Krokodil

by Dustin Stevens

  What little I could see about the room behind him, it appeared to be a home lab of some sort. Computer monitors took up almost the entire backdrop of the space, the bit of desk that was visible covered by an array of electronic wizardry.

  I had been the one to initiate the call, choosing to go in a few minutes early to get the perfunctory small talk out of the way before the others arrived. It wasn’t that I had any problem with Pally, of all the guys on the team he was one that I liked more than others, it was that each passing moment seemed to pull me back further into my old self.

  When the incident with Lita first took place, it was a surprise to me, a jolt to the system that I survived through muscle memory and blind luck. Spending those days on the rock shelf with Mateo, finding her body on the way out, they had served to awaken something inside me that I had buried deep within, had even tricked myself into believing was dormant.

  Seeing Hutch had only made it worse. Being back in California, knowing what lay just up the road, seeing so many familiar names, it was all tugging me straight back into a life I no longer wanted any part of.

  Pally was just another part of that. Seeing him up on the screen, despite the obvious physical changes, was like staring into a vision of 2009 all over again.

  It was a vision I wasn’t sure I wanted to see, friend or not.

  “So Hutch tells me you got yourself deep into something again,” Pally said, leaning back in his chair and lacing his fingers behind his head. The sleeves of his baggy green sweater fell down around his forearms as he did so, a quartet of brightly colored rubber bands around his wrist.

  “More like I was pulled in,” I replied, pushing a chair to the side and hopping up onto the table in the vacated space. I ran a hand back through my still-damp hair and wiped it against the leg of my slacks, a thin dark water line appearing.

  “Mhmm,” Pally snorted, his entire body rocking backwards, “sure ya did. Just like ya weren’t the one always charging headfirst into every situation we ever encountered?”

  The left side of my mouth curled up into a smile, knowing full well he was right. Still, that was a different time, I was a different person. If there was any way I could go back and change all that I would, no questions asked.

  “Maybe then,” I conceded, “but not this time.”

  “He’s telling the truth,” Hutch said from behind me, the corrosive scent of his miracle concoction arriving just a moment after his voice. “This one went all the way to Montana to drag his ass out of retirement.”

  He appeared on the opposite side of the table from me, mug in one hand, the other shoved into the pocket of dress pants. Like me he had showered after waking, opting to stay with the same rumpled togs he’d been wearing instead of putting on something new.

  Knowing Hutch, there was an equal chance he had forgotten to bring anything else along, or had and just chosen not to unpack it.

  “And hello to you our fearless leader,” Pally said, raising a hand to his brow and lowering it in an overdone salute. “A pleasure, as always.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Hutch said, offering the tiniest bit of a return salute.

  “You wouldn’t be saying that if you could smell that shit in his cup right now,” I offered, drawing a knowing grin from Pally.

  “Yeah, yeah,” Hutch repeated, taking another drink from the vile concoction.

  “No, he’s right,” Diaz said, her voice all-business, pulling all three of our gazes towards her. “It smells like ass in here.”

  In the hours since our last meeting she had shed the jacket, now sporting just her slacks and t-shirt. Her hair was piled high in a messy bun, her face wearing a don’t mess with me veneer.

  Whatever new information she had wasn’t good.

  Sensing the about-face from our host, Hutch shifted his attention back towards the screen. “Alright Pally, hit us with it.”

  Onscreen, Pally remained in the same position, reclined in his computer chair, his hands atop the crown of his head. He shook it from side to side beneath them, his entire upper body twisting. “Not a lot to tell. The account was set up in Haney’s name, which we all know to be fake. It was set up as a subsidiary of the family business, which...”

  “Also fake,” Hutch inserted. He remained standing to my right, his arm bent at a ninety-degree angle, his drink in front of him. On my left Diaz rested a hand on the top of the closest chair, crossing her right leg over her left, the toe of her shoe pointed into the ground.

  “Meaning?” I asked.

