by Chris Knopf
What these resumes didn’t reveal were my mother’s goofball sense of humor and unrelenting optimism, and my dad’s sweetness and unconditional support for anything and everything we wanted to do.
My sister used to say, “I think if I wanted to be an axe murderer, Dad would say, that’s fine, sweetie. Just be the very best axe murderer you can be.”
So it was left to her, ten years older, to shepherd me through the thickets of scholarships, academic achievement and the vagaries of professional life. This made her something of a busybody, and I owed her too much to completely deny her that prerogative.
“Arthur, where the hell are you?”
“Grand Cayman Island.”
“Vacation! That’s wonderful, you really need it.”
“Not exactly. We came down to empty out the safe-deposit box attached to Florencia’s Caymans account.”
“Oh,” she said, a bit deflated. “What was in there?”
“I don’t know yet. It’s in code.”
“Really.”
“So what’s been happening up there? The last time we talked they hadn’t traced Florencia’s laundering operation.”
“We turned over all the agency’s internal records, but apparently, vital pieces of information that could have led to the missing money had been thoroughly scrubbed. I wonder how that happened.”
“Gee, I don’t know. Heck of a thing,” I said.
“They aren’t even sure how much was embezzled. That creep who stumbled on the scam said it was millions, but who knows? Since none of the insureds ever had a loss she couldn’t cover, how do you assess damages? Bruce Finger, who’s back running the place, told me it was a dead issue. And even if it was worth their trouble to pursue further, our own liability insurance would cover any loss.”
Not likely, I thought, knowing the actual tab.
“Bruce did say there was one guy, a retired FBI agent, who still has a bug up his ass about the whole thing and pesters him on a regular basis. But it hasn’t come to anything.”
“Shelly Gross. We haven’t heard the last of him.”
We exchanged the usual back and forth—her telling me to be careful and take care of myself, me assuring her with no success that I would. Before I hung up, she said, “You got the guys who killed Florencia. Why take all these crazy risks now?”
“I don’t know why she did the things that got her killed.”
“And you have to know.”
“Bullet through the brain or no bullet through the brain, I have to know.”
THE BOXES arrived at the hotel the next morning. I met the delivery truck at the hotel loading dock. I showed the driver my ID, and then offered him a hundred dollars to hand the boxes over to me directly instead of going through the concierge.
“I probably woulda done it for free,” he said, “but since you’re offerin’.”
I took the service elevator up to my floor, and once inside my room, put the do not disturb sign on the doorknob and locked the door.
I slit open all the boxes and laid the equipment out on the bed, relieved that everything I’d ordered was there. I spent the day reading through instruction manuals and running demonstration programs, testing, configuring and integrating the components. Always agreeable work for me, even under extreme circumstances.
Out of their bulky packaging, I was able to carefully fit the field equipment into a large backpack. As darkness fell outside, I put on my black clothes and lay down on the bed to preserve my strength and calm my mind. I folded my arms across my chest and visualized the equipment configuration as a schematic diagram, with boxes and arrows, switches and connectors. For no good reason, this put me to sleep, delivering me five hours later to the chosen launch time.
I dragged myself out of bed, stuck my head in a sink full of water, toweled off, put on my black beanie, and struck out into the soft, hot air that perpetually caressed the summertime Caribbean archipelago.
At the police station, I repeated the prior operation, without hesitation. The hatch cover lifted off with less effort and minimum clamor. I wiggled out of the backpack and dropped it down the hole. Then I followed, sliding the heavy metal plate over my head when I was halfway down the ladder. I hooked two LED lanterns on the cable trays overhead, which lit up the crowded space like a birthday party.
The first task was to decouple the 50-pair cables and reattach the connectors to a switch block that gave me access to the voice information flowing through the lines. This caused the telephones served by each of the 50-pair cables to go dead for a few seconds, but I was reasonably sure no one would notice, even the cops.
Back when I last studied similar switch blocks—used to set up large temporary phone banks for things like conventions and fund raising events—a row of little red lights indicated which lines were operating at any given time. And that’s all you knew. Now, a wireless interface sent a signal to an application on my laptop that displayed the phone activity on a dynamic graph. I could see which lines were in use, by 50-pair cable, and by individual line. And then with a click of the mouse, I could hear any conversation I wanted to.
Decoupling the two data cables was more problematic. Any interruption in service would likely trigger analytic software to trace the break to the source, in this case, my hatch. My hope was I could plug in the phone-tapping devices quickly enough to have it show up as a simple blip in the network.
The devices were designed to be installed in a rack system with other telephonic gear in a closet somewhere inside a building. So it took extra care handling the exposed circuitry, and sharp aluminum edges, though in less than twenty seconds I had both units securely linked into the T1 lines. If the operating manual was to be believed, no one would be the wiser.
I had to use a separate wireless unit to feed the T1 voice and data into my laptop, but it was simple enough to toggle back and forth between the legacy phone lines and the ultra-modern.
