Make Them Sorry

by Sam Hawken

  She started to walk away. Andrea called after her, “He is dead, isn’t he? Really dead?”

  Camaro looked back. “They don’t get any more dead.”

  Andrea’s lip curled. “Good.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  IGNACIO RETURNED TO his desk to find several messages waiting. He sorted through them before calling the number on the top slip. “Hey, Willy, how are you?” he asked when the line picked up.

  Willy Marshall drove a patrol car in Boca Raton. He was an old-school cop, and he knew the names of people on his beat and stopped to help kids with their bikes. When he spoke, Ignacio heard the squelch of a radio in the background. “Ignacio! I thought I missed you.”

  “Only by a little bit. What’s up? You have something for me?”

  “Yeah. Let me pull over.”

  Ignacio waited. He thumbed through the message slips. He liked them better than voice mail.

  Willy spoke up again. “I took a picture of your DB’s tattoo to the priest over at Saint David’s. That’s the Armenian church around here. Father Hayrapetyan.”

  “That’s a mouthful.”

  “Yeah, it’s all like that with the Armenians. He’s a nice guy, though. Real helpful around here. And he was able to translate the tattoo for me.”

  “So what does it say?”

  “It says—let me check my notes—‘The armed struggle and right political line are the way to Armenia.’”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “Father Hayrapetyan says it was the motto of some Armenian militant organization that disbanded back in the ’90s. A lot of those guys were military or former military, and they were about breaking up Russian control over Armenia before it all fell apart. He told me a lot of other stuff, too, but I’ll be honest and say most of it went right over my head. I didn’t become a cop to major in Armenian history.”

  Ignacio chuckled. “Me neither. Listen, Willy, thanks for checking it out for me. I need somebody to go through this notebook, because it’s all in Armenian. Tell Father Whatsisname I owe him a beer. Do Armenian priests drink beer?”

  “Hell if I know. But I’ll tell him. And maybe he can look through the notebook for you.”

  “We’ll see how it goes. Take care, Willy.”

  “Nice talking to you. Don’t be a stranger.”

  Ignacio ended the call. He pondered the phone. He reached for the receiver again. Someone called his name.

  The woman was very short and very dark, her hair cut almost to the scalp. She wore a black suit with a skirt and low heels. A visitor pass dangled from a clip on her lapel. “Are you Detective Montellano?” she asked again.

  Ignacio stood and nearly upset his chair. “Yes, ma’am, I’m Detective Montellano. Ignacio Montellano.”

  He extended his hand and she shook it. Her grip was firm, the handshake brief. She had a serious face and distinct frown lines. Ignacio thought she might be fifty. “My name is Trina Pope. I’m a special agent with the Drug Enforcement Administration. I was wondering if we might have a word in private.”

  Ignacio glanced around the bullpen. Most of the cubicles were empty. A few detectives worked at their computers. “More private than this?” he asked.

  “Much more private.”

  “The captain’s out. Why don’t we talk in his office?”

  Pope allowed him to lead her. They stepped into Captain Palmer’s corner office. The blinds were already partly drawn. Pope closed the door behind them. She shut the blinds entirely. She said, “I understand you caught a case overnight involving a woman named Faith Glazer. What can you tell me about it?”

  “Looks like a stalking case. Ms. Glazer told Special Victims she’d been followed for several months by an individual she feared might attack her physically. Turns out she was right. Last night the man broke into her apartment and assaulted her. Luckily she had a gun.”

  “I see. Do you have an identity for the stalker?”

  “Not yet, but I’m working on it. He might be Armenian. Maybe an Armenian-American, maybe from outside the country. I won’t know until we’ve looked everywhere we can look.”

  “What makes you think he’s Armenian?”

  “It’s a tattoo he’s got. I did some checking and it’s from some group in the old country. Also, Ms. Glazer said he spoke to her in another language besides English. She said it wasn’t Spanish, and when we saw the tattoo and the notebook in his car, full of the stuff…”

  “Faith Glazer is in the hospital right now,” Pope said. It was not a question.

