When he raised his head, Carolyn stopped breathing. She watched him rub his eyes with his right hand.
He had slipped it out of the handcuffs.
She jerked her head toward the door, terrified the SWAT team was going to start shooting. She wasn’t a fool. The room was the size of a closet. If they started shooting, Moreno might not be the only one to die. She whipped back around, seeing both of his hands in the cuffs. Her fear and lack of sleep could have caused her to have imagined that one hand had been free. Terminating the interview now would be a disaster. He was about to tell her everything. She took in a breath, then slowly exhaled. His voice broke through her panic.
“I know who the real killer is.”
Chapter 34
Thursday, November 11—2:30 P.M.
Raphael had been standing in front of El Toro Market on Cooper Road in Oxnard, killing time until his sister’s school let out at three. The sky was clear, not a cloud to be seen, and the sun felt warm against his skin. It was hard staying inside all day with his mother. Sometimes he wondered if he’d made the right decision bringing her and Maria to the States.
Three years ago, his parents were involved in a car accident in Mexico. His father was killed instantly and his mother’s legs were crushed. At the time, Maria was only nine. How could he leave them there with no money and no man to protect them?
For a seventeen-year-old, he’d done fairly well. Dropping out of school had been the hardest. He had gone to work for a chop shop located in the hills above Malibu. For the first year, he’d dismantled cars and sanded off VIN numbers. One day, he’d got lucky. The boss, Angel Romano, heard about the burden he was carrying with his family and decided to try him out boosting cars. His slender build and fresh-faced appearance made him an excellent candidate, enabling him to move in the same circles as the wealthy without drawing suspicion.
He’d been smuggled into the United States at the age of ten, crammed in the back of a sweltering truck with forty other immigrants. The last thing he’d aspired to be was a criminal.
The first year, he’d worked in the strawberry fields, then a family had taken him in. As soon as he’d become fluent in English, they’d enrolled him in school. They’d been amazed to find out how smart he was. They told him he could be a lawyer, a doctor, or anything he wanted. He’d loved reading in his room, writing on the crisp white paper, learning and expanding his mind.
His downfall was his inherent thirst for fighting. Because of his small size, he’d strengthened his body. He’d spent hours in a makeshift gym he’d set up in the garage. Filling two plastic milk containers with a mixture of water and sand, he had used them as barbells. He did wide-arm pull-ups on the beam above his surrogate father’s workbench, developing a powerful punch and great hand strength. Holding old tires to his chest, he squatted to strengthen his legs. He’d become muscular, yet fast and agile.
When he was threatened by other students, he’d beat them to prove his masculinity. It wasn’t long before he had earned the name “Mighty Mouse” at school. People began to fear him, everyone except Javier Gonzales. Raphael didn’t know when to stop. When he did, Javier was a bloody mess of broken bones. Fifteen hours in surgery, and the boy barely survived.
The Gonzales family pressed charges, then dropped them with a nominal payment by Raphael’s foster parents. If not, he would have never been able to become a U.S. citizen. That was the happiest day of his life. Soon after, his world was shattered. His foster father had lost his job, making it impossible for them to care for him. Social Services placed him with another family, but they were awful. They fed him spoiled milk and food that looked as if it had come out of a trash can.
Raphael swore he would never be arrested again. He practiced getting in and out of restraints. When he was picked up by the police after robbing a convenience store, he slipped out of the cuffs and ran. The officer gave chase, but he was too fast.
When he learned about his parents’ accident, he’d decided the only thing he could do was sneak his mother and sister into the States. Things weren’t going well with his mother. Her left leg was infected and the doctor was afraid he might have to amputate. Raphael hadn’t had the heart to tell her, but tomorrow morning, he would have to drive her to the hospital. If she did lose her leg, he would have to hire a nurse. He’d managed to save about twenty grand, but he knew it wouldn’t last forever. He needed a score.
