by James Raven
Vance exhaled a long burst of air.
‘Shouldn’t we refer it up? Maybe the director himself should make the decision.’
Boyd shook his head. ‘I’ve been given full authority to do whatever it takes to limit the damage. This guy Larson is a liability. He has to be taken care of.’
‘I’ll do it myself then,’ Vance said. ‘That way I know it’ll get done properly.’
‘You sure about that?’
Vance nodded. ‘We can’t afford to get any more of our people involved in this. It’s getting completely out of hand.’
‘Good point,’ Boyd said. ‘Just make sure you do a clean job. I’m guessing that like me you’re a bit rusty when it comes to killing.’
32
WHILE KATE FED and changed the baby, I made some more coffee. We thought about going across the street to a diner for breakfast, but decided it wasn’t worth the risk. Instead we ate the sandwiches from the gas station.
I watched more of the news, but heard nothing I didn’t already know. When they showed an old photo of Emily the grief hit me again. Like a knife twisting in my gut.
Kate saw my reaction. ‘You’re not to blame you know. You went there because you thought she was in danger. She was.’
It didn’t help. The guilt had already embedded itself in my soul and it was growing by the minute. Along with my determination to avenge her death.
‘When was the last time you saw her?’ Kate asked.
I swallowed hard. ‘The day of the execution. She came to see me. We said our goodbyes and that’s when I decided to tell my lawyer not to lodge another appeal. I’d had enough and so had she. All the time I was alive she couldn’t get on with her life.’
‘It must have been sad.’
I felt a lump rise in my throat. ‘It was.’
‘Did she believe you were innocent?’
I nodded. ‘Always, but she was one of only three people who did.’
‘And the others?’
‘My wife Marissa and the lawyer I took on a few years ago. A guy named Mark Zimmerman.’
She left it a beat, said, ‘What was it like on death row?’
The memory of that place dragged me back there. I had a vision of the tiny cell. I felt the cold and the loneliness and it sent a shiver through my body.
‘It was like living in a bubble full of slime,’ I said. ‘When I walked out of the cell for the last time it was a relief.’
‘And what was it like walking into the death chamber?’
I felt tears push against my eyes. ‘It was weird, but I tried to empty my mind and tell myself that at least all the suffering was coming to an end.’
‘And when you woke up in that room – what the hell did that feel like?’
I looked at her. She was sitting on the bed putting a clean diaper on Anna.
‘I thought I was dreaming at first,’ I said. ‘But I quickly came to believe I’d been given a second chance. Vance said I would have to do something for the Bureau. Then afterwards they’d give me a new identity and move me to another country. I thought it was too good to be true. It was.’
‘But at least you’re alive,’ Kate said.
‘Yeah, but three other people are dead.’
As we checked out of the hotel I asked the guy on reception to point us in the direction of the nearest internet café.
‘No need for that,’ he said. ‘There’s a computer room down the hall. Guests can go online free of charge.’
It was a tiny windowless room with one computer on a desk. Alongside it stood a printer and fax machine. There were two plastic chairs so I positioned them in front of the desk.
Kate put Anna on the floor and gave her some toys to play with.
‘So where do we start?’ Kate said.
‘Aaron Vance,’ I told her. ‘And you’ll have to do it. I’m a bit stale when it comes to computers.’
We sat close together. Close enough for our arms to touch. The fact that Kate did not move away made me tense, but in a good way. I took it to mean that she wasn’t afraid of me, in spite of what she now knew. That was a huge relief.
‘Here we go,’ she said, as the Google search page opened up on the screen.
She started tapping at the keys and the name Aaron Vance appeared in the search box.
‘Is that your man?’ Kate said.
Google had come up with lots of hits for Aaron Vance, but a number of people shared the same name. So we narrowed it down by adding the letters FBI. And that’s when it got interesting. The first page we opened up happened to be the official site for the Bureau’s San Antonio field office. And there was his picture. He was younger by about five years. But the jaw was just as square and the dark hair just as neat.
Kate clicked on his name and up came his profile. Before being appointed Special Agent in Charge in San Antonio he’d spent time in New York, Miami and Los Angeles. During much of his career he’d been attached to task forces set up to combat organized crime and street gangs. It was an impressive track record.
Vance’s name also came up in quite a few stories involving high profile court cases and gang busting initiatives. Most of the stories, I noticed, mentioned the Texas Syndicate, one of the most notorious criminal gangs in America. At least seven of its members were on death row at the Polunsky Unit awaiting execution for murder. Hundreds more were in other prisons across Texas and there were thousands of them running illicit operations on the outside.
The stories went back years. In some of them Vance gave a quote to a newspaper or TV station after a successful bust or prosecution. In others he was named as the officer in charge of the latest push against the Texas Syndicate. Kate tapped into the stories and I scanned them.
August 3 2010: Five members of the Texas Syndicate were charged with drug offences today following an FBI operation that lasted eleven months. The agent in charge, Aaron Vance, said that the Syndicate had become ‘one of the most violent and prolific drug trafficking organizations the state has ever seen.’
