Delta Ghost - 02

by Tim Stevens

  “We got a problem,” said Venn.

  He’d summoned Harmony and Walter and Clune back out into the main office after Franciscus left, and stood for a moment, thinking, aware that their eyes were on him.

  “So, my photo,” said Clune. “Was it any good? Did it help?”

  When Franciscus had commented about people taking pictures at the crime scene, Venn had mentally cursed himself for a fool. Clune had been there, had seen Kruger getting shot. Why hadn’t he asked him if he’d captured anything on camera? To be fair, Venn had had a thousand other questions for the kid, and it was a reasonable expectation that any normal person would have volunteered spontaneously that they’d taken photos. But Clune wasn’t a normal person, as far as Venn was concerned. He was a serial liar, and little of what he said, or didn’t say, could be taken at face value.

  So Venn had marched into the side office and asked Clune if he happened to have had his phone out at the time, and Clune said sure, he’d switched to camera mode automatically, just as he did whenever something interesting seemed to be going down, and he showed Venn a series of snapshots. Most were of terrible quality, blurred abstracts that couldn’t be read at all, but there was one which was of halfway decent quality.

  Harmony said: “Boss? Something wrong?”

  Venn came out of his reverie. “That guy just now. O’Dell’s lawyer. He saw something in the picture. Something he didn’t admit to, but it was there all right. I sensed it in his manner. He ended our meeting too abruptly, as if there was something he needed to take care of urgently.”

  Venn indicated the image on the computer monitor. “See if you can spot it. Because I think I just did.”

  Walter and Harmony and Clune leaned in, their eyes searching the pixellated screen.

  Harmony was the first to speak. “That tattoo.”

  “Yeah,” said Walter. He fished a crumpled piece of paper out of his pocket, smoothed it out on the desk. It was a printout of the photo of the tattoo on Espinoza’s arm, two snakes twined round an M16 rifle. “Same goddamn shape.”

  Clune grabbed the paper from Walter’s hand. He brandished it with something like triumph in his face.

  “I know this. It’s the tattoo Salazar has. And most of the men who worked for him.”

  Venn said, “The guys who grabbed you in the street market had this.”

  “Yeah. On their forearms, up near the elbow. I assumed it was a gang symbol or something.”

  Venn stared at his two colleagues, then walked over to a whiteboard on one wall. He picked up a Sharpie and with bold, sweeping strokes, began to draw circles with words in them, and to connect them with lines that sometimes crossed.

  “Okay. Tattooed guys kill Kruger. They’re Salazar’s men. They try to kidnap Clune, because he robbed Salazar. Why do they kill Kruger? We don’t know. Maybe they know he’s had dealings with Clune. Maybe they just whack him because he was one of Flowers’ guys, and they’re mopping up, erasing everybody with links to Flowers.”

  He paused, looking at what he’d drawn.

  “This lawyer, Franciscus, recognizes the tattoo. He heads out of here. Why? What does the tattoo mean, and why won’t he tell me? The tattoo shows an M16. Franciscus is military, a Ranger. Is there a connection? Possibly. But lots of gangbanger symbols feature guns. There may be nothing significant in the tattoo’s design itself. What’s more important is what it represents.”

  He turned to Clune. “Come on, kid. Think. Was there anything about these guys, Flowers and Salazar, that made them special? Anything that might interest a New York lawyer to the point that he hightails it out of a detective’s office like his ass is on fire?”

  Clune pressed the heels of his hands against his forehead. “I’m thinking. I’m thinking.” He stayed silent for ten seconds, then raised his head. “Sorry. No. They were drug dealers, obviously. But beyond that... no. I don’t know anything about them.”

  Walter said, “You didn’t ask, boss, but I assumed you knew what I’d say. I spent half of last night running that tattoo through every known database we have access to. I even got an ex-FBI contact of mine to do me a favor and compare it with the federal files. There was no match.”

  Venn paced, sorting through the options in his head, arranging the priorities. “We need to pull Franciscus in. Find out what he saw in that photo, what the tattoo means.”

  “Bust him, you mean?” said Harmony.