Out of the corner of his eye, Raphael saw a flash of red. What was going on? Someone was unloading a red Ferrari off the back of a truck. Angel had a customer who wanted a fancy Ferrari. Could this be it? He’d never expected to see a car that valuable on the streets of Oxnard. He found most of the cars in Beverly Hills or Brentwood. When he delivered this one, he’d pocket five grand. Angel knew he had to pay his people well or they’d find buyers for the cars themselves.
His eyes scanned the area. Two drunks were sleeping in a doorway at the end of the street. An old lady, her back stooped and her face withered, was carrying a grocery sack across the street. Old ladies never talked to the police. Gangsters could mow down five guys, and an old lady would step over them and keep on walking.
Raphael carried a backpack so he’d look like a student. The only thing inside was his gun—a Tech 9. He yanked the gun out and dropped the empty backpack on the sidewalk, then sprinted toward the driver’s side of the red Ferrari. The windows were tinted, so he couldn’t tell who was inside. He was almost certain there was only one man. Smashing the glass with his gun, he shouted, “Get out of the car or I’ll kill you!”
Everything happened in a heartbeat. He saw the barrel of a gun and instinctively pressed the trigger, shooting the man in the face. Yanking the bleeding man out onto the street, he was about to duck inside when he saw the passenger door was open. Spinning around, he saw another man at the rear of the car pointing a gun at him. They fired simultaneously. Raphael reeled backward as the bullet ripped into his right shoulder. Regaining his balance, he didn’t wait to see if he’d hit the man. He leaped into the driver’s seat, gunned the ignition, and sped away in a cloud of dust.
The Ferrari almost jumped out from under him. Checking his rearview mirror, Raphael saw the passenger scooping his friend off the pavement and placing his body in the back of the truck. Wasn’t he going to call the cops? The guy was limping, so Raphael assumed he must have shot him in the leg.
Blood was oozing out of his shoulder. Steering the car with one hand, he removed his shirt and pressed it over the gunshot wound. He couldn’t bleed all over the Ferrari, not after he’d killed a man to get it.
The house he rented was only four blocks away. Angel had insisted on a house over an apartment because of the garage. He couldn’t park expensive cars on the street, so his instructions were to garage them until it was safe to drive them to the chop shop. If there was still heat after a few days, Angel would send a truck to pick them up.
Raphael kept his garage door opener clipped to his belt next to his pager. Hitting the button, he drove the Ferrari inside, then rushed into the house to call Angel.
“What kind of Ferrari did you get? Get the operating manual out and tell me what it says.”
“It’s nice looking, man,” Raphael told him. “Never seen one like this before. You still got money for me?” He knew he couldn’t tell him he’d killed a man. If there were injuries, Angel wouldn’t touch it.
He raced to the garage, seized the manufacturer’s booklet and flipped through the pages. “It says it’s a 2001 five-fifty Barchetta Pininfarina Speciale. The car’s in perfect condition. I swear, man. There’s not a scratch on it.”
“You’re shitting me,” Angel said. “Ferrari only made one of those babies. Bring it in around ten tonight. We have a buyer creaming his pants for a car like that.”
Disconnecting, Raphael went to the bathroom to check the gunshot wound. It was not deep. Since the bullet wasn’t embedded, he didn’t have to worry about infection. He found some hydrogen peroxide and bandages in the medicine ca
binet. After he’d dressed the wound, he put on a clean shirt. He peeked in his mother’s room and saw she was sleeping. Maria handled her medication at night when he was working.
His eyes went to the crucifix mounted over her bed. Dropping to his knees, he made the sign of the cross and begged God to forgive him. If he hadn’t shot the man, he would be dead. Then who would care for his family? He knew protecting them would not buy him redemption. When he died, he would burn in hell. His eyes came to rest on his mother. At thirty-six, she looked more like fifty. Her lovely dark hair had turned gray, and her once-shapely body was emaciated. Suffering and hardship were etched on her face. She’d given birth to two boys before him, but both of them had lived only a few months. The village his parents lived in had no work. His mother told him they were so poor, without God’s help, they would have all died. Despite all she’d gone through, she had never complained. Until the accident, she had gone to mass every day, praying for the souls of the lost and damned. How did the son of a saint become a murderer? He knew that now that he had killed, he would do it again. He had disgraced his God, his church, and his family. He was the one who had smashed the window out with a gun and threatened to shoot the driver. The man had acted in self-defense. What if he was arrested and sent to prison? How would his mother and sister get by without him? Since they were illegal immigrants, they would be deported to Mexico.
