by Frank Hughes
The first few hours after my arrest had been spent in the cage with a number of other detainees, but a dispute over seating arrangements had arisen between me and three other occupants. A brief altercation resulted in them being carried off to the infirmary. Since they appeared to have friends and supporters in the remaining group, and I was the only Anglo, I was placed in solitary to prevent an embarrassing murder, not to mention that blaming me for the fight cooled passions and made the other prisoners more malleable. So, for the better part of two days, the world sailed on without my input, and I could have cared less.
The only thing my tiny resort lacked was reading material. To alleviate the boredom, I fell back on a trick I’d learned from a Vietnam POW: mentally playing rounds of golf on my favorite courses and pleased with how much better a golfer I was in my own head. By late afternoon on my second day, I was playing Pebble Beach and I had just executed a daring shot on the 17th. It’s a long hole for a par three, unless you aim your drive right over the bizarrely shaped sand trap on the left side of the sloping green. My drive was perfect. The ball bit hard and stopped just a foot short of the pin. At least, I was honest enough not to fantasize a hole in one.
I was lining up the birdie putt when the cell door clanged open. It was not the usual CO. Instead, two burly guys in dark suits crowded the doorway. Neither one looked particularly happy.
“Get up and assume the position,” said the taller of the two.
I leaned against the wall, spreading my arms and legs.
“Cross ‘em,” said the other man.
I crossed my arms at the wrists and my legs at the ankles, which left me precariously balanced. I’d heard about this technique, a variation on the standard search position, but never seen it used. The upside was it gave the searcher more control. At the slightest wrong move by the suspect, you simply kick away the crossed feet, sending them face first into the ground. The downside was it made it more difficult to search the crotch and wrist areas.
The shorter man stepped up on my left side and placed his right foot firmly against the tops of my crossed feet. After an expert frisk, he stepped away.
“Uncross ‘em and continue facing the wall.”
I complied. He stepped up again and snapped a cuff on my left wrist, twisting the arm behind my back and pulling me back from the wall. Then he pulled the other arm back and cuffed it, too. He shifted his grip to my upper arms, his strong fingers digging into my flesh.
“Don’t panic,” he said.
A cloth hood was slipped over my head and everything went dark. Don’t panic, I thought, as I began to panic. Something cold snapped around my right ankle, then my left. I heard the clank of chains. Leg irons. I was being rendered.
“Let’s go,” said the man holding me.
He turned me towards the door. When he let go the other man took my left arm and guided me through the door. I shuffled along like Marley’s ghost, the clanking leg manacles echoing hollowly in the narrow hall. Then we were in a wider area, an office most likely, but there didn’t appear to be anyone there. There was no sound of conversation and several phones were ringing unanswered. So, they’d cleared all local law enforcement. That took some juice.
A door opened and some of the dazzling Texas sunlight briefly pierced the fabric of the hood before I was placed in a metal box.
“Bench behind you. Sit down.”
I sat. I heard someone take the seat across from me. A motor started and the metal box began moving.
“Where are we going?”
“Shut up.”
I surmised we were headed for an airfield, the beginning of a journey that would end, where? Some former Soviet republics were popular choices, now that the Arab Spring had removed Cairo from the list. With luck I’d end up wherever Karen was and we could have Christmas dinner together.
After forty-five minutes or so, the truck pulled off the paved road onto a rough, pitted surface and stopped. I heard a door slam up front. After some fiddling at the rear, I was again bathed in sunlight. The hood was pulled from my head by the man who’d cuffed me. He tossed it on the floor and bent to unlock the leg irons. While he did, I looked out the door at a sliver of unremarkable desert and the rear end of a tow truck. The other man was waiting patiently, one hand on the door. With the other, he held a bulky manila envelope to his chest.
The manacles clanked to the floor.
“Let’s see ‘em.”
I twisted to present my cuffs. He unlocked them and stepped aside.
“Now, get out.”
I climbed out, squinting in the harsh sunlight.
I saw we were just off a two lane blacktop in the rutted parking lot of a gas station.
“What now?” I said.
“You might want to get something to eat,” said the second man. He tossed me the manila envelope. The other man slammed the rear door and latched it.
I looked inside the envelope and found my wallet and money belt.
The two men walked up opposite sides of the truck.
“Wait,” I said, “you’re just leaving me here?” When they ignored me, I added, “I’m a dangerous criminal on the loose.”
The taller man paused while stepping into the driver’s seat. He shook his head and said, “You oughta be ashamed of yourself.”
He got in, started the engine and pulled away, turning onto the road and heading back the way we’d come. I could see now that I was in a truck stop that included a diner. A couple of tractor trailers were parked on the dirt lot beyond the diner. The only other vehicle was a Ford sedan parked in front.
I checked the money belt and it still contained cash. I was kind of hungry. Tucking the envelope under my arm, I walked over to the diner and went in.
A buxom, middle-aged waitress in a pink uniform was standing at the register sorting receipts. She greeted me with a big smile.
