by Tom Lowe
“You let Santana turn the clock back before the Civil War to enslave people? How can you play a part in slavery? Isn’t there someplace in your gut where you say stop the oppression, the same thing that enslaved your ancestors? Is Santana’s hold over you as strong as the chains that held your forefathers?”
“You!” shouted Davis. “Shut your fuckin’ mouth!”
I had to stall them. “Why do you take advantage of these people? The physical and sexual abuse is bad enough…but murder…why do Santana’s bidding?”
Gomez said, “Forget you ever heard the name Santana!”
“Why are you working for him? You’re businessmen. He’s a psychopath. What’s his hold, money? How many have you killed?”
“We don’t do the killin.’ We started doin’ the packaging and the disposal. Cops wouldn’t found the last girl if they hadn’t been stoppin’ traffic at the crossroads, lookin’ for DUI drivers. Had to dump the body in a place where animals and shit can get at it. Hate doin’ that. Disrespectful to the dead.”
“If you aren’t killing these people, who is? Santana? Does he call you to tell you where to find the bodies for organ removal after he’s had his fun? And you go from harvesting crops to humans?”
“Shut the fuck up!” Gomez yelled, s string of saliva hung from his lower lip. He snorted and said, “There are seven billion people on the planet. Lot’s of sick people waitin’ for hearts, kidneys, livers, whatever. Many of these people are scientists, doctors, people who make a difference. That’s why in any society we have the sacrificial lambs. You’re about to be a lamb we’ll sacrifice to the greater cause.”
“Santana’s got you, didn’t he?”
“Kiss my brown ass, O’Brien!” Gomez said. “You know nothin’ about Santana. The man’s much smarter than you and the rest of your cop friends. He’s a genius!”
“He’s smart enough to get you and Silas to do all the grunt-work while he calls the shots from the sidelines. What’s his hold on you, Gomez? Why partner with Santana?”
“Because he’s one of us! He’s powerful! El Diablo! The man knows and sees things. He knows who we’re seein,’ what we’re doin,’ what women are in our trucks. How many, and even what they look like.” Gomez pulled a pint of Jack Daniels from his pocket and took a long pull, passing the bottle to Davis.
I said, “That’s because he controls it. What if he has people to handpick the women from third world countries? What if he knows what’s happening in your migrant camp because he has spies there? Can you trust Silas?”
Davis sipped the whisky, pumped up his chest, and glared at me.
“Or can you trust Ortega, or any of the farm workers who might be on Santana’s payroll. If the Brennens are on his payroll, if he’s got a detective in his pocket, don’t you think he can buy Silas?”
“Shut up, fool!” barked Davis
“The Brennens’on his payroll?” Gomez asked, his eyes wide.
“Shut the hell up, cop!” Davis yelled. He turned to Gomez. “Don’t believe a fuckin’ word this dude’s says. I ain’t never even seen Santana. For all I know, there ain’t no Santana. Could be something you and Hector invented to cut me out later.”
“I might cut you out now!” Gomez said. “How about last month when you were gone to Miami for three days? Maybe you were meeting with Santana up in his penthouse. Santana is a Santeria master! He can control men’s souls.”
“Juan, listen to yourself!” Davis said. You sound like some damn voodoo nut!”
Gomez cut his eyes over to Davis and said, “Get that rope from the other room.”
Davis went into the adjoining office.
“Shut up about Santana,” Gomez’s voice was flat, something drained from his eyes, replaced by half closed slits of hate. “You had to keep stickin’ your nose where it don’t belong, amigo. Now you’re a dead man. Not all gonna be lost ‘cause the good thing is this…you’ll be keepin’ somebody else alive. Part of the great cop lives on!”
Davis brought the rope. Gomez said, “Tie his hands behind the chair.”
Davis yanked my hands behind the chair and began tying the rope tightly around them. I could feel the circulation cutting off.
To Davis, Gomez said, “I’m callin’ Santana. He can get Doc out here quick. Soon as Doc arrives, we’ll pop him. Until then we’ll make him pray he’s dead.”