  “Nothing to bust him for, yet,” said Venn. “I’ll call him back, tell him some new evidence has come to light and that I need him back here ASAP. In the mean time, Harm, I want you to start cross-referencing O’Dell and Kruger and the names Salazar and Oscar Flowers. It’s probably an Anglo version of Flores, so try that too.”

  “Want me to help?” said Walter.

  “No. We need to get the kid somewhere safe. Away from here. Salazar’s guys tailed him from here yesterday, so they might come back. Get him out, under cover, to a safe house. You got a list of those?”

  “Yeah,” said Walter. “There’s a bunch of them we used to send battered women to when I worked Harlem. I can arrange for one of them to be held for us.”

  “Whoah,” said Clune, staring from Venn to Walter. “You’re sending me out there? With him as protection?”

  “Detective Sickert is an experienced officer,” said Venn. “And I gotta be places, kid. You can’t tag along with me.”

  “We’ll be just fine, kid,” said Walter, his voice like a crypt door creaking open.

  Venn dialed the number on the card Franciscus had given him. It went to voicemail. Venn told Franciscus he needed to meet with him again, urgently, back at the office.

  By the time he’d finished, Walter was giving the kid instructions. “We get you out on the backseat, under a blanket. You stay there until I say you can come out.”

  They left, Clune glancing back uncertainly at Venn. Venn shooed him along with a flick of his fingers.

  He moved to look over Harmony’s shoulder, where she was bent over the computer keyboard.

  “Anything yet?” he asked.

  She was shaking her head in confusion. “I don’t get this,” she said.

  Venn looked at the monitor. He didn’t get it either.

  Chapter 28

  Sean O’Dell – Stefan Kruger – Salazar – Oscar Flowers/Flores.

  The string of keywords tripped a wire on a server located in Norfolk, Virginia, which in turn sent a signal to a board in Raleigh, North Carolina.

  The operator who noted the signal made an immediate phone call on a scrambled line to an office in Washington, D.C.

  The call was taken by a man named Cavendish, who was one of only six people in the nation’s capital with the necessary Sensitive Compartmented Information clearance for this particular issue.

  Cavendish had wall-to-wall meetings for the rest of the day until after eight p.m. He cancelled them all.

  Then he began to make calls of his own, to secure cell phone numbers throughout Washington and New York and San Antonio, Texas.

  As the next fifteen minutes ticked by, the signals spread throughout the network, the parts of a well-oiled machine moving efficiently and in harmony.

  One of the calls terminated in the office of the New York Police Commissioner, at One Police Plaza.

  *

  Harmony tried again. She typed the search words in a different order this time.

  The same message came up: Restricted access.

  “What the hell?” said Harmony.

  Venn said, “Try leaving one or more of the words out. The first names, say.”

  She did so. Again, the message in red. Restricted access.

  “Leave out one name at a time,” said Venn.

  It produced the same result.

  Harmony tried omitting pairs of names in combination. When she entered O’Dell’s and Kruger’s, a stream of data filled the screen. Kruger had rented a property from O’Dell a few months ago, and they had several mutual acquaintances.

  But
when Harmony tried the combination of Salazar and Oscar Flowers, once more the Restricted access legend came up.

  “Something political,” said Venn. “It’s got to be.”

  He took out his phone and dialed Captain Kang’s number. When it went to voicemail, Venn said, “Cap, I need you to get me authorization to access something on the database. I’ll explain when you call.”

  At the computer, Harmony typed in Oscar Flowers’ name on its own. There were no results. When she tried Salazar – for whom they didn’t have a first name – the screen was flooded again.

  “Too many people with that name,” she muttered. “Needle in a damn haystack.”

  Venn’s phone rang. It was Kang.

  “Yeah, Cap,” Venn began. “The database keeps freezing us out here. Can you –”

  “You need to leave it alone, Joe.” Kang sounded harassed.

  “Pardon me?”

  “Whatever it is you’re trying to access. I’ve just had a call from the Commissioner himself. Don’t touch it. Top secret stuff.”

  “The Commissioner?”

