Blood in the Water

by Jack Flynn

  ‘You didn’t know me.’

  ‘I know. It’s weird, but it was just an impulse I couldn’t resist. I didn’t even think about it. I just moved across the bar and grabbed him.’

  ‘I thought you were going to start a brawl.’ Diamond could feel her heart beating fast as the memory overtook her.

  ‘I thought I was, too.’

  ‘What stopped you?’

  ‘I don’t know. He was drunk. And it suddenly occurred to me how I’d feel if I ever lost someone who looked like you. I felt bad for him, so I just told him to back off and go to another bar.’

  ‘And he did. I think everyone there could see in your face not to mess with you. I’ve never seen Chris move as quickly as he did when he left that place. God, I was so turned on. I wanted you so badly, right then – right at that moment.’ She sighed. ‘But then you turned away. I remember, you looked at me, and all you said was, “I’m sorry, are you OK?” And I said, “Yes.” And then you walked back to the other side of the bar.’

  ‘I didn’t know what else to say.’

  ‘You didn’t even give me the chance to say thank you. That was when I knew I really wanted you. Anyone who could be that hardcore, and not expect anything in return … that was something I had never seen before. So I did two shots to get up my courage, and I went over to talk to you.’

  ‘You did,’ he agreed. ‘And the rest is history.’

  ‘I’ve never slept with a guy that quickly.’

  ‘I felt like the luckiest guy in Boston.’

  ‘Huh,’ she said. ‘I always thought I was the one who chased you.’

  He laughed. ‘You did. But it was only after I’d chased you.’

  ‘How do you feel now?’ It was a sudden change of direction, but she needed to know.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean, how do you feel now? Do you still want to be with me? Do you feel like you made a mistake? Do you feel like you’re done? What?’

  ‘I’ll always want to be with you,’ he said. Something in his tone made her believe it.

  ‘Buddy, there’s something I need to tell you.’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said. She couldn’t find the words. ‘I’m listening,’ he said when she didn’t respond.

  ‘I’m …’ Again the words wouldn’t come.

  ‘You’re what?’

  ‘I’m …’ It was no use. It wasn’t the sort of thing that she could possibly say over the phone. She needed to be able to see his face – to see how he would react. Besides, it wasn’t fair to him to drop this kind of news on him over the phone. ‘I’m really glad we had yesterday together,’ she said. ‘It was wonderful.’

  ‘It was wonderful,’ he agreed. ‘Can I see you tonight?’

  She thought about Cormack’s demand that she remain in the house. He seemed scared, and he’d left one of his men with her. Even if she’d wanted to get away to see him, she suspected that she couldn’t. ‘Not tonight, but soon,’ she said. ‘Are you working on Monday?’

  ‘Yeah, but not until the afternoon,’ he replied. ‘There’s a freighter that’s scheduled to dock around one o’clock. We’ll see how much trouble I’m in for missing yesterday.’

  ‘I’m sure it’ll be fine. Like I said, it seems like he has other things on his mind.’

  ‘OK,’ Buddy said. ‘I’ll talk to you soon?’

  ‘You better.’

  She ended the call and put the phone on the table. She ran her hand over her abdomen. She so wanted her child to grow up with both parents. She so wanted to be with Buddy. She knew it wasn’t likely to be, but she made a promise to herself and to her unborn child that she would try to make it happen.

  Thirty-Four

  Sunday 3 February

  Juan lay in his bed, looking up at the ceiling. There were cracks in the plaster running the length of the small room in the tumbledown apartment at the edge of the water in East Boston. He could hear the naked woman beside him breathing, a slight wet rumble in her chest from whatever she had found the night before to pack into her glass pipe and smoke. She had served her purpose then, but now her presence was an annoyance. He elbowed her in the back to get her to roll over in the hope that it would dislodge whatever was caught in her bronchia, but it was useless. If it weren’t for the hassle of disposing of her body, he would simply slit her throat and roll her off the bed so that he could get more sleep, but that wasn’t practical in this country.