That was good, but just a start. Once I was sure I was capturing all the information from all the cables, I booted up another application, called a voice analyzer. Legal and freely available like the switch block and tapping gear, voice analyzers were programs used by call centers to direct incoming calls and determine the mood of the callers. It could judge subtle nuances in the caller’s tone of voice, as well as home in on key phrases, like, “fuck you and all your robot operators.”
I’d spent much of the day programming in cop language and words relevant to Natsumi, like “Japanese,” “American,” “casino,” “First Australia Bank” and “safe-deposit box.” The voice analyzer would look for these words, analyze the tone with which they were delivered, and through the wireless connection, beam it all into my laptop.
Once I identified whatever cables were associated with the police station, I’d kill the other feeds to preserve bandwidth and processing capacity.
It didn’t take long.
Apparently the Colonial governing authorities believed the Royal Cayman Islands Police Service was worthy of the most up-to-date communications technology, and had dedicated a pair of T1 cables to that purpose.
I felt a little wistful unplugging the big old 50-pair switch block, as if mourning another part of my life that had become obsolete.
I watched the computer screen for another hour for keywords related directly to Natsumi, though for naught. So I packed whatever gear couldn’t be left behind, including the brilliant LEDs, and climbed back up the ladder.
probably because I was so tired, or because of all the pent-up nervous energy, I pushed the hatch cover with too much force, causing it to clang against the cement mount. I whispered a curse at myself as I lunged up through the hole, and this time far more carefully, dragged the big metal disc into place.
I’d just made it to the side street where I’d parked the SUV when floodlights snapped on behind me. I continued to curse myself in silence as I started the truck and argued in my mind over what to do next. Then I stopped arguing, and drove around the corner and down the str
eet directly in front of the police station.
Better to know.
The area surrounding the building and the grassy lawn next door was lit up like a night game at Shea Stadium, and a pair of RCIPS cops were out with flashlights and hands resting on the butt ends of the billy clubs stuffed in their belts. I drove by, and they barely looked at me, until I stopped and rolled down my window.
“Hey, sorry,” I said, “could you tell me how to get back to Seven Mile Beach?”
They seemed a little conflicted, looking both at me and up and down the street. Then one of the cops tapped the other on the shoulder and walked away, his flashlight scanning the sidewalk across the street from the station. His partner stayed with me to give directions.
I thanked him, then said, “What the hell’s going on here anyway? You guys are looking really intense.”
“Routine police business, sir,” he said, his speech graced with an Island lilt. “Best for you to just move along.”
“Yeah, yeah, sure. No problem. Can I turn around?”
He nodded, so I moved slowly up the street, made a very careful and leisurely three-point turn, and drove past them. They waved as they went back into the police station, their equanimity restored and my hatch left behind, undisturbed.
I drove back to my hotel, filled with relief and the residue of nervous tension, defiant in the face of the capricious and unforgiving night.
CHAPTER 3
I was in my hotel room in the company of all the phone traffic going in and out of the RCIPS HQ. If I hadn’t had the voice analyzer, I’d have to listen to conversations one at a time, in real time, to uncover useful information. With the analyzer, it was more productive to let a few hours go by so the application could search for keywords, and subtleties, such as standard American versus Caymanian inflections.
Not that this was easy. It took every ounce of self-control to keep my suppressed anxiety from exploding out the top of my head. I ran a mantra in parallel with my regular inner monologue. Something like, “Stay calm. Don’t panic. Don’t get hyper. Concentrate.”
And stay occupied. So while the program ran in the background, I did a search of local news outlets for any hint of Natsumi’s capture, though nothing came up. That told me something, though I wasn’t sure what. I went to the American consulate’s website and read up on what to do in the event of arrest by local authorities. Since the first instruction was to alert the American consulate, which I couldn’t do, the rest was of little value.
To the best of my knowledge, no one knew I’d survived the bullet that was supposed to take me along with Florencia. Any revelation to the contrary would start a process that would likely end with me in jail for the rest of my life.
After an agonizing wait, I went back to my monitoring program.
There were three hits: “Japanese,” “American woman” and “American consulate”—all within the same phone call. I clicked on the recording.
“Status,” was the first word spoken, in a tone the analyzer described as abrupt.
“We talkin’ to the Japanese girl, inspector, but she not talkin’ back.”
“Nothing?”
“Just demandin’ to be turned over to the American consulate. We try to explain that we scoop her up before goin’ in there. Why should we turn her over now?”
“No questions about that?”
“No, sir. She just keep telling us to call the consulate, and all this nonsense about how kidnapping an American woman was going to spark an international incident.”
The line was quiet for a moment. Then the inspector said, “So she’s American. You know that.”
“She talk like an American and why else the American consulate? You told us to ID her, but she don’t touch nothing and won’t take food or water. This girl know from fingerprints and DNA. Maybe if we can bring her into the station . . .”
“No,” the boss said, cutting him off. “Can’t take that risk. Stay in the house and keep your heads down. We’re bargaining with the Americans now. Need to keep the merchandise safe. She has to eat and drink eventually. Give it another couple hours, then print her and swab her mouth whether she like it or not.”
