by Jay Giles
“Tanya?”
Tanya O’Lennet ran a Fast Signs franchise that Cabrera frequented. She was twice divorced with a kid from each marriage and looking for something permanent.
“No. He stopped seeing her.”
“Is there anybody else?’
He’d been seeing an escort, Rio. Her website had billed her as “The blond bombshell. Makes other blonds seem brunette in comparison.” I wasn’t quite sure what that meant, but Cabrera must have; he was seeing her sometimes twice a week.
Nina didn’t need to know about that. Molly and Brittany were enough. “No,” I lied. “That’s it.”
Her body sagged, as if she was holding herself together while I confirmed the worst. “You know, the money I blame on Sloane. Sales slowed, he panicked,” she said bitterly. “We’re going to lose everything because he’s weak. I understand that. I can get past it. These women?” She threw up her hands. “No. I can’t forgive that.”
She railed on against Cabrera. I was sympathetic. But she was complaining to the wrong person—I wasn’t a marriage mediator, I was the guy who was going to arrive with the County Sheriff to seize all her stuff.
From the plane’s seat pocket I got my bottled water and took a drink. I’d felt sorry for Nina after that depo and my feelings hadn’t changed. Still, as an attorney, you can’t let your feelings influence you. I had to view Nina, as the boat’s owner, objectively. Was she doing something questionable with this boat? Would she use it to commit a crime?
Only if she could use it to keelhaul Garcia, I decided.
I closed the file and returned it to my briefcase, thinking why am I fretting about potential crimes? Nunez was going to sweep the boat. If even a hint of drugs turned up, I’d refuse to take possession.
Still, as the hours wore on and I became more and more tired, all I did was fret. A worry loop kept running through my mind: The Venetian. Ban Sloane. Garcia Cabrera. Ray Nunez. Nina Cabrera. My dad. Heather Sloane. Tiffany, my ex. I had whole thoughts at the beginning, but by the time the pilot announced we were about to land, they were just fragments racing around my head at a dizzying speed.
Consequently, when we deplaned at Rio de Janerio International Airport at 9:40 a.m. local time, I was beyond tired. It was war just to keep my eyelids up.
I followed a group of passengers, who seemed to know where they were going, to baggage claim, found my bag, wheeled it to customs. They had me open it, looked in my briefcase. The man in the booth glanced over my passport and in passable English asked, “Business or pleasure? Length of stay? Did I go to Disneyworld often? Did I know Hanna Montana?”
I think I mumbled, “Business, don’t know, never, and no.” He stamped me anyway. I gathered my things and walked toward a group of people holding signs.
The signs read: Mr. Ortiz. Hernandez family. Clayton Gas & Oil. Wilma Saks.
I kept looking, sure I wasn’t seeing the sign with my name on it because I was so tired.
But there was no sign.
No Ray Nunez to meet me.
Chapter 7
Maybe Nunez was just late arriving at the airport. Or maybe, because my plane was late, he was grabbing a cup of joe. I stood watching for him as the masses swirling around me. There were groups of students, couples carrying cups of coffee, families intent on keeping their kids in line, old people gazing around looking for who knows what, business men and women in dress clothes towing luggage, twenty-somethings bent over by the weight of their backpacks. Their conversations were a torrent of Portuguese that added to the airport hubbub of foot traffic, mechanical noises, bad Muzak, and constant airport announcements. The din made me want to put my hands over my ears.
I willed Nunez to emerge from the crowd going sorry, sorry, sorry. When he didn’t, I dug out my cell, tried the number Sloane had given me for him. My call went immediately to voicemail. The abruptness of it was worrying. I tried again. Same result. Wearily, I shook my head. Sloane always promised big, delivered small.
Near baggage claim, I found an information desk manned by an older lady with black hair in a tight bun and glasses on a chain around her neck. She spoke reasonable English, smiled at my request to page Ray Nunez, and a few minutes later, I heard the announcement in Portuguese over the airport speakers. Once again, I expected him to rush up, going sorry, sorry, sorry. When he didn’t, I turned back to the lady with the bun. “I need a hotel. Can you recommend one close-by?” I didn’t want anything on the other side of the city. I couldn’t stay awake that long.
