Ice Woman Assignment (15 page)

Outside, the sun was a fierce spotlight. Barton burst into sweat immediately. Heat never seemed to bother Morgan. It did not matter. They decided to take Barton's car, a modest gray Chevrolet sedan. Before he put his seat belt on or turned on the radio, Barton started the air conditioning and pushed the fan to high.

Corpus Christi is a wide, city with bright streets and natives who are aggressively Texan. Barton took them to the heart of the business district for a look at the corporate headquarters of the nonprofit organization known as Gold Heart Limited. Barton put the car in park but Felicity dropped a hand on his thigh.

“I'd love to do a site survey, but we're not about to underestimate these people again. Someone inside might recognize me or Morgan from a description. I'm thinking we stay in the car. Besides, I'm not thinking these people would keep anything like drugs in their offices.”

“They might have records worth looking at,” Morgan said.

“Yes, but I'm still liking the better part of valor here.”

Gold Heart's offices filled the fifth floor in a modern, glass fronted office building. The trio circled the block, examining access. Behind the building was a large parking lot and at the back, a loading dock.

“This is where charitable donations get converted to
goods. Everything is crated up right here to be trucked out to the warehouse, then loaded onto El Corazon de Hielo,” Barton said.

From the back seat, Morgan said, “I bet powdered milk is great for smuggling drugs in.”

“Maybe,” Felicity commented. “But this stuff's going out. I'm betting that not much that's edible gets sent back.”

“You got that right,” Barton said. “Not much ever comes back, except the propaganda that goes with the handout.”

“Right. Let's follow the trail, lover.”

Traffic got heavy and they wasted most of an hour getting across town. Streets got narrower and darker and suddenly they were in what appeared to be a separate city.

“This must be the part of town the locals call The Docks,” Barton said.

“Reminds me of when I was a kid and I'd go down to the Brooklyn shipyards,” Morgan said. Dark, narrow streets alternated with vast wide driving areas for prehistoric looking tractor trailers to maneuver their wide doors up to loading bays.

“It's a lot bigger than I thought,” Morgan said. “I always thought this was mainly a resort town.”

“You kidding?” Barton said, swerving around a long trailer. “Corpus Christie's a major seaport. Handles about fifty million tons of cargo a year. That's why it would be so easy to hide stuff here. Now let's take a look down warehouse row.”

They parked in front of a vast building, reminiscent of an old airplane hangar. Giant doors on the front had man size doors cut into them. A ring of windows ran around the top of the warehouse, fifteen feet up the walls. The walls were painted a dull gray, like every other structure in the area. The men walking these streets were mostly dull, mostly black, and all big.

Facing the warehouse, Felicity's back was to the ocean.
The air seemed saltier here than in the cottage on the same ocean's edge. Loud voices bounced off her ears, with violent and abrasive profanity. She heard heavy machinery grinding along and the clatter of wooden crates being manhandled into position. Her attention was drawn to a four by eight foot sheet of plywood leaning against a hydrant in front of the warehouse. Some crude artist had outlined a human form on it in grease pencil.

“This is Gold Star's warehouse, I take it,” Felicity said. “Contributions must be good to warrant a place this size. Sure would like a look around inside, without their knowing about it.”

“You can get inside, can't you?” Morgan asked, examining the doors. “I mean, there's nowhere you can't get in.”

“I need my gear,” Felicity said, leaning back against the car. “There could be motion detectors, infrared or microwave beam sensor nets, hidden micro cameras. Without electronic detection equipment or extensive research, I wouldn't even be trying it.”

“And I thought it was all about picking locks and using glass cutters,” Barton said, hugging Felicity. “Guess I'd never made a decent thief.” Felicity's response was friendly, but not warm. If Barton heard the difference, he gave her no clue.

“If they really do smuggle through this place, I'm surprised we don't see guards posted,” Morgan said.

As if on cue, one of the small doors opened. A man in canvas pants, a sleeveless shirt and heavy work boots walked out. A chain belt hugged his waist. He was heavy for a Mexican, average height with small hands.

