Day of the Tiger (A Carlos McCrary Mystery Thriller Book 5)

by Dallas Gorham

  “His computer geek, he ran it every which way through the property appraiser website and the Department of Transportation map database. He had the sergeants brief every precinct for all the patrol units Wednesday, Thursday, and this morning. Nothing yet.”

  “What did he find out about the phone that sent the text?”

  Will referred to his notes again. “It’s a Washington, DC number. It took a couple of days, but yesterday he learned it belongs to a fellow named Pablo Antonio Crucero Obregon. He’s the ambassador from the Republic of San Cristobal.”

  “Did anyone interview the ambassador?”

  “The lieutenant, he said the ambassador lives in Washington, but he’s been in San Cristobal for the last three weeks.”

  “Somebody else has his phone.”

  “That’s what the lieutenant said.”

  “Okay if I call the lieutenant after you and I are through here?”

  “You can call him now if you like.”

  “I’ll do it later. I have some boring cop stuff to discuss with him.”

  “Nothing about my daughter’s case will bore me.”

  “I’ll call him later.”

  Betty knocked twice on the door and brought in fresh coffee. I nodded my thanks and waited for her to leave.

  Will cleared his throat. “Is there something you want to discuss with the lieutenant that you don’t want me to hear?”

  I sipped my coffee while I decided how to answer. “It would take a literal miracle for the cops to find your daughter. That’s why the lieutenant sent you to me.”

  “I don’t understand. Why can’t the cops find my Lizzie?”

  “Jorge Castellano is a LEO—a law enforcement officer—sworn to uphold the law. LEOs follow state laws and the U.S. Constitution—things such as search warrants and Miranda warnings that protect people’s rights.”

  “Okay, but so what? My daughter was kidnapped for crissakes. Her life’s in danger, not to mention the other girls.” Will smacked the table with his palm. “We got to get a move on.”

  “The cops follow due process to obtain evidence, or the prosecutor can’t use it in court.”

  “You mean that legal stuff I seen on the TV cop shows?”

  “Right.”

  “I don’t need to convict nobody in court. All I want is to find my daughter.” His eyes glistened with unshed tears.

  “Jorge knows that he can’t find Liz if he follows due process of law. It just isn’t going to happen. He sent you to me because I’m not a LEO. I couldn’t care less about due process. Sometimes I do things which are, ah, outside the law.”

  “Such as?”

  “Suppose I find that three-story house Liz described. I would need to search the house to find her. As a private citizen, I can’t get a search warrant, so I might pick the lock or break down the door. If Liz or another of the captives were inside, nobody would raise a ruckus that I broke the law when I freed them. You follow?”

  “Good P.R. makes you bullet proof.”

  “Right, but if the girls are not there—say the kidnappers moved them somewhere else—I wind up in jail if I’m caught in a B&E.”

  “B&E?”

  “Breaking and entering.”

  Will rubbed his chin. “You take big risks.”

  “Goes with the territory. Also, as a private citizen, I don’t give Miranda warnings when I question a witness. I get them to talk to me however I can—whatever works.”

  Will caught the implications. “Jesus Christ. If you question somebody, and they don’t answer you—”

  I nodded. “Sometimes, I… persuade them to cooperate.”

  “How?”

  “Are you sure you want to know, Will?”

  His eyes became icy. “I want my daughter back, whatever it costs, whatever it takes.”

  Chapter 3

  Jorge answered on the second ring. “Hola, Carlos. Did a man named Will Jenkins call you?”

  “He just left. I’m gonna take the case. Thanks for the referral, I think.”

  “Good. You know our hands are tied, but you…”

  “Right. What did you turn up on the names in the texts?”

  “We’re checking every Vince and Tommy, but nothing’s popped. I have two guys on it. Unfortunately, our records don’t always include tattoos and identifying marks.”

  “The tattoo could be new anyway. Any luck with the house description?”

  “We screened the property appraiser’s data base for houses over six thousand square feet. There aren’t many houses that size in the county and none in the area within three miles of the cell tower.”

  “How about the street she described?”