Closing his mother’s door, Raphael rushed out to his ten-year-old black Mustang, then headed to St. Agnes’s to pick up Maria. His mother and sister were used to seeing fancy cars in the garage. He covered his occupation as a criminal by telling them that he detailed expensive cars for rich people.
After dinner, he went to the garage and scrubbed down the Ferrari. Once he told his mother that she would have to go to the hospital in the morning, he tucked Maria into bed and headed out to Malibu. He had driven a Ferrari before, but the Barchetta was fantastic. His problems were momentarily forgotten as he whipped around the curves, the city lights nothing more than a blur.
Angel was officially the caretaker of a twelve-acre parcel of wooded real estate. The property had been in probate for seven years, and the courts had erected high fences to keep people out. He’d started out small, receiving stolen cars and selling off the parts, working out of a double-wide trailer and a few metal sheds. Three years ago, he’d moved up to luxury cars, hiring guys to steal them and then delivering them to brokers throughout the country. His people never stole anything until Angel told them he had a buyer. The only work he had to do was to remove the VIN numbers and replace them with new ones so the car could be legally registered. On cars like the Barchetta, this was far more difficult. The new VIN number had to come back to a Barchetta. Angel had contacts with salvage companies throughout the world. When a luxury car was totaled, Angel would purchase the VIN plates. He had five file cabinets crammed full of clean VIN plates that could be placed on a vehicle whenever it came in.
Angel was still laughing when Raphael drove off in the spare car he kept at the shop, a Volkswagen bug, with five grand tucked in his pocket. Cops didn’t stop you when you drove a Volkswagen, particularly in Oxnard. Gangsters, even run-of-the-mill hoodlums, wouldn’t be caught dead in a Beetle.
Chapter 35
Wednesday, December 29—4:28 P.M.
Lawrence Van Buren inserted his gold key into the brass lock, securing the double glass doors, and disengaged the alarm. Navcon International was located on the twelfth floor of a high-rise office building in Los Angeles. He stepped several feet back and gazed at the gold lettering on the door, knowing it would soon be gone if he didn’t deliver the Ferrari.
Entering and turning on the master switch for the lights, his eyes swept over the opulent furnishings in the lobby. His life was a sham. He had been born John Hidayah, the only son of a wealthy Egyptian family. He had changed his name so his father in Egypt wouldn’t be able to find him. He’d selected the name Van Buren after the American president. Although his hair and eyes were dark, his skin was fair. He told people he was born in New York. Everyone trusted Lawrence Van Buren. His honest face and impeccable manners served him well.
Taking a seat behind his leather-topped Louis XVI desk, he unlocked a drawer and removed a small phone book. His cover of brokering exotic cars to overseas buyers had once been legitimate. Some of his best clients resided in Saudi Arabia. The only thing that was an outright lie was telling his wife he was a CIA agent. Women weren’t that concerned with the truth, particularly if you gave them everything they wanted.
Van Buren used his established history of shipping exotic cars overseas to avoid suspicion. His organization used tankers sailing out of Port Hueneme, a small city with a naval base and shipping yards a short distance from Ventura. They altered the car so no one outside of the Ferrari plant in Italy would be able to tell that it was carrying illegal cargo. In addition to those cars, they shipped at least four cars a month that were clean. Another reason they passed undetected was geography. No major players in the arms market operated in this particular area. Criminal activity in Oxnard, a sister city to Port Hueneme, centered around gang activity, murders, and local drug-trafficking. These types of criminals might be vicious, but they didn’t possess the funding or sophistication needed to broker weapons to foreign entities.
After the terrorist attacks on September 11, Van Buren had lain low for two years before resuming trade in the arms market. He had, however, continued to export exotic cars. Americans were big talkers with short memories. Politicians yapped all the time about airport safety, yet security guards continued to be individuals with no education and a minimum level of training. To prove his point, he’d had one of his most trusted men smuggle a suitcase full of automatic weapons on board a Delta flight to New York.