  “Yeah, she was banged up pretty badly.”

  “Is she under police protection?”

  “Uh, no. The guy stalking her is dead. Should she be?”

  Pope took a step toward him. “How much do you know about Faith Glazer?”

  “She’s some kind of accountant. I don’t know a whole lot more than that.”

  “So she didn’t tell you anything which might make you suspect there was more to this matter than a simple stalking case?”

  “No. Look, what is this all about? I was going to do my due diligence and try to identify this guy, but the case is open-and-shut. He was a freak and she killed him when he came after her. It’s happened before.”

  Pope nodded. She lifted one of the slats in the blinds and peered outside. “It’s a little more complicated than that. I’m going to need everything you put together for this case, and we’re going to combine it with the case file we got from Detective Herrera in Special Victims. Then we’re going to ask you to ease off a little bit while we put things in order.”

  “‘We’? Last I heard, the DEA doesn’t handle homicides. And this doesn’t have anything to do with drugs.”

  Pope dropped the slat. “You don’t know what this has to do with, Detective Montellano. And as far as who’s going to handle it from here on out, let me introduce you to someone you already know.”

  She opened the office door. Ignacio saw a man standing there. “Hello, Nacho,” Special Agent Mansfield of the FBI said. “It seems like we just talked.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  SHE FOUND THE office in Liberty City on the second floor of a building with mostly empty offices. The ground floor used to be a showroom of some kind, but the tall, broad windows were completely boarded up and painted an aquamarine bleached halfway to white over the years. Trash settled into the cracks and hollows of the storefronts on the street.

  Camaro parked her motorcycle by the curb. The bike was unsteady, the surface of the road eaten away by time and neglect. The sidewalk was worse: concrete squares pitched and angled against one another like a child’s imitation of the real thing.

  The building looked abandoned at first, but Camaro heard voices when she stepped into the stairwell off the street. A radio played, and someone talked loudly in Spanish on a speakerphone. The stairs were narrow. The paint on the walls bubbled from water infiltration.

  Gold Coast Direct Marketing had a printed paper sign tacked by the open door to the office. Camaro went inside. An oscillating fan on a stand stirred the sodden air. The windows toward the street were open and no air conditioner ran. The front office was larger than it needed to be because there was no furniture in the waiting area and only a desk. Instead of a coffee table and a couch, there was a two-foot-high mound of telephone books in plastic bags identical to the one in Faith’s trash.

  Two rear offices had their doors open. Camaro saw that one office was empty. In the other, a man worked with his back to her, shuffling through a pile of flyers on a battered desk. Camaro stepped into the doorway and cleared her throat.

  The man turned around. His shirt was open to expose the undershirt underneath, and both materials were soaked with patches of sweat. He was Latino, his mustache and half-grown beard flecked with white. “What the hell?” he exclaimed. “What do you want? ¡Sal de aquí!”

  “Who are you?” Camaro asked.

  “Who am I? Who are you? What do you want? No work today.”

  Ca
maro pointed to the phone books. “You distribute these?”

  “You need a phone book? Take all the phone books you want.”

  “I don’t want a phone book. I want to know about someone who took them around.”

  The man squinted at her. “You police?”

  “Do I look like police?”

  “No police, no warrant. No warrant and I don’t have to say nothing. Get out.”

  Camaro’s right hand made a fist by her side. “Hey, asshole, I want to know about phone books someone took north of the Crossings. He’s a black-haired guy, about this tall. Foreign. Maybe forty? Something like that. Do you remember him?”

  The man opened his hands. “Look, lady, I don’t know names. People come in, we pay them cash to take the stuff. You see these? Flyers for a strip club. Whatever people want spread around, we spread around. This man—who is he?”

  “I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking!”

  “You don’t know, I don’t know. So go away. I have too much to do.”

