Earthbound : A gripping crime thriller full of twists and supernatural suspense

by Fynn Perry

  It wasn’t the first time that Lazlo had been suspended. He had gotten through previous suspensions in the past and been reinstated, but this time it was different. He could lose his badge. Being an NYPD detective gave him status. Status allowed him to keep the balance of power in his favor when it came to his contacts in the criminal underworld. This was more important now than ever.

  As he stared silently at the box of files he had surreptitiously retrieved from his desk at work, he heard footsteps approach the front door. They sounded louder than he would have expected. Immediately, he played back in his mind how he had entered the house––carrying in the box with both hands. Preoccupied with thoughts of his suspension, he had given the door a kick to close it. Not only had he forgotten to go back to lock it, but it seemed that it hadn’t closed fully.

  The footsteps stopped as if somebody was assessing a door that had been left ajar.

  The next few seconds would betray the visitor’s intentions, good or bad. There was no knock on the door, or ring of the doorbell. Instead, the door creaked open.

  Lazlo got to his feet and inched his way along the wall separating the living space and the hallway. He stopped at the edge of the large archway connecting the two areas. Devoid of his service weapon, his own guns were, excruciatingly, just out of reach across the hallway, in the secret room where he stored his research on El Gordito. His heartbeat became elevated as he heard just the barest sound of shoe grit being crunched underfoot on the granite flooring of the hallway. He pressed his back and the side of his head against the wall and waited. The gun of the intruder didn’t appear first in his line of sight, as he had hoped. That would have afforded him the opportunity of surprise and a chance to disarm the trespasser. But the intruder was a professional and had scoped out the view into the living area from the safety of the far wall of the hall, only coming into Lazlo’s view at a safe distance with his gun pointing at him.

  The detective immediately recognized the face behind the Glock 17M handgun favored by the FBI. It was Lee Chapman.

  “What the fuck, Lee? Out of the blue you call about fake IDs, and the next thing I know, you’re sneaking around my house and pointing a gun at me?”

  George Cromwell appeared next to Chapman, holstering his weapon in unison with Chapman. “We saw the door open and wanted to make sure you were fine,” Cromwell said, extending his hand. Lazlo’s handshake, in addition to his greeting, was noticeably warmer to his old friend Cromwell than to Chapman as he let both through into the living room. “I’ve had a lot on my mind. Guess I forgot to close the door.”

  “We know about the suspension,” Chapman said, eyeing the box of files.

  “I guessed that’s why you’re here,” Lazlo replied. “So what is it? Good news, I hope?”

  “Yes and no,” said Chapman.

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “We couldn’t trace whoever it was who ordered the counterfeit IDs associated with El Gordito’s money laundering operation, but it wasn’t too hard to lean on the New York residents whose faces were on the ID cards. They were part of a ‘smurfing’ or ‘mule’ network hired to open bank accounts under fake identities, to receive funds into those accounts, and then pass them on to other accounts overseas, minus a nice commission. They were recruited from ads, which targeted people in debt with the promise of easy money.

  “Like I said on the phone, it sounds like a regular setup. How is this good news for me?” demanded Lazlo.

  “The people on the IDs gave descriptions of three handlers they had to report to on their laundering targets. We saw all three of these men at multiple meetings with Hernandez and Gonzalez who, I am sure you know, are two of El Gordito’s henchmen.”

  “Sure… and?”

  “We can’t prove the link yet,” Chapman said. “We’re drilling down into the accounts.”

  “That’s it?” inquired Lazlo.

  “No. There’s been one hell of a crash out of town, on the I-84 between Albany and Saratoga Springs. Witnesses say the truck suddenly jackknifed. Amazingly, the driver got out alive but pulled a gun on the police and was shot dead. Initial identification seems to indicate it was Alberto Gonzalez. The state police are running a check to find the registered owner of the truck.”

  “What? El Gordito’s third-in-command was driving a truck and overturned it? Why the hell would he do that? What was on the truck?” interrupted Lazlo.

