by Jon Mills
“Why?”
“Perhaps I can come with you. I still have a few weeks left to use.”
“And that cruise you were going to take?”
“Ah, it can wait until next year.”
She smiled as she passed him. “Cooper, don’t take this the wrong way but, no.”
He tossed his arms up as she walked away.
“Come on, Baker. What’s the problem? You know we work good together. We could share a hotel room.”
She hollered over her shoulder, “That’s what I’m worried about.”
A few of the other agents at their desks chuckled.
“What? What are you all looking at?” Cooper said walking back to his desk in a huff.
Jack kept his distance. Occasionally James would look over his shoulder but he was too far back and the streets were crowded. Once James reached North Broadway he hailed a taxi. For a few seconds Jack thought he was going to lose him. Fortunately, a taxi had pulled up on the other side of the street. Someone was about to get inside when Jack rushed over and offered to pay the guy some extra cash if he would let him take that one.
“No, I’m in a hurry.”
“A hundred bucks.”
Jack saw James get in a taxi further up and it pulled into the stream of traffic. He didn’t have time to haggle with this guy, he shoved him to the ground, tossed him a fifty and hopped in. The guy got up and was banging on the window as Jack told the driver to swing around. Taxi drivers didn’t care who entered their vehicle as long as they paid and if you offered them more they would go out of their way to help you. The guy spun around but came to a grinding halt half a block up North Broadway. The traffic was moving slowly and construction was holding everything up further down the road. Jack was trying to see the taxi James was in but it was hard to tell.
“Can you swerve around that vehicle?”
The driver motioned to the cars blocking his way. This was no good. At this rate he would lose him. Further up a guy on a motorcycle carrying pizza on the back was stopped at the light. Jack tossed the taxi driver some cash and hopped out.
“Where are you going?”
Jack raced up to the guy on the bike.
“Fifty bucks, and you follow that taxi.”
“Get the hell out of here, man.”
“A hundred.”
“Get on.”
It didn’t matter where you were in the world. Every big city was the same. Pizza delivery guys were paid shitty money and the chance to earn in a few minutes what took them close to ten hours was too tempting. Jack clung to the delivery guy as the light turned green. The bike zipped in and out of traffic and before long they were about four cars away.
“Just keep close.”
The guy muttered something back but Jack couldn’t hear because of the wind. They drove for another ten minutes until they reached Foster Avenue which took them down to Foster Beach. It was late September so all the trees had changed from green to golden browns and yellows. A fall wind blew across Jack’s face and the cold nipped at his hands and ears as the guy on the bike dropped him off.
“Thanks.”
“No problem.”
He looked pleased to have made money for doing very little. Jack watched James stroll across a field towards the beach. He kept his distance. When he came over a rise, he could see James seated at a bench with another man. He couldn’t hear what they were saying but they were engaged in a very animated conversation. James got up and was waving his hands around. He was red in the face and a few times he put his finger in front of the guy’s face. Jack couldn’t see who he was speaking to as the guy had a long coat and a hat on, and was facing away.
He stood by a tree watching it play out. He kind of figured that he’d spooked James and the guy he was meeting with was his contact. Several times James looked around and Jack thought he spotted him. Eventually the man turned on the bench, reached into his jacket and pulled out an envelope and handed it to him. Based on its shape and thickness, he assumed it wasn’t drugs. He was paying him money but for what?
The conversation was short-lived. After he handed him the money he got up and left. James tucked it inside his jacket, looked around nervously and strode back up the field towards the taxi. Jack wanted to speak with him again but right now he knew following this other guy was his best chance of finding out what he was involved in.
Staying close to the cluster of trees that bordered the beach, he followed the unknown stranger towards another parking lot on the north side. The man in the trench coat kept his head down and shuffled fast. Jack had to break into a light jog to catch up with him. Once they reached the parking lot, the guy was heading for a fairly typical-looking car. It was a sedan. Jack rushed up to him and grabbed a hold of his collar. As he spun him around the man looked white with shock.
“Please. Take whatever you want. I’ve got a wife and child.”
“Who the hell are you?”
“Pat Nichols.”
“How do you know James?”
He glanced past Jack as if expecting to see him.
“I get weed from him. Are you a cop? Please don’t tell my wife, she will go nuts if she finds out I’m smoking.”
Jack ran a hand over his face. “The Eternal Movement. You know them?”
“Who?”
The look on his face said everything. Jack groaned. It was just a case of a guy without a medical license getting weed from a dispensary owner who was conducting his own black market business. Jack glanced in the back of his vehicle. There was no baby inside but he could tell it was a family car as it had a sticker in the back window that said BABY ON BOARD.
“Get the hell out of here,” Jack said.
He nodded and jumped in his vehicle. Jack watched him pull out of the lot at a high rate of speed. He chuckled to himself thinking that the guy probably lived in the suburbs, was bored and just looking for a way to get high.
