by Chuck Dixon
These theories were all nonsense, of course. But Jordan Roth could never prove that. Who would believe a crazy story about Russian hitmen who killed his wife but let him live? Certainly not a bunch of cops looking to hang a murder around the neck of a famous surgeon.
He really thought he'd sold himself into a life of criminal adventure with Karp and Nestor. It was only another chapter in his life — a dull one at that.
Now he wrote scrips four days a week and read mystery novels on the beach the rest of the days. He had a condo in Pompano and a girlfriend who was a waitress at the Ebb Tide. He drank more than he should. He was having frequent headaches. He didn’t sleep nights. Not well anyway.
When he did sleep, he had a dream. It was of the weekend he drove Arlene to college for her freshman year. In the dream, he is driving along a scenic road lined with green under blue skies. Arlene is as young in the dream as she was on that day. But in the dream, she wears a stained print hospital gown as she had the last time he saw her alive. She looks out the window and does not speak.
He tries to talk to her but she does not turn her head. He can never remember what he says to her, only that he feels increasingly frustrated. Finally, he is shouting at her. She turns from the window to look at him without expression, without recognition. Arlene opens her mouth as if to say something. She reaches out to turn up the volume on the radio.
The music fills the car and drowns out his pleas for her to forgive him.
She turns away and looks out the window at the trees and clouds going by.
Levon’s Night
Chuck Dixon
Kindle edition
© Copyright 2019 (as revised) Chuck Dixon
Wolfpack Publishing
6032 Wheat Penny Avenue
Las Vegas, NV 89122
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced by any means without the prior written consent of the publisher, other than brief quotes for reviews.
1
“It is very bad, sir.”
The cop was young and snapped to attention in a rigid salute. Pressed fatigues and body armor. Cap pulled low over his eyes. The one spot of color on his dark uniform was a patch depicting a police officer standing protectively by a pair of children. The lines around the young man’s mouth were deep. His voice husky with emotion.
“I have seen bad,” Ramon Salas said, stepping into the shade of the awnings over the broad veranda. The day was already hot, the sun up only a few hours. The breeze off the Caribbean was doing little more than stirring the muggy air along the Costa Rican coast.
“Very bad, sir,” the young cop repeated and led the way through the expansive villa toward the main crime scene at the back. There were secondary crime scenes outside the big house. Two bodies lay outside; Ramon saw them from the back of the police cruiser on his way in. One by the wrought iron access gate. Another on the circular turn-around before the main entrance. Both bodies appeared to be men covered in sheets. Flower print sheets taken from the house to preserve the dignity of the dead. The forensics team from Departamento de Medicina Legal would scold the answering cops for tampering with evidence. The cops from the Fuerza Publica stood about the bodies like ants around crumbs of bread. Black uniforms and body armor. They smoked and talked while waiting for someone like Ramon to show up. Someone who would take the bloody mess off their hands.
The house sat on a hill overlooking the sea. All spread out with outbuildings that formed a courtyard around an enormous saltwater pool. Ten thousand square feet maybe. On a ten-acre parcel in Puntayamas. Many millions in American dollars. The interior was cool with stale air-conditioned air. The rooms went on and on toward the back of the house.
Ramon walked past walls lined with paintings. He knew nothing of paintings. The walls of his home displayed pictures of his children. To him the paintings, in their expensive frames, looked like something his kids might have done. When they were four. And drunk.
The eager young cop stood aside and gestured with an open hand into a wide arched opening. He reminded Ramon of a presenter on a Mexican game show. And here are your prizes, señor.
The room had a high ceiling two stories in height. It was a large area meant for entertaining. Lots of upholstered conversation pits comprised of long sofas upholstered in cool linen and layered with mountains of embroidered throw pillows. A projection system for a TV screen that dominated a one hundred foot wall. The wall facing the back of the house was glass from end to end and ceiling to floor. The ocean filled the eyes. The morning sun turned the water to silvery shimmers. The remaining face of the room was dominated by a long bar with a full kitchen behind it. Shelves stocked with bottles. Behind the glass doors of a stand-up cooler Ramon could see row after row of bottled beer. Imported brands in green bottles. He licked his lips despite the earliness of the hour.
In an open area before the bar was the main crime scene. Three adult figures sat in steel framed chairs. Patio chairs dragged in off the veranda for this purpose. They were draped in sheets like the bodies out front. Ramon could see the exposed arm of a woman. She was secured to the arms of the chair with black tape at her wrists and elbows. Broad bands of tape held her ankles secured to the metal legs. More tape below the knee. Whoever did this was practiced.
The three adults sat in a row next to one another like members of an audience.
Or witnesses.
Across from them sat two more figures, smaller figures. Similarly bound with black tape. They looked tiny beneath the sheets that covered them like tents. A tasteful monochromatic print of palm fronds. Beneath the chairs was a joined pool of dried blood shining black in the sunlight slanting in through the window wall. In the sticky spill Ramon could see pale objects.
Fingers. The fingers of children.
