The Grace Painter (The Grace Series Book 1)

by Mark Romang

  Howell nodded his balding head. “Your assessment fits his profile. Money has spoiled him.”

  “We could call Brinkman,” Leflore suggested. “He would know. Brinkman and Zaplata operate on the same wavelength.”

  “That won’t be necessary, Jeremy. Mario is off-duty, remember?” Chandler said, leaving the window. She turned to Pederson. “Brant, you might have your men check out the old man at the end of the pier. I think the geezer is casing us. He hasn’t changed bait in nearly an hour.”

  Howell took a bite from a powdered doughnut. “Zaplata may have paid him a few bucks to watch the harbor for feds,” he suggested.

  “Or maybe it’s Sebastian Boudreaux wearing a disguise,” Newton Laskey speculated. Laskey was assisting Brant Pederson with the FBI’s portion of the operation.

  Pederson turned to the two agents sitting silently near the end of the table. “Rich, why don’t you and Mallard go strike up a conversation with the old man? See if he really is who he appears to be.”

  “We’ll do, Brant,” Richard Pancea replied. “I’m tired of sitting anyway.” Both he and Special Agent Mallard adjusted hideaway holsters under their USDC seafood inspector smocks, and then left the room. The two FBI agents walked directly through the sweaty bowels of the shrimp processing plant, dodging laborers and noisy conveyors on their way outside. The whole journey took less than a minute. But when they entered the afternoon sun, the old man was gone.

  Pancea and Mallard trotted up the pier to the spot where the fisherman had been. They looked all around, but the old man had vanished like a ghost, leaving his rod and reel behind. Pancea picked up the fishing rod and reeled in its line. He swore when he saw a lead sinker and nothing else tied to the end of its line.

  “Open up the tackle box, Chris,” Agent Pancea commanded.

  Agent Mallard opened up the tackle box and looked inside. His mouth dropped to his chest. “We’ve been had, Rich. That guy wasn’t fishing, at least not for anything that swims. There isn’t one lure in this box.”

  Pancea pulled a two-way radio out of his smock pocket and hit the transmit button. “Brant, come in, over.”

  “I copy, Rich. What’s your situation?” Pederson asked.

  “We have a problem,” Pancea admitted sheepishly. “The fox has left the chicken coop.”

  “Say again?” Pederson asked, thinking maybe he’d heard wrong. He wasn’t used to hearing his best agent used tired intelligence clichés.

  “The old man, he disappeared. Left all his gear behind, and I don’t think he’s coming back for it.”

  “Find him!” Pederson’s voice roared out of Pancea’s radio.

  “Consider it done, sir” Pancea replied. He looked over at his partner. “You heard the man, Chris. Let’s go find Gramps.”

  Chapter 41

  Back in the shrimp processing plant, Elizabeth Chandler, Brant Pederson, Newton Laskey, and DEA agents Curt Howell and Jeremy Leflore pored over the latest satellite imagery faxed to them from the National Imagery and Mapping Agency. They all cheered when they came across a photo of Carlos Zaplata standing topside the Sea Maiden.

  The operations phone rang and Chandler tore herself away from the hoopla to answer it. Rear Admiral Patrick Davidson from aboard the USCG cutter Integrity greeted her. She quickly put the admiral on speakerphone so they could all share in the conversation. “As you were saying, Admiral.”

  “I regret to inform you that the Sea Maiden has just entered the Intracoastal Waterway,” Davidson admitted.

  “How in the world could you let them past you?” Chandler screeched. “Zaplata never should’ve made it this far.” To avoid collateral damage, a last minute change in the plan called for the arrest to take place at sea rather than at the Morgan City Harbor. The risk of civilian casualties became too great to ignore.

  “We intercepted a mayday distress call from a nearby oil freighter. We made for its location, and when we arrived on the scene the freighter was on fire and men were in the water. We obviously had to forgo the Sea Maiden and establish a rescue operation,” the rear admiral said calmly.

  Elizabeth Chandler’s eyebrows furrowed together. “How soon before you can resume pursuit?”

  “Pursuit is not possible for us. The Integrity’s draft is too deep for the canal system. This section of the ICW is designed for shallow-draft vessels,” Davidson explained. “From here on out you will have to rely on Coast Guard ground units to assist you in Operation Pitfall.”

