Caravan of Thieves (31 page)
Read Caravan of Thieves Online
Authors: David Rich
South of the harbor, a row of low-down bars serviced the sailors and fishermen. A few enterprising, optimistic prostitutes hung around: early-bird specials. After parking, I circled around so I could see where Junior left the black Dodge. I picked a tavern away from the cars and sat at the bar and nursed a few beers, talking baseball with the old guy to my right and the bartender who was missing one eye. We spoke Spanish, but I did not want them to worry that I was a cop so I let them know I was a gringo. Fishermen drifted in. The jukebox played a mix of Mexican and American rock and roll. Somebody especially liked Freddy Fender.
“Come in, Junior. Confront me. Threaten me. Pull a weapon.”
“Hey, buddy boy, hand over the money. It’s mine.”
“Nothing is yours, Junior. You’re a…”
A what? A scumbag? What would be the use of calling him anything? Of talking to him at all? Junior was beyond words and he thought by now, he was beyond punishment, beyond shame. Punching him out would not bring enough pain for him or enough satisfaction for me.
I looked at the old man next to me and said, “My father is a big-time general in the Marines, very powerful and very much feared. So no matter what I do, I can get away with it. Okay?”
The old man got up quickly and left. No one around here would care about Junior’s connections. Junior did not come in so I drained my beer, and leaned toward the bartender, and told him I wanted to buy cocaine. He rolled his eye. I gave him two thousand pesos. “Para usted. De buena fe.”
I followed two friendly, happy-go-lucky, south-of-the-border dudes down to their boat, where they sold me twelve thousand pesos’ worth of cocaine, which I asked them to divide into three bags. They were happy to do it. “Are you sure you don’t want to try it? We want satisfied customers. You can send your friends.”
“There is something else,” I said. “Someone is following me. I’ll pay you an additional five thousand pesos if you’ll just delay him. Don’t hurt him, please. I need about ten minutes.”
“You bet, amigo. No problem. We know a lot about hassling people.”
We started walking back to the bar. I was about to say good-bye, have them deal with Junior, but I had another problem. “You guys know where I could pick up a coat hanger and maybe a screwdriver around here?”
“How about just use a slim jim, amigo?” We walked back to the boat to fetch the tool. They refused to accept money for it. “We have a bunch of them. Come back if you need more blow, okay. And we’ll look after your friend.” But Junior was not following me. I wandered around for a while, then signaled to the dudes. I paid them for their trouble and called them off and headed toward the bar.
A young prostitute fell in beside me. She spoke enough English to get her job done and I let her go on with it. “You very handsome hombre. I love you. Come with me.”
“And you’re very beautiful and I love you, too. Very much. But not right now.”
“Now, okay? Cheap deal. Cheap deal special for you.”
“How cheap is cheap tonight?” She didn’t understand or wasn’t sure. She looked back at the small Ford trailing us, driven by her pimp. “One thousand pesos,” she said.
That was pretty cheap. But I wanted to find out just how much in love with me she really was. “Two hundred,” I said.
She looked back to the pimp in the car and held up two fingers. He held up one. She shook her head and said, “Doscientos pesos. Doscientos.” He paused, then shrugged and nodded. Maybe he was in love with me, too. Maybe they did not love me at all and someone else was subsidizing the difference.
I paid her on the spot and took her arm, and she led me to a crumbling three-story building where two sleazy guys hung out at the door. The pimp followed us. He called out to the sleazy guys and they moved aside to allow my new love and me inside the courtyard. A concrete staircase ran up the right side to an outer walkway. Flaco Jiménez and his accordion, or someone who did a good imitation, was playing from two different rooms with competing songs. In the courtyard, a disused molded plaster fountain was half filled with still, fetid water and cigarette butts. I threw a coin in and smiled at my love. “Which room?”
She pointed to a room on the left side of the second floor. The lights were out. She glanced back toward the gate. I could see the tail end of the pimp’s car idling. My love marched for the stairs, but
I stood still. She stopped at the bottom and turned back and smiled at me. She shifted her pose in a way she thought was enticing and gestured for me to join her. I moved away from the staircase, under the left-side walkway, so I would not be visible from the room. “Ven aquí, por favor,” I said quietly.