December 10 2011: Acting on a new federal indictment an FBI task force led by special agent Aaron Vance arrested three more gang suspects as part of an effort to disrupt the activities of the Texas Syndicate in San Antonio. But despite these latest arrests there’s growing concern that the authorities are losing the fight against this powerful organization.
October 7 2012: Texas Syndicate boss Julio Martinez walked free from a court today after racketeering charges against him were dropped. It followed the sudden disappearance of two key federal witnesses. Martinez has been described by the FBI as one of the Syndicate’s leading figures, with links to drug trafficking, prostitution, extortion and murder. FBI agent Aaron Vance said, ‘This is a major disappointment for the Bureau. But I can assure the public that we will keep up the fight against the street gangs that are terrorizing our cities.’
I touched the computer screen with my finger. ‘See if you can pull up other versions of that particular story. I want to see if there are any photos of Julio Martinez.’
Kate tapped the keys and several stories were listed. The second was a page from the San Antonio Express. And there was a photo of Martinez. He was coming out of a building, wearing a bright orange shirt, jeans and tinted glasses.
‘That’s him,’ I said. ‘That’s the guy I was supposed to meet in the restaurant. He waved at me through the window just before I was shot at.’
Then something else caught my eye. The door behind him was open. On the wall to the right of it there was a small square plaque. I could just about see the words on it but I asked Kate to zoom in so that I could be sure. She did it by cutting and pasting the photo into the computer’s documents file and them magnifying it.
And I was right. The sign read: Garcia and Cruz – Attorneys at Law. I took out the business card I had found in the jacket. Showed it to Kate.
‘It’s the same firm.’
‘Could be a coincidence,’ Kate said.
I shook my head. ‘No way. This sho
ws there’s a link between Julio Martinez and Raymond Garcia. A lawyer and a gangster.’
‘So what have those two got to do with you?’
‘I haven’t a fucking clue,’ I said. ‘But I’m gonna find out.’
The next step was to look up the Garcia and Cruz law firm in San Antonio. But the search proved less than fruitful. The company did not appear to have its own website, although its address was given in various business directories, along with the names of the partners – Raymond Garcia and Michael Cruz.
This surprised me as all the other law firms in the city were doing what they could to raise their online profile with photos of the lawyers and all kinds of information.
We couldn’t find any photos of Garcia and Cruz and we didn’t come across anything linking them to the Texas Syndicate or the FBI. There was a spiral notepad and pen on the desk so I jotted down the firm’s address. Then I copied out the phone number and address of the FBI field office in San Antonio.
‘Is this stuff helpful?’ Kate asked.
I looked at her. ‘Only in the sense that it gives me somewhere to look for answers. But for the life of me I can’t figure out why I was drawn into something involving these guys.’
‘Had you heard of either of them before?’
‘No, but then I’ve been out of circulation. I rarely got to read a newspaper and I had no TV in my cell.’
‘You want me to see what else there is on Martinez?’
‘Sure.’
‘In that case you’ll have to pick Anna up.’
I looked down. I hadn’t realized the baby was trying to climb up a leg of the chair.
‘She’s got that look on her face that comes when she’s about to scream like a banshee,’ Kate said.
I picked Anna up and gave her a smile. She stared into my eyes as if fascinated by them, and then started gurgling with a sloppy grin. It felt good to be holding this tiny living person on my lap. I rubbed her back and she snuggled against me. I could even feel her heartbeat.
‘It says here that Julio Martinez has been running the San Antonio branch of the Texas Syndicate for about four years,’ Kate said. ‘He took over after his release from a short prison term for drug trafficking.’
She was reading more news stories thrown up by Google. Martinez was obviously a well-known gangster and the Feds had been trying desperately to put him away, but without success.
‘According to this story, Martinez has been linked to no fewer than seventeen murders,’ Kate said. ‘Including the killings two months ago of four men whose bodies were dumped in an alleyway near the Alamo.’
I’d heard about that. It’d been a hot topic on death row. One of the guards had told me that the dead men were all police informants. The web was teeming with information about the Texas Syndicate, as well as all the other street gangs that had become the new face of organized crime in the US. The Syndicate was more prominent than most. It was formed in one of the state’s prisons during the seventies when a group of Mexicans began extorting and raping weaker inmates. The Syndicate grew at an alarming rate and during the eighties gained full control of the prison system’s drug trade across Texas.
The gang was now a highly organized outfit with a proper chain of command from foot soldier to chairman. There was even a board of directors who monitored the gang’s funds, approved of new members and authorized killings. Joining the gang was a life commitment and all members had to bring in money.
The more I read the more puzzled I became. Questions were piling up inside my head. Did Julio Martinez have anything to do with my faked execution? Why was he waiting for me in the restaurant and what would he have told me if I’d gone inside? Did he have a relationship with Aaron Vance, the FBI agent who was trying to put him behind bars?