  “Well,” Pally said, raising his eyebrows a fraction of an inch, “even if the names and addresses are fake, the money has to come from somewhere. And believe me, that somewhere is where things get interesting.”

  Diaz and I exchanged a glance as Hutch took another pull on his drink, his slurp audible throughout the room.

  “We’re listening,” I said.

  Without turning around or consulting anything, Pally lowered a hand and held it in front of him, his thumb and forefinger pressed together. “The money was wired into New Mexican National Bank from an account in West Cayman.”

  “So it’s a dead end?” Diaz asked.

  “Ha!” Pally spat, his head rocking back a few inches. “The Caymans aren’t nearly as untouchable as they want people to believe. Most of that mythos comes from corporate stooges and bad television.”

  I had heard the same rant on multiple occasions over the years, the vitriol a little dialed down from times past, but the general message still the same.

  “So how did it get to Cayman?” I asked.

  At that, Pally shifted his thumb from his index finger to his middle finger. “Prior to landing in the Caribbean, these fortunate funds spent some time in the Swiss Alps. Surfing and skiing, not a bad way to live.”

  “Right up until it decided to become a chile farmer in New Mexico,” Hutch deadpanned, drawing a smirk from Pally.

  “Right you are, boss,” Pally said. “Sort of.” He ticked his finger from his middle to his ring finger and said, “But you guys haven’t heard the kicker yet. Before Switzerland, that money originated in none other than Mother Russia herself.”

  “Russia?” I asked, my face twisted up in confusion. I turned to face Diaz beside me, a similar look on her face, and asked, “You guys working anything in Russia right now?”

  “Nothing,” Diaz said, shaking her head. “You guys do much there when you were around?”

  “Almost nothing,” I said. “Stopped through one time when we suspected an outfit from Hungary was hiding there. Nothing local.”

  “There’s not much on the national scene involving the Ruskies either,” Hutch said, finishing his beverage and sliding it onto the table. Without the mug he shoved both hands into his trousers, remaining in place, staring back at Pally.

  If he seemed at all surprised by the revelation, he didn’t show it.

  “Alright, Pally,” I said, “I’ll be the first to bite. Where did it come from in Russia?”

  Pally replaced the hand back atop his head and said, “Don’t know. Not yet anyway.”

  “You don’t know?” Diaz said, her eyes widening a bit.

  “Well, I can tell you the shell corporation it is said to have originated with,” Pally said, motioning over a shoulder to the monitor on his right. “But if you want actual usable intel, it’s going to take me a day or two yet. The Russians are a bit more lax on their SEC filing requirements than we are.”

  Despite the weight of the moment, I allowed a single snicker to roll out. Pally never missed an opportunity to take a jab at the country that held his ancestors in persecution for so long, no matter how veiled or innocuous it might sound.

  Besides, the fact that he had traced the funds that far meant it was only a matter of time before he found out who was behind them. If he could crack both the Cayman and Swiss banks, figuring out a false business front in Moscow would be no problem.

  “Russia would definitely fit the names of Pavel and Lita,” I said, glancing over to Hutch.
He nodded in agreement, his face bunched tight, deep in thought.

  “You had any luck on that front yet?” I asked, shifting back to face Pally.

  “Actually, I farmed it out,” Pally said, raising his hands from his head and holding them out wide before dropping them back into place. “I know somebody at the NSA that owes me a favor. Seemed easier to let her do the digging from the inside than to tiptoe around them the entire time.”

  “Her?” I asked, arching an eyebrow.

  “Stop it,” Pally said, rocking forward to sit erect, his face much closer to the camera. “I get anything on either front, you’ll be the first to know.”

  “Thanks, man,” I said. “Good seeing you again.”

  “You too, Hawk,” Pally said. Once more he raised two fingers to his brow and said, “Hutch, Diaz.”

