Make Them Sorry

by Sam Hawken

  “She left the hospital last night, and her apartment is abandoned. It looks like she packed some things and left. Her car’s still parked outside, so she had to have taken a cab.”

  “Or a Lyft,” Ignacio said. “I’ll see what I can scare up on my end. But if she left last night, she has hours of head start on us. She could have gone to the airport easy.”

  “I’m going to look around some more,” Camaro said. “I’ll call you back if I find something.”

  “Hey, don’t touch anything, okay? If she’s gone, that means Mansfield and Pope are right behind her. They’ll want to know why you were there and what you were doing. If you don’t want to answer those kinds of questions, don’t give them a reason to ask.”

  “I can handle it.”

  “Sure, sure. Keep me posted.”

  They ended the call. Camaro cast her gaze around the room, looking for something she hadn’t seen before. She turned in a full circle. She stopped. “Goddamn it,” she said.

  She prowled the apartment. It was all the same. In the dining area she looked at the fallen pictures, punched out of their frames. Something itched at the back of her mind. She turned away, went to the front room, scanned the empty walls and the broken leavings of Eduard Serafian.

  “To hell with this,” Camaro said to no one. She left.

  Chapter Forty

  FAITH USED MAKEUP to hide the worst of the bruises, and a large pair of sunglasses completed the disguise. She took a room on the third floor of the Avalon Hotel, with a view of Ocean Drive and the beach beyond. Two large beds took up most of the space. The desk was a miniature, but it was possible to sit and look out the window at the same time. Faith didn’t mind the imposition.

  She had unpacked her suitcases and made use of the room’s dresser and closet. She did not want to live out of bags. She stowed the cases in the closet and put a heavy backpack on the foot of one of the beds. She extracted a laptop and an external DVD-R drive. She set up on the desk, attached the drive. She returned to the bag.

  Inside she had thick binders of printouts, all on green-and-white-striped paper of the sort fed through an ancient dot-matrix printer. The printer and the workstation where she produced the printouts were buried deep in the bowels of M&I Bank and Trust in an area no one seemed to frequent for any reason. She’d been shocked to discover that the equipment still worked, even the decrepit PC. Getting access to the files she wanted was easier from that terminal, and didn’t leave the footprints her personal machine did.

  The printouts went into one of the drawers, beside her underthings. She shut them away. Back at the computer, she logged in to the hotel’s free wireless internet and turned on a virtual private network to disguise her IP address. When that was done, she accessed a cloud storage site through an account not in her name, and scrolled through the files she had there. Everything in the printouts was replicated electronically, shuttled through the ancient bank workstation that time forgot, processed by her laptop before being squirreled away online.

  She had two more backups, each on a different cloud storage service. These she never accessed using her own machine, even with the VPN active. To reach those, she needed a third party’s internet access. Even a public library’s computer would do.

  She opened one of the files at random, copied a section of data from it. She pasted these numbers into a new spreadsheet. None of it was anything a layperson would recognize. Strings of numbers and attached dollar values. Faith knew what they meant, and she knew she wouldn’t have to explain anything to the person she was about to contact.

  The spreadsheet went into an encrypted archive. She attached it to an e-mail sent via an anonymous remailer. In the body of the e-mail she wrote, “I know what you’re doing. Here is proof. Answer me with a post on r/movies and you’ll get the password. You will not find me. Don’t look.”

  Faith considered the words. She excised a sentence before putting it back. She tinkered with the wording, but decided it was better as it was. She sent the e-mail. She took a long, shuddering breath. She closed the laptop.

  When she got out of the chair, her legs trembled. She walked to the window and looked out on the beach. It was easy to tell the tourists from the locals as they walked through the Art Deco District. The tourists had to take pictures of everything, and half the time they were sunburned and unhappy-looking. The locals moved past the old hotels without sparing them a glance. They’d seen them so many times the buildings were simply a part of the landscape. As Faith watched, she saw a man and a woman snap a selfie across the street from the Avalon. The picture would be terrible. They should wait until dark, because that’s when the district came alive.