It was hard to believe that Martinez would have had anything to do with the attempt on my life. After all, he’d waved at me through the window, expecting me to join him at his table. He was probably just as shocked as I was when the gunman struck. I would have given a king’s ransom to talk to him, but there was no way that was going to happen. I had no idea where he hung out and he’d almost certainly be heavily protected.
It meant I’d have to concentrate my efforts on Vance and the two lawyers, Garcia and Cruz. I was beginning to think that maybe they were part of some clandestine conspiracy involving gangsters, lawyers and government agents.
The rational side of my brain was telling me to walk away and get as far from Texas as possible – that no good would come of trying to seek answers to all my questions.
But the other part of my brain, the emotional part, was telling me that I had to find out why Emily had been killed and who was ultimately responsible. I owed her that much.
‘I’ve seen enough,’ I said to Kate. ‘It’s time we headed for San Antonio.’
33
THANKS TO a couple of sleeping pills and almost half a bottle of whisky, Gideon Crane had managed to get a good night’s sleep. But when he woke up at nine his head ached and his mouth was bone dry.
He rolled over and saw that the other side of the bed was empty. It surprised him because he usually heard Pauline when she got up first, which wasn’t often.
He still felt tired but his mind had shifted into gear and he knew he would not be able to get back to sleep. He sat up, mashed the heels of his hands into his eye sockets, and sat still for a few seconds to assess whether or not he had a hangover. He did, but only a mild one.
Still, as he got out of bed his neck was stiff and his limbs sluggish. It felt like he had sludge running through his veins. He shuffled into the bathroom, took a leak, and decided to shower before going downstairs. He turned on the water and while it was heating up he went back into the bedroom to open the curtains. It was overcast outside and raining. All the colours in the garden were muted.
He was reminded of his conversation outside last night with Travis and how calmly the bastard had revealed that he was going to blackmail him. Crane knew he had no choice but to pay the $100,000. Travis was an evil low-life who would not think twice about carrying out his threat to expose the affair with Beth. In fact the money was already in Travis’s account. Crane had transferred it from one of his own accounts before going to bed.
It was a price he had to pay to keep his political ambitions alive. But it grated like rough sandpaper on his nerve endings.
The shower battered the tiredness out of him. He stood under the power jets for a full five minutes, then dried himself and got dressed in a pair of shorts and loose-fitting shirt.
Pauline was in the kitchen drinking coffee at the breakfast bar when he got downstairs. She was dressed in her designer tracksuit, her hair pulled back from her face.
‘I’m going to the gym,’ she said. ‘I’ll be a couple of hours.’
There was something in her voice that told him she wasn’t in the best of moods.
‘Since when did you start going to the gym first thing in the morning?’ he asked.
She smiled at him, but the smile didn’t quite reach her eyes.
‘Since I decided to go on a serious diet,’ she said. ‘I told you about it but you probably didn’t take it in.’
He detected the thinly veiled sarcasm in her words but chose not to remark on it. She poured him a cup of coffee and handed it to him. At the same time she offered her cheek and he gave her a gentle kiss. Then she collected her bag and left the house. He was used to her moods and had decided long ago that it was best to ignore them.
He carried his coffee into his study, glad that he had some time to himself this morning. He needed to focus his mind on how to resolve the issue of Pauline’s brother. There were very few options open to him and those that were – like confessing all or having Travis killed – were simply unpalatable. But he had a feeling that if he didn’t do something the whole blackmail thing would blow up in his face.
He sat down behind his desk and heaved a sigh. Just then a message came through on his cell. He dug it from his pocket an
d saw that it was from Beth.
Call me asap
He felt a frisson of guilt because he hadn’t thought about Beth all morning. And he hadn’t yet told her that it was Travis who took her diary.
He rang her and she answered on the third ring.
‘Hi there, sweetheart. I was actually about to call you when your message came through.’
‘Have you seen the news?’ she asked with a sense of urgency that unsettled him.
‘No. Why?’
‘Check it out. There was a shooting last night near Austin. Lee Jordan’s sister was killed.’
It came as a shock to Crane and he was lost for words. He had seen Emily Jordan many times when she attended her brother’s trial. She’d been distraught the whole time and he had actually felt sorry for her. He’d been surprised that she hadn’t attended the execution.
‘What happened?’ he asked.
‘It’s all a bit of a mystery apparently. Two FBI agents were also killed. All three were shot.’
‘My God!’
‘The FBI have taken over the case. A special agent named Vance was interviewed at the scene in the early hours.’
Crane experienced a jolt of recognition.
‘Would that be special agent Aaron Vance?’
‘I think that was the name on the screen caption,’ Beth said.
‘But he’s based in San Antonio.’
‘You know him then?’
‘Not at all, but for some reason he showed an interest in Lee Jordan on the morning of the execution.’
‘What do you mean?’
Crane realised he’d said too much. What the governor had told him about Vance applying pressure to ensure the execution did not get stayed was in confidence. And he wasn’t about to betray his old friend.
‘Oh, forget it,’ he said. ‘Look, I’d better get across this before some reporter rings me for a quote.’
‘Will you call me later?’
‘Sure will, and listen, there’s something you should know. It’s about your diary.’