Angel Dance (Danny Logan Mystery #1) (34 page)

“You sound convinced,” I said. “Knowing you, you must have some sort of plan.”

She smiled. “Of course. My plan is to create a team using my family ties in Chicago and a Mexican drug cartel. They grow. We distribute nationwide. We split profits. This works until the Feds pull the plug and change the laws. There’s a bucket-load of money to be made in the meantime.”

I paused to digest what I’d just heard. “I have to say that you even considering this is pretty mind-boggling. And telling me about it is like way over the top.”

“I figured you’d need some convincing,” she said.

“Fire away,” I said. “Frankly, I’m having a little trouble with this—even conceptually.”

“Okay. Sometime—end of April, start of May—I started seeing in my mind how this could work. I did my research and put together a business plan. I went to Chicago and met with my uncles. I laid out all my numbers. They were impressed. They should be. I think we can split more than three hundred million dollars a year with a single cartel. When I drove home the fact that the Mexicans were making all this money right now, coming to our country, illegally, and using our land to grow marijuana to turn around and sell to Americans, I got their patriotic juices sizzling. They may be crime bosses, but they’re Americans, and they don’t like the idea of someone sneaking over and stealing what they consider to be their profit. If anyone’s going to sell drugs to Americans, it’s going to be them. Based on this, I signed them on to my plan.”

“My problem, though,” she continued, “is that I didn’t know anyone with contacts with a Mexican drug cartel that was already in the marijuana business here. I didn’t know how to contact them, or why they’d even listen to me.”

“Speaking of which,” I said, “what’s in it for them? If they’re making all that money now, why would they agree to split it?”

“Two reasons,” she said. “First, my uncles can put together a wide distribution network, particularly through the East Coast, where retail prices are double West Coast prices. This will increase gross profits significantly. The second reason was left unspoken. It’s basically if they don’t agree to cooperate, they should no longer expect the U.S. organized crime families to sit on their hands while they take hundreds of millions of our customers’ dollars out of the country. With the cocaine and the heroin business, they provide the product—we distribute it. We’re comfortable with that arrangement. Ultimately, this business will be no different.”

“In other words, you use the carrot if you can, the stick if you can’t,” I said.

“Exactly.”

“So how’d you go about finding a contact in a Mexican drug cartel? Let me guess—that would be the lately deceased Mr. Eduardo Salazar.”

“Poor Eddie. That’s right. I met Eddie in June. I figured that if I wanted to meet someone connected with the Mexican drug cartel, then I should start hanging out at places where they hang out. I started going to Mexican lounges and bars. Sometimes I went by myself, but usually I went with a friend. I know a girl named Kara Giordano from work. She runs the finance department for a customer of ours.”

“I’ve met Kara,” I said. “Eddie beat her up trying to find you.”

“Robbie told me. I’m very sorry she got hurt.” I assumed she was being truthful, but she barely slowed down before continuing. “Anyway, one night Kara and I go to this crappy dive of a bar called Ramon’s Cantina.”

“We spent a very lovely evening there ourselves,” I said.

“I’ll bet. We hadn’t been there an hour when I get hit on by this skinny little Mexican guy who thinks he’s god’s gift to women. He was so completely full of shit that it was laughable—corny lines and little innuendos—he’d have been blown off instantly in any respectable place. It was pathetic. But the thing was, I noticed that everyone in the place acted like they were afraid of him. They treated him with respect, were almost subservient. Naturally, I was intrigued. I worked him a little. He wanted in my pants so bad that I soon had him bragging that he was a lieutenant in the Tijuana-Mendez drug cartel. Bingo! Actually, I’d have never believed him, but judging from the way other people treated him, I thought maybe he was telling the truth.”

“When you say you worked him, what do you mean?” I asked.

“Worked him? You know, I flirted with him. I chatted him up. I made him think I was impressed by his bullshit while I tried to figure out if he was connected.”

“Okay,” I said, “you dangled the bait.”She smiled. “Exactly.”

“Then what happened?”

“We went back to the bar several times in June, maybe once a week or so. Eddie apparently practically lived there, so each time he’d come at me with his crazy stupid pickup routine. Each time I let him think I was a little more interested and that he was a little closer to payday. Then, one night in late June, I’d ground up a Quaalude and poured it into a pen container, just like the spies. When he went to the bathroom, I dumped it into his drink and stirred it up. He drank it when he got back. As soon as he was done, I told him to take me to his place.”