“You want something?” the guard asked in a heavy accent.

“Just looking around,” Barton said, smiling.

“Tomas don't like it Anglos looking around here,” the
guard replied. When he saw Morgan he added, “Tomas don't like nobody looking around here. Is bad luck.”

“Really?” Morgan said. “For who?”

“Bad luck for lookers,” Tomas said. He turned to face the drawing on the plywood sheet, twenty feet away. Then Morgan saw that the chain around his waist was in fact a bandoleer of some kind. Double edged knives surrounded him. Each was not much more than three inches long including a short handle.

Tomas glanced at his audience, slipped one of the knives out of his belt, and tossed it. The blade thudded into the plywood man's right biceps. Morgan maintained a bored expression.

Tomas pulled a knife with his left hand. This one he sent into the drawing's left arm, and now Morgan thought he might be hitting where he was aiming. Felicity looked at Morgan when Tomas pulled a third blade from his belt. This one flew into the plywood man's left thigh. Now Barton looked uncertain. Tomas turned his left side to the target, drew a fourth blade and flipped it behind his back. The action was all wrist, but the knife flew true into the target's right thigh. Finally he pulled a knife with his left hand and turned to face his watchers.

“Looking around can be dangerous,” Tomas said. Without losing eye contact with Felicity, he brought his arm down. The final knife landed in the target's throat. When Tomas grinned, he revealed a gold tooth on the right side of his mouth.

Rodney was feeling that itching under his skin again. It was the first sign that he was coming down from the ice high. Time to score again.

His mind had started to wander, and he almost walked into the man on the corner. He was tall and thin, like Rodney, but he certainly did not belong here. First of all, he was not Mexican. He was white, with short brown hair and spooky blue eyes. And he had on a light blue suit and a tie. Rodney started to move on, but the man lightly touched his arm.

“You look like the man I'm looking for.”

Like most teenagers, Rodney liked being called a man, even by a stranger. “Yeah? For what?”

“I'd like to give you this.” The stranger held up a hundred dollar bill, and then headed down the street slowly. The sun was hurting Rodney's eyes, one of the things that happened when the ice faded. He turned to follow the tall stranger.

“Okay, you the man,” Rodney said. “What you want? Not much I can't handle for a hundred dead presidents.”

The man never looked at Rodney, but kept his eyes straight ahead. Still, it felt as if he was looking everywhere. “I just want to know who you get the drugs from and where they are.”

“What, you think I'd rat out my connection?” Rodney grabbed the man's arm and felt unexpected strength there.

“I look like a cop to you?”

He did not. Rodney was not thinking too clearly, but he took the time to think now. None of his usual posse was on the street. He was broke and he needed the cash now. But turning in his connection might make it hard to get his next fix. He jammed his hands down into the pockets of his baggy pants.

“Give me the money,” he said. “I'll take you.”

Paul had followed the Mexican teen for ten blocks on a winding route which took them down a seemingly endless string of narrow streets. He was sure the boy was a drug user. He had the wiry build and the distinctive body odor of a speed freak. He could only hope the boy would lead him to his connection, which might put him on the trail of his two bosses.

Finally, the boy came to a boarded up tenement. Kids played in the street, shouting at each other in Spanish, but none came near this place.

Rodney shoved the door open a few inches and darted inside. After the slightest hesitation, Paul followed.

Light filtered in through loosely boarded windows, creating an imitation dusk in the musty room. Rodney turned and Paul subtly shifted his balance.

“All right. Where are we?”

“Right where they'll find you if you don't give me more money.” Rodney pulled his butterfly knife and flipped the handles apart, exposing the long blade.

Paul remained calm. “You're a hundred dollars richer. Why not keep this simple?” He began to slowly circle through the long, dark shadows criss-crossing the plaster dust covered floor.

“You got that much, I know you got more,” Rodney said, carving small figure eights in the air with his knife. His movements were fast, but somehow disjointed and all the more dangerous for that. Paul heaved a heavy sigh.

