Human Traffic

by Patrick Logan

  “Good,” the man said. “Now I want you to—”

  A shadow suddenly appeared behind the officer and Drake cringed. Sensing that something was up, the officer’s brow furrowed and he started to turn.

  “No! Wait!” Drake shouted, but it was too late.

  The much smaller figure swung something heavy in a wide arc. It struck the officer across the cheek and smashed into his nose. He grunted, then collapsed to the gravel in a heap.

  Drake immediately whipped around, his eyes desperately seeking the man who was filling the boat with bodies.

  “Shit!”

  The short bastard with the gray hair that Drake had winged must have bolted the second his back was to him. He was already halfway across the bay and even weighed down with the bodies, the boat was putting more distance between them with every second that passed.

  Drake swore again then turned to see what had happened to Officer Paul Kramer.

  “Is he alive?” he asked as he strode toward the downed officer. Mandy, who looked as terrified as she’d been when Drake had first met her at Screech’s apartment, dropped the tire iron as he approached.

  Paul Kramer was an asshole, but Drake still felt some responsibility for him, considering that he had been a part of Clay’s life. A quick inspection answered his initial query: he had a broken nose and maybe even a fractured cheek, but Paul Kramer was very much alive.

  Drake raised his eyes and stared at Mandy.

  “I told you to stay the fucking the car.”

  “I’m sorry,” Mandy said softly, and Drake instantly regretted yelling at her. She was just scared… and she might have just saved his life.

  “It’s okay,” he replied, looking around. There were no police sirens or lights filling the night. However Kramer had found him, he’d done so alone.

  That was good.

  Confident that they were alone for the time being, Drake turned his attention to the shipping container that the Russian was in the process of cleaning when he’d arrived.

  Even illuminated by only the weak light from his flashlight, what Drake saw almost made him sick. It wasn’t the blood that coated the floor of the container, nor the congealed pools of vomit in the corners. No, it was the knowledge that less than 24 hours ago there were nearly two dozen living and breathing Colombian girls locked in the dark. All they wanted was a better life for themselves, and what did they get for their efforts? Unintentional overdose, followed by a watery grave.

  Drake looked away — he couldn’t stare at the mess any longer.

  Without saying a word to Mandy — who looked legitimately terrified now — Drake grabbed Officer Kramer by the ankles and started to drag him across the gravel. Even though Kramer was on the smaller size, Drake’s body protested even the smallest of physical movement now. With a pained grunt, he somehow managed to hoist the officer into the shipping container. Kramer’s head bounced off the metal and his eyes rolled forward.

  “Wha-wha-what? What happened?” he muttered.

  Drake didn’t answer; instead, he slammed the doors closed and then used the tire iron that Mandy had struck Kramer with to lock them.

  “Did I do something wrong?” Mandy asked quietly. “I thought he was going to kill you, Drake.”

  Drake sighed.

  “No, you didn’t do anything wrong,” he replied. But you most definitely put us in a jam, he thought, but didn’t say.

  Any bullshit that DI Palmer might have on him for what happened at the Reynolds farm, or any of the shit he’d done during Smith’s campaign, Drake thought he might be able to weasel his way out of.

  But this… this was going to prove difficult, maybe even impossible, to get away from unscathed.

  He needed to call someone, someone who had some sway in the police department. Someone he could fully trust.

  Only he didn’t know anyone like that. All the people he knew were ifs, ands, buts.

  Maybes.

  Sometimes.

  But given the situation, Drake had no choice but to take the leap.

  He took his cellphone out of his pocket and with a heavy sigh, started to dial.

  Chapter 21

  Screech stared blankly at his computer screen until his eyes started to defocus. He knew that he should be trying to trace the money that was moving in and out of ANGUIS Holdings as Drake had suggested, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it.

  Not yet, anyway.

  Instead, he found himself staring at familiar photographs.

  There was the photo of Beckett standing over Donnie DiMarco as he drowned, the picture of the bricks of heroin in the yacht. And then there was the photograph of Beckett holding the stone covered in blood moments after he’d brained Craig Sloan.

  He’d taken all of these.

  The second set of photographs were taken by someone else: Drake in an election office, Drake holding a finger bone, Drake in the 62nd precinct evidence room. There was even a photograph taken outside of Peter Kellington’s house moments before Clay had been killed. And then there was the photo of Drake on his knees, weeping, his mouth wide, Clay’s bloody body in his arms.

  But perhaps the most disturbing image wasn’t of Drake at all. It was of a younger, smiling Jasmine holding what Screech now knew to be a key of heroin.

  A photo that he was never supposed to see. In fact, all of these new images were meant for select eyes only. But Screech had his means.