  They both murmured a farewell as the feed in front of us cut out, the screen changing to bright blue. It cast a harsh pallor over all three of us as we sat in silence, each chewing on the new information.

  “Alright,” I said after a moment, “the money originated from somewhere in Russia. Not exactly what we were looking for, but at least we now have a heading.”

  “Not a lot of activity coming out of there,” Hutch said, his gaze aimed at the wall, just beneath the television beaming blue onto us. “Shouldn’t be too hard to narrow the field quickly if we have to.”

  “True,” I conceded, bobbing my head in agreement. I paused a moment to add that to the tangle of information nestling itself into my brain and turned to Diaz beside me. “So what happened while we were asleep?”

  The question seemed to jolt her out of her own thoughts, her head snapping upward to face us. “Huh?”

  “Something happened since the last time we talked. It was obvious when you walked in. Pertinent to us, or something else we don’t need to know about?”

  I had no illusions that she didn’t still have an entire branch to run, with cases stretched across the gamut of subject areas that the DEA dealt with on a daily basis. I appreciated how helpful she’d been and how much autonomy she was granting us, both facts I wanted to impress upon her. In return, I understood that she had things on her plate separate from us, and I respected that.

  Still, if whatever had happened was relevant, I’d prefer to know sooner rather than later.

  She glanced at each of us in turn and said, “Carlos Juarez is gone.”

  My eyes bulged as I stared at her, my heart rate picking up a tick. “You mean after we...?”

  I left the question open-ended, the destination clear.

  “No,” she said, shaking her head. “Our guys picked him up right behind us, brought him here. A little later they tried to take him back to his safe house in Texas, but he refused and I guess things got ugly.

  “As of this afternoon, he’s in the wind.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Hutch decided to remain behind at headquarters. Being a ranking bureaucratic official in one of the larger agencies under government control meant he had responsibilities beyond the case at hand, no matter how hard any of us tried to ignore it. Diaz offered him her office to work out of, offering him free reign over his old digs with the lone exception that no herbal teas were to cross her threshold.

  The comment was meant to be a joke, something to lighten the mood a tiny bit, though it barely drew more than a half-hearted chuckle from Hutch. He hadn’t said anything to us directly, but we could both tell there was a bit of disapproval about the way we’d handled Carlos earlier.

  We all knew the incident hadn’t led directly to his leaving, but it damned sure hadn’t helped the situation either.

  “What in the world could have Carlos spooked enough to never return to Texas, but secure enough that he would leave protective custody, even after what happened to Mateo?” I asked, staring out the side window as we rolled into the Metropolitan Correctional Center on the outskirts of San Diego.

  Diaz remained silent for a moment as we pulled up alongside the front gate, a reed-thin guard in a light brown uniform stepping out to meet us. She flashed her badge at him as he bent at the waist and peered in at us, the same man that had been on seven hours before.

  “You guys back again?” he asked with a smile. “Just can’t get enough of this place?”

  “Something like that,” Diaz said, forcing a smile to her face, despite her voice relaying it was not the time to be messing with her. “Can you call ahead and ask to have Manuel Juarez made available for questioning, please?”

  The smile faded around the edges as the guard stood to full height and stepped back from the car. “Yes, ma’am, will do. You know the way, right?”

  “Sure do, thanks,” Diaz said, buzzing the window up and depressing the accelerator at the same time. Once the car was sealed tight and we were on our way she pushed out a quick sigh, blowing a stray strand of hair off her forehead.

  “I honestly have no idea,” Diaz said. “As you saw today, it’s sometimes hard to get a full read on Carlos because he’s always playing that rebel-without-a-cause character of his.”

  “More like without-a-clue.”

  “That too,” Diaz agreed. “But this time seemed different. I heard the tape from when the package arrived. You saw him today when we forced him out of the car. That boy was spooked. Bad.”