She was scared. She looked toward the gate but no help was coming from there. I held up a bunch of pesos. When she came close, I held out my hand. “The key. La llave.” I rustled the pesos in my other hand. “Give me the key, then go. Don’t hang around. He won’t find you.”
She understood.
I moved deeper under the walkway, deeper in the shadows. When the sleazy guys glanced in, they didn’t see me, so their eyes rose up to the room on the second floor. They shrugged in unison and retreated. Flaco stopped playing in one room. And a moment later, he stopped in the other room. The only sound was the scratching of the rodents near the stairway.
Junior was making it easy for me. I could burst in and shoot him; he would be hiding, probably in the closet, waiting for me to get in bed with my love. I had the cocaine to leave with his body: another gringo drug casualty. Or I could wait right where I was and shoot him when he came down, frustrated and angry, ready to take it out on the pimp and the whore.
“Don’t go after him.”
There would be no witnesses. If there was an investigation, it would not lead to me. He had caged himself and no one could make an argument for mercy. I took out the gun and spun the cylinder to make sure it was loaded, and I started for the stairs. Two steps were all I could take. I knew I could kill Junior and come out alive, but
this felt like a trap, a trap made of crumbling concrete and rusted iron and the foul stench of the fountain, which would cling forever. Flaco started playing again at once in both rooms. I put the gun in the backpack and walked out.
Two fishermen and their wives or dates watched me open the Dodge with the slim jim. I put my gun in Junior’s glove box along with one bag of cocaine. Another bag went under the driver’s seat and the last in the bottom section of the trunk, tucked in with the spare.
I asked for an outside table at the restaurant down the street from the car, ordered a beer and arroz con camarones, because camarones are a big specialty in Guaymas and I didn’t want to leave without having any. Using the pay phone inside, I called the PFM, the local police, and even the uniformed federales, giving them all the details on Junior’s car. I spoke only Spanish and gave no hint of my identity. Having been burned twice with authorities letting Junior off the hook, I thought that if multiple agencies were in on the bust, there would be a better chance of the charges sticking.
I forced myself to eat slowly. Everything was control at that point. The cops were in place within twenty minutes. I don’t know which organization arrived first. I paid my bill and waited. Ten minutes later, Junior strode into the square, heading for his car. I looked away, and when I glanced around a moment later, he was gone.
He could not spot me sitting out in the open cafe, but I knew where he would go to look for me. I strolled down to the bar where I had sat before, came out, and walked to my car, taking my time. Inside, I watched in the rearview mirror as Junior hustled back to his car. It was easy as leading a dog on a leash.
I started the car. And I let the thoughts of confrontation drift away: pleasing fantasies of indulgence vaporizing, as they should. I was following Major Hensel’s orders, Colonel Gladden’s example of restraint, and Dan’s lifetime of lessons: a line so crooked that toeing it required a crazy dance. I pulled into the street to get a better angle in the mirror.
Junior put the key in the car door and sprang the trap. Cops came at him from all directions. I drove away.
K
ate’s office said she was on vacation. Scott’s boat wasn’t in the slip. Maybe they were honeymooning. Major Hensel met me at Air Station Miramar. I handed over the money I took from Shaw and gave him the accounting he asked for of the money left in the cave. I neglected to mention the money I gave Loretta. He didn’t ask about Junior.
“What do I do now?”
“What do you want to do?”
“That’s a lousy question to ask, sir.”
“I know the answer. I just want to see if you know it, or will admit it.”
I knew the answer, too. And I didn’t want to admit it. This guy was good. He could even read my expression.
“The other graves full of money.”
“Where do I start?”
“Start at the beginning.”
The beginning? “Back in the brig, sir?”
“You’re shipping out to Baghdad. I have someone for you to
speak with at the morgue. I’ll leave it to you how to proceed, but keep me informed at all times. That’s important.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And Lieutenant, I’m pretty sure there is exactly twenty-five million dollars in each of the graves.”
