Make Them Sorry

by Sam Hawken

  “Detective Montellano, I’m Noah Austin,” said one of the men at the table.

  “U.S. Attorney’s office,” Ignacio said.

  “Right. Detective Montellano, by itself the discovery of a single account feeding into a single bank is not that big of a deal. The banking industry is riddled with corruption and money laundering schemes to a scale you wouldn’t believe. But we don’t think the treasure trail stops with this little bit of information. Special Agent Mansfield was brought in because the Black Eagles are a terrorist group who directly threaten our allies by destabilizing the region. Before he came on board, the number crunchers at the Bureau processed the information the informant—”

  “Faith Glazer.”

  “Yes, Faith Glazer. They processed the information Ms. Glazer provided, and there is much more. This is a back door into a larger world. Think of it like the exhaust vent on the Death Star.”

  “The Death Star,” Ignacio said. “And this guy Lorca is Darth Vader, I guess?”

  “In layman’s terms.”

  “I think I understand.”

  “But here’s the thing, Detective: unless we have Faith Glazer’s evidence in hand, or if we can directly link the bank to criminal malfeasance, we are not in a position to move on this case.”

  Mansfield spoke up. “What we’re trying to ask is this: What do you have for us, Detective? Because we’re running out of options.”

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  FAITH’S EYES WERE alight. “Oh, my God,” she said. “Oh, my God.”

  “This is where we are right now,” Camaro said. “These people at the bank, they think you told me something, or maybe they think I was working with you all along. It doesn’t even matter, because they made up their minds. I’m a target.”

  “Is that why you’re dressed up like an insurance salesman?”

  Camaro plucked at the lapel of her jacket and frowned. “I don’t think they care what I’m wearing. But I’m in this. We’re in this. You can’t make decisions without affecting me. We need to resolve the problem. Otherwise more people are going to come and I’m going to have to kill them, too.”

  It was Faith’s turn to pace the room. She stopped at the window. Camaro let her take her time. When Faith spoke again, she was calm. “I’m sorry this happened. It’s not what I wanted.”

  “But?” Camaro asked.

  Faith turned away from the window. “I have to keep going. I need the money. If you want a share, we can work it out. Tell me where to make the deposit and we’ll go from there. Fix up your boat. Buy a new boat! Do whatever you want.”

  “I want to go back to my life before you came along,” Camaro returned. “I tried to help you. I’m helping you now! Do not go down this road, because once you start running, you can never stop. Even if you find a place where you can hide, and everything seems okay, it falls apart. You’ll lose it all. That’s what comes next.”

  “I don’t know what to tell you.”

  “Talk to the detective. Or take it all to the FBI. You have to trust someone.”

  “I trust you.”

  “No. No. I am not your spirit guide, okay? I am not your bodyguard. I taught you what I taught you so you could take care of yourself, not so I could go on taking care of you forever.”

  “I am taking care of myself! This is me taking care of myself. I make this deal with the Colombians and I disappear. Anyway, I don’t believe you when you say there’s nowhere to run. There are lots of places to run. I can go anywhere. I can do anything.”

  “With two million dollars?” Camaro asked. “Do you really think that’s going to last forever?”

  “I’m good with money.”

  “I can’t let you go,” she said.

  Faith crossed her arms. “I don’t think you get a say in the matter.”

  “I am not going to get left holding the bag for you. When the feds can’t find you, they’ll come for me. And when they come for me, they’re going to find out things I don’t want them to find out. Things that will wreck my world. I risked my ass to get the things I have! I put my life on the line. I’m not going to lose everything because some bean counter can’t get her shit together.”

  Faith pointed toward the door. “Okay, you can go. Go right now. Don’t come back.”

  “You’re being stupid. Let’s fix this.”

  She took a step toward Faith. Faith retreated, her back against the window. Camaro saw a stab of fear in her face. Faith pointed toward the door again. Her finger shook. “I said go! Turn around and go. I don’t need you anymore. I don’t want you here!”

  Faith trembled all over now, and she hugged herself like someone taking refuge from the cold. Camaro felt something sick in her stomach. She started to speak, stopped. She started again, but the words didn’t come. She stepped back.

  “Are you going to go?”

  “Do not do this, Faith.”

  “Will you tell the police where I am? The FBI?”

  “No.”

  “Okay, then. We’re done.”

  “Do you have a sister?” Camaro asked Faith.

  A deep notch appeared between Faith’s eyebrows. “What?”

  “I asked you if you have a sister.”

  “Why would you even want to know that?”

  “Because you need somebody right now. Someone who only wants the best for you. Someone you can believe.”

  A new expression dawned on Faith’s face. “That’s who you saw,” Faith said. “In me.”

  Camaro didn’t answer.

  “I don’t care. I don’t care about any of it.” There were fresh tears. Faith wiped at her face and sniffed. “You’re not my sister. I’m not your family.”

  Camaro left without saying anything else. She lingered in the hall until she heard Faith lock the door and set the chain. She breathed a shuddery breath. Her throat hurt. She walked a few doors down before she stopped. She took out her phone. She dialed Ignacio.