  Newton Laskey squirmed in his seat. “Admiral Davidson, Newt Laskey here. I’m the Special-Agent-in-Charge of the FBI’s Baton Rouge Resident Agency. How soon before the Sea Maiden chugs into the harbor?”

  “My guess is that you may be able to spot the trawler in fifteen to twenty minutes with a good pair of binoculars. And I would think it wouldn’t be too difficult to distinguish a catamaran trawler from the other shrimp boats.”

  “I tend to agree with you, Admiral,” Laskey said.

  “If there are no other questions I must return my attention to the rescue operation,”

  “No more questions. Thank-you, Admiral,” Chandler sighed.

  “My pleasure. Good luck and Godspeed, gentlemen. And you too, Miss Chandler.”

  Elizabeth Chandler looked around the room at the sleep-deprived faces and wondered if she looked as tired and frazzled as they did. She felt as if she’d aged ten years over the last thirty-six hours. Her lofty ambition of someday becoming the Drug Enforcement Administrator had just collided with cold hard reality, and the possibility of failure humbled her.

  At the moment her fast-track career teetered on an ice-covered precipice. Succeed and advance higher, or fail and be demoted. An unthinkable embarrassment she’d do anything to avoid. Her environmental lobbyist father and Yale professor mother didn’t raise her to grovel shamefully among the commoners. From birth she’d been groomed for greatness, reared among the powerfully elite residents of Martha’s Vineyard to someday dominate all social classes.

  At Yale University she excelled at both academics and athletics with equal aplomb. She captained the women’s lacrosse team her senior year. And it was through tirelessly pursuing academics and athletics that her superior leadership skills were forged.

  From a young age she’d sensed that she would one day achieve something spectacular. But until now she didn’t know what event would propel her rise to greatness. Her future had always shimmered just out of focus. But now the blurriness had faded and it was crystalline clear what needed to take place.

  Chandler picked up a satellite phone. She keyed a number and waited impatiently for Special Agent Stan Baxter--special liaison between the Coast Guard and DEA to answer. She heard Baxter’s monotone voice come on the line after the second ring.

  “Stan, it’s time. Pitfall is green light. Repeat, Pitfall is green light. Initiate phase one of contingency Plan B,” Chandler commanded, unable to hide the rising excitement in her voice. And thus Operation Pitfall began in earnest. Her cryptic command set off a flurry of preparative activity that would hopefully set the stage for perhaps the biggest arrest ever in the war on drugs. Victory never comes easy. And quite often, as Chandler would soon learn, it carries with it an exorbitant price.

  Chapter 42

  That afternoon

  His money-stuffed duffel slung over one shoulder, and dressed in authentic fishing garb, Sebastian walked purposefully to the ship carrying his benefactor. He’d been to the Morgan City harbor several times as a child, and nothing much had changed. But on this day the harbor’s sights and smells overwhelmed his prison-dulled senses.

  A symphony of laughter and spirited cursing from the fishermen and dockworkers rang out against a mechanical backdrop of cranes. The cranes whizzed and hummed as they offloaded shrimp pods. Seawater and freshly caught fish odors hung heavy in the afternoon air, attracting seagulls by the scores and even a pair of white pelicans.

  It would be a day like any other except for all the FEMA officials buzzing about. The Federal
Emergency Management Administration representatives were everywhere, inspecting and recording the extensive structural damage the port city had incurred from the backside of Hurricane Vera’s eye wall.

  You better steer clear of the FEMA people, he told himself. After all he’d been through to get here; he didn’t want a fed to spot him. His journey to Morgan City read like a modern version of Homer’s Odyssey. After being hotly pursued by Jon Rafter and a killer twister through much of the Basin, he’d capsized his Wave Runner in a monstrous wave and nearly drowned trying to rescue his money.

  The Wave Runner ran out of gas near the town of Charenton. He spent the night there in a ratty motel. But instead of refueling the PWC the next morning, he elected to ditch it for the battered Ford pickup truck.

  He regretted killing the old woman over her truck, but felt like he offered her a fair price for it. The old biddy had it coming. She should have taken the generous six-thousand in cash I offered her. She’d still be alive if she had, Sebastian thought.