  It wasn’t easy, even with the backdoor rootkit he’d installed on his cell phone before Ken and Raul had seized it. In fact, he’d been at a dead end until someone had plugged his phone directly into the USB drive instead of just transferring the images over Wi-Fi.

  Screech rubbed his eyes. He was exhausted, but knew that he wouldn’t be able to sleep. Sleep had become an adversary every since he’d started at Triple D, and now, after what had transpired in the Virgin Gorda, it had become his archnemesis.

  He sighed and then minimized the folders with the images. He would figure out what to do with them later. Right now, he had to help Drake. And, while the man was a dinosaur, it quickly became apparent that he was onto something: with the Church of Liberation’s financials frozen, there might very well be a traceable money trail out there somewhere.

  And, with remote access to Ken Smith’s computer, it didn’t take Screech long to find it.

  He had to give the man credit; Ken had been careful. ANGUIS had made dozens of transfers since the events at the Reynolds farm, but all had been of moderate sums, sums that wouldn’t raise eyeballs. But as Screech dug deeper, he discovered that after being routed through several international banks, they eventually found their way into just four accounts.

  And once he had the account numbers, he was able to cross-reference them with all the names that were listed on the ANGUIS Holdings accounting statements. A little brute force hacking and Screech identified the names of the primary account holders.

  “Steffani Loomis, Horatio Dupont, Boris Brackovich, and Mendes Corp.,” Screech read out loud.

  He tapped his chin and thought about these for a moment.

  “Well, it looks like I found your Russian, Drake,” he said, staring at Boris’s name. But it was the last one that held his interest. Of the four, it was the only one that wasn’t a personal account.

  And there was only one Mendes that he was familiar with: Raul Mendes.

  Eyebrows kitted, Screech went about trying to find more information about Mendes Corp. This proved considerably more difficult. For one, the account was held in the District of Colombia and even though this wasn’t the 1980’s heyday for drug lords, Screech still couldn’t his hands on anything more than the name.

  All breadcrumbs led to… nowhere.

  Frustrated, Screech pulled up the file folder on the desktop with Drake’s name on it. Only this time he wasn’t looking for a photo, but a video; the video from the camera that Drake had set up in the basement that had held the final Church of Liberation meeting.

  He skipped forward to the p
art where DI Palmer met and spoke with Raul for several moments before parting ways.

  Raul… Raul…

  Screech drummed his fingers on his forehead. He was fairly certain that Ken Smith was at the head of all of this, despite none of the accounts leading back to him, but the person that kept popping up was Raul.

  But why? What makes Raul so special?

  Screech went back to his browser and started typing so quickly that his fingers became a blur. By searching for both Ken Smith and Raul Mendes, he finally stumbled upon an article from a Colombian newspaper dated more than forty years ago.

  And while Screech didn’t speak let alone read Spanish, when he saw the accompanying photo, his jaw went slack.

  “You’ve got to be shitting me,” he said, reaching for his phone.

  Chapter 23

  Drake leaned against the side of the shipping container, gun at his hip, as the man with the cigarette in his mouth approached. The man moved slowly, but Drake didn’t blame him; Officer Kramer had since awoken and was banging against the side of the container. It sounded like there was a mountain lion inside. He was shouting, too, but the words were muffled and Drake couldn’t make them out.

  Which, he thought, is probably for the best.

  “Drake? Is that you?”

  Drake stepped away from the container and showed the man the pistol in his hand.

  “That’s not necessary. I came alone, just as you asked,” the man said, taking another drag. From behind him, Mandy stepped out, a piece of Rebar in her hand this time.

  Well, if nothing else, she sure is resourceful.

  Only it wasn’t necessary. Drake shook his head and the girl dropped it. It landed softly in the gravel, but it was enough to make the man turn.

  “And who’s this?”

  Trust… you have to trust the man. You have no other choice.

  Drake slipped the gun into the back of his pants.

  “Hank, I’m in a bit of a bind here,” Drake said, moving forward. He hooked a thumb at the container. “As you can probably tell.”

  Sgt. Henry Yasiv took another haul on his cigarette. The red ember illuminated his face, and Drake was startled to see how the man had aged. He looked at least a decade older than the last time they’d seen each other.

  “I’d say,” Yasiv said. He finished his cigarette and then immediately lit another. “I don’t know if you watch the news, but DI Palmer is out to get your ass. I don’t know what you did to piss him off, other than just being yourself, but he’s right pissed. Except right now, he only wants you for questioning. At least, that’s the official line. But now there’s some chatter that he has some… incriminating… photos. I’m thinking that ‘questioning’ might soon be upgraded to ‘wanted’, especially with this.”

  Yasiv pointed at the shipping container.