“Yes, sir. Oh, one thing. If there is more money in one of the graves, what should I do with the extra?”
“Your plane leaves in two hours, Lieutenant.”
I sat in the terminal letting my mind go blank. Families waited for their fathers and mothers to arrive. Some of the kids ran around according to some mysterious game. Other kids sat tight and nervous and, probably, scared. A plane arrived, everyone stood as if they had been told “All rise” in church. The kids who had been running around were ordered to stop and stand with the rest of the family. Every one of them got it immediately. Marines, men and women, strode from the tunnel, most of them looking around expectantly with sharp, cautious eyes that softened and teared when they found who they were looking for. A sergeant fell to his knees and kissed the dirty tile floor, and a specialist wasn’t paying attention and tripped over the sergeant. Others helped them both up and everyone laughed and kept moving. Some kids were shy about greeting their parents; some hogged the hugs.
The outbound passengers around me watched it all carefully with their spouses or girlfriends or boyfriends or parents or kids. I don’t know how many were jealous of the new arrivals. They all should have been, but it’s a difficult thing to admit. Probably quite a few had already been through it before. Except for one blubbering teenage daughter, the tears had not yet started for the outbound group.
My plan was to have no plan, get a slow start in the hope I could see it all with fresh eyes. But Dan had some ideas to plant and would not be denied.
“Thank me,
” he said.
“I got you the best job you’ve ever had. SHADE. You could get rich.
”
“I’m not going to steal the money. None of it.”
“I know that, Rollie Boy. You’re too smart for that. But you’re going to Iraq. There’s turmoil. Maybe to Kurdistan. They’re hungry. Want their own country. They have oil. You can offer them help. Information. Contacts. You’re in a position to have the greatest job of all.”
I knew the answer, but I asked just to hear him say it.
“What’s that?
”
“Middleman.”
This is my first novel. I needed plenty of help and I got it.
Howard Blum went above and beyond the call of friendship. I would not have started without his steady encouragement, and would not have finished without the benefit of his shrewd advice and acute insight. I owe him.
P. J. Morrell generously provided Spanish vernacular translation. Peter Keeler, gunsmith, tutored me on weapons. Jack Barthell, Alan Holleb, Neil Steiner, and Clay Frohman, all always gracious, housed and fed me on the West Coast.
Guy Prevost, Mack Reid, and Margy and Norman Bernstein tirelessly listened, critiqued, and proofed without complaint or delay. Paul Bracken let me view the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan through his unique lens. I never came out of a conversation with him the same as when I went in. Geoff Baere spotted the hidden quicksand in the story and posted warning signs. Avoiding those traps kept me laughing the whole way through.
Kim Witherspoon, refreshingly direct, said what she was going to do and then did it. Rare.
Ben Sevier took the chance, and, along with Jess Horvath, has made it all so easy, smooth, and fun.
I thank them all.
Don't miss the next Lieutenant Rollie Waters novel by David Rich,
Now available from Dutton
S
nowflakes appeared in Havre, Montana, then disappeared when they hit the ground. The headstone had been pulled out of the ground and laid faceup. It said:
ETHAN WILLIAMS
1979â2004. He had been a father, a husband, a son, but none of that was mentioned even though the Army would have paid for the listing. The headstone was probably going to become obsolete as soon as we opened the coffin, but the family might not get a chance at a replacement: My job was to find the money, not the bodies.
A police cruiser pulled up to the curb near the cemetery entrance. The cop did not get out. Our car was parked on the opposite side of the small cemetery, near the exit.
Sergeant Will Panos shrugged. “Had to notify them.” He shifted his gaze across the grave. “Who's the smoker?”
The family was clumped together, with one exception. “Must be the father. Met all the others.”
“They all keep looking at you.”
“It's the uniform.” We wore our service uniforms; this wasn't an occasion for dress blues, according to Sergeant Panos.
“Got my eye on the widow. Does that make me a bad guy?”