  “He sounded like he was passing on orders from way above him,” said Kang. “Apparently you triggered some warning with a search combination you used. Whatever you’re looking at, it’s not for us. What are you looking for, by the way?”

  Venn gave him a recap on everything, including Clune and his story. Kang listened without interrupting, then said: “Jesus. This guy came to your house?”

  “Yeah. But forget that for now,” said Venn. “Listen, there’s something wrong here. I almost got killed yesterday facing these guys. If they catch the British kid they’ll kill him. They probably killed O’Dell, and certainly killed Kruger. I can’t let this go, Captain. Harmony and Walter and I are involved, like it or not.”

  “Not any more, you’re not.” Kang’s voice could take on an edge when he wanted it to. “Look, Joe, I know it’s a pain in the ass. I’m a cop, too. I know how infuriating this political, Federal interference is. But we really can’t afford to screw up here. Times are tight. The funding of the Division of Special Projects is constantly up for review. We give them an excuse, they’ll shut us down.”

  Venn closed his eyes in frustration. “Cap, aren’t you even curious? We bust our asses to pinch O’Dell, discover this kid Clune is connected, save his ass from those killers – and now we’re expected to just drop it all and walk away?”

  “This time, yes, that’s exactly what you’ll do.” Kang paused. “Speaking of the kid.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You need to hand him over to Federal custody.”

  “No, sir.”

  “What?”

  “He won’t talk to them. He doesn’t trust them. The only person he’ll engage with is me. God knows why, but there it is.”

  Venn had never seen or heard his captain truly angry before, but he felt the venom spitting down the line.

  “Whether or not he’ll talk to them isn’t my concern, or yours. This is not our case any longer, Venn. I can’t make myself any clearer. Understood?”

  “Yes.”

  “Now hand the kid to the Feds, get the hell away from that database, and find something else to do.”

  “Sir.”

  Venn put the phone in is pocket. He took a moment to compose himself, too angry to breathe.

  When he turned, Harmony said: “Uh oh. Something tells me our captain isn’t going to be pleased with you.”

  “Damn right.” He began to pull on his jacket. “Come on. Shut off that computer. We’re going to find this Franciscus guy.”

  “Am I going to regret this?” she said.

  “Quite probably.”

  “Great.” She slipped on her own lightweight jacket over her shoulder holster. “Every day, I wonder to myself: why the hell do I work for this guy?”

  “Short answer? Nobody else would tolerate you.”

  They headed out the door.

  Chapter 29

  It took Franciscus thirty minutes to locate the prisoner, Ramon Espinoza. Thirty minutes and a couple of judiciously placed phone calls through his secretary.

  On his way to the jailhouse in his BMW, Franciscus received a phone call from the senator he’d called earlier.

  “Your cop, Venn,” said the senator. “He’s just tripped a wire on the system. He used the search terms Salazar and Oscar Flowers.”

  “Mm.” Franciscus was a calm man, who’d learned long ago that there was little point giving vent to strong emotions. It didn’t provide catharsis, but merely stoked up feeling. And feeling generated a lot of heat, but very little light.

  “The cop’s been ordered to cease his inquiries,” said the senator. “You’ve met him. Do you think he will?”

  “No,” said Franciscus.

  The senator said nothing, but the silence carried a clear instruction, Franciscus knew.

  At the jail where Espinoza was being held, Franciscus found the Public Defender, a harassed-looking young woman whom he’d met a number of times before.

  “Hey, Peter,” she said distractedly. “Up to my ears in it.”

  “Maybe I can lighten the load,” he offered.

  She glanced at him.

  Franciscus said, “I hear you’ve picked up a guy named Espinoza. One of the shooters in the Ninth Avenue market yesterday.”

  The PD sighed. “He’s a pain in the balls. Won’t say a word. One of these honorable gangbangers, sworn to uphold the code of the brotherhood. Been watching too much Godfather. He’s a lost cause, but I’ve got to go through the motions. Particularly because of the race angle.”

  “Let me take him,” said Franciscus.

