by Fynn Perry
“My client is willing to turn state’s evidence against Miguel Vargas in return for immunity and witness protection, including relocation,” Gomez said.
“He has to do some jail time. Minimum security.” Seeing their frowning faces, Chapman added, “He’ll be well looked-after; it’ll be like an extended holiday.”
“We said no jail time!” Gomez protested.
Chapman smiled. “Your client is in no position to make demands, Counselor. With or without his cooperation it’s over for him and the rest of Vargas’s men. We have enough to go on with the seized drugs. Montreal police are already on their way to arrest the buyers of the washing machines. We won’t stop ripping apart all of El Gordito’s businesses and company structures until we find out exactly where the drugs on that truck came from. When we do, I bet we’ll find a lot more besides, and we’ll nail everyone involved, including your client here, with everything we can. If your client doesn’t like a minimum-security prison, he sure as hell isn’t going to like a Supermax, because that’s where he’s heading.”
Gomez reciprocated Chapman’s sarcastic smile as he placed his hand on The Accountant’s forearm, as if to communicate to him that he had the situation under control. “Without my client’s help, it will take you months of tedious investigation to unravel Señor Vargas’s company structures and, without my client’s testimony, you will never get him on any murders. I know that is what you really want, Special Agent Chapman. You are ambitious, I can see that. So, let’s stop playing games. You know my client can’t be in any jail. Vargas will have him killed more easily in prison than out here. He’ll pay off a guard, a prisoner—he’ll get to him.” Gomez stared for a long couple of seconds at Chapman. “No jail time. Full immunity, witness protection, and relocation. And while you’re at it...I want the same package.”
Chapman chewed on that for a moment, and John felt a rush of renewed hope pass through him. If El Gordito’s own lawyer was turning against him, then Santiago’s host was done for and Santiago’s spirit was surely soon going to be out of The Game! All John had to do was to wait and see it happen.
“You’ll give evidence against Miguel Vargas?”
“I will.”
“You’ll be disbarred. You’ll be breaching attorney-client privilege.”
“You think El Gordito trusts anyone? If he’s sent down, even without me talking, he’ll have me killed to guarantee my silence. With what I can give you, you can get a death penalty in a federal court, and only the President himself could commute that. I’ll take being disbarred over being shot. A dead man can’t harm me.”
That’s where you’re wrong, thought John.
“Immunity and witness protection for us both—me and The Accountant here—or there’s no deal,” Gomez finished.
“What exactly do I get in return?”
“You get everything. The full accounts detailing every operation: shipments and storage, names and locations, details of payoffs to officials, kidnappings, names of his lieutenants and hitmen. His drivers and pilots of fast boats and planes, his engineers who manage encrypted communications, and his own private army of so-called security guards for his buildings and transport. You will have it all. Make the call.”
“What call?” Chapman asked, surprised.
“To your supervisor, of course. I’m guessing this is above your pay grade,” Gomez said snidely.
Chapman stepped out to make the call, as Gomez knew he would. The lawyer patted The Accountant on the back of the hand. “All good, Pablo,” he said, smiling. “At last we rid ourselves of that pig!”
The door opened after a few minutes.
“Agreed,” said Chapman. And, just like that, El Gordito’s lawyer and The Accountant both got immunity for all their sins.
“Give me something now,” Chapman demanded.
“Not until I have it all in writing, details and everything,” answered Gomez.
“Give me something now, or the deal is off,” threatened Chapman.
The Accountant looked at the lawyer, who nodded. “My desk in my office has two secret compartments. Your men won’t have found them. Before you wreck that fine antique, the way to open them is to press two buttons. Each button is disguised as a carved and gilded wooden rose. One is on the right-hand corner, the other in the middle of the of the desk under a drawer. Press them together and a compartment at the bottom of each of the two pedestals will spring out.”
“What’s in there?”
“Ledgers with the accounts of everything. The real accounts. Hard copies only, no electronic copies, nothing on any computer.”