One had a flower, a daisy, meticulously painted on the nail.
The eager young policeman was right.
This one was bad.
2
They told him that being bilingual would be a plus.
Fluency in Spanish and English would lead to advancement in the Bureau, everyone said.
Instead, it led to shit assignments like the one Bill Marquez was being briefed on now.
“Got a liaise job down in Costa Rica for you. Should be cake since you’re Mexican.”
“I’m Dominican, sir,” Bill said.
ADC Terry Blount squinted at Bill from across his desk. Sunlight filtered by LA smog glared through the window. The sounds of traffic from down on Wilshire filled the silence.
“That’s not a problem, is it?” Blount said.
“Da nada.” Bill smiled and shrugged.
ADC Blount let out a sigh. The FBI had become totally politicized in recent years. Every utterance had to be checked before it was spoken in order not to offend. A special agent used the word “siesta” in a surveillance report three years ago. The shitstorm of paperwork, hearings and mandatory seminars handed down from Justice went on for six months. The last thing the assistant director in charge needed was another weekend spent at a sensitivity course for thinking every beaner in his office was a Mexican.
“Okay. We’re good. Thanks for being cool about that, Bill.” Blount used his first name. We’re all buds here, right? Amigos.
“A liaison job, sir?” Bill said.
“Remember Corey Blanco?”
“The Ponzi guy? Took a bunch of investors for a ride. Mall real estate, right?”
“And an escrow surety company he bought then picked the clients’ accounts clean. Got away with almost a half billion,” Blount said.
“Got away is right. I’m guessing the trail got hot again?” Bill sat forward. They were sending him after one of Justice’s most wanted felons?
“Hot then cold. Corey Blanco is dead. Homicide down in Costa Rica. Whole family. The OIJ in CR is investigating. When they found out who they had they called State who called the AG who called us looking for someone to send down.”
“So, no investigation, sir?”
“Thank you, sir. But won’t there be evidence down there?”
“Evidence, Marquez?” They were back to last names.
"The funds Blanco got away with were never recovered. Hundreds of millions were taken from innocent investors. There might be something down there on a hard drive or paper. We might find some of those funds."
“Tell you what. If you find any bank receipts lying around with lots of zeroes on them you give me a call. We’ll send a team down. Otherwise, you are there to bear witness, sign forms and confirm the identity of the deceased. You comprende that?”
“Sí,” Bill said, biting the inside of his mouth to keep the sarcasm from escaping.
“So, email or paper?” ADC Blount said, fingers poised over his keyboard.
“Email. I’ll read it on the plane, sir.”
“Your flight’s at four. LAX. Get your toothbrush and jammies and get over there.”
3
“It was very bad,” Captain Ramon Salas of the Organismo de Investigación Judicial shouted, bending under the prop wash of the Huey they’d sent to ferry Bill to the crime scene.
“Okay,” was all Bill could say in answer to that as he took the older man’s offered hand.
They made introductions as they crossed the flagstone parking area where the chopper set down and toward the sprawling villa of the late, ex-patriate fugitive felon Corey Blanco. The two men were from roughly equivalent agencies investigating crimes that rose above a certain bar of malfeasance, national security or broad federal guidelines of misbehavior. Salas was much more senior. It wasn’t just the gray in his dark hair. It was the lines around the eyes and mouth. The face of a cop a few decades on the job. Bill liked him immediately.
Captain Salas led him through the house past the few uniformed cops that had been left behind to keep lookie-loos and looters away. Surfaces of furniture, walls, light switches and doors showed the greasy residue of a thorough fingerprint search. The carpets were trampled flat by the passage of many feet. Paintings on the wall were askew. Was that a Matisse study? Furniture had been moved aside to allow passage for cops, forensics, investigators and coroners.
The big room at the back of the house had yellow tape strung across one end cutting the room in half. LA LINEA DE LA POLICIA NO CRUZADO. One side was a dream home theater area — the other something out of a nightmare.
Three chairs sat across from two more. There was blood sprayed over the scene with a large stain beneath the pair of chairs facing into the room. Carefully cut strips of black duct tape were still stuck to the legs and arms. The set-up was obvious. The three chairs facing the water were for spectators. The two seats with their backs to the sea were the main show.
“Tell me what happened,” Bill said, touching fingers to a strip of yellow barrier tape. He’d get some answers before he set foot in the crime scene.
“Señor Blanco, his wife and their housekeeper were seated in the row of three chairs. The Blanco’s two children, a boy of six and a girl of ten, were seated there,” Salas said and gestured to the chairs in the pool of blood.
“Causes of death?”
"The children, in the end, had their throats cut. Señora Blanco and the housekeeper were each smothered with plastic bags cinched over their heads."
“And Corey Blanco?”
“Heart attack.”
“What was that?” Bill said, turning to Captain Salas.
“Señor Blanco suffered a massive coronary. There were no wounds to his body,” Salas said.
Bill stood for a moment, looking at the scene of horror that marred this beautiful home.