“That isn't what makes you a bad guy, Will.” We had been working together for weeks, traveling around the country and to Iraq, and I had not discovered too much about him that was bad. He was the only one who thought he was a bad guy. I figured he was the expert. Sergeant Will Panos had a fleshy face and saggy eyes. His skin was pockmarked, dark and rough. His nose was crooked from fighting. It was the face of a tough guy, a slob, a bruiser. His face lied: Will Panos was a refined, meticulous, careful man who navigated Marine regulations so precisely that I wondered if he had written them himself.
The widow, Kristen, was a pretty woman, wary, about thirty, short, with her dark roots pushing the blond hair away. Her parents and a sister and the sister's husband huddled together in their winter coats near the foot of the grave. I had met them last night at Kristen's house. She had papers to sign. We had waited thirty minutes for Ethan Williams's father, but he never showed up, and no one found that noteworthy.
The smoker stood alone, smoked his cigarette to the stub, tossed it down and lit another. I walked over and introduced myself. Up close, he looked ragged. Random patches of his beard had evaded the razor. He was too young to look like that. “Marine Lieutenant Rollie Waters, sir.” He didn't reply, so I said, “Are you Specialist Williams's father?”
His eyes narrowed and he seemed to hiss. “You don't fool me,” he said.
“I'm sorry we have to do this.” I just wanted to get away from him. The smell of liquor cut through the tobacco on his breath. Watery film covered his eyes and he could not hold my gaze.
“You've never been sorry for nothing,” he said.
Kristen stepped in close to intervene. “I realize I didn't introduce you two. Lieutenant Waters, this is Ethan's father, Jim.” The father pointed at me and said, “That oughta be you in that grave and we both know it.” His right hand turned up and I saw something black in it, and a second later the blade popped out the side.
Kristen said, “Jim! I'm over here.” He looked at her. “Put the knife away, Jim. There's no danger.” She moved closer to him.
“Mrs. Williams . . .”
She was half his size and the blade looked like it would go all the way through her even with the puffy down coat she wore. Jim noticed me again and his eyes narrowed like they were going to take over the hissing, but they wavered. He was afraid. Kristen put up one hand to stop me from making a move, and put the other on Jim's shoulder. I stood still.
“Jim, give me the knife. This'll be over soon.” Her voice was soft and understanding, as if they had been partners in some harrowing experience. She put out her hand. He retracted the blade and put the knife back in his pocket. He was back in this world. Kristen checked with me and I nodded that I was okay with that.
Jim spat on the ground next to me, then shuffled a few feet away. Kristen waited for my reaction.
“Usually people wait until they get to know me before they do that.”
“He's just . . . it's been hard,” she said. She stood silently beside me for a while. “How many of these have you done so far, Lieutenant?”
“I've lost count.” I glanced toward Will. He was watching us jealously.
“Lots of tears? Fainting?”
“Some.”
“The sergeant is acting as if I'm going to fall to pieces.”
“He's seen what happens. . . . He's a good man.” I waited too long to give the recommendation and it sounded forced to me, but she ignored it.
“This one will be different,” she said in a way that made me believe her.
I wanted to believe her. This job, my first for
SHADE
, had cloaked me in respectability. The families treated me like a black-swaddled Keeper of Some Holy Secrets; they feared and resented me. Being mistaken for someone I'm not has always been a private pleasure and I always enjoyed feeding the misconceptions about me. But this identity, Exhumationist, a joke at first, became an open wound. I started thinking that one day I would unzip a body bag and find myself inside.
Kristen rejoined her family. They were not crying either, yet. A preacher had tagged along, ignored by all, stationed on the opposite side of the grave from Jim. I glanced at the man working with a rake about one hundred yards to my right, on a small rise. He was Mack Rios, a Marine sniper I brought along as a precaution: Millions in cash is a temptation for everyone, even the bereaved. The small white tent where we would open the coffin stood between us. Exhumation is a private business. This one, even without tears, felt no different from the others.
I wished it did.