  He turned away. Camaro caught him by the arm. The man made a squawking sound when she dragged him around, and again when she grabbed the front of his shirt. “I am not done talking to you. You have to keep records. How do you pay taxes? Give me a name. Do you know the guy? A name.”

  The man gripped her wrist, but she did not let go. This close to him Camaro smelled sweat and the perfume of bodywash intermingling. “I’m telling you, I don’t know. I really don’t know.”

  Camaro lifted one foot and swept the karambit from her boot. The man made a yipping sound when she put it against his neck. The edge curved flush against his skin but didn’t cut. “I don’t believe you,” Camaro said.

  “He’s not from here, I don’t think!”

  “Then you do remember him.”

  “Sure, sure. He talked funny. With an accent, like he don’t know English. Maybe Russian or something. His name was Eduard. Yeah, Eduard!”

  “Eduard what?”

  She pressed the karambit harder against the man’s flesh. The tip dug into soft tissue below the ear, the skin drawn tight. A vein pulsed visibly.

  “I can look for the name. In the book. We keep a book.”

  “A record book?”

  “Yes. Records. But it will take a minute. It’s a big book. Everybody goes in.”

  “I don’t give a rat’s ass how big the book is. Find it.”

  Camaro let him go. The man sagged against the desk. Flyers tumbled to the floor around their feet. When Camaro pushed him, he moved, slipping on the papers. He rounded the desk and searched a lower drawer and found a ledger as thick as one of the phone books. He fished in the breast pocket of his shirt and produced a pair of reading glasses. He sorted through the pages, his lips moving silently as he read.

  “Hurry up,” Camaro said.

  “A moment. Yes, it’s here. He took thirty phone books. His name is Eduard…Serafian.”

  “Eduard Serafian,” Camaro repeated.

  “Yes, that is him. He’s a weirdo. I didn’t think he would be a good employee. And he never came back for his money. He took the phone books and disappeared with them. I remember him now. I don’t know why I didn’t think of him before.”

  “I don’t know, either,” Camaro replied. “Now…did he leave an address?”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  CAMARO FOUND THE home of Eduard Serafian in Wynwood, some fifteen minutes outside Liberty City. The transition between neighborhoods was typical Miami, from the rougher outlines of Liberty City to what was turning into an enclave for artists and their benefactors. Gentrification was the word here, and though much of the working-class history of Wynwood remained, it was being painted over, like an old fence gussied up for a new owner.

  The place was a duplex, one unit on top of the other, kept behind a chest-high fence. The short driveway was locked in, and at this hour it seemed that the residents on the ground floor were at work. The entire lot was paved over, with only a couple of wispy trees on either side to allow for green. Compared to Camaro’s neighborhood, where the trees had grown to encompass everything, it seemed desolate.

  She parked opposite the house and watched it until she was absolutely certain no one was home. What she could see of the apartment through the open blinds was too dark and still otherwise. She knew Serafian was never coming back.

  She dialed Ignacio’s number. He was slow to pick up. “Oh, hey, honey,” he answered.

  Camaro sat up straight in the saddle. “‘Honey’?”

  “How you doing? Everything okay?”

  “This is Camaro Espinoza.”

  “Right, right. No, I didn’t forget.”

  She moved the phone from her ear and looked at the display. Ignacio Montellano’s name was in block letters above the timer measuring out the call. She talked to him again. “Is this some kind of weird thing you do?”

  “Lunch? I don’t think so. I’ve got a lot of stuff going on here.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Oh, you know, I have to talk to some sources.”

  She listened to the background of the call. She heard nothing, not the bustle of the street nor the sounds of an office staffed with cops. It was perfectly silent. “You’re not alone.”

  “No. No, I’m not.”

  “Do they know who’s calling you?”

  “I haven’t said anything to them about it, but I’ll keep it in mind.”