She pointed me toward a wall display featuring different local hotels. Each panel had photos, listed amenities, and provided a phone to contact the hotel. I chose the Hilton. Not because I wanted to add to the Hilton family’s ability to keep Paris in bail money, but because it referenced being close to the airport.
Their limo picked me up curbside five minutes later and took a mere seven minutes more to deposit me at the hotel’s entrance. I sleepwalked through check-in, took the elevator to my floor, trudged down the carpeted hall until I spotted my room number.
The room was what you’d expect from Hilton—the obligatory king-size bed, low chest of drawers with a big-screen on top, lounge chair, and worktable with task chair. There was also a small but tasteful bathroom and a miniscule closet. I locked the door, put my suitcase in the closet, briefcase on the desk, turned off the sat phone. Chucked off clothes. Slipped between cool white sheets in my skivvies.
A door slam woke me. I looked at my watch. I’d been asleep six hours. I felt better. But hungry. I quickly unpacked, jumped in and out of the shower, dressed, tucked my key card in my wallet, locked the door behind me, and went in search of a restaurant.
Of course, the Hilton had one. It was early yet and I had the 30-table dining room to myself. However, there may have been another reason it was empty. My salad was wilted, steak mediocre, and baked potato marginal. The best part of the meal was putting it on Sloane’s Visa card.
Rested and fed, I headed back to my room thinking the trip may have gotten off to a rocky start, but things were getting better.
That good feeling only lasted until I saw the door to my room ajar. Positive I’d closed and locked it, I strode in anxiously going, “Hello. Hello,” hoping against hope the maid was changing towels.
What greeted me was chaos. The room trashed. Mattress off the bed. Dresser drawers pulled out. Clothes all over the floor. Briefcase no longer on the desk.
I reached for the phone on the bedside table, pressed 0.
“Si, how may I help you?” A slightly accented female voice asked.
“This is Mr. Taggert in room 813. My room’s been ransacked.”
There was a sharp intake of breath. “Someone will be right up.”
A stick figure of a man arrived wearing a black suit, white shirt, and highly polished black lace-up shoes. His brass name badge identified him as Antonio. He had dark hair, oiled and brushed back, a thin black moustache. Dark circles under his eyes made him look older and world-weary. Those eyes surveyed the mess.
“Oh, my,” were his first words.
“I came back from dinner and found it like this.”
His gaze turned to me. “Is anything missing?”
“My briefcase with my laptop in it.”
His eyes half closed, he began wringing his hands. “On behalf of the Hilton, I offer you our apologies.” He took a cell from his pocket. “I must call the police.”
I nodded.
Although he spoke in Portuguese, I got the gist: We’ve had a guest robbed, how quickly can you get here. And please, please, please, don’t alarm the other guests.
While Antonio and I spent an awkward fifteen minutes waiting for the cops to arrive, I fretted about what else had been in my briefcase—the Cabrera file. Without it, there was no way I was going to be able to get the boat. Those court documents were my only way to prove ownership. The MacBook I could replace relatively easily, getting a new set of documents was going to take time.
I heard three
soft knocks and two blue uniformed men stood in the doorway.
Antonio waved them in, and the three entered into an animated discussion in Portuguese complete with a series of not-so-subtle glances and gestures my way.
One of the policemen was Antonio’s size. He had a round Charlie Brown head and deep recessed brown eyes that gazed furtively around the room. His mouth was a straight line, his face covered in two-day beard. There was an unpleasant odor to him I couldn’t identify.
The other policeman was wide-bodied and stood a good head-and-a-half taller than the other men. His face was fleshy with heavy jowls. When he spoke, I noticed one side of his mouth didn’t move; it drooped down in a frown. In fact, that whole left side of his face sagged. It had to have been the result of an injury to the nerve that served those facial muscles, but it gave him a freakish, menacing look. As if that wasn’t intimidating enough, the giant’s hand rested on the top of a Taser holstered on his left hip.