Chapter Ten
LIMA, PERU
The bartender refilled Sid Ramirez’s glass to the top with Pisco Sour. Over the past four years living down in Lima, he had consumed more than his fair share of Peru’s finest alcohol — of course this had all been paid for by scams. Since being kicked out of the Marine Corps only a year into service, he had settled on Lima as the place to live. The government was corrupt and as long as you were rolling in the money, there was nothing that you couldn’t get away with down here.
He had his hand in a lot of things — a small taxi service that overcharged, portable shopping stalls that handed tourists back counterfeit money, phone scams, a currency exchange racket that preyed upon the uninformed — and yet nothing was working as well as his latest.
He’d first heard about the wealthy American searching for his daughter through a missing persons piece posted in a local Peruvian paper. At the time the reward was for information leading to the whereabouts of Danielle Lefkofsky. It didn’t take long to do a quick Google search and find out if the father was good for more than that.
It seemed like easy money and up until last week it had been. The guy was desperate for any news, even if it was bogus. Sid contacted him using the number in the paper and though he was skeptical, once he mentioned his past work in the military and having lived in Peru for the past eight years — it was all smooth sailing from there. Once the first few checks cleared it was all just a matter of looking busy, giving the appearance of having made progress. A few staged photo shoots on the beaches of Lima, a couple of shady snapshots of the underbelly of Peru and Mr. Lefkofsky was like putty in his hands.
That was until he was hesitant to send the last payment. This was meant to be the big one, the one that would set Sid up for the next five years. The cost of living down in Peru was cheap and with the prospect of receiving one hundred thousand up front, well, it almost felt like he was about to win the lottery. The guy was completely clueless. Had it been his daughter, he would have searched the streets himself or at least paid for someone to visit and check that the guy he was
paying was legit.
“Thanks, Juan,” he said before heading back over to his table out on Esco’s rooftop terrace which gave him an incredible view of the ocean and Lima’s Plaza San Martín. It was a little after nine at night and all the colonial architecture was lit up. He was waiting for an escort that he had hired for the night. They were cheap but the service wasn’t. He couldn’t wait to get as drunk as a skunk and spend the better part of the evening screwing.
Sid leaned back against the plush leather chair and lit a fat cigar. He checked his phone again for forwarded messages. It had been five days since he’d last been in contact with Lefkofsky. He’d initially replied that he needed time to think about it. That was never good. In every business deal he had ever done, legit or not, you didn’t give them time to think it over. That was when they started looking at their options. So he had laid it on thick. Told him that the window of being able to move in and grab his daughter was getting smaller by the day. If he didn’t act now there was a good chance they were going to disappear, as they were already spooked. Of course none of that was true, but a few photos of his escort who matched his daughter’s height and hair color was all that was needed to apply pressure. The last batch he had sent over twenty-four hours ago was of her in lingerie surrounded by three men down in one of the worst parts of Lima. He thought that would be the final nail in the coffin. Only problem was, he hadn’t heard a peep out of him. Everything had gone silent on his end.
As he sat there glancing out and watching the twinkling lights of boats on the ocean, a pair of hands gripped him from behind. This was followed by laughter and Aaron Gibson, a fellow Marine buddy of his, took a seat beside him.
“Shit dude, you should have seen your face.”
“I’m telling yah, one of these days you are going to do that to the wrong person and end up with a bullet in you.”
“Ah, give it a rest,” he said before motioning for the waiter to come over. “A bottle of Corona, my good man.”
The waiter shuffled away and Aaron lit the joint in his hand.
“So, any news?”
Sid picked up his phone again and checked. “Nothing. I’m starting to think that he might be on to us.”
“Ah, don’t sweat it,” he said taking another toke. “He would be dumb not to send the money. We have delivered proof, he knows he’s dealing with Americans. We have this in the bag. A week from now we will be sipping on margaritas and kicking back with the ladies.”
“I have a bad feeling about this.”
“Oh come on, man. You think the government is going to give a shit about him or his so-called missing daughter? Ask yourself why he hasn’t already got the local police involved. I’m telling you he is keeping the cops out of this.”
“That doesn’t mean he won’t bring someone else in.”
Gibson’s brow knit together. “Like who?”
The waiter came over and set a cold beer in front of Gibson. Gibson handed him some cash and told him to keep the change. He leaned back and settled in for what was going to be another night of drinking, good food and women.
It had been pretty much their routine for the past four years. In the day they supervised the small and shady enterprises they had running, and by night they enjoyed the benefits that it brought in. It was easy money down in Peru. Peruvians would work for next to nothing and if they didn’t do their job, there was a line of them waiting to take their place. They didn’t care if the work was illegal, as long as they got paid a good wage at the end of the week. They earned a quarter of what Americans would have demanded, which left a large amount of profits in their pocket.
That evening he used lines of coke, drank an insane amount of alcohol and found pleasure in the arms of a woman in order to forget.
If he hadn’t heard back by tomorrow he would have to step up his game.