  Pulling his ball cap down low, Sebastian stepped onto the wharf and casually picked his way along the wood planking through a small mob of dockworkers, seafood inspectors, and iced wooden crates containing shrimp waiting to be inspected and transported to the processing plant.

  As late as yesterday he’d debated himself on the virtues of going through with the plan, weighing the advantages and disadvantages with actuarial precision. And after much hand-wringing he finally decided that boarding Carlos Zaplata’s boat was indeed his best option. He knew he couldn’t stay in America. And yet there were very few countries that wouldn’t extradite him back to the states.

  A few Middle-eastern countries might balk at handing him over to the Justice Department. Cuba for sure wouldn’t do it, and the climate in Cuba would be to his liking.

  Maybe Castro will let me stay there if I pose as a French journalist writing a book on the strained relations between Cuba and the United States. An unlikely scenario. But he had to keep an open mind to every possibility.

  Sebastian held tight to his duffel and checked off the names of the trawlers one by one: Adele, Hole Shot, Iliad, Shining Knight, Calypso, Southern Belle, Cajun Queen and lastly, the Sea Maiden. Moored in slip 8, the boat looked in pristine shape. Her twin hydraulic trawls pointed skyward, and the burgundy-and-white paint scheme glinted in the sun.

  Sebastian’s eyes lingered on the boat’s hull. He had been under the impression the Sea Maiden was a catamaran. Paranoia knifed at his back until he noticed the trawler flew a Mexican flag just underneath an American one. This has to be Carlos Zaplata’s shrimp boat, he mused as he walked up the boat’s gangplank.

  The first person he saw after boarding was a shirtless Hispanic man. The worker’s umber skin glistened under the hot sun as he rigged a harness over a loaded pallet of shrimp crates, readying the pallet to be off-loaded by a nearby crane. Sebastian approached the deckhand. “Excuse me, sir. But where might I find the captain?”

  The young Hispanic kept on working. “Are you Senor Boudreaux?” He asked in broken English.

  “Yes, I am Sebastian Boudreaux.”

  “Senor Zaplata is expecting you. He is downstairs in the galley with the chef.”

  “Thank-you.” Sebastian padded lightly across the deck and into the bulkhead where a short staircase led to the galley. Butterflies fluttered in his stomach as he descended the steps. The thought occurred to him more than once that he could be making a grave mistake throwing his lot in with an unscrupulous killer like Zaplata. He could become fish food once the Sea Maiden left the harbor and entered the deeper waters of the Gulf.

  But it’s too late to turn back now, he thought as he stepped down into the small dining area adjoining the kitchen. He could see a tall, slender Hispanic man standing in the dining area and a female chef through a serving window that accessed the two rooms. His heart walloped in his chest as he approached the infamous Carlos Zaplata. The slender Hispanic heard his approach and turned his handsome head. He smiled warmly and offered a hand to shake. “Welcome to the Sea Maiden, Senor Boudreaux. We’ve been expecting you,” Carlos Zaplata said in almost perfect English.

  Sebastian felt a layer of anxiety slough off his mind. Perhaps the drug lord’s legendary reputation for savagery was nothing more than malicious gossip. Sebastian took Zaplata’s hand and shook it. “I hope I’m not too late,” he said.

  “Oh, no, Senor Boudreaux. You arrived as promised. An amazing feat considering your mode of transportation,” Zaplata said as he glanced over Sebastian’s shoulder. His eyes narrowed. “I don’t see Jean-Paul, Henri, or his son Blaine with you? Is there something I should know?”

  Sebastian put on his best grieving face. “Jean-Paul and Blaine drowned in the Atchafalaya Basin. I was lucky I wasn’t with them when the storm surge washed them away.” Sebastian paused for added effect, even dabbed at a manufactured tear. “They didn’t have a chance. The giant wave came with little warning.”

  “And what about Henri?” Zaplata pressed.

  Sebastian dabbed his forehead. He wasn’t sure how to answer. Should he lie, or tell the truth? Zaplata’s dander appeared safely mollified at the moment. But that could all change in a heartbeat. “Henri and I had a disagreement,” he finally spat out. “Unfortunately, the argument turned physical.”