“Explains a lot,” Chapman muttered, picking up his mobile phone. He made the call to one of his men currently leading a search at DNA and relayed the instructions that Gomez had just given. “Call me back immediately, the moment you have them,” he insisted.
The three men sat in silence for around five minutes before Chapman’s phone rang and he answered it. After he hung up, he turned to back to the lawyer and The Accountant. “The ledgers will be here in fifteen minutes. You’re going to a safe house now. Once the ledgers check out, we’ll pick up your wives and children and bring them to you. Then we get down to business.”
John sighed with relief. None of the agents that came in to take the lawyer and The Accountant away showed signs of possession. He could only assume that Santiago was still possessing El Gordito as he sat in one of the holding cells.
Chapman left the interview room and went to a nearby section of the precinct which had been taken over by fellow agents. He sat at a desk to make some calls, John assumed, to FBI headquarters regarding preparation of the immunity, witness protection, and relocation documents.
John followed him. After a while, the agent was interrupted between calls by a young male agent who brought in the two ledgers John had seen The Accountant using at his desk at DNA. The agent also passed on a message from the sergeant in charge of the holding cells. Apparently, El Gordito was becoming a nuisance, repeatedly shouting demands to see his lawyer, Raul Gomez.
“We have a duty to inform him that his counsel has disqualified himself from representing him,” one of Chapman’s colleagues at a nearby desk suggested.
“Let him sit and rot for a while longer. Gomez hasn’t technically disqualified himself yet—we’re still waiting on the paperwork for him to sign and he has to accept it first. Let me know if he asks for a replacement lawyer. I doubt he will; he still believes in the absolute loyalty of his men.” Chapman flicked through the ledgers. He ordered the contents be scanned and divided up between his team at the precinct and a team of waiting analysts at the FBI’s New York offices. “I want to know everything that’s in these ledgers before I get El Gordito back in that interview room.”
The next hour and a half were spent with Chapman barking orders and taking calls as the two agents worked frantically, receiving and reporting upon analyzed data on their laptop screens. Occasionally, more agents would appear with documents, causing John to fear each time that Santiago’s spirit may have left El Gordito’s body and possessed one of them to find out what was happening.
“OK, bring Vargas back into the main interview room,” Chapman said. “Gomez and The Accountant have signed a framework agreement. The two people in the world who can hurt him the most just turned on him.”
Chapman waited for El Gordito to be brought back, and until he was seated in front of the one-way glass. The sight of his eyes, still burning with the fire of possession, filled John with a small sense of relief at first––Santiago’s spirit must have stayed in El Gordito, no doubt so he could face his reckoning by the Voids in The Game. But then fear engulfed John as he considered the prospect of Santiago’s spirit emerging. He recalled Jennifer’s description of the look on the spirit’s face. Pure evil, she had called it.
Chapman returned to Interview Room 1 to be greeted by angry questions from El Gordito as to the whereabouts of his lawyer. After sitting down, he broke the news to the drug lord straigh
taway. “Your accountant and, wait for it...your lawyer have both caved and cut a deal to turn state’s evidence against you.”
John could see that the fire in El Gordito’s eyes was now blazing.
“You’re going to be taken now to Rikers, and this time, obviously, your lawyer won’t be defending you at the arraignment.”
El Gordito just stared at him with unbridled hatred. “Nobody testifies against me,” he hissed.
There was a knock at the door. An agent entered carrying two large ledgers. “In case you were thinking we’re bluffing . . .” Chapman said, as he took receipt of the two books.
John could tell right away that El Gordito recognized them. His eyes were now burning pure white. Santiago must be seething with anger as, surely, the spirit could see his host’s drug manufacturing empire about to crash down, and with it, his chances to succeed in The Game and stay on Earth.
