by Matt Lincoln
I gritted my teeth and prepared to stand back up to reconvene outside with Leeland and figure out what to do next when Hills suddenly slammed his hand onto the table palm-down. It was so forceful that the table rattled, and the bang the strike produced echoed around the small room. Velasquez flinched backward in his chair and tensed even further, his shoulders rising up to his chin.
“Hell no,” Hills growled as he stood up and walked around the side of the table, so he was standing just inches away from Velasquez. He bent down and leaned in close to the man’s face. “We’re not doing this again. We both know that this is just some childish stalling tactic. One of your lackeys already tried this, and all it did was waste both of our time, so why don’t we just get this over with?”
I frowned at him in dismay. While I wasn’t completely knowledgeable about Italy’s legal system, in the U.S., continuing to talk to a suspect after he’d asked for a lawyer could lead to anything he said being thrown out in court. Hills could cost us this entire investigation if he didn’t stop what he was doing.
“Y-you can’t talk to me like that!” Velazquez stuttered, tripping over his own words. “I… I asked for a lawyer, so you need to stop talking to me!”
“Yeah.” Hills nodded, a derisive sneer on his face as he looked down at Velasquez. “You know what? You’re right. Instead of talking to you, maybe we should go talk to your mother instead.”
What little bravado remained in Velasquez’s demeanor quickly faded at the mention of his mom. His eyes went wide, and his jaw slackened before he bumbled through a response.
“What? No!” he replied, swallowing nervously as he did. “Leave her alone! She didn’t do anything!”
“Didn’t do anything?” Hills barked out a laugh. “She brained a cop with a baseball bat. She nearly killed him. He’s still in the hospital now, did you know that?”
Velasquez gaped up at Hills, his mouth opening and closing like a fish’s.
“That wasn’t her fault!” he protested weakly. “She was just trying to defend herself. She was scared!”
It was a ridiculous argument, and it was clear that Velasquez was just grasping at whatever excuses he could come up with to defend his mother’s actions.
“No,” I interjected calmly. “She was defending you. Of course, she would. What mother wouldn’t?” I stood up slowly from the table before looking over at Hills. “You know, a mother that loving and protective… I bet she’d even lie to keep her own son safe and out of prison.”
I glanced pointedly back at Velasquez, whose face had taken on a sickly pallor as he caught on to my meaning.
“It wouldn’t surprise me if she did,” Hills replied as he moved away from Velasquez and walked back around to the other side of the table. “I guess we’ll just have to make sure we’re really thorough while we question her.”
He feigned as if to move back toward the door we’d come in through, and I followed his lead, walking right behind him.
“Wait!” Velasquez called, his voice cracking.
“Sorry.” I raised an eyebrow at him over my shoulder. “We can’t speak with you anymore. Not until your lawyer arrives.”
I turned back around, holding my breath nervously as I waited to see if the bluff would work.
“No, stop!” Velasquez growled, his tone a mixture of anger and fear. “Stop. I changed my mind! I don’t need a lawyer!”
“Really?” I turned fully back around and asked him skeptically.
“Yeah, I’ll talk to you,” Velasquez grumbled. “Just leave my mom alone, okay? She had nothing to do with this.”
“Say that you’re waiving your right to legal counsel,” I instructed him as I folded my arms over my chest.
“Huh?” He stared up at me, his eyebrows scrunching together in confusion.
“Say it out loud,” I replied as I walked back toward my chair. “That you changed your mind, and you’re waiving your right to have a lawyer here.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Velasquez scoffed. “I waive my rights or whatever. I don’t want a lawyer.”
“That’s good enough for me,” Hills grunted as he sat back down.
I followed suit and took my own seat again. I was still annoyed at Hills because once again, he’d launched into some plan without giving me any warning. It had turned out alright in the end, but it had been too rash. Regardless, now wasn’t the time to dwell on that.
“You said your mom ‘didn’t have anything to do with this,’” I began. “What did you mean by ‘this’?”
“You know,” he mumbled as he looked around the room, refusing to make eye contact with me, “all the crap my brother’s up to. The drugs and stuff.”
“Your brother being Viper, right?” I asked for clarification. “Otherwise known as Jorge Velasquez?”
“Yeah,” Velasquez muttered as he reached his cuffed hands up to fiddle nervously with the neck of his shirt.
“And ‘drugs and stuff’ meaning all the pirating activities he’s been engaging in?” I continued.
“Yeah,” he replied, still looking down at the table and around at the walls.
“So, how are you involved in all of this?” I asked.
“Uh… I’m not. Not really,” he replied, clearing his throat awkwardly. “It’s all his thing.”
“Well, that’s just not true,” Hills scoffed disdainfully. “Because if it was, you wouldn’t have carved Agent Marston here up with a machete in an attempt to escape, and your mother wouldn’t have clobbered a police officer over the head in an attempt to help you escape. Cut the crap and tell us the truth.”
Velasquez seemed to become even smaller at Hills’s harsh scolding as he flinched away from the verbal onslaught.
“Fine, I… I help with management, sometimes.” He shrugged.