“You're out of your depth, son. You don't want to play this game with me. I used to do this strong arm stuff for a living.”

“Fuck that!” Rodney shouted. “Fuck you! You don't give it up, I'll take it off your bleeding body.”

Paul heard the commitment in the boy's voice and resigned himself to the unavoidable outcome. He moved his hands to his sides, farther than some might consider wise. His feet shuffled on the floor, covering his shoes with a fine white powder. Crumbling plaster. His eyes were on Rodney's belt buckle, the leading indicator of a thrust.

Rodney feinted once, twice at Paul's midsection. Paul did not react at all. He was waiting for the real thrust. When it came, it came fast. Rodney stabbed forward with all he had, right on target. Except somehow, when the point of the blade arrived, Paul's body was no longer there.

Paul's right hand crossed his body to land on Rodney's wrist. He swung his arm up, around and out in a big circle. Rodney screamed as his shoulder joint rolled around and out of its socket. The knife clattered to the floor just before Rodney landed on his back, raising a small dirty cloud. In the semidarkness, Paul could see his face twisted in a rictus of pain. He pressed his left foot into the boy's armpit and rotated his arm out just a little more.

“I understand your confusion now,” Paul said, his voice still tightly controlled. “I'm nothing you've ever seen before. I'm not a policeman constrained by rules of law. I'm not a drug addled junkie or one of these, er…” he reached for the right word, “one of these gang bangers you meet. I'm the genuine article, sonny, and I'll twist your arm right off unless I get a name and a location real soon.”

But pain and the need for drugs had already broken Rodney. He began to babble wildly, words spilling out of his mouth like the pitiful meanderings of a wino with delirium tremens.

“This Tomas is special help,” Morgan said around a mouthful of scampi. “Too special to be guarding a warehouse where nothing shaky's going on.”

“Got to get in there,” Felicity said, sipping her wine. “Somehow Chuck's people missed it, but I'm sure the stuff's held in that warehouse.”

They had found a small, peaceful restaurant and chosen from four pages jammed with shrimp dishes for a late lunch. They had an ocean view from their seats through a wide picture window.

Barton sat back from his shrimp Creole and took a long swallow from a Coors bottle. He swung a hairy hand up and slapped Morgan's shoulder.

“You guys have changed a lot since that fiasco in Panama,” Chuck said. “I seem to remember you smiling a lot more, Morgan.”

“At the time I hadn't killed any young women recently.”

“You're not responsible for that,” Felicity said, pushing her Newburg away.

“And you, my fine beauty, you're different too,” Barton continued, sliding a hand into her hair. His fingers slid down her neck, probing toward her chest.

“Jesus, don't you ever think of anything else?” Felicity snapped, brushing his hand away. Morgan looked up from beneath hooded eyes. For the first time since he had known her, he could not read her face.

“I think you're right about the ice being in that
warehouse,” Morgan said between sips from his beer. “You got a way to get in?”

“Nope,” Felicity said. “Don't even have any contacts around here to get detection equipment to defeat their security, but I'll think of something.”

“I'm telling you we went over that damn building with a fine tooth comb,” Barton said. “Where could drugs be that we couldn't find them?”

“Good question,” Felicity said, looking up. “If it's not too late on the continent I might be able to get the answer.” Then she left her chair, heading for a pay phone just outside the restaurant. Both men watched through the window while she pushed one button and started talking.

Morgan knew Felicity was talking to an operator, which meant an overseas call. She would not want to use her own credit card, so she was most likely arranging a collect call. After a pause, she started talking, eyes wide and rocking her head the way she did when her voice was filled with excitement. After a time, she turned to the picture window and signaled for them to join her. Morgan moved outside while Barton settled their check. When Morgan was close enough to hear, she mouthed “It's Raoul” and held the phone a little away from her ear.

“Cheri, you know I never handle narcotics,” the man at the other end said. Morgan knew him, a professional smuggler who lived in Paris, and Felicity's friend and lover from years back.

“How do you stay in business without it, lover?” Felicity asked, only half joking.