  She went to the backpack, deflated and empty without its cargo. She unzipped one of the front pockets. Her hand closed around the grip of her Glock. She brought it out, and for a while she did nothing but stare at the ugly, functional blockiness of the weapon. Nothing had changed about it since the night she killed the man. She hadn’t even reloaded it. The police returned it to her in a plastic bag. The first thing she did was throw the bag away and put the slide of the gun against her nose to smell the spent gunpowder. The scent was powerful, acrid. It brought memories of the moment the man died.

  Faith looked at the bed. She stowed the gun under the pillow, thought better of it. She remembered how it had fallen between the bed and the wall when the man came for her. She opened the drawer of the nightstand to reveal a Gideon Bible with a green leatherette cover. She took the Bible out and put the pistol in. She dropped the Bible on the floor and kicked it under the bed. She looked at the gun one last time before she shut the drawer.

  The DO NOT DISTURB door hanger was on the inside of her door. She put it on the outside before placing a call to the front desk and saying she was not to be bothered by anyone, including housekeeping. She was trying to get some rest before a big day with clients, she said. The man on the other end of the line didn’t seem to care one way or another. She hung up satisfied.

  She lay down on the bed and tried to put her forearm over her eyes. It hurt too much. She cupped her hands over her face instead and saw shadows. After a while she wept, and when she was done, she rolled onto her side and slept.

  Chapter Forty-One

  IGNACIO’S PHONE RANG. He answered. “This is Reggie Silva from forensics,” said the man on the other end.

  “Silva,” Ignacio said. “Hey, you’re not related to Don Silva, are you? Worked homicide for thirty years?”

  “Yeah, that’s me. I’m his son.”

  “I don’t even want to know how old you are. I’ll only feel like I’m a hundred. Say hello to your old man for me.”

  “I will. Hey listen, Detective Fletcher asked me to call you if I got a hit on one of her DBs from last night.”

  Ignacio started. He gripped the phone tighter. “You did? Tell me the guy’s Armenian.”

  “How did you know that?”

  Ignacio pushed his mouse and stirred his computer to life. “What’s the guy’s name?”

  “Michael Bamanian.”

  “Bamanian? Where’d you get the hit?”

  “Through the Department of Defense. The guy’s an immigrant from Turkey. Came over in the ’90s and joined the army. Get this: he was Special Forces. I’ll bet he got up to all kinds of stuff over there.”

  “Over where?”

  “You know…Over there.”

  “Sure, sure. Is he local?”

  “He is. Got his Florida driver’s license about six years back when he left the service. You should be able to take it from there.”

  “I’m already on it. Hey, thanks, Reggie. You’re all right.”

  “Take care, Detective.”

  Ignacio called up Bamanian’s record. He saw a photograph of the man. Bamanian had square features and a nose that looked as though it had been pounded into his face. His hair was cut military short, and he glared at the camera as if he were about to lunge.

  A search for additional records called up the m
an’s service history. Some of it was freely accessible by law enforcement. Chunks were missing, with a notation to contact a representative of the United States Army for information. “Black bag,” Ignacio muttered to himself. The man had time in Iraq and Afghanistan, along with several other ports of call. He’d been pretty much everywhere the military put a boot down.

  He went further. Calling up employment data via the Social Security Administration, Ignacio saw that Bamanian had been self-employed for the entirety of his six years in Florida. His business was called MB Security and was a sole proprietorship. Digging into the state’s records gave Ignacio still more information, this time about employees of MB Security. Bamanian never had more than six people working under him at any given time. Ignacio chased down the employees he found, but none of them was Eduard Serafian.

  He rubbed his eyes. He felt pressure in his temples. When his phone rang again, he jumped.

  “Detective Montellano, Homicide Unit.”

  “Montellano, this is Special Agent Mansfield.”