  “Peter, thanks, but I -”

  “Hey. I need more pro bono work to keep up my reputation as a nice guy. What could be better than a hopeless case? A Mexican gangster facing serious time for hostage-taking?” He beckoned with his fingers. “Come on. Hand me his file. I’ll square it with the cops. By the sound of it, you and Espinoza haven’t exactly established a warm, trusting professional relationship, so he won’t care if I take over.”

  She exhaled deeply, looking profoundly relieved. “I owe you. Big time.”

  “You sure do,” said Franciscus dryly, taking the slim file from her.

  *

  Nothing registered on Espinoza’s sullen face, apart from a mild flicker of surprise, when Franciscus stepped into the cell and introduced himself.

  He said the PD was no longer able to represent Espinoza, and asked if Espinoza would be willing to have him, Peter Franciscus, as his counsel instead. Free of charge.

  Espinoza glanced at him, then resumed his truculent stare into the middle distance.

  He was seated on a bench along one side of the cell wall. Franciscus hunkered down next to him.

  With a swift movement Franciscus slid the man’s sleeve up his forearm. Espinoza jerked away angrily, but not before Franciscus had seen the tattoo.

  “Salazar’s man,” Franciscus said conversationally, and in Spanish.

  He watched the side of Espinoza’s face. Was there the faintest trace of a reaction there? A tightening of the small muscles around the eyes and the mouth?

  Franciscus said: “He won’t let you live, you know, Ramon. I mean Salazar. However tightly you keep your mouth shut, however proudly you protect the organization... Diego Salazar will never be free from the nagging worry that you’ve squealed. And so he’ll make sure you’re silenced. A shank between the ribs, a throat-slashing in the showers. Who knows, he may even pay a warder to kick you to death.”

  The man’s absolute impassivity had taken over once more. Franciscus couldn’t help but admire him for it. Espinoza’s profile was like a granite bas-relief.

  “But I can see that doesn’t scare you, Ramon. So I’m not going to waste my time with further warnings about the fate that awaits you. Instead, I’m going to frighten you where it really hurts.”

  Franciscus took out his phone.

  After getting the case file off the gr
ateful ADA, and perusing its meager contents briefly, Franciscus had found a private room and had made a call to San Antonio. He’d texted a photo of the mug shot on Espinoza’s arrest papers.

  Then he’d waited, for fifteen agonizingly slow minutes, until his phone chirped to herald the arrival of a new text message. With an attached photograph.

  It was this photo Franciscus now brought up on his phone’s screen, and held up close to Espinoza’s face.

  “Take a look, Ramon,” he said gently.

  The Mexican didn’t turn his head. But Franciscus got the impression he was restraining himself from doing so with great force.

  Franciscus rose from the bench, moved so that he was in front of Espinoza, held the phone directly in front of his eyes.

  “Take a look, Ramon.”

  Espinoza’s eyes flicked involuntarily to the picture on the screen. They didn’t flick away. A ridge of muscle bulged along each side of his lower jaw, and he gripped his hands together so hard the knuckles cracked audibly.

  Franciscus said: “Juan is nine, yes? And Alicia seventeen. So pretty, both of them. Such smooth, innocent features.”

  He could feel the rage building in the man like an electric current. He saw the quivering limbs, the mask of the face threatening to dissolve and reveal the primal fury beneath.

  “Stay seated, Ramon,” said Franciscus softly. “If the guards have to come in and haul you off me, I’ll leave, and it’ll be the last time you’ll ever see me. You know what will happen next. Alicia and Juan will be paid a visit. By some men who are barely human, who lack the normal empathy you and I take for granted.”

  At last, Espinoza’s composure collapsed. He hunched forward, his knuckles kneading his forehead, his lips moving in silent pleading, or prayer.

  Franciscus took a calculated risk and squatted down in front of the man, within striking distance.

  He murmured, “I need just two things from you, Ramon. Two things, and your family will be left unharmed. The first is: you need to tell me why you’re here in New York. You, and all the rest of Salazar’s crew.”

  Franciscus waited.

  After a silence so prolonged that Franciscus began to wonder if the other man had in fact heard him, Espinoza said in a whisper: “A British man. Young. His name’s Danny Clune. He robbed Mr Salazar of one million dollars, and he’s here in New York. We’ve come to find him.”