was certainly plenty of the latter around here.

  “Your ID says your name is John Crane.”

  “That’s right. I’m pleased to meet you, Agent Arias.”

  “I’m investigating a suspected criminal ring operating inside the Puerto Rico police,” said Arias. “It’s not pleasant, but it’s the job, and I flatter myself that I’m good at my job, Mr. Crane. This investigation was going well. Then you appear, and if you’ll pardon me speaking bluntly, suddenly my case turns into a complete clusterfuck.”

  Crane shrugged.

  “The men here believe you’re responsible for the killing of a PR Police officer named Hector Acosta.”

  Arias paused. His fingers went to his left ring finger as if to idly twist a wedding ring. But there was no ring, just a tan line where one had been.

  “They believe Officer Acosta was working a case involving the theft of prescription drugs from Carolina Mercy Hospital. He was not.”

  Arias waited for Crane to say something, but Crane couldn’t think of a thing to say that would advance his cause. On the other hand, he’d learned that if he just stayed quiet, the other person would usually fill the space themselves.

  “What Acosta was doing,” Arias continued, “was hanging around with a group of fellow officers. Sosa, Rodriguez, J., Gavilan, Rodriguez, B., and the ringleader, Sergeant Acevedo. They’re up to something, but it isn’t undercover work.”

  “What do you think they’re involved in?” Crane asked.

  Arias raised an eyebrow. “Nothing I can prove yet. I was hoping you might be able to help me.”

  “Go on.”

  Arias shook his head. His fingers went back to the missing ring.

  “They do their patrols, they go home. Weekends they go to Hato Rey for a ball game, or fishing at Fajardo. They’re men of routine. But recently their routine changed. They started spending a lot of time around a village called Benitez. No idea why. There’s not a lot to do out there.”

  Again Crane made a noncommittal sound and waited. Arias was doing just fine without his help.

  “On the day Acosta was killed, there was an incident at a research facility near there. A lot of shooting, several men from the look of it, with automatic weapons. The Carolina police recovered a great many bullets and casings. 7.62 mm Kalashnikov. According to the autopsy report, that was what killed Officer Acosta. I had a hunch. I inventoried the PR Police evidence room in Carolina. Several weapons were missing, Vietnamese AK-47 knockoffs.”

  Arias stopped, folded his hands in front of him, and looked at Crane with a smile. The moment dragged.

  “So what do you conclude from that?” Crane asked.

  “I think that, for reasons unknown, Sergeant Acevedo and his men attacked that laboratory. Acosta didn’t come back. Somehow, he ended up twenty miles away, in a Cadillac belonging to the chief of thoracic surgery at Carolina Mercy.”

  “That is odd.”

  “Conclusions that follow: the director of the facility, Dr. Simon, lied when she made her statement to the police. Somebody was there when the attack happened. Somebody who was able to disarm a man with a Kalashnikov and kill him with his own gun. I don’t see Dr. Simon or any of her staff doing that.”

  Crane grinned. “You don’t know Dr. Simon very well.”

  Arias scowled briefly. Then a young woman in a suit came in and whispered something to him.

  “You’re sure?” he whispered, and glanced at Crane.

  The woman nodded. Arias thanked her, and she left the room.

  “Who the hell are you, Mr. Crane? Running your name and license number through the system is unusually…unrewarding.”

  Crane hid his smile. That was a break. The old Hurricane Group blocks on his records must still be in place. Arias had sent inquiries and gotten something very vague and not especially helpful. He gathered Arias had seen that kind of result from a file search before and was drawing a conclusion. That was something Crane could use.

  “I don’t lead a terribly interesting life, I guess.”

  “I doubt that very much,” said Arias. “Speaking hypothetically, if there were a ring of corrupt police officers in the Carolina district, what do you think they’d be doing?”

  Crane let his voice take on a conspiratorial tone. He used to be an agent. He could still do a convincing imitation of one. “The airport’s in Carolina. I’d think drug smuggling would prove lucrative. SIB probably isn’t the only agency that would be interested in that.”

  Arias studied Crane for a long moment. “That’s why we couldn’t connect them with local drug gangs. They’re not selling locally. They’re transshipping them out.”

  “Hypothetically, of course,” said Crane. “None of this is proven. But it makes your corruption case part of a bigger picture. Narcotics. Terror. The same channels could move materials, money, people.”

  “And th
at’s why you’re here.” Arias nodded. He was filling in the picture for himself the way Crane hoped he would. “One of them’s dead now. I have to settle that somehow.”

  “Well, I certainly didn’t have anything to do with that,” said Crane. “Any more than I’m discussing classified operational details with someone outside the clearance structure. Frankly, from what you’ve told me, it sounds like death by misadventure.”

  The door opened again. The same woman whispered something to Arias. He slammed his fist on the table. “Well, of course he is!”

  The woman withdrew, and Crane gave Arias a questioning look. “Something wrong?”

  “Your good friend Emil is gone. There’s no record he was ever here. Any more than there is for you.”

  “You do have a problem here, don’t you?” said Crane.

  “I’ll get you out,” said Arias. “Make it clear that you’re off limits. If I push things, I could put half the cops in this station away and suspend the rest without pay. They know it. The moment I showed up, you should have seen them jump.” He shook his head. “There really are some good cops on this island.”

  “I believe it,” said Crane.

  Arias got Crane’s effects in a plastic bag. There was just his wallet—with the cash missing—and his room keycard. Crane slipped them back into his pocket, and they left the room.

  All eyes were on them as Arias walked Crane through the station and out the front doors. But only from an angle. Whenever Crane tried to make eye contact with someone, they quickly looked away and made themselves busy with something. Crane was fine with that.

  “Do you know anything that would explain why they decided to attack a non-profit lab doing botanical research?” he asked as they walked.

  “No,” Arias admitted. “That still doesn’t make any sense to me.”

  “Me either. Now Emil.”

  “Your only friend?”

  “He’s not a cop, and he’s not from around here. Eastern Europe, from the accent. That suggest anything to you?”