  Ignacio looked skyward and gestured with his free hand. The supplication did nothing. “Agent Mansfield. What can I do for you?”

  “I thought you should know Faith Glazer checked herself out of her hospital room last night against medical advice.”

  “Did she? That’s terrible. I didn’t know.”

  “I’m in her apartment right now. She left the door wide open. There’s no sign of her.”

  “I don’t know where she might be,” Ignacio said. “No one called me. I haven’t heard anything.”

  “Detective, did you discuss with anyone the details we shared with you the other day?”

  Ignacio planted his feet firmly on the ground and straightened up before he spoke. “No, sir, I did not,” he said.

  Mansfield paused. Ignacio waited. “Okay,” Mansfield said. “I wanted to make sure. Because we made our move and it seems to have spooked Glazer into running. I should have expected it, but I honestly didn’t think she’d break. I suppose killing someone can make you do a lot of crazy things.”

  “That’s true,” Ignacio replied.

  “I only ask about outside parties being made privy to our investigation because one of the neighbors recalls seeing a woman stop by Glazer’s apartment this morning. I think you know what I’m going to say next.”

  “Camaro Espinoza.”

  “Normally I’d assume this is a harmless coincidence, and it’s a friend meeting a friend, but when I made a call to your department to get some information about Ms. Espinoza, I found out she murdered two people in her living room last night.”

  “‘Murder’ is a strong word,” Ignacio said. “It’s more like self-defense.”

  “Are you working the case?”

  “No, but I have an interest. A guy tries to kill Faith Glazer, two other guys try to kill Camaro Espinoza. Maybe it’s a coincidence.”

  “Coincidences have a tendency to turn out to be connections in my experience. I’d like to know if you know where Camaro Espinoza is right now.”

  “Honestly? I have no idea. I haven’t talked to her since last night.”

  “This is getting ugly, Detective. People are dying. If you know something, I need to know it.”

  “Believe me, the very first thing I’d do is tell the FBI everything. If this has to do with terrorism, then it’s way above my pay grade. But it’d be nice to know the whole story.”

  “You’ll be briefed when the time is right. First let’s concentrate on finding Faith Glazer and Camaro Espinoza. Get in contact with me or Special Agent Pope the minute you learn anything.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “The minute, Detective. We don’t have time for games.”

  “No, sir. No games. I’ll be in touch.”

  Ignacio hung up the phone. He picked it up again and dialed Camaro’s number. “I haven’t found her,” she said when she answered.

  “That’s not why I’m calling. Well, not completely. Listen, we need to get together somewhere. Somewhere we’re not gonna be noticed.”

  “You know Club Deuce in South Beach?”

  “That place is a dive.”

  “Meet me there in an hour.”

  “Keep a low profile,” Ignacio said. “They’re watching for you now.”

  Chapter Forty-Two

  THERE WAS NOTHING new about Club Deuce. It looked as though it had been built in the ’50s or ’60s and put in suspended animation for the next few decades. It had a double bar with ashtrays scattered on them, pool tables, and lots of neon. Mirrors on the wall made the place seem marginally larger than it was, and everything else was painted flat black. The only concession to modernity was an ATM tucked beside a door violated with a garish Reservoir Dogs poster.

  Camaro sat at the far end of one of the U-shaped bars, close to the wall. She had the bartender line up three shots of whiskey. A cold beer stood ready to quench the fire. When she saw Ignacio enter, she downed the first shot, and sipped from her beer. She waved him over.

  “Little early in the day to be drinking the hard stuff,” Ignacio said when he sat. The bartender approached. “I’ll take a club soda. With lime.”

  “I drink because it makes other people interesting,” Camaro told him.

  “I’m flattered.”

  “No, not you.”

  “Okay, then.”

  “What do you have?” Camaro asked.

  “I have a name for one of the goons who busted into your place last night: Michael Bamanian. He’s an Armenian who came here twenty years back and went into the army. Some of the stuff he was into, we’ll never know. But lately he’s been working private security.”

  “For who?”