  “Do you know how many streets in Atlantic County have parking on both sides?”

  “Thousands of miles of streets.”

  “We briefed the patrol units in all precincts. We told them at morning muster to watch for three-story houses of any size on a street with two lanes of traffic with parking on both sides. Nobody’s seen anything suspicious so far.”

  “Tell me about the phone that sent the texts.”

  “We ran into a brick wall.”

  “How so? It’s pretty simple to check out a phone number.”

  “Usually. We got a warrant using the phone number and obtained the tower’s location from the cell carrier. No problem. The problem came when we tried to identify the owner. The phone’s registered address is the Embassy of the Republic of San Cristobal in Washington, DC. We called the U.S. State Department to learn that it belongs to the ambassador, Pablo Crucero. We checked him out with the DC cops and the State Department. Pablo is not the guy. He’s been in San Cristobal for several weeks for knee surgery.”

  “Who has his phone? A family member?”

  “Yeah. The ambassador owns four cellphones, all with diplomatic immunity, which means we can’t get a warrant to do anything with the phone, such as trace back its GPS locations. He has a wife, a thirty-year-old son, and a daughter who attends Georgetown University. The wife and daughter went with Daddy to San Cristobal, so the phone that sent the text may belong to the son.”

  “Jorge, you saw the texts. This girl was kidnapped. Can’t you do an unofficial GPS backtrack on the phone?”

  “Are we on speaker?”

  “No.”

  “The phone has its GPS locator disabled. Whoever this guy is, he has something to hide.”

  “What’s his name.”

  “You’re gonna love this, amigo. It’s Antonio Ricardo Crucero Calderone.”

  “With my luck, this idiot is a distant cousin.” My Mexican mother’s maiden name is Calderone and my legal name is Carlos Andres McCrary Calderone, after the Mexican custom.

  Jorge laughed. “San Cristobal is a long way from Mexico, amigo. If he’s kin, he’s an eighth cousin or some such.”

  “Where’s Antonio now? Does he live in Port City or is he here on vacation?”

  “Funny you should ask. When we asked about the son, the embassy stonewalled us. A snooty embassy fart reminded me the ambassador and his family enjoy diplomatic immunity. The embassy would release no personal information, not even the son’s whereabouts. And we can’t question them without the father’s permission.”

  “I suppose you asked for permission.”

  “Do cats have hair?”

  “And their answer was…?”

  “Go piss up a rope. They used fancy diplomatic words to tell me to take a long walk off a short pier. That’s when I told Mr. Jenkins to call you.”

  “Which cell tower did the texts use?” I wrote down the address and the name of the cellphone carrier. “You have pictures of the two girls you identified?” I checked my notes. “Dolores Cherry and Morgan Putnam?”

  “I’ll email them to you.”

  “Thanks. Anything else to tell me?”

  “The DC cops couldn’t come out and say it, but one cop called them ‘diplobrats’—that’s what DC cops call the children of diplomats who ignore local laws. The mild offend
ers park illegally or break the speed limit, then tear up their parking citations and speeding tickets. The worst ones commit felonies like drug smuggling or assault. They had a diplobrat commit murder once. All the cops could do was ask the State Department to declare the perp persona non grata and make his country recall the guy.”

  “Is that the situation here? Human trafficking or drug smuggling?”

  “God, I hope not. We don’t even know if he lives here. If Antonio Crucero is a criminal, which we don’t know, our hands are tied.”

  “But mine aren’t.”

  “Exactamente, amigo. That’s why I told Jenkins to call you. We’ll keep working names from our end. If anything pops, I’ll keep you in the loop.”

  “I may not keep you in the loop from my end.”

  “Of course, I have deniability. Next time you see Jenkins, tell him you saved my freedom and my career. Hopefully, you can save his daughter.”

  Chapter 4

  Liz sat on the edge of the bed and watched as the john closed the door behind him. Maybe he was the last one for the day. She was tired and sore from servicing a dozen men. She didn’t bother to hope her day was over. Hope made no difference. Another stranger would come in the door or else Tommy would. One was as bad as the other.