  The call went to voice mail. Camaro tried again, but the same thing happened. She waited for the tone. “Detective, it’s Camaro. I need to talk to you. Call me anytime, day or night. I have a charter tomorrow. I’ll be on the water for a while, but I’ll be back. It’s important, so don’t wait. You know my number.”

  She ended the call and stared at the phone. She pressed the button to lock the screen. The click was final in the quiet hallway.

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  THE ENGINES OF the Piaggio P-180 Avanti on the worn dirt landing strip roared as the pilot tested the throttle ahead of takeoff. Lorca walked with Parilla toward the plane from a line of armored SUVs. They were flanked by five other men, all dressed in civilian clothes, as was Parilla. They carried no cases. Everything was already on the plane.

  Lorca signaled for Parilla to stop before they were in the wash of the propeller. The others went on, clambering up the short set of steps into the plane. They were dark men and the night was also dark, the strip unlit by anything except moon and stars. Lorca’s pilots flew in any weather, day or night, and they could take off and land on any strip, no matter how crude. Many of them had flown for him for decades.

  “Listen to me, Captain,” Lorca said to Parilla. “It is essential you understand what is about to happen.”

  “Yes, General.”

  “Once you land in Miami, I will make contact with the woman. I will agree to all her terms. If she is true to her word, we will have all the information we need within a day. I will have targets for you then. Some may be outside the city. Be prepared for a long stay in the United States.”

  “Of course, General.”

  “Know this: those already on the list are to be eliminated regardless. Get what you can from them, and send them on their way. Don’t allow them an opportunity to escape. Be certain to get every last bit of intelligence you can.”

  “I won’t fail, General.”

  Lorca patted Parilla on his cheek. “You are a good man, Daniel. Your father would be very proud. And I am proud of you, too. Everythin
g you’ve done for me has led to this moment. It should have happened a long time ago, but I fooled myself into believing it would run perfectly forever. This was my mistake to make. I won’t make it again.”

  “You mustn’t blame yourself.”

  “Go now. Buena suerte.”

  They parted. Parilla ran the rest of the way to the plane. The copilot drew up the steps and sealed the hatch. A few moments later the plane throttled up. It aligned with the vector of the runway. In seconds it was airborne, banking gently over the trees and the darkly verdant hills, running lights extinguished, white shape rendered a quicksilver flash in the shadows. The engine noise faded until there was only the jungle night.

  Lorca walked to the parked SUVs. He climbed into the middle vehicle. Its interior lights were on. A man in the passenger seat ahead of him sat hunched over a laptop, tapping furiously on the keyboard.

  “Is it done?” Lorca asked.

  The man glanced up once. “We’re ready, General.”

  “Tell the woman. We want her accounts by the time the banks open in the morning.”

  “Yes, General.”

  The man typed. Lorca leaned forward and laid a hand on the back of the man’s forearm. The typing stopped. “You can follow the money wherever it goes, can’t you? This is what you told me.”

  “There are ways, General. She will move the money as soon as it hits the accounts she gives us. She’ll do her best to disguise the transfers, but I’m familiar with several people who can provide us with access.”

  “Hackers,” Lorca said, and the word felt sticky in his mouth.

  “Yes, General. They work for the highest bidder, but they are discreet. As long as we’re careful not to expose ourselves too much, it won’t come back to us. These transfer accounts are entirely new. Perfectly clean. I made certain there is nothing connected to the bank in Miami, nor any shell corporation previously used to move funds. Once this operation is complete, I will burn everything associated with the payoff and shift all our operations to a third set of accounts already set up.”

  Lorca took his hand from the man’s arm. He sat back against the cushioned leather of the seat. “If I didn’t hate it all so much, it would be fascinating,” he said. “The money goes here, the money goes there. And all of it begins with a seed in the soil.”

  The man said nothing. He didn’t resume typing. He looked at Lorca, a question on his face.

  “What is it?” Lorca asked. “You look like a monkey taking a shit. What is the problem?”

  “There will be questions. This shift will make our partners nervous. They like things a certain way. To change everything so rapidly…it’s not something they’re used to. Already I’m hearing complaints.”

  Lorca scoffed. “They can bring those complaints to me in the jungle where the real blood is shed. This country’s government is a pathetic shell, and the people who scurry to do the Americans’ bidding make me sick. To them, all this is a minor inconvenience. They will have to take their payments from some other bank somewhere on the other side of the world. Who cares? To us, this is a matter of life or death. They will never understand. They have never understood.”

  “Yes, General.”

  “Go on, make it happen. Tell the woman we are ready to make a deal. No more internet phone calls. No more games. If she wants the money, she needs to take it. Tell her. She will listen.”

  His driver closed the open door of the SUV and got behind the wheel. The idling engine stepped up its hum and they rolled. The small convoy drove without lights. They knew where they were going.

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  IT WAS DARK on the boat. Through the portholes there was only blackness. Camaro felt her phone vibrate. “Detective?” she answered.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t call sooner. Were you asleep?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “I guess not. I’ve been dealing with a lot of heavy things on my end. This is a lot more serious than the feds let on.”

  “How so?”

  He told her and she listened. She thought of Faith in her hotel room. She did not speak of it to Ignacio.