  She maneuvered the car back to the same building, situated in the far back corner of the lot. Beside us prisoners were out for their late afternoon yard time, hundreds of men dressed in grey, no more than a handful even glancing our way. Despite the cool weather many had stripped off their shirts and were playing basketball or pumping iron, sweat glistening off their skin.

  Diaz jammed the gear shift into park and killed the engine, the same disgruntled look that had been on her features all afternoon still in place. Without the sound of the air conditioning or the road beneath us, the outside world could be heard plainly, the sounds of inmates in the yard filtering in, their voices full of bass, floating on the breeze.

  “Think there’s any chance Manny tells us why? Or who?” I asked.

  “Depends,” Diaz said, tightening the side of her face, considering the question. “If he and Carlos set this up this morning, he’ll fold his arms and give us some tough guy bullshit runaround.”

  “But if Carlos is really acting alone here, he’s going to be just as worried as we are right now,” I finished.

  “Different reasons obviously, but same final product,” Diaz said.

  Together we climbed out of the car, our respective dress shoes sounding against the concrete sidewalk. As we walked Diaz shrugged her suit coat back on, buttoning it as we approached the front door and entered.

  Stale, frigid air greeted us as we stepped inside, the door swinging shut behind us with a wheeze. The same guard that been on before lunch nodded us through without checking badges, barely looking up from his copy of Field and Stream magazine as he waved us on by.

  A few weeks ago, I would have stopped to see which issue he was reading, maybe even asked him what his sport of choice was. Now, the only thing that even registered with me was the antler spread on the moose splayed across the front cover, an image processed and dismissed in less than a second.

  The change was not a welcomed one.

  I fell back a half step and allowed Diaz to take the lead, moving quickly through the front hallway and turning us towards the interrogation chambers. A pair of oversized guards on their way out for the day stopped and turned sideways to let us squeeze by, their backs pressed against the walls, uniforms aching for relief from the strain, but otherwise nobody so much as glanced our way as we cut a direct path through the facility.

  Given the deference of the guards around us, and the clench of Diaz’s jaw, I got the distinct impression that she was no stranger to the place. Once upon a time I would have been stopped by a handful of prodding guards wanting to know who I was with and what I was doing. Not once had I ever been allowed to wander unescorted through the halls. The fact that we w
ere doing so now meant either procedure was becoming more lax, or Diaz was known as a woman not to be trifled with throughout the building.

  My money was on the latter.

  “We good?” Diaz asked as we stepped past a trio of doors, simple grey metal affairs with chicken wire across the plate glass windows covering the top half of them. Each one had a basic plastic placard on it announcing interrogation rooms with numbers counting backwards from four.

  “Yeah,” I responded, knowing she was asking if I was ready with what we had discussed on the drive in. We pulled up to a stop outside the door marked Interrogation Room #1, myself careful to stay back on the opposite side of the hall, out of direct sight line of the window.

  As it stood, Manny didn’t know I was there. Carlos hadn’t seen me until after meeting with him, and a simple call had confirmed that he had not contacted his cousin to relay that information.

  The plan, as it were, was pretty simple. Diaz would go in first and try to determine where Carlos would have gone. She would be tough but firm, letting him know how dire this was and how this was the direct result of Carlos being a bit of a loose cannon, not some perceived slight by the DEA.

  If he insisted on giving her a hard time, or being in any way uncooperative, she would give me the signal. Neither one of us was exactly sure what the punch line would be once I entered, but we both had a feeling it would be effective.

  Standing in the hall outside the interrogation room, most of me wanted him to play ball, to tell her what she needed in a timely manner so we could find Carlos and get moving.

  Some small part of me though, a tiny, undefined space deep within, hoped he would press her, that he would try to mess with her just enough to get me called into the room.

  “Okay,” Diaz said, standing alongside the glass and peering inside. “They’re bringing him in now.”

  “How’s he look?” I asked.

  She paused a moment. “He’s a little more worn down than the last time I saw him, has a scowl in place that would make Ice Cube proud, but otherwise he seems okay.”