“I barely got him inside before he basically passed out. I’d seen him with a little notebook he’d use when he’d get phone calls. He kept it in his shirt pocket, and it seemed pretty sensitive to him. While he was sleeping, I found it and saw that it contained hand-drawn maps of each of his grow sites—there were about twenty of them that he was in charge of—along with phone numbers of the guys who worked for him. I used my cell phone to take pictures of each page. Then I put the notebook back in his pocket. I wrote him a sexy note that told him I had a great time and that he was a wonderful lover. Then I left and took a cab home.”

“You’re bad,” I said.

“I know,” she smiled.

“The very next time I went to Ramon’s, I got Eddie by himself. I told him that I was connected to the Calabria family and that we wanted to meet to talk about a business proposition. I gave him a card with my name and an e-mail address. He laughed and said forget it. So I turned over one of his grows to the DEA. I left an anonymous message from a pay phone and three days later, the Feds busted it.”

“You didn’t tell Eddie, did you?”

“Hell no, he’d have killed me. Instead, I just bugged him again the next week. Left another card. This happened three more times. Same result—another field turned in. I turned in a total of four of his fields.”

“I saw the busts in the paper. You made the DEA very happy. You were playing with fire. Weren’t you worried that he’d eventually catch on?”

“Oh, yeah. But poor Eddie wasn’t the sharpest pencil in the box. Even so, after the fourth time, I finally got an e-mail, but it wasn’t from the cartel—it was from Eddie. He said that he needed to see me about something urgent. I figured my luck must have run out, and he’d finally put two and two together. So I decided to disappear and keep working on him.”

“And that’s when we got called in.”

“Right. That was a bit of a surprise. I never thought the police would actually suggest that my parents hire a private investigator. I just expected them to do nothing because I’d read that they won’t look very hard for a missing adult. I figured my deal would be concluded by the time anybody actually did anything to try and find me.”

“Oops.”

“Damn right, oops. You guys got started and almost immediately picked up my trail.”

“That’s what we do,” I said.

“I can see that now,” she said.

“So what happened to Eddie?” I asked. “Who shot him?”

“We didn’t do that,” she said quickly. “I think Eddie finally told his bosses what was happening because two things happened right about that time.”

“Go ahead.”

“First, I got an e-mail. Eddie finally gave my card to someone who mattered. The e-mail said that they wanted to talk to me.”

“What was the second thing?”

“The second thing was that Eddie got killed. I didn’t see that coming, either.”

“Bad news for Eddie.”

“True, but I’m sure you know that Eddie was a sadistic little prick. I didn’t expect him to be killed, but there’s no doubt in my mind that he would have killed me once he figured out what I was doing if he’d found me.”

“I agree. However he got there, we’re probably all better off without Mr. Salazar. So did you meet with the cartel?”

“Yes. They sent a man named Francisco Miranda. He’s a high-level guy in the cartel. We met this past Thursday. I ran him through the whole proposition, and he relayed it to his bosses.”

“And? What next?”

“And there’s going to be a meeting tomorrow morning between the bosses of the cartel and my uncles to close the deal.”

“They’re meeting here?”

“At the Jefferson County airport, in a hangar. They both fly their planes in, taxi to the hangar, park, meet, agree, shake hands, and then leave. The airport is uncontrolled. No tower, no FAA. I think the cartel is flying in from Vancouver.”

“Holy shit,” I said. “So you’ve pulled it off.”

“I think so,” she said, smiling broadly. “All that has to happen is the principals need to meet each other and shake hands. Then, the lieutenants will work out the details, and we’ll have a deal.”

“Damn,” I said. I thought for a minute and suddenly wondered what my role in all of this was. “Back to my original question,” I said. “Why am I here? Why did you summon me to Port Townsend, sandwiched in between high-level meetings with the Tijuana-Mendez cartel and the Calabria family?”