  As he lay there, he contemplated the strange and winding journey of his life. He remembered his childhood in the city of San Salvador, the orphan of a slaughter carried out by the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front – the FMNLF – which invaded the city in 1989 and took control of the poorest quarters of the capital. Suarez still had no idea whether his parents were active participants on either side of the years-long brutal conflict; he was only three at the time. All he knew was that all of a sudden their bodies lay before him, shredded by automatic gunfire, and there was no one left to care for him.

  He survived in the war-torn country by begging and digging in trash for morsels of food until 1992, when the armistice was signed. The FMNLF members who had killed his parents were pardoned, and the organization was christened as one of the country’s major political parties. Only then did the government turn its attention to the plight of the children of the war. He was taken into an orphanage, which was only slightly better than the streets. Food was still scarce, and now his tormentors had legal custody and government sanction to do as they pleased with him. He would never speak of the manner in which he was abused in that place.

  At the age of thirteen, he was released from the orphanage, coarsened by his experience and impervious to pain – both his pain and the pain of those around him. Crime became his occupation and his salvation. Even at that tender age he was an accomplished thief, and his willingness to dispatch victims with the flick of a knife at the first sign of resistance earned him a reputation for ruthlessness on the streets. It was that reputation that brought him to the attention of a group of former left-wing guerillas who had been forcefully repatriated from the United States when the war ended and their amnesty was no longer recognized. In the United States, the guerillas had adapted their military skills to the gang wars that raged in Los Angeles. Confined to a small community in the violent city, they had banded together to protect the Salvadoran community from the black and Latino gangs, and exploit that same community for the service. Because of their small numbers, they employed the most brutal tactics to instill fear in their rivals. That strategy had drawn the most sadistic members of the dispossessed to their ranks, and the group had grown dramatically in the 1990s and early 2000s. They took the name Mara Salvatrucha 13, or MS-13, for their gang – a nod to their native land and to the neighborhood where they had started – and covered their bodies in tattoos as evidence of their lifelong commitment.

  Those who had been deported identified Suarez as a young man who would be useful to what had now become an international criminal enterprise. They trained him, cultivated his brutality and instilled their brand of loyalty. It was a loyalty born from desperation and fear, and any betrayal of that loyalty came with a sentence of death.

  By the time Suarez was in his late teens, MS-13 had established an international network that formed the backbone for one of the world’s largest criminal organizations, run from El Salvador and Los Angeles, but with a significant presence throughout Central America and the United States. Their numbers were estimated at 50,000 strong worldwide, and they were contracted by cartels in Mexico to transport drugs from Asia and Central America into the United States. The network smuggled Suarez into southern California, and he was installed as the military leader of the largest faction in Los Angeles, moving steadily up the ranks, leaving a bloody trail of rivals and innocents behind him as he advanced.

  Two years ago, his superiors in Los Angeles had sent him to Boston to keep an eye on T’phong Soh, a young MS-13 recruit from Malaysia who was consolidating power on the east c
oast. The young man’s rapid ascension had concerned the hierarchy in Los Angeles, and they wanted Suarez to learn the young man’s nature and intentions, and dispatch him if necessary.

  Suarez had come to Boston with every intention of killing T’phong Soh within weeks, but he didn’t. He wasn’t sure why, but he found himself fascinated by the diminutive Asian. He had all the ruthlessness of others in the organization – more, in fact. But his ruthlessness was more directed, and more effective. He also seemed to have an endless reservoir of followers who were willing to die for him. And Suarez soon realized that Soh’s power over his followers was different from the dominion exercised by the other leaders in MS-13. The other leaders ruled by sheer force of terror and intimidation. Soh’s presence struck fear into the hearts of many, but he also inspired true belief. He quickly became an acolyte of Soh’s, and shortly thereafter the closest thing to a trusted advisor that Soh would ever have.

  Now he and Soh were poised to reveal the full scope of Soh’s power to the world.

  The crack whore next to him continued to breathe, and the rattle in her chest grew louder and louder until the noise clogged his ears. His nostrils filled with the scent of her – a sickly sweet combination of burned chemicals and sweat and sex, until he couldn’t stand it anymore.