  When he was done there was dead quiet on the phone. Camaro heard his breathing. “What do you want to do?” she asked him.

  “I don’t know. I have to keep moving forward. They’re giving me a gift, letting me take point on the next move. They didn’t need to, but they’re opening the door for me. I gotta step through.”

  “And I stay behind,” Camaro said.

  Ignacio was slow to speak. She heard something new in his voice, something like an apologia, which couldn’t be put into so many words. “I should never have let you get this deep.”

  “You didn’t let me do anything,” Camaro replied.

  “So I guess I should ask you: What do you want to do?”

  “I’ve done everything I can. Faith doesn’t want my help. You don’t need me stepping in with the feds all around you. It’s time for me to go back to being a charter skipper.”

  “Hey,” Ignacio said, “you know I think you’re more than that. You’ve got heart, and you don’t let anyone beat you down. That counts for a lot with me.”

  Camaro got out of bed. She walked barefoot into the galley and stood looking at the floating lights of the marina. Coming in at night, it was like seeing a dense collection of stars, an unrecognizable constellation, or maybe a new galaxy being born. Up close they were far more prosaic. The poetry was gone from them.

  “Hello?”

  “I always wondered something,” Camaro said. “Why is Superman called Superman and Supergirl not called Superwoman? You ever think about that?”

  “No, I never did.”

  “Most men don’t. I’ll see you when I see you.”

  “Camaro—” Ignacio started, but she pressed the End icon and he was silenced. She waited to see if he’d call again, but he didn’t.

  She went back to the bow and put on the same day’s clothes in the dark. She went up to the flybridge and stoked the boat’s engines. With twin diesels running, she cast off. Within a minute she was back behind the wheel, maneuvering the Annabel out of its slip. She navigated the confines of the marina to open water, opened the throttles, and let Miami fall away behind her.

  The boat crossed into night, where there was nothing on any horizon save the flat black shadow of the Atlantic. Camaro cut the engines. She let the Annabel drift, listening to the lick of water against the hull, feeling the slow roll of the deck. It was calm tonight, with barely a wind. She climbed down from the flybridge and sat in the fighting chair and fell into herself.

  The moon slid across the sky, silent and silver. Camaro was gone. She stared into nothing and thought nothing and was nothing except a speck in the water that would disappear if the attention of any watcher faltered for more than a few seconds. Once lost, this tiny white spot would be swallowed up by the deep blue, and even in the brightest day Camaro would be absent from the mind of the world.

  She stirred when the eastern sky blushed with the first hint of false dawn. The breeze picked up, carrying a clean, raw scent. She was alone out here, utterly alone, as though she were the last woman on the face of the waters.

  Everywhere she had ever gone, no matter how crowded, she had found this place. In the desert she had found it. In the forest she had found it. Here she had found it, and it was expansive and real and she could breathe. Here the quiet was palpable, a thing alive embracing her gently and smoothing the jagged edges of her thoughts.

  “Shit,” she said out loud. Serenity vanished.

  She checked the luminous hands of her watch. She had a charter coming in before noon, another in the evening. There would be no more time for quiet or isolation. Instead there would be talk and the whirring sound of cast lines as reels spooled out. The clink of beer bottles taken from a cooler. The cry when a hook found its way into the mouth of a battling fish.

  Camaro climbed to the flybridge. She checked her coordinates relative to the shore. She throttled up, br
ought the custom Carolina around in a long, swooping arc, turning blue water into bright white foam. She pointed the bow toward the heart of a city only starting to wake.

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  IGNACIO LOOKED AT the decorations in Brandon Roche’s outer office. He didn’t know the exact price of things, but he recognized what was cheap and what wasn’t. The paintings on Roche’s walls, the vase in the corner on a teak table, the table itself with its scrollwork—they were not the slightest bit cheap.

  He sat in a leather chair with brass buttons. It was comfortable and big even for a man his size. He found himself relaxing into it but forced himself to sit taller. He watched the woman behind her desk, typing on a flat keyboard that made no noise when her fingers hit the keys. Once he breathed heavily, and she glanced up. “Only a few more minutes,” she said.

  “Thanks.” He smiled at her. He turned his hat in his hands.

  The phone on the receptionist’s desk made a chirping noise. She picked up the receiver and listened. “Yes, sir,” she said. She looked at Ignacio. “Detective, Mr. Roche will see you now. Are you sure you don’t want to leave your hat?”

  “I feel good having it with me,” Ignacio said.

  She left her desk and opened the doors to the inner office. Ignacio stepped through into the brilliant light of a Miami midmorning cascading through the windows. He saw Roche at his desk, a stern-faced man with thick black hair swept away from his temples. His suit was perfect. “Mr. Roche?” Ignacio said.

  Roche came to Ignacio and offered his hand with a smile. “Detective Montellano. Brandon Roche. It’s good to meet you. Please, have a seat. Can I get you something?”

  “No thanks, I’m all good.”

  Roche returned to his desk. Ignacio sat opposite. “What can I do for the police department today? Your call took me by surprise, especially when you said one of our contractors was attacked. And the man who attacked her was killed?”