Trader of secrets pm-12

by Steve Martini

  As he moved the blade, Liquida dripped venom while bargaining under his breath with the evil imps that inhabited his heart. He haggled for the soul of the dead black bastard who did this so that Liquida might staple his spirit to the hottest rock in hell. By the time he pulled the last wicked little piece of wire from his flesh, he was a quivering mass of sweat. Liquida looked at himself in the mirror. Even to his own eyes he appeared the hideous image of Gollum.

  He rested for an hour and then showered. When he was done patting the wound dry, he checked the towel to make sure that the tiny pinholes from the staples were no longer seeping blood. He dressed, putting on a pair of tan slacks and a loose-fitting Egyptian cotton white shirt with an open collar and black buttons down the front. He left the bottom of the shirt outside his pants and slipped on a pair of loafers with no socks, the casual Spanish squire on holiday.

  Liquida spent the rest of the day relaxing, sitting under an umbrella by the pool and reading newspapers to catch up on the evil others had done while he was on the run, hiding and plucking sharp pieces of wire from his body.

  He was two days early removing the staples, but he had no choice. Bruno’s offer wouldn’t wait. It was now or never. If Liquida didn’t reply and do so soon, the offer would be gone.

  While the better half of his brain told him it was a setup, his weaker side didn’t want to believe it. Besides, he had no option. He was running out of money. He needed the cash in that box. And if Bruno had a job for him, a big one, there would likely be money for expenses. Bruno was hip deep in people who could supply top-notch passports and create new bulletproof identities, all the resources that Liquida needed for cover. It would buy time. He could use it to stay out of the clutches of the Americans.

  He wanted to believe that it was all there in the box. The problem was, there was only one way to find out.

  Chapter Eleven

  Harry, my law partner, gives me a sleepy stare from tired, heavy-hooded eyes. It’s almost noon and Harry just fell out of bed. He and Sarah came in late last night in a two-car caravan, large dark SUVs with all the windows blacked out, driven by the FBI.

  This morning Sarah is out working with one of their computer techs in the ongoing effort to refine an Identi-Kit portrait of Liquida, at least as much as she can remember. It is likely to be the only image they have since Herman, who was taken from behind with the knife, says he never got a clear look at the man.

  “Paul, listen. I don’t know how else to say it. I’m sorry.” Harry is looking at me sheepishly, wiping the sleep from his eyes. “I was supposed to be watching her and I blew it.”

  “It’s not your fault.”

  “Yes, it is. I should have been watching her more closely. You trusted me and I let you down.”

  “You did what you could. Besides, it was my job. I’m her father. I should have been there.”

  “You couldn’t be everywhere,” says Harry. “We agreed I would be the one responsible for keeping an eye on her and I failed. Simple as that.”

  “Let’s not talk about it,” I tell him. “The important thing is, she’s alive.”

  “No thanks to me.”

  Harry and I are seated in the two tufted wingback chairs in the living room of a safe house in Washington, D.C. It is a high-rise condo courtesy of Thorpe and the FBI. At the moment none of us knows how long we’ll be here. The place is decked out with rented furniture and contractor-painted eggshell-white walls. With all the blinds drawn it has the ambiance of a whitewashed cave.

  “Any idea how Liquida found the two of you on the farm?” I ask.

  Harry nods. He’s gazing down at the floor, still half asleep. “They think he used an electronic tracking device. The fucker’s devious,” says Harry.

  “I thought Herman had the cars all swept. He found the one attached to your car and had it removed,” I remind him.

  “He did. Liquida mailed another small tracking device to Sarah at the house, figuring she probably left a forwarding address with the post office. The FBI found the tracking device in one of the drawers in her bedroom in Ohio. The note with it said it was from you, that you’d explain what it was the next time the two of you talked on the phone. When you talked, Sarah forgot to mention it. All Liquida had to do was read the tracking information on his computer. It led him right to the farm.”

  “Son of a bitch.”