“What do you mean by that?” I asked, growing a little impatient at his vague answers.
“There’s a warehouse here that they use as a base,” he explained. “Well, the real base is on a boat, but when they need to come back to land to restock on supplies or get fuel or anything, they go there.”
“And that’s where you do the ‘managing’?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he muttered in response. “But not a lot. Just here and there, you know? Just to make sure none of the guys are stealing or anything. I really don’t have all that much to do with any of it. It’s all Jorge.”
I watched him silently for a moment, frankly a little disgusted at the way he was so easily selling out his brother. It was beneficial to us, of course, but still.
“And where is this warehouse?” I asked, careful to keep the contempt I felt toward him out of my voice.
“In the basement of the Crescent Cove Resort,” he answered. “Up on West Bay Road.”
“In the basement?” Hills repeated, his voice tinged with disbelief. “They’re operating out of some fancy hotel?”
“Yeah,” Velasquez replied. “It used to be some froufrou spa or something. There are a lot of empty hot tub pools. Anyway, I guess it was too expensive to keep it running, so they shut it down. Now the manager lets us use it for a fee. It works out pretty good since it’s such a crowded place. No one really cares or even notices if we walk in and out, plus it’s right on the beach, so it’s easy to bring supplies in.”
“We’re going to need the exact address,” I replied as I took in the information he’d just given us.
The fact that their base was located in such a highly trafficked area only complicated matters. It would be difficult for us to carry out any kind of sting without putting innocent bystanders in danger. I pulled my phone out of my pocket and made a note of the address as Velasquez relayed it to me. Once that was finished, I put it back into my pocket and looked up at Velasquez.
“Do you have any idea where Viper is right now?” I asked him.
“No,” he replied with a jerky shake of his head. “I told you, the real base is on his boat. He could be anywhere.”
“He doesn’t share any important information with
you?” I asked him suspiciously. “His own brother?”
“Nah,” Velasquez murmured. “He doesn’t trust me enough to tell me something like that.”
“But he trusts you enough to leave you in charge of his men and his product when he’s not around?” Hills interjected coldly, his eyes boring holes into Velasquez.
“That’s different,” he argued. “He only put me in charge because he trusts everyone else even less. The truth is that he doesn’t trust anyone when it comes down to it. He uses people but only trusts himself with stuff that he thinks is important.”
There was a genuine bitterness in his voice as he spoke, and I could tell there was some kind of resentment there. It was enough to assure me that he wasn’t lying about not knowing where his brother was.
“Do you know when he might come back to the land base?” I asked.
“No.” He shrugged again. “He comes and goes as he wants, does whatever he wants. It could be a month from now, could be tomorrow. Although…” His eyes turned cloudy as he trailed off, as though he’d suddenly remembered something.
“Yes?” Hills huffed impatiently, his mouth set into a frown.
“The last time they came back to resupply was about two weeks ago,” he muttered pensively. “Right around the time he went and attacked that Chinese ship. They didn’t take that many supplies. They were in a hurry. They’re probably running low about now.”
“So, you think there’s a good chance they might come back soon?” I asked, unable to completely hide the eagerness in my voice. It would be a stroke of unbelievable luck if we happened to strike the base right as Viper returned. It would certainly save us the trouble of having to chase him all across the ocean.
“They’ll have to,” he replied. “Can’t keep sailing without fuel or food. I guess they could stop somewhere else, but… like I said, Jorge doesn’t trust people. He doesn’t like taking chances, and he prefers to know exactly what’s going on around him. He’ll be more comfortable here where he has control than somewhere else.”
“Then we’d better get moving,” I replied as I stood up, my chair scraping across the floor and emitting another loud, painful noise.
“Right behind you,” Hills grumbled, already looking bored and ready to leave.
“Wait,” Velasquez called as we turned around to leave the room. “What about my mom? Are you still going to question her?”
“Do we need to?” I turned to look at him warily. “You said she didn’t know anything about what your brother’s been up to, right? Was that a lie?”
“No!” he exclaimed, his voice rising in pitch in his desperation. “She doesn’t. I know she hit that cop, but she doesn’t know crap. She thinks that he’s still out dealing. She doesn’t know anything about the ships or even about the base.” He was grinding his teeth anxiously as he spoke. It didn’t seem like he was lying.
“Then there’s no reason for us to question her,” I replied. “We’re only interested in Viper and what he’s been doing to other ships. Your mother will face the consequences of what she’s done, but that doesn’t concern us.”
Velasquez pursed his lips together before nodding stiffly in response. I turned without another word and walked back out of the room, Hills just behind me. Leeland, Holm, and Chapman were sitting just outside.
“You really think the mom doesn’t know anything?” Hills asked as soon as the door was securely shut behind us.
“No,” I replied. “I think he was honest about her only knowing the barest details. I doubt we’d get anything more out of her. We’d probably just be wasting time we could be using on planning how to hit the base.”
“Yeah, you’re right,” he replied gruffly.