“Simple. You were getting too close to be left alone,” Gina said. “My genius brother told a lie after I specifically gave him instructions not to, and you caught him on it. You were closing in. My deal happens tomorrow morning. I’ve been working on it for four months. I couldn’t risk you doing something to blow it up at the last minute. So I brought you in.”

“Where you can control me,” I said.

She smiled but didn’t disagree.

“How did you plan on controlling the rest of my team?” I asked.

“I’m counting on you to do that,” she answered.

“And you’re convinced that I won’t blow it up, even now?”

She smiled as she got up and walked around to my side of the desk. “Yes,” she said, putting her arms around my neck. “I am convinced that you won’t blow this up. You have no reason to. Like you said, you’re not a cop.” She kissed me lightly on the lips. “I’m also convinced that you’ll go home with me now and stay with me tonight. Tomorrow, I’ll go back to Seattle with you. You can tell the world you found me. That’s what my parents hired you to do. That’s what you did.” She kissed me again. “Should be great for your firm’s reputation.”

She must have sensed by the look on my face that I wasn’t sold.

“Besides,” she said.

“What?” I asked.

“We still have a lot of catching up to do tonight. I can’t wait.”

I started to get a little light-headed again, intoxicated by her perfume, the smell of her hair, even her breath. No harm in doing a little catching up, I supposed.

Chapter 23

THE QUIMPER PENINSULA
juts out to the northeast from the top of the Olympic Peninsula like a hitchhiker’s thumb thrust from a fist. The peninsula is bounded by Discovery Bay to the west, the Strait of Juan de Fuca to the northwest and north, Admiralty Inlet to the northeast, and Townsend Bay to the southeast. Port Townsend is located at the far northeast corner of the peninsula. Gina said the house where she’d been staying was six miles directly west, on the Discovery Bay side of the peninsula. I agreed to follow her.

She dropped me off at my Jeep, where I tossed my pack in the back and fell in behind her silver Lexus SUV. From Water Street in downtown Port Townsend, we took Tyler Street west until it turned into Discovery Bay Road. She turned right on Hastings Avenue. The small town quickly dropped away, showing that we were on a long, straight road with very little traffic. The posted speed limit was fifty, but Gina drove at sixty-five for several minutes. The surrounding area was half forest, half rural-type residential.

The terrain rose slightly, peaking near the centerline of the peninsula, before falling back toward the sea on the western half. A couple of minutes after we’d crested the ridge, Gina turned right on a small, unnamed dirt road. The forest was thick on both sides of the road. She proceeded about half a mile until she came to a gated entry, complete with two attendants who, despite not wearing uniforms or showing visible weapons, were clearly guards. If I had to guess as to whether or not they had weapons nearby, my money was landing on yes. In any case, they smiled at Gina when she approached. She stopped and talked to them. I saw her pointing back to me. Both guards nodded. After she drove through, I approached.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Logan,” the first guard said without smiling. “Please follow the Lexus up ahead. Stay right with her.”

“Okay,” I answered simply. These guys acted like government guys—they were serious. Sometimes you crack jokes. Other times, not. This seemed like one of the other times. I followed Gina.

She wound through the trees, and after another two hundred yards or so, she disappeared around a corner. Rounding the corner myself a few seconds later, I saw a magnificent lodge framed by huge cedar trees. Beyond the trees, the sky and the brilliant blue waters of the Strait of Juan de Fuca served as a backdrop. The lodge was constructed with rocks and timbers and featured a large, twenty-foot-tall porte cochere. A circular drive wound around a well-manicured lawn the size of a long par-three or maybe even a short par-four golf hole. Flowers of all colors surrounded the lawn and the home. I thought I’d been transported to Yosemite and was looking at the Ahwahnee Hotel. It was jaw-dropping.

I pulled up beside her and stopped. Hopping out, I said to her, “Where do you stay when you’re not slumming?”

She laughed and said, “Pretty nice, isn’t it? It belongs to my Uncle Peter. He doesn’t use it very often. He welcomes family as guests, so whenever I’m up here, I like to stay.”

“I can see why,” I said, grabbing my backpack. “This is where you’ve been hiding out?”

“Yeah. Just leave your keys in the car. Someone will park it for you in the lot over there.” She pointed past me. I looked and saw several cars including three silver Fords of the same type that had followed me. Looks like my hosts were making sure I arrived safely.