  “She didn’t tell me about it because the note said it was a surprise for me.” The craggy gray lines down Harry’s face appear like ravines on a mountainside. He seems to have aged five years since I saw him last in Coronado. That was less than a month ago.

  Our law practice in California is now a shambles. Neither of us has been in the office for weeks, forced into hiding by Liquida. No doubt clients are now complaining to the state bar that their phone calls are not being returned. Before long the bar will be trying to punch our tickets to practice. Harry and I can take down the shingle and start selling pencils out on the street. Our lives are unraveling.

  “Coffee’s ready.” Joselyn sticks her head through the open doorway to the kitchen.

  “Be there in a minute,” I tell her.

  “You two need to stop talking about this. Dredging up all the little details isn’t gonna make it go away. What’s happened has happened. The more you pick at it, the worse it’s going to get.” She’s been listening through the open door.

  “So what are we supposed to do?” I turn and look at her.

  “Get off your ass and come get something to eat.” Before I can say anything more, she disappears back into the kitchen.

  “Yeah, I can see how she could be good for you,” says Harry. He looks up at me and winks. “How’s Herman doing?” He changes the subject.

  “They moved him out of intensive care yesterday.” We get up and start walking toward the kitchen. “He’ll be on the mend for a while. But he’s starting to get irritable.”

  “That’s a good sign.”

  “The doctor’s telling him six weeks to two months before he can do any heavy lifting.”

  “Take bets,” says Harry. We enter the kitchen. “Give you three to one Herman’s back out on the bricks in less than a month.”

  “At death’s door one day, fighting to go home the next. Herman’s always been a quick healer,” I tell him.

  “More power to him,” says Joselyn. “Either one of you would be laid up for a year.”

  “You see what I have to put up with? What a hard-ass.” I look at Harry and smile.

  “Yes, and it’ll be a long time before you touch it again with that kind of an attitude.” Joselyn has her back to us as she works at the counter slicing some small sandwiches and stacking them on a plate. “He’s been in the dumps since he first heard about what happened to Sarah.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s pretty hard when your daughter comes within a whisper of being murdered,” I tell her.

  “Yes, but she wasn’t. You have to let it go and move on,” says Joselyn.

  “On to what?”

  “You can pour your own coffee. Cups are in the cupboard over there.” She gestures with her head. “Sugar and cream are on the table. Silverware is in the drawer. Help yourself.” She turns and sets the dish of sandwiches in the center of the table. “Napkins, I don’t know. You’ll have to use your sleeve. I forgot to put ’em on the list the last time they went for groceries.”

  “The FBI does our housekeeping,” I tell Harry.

  “So what’s the gig this time? Protective custody, witness protection, or are we under arrest?” He looks at me.

  “It’s not entirely clear,” I tell him. “I don’t think we’re in custody. As far as I understand it, we’re just cooperating with their investigation. For the time being, they’re happy to provide security, at least while we’re here and on their terms.”

  “What’s Thorpe saying?”

  “He’s suggesting we stick around, at least for a while. This thing with Sarah rattled him. They squeezed Joselyn and me for information, whatever
we knew. They questioned Herman as soon as he could talk. Now they’re working on Sarah.”

  “They talked to her at the farm,” says Harry. “Questioned me as well. They lost interest when I told them I hadn’t seen or talked to either of you in almost a month, that I’d been hanging out on the farm in Ohio since we split from California. I couldn’t tell them anything. Didn’t even see Liquida. They trampled all over the farm looking for anything that might give them a lead. They would have grilled the Doberman but his English wasn’t that good.”

  “Sarah tells me the dog saved her life,” says Joselyn.

  “If he’d been just a few seconds faster, the FBI could be doing DNA on a hunk out of Liquida’s ass, I suspect,” says Harry. “She’s quite attached to him. The dog, I mean. He’s been sleeping at the bottom of her bed ever since it happened. He’s getting spoiled. Kibble and bacon bits out of her hand. I take it you met him last night?”