Chapter Eleven
LIMA, PERU
When Jack touched down at Jorge Chávez International Airport in the late hours of the morning, it felt like he had stepped into hell itself. As he collected his baggage, heat waves danced above the ground outside. The smell of fuel lingered in the air. He watched as airport vehicles dashed back and forth between stationary planes. With tourists arriving and leaving at all times of the day, and Lima being the central city for Peru, the entire airport was a hive of activity.
He waited to collect his one bag. It wasn’t much, just a few shirts, pants and toiletries. He could have fit most of it in his carry-on but it would have been a tight squeeze. On the flight, he had been going over all the details Lefkofsky had given him about his daughter, and the man he had been in contact with. At no point had the guy shown a photo of himself, which should have been the first red flag.
It wasn’t uncommon to find scam artists in New York. He recalled the guys that would stand close to the subway stairs. They would sell bags of supposed brand-name colognes and perfumes for a quarter of the price of those in stores and imply to people on the street that it was the last batch from a wholesale deal or that the boxes were slightly faulty. They would show the box with a small nick in it. Most wouldn’t be bothered as long as the bottle of perfume was legit. At times they would tell them not to open their bags because they didn’t want the police to see that they were undercutting businesses. Of course they knew people would look. That’s why they would position testers of the real cologne in front on their stall so that unwitting pedestrians would think that it was the real deal ahead of time, and they would set up stalls that could be collapsed in a matter of seconds. The truth was the cologne in the bags was actually baby lotion. They usually did it around Christmas when the streets were packed with those searching for a cheap deal for their other half. In the event that anyone did open it and return to get a refund, they would dart into the subway and lose them. More times than not they sold lots of the goodie bags in the first five minutes and then would rush off with the money and reappear in a different location in the city.
He snorted at the memories.
They were the small-time crooks, little fish playing in a big ocean full of sharks. Sharks like Jack’s old boss Gafino didn’t concern themselves with small game. They only took on jobs that could net them six figures.
The conveyor went around unloading strangers’ suitcases that looked as if they were bursting at the seams. When Jack’s finally appeared he scooped it up and within twenty minutes he was in the back of a taxi and making his way to a nearby hotel in the city.
After checking in, he dropped his bags in his room and headed out in the direction of a café called San Anton. According to Mr. Lefkofsky he had tied the emails he was receiving and the phone calls by IP to an internet café in the heart of Lima. Whether the guy was forwarding the messages to a phone was still to be determined. Whoever Patrick had hired had avoided showing his face, which meant it was going to be tricky finding him. What should have taken them ten minutes by car took over thirty as the driver tried to sell him everything under the sun. He had turned his passenger seat into a stall with all manner of knickknacks, hats, shirts, even weed was being offered. His English was barely comprehensible and no amount of telling him to keep his eyes on the road seemed to do the trick. On two occasions he had nearly flattened a pedestrian and run into the back of a vehicle that had slammed its brakes on. All that could be heard was the sound of horns honking as drivers fought their way to destinations. It was quite a sight, especially when they came up to an intersection without any traffic lights. The driver didn’t look fazed as he kept droning on while glancing at the road every few seconds.
Upon arriving at the café, he tipped the driver and entered. Inside a young woman served a customer, while two old men sat around a corner table sipping on coffee and chatting. Along the back wall were two computers. They looked as though they hadn’t been updated in a while as they were still sporting chunky-sized monitors. When the customer walked away, Jack approached and the woman asked him what he wanted in almost perfect English. She had long dark hair that went
down below her breasts and a light outfit that hugged her figure. Her eyes were almond in shape, and dark in color. She was the kind of woman that could make any guy’s heart thump a little harder.
“You speak good English. Where did you learn?”
“My father is American. From California.”
“The land of sun and surfing.”
She glanced back but didn’t reply.
“You get a lot of people using the internet service here?”
She nodded carefully bringing his full cup of coffee over to him.
“Any regulars? Americans?”
He handed her a few dollars. She clutched them in her hand. “Are you a cop?”
“Would it change your answer if I was?”
The corner of her mouth curled ever so slightly as she rang up the order and stashed away the money.
“We get people from all over the world passing through these doors. If you are looking for someone, you are going to need to be more specific.”
This was when he wished he had a photo of the guy. How could Patrick be so stupid as to send money to a stranger in a foreign country?
“Do you keep logs?”
“Yes. Every person who pays to use the computer has to sign in.”
“Dates and times?”
She nodded.
He was going to need to get in contact with Patrick and find out the exact time he sent the last message. Perhaps then he could pinpoint a time, or even see a pattern in which messages were sent.
Jack thanked her for the coffee and took a seat. Over the next eight hours he sat there watching people come and go. Several times he saw a man come in and use the computer but he was able to see from his table what the guy was looking at — job websites.
As the day wore on and he had consumed six times more than his daily limit of caffeine, he was wired and getting hungry. He got up to leave and the woman behind the counter thought he was going to order.