  “No shit,” Drake grumbled. He gestured for Mandy to come to his side. “This is Mandy — she’s the girl I was telling you about.”

  Yasiv gave her a once over.

  “I’m Sgt. Henry Yasiv,” he said quietly. Mandy slid in behind Drake. “I’m going to—”

  The sounds from the container to their right suddenly intensified.

  “And that must be Officer Kramer.”

  Drake nodded.

  “Can he hear us in there?”

  Mandy shook her head.

  “You can hear sounds, but not words. You can only hear words when the doors are open. That’s when I heard about Drake.”

  Yasiv squinted at the girl before turning his attention to Drake.

  “I can hold off DI Palmer for a while — not forever, but for a little while, no matter what photos he has. But this… Drake, Officer Kramer is an NYPD officer. Sure, he’s an asshole, but you can’t just brain a police officer over the head and lock him up.”

  Mandy stepped forward as if to correct the man, but Drake put a hand on her shoulder, effectively silencing the girl.

  “I know. I know; I’ll take the heat for that. But there is something more important that we have to deal with.” Drake had already told Yasiv about the girls in the container over the phone and didn’t feel the need to rehash it now. “There was a man here, a short man with gray hair, taking the bodies out to sea. I shot him in the hip, but it barely fazed them. I’m thinking the tough bastard was Bolivian or Russian or something like that. Likely with ties to organized crime. I know it’s not much to go on, but we might get lucky if he was picked up recently in a drug trafficking sting, or something to do with the sex trade. Anything you can dig up might be able to help.”

  It was a shot in the dark, and both of the men knew it.

  “I’ll see what I can dig up,” Yasiv said as he made his way to the front of the container. For a brief moment, Drake thought he was going to grab the tire iron and let Kramer out. But he stopped in front of it and then squatted on the blood covered gravel. Yasiv raised his eyes, and followed the trail of blood to the shore.

  “What’s that?” he asked.

  Drake, not knowing what the man was referring to, shrugged.

  Yasiv took the initiative and picked up a small square of paper and showed it to Drake. It looked like the upper right-hand corner of a business card of some sort. Drake took the card and rubbed a dot of blood off with his thumb.

  “No clue,” he said, thinking back to the shot that the Russian had taken in the hip.

  Had it been his pocket? It could’ve been…

  “It looks like… I dunno, it looks like a leg of some sort,” Yasiv said.

  Drake nodded.

  It really did look like the pale, slender leg of a woman ending in an expensive looking shoe.

  Mandy suddenly appeared at Drake’s side and looked at the image.

  “They were handing those out in Colombia. A business card; La chica con las piernas, we called it. They said we would be working at a classy place here in America.”

  Drake chewed the inside of his lip and then slipped what was left of the business card into his pocket.

  “Think you can give me a five-minute head start before you open the cage and let the wild animal out?”

  Yasiv took the cigarette out of his mouth and looked at it.

  “You have until I’m done my smoke.”

  Drake nodded and turned to face Mandy.

  “I want you to stay with Sgt. Yasiv. He’s going to look after you for a little while, make sure you’re safe.”

  Mandy opened her mouth to protest, but Drake shut her down before she could even get started.

  “I’m going to find out who did this to you and your friends. That’s a promise. But I can’t do that if I’m always looking over my shoulder to make sure that you’re okay. You need to promise me that you’ll stay with Sgt. Yasiv. He’s not like the others, he’s a good man.”

  In his periphery, Drake saw Yasiv raise an eyebrow, but he ignored this. The fact that Yasiv had come here and put his career and maybe even his freedom on the line by speaking to him, was proof that he wasn’t in bed with Ken Smith and the others.

  Yasiv could be trusted… for now.

  The man took a heavy drag of his smoke, and the white paper burned another a quarter inch.

  “I’ll look after her, Drake. But you better get going.”

  With that, Drake spun and hurried back toward his car clutching the ride side of his body protectively.

  He heard Mandy shout something, but he ignored her. Yasiv would keep her safe; he would do a much better job of it than Drake ever could, anyway.

  After all, he was a shitty boyfriend, more than likely a terrible father, and he was a god-awful business partner — both on the force and as a PI.

  But he was good at one thing. Really good at it.

  Drake was good at catching bad guys. And the people who had done this… they weren’t your run of the mill purse-snatchers.

  These were murderers who had no shame, no morals, no code of ethics.

  And they needed to be stopped.

  Chapter 24

&nb
sp; Drake had only just opened the door to Triple D when screech ran toward him, eyes wide.

  “You’ve got to see this, I think that—” he glanced behind Drake. “Wait… where’s Mandy? I thought you said she was with you.”

  Drake stepped inside and closed the door behind him.