I was used to the members of the Orlando police force who worked the courthouse. Those cops were likable and comforting. These guys were scary. I’d been annoyed about the robbery, now I was frightened.
After lengthy discussion, damaged face turned to me—the good side of his mouth turned down to match the bad.
“He would like to see your passport,” Antonio explained.
Reluctantly, I extracted it from my pants pocket and handed it to him.
He took it, quickly flipped through the pages, said something to Antonio.
“He would like you to recount your time since your arrival,” Antonio translated.
“Sure.” I described arriving at the airport expecting to be met by Ray Nunez, and when he wasn’t there, coming to the Hilton. “Once I got here, I slept, went downstairs for some dinner, and when I came back to the room, I found this.”
Antonio nodded and relayed what I’d said in Portuguese.
Charlie Brown frowned—a frown that deepened as he listened—which made me nervous. What I’d done since I arrived had been pretty innocuous. If anything, they should be reassuring me this wasn’t a normal occurrence in Rio.
Charlie Brown said something to Antonio who began stammering.
“Tell them I’m—“
But nobody was listening to me. Antonio, Charlie Brown, and damaged face were all talking at once. Antonio, I noticed had begun to sweat and dabbed nervously at his forehead with a white handkerchief.
“Listen to me,” I said loudly. All three stopped jabbering and stared at me. “There’s been some a kind of misunderstanding.”
Charlie Brown said something under his breath to his partner whose hand clamped my upper arm in a vice grip. Taken aback, I jerked my arm away.
Antonio looked horrified. “They wish you to come with them.”
Damaged face unsnapped the holster to his Taser.
Alarmed, I stepped back to put distance between us. I didn’t want to be grabbed or tased. “There’s no need for me to go with them,” I said to Antonio. “No need for a report. Forget it. Just tell them to forget it.”
As I talked, damaged face put my passport in his pocket and said something authoritative to Antonio in Portuguese.
Whatever it was, it made Antonio quiver. I read fright in his eyes. “You must go with them, Mr. Taggert. Their superior wants to speak with you. Only after you do what they ask will your passport will be returned to you.”
“Why?” I demanded, “It’s a simple breaking and entering. Their superior doesn’t need to talk to me.”
“Yes. Yes. I agree this is most unusual,” Antonio said, dabbing his forehead with the handkerchief, “but you have no other choice.”
He was right. As long as damaged face had my passport, they had me prisoner.
I was marched out of the hotel, taken to a black and white parked outside the entrance, and not-so-gently shoved in the back. The seat was covered in cracked vinyl and separated from the front seat by a metal wire screen. There were dueling smells—disinfectant and vomit. Vomit seemed to be prevailing.
Charlie Brown slid in the driver’s seat, got the engine going, hit the siren, and a hole magically opened in bumper-to-bumper traffic. He deftly pulled into it and my Hilton home-away-from-home receded in the distance. We stayed on the main drag for several blocks, driving past ritzy shops and restaurants, before we turned onto a narrow two-lane street with brick and masonry buildings tight to the roadway. Cars and pick-ups were parked randomly on our side of the street. I peered out the window at the increasingly grim surroundings. The upscale stores were long gone, replaced by ratty storefronts and bars. Rough-looking people stared at the cruiser.
We pulled into a gap between parked cars to let a delivery truck by. From the sidewalk, three men wearing baseball caps and oversized white t-shirts yelled at us and smacked their palms on the roof of the car. Charlie Brown hit the siren. The three guys jumped away from the cruiser; one even ran off. Charlie and damaged face laughed uproariously. One more hit of the siren and Charlie Brown eased the car back into traffic, turned left at the next intersection, went two blocks and turned into a surface parking lot filled with black and whites. Our destination was a wide, ugly five-story brick building, its front pock marked with small windows.