  “He was transporting washing machines packed with pills. Not opioids or ecstasy, but Spider’s Bite pills. It’s the first time we’ve seen such a large shipment of these new pills. Scrub that—any pills. El Gordito must be a major distributor, if not the main distributor. The delivery manifest shows they were being transported from a fulfillment center in New Jersey.”

  Lazlo looked furious. John, who had just returned to the house five minutes earlier, was both surprised at seeing Lazlo at home and delighted to see him being informed of the crash by men in suits who, he assumed, were FBI. But then he began to stare at Lazlo with astonishment. El Gordito was finally about to get what was coming to him and Lazlo wasn’t happy?

  Lazlo was shaking his head angrily. “Five years, I’ve worked El Gordito!” he exclaimed. “Tracking every murder he was suspected of and every drug bust he avoided being connected to. Now you guys get lucky with a truck full of drugs overturned by one of his top men! I’m the one who put him under pressure and caused him to make mistakes! I get my badge and gun taken away from me. That’s the fucking thanks I get, while you guys breeze in on the back of my fucking work?”

  “You did what you could, Lazlo,” Chapman said calmly. “We’ll be bringing in Vargas under a federal arrest warrant. Drug trafficking and falsifying identities are federal crimes, so we won’t have to deal with any state judges that El Gordito may have compromised. It’s a different ball game now.”

  “At least tell me when you plan to raid the fulfillment center! I need to be part of it!” pleaded Lazlo.

  “You can’t be,” said Chapman.

  “Forget the suspension! That’s bullshit! You need me on this raid! I know how his mind works,” argued Lazlo. “I need this, I can’t just sit around in this house all day. Policing is my life!”

  “It’s not the suspension, Dan.” Chapman paused awkwardly. “There’s a contract out on you. A hit has been ordered.”

  “Go on,” said Lazlo with a mixture of shock and anger on his face.

  “An assassin known only as Shadow Dragon was contracted via the dark web yesterday. We tried to take him out an hour ago at a location in Hawaii when the full upfront payment went through, but––”

  “But what?” snapped Lazlo.

  “We were sure we had him. George here burst through all his encryption and we know the assassin was there just minutes before the raid. So close!”

  “What fucking good is that now, Lee? You guys don’t know anything about this assassin. You didn’t see anything, did you? Christ! You don’t even know if it’s a he or a she, right? What’s his or her kill efficiency?”

  “A hundred percent and at least twenty kills that we know of…” Chapman paused awkwardly. “He’s responsible for around eighty that we suspect him of. True, we don’t know if it’s a she, but very few assassins have been female.”

  “Just great guys! Assuming it’s a ‘he,’ and you missed him an hour ago—he was probably heading to the airport to come for me. What’s his nearest airport?”

  “Honolulu. Nine and half hours to JFK,” came the response, also pre-empting the second question.

  “Wait a second, why did you come here with your guns drawn? You thought he might already be here!’

  “It was unlikely, but we didn’t want to take any chances,” Cromwell admitted. “In addition to all the location cloaking that I broke through, I couldn’t rule out that he hadn’t used a remote method of controlling his computer that I hadn’t been able to trace.”

  “Perfect! How much for the hit?”

  “It’s a seven-figur
e hit. You’re NYPD and a detective, for God’s sake––anyone with a shield will want to avenge your death.”

  Lazlo raised his eyebrows, slightly mollified and flattered at this proof of his value.

  “With administrator’s privileges I could get the buyer’s IP address––” Cromwell interjected.

  “Yeah, I know you’re clever, George. Just tell me who ordered it, for Christ’s sake!” interrupted Lazlo.

  Cromwell continued. “The buyer used the name ‘La Tarántula,’ meaning Tarantula in Spanish.”

  “I know what it means, George!” Lazlo muttered impatiently.

  “It came from an IP address located in an exclusive loft complex in Manhattan.”

  “Fuck it, George! Whose?”

  “We know that El Gordito and his lieutenants have condos there. I narrowed the address to somewhere in Victor Sanchez’s condo. The trail leads to Sanchez, but it’s obvious that he was doing it on El Gordito’s orders.”