His best recruits were former police officers and disgruntled FBI and CIA agents. Of course they weren’t aware of what was inside the vehicles. Only a few international criminals knew the truth.
Each day, he searched the newspapers for cops who had been fired for using excessive force, dealing drugs, or receiving payoffs. Such men were willing to sell their souls for the right amount of money. The bonus of working with pros was that they knew not to ask questions.
Van Buren pushed the button for the speaker phone, then stood behind his desk. He could never talk with his North Korean contact sitting down, particularly when he was seven weeks late on a delivery of plutonium. His three earlier shipments had gone perfectly. The cars were shipped to Saudi Arabia, then to Shanghai. For security reasons, he wasn’t informed as to how they reached their final destination. As it was, he knew more than he wanted.
He sucked in a deep breath, then punched in the number. His contact had been waiting in Shanghai for delivery. There was a sixteen-hour time difference, and he refused to accept calls during business hours. Although it was a few minutes past four-thirty in the afternoon, it was eight at night in Shanghai. To avoid wiretaps, his call was transferred electronically to an unknown number. A recognizable voice finally came on the line. The code name the Korean had chosen was Bill Clinton. He doubted if the former president would be held accountable if the situation ever came to light.
“How are you doing, Bill?” he said, sweating inside his Valentino sport jacket. When the Korean answered, his accent was so thick, Van Buren had to strain to figure out what the man was saying.
“How do you think we doing?” he shouted. “Your company fail to deliver goods. I wait six weeks in crappy hotel in Shanghai. Boss say you no good. If not get it by next week, he send someone to kill you and your family.”
“There’s no reason to panic,” Van Buren told him, pacing in a small circle. “We got a lead today on the car. By tomorrow afternoon, it will be on a ship headed to Shanghai.”
“How we know you tell truth?” the Korean said, his voice rising. “Maybe you sell goods to other country. Boss not get proof of shipment by tomorrow, you dead.”
“Do you want the U.S. government to know you’re procur
ing nuclear materials from independent sources?” Van Buren tossed back, “Hold tight and everything will be fine. I delivered the three other shipments, didn’t I?”
When he heard the dial tone, he yanked the multiline phone out of the wall and hurled it across the room. It struck an original drawing by Leonardo da Vinci. The glass shattered and the frame fell to the floor. The drawing had been given to him by a client who’d purchased three hundred assault rifles. He later learned it had been stolen from a museum in Amsterdam. So no one realized it was an original instead of a print, he’d covered the signature with tape, then made certain it wasn’t visible.
He ripped off his jacket and wadded it up in a ball, stuffing it in the trash can. How could his men fail to track down a one-of-a-kind 550 Barchetta Pininfarina Ferrari?
He’d already wired thirty million dollars to his unnumbered bank account in Zurich. Each of the three cars he’d successfully shipped had contained ten pounds of plutonium. One pound of plutonium was the size of a baseball. His mechanic had been ingenious. He’d constructed a lead compartment that contained a half-pound ingot of plutonium in each of its twenty sections. This enclosure went into an aluminum case, which was hermetically sealed and mounted on the modified radiator inside the engine cavity.
He knew North Korea intended to use the material in an attempt to construct a nuclear bomb. It was their backup plan in case they weren’t able to get the plutonium from their nuclear reactor, which was closely monitored by the international community. Van Buren believed nuclear weapons were more for leverage than for their explosive capabilities.
Even if they built the bomb, he didn’t think they would ever use it. On the off chance that they did, he hoped the United States wasn’t their intended target. As soon as he made his last shipment and pocketed his remaining ten million, unknown to Eliza, he had made arrangements to relocate her and his children to his seven-thousand-square-foot winter home in the Virgin Islands. No country on earth would nuke the Virgin Islands. The beaches were pristine, and the landscape so lush and beautiful, even terrorists loved it.
Sullivan’s Justice Page 32