“Hello there. Welcome!”
“Afternoon,” I said.
“Sit anywhere you want,” she said, waving a chubby arm. “As you can see, it ain’t our busy hour.”
“Thanks.”
The two truckers on stools near the register looked at me with mild curiosity. At the far end of the counter an earnest looking young man in a dark suit was giving me the steely eyed look. He might as well have had ‘Federal Agent’ stenciled on his forehead. However my attention was drawn to the man sitting in a booth near him. I strolled over and the young man stood up to block my way. I looked past him at the man in the booth.
“Hello, John,” I said.
“That’s Director Roma to you,” said John Roma. He gestured at the opposite side of the booth. “Have a seat.”
43.
By the time I finished my story, I’d gone through steak, eggs, a stack of buttermilk pancakes, and two cups of passable coffee.
“You’ve been busy,” said Roma.
The waitress came by to refill my coffee. Roma smiled at her and held a hand over his empty cup.
When she was gone, I said, “Are you ever going to tell me why you’re not here?”
“What am I going to do with you?” he said, not looking or sounding as if he really cared. “Manslaughter, gun running, entering the country illegally, consorting with known drug lords, theft of government property, to whit a passport and credit card.”
“Ripped the tag off my mattress, too.”
“You were warned to stay out of this.”
“Oh, bullshit. I’m not a complete idiot.”
“That is one man’s opinion. Explain yourself.”
“At first I thought you were treating me like some four year old, telling me you didn’t want me to eat my spinach just so I would eat my spinach. That’s why you fucked with my passport and bank accounts and planted a stakeout car. You knew after Raviv was killed I wouldn’t let it go, but you needed it on the record that you did everything to stop me. That little drama you staged at your office, treating me like a long lost son in front of the troops, wasn’t for my benefit.”
“It kept you alive. They were less likely to kill you if they thought you were a government agent.”
“That was a side effect, not your reason. There’s a leak in your office. You needed a distraction.”
“I have limited resources, and not many people I can trust.”
“I can imagine. Investigating a corporation with ties to a powerful U.S. Senator. You’re running something off the books, using assets you can trust, like Raviv. Why not just ask me?”
He smiled. “I wasn’t authorized to read you in. Besides, you turned your back on us once already.”
“You guys turned your backs on me. Besides, I was a red herring. You wanted them chasing me.”
He smiled. “Perhaps.”
“And while they were, Timmy the bartender might have more freedom to act.” I smiled. “You’re a hell of a poker player, but I saw you twitch.”
“I heard about your little pronunciation lesson. Tim can be overly theatrical.”
“Well, it’s gonna get him killed.”
Roma looked as if he was going to speak, but folded his hands on top of the file and said nothing.
“She’s coming back, isn’t she?” I said.
“How about some pie, Hon?” said the waitress.
“Honestly, Ma’am, I don’t think I can cram one more bit of your excellent food into me, much as I would like to.”
“Well, thank you for the compliment, Sug. You enjoy your coffee now.” She hurried off.
Roma opened the file. “This says you have a distinct distrust and dislike of authority. And a challenge brings out the best in you. I am the authority figure who made things as challenging as possible.”
“What’s that, my eHarmony profile?”
“It’s your psych profile from North Carolina.” He smiled at my reaction. “I told you I knew.”
“You’re a plugged in, devious motherfucker, I’ll give you that, but, I didn’t stick with this because of you.”
“Raviv?”
“And Kenneth Boyd. I was hired to find him, or what happened to him. And when I do, I’ll find who killed Raviv.”
“Not buying the Black September revenge angle?”
“Never did.”
I heard the sound of air brakes and saw a bus pulling into the parking lot.
“There’s my ride, so you have thirty seconds to tell me why I’m here.”
“I’m now authorized to read you in.”
“I’m not interested in working for the government.”
“I know what happened in Paris, and how you feel about it. You think it was your fault.”
“It was.”
“I agree. It was.” His smile widened a little. “Ah, no one’s ever said that to you before, have they?”
I had no answer.
“I’ve read your whole file, not just this one.” He tapped the folder for emphasis. “All the way back through Customs. You were all about the job and nothing but the job. That’s why you had so many problems with guys like Imperatrice. You’re terrible at politics, but a hell of a cop. And you threw it all away, for this.” He tapped the file again.
“It was something I needed to do.”
“You could have done something else. Joined the Army, the Peace Corps, run for office. They used you, used your anger and your grief. And you thought you were getting revenge. Tell me, did it make you feel any better? Is she resting any easier?”
“Leave her out of it.”
“I can’t.” He leaned in a little. “I knew your wife, worked with her. She was a great cop and a devout Catholic. I think we both know what she would have thought about this.” He tapped the file. “People like me and her we’re about justice, not vengeance. You stepped across that line, rejected everything she believed in, that you believed in, government sanction be damned.” He lifted a page. “Raviv knew that. He wanted you scrubbed from the program.”