  Recognition flickered in Zaplata’s ink-black eyes. He stroked his mustache as he considered Sebastian’s admission. “Henri is dead?”

  “Very much so.”

  “You killed him?”

  Sebastian slowly nodded. If ever there was a time to fall back on his knack for spinning believable falsehoods, it was now. “Believe me, Mr. Zaplata; I took no pleasure in killing my uncle. But I felt his reckless behavior had to be stopped. His drinking affected his judgment. At first he wanted to kill the little girl. But then he flip-flopped and wanted us all to turn ourselves in. I spent the last twenty years behind bars. That was enough for me.”

  Zaplata digested the explanation with almost catatonic deliberateness. Sebastian gripped his money-stuffed duffel bag tighter. Perhaps he should have just taken his chances and gone it alone.

  Zaplata pulled a large cigar from a humidor sitting on the counter. He lit it and took a slow drag. Smoke billowed toward Sebastian’s face. It was all he could do not to cough.

  “I assume you buried the body in a discreet place,” Zaplata said stonily.

  “Yes, sir. Henri lies in state in a junked logging truck. The truck is completely obscured by kudzu vines.”

  “Is the burial site isolated?”

  “Very isolated. The corpse is deep in the Atchafalaya Basin.”

  “Gracias, Senor Boudreaux. Henri knew almost everything about my operations. I’m sure he would’ve tried to cut a deal with prosecutors.”

  “That is a likely scenario,” Sebastian agreed quickly. Relief flooded over him. It’s going to be okay. Zaplata is a reasonable man.

  “You look famished, Sebastian. Would you like something to eat?”

  Sebastian nodded. “I’ve eaten very little in the past thirty-six hours,” he confessed as he set his duffel down on the floor.

  Zaplata nodded and said something in Spanish to the petite chef who stood at the cook stove preparing food. The female chef dished up a plate and slid it carefully across the surface of the serving window.

  Sebastian stared hungrily at the steaming food. Hunger made his insides rub together. The chef had prepared sirloin beef tips and gravy over fried rice. The food smelled delectable. His mouth drooled in anticipation.

  The chef held out a fork and spoon.

  Sebastian reached for the utensils without a second thought. Suddenly, and with amazing quickness, the chef brought a pair of handcuffs down hard on his exposed wrist. Sebastian recoiled too slowly. The cuffs cinched tightly around his wrist.

  He instinctively pulled back and reached down with his free hand for the Browning in his duffel bag. But the man he believed to be Carlos Zaplata grabbed him from behind, twisting his f
ree arm behind his back and shoving him up against the serving window.

  Sebastian struggled to free himself but wisely stopped when the chef pressed the barrel of a handgun up against his forehead and began reciting him his Miranda rights.

  “You have the right to remain silent, anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney, and to have that attorney present during questioning. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided for you at government expense…”

  Thunderstruck by the stunning series of events, Sebastian glared sullenly at the woman. It was then he noticed she had two black eyes. Her makeup couldn’t quite cover the bruises around her orbits. And there was something else about her, something vaguely familiar. Despite her dark hair she looked remarkably like Annie Crawford, the FBI agent he briefly detained in the Atchafalaya Basin.

  “What should we do with him while we wait for Newton and the marshals to show up?” Special Agent Randy Trujillo asked Annie. They’d been partners for only two days.

  “Put him in the head over in the corner.”

  “Are you serious? That bathroom isn’t much bigger than a small closet.”

  Annie grinned. “He’ll be okay. Sebastian has a thing for closets, don’t you?”

  “You heard the lady,” Trujillo barked. “Let’s go.” The veteran FBI agent led the shell-shocked kidnapper over to the bathroom and shoved him inside, locking the door behind him. Trujillo then rejoined Annie in the kitchen. “Please tell me you got his confession on tape?”

  Annie nodded and retrieved a small tape recorder affixed to the underneath side of the counter. It still recorded. “I’d say so, Randy,” Annie said as she pushed the stop button.

  Trujillo held up his palm for Annie to high-five. “That couldn’t have gone any better.”

  “I agree. Sebastian hung himself with a confession like that. And since we also have the confession on video there’s no way a lawyer can argue that he was coerced into spilling his guts.”