  Liz washed in the bathroom before the next john showed. She didn’t bother to dress. Tommy would tell her if the john wanted to play dress-up. She returned to the bedroom and lay on the bed to wait for the next whoever—or whatever. It didn’t matter, did it?

  Some men opened the door and walked in like they owned the place. The fat ambassador for example. Others knocked like they needed permission to enter. They pretended this was a date even when she opened the door naked as Venus on the half-shell. Months ago, she told several johns that she was a captive. She asked them to call the police. They laughed, so they knew. Still, it was funny how many johns knocked. Maybe they sought the illusion of a normal romantic relationship. Liz had no illusions left.

  Benson Broady had been her first romance. They met at David City High School and dated for two years, he the basketball player and she the head cheerleader. She remembered their first clumsy love-making on the blanket behind the grain elevator. He had been so sweet, so tender, so… romantic. Wasn’t that the way love was supposed to be?

  Benson left for the University of Nebraska. She planned to follow him the next year. He drove out to see her on weekends when he came home from Lincoln. They used the blanket behind the grain elevator again and again. She thought of it as their place. She didn’t understand when Benson’s visits became less frequent and then before Thanksgiving they just stopped. Maybe it was the weather turning colder as autumn set in. At Christmas, he swore everything was fine between them. He had been busy, but he didn’t call. If he came home on a weekend, she didn’t know it. Easter weekend, she borrowed her dad’s car, drove to David City, and confronted him in his living room. Benson confessed he was seeing another girl, a freshman.

  That romance had been an illusion. Was it any different than the illusion the johns wanted? Sometimes she couldn’t tell the difference between real passion and fake. She sighed and looked back at the door.

  She never knew which john was the last until Tommy came in. He always opened the door without knocking. Of course, he did own the place. He would say her day’s work was done, and he would screw her one more time himself. Every day.

  She heard the doorknob turn. No knock.

  It was Tommy. “Hey, Angel. You had a good day today. I got compliments from three clients. They said they’d ask for you next time.”

  He called them clients, as if they were somebody special. They weren’t special to Liz. To her they were an endless drudgery of sweat, body fluids, and sore muscles. If johns complained about her sexual performances, Tommy would beat her. She sighed. At least Tommy wasn’t going to beat her this time.

  Tommy smirked. He never smiled, only smirked. “You know what I want, Angel.” He pushed her back on the bed.

  After it was over, she dragged herself to the bathroom one more time. At least he was the last one for the day.

  She stood under the hot water a long time in a vain attempt to scrub away the dirty feeling Tommy left her with. It didn’t work. It never did.

  For her thirteenth birthday, Liz’s mother gave her a pink flannel nightgown. When her mother died from breast cancer two years later, Liz wore it every night. The nightgown made her feel like her mother was there, even as her father became more distant. She washed it so often, it faded almost to white. She packed it first when she left for Disney. It was her link to the home she loved before her mother died. Before Daddy changed.

  Then she met Tommy. He was nice at first. He gave her a new phone to replace her old one. The old phone was so last year he said. They laughed when she threw it into the Atlantic. She abandoned her old life, her old character. He partied with her, gave her drugs and alcohol. After a week as her lover, he asked her to have sex with a friend of his. She refused and he hit her. He brought her to this place and made her watch as he burned her clothes in the alley behind. “Your past is dead, Angel. This is your future. I’ll give you everything you need.” He dragged her inside nude and locked her in this room for two days without food. She drank from the lavatory in the bathroom.

  When he did show, she was so grateful that she met all his demands. Better than starving to death, wasn’t it? Now she wasn’t so sure.

  She returned to the bedroom where she worked and slept. Tommy had burned her nightgown. The only underwear any of his Angels owned was kinky stuff some johns told them to wear. The small chest of drawers overflowed with thong underwear, crotchless panties, pushup bras, and sex toys. The closet held a few normal clothes she wore for meals downstairs. The rest was a nurse’s uniform, a maid’s uniform, and see-through negligees in red, white, and pink for the johns. None of them felt comfortable for sleeping.