Gomez drove his fist square into my jaw. The blow almost turned over the chair. The force caused a white explosion in my brain. I was back in a dank interrogation room in Afghanistan, the slap of a nine milliliter across my jaw, the surge of electricity through my body. The whirl of chopper blades fading.
I spat blood and heard Davis laugh. It sounded like a laugh tract playing a second behind the first tract. Through blurred vision, I could see Gomez stepping to the open door to use his cell phone. “We got O’Brien…at the gator shack. Send Doc with all his tools…sure, Santana…no problem…got it, yeah…okay man.”
He closed the cell phone and stood in front of me. I looked up at him, blood dripping from my crushed lip and gums.
Gomez rubbed his knuckles and hooked his thumbs in his wide belt. He rocked on the ball of his ostrich skin cowboy boots. “We got a little time to kill before you go under the knife. What can we do to pass the time?”
Davis said, “We can cut his balls off. Toss ‘em in the river for the baby gators to chew on. Don’t think nobody wants recycled cop’s balls.”
My right eye was beginning to swell, closing my vision. Through my left eye, I watched him take the pistol out of his pocket. I said, “Why are you two going down for Santana? Do you think I came here alone? Santana is calling the shots from his hide-away in Miami while you two are about to be arrested. If you cooperate—”
“Shut up!” Gomez bellowed. He stepped closer and held out the pistol. “I had a feelin’, sooner or later, I’d take you out. You’re one tough dude, O’Brien, but every man’s luck runs out if he keeps on rollin’ the dice.”
Davis stood to my left, his arms folded, a smirk working on his face. “Before you waste him. I need to pee real bad. Always wanted to piss on a cop.”
“You piss on him and Doc would be pissed. He don’t have that kind of time.”
Both men laughed. Davis said, “I think Doc left one of his scalpels in the drawer. We can use it to scalp him. Maybe that’s where they got the name scalpel. Got it from cuttin’ people’s scalps off.” He laughed and said, “Mexicans learned the art from the Southwest Indians. Shit, man, we probably taught them how to do it, you know?”
Gomez cell rang. He answered it, stepping to the door for a better signal. “Yeah. Where you at?” He paused for a beat. “If you’re a few minutes away, we can go on and take care of him. We know you don’t like that part, Doc.”
He disconnected and turned back toward me. “Crazy dude, Doc. He can filet a man faster than I can cut on a steak, but he don’t like the part when the lights go out.”
Davis gripped my hair in one hand and jerked my head back. His breath was sour, smelling like vomit and marijuana. His T-shirt stank of chicken grease and reefer. He used the index finger of his other hand, stuck it in the blood pouring from my mouth and drew an imaginary line across the top of my forehead. “We could start the cut here, go down to the bone, and end over here. It’s like pullin’ the skin off a catfish. Hand me the scalpel, Juan.”
Davis stood in front of me, legs slightly spread, a sneer on his face. I waited for just the right second. I brought my left foot up hard between his legs, burying my shoe deep in his groin. His face seemed to detonate in pain.
He hit me in the ribs. The air blew out of my lungs.
Gomez said, “Stand back, Silo! ‘Less you want O’Brien’s blood spray on you. Headshot sprays like a melon dropped from a movin’ truck.”
He pointed the pistol directly between my eyes, a grin working at the corner of his mouth. “Now’s the time to kiss my brown ass, O’Brien.”
I saw a shadow move. Between Gomez and Dav
is. In the threshold of the door. I looked at Gomez, his eyes wide with delight. I said, “If you drop the gun, you and Davis walk out of here. If you don’t, they’ll carry you out in a body bag.”
He laughed and brought his left hand up to his right, holding the pistol with both hands, the barrel less than three feet from my face.
“Beg, asshole!” Gomez yelled.
I said nothing.
“Waste him!” Davis said, stepping back.
“I want to hear O’Brien beg! Beg cop!” Gomez shouted. “Lemme hear what you’re gonna tell the Virgin Mary! O’Brien, you ain’t gonna go to heaven. You’re gonna see the devil. What you gonna say to him, huh?”
I looked deep into Gomez’s eyes and said, “Fuck you.”