  He gave her body a tremendous shove toward the side of the bed. ‘Get out!’ he yelled at her in Spanish.

  She didn’t move, and gave no sign of consciousness, which angered him even more. He twisted in the bed and kicked out furiously at her. ‘Get out!’ he screamed. ‘You fucking whore! Get out!’ He kicked at her head and connected hard, sending her further toward the side of the bed. She rolled over and opened her eyes. Her expression was one of resignation and acceptance, and he suspected that this was not the first time she had awoken to a beating. In all likelihood, it was more common than not in her experience. That reality made her even more repulsive to him, and he kicked her again, this time in her face, hoping to smash the expression into oblivion.

  He connected well, and she tumbled off the bed and hit the wooden floor hard. She screamed out and crawled on her knees to the bedroom door, gathering up what few clothes she’d had on the night before when he picked her up.

  ‘Get out, bitch!’

  She reached the door and grasped for the knob. Blood was running down from her forehead and into her eyes, and it was making it difficult for her to see. Finally, she latched onto the knob, turned it, and fell into the hallway. He could hear her crying as she lay there, just outside the threshold.

  ‘Close the fuckin’ door!’ he yelled.

  She used an elbow to slide the door closed.

  The room was quieter now, and he could think. There was much to do today. He picked up the pre-paid burner phone he had purchased the day before. He swapped phones out twice a week: always pre-paid and anonymous, no internet access or smartphone functionality, and he only used the text function.

  There was a text from one of Suarez’s local distributors to discuss the next batch of Fentanyl he was due to deliver. The dealer wanted to meet late in the morning.

  Suarez texted back a time and place, then swung his feet off the bed and onto the floor. The whore whom he’d kicked out of his bed had left a smear of blood on the bedroom wall, and he cursed her under his breath. He took two quick steps to the doorway and threw open the door to see whether she was still curled on the hallway floor, but the place was deserted.

  He looked up and down the hallway, considering whether he should see if he could catch up with her to deliver another beating, but dismissed the idea after a moment. There was no point; it would not make him feel better for long, and it certainly wouldn’t impart any lesson that she would retain.

  Besides, he knew it would be foolish. Important events were unfolding rapidly, and he needed to avoid distractions that could derail the plans he had with Soh and the Carpio brothers. The world would soon come to understand the power that Soh had, and Suarez would become known as one of the most feared men in organized crime. He would do nothing to prevent that from happening.

  Thirty-Five

  Cormack stood in a small clearing off one of the main paths that wound around Belle Isle Marsh Reservation in East Boston. The temperature was below zero again, and he had to clench his jaw to keep his teeth from chattering. The bruises from the attack on the Mariner days before were fading, but still added to his discomfort.

  He regarded his companions in silence. John Hall was a giant of marginal intelligence who had worked for the union for years, and was as loyal to Cormack as he was cruel and evil. He was standing at the edge of the marsh, urinating into the Short Breach Creek that ran along the edge of the spot. He seemed as oblivious to the cold as a man could be, and Cormack suspected that the generous layer of fat and a dearth of brain cells afforded his tolerance to the weather. Cicero was also with him, and stood looking out at the open path, his eyes sharp and his body still.

  Belle Isle was a well-known spot among the Boston underworld for dumping bodies. It was a twenty-eight-acre park along the water at the northeasternmost edge of East Boston. It was less than a half mile across the Belle Isle Inlet from the eastern runways at Boston-Logan International Airport. During the spring, summer, and fall, it was a popular place to jog along the extensive maze of trails, or bring dogs to frolic at the edge of the thick marshes of heavy reeds and bushes. At certain spots, long wooden piers extended far out over the marshes, providing sweeping views of the city. In other spots, the bushes and shrubs were so thick that they were impenetrable.

  During the winter, the place was deserted. The marshes lay flat and lifeless, forming a thick white canopy of snow and ice with dark grey veins cutting through it where the eddies rose and fell with the inlet’s tides. Looking out toward the airport and the skyline beyond, Cormack was doubtful that any life could ever come back to this place after a winter so cold.