  “Lie down with dogs, wake up with fleas,” I tell him, “but that’s one animal I’d kiss. I’m glad she has him. At least for the time being.”

  “Which reminds me,” says Harry. “Where is he? You didn’t lock him in the bedroom, did you? Cuz he’ll chew the carpet off the floor. He doesn’t like to be locked in a room where he can’t see out. And he tends to get antsy when he’s separated from her.”

  “Sarah took him to her meeting at the FBI office,” I tell him.

  “They let her do that?” says Joselyn.

  “It’s hard to say no when you have a snarling dog with his nose in your crotch,” I tell her.

  We pour coffee, settle into chairs around the table, and start to eat.

  “Thorpe give you any idea as to whether they have any leads on Liquida?” Harry talks with his mouth half full.

  “They’re looking. But without a name or something else to track, it’s difficult. All they can do is print a sketch, put it on their website, hang it in the post office, circulate it to local law enforcement, and hope somebody calls in.”

  “I would think that after the bombing near the Capitol he’s going to draw a pretty high number on their wanted list,” says Joselyn.

  “Depends whether they put him on their terror list or regular most wanted list. They put him on the terror list, there’s no way he’s going to get near the top. There’s too many big names already,” I tell her.

  “The last time I checked, bin Laden was still number one. And that’s going on ten years now,” says Harry. “And, of course, while they’re looking, we don’t have a life. Can’t go home cuz Liquida may be waiting for us.”

  “Yeah, well, I’ve thought about it. I can’t speak for either of you, but I don’t intend to sit around growing old, waiting and hoping that somebody snags the crazy bastard before he kills me or murders my daughter.” I look at both of them. “He came within a breath of killing Herman. He’s made one attempt on Sarah’s life and murdered one of her friends.”

  Liquida killed Jenny, one of Sarah’s girlfriends, after following the two of them to a club in San Diego. It was Liquida’s twisted way of sending a message that my family and I were next.

  “So you think he’ll try again?” says Joselyn.

  “Hell, yes,” says Harry. “Unless he dies of cancer or gets hit by a truck.”

  Harry, Herman, and I had become entangled with this psychotic as a result of a case that turned out to have connections with terrorism south of the border. Ever since then Liquida has been crossing our path with the constancy of an orbiting death star, making it crystal clear that he has declared war on us even if we refuse to realize it.

  “It’s cultural,” I tell her. “Liquida has his roots in the Mexican cartels. These are people to whom vengeance is a religion. Only heretics allow the flame of revenge to go out.”

  “What did you do to him?” she asks.

  “I don’t know. But it wouldn’t matter even if I knew. Assuming I could undo whatever it was, it would make no difference to Liquida. He has no sense of proper proportion. Look at him without genuflecting and he’ll kill your entire family, shoot your dog, and burn your house. When he’s finished, he’ll dig up your ancestors and grind their bones to dust for fertilizer. He may have gone upwardly mobile and branched out to service the international terror trade, but his instincts come from the cartels.”

  “So what do we do?” says Joselyn. “Stay here? Hope the FBI will provide protection? Pray they’ll catch him?”

  “For how long?” says Harry. “We’ve been through this before. Hiding out in an FBI safe house. You weren’t with us.”

  “Harry’s right. And when we came out into the open, Liquida came back. He killed Jenny. While we were looking for him he was busy hunting down Sarah. He’s smart and he’s very patient. He knows sooner or later we have to surface again. He’ll simply wait. When we feel safe, when we get into the routine of life with the illusion of security, that’s when he’ll hit us. And this time we may not be so lucky.”

  “I can’t disagree with your logic, but it still doesn’t answer the question of what we do,” says Joselyn.

  “Simple, we find him before he finds us,” says Harry.

  “Unless you have a better idea,” I tell her.

  “We tried that; it didn’t work, remember? Herman very nearly got killed,” says Joselyn. “It’s too dangerous. We don’t have the resources. Look around the table. There’s three of us. None of us has a gun or, for that matter, knows how to use one. Herman was your only real backup in terms of security and he’s down. Let the FBI do it.”