He brought his left hand back to the pistol. He stopped grinning. His face blank. “You really aren’t afraid to die! You got balls, O’Brien. Now they’re dead balls!”
I could see the index finger on his right hand slowly start to move against the trigger. He grinned just as a hole the size of an orange exploded in his throat, blood spraying across my chest and face. Gomez fell like a giant at my feet.
“Put your hands up!” It was Dan’s voice. He had his arms extended and a pistol pointed at Silas Davis’ head. Dan and two uniforms stepped into the room. They threw Davis up against the wall and cuffed him.
I said, “There’s another one coming.”
“He’s the first we got.” Dan said. “Cuffed. Scared. Sitting on the grass crying like a baby. Says he didn’t kill anyone, only did the organ removal after death. ”
“What a boy scout,” I mumbled, my head entering a vertigo spin.
Dan knelt down. He used both hands to hold and examine my face. He turned to one of his men. “Call for an ambulance. Tell them to step on it. Now!”
SIXTY-TWO
It took about five days before Max could look at me without quickly turning her head. I don’t think my swollen face scared her. She seemed to be more uncomfortable than afraid. She still slept at the foot of my bed. The dark is often the great equalizer.
On my sixth day of convalescence, I left the river house with Max and took her to the beach. She played in the small breakers while I floated on my back, tilted my face in the sea, letting the sun and saltwater gods heal my cuts and bruises.
From the beach I decided to head over to Ponce Marina to pay the boat slip rent. My cell rang. It was Dan Grant.
“Sean, the guy you said Davis and Gomez referred to as ‘Doc,’ is a real doctor. His name is Jude Walberg, an oncologist. He says he didn’t kill anyone. He was being blackmailed by someone he never met. Walberg says one day he received an e-mail with a video attachment. Showed him having sex with underage girls. Although he swears he was told they were all over eighteen. He met them through an escort service that specializes in Central American women. Said he was given directions to meet the women at a posh condo. Camera must have been hidden there. The good doc is married with two kids. He cried straight for the entire hour we questioned him.”
“Who’s blackmailing him? What’s the escort service called?”
“He didn’t know the guy’s name. Service is called Exotic Escorts. Because all biz is done online, who the hell knows where they’re located. Probably some pimp’s house. Walberg would get a call about a few hours before he was supposed to drive to the processing shack near the river. Vics would be on ice. He removed a heart or kidneys and left them in Styrofoam cartons with that clear liquid in the tanks.”
“Did he say what the caller sounded like? Any accents, speech patterns?”
“He said the guy talked in a soft monotone. Like he was in total control.”
At that moment, I wanted to hear Santana’s voice. I knew how Richard Brennen spoke. Measured. Complete control. But Richard Brennen had brown eyes, unlike that of a jaguar.
* * *
I parked in the Marina lot and walked to the office. The door was locked. I had forgotten that it was Sunday. The office was only open from 8:00 A.M. — noon on Sundays. I checked my watch: 2:45 p.m. I wrote a check and slipped it under the door.
Turning to leave, I almost ran into Dave Collins.
“Sean, what the hell happened to you? Don’t tell me I should see the other guy.”
“He’s dead.”
“What?”
“Yeah, worse shape than me.”
“Did you…”
“I didn’t kill him. I would like to have, though.”
“What happened?”
We sat on the aft deck of the Gibraltar. I told him everything that had happened. I concluded by saying, “Not only is Santana a serial killer, he’s figured out a way to make a huge profit from his spoils. Dave, this perp is the most sadistic and smartest criminal mind I’ve ever come up against. I might have to set a trap to draw him out.”
“What kind of trap?”
“Not sure. It has to be one that he can’t resist. I need to dig as far into his mind as I can. I have to get as close to his way of thinking as I can consciously permit myself to travel. Evil is a dark destination.”
“Maybe if you knew Santana’s past, you could predict his future. If you could open his mind, a psychopath who kills the way he does…the asphyxiation…what would you see? I’ll make drinks, maybe it’ll take away some of the pain in your wounds.”