“So, why wasn’t I?”
“He was overruled. After all, he was just a consultant who barely knew you, and he was openly against the whole program anyway. Meanwhile, your former boss gave you a glowing recommendation, and you seemed like a natural.” He closed the file.
“My meeting with Raviv was not chance, was it?” I said. “Nor was his friendship with Boyd. He was working with you. He said there were others watching me. You were behind Raviv hiring me, weren’t you?”
“No one is ever completely off the grid. We kept tabs on you.”
“We?”
“Raviv, me, other interested parties.”
“Why? What do you want?”
“We can talk about it later.”
“What ‘later’?”
“After you’ve done what you intend to do.”
“You have no idea what I intend to do.”
He just smiled.
“It’s deflating to my ego,” I said, “that everyone finds me so easy to read.”
“Then grow up.”
“Thanks, Dad. In the meantime, I’m getting a little tired of being everyone’s butt boy. Tell me what you want.”
He spun his coffee cup slowly in a circle and said nothing.
“Today, I meant.”
He looked at me over those glasses with bemused patience.
“I can’t imagine how you were ever accused of insubordination.”
“Ha, ha.”
“Tell me about it.”
I looked outside. The bus was pulling out of the parking lot.
“Craig, tell me about that incident. What happened?”
“I called my boss some unflattering names in front of a roomful of witnesses.”
“What were the circumstances?”
“The circumstances were him not letting me do my job.”
“Tell me more,” he said.
“We had a string of minor busts, mules flying in from South America, always the same airline. After a while I noticed that nearly every time we’d catch one of these people, a big shipment of coke hit the market.”
“The mules were decoys,” he said.
“That’s what my partner and I figured. They gave us a small fish as misdirection, while they got the real shipment through. I started investigating and found a pattern in the crew assignments that seemed to match up. A female flight attendant. My partner and I worked it quietly for a few months.”
“Why quietly?”
“Around that time things had a way of leaking, so we kept it between us. The flight attendant had a sister who worked at the airport. The sister’s boyfriend was a thrower.”
“Thrower?”
“A baggage handler. The guys who unload the luggage. The inside girl handled the ground crew assignments. She made sure he always worked the right plane. Someone had rigged a way to have the dirty bag bypass our inspection process during the baggage transfer.”
“How were they doing it?”
“Pulled a switch on the trolley, replaced the dirty bag with an exact duplicate and swapped the tags by switching bag handles. The suitcase with the drugs got mixed in with bags from an incoming domestic flight. The courier on this end simply picked it up in baggage claim and walked out.”
“And the flight attendant?”
“She helped get the bags through at the South American end and kept her eyes open for any hint we were watching.”
“What did you do about it?”
“We took a plan to Imperatrice. Flip the stew and let her keep bringing the stuff in while we traced the whole pipeline. I also wanted to bring in the DEA, utilize their resources at the other end.”
“How could you trust her?”
“She knew she was caught. She was only doing it because her little sister had been threatened. The kid sister didn’t know, she was head over heels for this guy and did whatever he said. She didn’t realize he was using her or why. Big sister offered to give us the whole operation. In return, they would both get immunity, and then witness protection.”
“So, what could go wrong?”
“Imperatrice rejected th
e idea. Went for the quick hit to pad his arrest stats and keep DEA from getting any credit.”
“He had to have more reason than that.”
“He did. The usual one, money. When you expand an investigation like that, it needs extra manpower. You need to give the informant some rope, so you need people to watch and protect them. You need to put people on the people they meet, and more people to secure the meeting places.”
“To be fair, Craig, those operations are risky and rarely pan out. They can be a budget buster, which makes it a black mark on the career of the officer who authorized it.”
“This one was worth the risk. There was major weight coming in. Those girls were just one part of a bigger operation. Someone at the airport was involved, someone high up, I could feel it.”
“But, Imperatrice went for the easy bust.”
“Right. We arrested the women and tried to make a case against some of the ground crew.”
“The boyfriend?”
“Vanished. Never saw him again.”
“Tipped off?”
“Had to be.”
“What happened to the sisters?”
“Someone bailed them out,” I said. “They never made it home. Vanished into thin air.”
“You ever find them?”
“Sort of. About a week later, a Newark cop saw some homeless guy playing soccer on the sidewalk outside the abandoned Westinghouse factory. It didn’t look right to him, the ball was bouncing funny, or something, so he went to check it out.” I looked Roma in the eye. “It wasn’t a ball; it was the younger sister’s head. They ID’d her from dental records.”
“I see.”
“Newark PD searched the building. Found a sort of torture chamber in one of the rooms, blood all over the walls. I saw the place. There was a metal chair with manacles and one of those old claw foot bathtubs. The tub was caked with dried blood.”
“Hers?”
“Among others. They used it to cut up the bodies of people they killed. The FBI lab said there was DNA from a dozen different people in that tub.” I looked down. “God only knows what the last hours of that girl’s life were like.”