  “We could die of old age hiding out in this hole,” says Harry. “The FBI’s got a full plate, and Liquida probably doesn’t even show up on their list of hors d’oeuvres. We could be here for years. I’m not that patient. You want to know the truth, I’d just as soon be dead.”

  “If you go after him, you probably will be,” says Joselyn.

  “I don’t intend to go toe to toe with Liquida. But if I can find a lead, hand it off to Thorpe, or let the local police take him down, I’ll settle for that,” I tell them.

  “Only if they lock him up at Supermax and I can swallow the key,” says Harry. “On the other hand, there’s nothing more permanent than death.”

  “Listen to him,” says Joselyn. “Dirty Harry wants to kill him?”

  “Why not? He wants to kill us.”

  “Harry is a different kind of criminal defense lawyer,” I tell her.

  “And how would you go about this?” asks Joselyn.

  “Well, I wouldn’t try to take him in a knife fight, if that’s what you mean,” says Harry. “But then, this isn’t a duel, and Liquida doesn’t necessarily get to choose the weapons.”

  “So what’s it to be, water pistols at twenty feet?” she asks.

  “Show me where he hides his coffin and I’ll rent a cement truck, fly it through his window, and run over him in his sleep,” says Harry. “That way I can take my time driving the stake through his heart.”

  “Listen to this man.” Joselyn thinks he’s joking.

  The fact is, Harry is one of the few people I know whose capacity to kill I would never question, not if the motivation was sufficient. And knowing Harry, he wouldn’t lose a lot of sleep after he did it.

  Harry has what you call a hair trigger. Some might call it an anger management problem. Rub him the wrong way and there’s no way of telling what might come out of the barrel. More than once I have had to pull him off someone before he did serious damage. I have seen Harry kick the crap out of drunks in bars who got in his face thinking it might be fun to push the guy in the rumpled suit with the bow tie. He once pounded the shit out of a client using a casebook off his shelf when the guy started slapping his wife around in Harry’s office. The fact that the man was there on a manslaughter rap didn’t even enter the equation. Not to Harry. It was all in a day’s work.

  It’s not that Harry brawls. But if you push his button, he can go crazy all over you. His victims are often stunned and defenseless in the same way you might be
if you stepped on a pit viper you thought was a common variety garden snake.

  In a crowded room Harry is the guy you never notice, the one holding the smoking gun.

  If I got a phone call in the middle of the night telling me that my partner was in the clink on a homicide charge, it wouldn’t exactly shatter my image of who Harry is.

  “Fine, now that we know how we’re going to kill him,” says Joselyn, “how do we find him? What about that address in Thailand?” She looks at me.

  “What address?” says Harry.

  “Herman and I found a notepad in a hotel room in Puerto Rico when we were trying to track down Thorn. You remember, Liquida’s client in the D.C. bombing.”

  “Yeah?”

  “The note was from an impression left on the inside cover of a notepad. It mentioned something called ‘Waters of Death’ with an address in Thailand. It was something Thorn had jotted down. To me it looked like a contact address for Liquida.”

  “Was it?” says Harry.

  “We don’t know. I turned the information over to Thorpe. He had two of his agents from the U.S. Embassy in Bangkok check it out. A few days later he told me they struck out. The address was for an office in a place called Pattaya. Thorpe told me his people found the office, but it was locked up and dark. There was nobody inside. There was nothing on the door or anywhere else in the building with the name ‘Waters of Death.’ ”

  “Maybe they got the address wrong,” says Joselyn.

  “No, according to Thorpe it was the right address. The one on the note. It even had the suite number. They had the local police check with the landlord. The office was on a year-to-year lease. The tenant was a Thai businessman. The local authorities told the FBI agents that the guy had no apparent criminal history. The cops found him, and the agents talked to him. The man told them that he used the office only to store business records. He said he never heard of anything called Waters of Death. He had no idea what it was.”

  “He could have been lying,” says Harry.