“How did the killers gain entry?”
"From the sea. Or they came along the beach from another point. All evidence was erased by the tide. So it is merely a guess. The front gates are covered by cameras. There are other cameras along the road leading to this house. Many families of wealth live on this beach. Security is complete. No unrecognized cars used the road the night of the murders."
"There was private security?" Bill asked. The kitchen and bar were untouched. The killers did not help themselves to booze or snacks — all business.
“Two men listed as assistants to Señor Blanco. One was found dead at the front gate. Another on the drive before the house.”
“Cause of death?”
“Blunt force trauma of some kind. We’re not certain of the weapon. They were each taken from behind by blows to the head powerful enough to fracture their skulls.”
“Unusual.” Bill made a note to look into the bodyguards’ backgrounds.
“We thought so as well,” Salas agreed.
“Anything else?” Bill asked.
“Follow me,” Sala said and turned to walk away. Bill followed.
In the home gym they arrived at a wall safe, a vault really, hidden behind a door disguised as just another mirrored panel in a long mirrored wall. The vault was six feet tall with shelves and drawers within. The contents were spilled on the floor. Bearer bonds. Some bundles of cash. Jewelry. Passports.
“It is all untouched. We wanted to leave this as we found it until your people arrived,” Salas said and met Bill’s eyes with a level gaze.
The message was clear. We took nothing. We are not thieves.
“This safe wasn’t forced open. Someone opened it for them. Probably under duress,” Bill said and crouched to look at the valuable litter lying in a heap between an elliptical machine and a stationary bike. He took a pen from his jacket pocket and used it to poke through the pile.
“We surmised it was Señor Blanco. They brought him here and he opened the safe for them,” Salas said.
“Almost a million in Yankee dollars here. About the same in Euros. And God knows how much in bonds and jewelry. I’d say they didn’t find what they were looking for.”
“Why not take what is lying here for the taking? Most of it is untraceable, no?”
“Because whatever they were looking for makes even what’s on the floor here look like chump change,” Bill said and flipped open a passport with the pen tip. Mrs. Blanco was young and pretty. Pretty enough to take a good passport photo.
“Que? Chump change?” Sala said, peering over Bill’s shoulder at the open passport.
“Poco poco.”
“I see. Chump change.”
“Blanco opened the safe for them. What they wanted wasn’t here. So they tortured his kids to make him talk. He had a heart attack and spoiled their plans. Stress, probably.”
“But he let these men torture his children for a very long time,” Sala said, recalling the autopsy report.
"Maybe that's the kind of hard man Blanco was. Or maybe seeing what they were doing tripped his heart off. Maybe they kept on going hoping the wife knew what they were looking for. I'm betting she didn't. They left here empty-handed."
“Jesus Maria. What were they looking for?” Sala sighed.
Bill Marquez stood and replaced his pen in his jacket pocket.
“Corey Ray Blanco got away with over seven hundred million dollars from investor fraud and outright theft. Subtracting this house and whatever he spent on his wife and kids the past decade still leaves a shitload of cash somewhere. These men were after that. The whole enchilada.”
“Que?”
“An enchilada is like a burrito, I guess.”
Sala laughed at that.
“Yeah. Right. ‘The whole enchilada’ means everything. They want it all.”
“And your FBI will send more agents to try and find the men who did this thing? These men will be far away from Costa Rica by now. I do not have the means to pursue this any further.”
“I’m going to tell you the truth, Captain,” Bill said. “My bureau could give a shit about the men who killed this family. But my government has more than a few agencies who’d like to find Blanco’s money. A
ll I have to do is convince them it’s worth looking for.”
“And you? What do you wish to find?” Sala said, studying Bill’s eyes.
“I want the animals who could do something like this. And I want them soon. Because I don’t think this is the end of all this. I think it’s just the start.” Bill excused himself to make satellite phone calls to a few numbers back in the States.
4
Levon Cade sat forward in the upholstered leather chair. His elbows on knees. Neither sitting nor rising but poised for either.
“I wish you’d make yourself comfortable,” the thin-faced, bearded man said to him.
“I am comfortable, Doctor,” Levon said.
“You can call me by my name. Justin.” Dr. Justin Ayres smiled where he sat lounging back in the swivel chair he’d pulled from behind his office desk in order to sit closer to Levon.
Levon scanned the room. An office with a few too many personal touches to be entirely professional. Bookshelves packed with textbooks and file folders in standing plastic cases. There was a Superman action figure next to a framed photo of Dr. Ayres kayaking through white water. A potted plant by the window, fronds stretched to reach through the slats of the partly open blinds. The desk, an antique or heirloom, was stacked with file folders held together with rubber bands. An open laptop occasionally made muted cartoon noises.
They sat that way for a while. Not talking. Levon unmoving yet kinetic. Dr. Ayres smiling easily over templed fingers, eyes on Levon’s face.
“You mentioned post-traumatic stress,” Dr. Ayres said after a while, giving up, for now, on having his new patient call him by his first name.