  “That part comes next. But I’m willing to bet this guy Bamanian brought over some of his Armenian buddies to do jobs off the books. These security guys, they have up-front clients, but they take money on the side. Maybe they hire out as muscle. Anywhere there’s some cash in it. And these people like Serafian, who don’t have any history at all? They are definitely in business for hard money. No credit cards, no paychecks.”

  Camaro downed a second shot. She chased it with beer and thought, watching the bubbles rise in her glass. “Okay,” she said. “How does this fit with Faith?”

  “I’m not sure, but I have ideas. Faith, she gets a look at some financial records she’s not supposed to see. She does something she shouldn’t. Maybe she makes copies. Maybe she tries to blackmail somebody over it. That’s the hazy part. What she doesn’t know is, the people she stole from, they have tabs on her already. They decide to take her out.”

  “That’s why Serafian searched her place,” Camaro said. “To find what she had.”

  “Yeah, but even I know somebody like Faith isn’t gonna hide information on a secret disc or something. She might have a hard copy somewhere, but it’d be in a safe place. Everything else would be somewhere she could get at it, but no one else could. Because she’s one of those computer nerd types, right? I don’t even keep files on my computer at home. It’s all in the cloud thing.”

  “The cloud thing,” Camaro repeated.

  “You know what I mean. Or maybe you don’t. You know anything about computers?”

  “I know you have to replace them all the time.”

  Ignacio sighed. The bartender brought him a club soda and put it on a square of napkin. A slice of lime was run through with a toothpick festooned with little plastic streamers. Ignacio pulled the slice free and squeezed it out. He pushed the crushed lime down to the bottom without thinking about what he was doing. Then he remembered Camaro doing the same thing. “This is not the kind of work I’m cut out to do,” he said after he drank.

  “People are dead. It’s your job to find out why.”

  “Yeah, I know. But usually it’s real simple. Guy kills his girlfriend. Girlfriend kills her boyfriend. Junkies fight over who gets the last hit. Gangbangers shoot it out for a corner somewhere. This kind of stuff is like Eliot Ness or something.”

&n
bsp; “Who’s Eliot Ness?”

  Ignacio covered his eyes. “I am so old.”

  Camaro prodded. “I’m kidding.”

  “Don’t kid. I’m not in any shape for it.”

  She downed her last shot. Her stomach felt like a simmering flame. She drained her beer and motioned to the bartender for another. “So what do we do?”

  “You don’t have any idea where Faith might have gone?”

  “I didn’t know her that well. And you said it yourself: she could be anywhere. She didn’t have to stay in Miami. But…”

  “But what?”

  Camaro shrugged. “It’s something somebody told me once. People like to stick with what’s familiar. They go back to the same places again and again. The same people. Sometimes all you have to do is knock on a few doors and there they are.”

  “Sounds like somebody has some experience with this.”

  “Some. But I’m a charter-boat skipper, okay? I’m not a detective.”

  “That kind of thing might work with someone who doesn’t know you, but not with me.” Ignacio saluted her with his glass. “Cheers.”

  The bartender brought Camaro a fresh beer. She pushed bills across the bar. “Keep an eye out for me,” she said to Ignacio.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “These people tried to kill me,” Camaro said. “They’ll try again.”

  “I believe it.”

  “So what do we do about it?”

  “We find Faith and we figure out what the hell is going on. And I mean for real. Everything so far has been guesswork. And it has to be done pronto. Which is more for you than me, because nobody’s tried to kill me in the last twenty-four hours.”

  He raised his glass again. Camaro put her hand over it and pushed it to the bar. “You’re going to need something stronger than that,” she said.

  “I’m on duty.”

  “We both are,” Camaro said. She picked up her beer. “Cheers.”

  Chapter Forty-Three

  CARLOS LORCA WAS a Colombian. He had never thought of himself as anything else. He had no desire to be anything else. He was Colombian, and Colombia was where he would live and die. He had never been outside the borders of his country.