Chapman pressed on, completely oblivious to the maelstrom of anger building inside the man opposite. “This has proved very interesting reading, Mr. Vargas. In this ledger, we have the details of the ownership structures of your companies and their accounts: the nightclubs you are famous for, the fulfillment center, and a number of companies supplying various household goods. I’m pretty sure we’ll find that they all use the services of the fulfillment center and include the retailer of the washing machines. But we don’t need to go through those companies to prove that the drugs we found in the truck crash originated from you. This second ledger gave us all we needed to know.” Chapman paused. “By the way, what are you doing with a medical research center? Finding new ways to torture your competitors?” Chapman allowed himself a chuckle.
El Gordito said nothing, but John’s heart raced at the sight of the fire raging in his eyes. The kingpin’s head and body were now starting to emanate a faint orange glow.
Chapman went on, his words surely penetrating not only El Gordito, but also Santiago’s spirit, like daggers, John thought.
“The second ledger details the cash flow of your drug manufacturing operation, the huge profits you make, and the vast network of ‘smurfs’ you require to wash all that cash through your intricate network of agents with false identities, who make small cash deposits, below the ten grand threshold level, into various banks in order to prevent alarms going off.” He paused and a smile played at the edges of his mouth. “Your production costs include top-end pharmaceutical grade analysis and research equipment, pill presses, ovens, and commercial brewing equipment. The raw materials don’t contain any well-known drug-making ingredients. Strange, because we had the pills tested so we know they contain heroin and cocaine, but there’s no poppy plant resin or coca leaf derivatives listed. Instead, it’s mainly sugar, molasses, specifically—and tons of it. Neither your lawyer or your accountant could tell us how the process works but they told us where we can see it. The drugs are being made under the supervision of a scientist you kidnapped and who works in a secret basement underneath the fulfillment center. An FBI SWAT team is on its way there right now.”
John watched, paralyzed with fear, as the glow inside El Gordito’s body got brighter until it penetrated the skin, and the spirit’s head emerged like a butterfly from a cocoon. The features were Hispanic but there was no beard, and the hair was short. It isn’t Santiago! Fuck! He looked again at the face of the spirit but didn’t recognize him. For all he knew, this could be the spirit of another of Santiago’s murdered lieutenants from his Miami gang days. Jennifer had shown him photos online from news stories, but there was no way he could remember individual faces. Why wasn’t it Santiago’s spirit? Had this other spirit been paired with El Gordito by the Voids for the purposes of The Game all along? Had he and Jen been wasting their time putting so much energy into trying to take down El Gordito when the failure of his drug business would have zero effect on Santiago?
He thought back to what Nikki had told him the evening she had shown him the Game. He had been so overwhelmed by the amount of information that he hadn’t realized, until now, that she hadn’t actually told him that Santiago’s spirit was possessing El Gordito. Neither had she told him that the narrative Santiago was to execute involved the creation of a new and highly addictive narcotic. He and Jen––pursuing their own assumptions without correction––had reached those conclusions. And since that was so, it began to appear that they were just an amusing sideshow in the Game. He felt a chill run down his invisible spine. For all they knew, Santiago’s spirit may have been charged with a completely different narrative that they knew nothing about. John’s would-be killer might actually be paired with a host that they were yet to meet.
The spirit rose out of El Gordito, causing his host to collapse onto the desk head-first. Taller and with a bigger build than John’s, it towered over Chapman, who was rushing to El Gordito’s body. The spirit stared at the one-way mirror and, for a moment, John thought it knew he was there. John couldn’t help but notice the bullet holes that riddled its chest. Someone had shot this person multiple times to make sure the big man was, in fact, dead.
Chapman tried frantically to revive El Gordito, pausing only to bang on the window and to run to the door to get help.
Seconds later, a medic rushed in with another two FBI agents. All this, including the welcome sight of the spirit walking away from him through the door and out of the interview room, faded into an insignificant blur for John as he was consumed with a terrible realization: he had been following the wrong host the entire time. The fact that he had helped to put a dangerous criminal behind bars gave him little solace––he had failed to ensure not only the safety of his girlfriend and her father, but also his own.