“It’s kind of ingenious,” Chapman chimed in from where he was sitting a few chairs away, still looking through the two-way glass. “Putting the base inside a fancy resort, I mean. I looked up the name while you were in there. It’s a really high-end place. No one would ever expect there to be a smuggling ring beneath the surface. Hidden in plain sight, so many people around carrying luggage and bags that no one would bat an eye at them as they transported their loot.”
“So, what should we do?” Holm asked. “Lie in wait and see if Viper shows up, or move in ASAP?”
“I’d greatly prefer the latter option, to be honest,” Leeland suddenly interjected, his voice low and serious. “I’m afraid I don’t feel comfortable waiting, now that we know where the base is and what’s going on there. Velasquez said that it could take up to a month for him to return. Who knows how much havoc they could cause in that amount of time? How many people they could hurt? No, I’m afraid we must strike as soon as possible.”
“I agree.” I sighed. “As great as it would be to catch Viper then and there, Sergeant Leeland makes a good point. For all we know, Viper’s already resupplied somewhere else and is on his way to carry out another attack as we speak. The longer we wait, the more opportunity he has to cause destruction. I say we raid the base, arrest everyone, and see what we can find there. We might discover something that can clue us in on how to find him. If nothing else, we’ll have cut off his biggest source of fuel and supplies.”
“That makes sense,” Holm replied as he stood from his seat.
“I’ll get some officers ready then,” Sergeant Leeland replied resolutely as he turned to look at everyone in the room. “I suspect we’re going to need a lot of manpower for this.”
30
Ethan
Grand Cayman Island was peculiar in its architectural layout. We were on our way back to the station that evening. Holm was driving, and Chapman and Hills were discussing something quietly in the backseat. Usually, I preferred to be the one to drive, but with my injured arm, it wasn’t really possible. However, being in the passenger’s seat meant that I got to take a moment to enjoy the passing scenery in a way I normally wouldn’t have been able to. As we drove, I marveled at how quickly it changed outside of the car window.
The highway was lined with a plethora of different kinds of trees. Not just palms, as one might expect to find on a tropical island, but short, bulbous ones as well that looked like something I might have seen on an African safari.
The towns themselves were peculiar and made up of a hodgepodge of different kinds of buildings. On a single street, we passed a few small, cute cottages, complete with picket fences and colorful gardens, a huge industrial structure that looked like it might have been some kind of medical center, a small, bright turquoise building with a large sign over the front that read: Helicopter Tours, and an absolutely massive, colonial-style building that looked like something out of the old west, complete with saloon-style doors.
“Is that a Burger King?” I muttered vaguely as we passed by the blue and red building, the store’s logo displayed prominently over the front facade.
“I think so,” Holm replied as he glanced into the rearview. “Why? Didn’t you just eat?”
“Yeah, I’m not hungry,” I clarified. We’d headed back to the hotel in a car borrowed from the police station so we could rest and get something to eat before the mission tonight. In the meantime, Leeland had gone to work getting his officers up to speed with what would be happening.
Of course, all of these buildings were just feet away from the ocean as well. Out in the distance, I could see a cruise liner drifting on the surface of the water.
Chapman had mentioned something on the flight about the Cayman Islands being a popular tourist destination, and I could see why. It wasn’t necessarily the most beautiful place I’d ever been during my travels, but it was definitely unique. It had an unusual charm about it, and that was to say nothing about the stunning beaches I could see from basically everywhere we’d been so far.
“I was just thinking about how interesting the buildings are,” I remarked as we passed a long, bright blue building covered in red crab and lobster decorations. “Seems like there are about a hundred different styles.”
“There are!” Chapman suddenly i
nterjected from the back seat. “The Cayman Islands have a pretty rich history. There’s a lot of African and Jamaican influence due to its proximity to Jamaica and also the fact that about a fourth of the population is descended from slave peoples that were brought over during British rule. That’s why there are so many different styles of architecture. Food, too. A lot of it has become really Americanized in the past decade or so, though, as a result of the tourism industry. It’s kind of a shame that most people who visit just stick with the touristy areas and the beaches. They’re missing out on all this cool stuff that you’d only find if you explored other parts of the island, too.”
“That makes sense,” I replied as we passed a set of small houses that were painted pink and mint green. It definitely explained why the entire town looked like an amalgamation of different cultures. Chapman continued to spout facts and figures about the island for the rest of the drive, only stopping when Holm finally pulled into the station’s parking lot.
“Alright,” Holm declared as he put the car in park. “Let’s do this.”
We all climbed out of the car and walked back into the station. The lobby was empty now, and even though there were only a few officers standing around, the tension in the air was palpable.
The officer behind the window looked up at us as we entered. I hadn’t seen him before, but something like recognition lit up in his eyes as we approached.
“Hello,” I greeted him as I pulled my badge out of my pocket. “I’m Agent Marston with MBLIS. We’re here to see Sergeant Leeland.”
“Of course,” he replied as he pulled his radio speaker off of his shirt. “He told me you’d be here. Just a second.” He pressed the button on the side of the speaker before bringing it close to his mouth. “Hello, Sergeant Leeland? The agents are here to see you.”