  “Listen, I wanted you to know I got a name for the wacko who broke into Faith’s apartment: Eduard Serafian. The phone books he had were his cover to get into the apartment complex. Once people got used to him, he pretended to live there. He’s definitely foreign. He had an accent. I tried to find out more, but the man who gave him the phone books couldn’t tell me anything.”

  Ignacio’s voice brightened. “That’s awesome! Good news for her. I’ll have to send her something.”

  “I’m in front of the house right now. It’s in Wynwood. I’ll text you the address. I don’t know if you can get permission to go in, but there might be something inside. It’s bothering me. He wanted something. Faith didn’t tell me, but I think she knows.”

  “Don’t pick out anything yet,” Ignacio said. “I want to help.”

  “How soon can you get here? I can’t hang out on the street all day.”

  “Let me get back to you, okay? I’m in a meeting, so I might be a while.”

  “The address is coming. Text me when you’re on your way.”

  “Will do. Love you!”

  The call ended. A crawling sensation moved across her forearms. She rubbed them and it went away.

  She looked up at the house again. Nothing had changed. She crossed the street.

  Up close there was no sense of anything amiss. The place was small and painted bright yellow with white trim. A green awning made shade for the front door, but the windows upstairs were bare to the sun, the face of the house a northern exposure. She moved along the fence until she saw narrow stairs leading to the second floor. Serafian’s door was the color of baked clay.

  No one passed on the street, though she wasn’t far from a busy thoroughfare. The sound of traffic carried to her, as did the distant, angry blare of a horn. A few moments later, there was a brief skirl of a siren. Camaro looked up and down the street before she went over the fence.

  She surveyed the ground floor, peered into each of the windows in turn. Shadowed rooms and life on pause. The people who lived there weren’t wealthy, but they had some nice things. They were clinging to the bottom rung of the middle class in a city that wanted to price them out of town.

  When she was satisfied, she mounted the steps to the second floor one at a time, listening for a raised voice, a shout, or any indicator of someone who cared or even noticed that she was somewhere she shouldn’t be. It didn’t come.

  Serafian had a cross hanging from a small hook on the door. It looked as though it was made of stone, but it was lighter than that. It had been inscribed with l
ettering Camaro didn’t recognize. It wasn’t Arabic, and despite what the man at Gold Coast Direct Marketing said, it didn’t look Russian. Camaro didn’t know what kind of name Serafian was, but the rest of it had to be Armenian.

  She tried the door. It was locked. The only window on this side was by the door, but too far from the steps to see through.

  Camaro kicked the door in.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  IGNACIO ENDED THE call with Camaro and stuffed his phone into his pocket. He grinned at Pope and Mansfield. They looked back at him. “Trouble?” Pope asked.

  “No, no trouble. That was my girlfriend. One of the ladies she works with is having a baby. She wants to get something nice. They’ve been working together a long time.”

  Pope raised an eyebrow but said nothing else.

  Mansfield leaned against the captain’s desk. “I know this is something of a shock to you, Detective. And God knows I never expected to talk to you again after that disaster with the Cubans last summer. It’s just the way things worked out.”

  “Right. Is this about Cubans again? Or some kind of terrorist thing? That’s what you do, isn’t it?”

  “Most of the time. And no, it’s not about Cubans. It’s about…well, I’m not sure I’m cleared to tell you everything you want to know, but I can tell you some. For example, Special Agent Pope and I are part of a small task force investigating offshore money laundering. The kind of money laundering that puts cash in the pockets of American enemies.”

  “Miami used to be the money laundering capital of the United States,” Pope added. “In the ’80s there were banks popping up on every corner, and every single one of them was flush with drug cash. All the major construction projects in Miami had a little dirt on them, whether they knew it or not. That’s how the profits moved around.”

  Mansfield nodded in agreement. “Did you know you can bring a suitcase through the airport packed with twenties, and nobody would ever know? That’s half a million dollars walking around. Multiply that by dozens. Hundreds. You couldn’t turn around in this city without bumping into a stack of cash.”