Two hours earlier, La Tarántula had logged off The Path to Paradise website and decided that a quick death was too good for Lazlo. Lazlo had to suffer, he had to feel pain, and the terms of the hit had been changed accordingly. Lazlo was to be maimed and not killed. He was to be left for Tarantula to finish off.
Specifically, Lazlo was to be shot in each kneecap, blindfolded, gagged, and left in an isolated and derelict location, making escape impossible. Masquerading as Shadow Dragon, Cromwell had agreed to the new plan, but had demanded an additional $200K for the additional work and risk involved. Not to do so, he believed, would raise suspicion. He immediately diverted the funds, when they arrived from Tarantula, into an FBI account. Perhaps now there would enough booze at the next Christmas party, he mused.
The final message from Cromwell, posing as Shadow Dragon, to Tarantula included a set of GPS coordinates where Lazlo could be found at 12:00 noon the following day.
A top-of-the-range Mercedes sedan pulled up and stopped outside a derelict factory in the Red Hook neighborhood of Brooklyn, a few minutes before midday. According to the car’s navigation system, the coordinates in the assassin’s message corresponded to a point in the center of one of the buildings. The car door opened, and a man got out. He was alone. He looked up at the side of the building and the building opposite. Both were six stories in height. He scanned the rooftop and broken windows before deciding how to enter.
Broken glass and building debris crunched under his handmade Italian leather shoes. His suit and open-necked shirt were a perfect fit for his tall and muscular frame. His walk had a purpose and confidence that only military training could give. In his left hand, he held a portable GPS device. In the other was a commando knife with a vicious serrated edge on one side, and an uncompromisingly sharp and smooth edge on the other.
The voice was screaming in his head: You’re going to gut him. Gut him like a pig! He has to pay! He clenched the handle of the knife tighter as he felt the anger channeling into his arm. It was 11:59 a.m. He needed to be right on time: too late and the victim might bleed out. Where was the fun in torturing someone who was already dead?
The building’s floors had been designed to form a large, central atrium that was flooded with daylight. On the floor, beneath the opening, he could see a body. The area around it had been swept clean of debris
and the head was turned away from him, the white, knotted straps of a blindfold and gag clearly visible. The knees were bandaged with blood-soaked cloth, and the hands were bound behind the figure’s back. All as ordered. Muffled moans confirmed Lazlo was still alive.
There he is! The pig needs to learn his lesson! screamed the voice.
The man cautiously approached the area beneath the atrium where the body lay, and instinctively looked up at all the balustraded walkways above him. A thousand places from which someone could watch him.
He unexpectedly faltered, then stumbled. It felt like his energy had left him, and he had the unfamiliar and disagreeable feeling that he might pass out. The voice in his head was strangely quiet. Then, just when he felt he was about to fall over, what felt like a sudden bolt of electricity re-energized him, and the voice returned.
It’s a trap! It’s a trap! It’s not him! it shouted. Go back! Go back! it cried again.
But he ignored the voice. He had come this far. Was he just going to walk away? He pushed on. Lazlo had to be punished, that’s what he had told himself. That’s what had to be done. Lazlo didn’t only have to die, he had to be so grotesquely mutilated that nobody, not even a cop, could mess with him. He had to send a message.
What are you doing? This is a fucking trap! It’s not him! It’s not him!
He continued to approach, ignoring the voice.
It’s not him! It’s not him! the voice continued.
He dropped the GPS to the floor with a clattering sound that echoed around the building and then he reached behind his back. He pulled out a Heckler & Koch VP9 handgun with his free hand and pointed it at the body while he held the knife at the ready in his other hand as he gave the body a kick in the back. He heard a groan. The voice in his head was still screaming, now in Spanish. But it didn’t matter, nothing mattered at that moment. Searing pain hit his left shoulder, accompanied by a cracking sound. A 5.56mm caliber bullet had torn through his shoulder. The nerve damage caused him to drop the gun, and the force of the bullet spun him into a backward fall.