  Liz sat on the bed and stared at the door. Tommy always locked it from the outside when he left. The bed felt warm where she and her kidnapper had lain. She stood. She couldn’t sleep yet—not on a bed still warm from a man who just raped her. She grabbed tissues from the box on her nightstand, dried her tears, and blew her nose. She had slept nude for eleven months, but she’d never gotten used to it. She felt exposed and vulnerable, even when she pulled the covers over her head and made a little tent the way she did when she was a child.

  Where was Daddy? Why hadn’t he found her? He might be mad at her for leaving, but he was her father. Did he change cellphone plans and get a different number? Maybe he didn’t receive the texts she sent. It had been a week with no action. Her spirits fell further.

  If he didn’t come soon, she would kill herself. Had she hidden enough pills for an overdose? How many would it take? If she tried to escape and failed, she’d be tortured to death. No, it would be escape, rescue, or overdose. Whatever she did, it had to work the first time.

  She flopped back on the bed. She’d give Daddy two more weeks to come through for her. Two more weeks and she was through. For good.

  Chapter 5

  Antonio Crucero was the type who shared his personal life on social media without hesitation. He had accounts on the first three websites I checked. I found all the information the San Cristobal embassy wouldn’t share with Jorge.

  Crucero lived on Port City Beach in a rented apartment. He called himself Tony Crucero—very American. I got both license plate numbers from pictures of his Glacier Silver Metallic BMW sedan and his Torch Red Corvette convertible. Diplomatic plates on both—easier to park in loading zones and by fire hydrants. He posted the names and pictures of exclusive bars and nightclubs he frequented. He was proud of the view from his waterfront apartment’s balcony. I downloaded selfies of him with different beautiful women, his black hair blowing in the wind when it wasn’t in a ponytail. The women were nines and tens. Most looked six feet tall; Crucero was five-foot-six. Diplobrat rated a three, maybe a four. What did they see in him? A jerk like hi
m needed more than money. Or were these women professional escorts?

  I filed that question away for future research.

  Using the backgrounds and angles in the photos, I figured out where his apartment was and the approximate floor he lived on.

  Saturday afternoon late, I staked out his building and waited for the Corvette or BMW to show.

  Another gorgeous South Florida sunset lit the sky over the Everglades as Crucero’s Corvette squealed down the garage ramp and headed south on Ocean Drive.

  He first stopped at the Pelican Roost, a thatched-roofed restaurant on an island in Seeti Bay, and a favorite on his Facebook page. He left his Corvette with the valet. I intended to stick a GPS tracker under his car, but if I failed, I needed my white Dodge Caravan accessible to follow when he left. I found a spot in the self-parking lot fifty yards from the rustic plank steps of the restaurant entrance. I backed in for a fast exit.

  The Corvette was parked too close to the valets for me to place the GPS tracker.

  I told the restaurant host that I was the first to arrive of a party of four. No, we didn’t have a reservation. Yes, I realized it was Saturday night. Yes, we would wait an hour-and-a-half for a table. The host jotted down the fictitious name I gave her. “When your table is ready, Mr. Washington, this pager vibrates and flashes red lights like this.” She tested the pager and handed it to me. “You can wait in the bar for your party.”

  The Pelican Roost sticks all customers in the bar long enough to order a drink before showing them to a table. Sure enough, Crucero slouched over a stool at the Tiki Bar, smack under a ceiling fan. His hair was longer than it looked on his social media page. He looked fatter in person than he looked on the internet, maybe because he was so short. I was surprised he fit into a Corvette. His XXXL Hawaiian shirt made a vain attempt to disguise his bulk. He left three buttons open in the tropical heat. Three gold chains hung halfway down a chest that could double for a bearskin rug. He wore two rings on each hand. He had no visible tattoos. Not surprising, since his arms and chest were so hairy a tattoo wouldn’t show through the fur. He sipped a Coco Loco with a paper umbrella and a bougainvillea flower stuck in the top. South Florida chic. The flower swayed in the breeze.