The boys perp walked me into a large, congested lobby where I mingled with Rio’s criminal element while we queued for the metal detector. Past that, we navigated a short hallway filled with the hubbub of people walking, talking, bickering, and yelling that took us to a bank of elevators. On five, we stepped out into a hallway that reminded me of an American high school gone to pot. Beige metal lockers lined both sides of a long hall that ran the length of the building. The walls were painted a bilious blue green that might have been called Seafoam. People—some in uniform, some in civilian clothes—looked me over as the boys walked me down the hallway.
We came to a halt at a closed dark-brown wooden door bearing the number 513. Charlie Brown knocked four times with military precision. When no one answered, I was escorted inside to a small windowless office in which an old wooden desk, desk chair, credenza, and two visitor’s chairs were fighting a losing battle against an avalanche of manila file folders filled with paper. I began sneezing; the place was dusty and smelled of paper mold.
Each of those files was probably a criminal matter that was still open. It made me wonder to whom this office belonged. Who would have this many active matters?
I thought they’d clear off a chair for me, have me sit. They didn’t. We stood. While we were waiting, I glanced around. On the credenza was an ancient IBM desktop that probably ran the original version of Windows. Above it was a detailed street map of Rio. On the wall to my left, a large white board was covered with head-and-shoulders photos of men and a great deal of indecipherable writing. Overhead, a hanging fluorescent fixture sputtered and hummed.
I noticed there were no personal items. No photos. No mementos. Not even a coffee cup with a tacky saying. Also, no clock. Elementary, Watson. This was the office of a man with no personal life, unconcerned about time, pursuing every criminal plaguing Rio. He obviously had more important things to be concerned about than a hotel room break in. So why had I been brought here?
He arrived with no fanfare. Just walked around the desk and settled into the wooden chair the way a gun slides into a holster. I knew that action had happened again and again, until man and chair perfectly fit each other.
He struck me more as a starving academic than a policeman. There was a gentile shabbiness about him. The cheeks of his round face were sunken. His gray hair was arranged in an elaborate combover, the sides badly in need of a cut. The goatee he’d grown to hide his weak chin was ragged. Old-fashioned wire frame glasses kept sliding down his stubby nose. He had on a tan turtleneck and a well-worn brown tweed sport coat with leather elbow patches.
He stuck out his hand, which trembled slightly. The cop with the damaged face placed my passport in his hand with the precision of a nurse delivering a scalpel. He leaned back in his big chair
and thumbed through it. Finding little, he let the chair spring forward, and nodded to the two cops. They left.
He placed my passport on the desk in front of him, but kept one hand on top of it as if afraid I’d snatch it back.
His gaze met mine. Behind the wire frames, his soft, brown eyes seemed kind and trusting. He gave me a gap-toothed smile, ala David Letterman. “I’m Inspector Diaz, Mr. Taggert. Thank you for coming.” His voice was soothing. Almost ingratiating.
I was immediately on guard. “Seems I didn’t have any choice.”
His smile turned rueful, he pulled on an earlobe with his thumb and forefinger. “My apologies. We were trying to find you. The call from the hotel was a bit of good fortune for us and brought us together sooner.”
The words We were trying to find you came out so smoothly they almost slid by without notice. Almost. “I don’t understand. Why would you need to find me?”
He looked at me with a professorial combination of amazement and annoyance, as if I was challenging my exam grade. “You are connected to a matter that has come to our attention,” he said evenly. “We simply wished to talk and learn what you know about it.”
“Here’s what I know. While I was having dinner at the hotel, someone ransacked my room and stole my briefcase with my laptop and work papers in it. I explained that to your officers. I don’t understand why I needed to be brought here to tell it to you.”
During my little indigent diatribe, I watched his gaze turn wary. Now I was the student demanding to speak to the dean.
“Yes, yes, I understand.” His brow furrowed. “What you—” He stopped himself and stood. ”Perhaps, it will be easier to show you.”
If he wanted me to do something, he’d have to do something for me. “I’d like my passport back.”
He handed it right over. “Now, Mr. Taggert, please come with me.”
I took it from him, stuffed it deep into my pants pocket.