  “So, El Gordito thinks he can just order a hit on me now?” Lazlo said, his anger rising.

  “We have a plan, including dealing with the hitman,” said Chapman.

  “Well, thank God for that! I feel better already! Is it a hundred percent efficient?”

  “Try to stay calm. There’s better news. We’ve taken over the communication between Shadow Dragon and Tarantula by assuming their identities. We’ve made the real Shadow Dragon think that Tarantula has called off the hit while leaving Sanchez and, by extension, El Gordito thinking that it’s still in play,” explained Chapman.

  “But the assassin’s been paid everything upfront, a hundred percent,” Lazlo countered. “Shadow Dragon doesn’t sound like the kind of assassin that gives refunds.”

  “No...and from what we know––” started Chapman.

  “Which isn’t a lot,” Lazlo interrupted, frustrated.

  “It’s true that he might do the job just to seal the contract,” Chapman continued. “You know, under some kind of hitman code of honor. We figured the only way out is to pay him more.”

  “Pay him not to kill me? That’s great! And the FBI has money lying around to pay hitmen for not killing people?”

  “In a manner of speaking, yes. We hijacked some unrelated transactions on the site and transferred the Bitcoins into the assassin’s account. We made it looked like it was coming from El Gordito’s man, Sanchez. You know, under his name, Tarantula,” said Cromwell.

  “OK, so you think you’ve called off the hit with the assassin, but you have Sanchez and El Gordito believing it’s still going ahead. Now what?”

  “We want to get more on Sanchez than just an intent-to-murder charge. We need to place him, and maybe even El Gordito, at a murder scene that we will stage.” Chapman added.

  “How do you figure on doing that? The whole point of him hiring a hitman is for him not to be anywhere near the body!”

  “We’re counting on the fact that because of your illustrious relationship with him, Vargas will want to see the body, to satisfy himself that you’ve really gone. His type always does. We’ll need you to play dead and then we’ll take photos of you in a staged murder scene. Then, when Vargas wants to see the body, you’ll be safe somewhere else, while we’ll use an agent as a stand-in for you. At that point, we’ll arrest him and whoever else he brings to the party. It means you’ll have to disappear completely until we have him arrested and, of course, until we’re sure the real hit has been called off,” Chapman said.

  “Of course!” Lazlo agreed sarcastically.

  Chapman was getting ready to leave. “I’ll see you at the car,” Cromwell said to him.

  “Make it quick! We have less than eight hours to stage Lazlo’s death and for him to disappear,” replied Chapman as he left the brownstone.

  Cromwell turned to Lazlo. He put his finger to his lips—it was the universally understood symbol to be quiet. But Lazlo understood that it meant the place they were in could be bugged.

  “Go and talk to Joseph now. I’ll let you know when we need you,” Cromwell said.

  ‘Talking to Joseph’ was code. Code that only Cromwell and Lazlo knew. Since Quantico, they had kept in touch. ‘Joseph’ was a secluded log cabin out in the woods in Oregon that George had bought with some inheritance money and that he’d kept in order to escape, from time to time, the pressures of working at the FBI. It was accessed by a series of unmarked dirt roads and was six miles from a lake that was good for fishing.

  The cabin had helped Lazlo reassess his life after his divorce and after quitting Quantico. He had never seen another soul in all the times he had been there, and that was just the way he liked it. More importantly, the cabin had high visibility on the surrounding grounds. It was located in a clearing in the forest, making it impossible for anyone to approach the cabin under cover of trees.

  John followed Chapman and Cromwell back to Lazlo’s precinct, the 73rd, where he assumed the FBI would make their base.

  Entering the station, he saw a few men in suits and blue windbreakers with the letters FBI stenciled on their backs. They were setting up computers, moving files, sequestering furniture—confirming he was right. Fresh coffee was brewing in response to the increased demand, but the interview rooms were still empty. He decided to wait it out until arrests were made and got himself out of view, crashing in the janitor’s closet again to get some rest. He would need it.