Dave served Grey Goose martinis with slivers of ice bobbing on the surface. I said, “In the processing shack, the liquid in the vat looked like this martini. I didn’t see any ice in it, but it was cold. Not a subzero cold, but more like a chilled syrupy liquid.”
He listened intently, brow wrinkled, eyes trained on me, and then he glanced to the side like what I said brought back some distant connection. “Santana has a pipeline for quick distribution,” he said. “Maybe some hospital is turning a blind eye and accepting the organs. He might have a network getting them to recipients far away.”
Dave sipped his martini and continued. “I recall a study done on the wood frog. The frog is found far north as Alaska. They survive severe winters by increasing the glucose stored in their cell fluids. This acts as a kind of antifreeze providing the tissue, membranes, and internal organs with a greater freeze threshold. Gives the frog the ability to withstand temperatures minus twenty degrees Fahrenheit. What if Santana had some type of agent, antifreeze if you will, that allowed them to dramatically cool down organs without damaging the cells and tissue, essentially providing greater latitude from the time the organ leaves the victim to the time it enters the receiver’s body? Makes it easier to ship from point A to B.”
I watched Dave scratch Max behind the ears. She was asleep in his lap. I said, “Thanks for the martini. I can’t finish it. A little sore. Can you to watch Max for a few hours tomorrow? I have her food on Jupiter.”
“I’d love spending some time with the lass. Where’re you going?”
“To point A.”
SIXTY-THREE
On the drive to SunState Farms migrant camp, I called Special Agent Lauren Miles. It had been ten days since I had last spoken to her. After the shootout at the processing house, I’d asked Dan to fill her in on the details. Between the soreness in my mouth and my cracked ribs, I had been in no mood to deliver a dossier for the FBI.
She had news for me. “We have a little more on Santana, but it’s not much. Nothing from DMV. Can’t find photos. There is no record of his birth in America. He’s said to speak three languages. Owns or has partial ownership in an upscale strip joint called Xanadu. He’s also said to have ties to some of the new hotel casino combos and some coming up in Florida. His Xanadu website mixes pictures, video and pay-per-view porno. We found a connection to an Internet escort site, Exotic Escorts.”
“I bet the guy has a few degrees of separation between himself and his businesses. He’s smart, ruthless, well-connected, and manages to buy people or trap them like a spider, and that’s when he uses them.”
“As in Jude Walberg, the good doctor?”
“The same.
One of Santana’s former strippers is missing, probably dead. Name’s Robin Eastman. Ring a bell?”
“No, it doesn’t. You think Santana did it?”
“Or he had it done. May have been a cop who did the killing, a Detective Mitchell Slater, Volusia County. See what you can find on Slater. For some reason he’s connected. The guy who owned Club Platinum in Daytona, Tony Martin, was killed after he left the club. Martin had just got into his car and was talking on his cell with his girlfriend, Robin Eastman, when he was killed. Eastman told her mother that Martin had said, ‘You’re supposed to be a cop,’ right before she heard gunshots.”
Lauren was quiet a moment. “If it was a rogue cop playing hit man, Santana’s either paying him many times his pension, or he has something on him?”
“Slater has political aspirations. He was at the Brennens for a fund-raising, and pissed off that I would question them. He knew Leslie was about to implicate him. I’m convinced he killed her. I think he’s a guy paid to look the other way, and when the stuff really hits the fan, then he’s a triggerman behind a badge. Your people are good at surveillance, see if you can follow Santana.”
She was silent for a few seconds. “We have followed him, but we can’t seem to get close enough to catch him in anything.”
“What do you mean?”
“That’s where your skills have helped greatly. You’re closer, at least you’re coming closer than anyone else. You’re beginning to directly link him to things. Our profilers say Santana’s one of the worst-of-the worst, if these creeps can get any worse. So, although we’ve managed to profile him, we haven’t caught him.”
“Your profilers? You’ve known about Santana all along! You recruited me to hunt him down for you.”
“It’s not that simple. Our information corroborates everything you’ve said, but, you actually have more than we do.”
“Were you planning on sharing what you knew, or was I always the only one to sift through clues and hand it to the feds?” I felt my anger boiling up.