When they broke the connection, I searched for more hits, adding a few new keywords like “swab” and “DNA.” A new list, sorted chronologically, appeared on the screen. I clicked on the first conversation:
“Inspector Josephson,” said the boss, answering the phone.
“We did like you say with the prints and swab. Man, that little Jap girl, she’s a tiger,” said the other man. He was breathing hard.
“Get that stuff over here.”
“On the way, inspector. Georgie bring it after he drop Antonio off at hospital. Girl near opened up his face with those claws.”
“Just get it over here.”
“He’s coming.”
The next call was an hour later, initiated by Josephson.
“Okay, Officer Brick, the girl’s name is Natsumi Fitzgerald. That’s all our American friends are giving up. They seriously want this person. You didn’t hurt her any?”
The other guy let out a sharp laugh. “All the hurtin’ was done to our side. You try swabbin’ a wild dog.”
“Tell her we now know everything about her. Tell her she’s in big trouble with the Americans, so she doesn’t want to go to that consulate. Tell her we can keep her in George Town long as she wants. Just need a little cooperation.”
“But we know nothing but her name.”
The inspector sighed.
“She doesn’t know that. We got her name, that’s good enough. You never interrogate anybody? Do I got to come over there?”
“No, sir. I’ll call back in an hour.”
He was true to his word.
“She don’t care about our story, inspector. She still demanding to go to the consulate. She say her name’s Zelda, not Natsumi. And she drank a lot out of the bathroom faucet when she went to take a piss. I think it gave her a boost.”
I could hear the thoughts of the inspector as he absorbed that last bit.
“Brilliant, officer. Just brilliant.”
“Can’t be watchin’ a woman take a piss, sir.”
“You like your job?”
”Yes, inspector.”
“Watch her take a piss. Just don’t look like you’re enjoying it.”
“Yes, inspector.”
The next calls were innocuous and inconclusive. Natsumi was holding firm and there was no movement on the negotiations with the Americans, whose exact identity was never revealed. Near the bottom of the list, things took a bad turn.
“Time to move the Japanese girl,” said the inspector.
“We bringin’ her in?”
“No, need a new place to be keeping her. The Americans getting hostile. Say they send the Seals, bust up the place, put on the diplomatic pressure. This thing’s startin’ to get ahead of my pay grade.”
“They don’t know we’re here,” the officer said, in a plaintive way.
“Brick, you don’t know these people. They got ways of knowing shit we never dream of. Get out of there and come see me when you’re secure.”
Damn it all to hell, I said to myself. I clicked on the last call on the list, placed only an hour before. The incoming call to HQ was from a new number, a different cell was my guess.
“We all settlin’ down and comfy, inspector. I be by to discuss.”
“No. Meet me at Henrique’s. At the bar. No uniforms.”
“Aye, sir. Understood.”
The second they clicked off, I jumped over to Google and searched for bars or restaurants called Henrique’s. Nothing. Then I searched the name and got more than I could sift through in short order. I went back to restaurants and bars and searched each site for anyone named Henrique. I tried not to look at the time as I felt the opportunity drain away.
I went back to Henrique the name, and tried coupling it to anything bar related.
Then bingo. Henrique Fox, Bartender of the Y
ear 2007. Still holding court at the Crazy Parrot Caribbean Grill and Saloon. I clicked over to their site. One block from my hotel.
I ran into the bathroom and stared at myself in the mirror. For comfort, I’d removed the Bernie Madoff disguise, and there was no time to put it back on. Under the hat and wig was my shiny bald head. I put on a pair of black-framed glasses and a loud tropical shirt over a white T-shirt and white linen pants. I also brought along a dark blue lightweight blazer and a different baseball cap.
It would have to do.
The Crazy Parrot was easy to spot, a giant neon sign depicting its namesake hanging above the door of a tattered, Colonial-era stucco building. Inside was a clean, brightly lit if well-worn space, painted in the usual array of brilliant Caribbean colors. Most of the floor space was taken up by the bar, with maybe a dozen tables lining the opposite wall. I sat at the bar, ignoring the other guests as I looked expectantly at the bartender.
Once I had a beer in hand, I looked around the place. It was thinly patronized, mostly by small groups of men and women. Five men sat at the bar, one solo and two pairs engaged with each other in conversation.
There’s an old trope in books about cops and robbers that the cops are always easy to pick out of a crowd, even in civilian clothes. It sounds sort of believable, but it’s not exactly true. Normal, non-narcissistic cops look and act like everyone else when they’re off duty. So either pair at the bar could have been my quarry.
I first concentrated on the two with the greater age difference. The older man was doing most of the talking. He was bigger than the younger man, who showed a hint of deference in the way he actively listened. There was a TV above the bar showing a soccer game. I moved behind them, ostensibly to watch, which half worked. I would have been close enough to overhear them speak, if it hadn’t been for the TV.