  In a hotel room by JFK airport, booked under the unisex name Alex Simpson, Shadow Dragon moved the onscreen slider to the start of the recorded film footage of the FBI raiding her Honolulu home. She was well aware that even successful professional killers left tracks. Like her, they needed a slew of trusted partners in order to do their job: an accountant, weapons suppliers, informants, contacts, and more. But she wasn’t just successful, she was the best, and one of a new breed––a digital nomad who resided, along with her partners, only in the dark web, cloaked in anonymity.

  Twenty-Six

  As soon as John awoke, he made his way back to the interview rooms. He could already sense, even from a distance, that there was increased activity in and around that area. Passing through the wall of the observation room that looked into Interview Room 1, he counted six people, all of them looking out through the one-way window. El Gordito was in the interview room, sitting opposite a man in a suit who had his back toward the glass. Immediately, John saw that El Gordito was possessed; an orange glow smoldered in his eyes. Santiago’s spirit must have returned.

  After a few seconds, John recognized that the man with his back to him was Lee Chapman of the FBI. He listened in to the conversation that was being relayed through the overhead speaker.

  “Your man Gonzalez crashed a truck carrying drugs hidden in a shipment of washing machines. The delivery manifest shows that it came from your fulfillment center in Newstone, New Jersey. You and your organization are now the subject of a federal inquiry.”

  El Gordito shrugged. “You’re barking up the wrong tree, Special Agent. Fulfillment centers like mine simply receive, store, and distribute goods for companies who don’t want to invest in their own warehouses. I am in the business of storing sealed packages. Thousands of them. I can hardly be expected to check every one of them. If some unscrupulous criminal organization decided to hide drugs inside some of the goods, I cannot be held responsible,” he said, giving Chapman an incredulous smile.

  Chapman seemed unfazed, but John was starting to worry just how much of a case the FBI really had. “How do you account for Gonzalez being the driver?” Chapman asked.

  “I suppose he was helping out. Perhaps the original driver of the truck was taken ill? I don’t get involved in all the details of my businesses, Special Agent.”

  “Enough of the bullshit! We’ve got federal arrest and search warrants that give us the right to seize your accounts and raid every business you own.”

  “You will find my accounts and businesses are in order. Anything else you can discuss with my lawyer.”

  John knew how well
the drug manufacturing was hidden and figured El Gordito would have a prepared set of legitimate accounts to show to the FBI. He shuddered at the prospect of him walking away from these new charges due to lack of hard evidence. All John’s efforts would amount to nothing. Far from closing down the drug business of Santiago’s host and thus making the evil spirit fail at The Game, he would have simply postponed Santiago’s victory.

  Chapman got up. “Looks like your lawyer is taking his time getting here.”

  John watched as El Gordito was taken out of the room by a police officer. He didn’t look concerned, and while his eyes glowed orange, they didn’t burn with rage. Santiago’s spirit must feel confident that his host will soon be released, John thought.

  One of the agents in the observation room with John stood up from his computer as Chapman entered. “Why didn’t you tell him his accountant is with his lawyer, next door, trying to cut a deal?”

  “I’m not going to show him our cards just yet. At the moment, just let him wonder where his lawyer got to. Let it play on his mind for a while.”

  John suddenly felt a spark of hope. He couldn’t resist checking that The Accountant was indeed being held at the precinct and cutting a deal. Would they really be holding him next door?

  John followed Chapman out of the room and watched him enter Interview Room 2. He didn’t follow him in, preferring to look through the one-way window of the adjacent observation room, in case any of the occupants were possessed.

  Entering the observation room, John saw it was occupied by a pair of Feds typing away at their laptop computers. Through the one-way glass he saw the puffy faces and bulky frames of The Accountant and El Gordito’s lawyer, Raul Gomez, sitting opposite Chapman, who’d now moved through into this second interview room. The Accountant sat in a well-tailored suit, one of his hands cuffed to a steel bar set into the table. Gomez was sitting in an even nicer suit and was making notes in a leather-bound jotter using a fat black pen with gold fittings. John could hear the conversation in the interview over the speakers.