The first time we dug up a grave and unzipped the body bag and found money, I got that thrill that comes from being right. Hard work rewarded. We had to count the money even though the game was still going on and counting brought questions, which deflated the good feeling. We expected to find twenty-five million dollars in each grave: The first had one million; the second had a million and a half. Something was wrong. We did not understand what it was.
The snow stopped. The winch operator signaled to Will that he was ready. Will nodded. The winch spun. Everyone stared dutifully at the hole in the ground as if they did not know what was going to emerge. But the grave seemed to be two miles deep. The creaky chains rolled up slowly. Maybe the winch man was holding out for overtime. I snuck in behind Jim Williams and grabbed his right arm into a quick hammerlock and slipped my hand into his pocket and extracted the knife. He hissed once more.
At last the casket floated up from the grave and hovered like an alien drone that we had foolishly unearthed and activated. It swung hypnotically and Kristen flinched. It almost hit the preacher, whose eyes were closed, but no one interrupted his reverie. Each exhumation was like a combat patrol. This was my third exhumation, so I felt like a veteran: weary but addicted. I tried to watch the family without staring. I wanted to know what they were hoping for. If I was wrong, if the body was in the grave, then hope was crushed forever. If I was right and the grave contained a body bag filled with money, then hope, which I knew I had revived when I contacted them, would rise up and slam them to the ground and stomp on them, probably as long as they lived. I wanted to watch them to see which choice they thought they preferred. But this was only the third grave and it would take thousands to make a good sample.
The explosion was small, a flash and a pop, but so was the tent. Dirt pelted us, speeding through the strips and bits of white canvas swirling around us. Beyond the tent, Mack Rios went down with the first shot. The second shot hit Will Panos, who had jumped in front of Kristen to shield her. He yelled, “Damn, damn, damn,” and tottered and brought her down when he fell. A hand pushed me in the back and I bent forward to maintain my balance. Jim Williams said something like “You, damn you . . .” The rest was drowned out by the third shot, which went through his neck.
For a moment I thought the silence was complete, but the creaking of the chains holding the coffin kept a steady beat as I ran up the hill to Mack. He was dead, shot in the face, lying on his back with his rifle just inches from his left hand.
I stood up and looked back toward the grave. At first, the area was diorama still, then the figures began to move as if a spell had been cast off. The gently swinging ticktock of the coffin accentuated the stillness of the scene. The shots had come from the big, peaceful field of headstones lined up like seats in an auditorium beyond the grave site. A shooter could have hidden behind any one of them, but no one was out there now.
The sirens were close by the time I got back to the graveside and Will Panos. His wound cut across the front of his right thigh. He was trying to stand. I pulled him down and kneeled next to him. “How is it?”
“Not bad,” he said while wincing, because the only bullets that don't hurt are the fatal ones.
Kristen had crawled out from under him and gone over to her parents. The flashing lights from the cop cars coated the scene in glimpses of red, so it took me a moment to realize the back of her jacket was smeared with Will's blood.
“Get the attention of the first cops. Howl if you have to,” I said. “I'm going to try to get out of here with the money.”
I left Will and went to the winch operator and pulled him up. “Lower the coffin to the ground. Right where it is. Now,” I said. He was staring at Will, still on the ground. “Just do it. Do it now. Where's the crank?” He pointed to a tool chest next to the winch. I pushed him toward the controls and he went to work. I meant for him to drop the thing, but he lowered it as if the world's last bottle of bourbon were inside. As soon as the casket was on the ground, I put in the crank to pop the lock, then wedged the crowbar in the middle to lift the top. The winch operator sat there as if waiting for further instructions.
The cops were getting out of their cars. An ambulance was pulling up. I was not sure how I was going to get out of there with the money, but I knew I did not want the local police claiming it. I lifted the top of the casket and reached inside and unzipped the body bag and I flinched. The skin was thin as fancy stationery and the hair was sparse and the remains of a man wore a Marine uniform. From behind me Kristen said, “Who the hell is that?” I stared at her and might have kept staring at her while I tried to comprehend the situation, but I saw cops coming toward us. I zipped up the bag and closed the lid.