  ‘You sure this is the spot?’ Hall asked, zipping up his pants.

  ‘I saw the text myself,’ Cicero replied. His voice carried with it a threat that made clear that he didn’t like being questioned by someone like Hall.

  Hall shook his head, squinting into the vast expanse of white and grey around them. ‘Seems like a strange place, is all.’

  Cicero turned slowly to glare at Hall, and the giant man turned away as though struck in the face. Cicero was perhaps the only man on earth other than Cormack who could intimidate John Hall.

  ‘Just seems weird,’ he said. He took a step toward the marshes, and Cormack wondered whether the man might start running out along the frozen mud to escape Cicero’s ire. At that moment, though, there came a rustling along the path, and the three of them moved quickly and quietly toward the mouth of the clearing, which blocked anyone walking along the path from seeing them.

  They plastered themselves against a tree and a snow-covered bush at the edge of the clearing as they listened to the footfalls coming down the path. Cormack’s heart started beating as he realized that there was more than one set of footfalls. It sounded like multiple people, and there was heavy breathing. He and Hall took the point, ready to attack.

  ‘I thought it was just one guy,’ Hall hissed, and Cicero shot him a look that made him shut his mouth immediately.

  ‘There could be more,’ Cicero said. ‘We take them all out, but keep the target alive.’

  The men on the path were close, now, and Cormack gripped the club he’d brought with him. Both Cicero and Hall had guns, but Cormack didn’t want the man killed. The goal was to take their target alive. Information was the key.

  The panting of the men on the path was loud. Cormack readied himself, and raised the club up to strike.

  A figure passed by, but it wasn’t a man. It was an older woman in a heavy coat. She held a leash, and at the end of the leash was a large, ancient dog of indeterminate breed. She spun as she sensed Cormack’s presence, and he barely got his club down before she could see it. He turned to make sure both Hall and Andolini sti
ll had their guns in their pockets.

  ‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph!’ The woman exclaimed. ‘I didn’t see you there! You nearly scared the life out of me!’

  ‘Sorry, Ma’am,’ Cormack said. ‘I didn’t mean to scare you.’

  ‘Well, you did,’ she said. She shook her head as though regaining her senses. The dog, out of breath and panting in the cold, lumbered over to give Cormack a disinterested sniff. ‘Charlie, no!’ the woman barked at the dog, pulling on his leash to get him away from Cormack. The dog looked over his shoulder. The woman was too small to actually move the dog, but after a moment Charlie complied. ‘I thought I was the only person crazy enough to be out in this cold!’ the woman continued.

  Cormack gave her his most charming smile. ‘What cold?’ he said.

  She gave a nod at the attempted humor, but didn’t smile. ‘Looks like you had a bit of an accident,’ she said, examining the cuts that were still healing on his face.

  ‘My wife’s got a temper,’ Cormack replied without missing a beat.

  The woman nodded matter-of-factly. ‘And you got a wandering eye, I bet,’ she said.

  Cormack shrugged.

  ‘I walk Charlie here every day,’ the woman said. ‘No matter the weather. He likes it.’

  ‘I bet,’ Cormack said. He was praying that she would just move along. He had the sense that Cicero Andolini would have no qualms about killing her and Charlie and dragging their bodies out into the marsh. That would complicate matters. ‘We’ve got to get back to work,’ he said.

  ‘What kind of work?’ she asked, her eyes narrowing.

  ‘Surveying,’ Cormack said, improvising as quickly as he could. ‘There’s been some complaints about vagrancy here during the summer. We’re trying to survey the land to see what effect cutting back some of the growth would have on the place. It might prevent the homeless from setting up camps.’ He turned to look at Hall and Andolini. Hall nodded sheepishly. Andolini just stared at the woman.

  ‘Well,’ the woman said, ‘you just be sure that you don’t cut back too much! Those of us who live around here like this park just the way it is. You cut back too much, and I promise you, you’ll hear about it from not just me. Others, as well!’