More Than an Echo (Echo Branson Series) (35 page)

“It just stuck out there, don’t you think?
Amid that swarm...
it made me think of bees. Bees and flowers. So, I punched in heliotrope and
voila,
it’s a flower.”

“If I said
so what,
would it hurt your feelings?”

“Be patient, Princess. There’s more. A lot more. We dug unsuccessfully  for a bit, until Roger typed in Circe.” Both guys grinned. Franklin nodded. I was beginning to feel their excitement even through my shields.

“The Circe line ties right in to the heliotrope line. The Dragon Circe is a heliotrope.”

“Okay.” I looked at Danica and shrugged.

“The Dragon Circe is only found in Colombia.”

Now, they had my attention. “Keep going.”

“Colombia has all the puff and blow and drugs anyone could ever want. Eighty percent of the world’s blow comes from Colombia.”

“So, we think your savant was trying to say that the people who are taking your guys from the streets are Colombians.”

I let out a huge sigh. “That’s quite a stretch even for me.”

The boys exchanged glances. “Oh ye of little faith.” Carl punched a few keys. “This last line,” he began reading it aloud. “...
For by the bridge and on that shapeless crew I saw him point to you with a threatening gesture, and I heard him called Geri del Bello.”

“We looked up old Geri and discovered he was a cousin of Dante’s father who was murdered. When Dante wrote the story, his death had not yet been avenged.”

“There are several components to this line,” Carl said. “I think the bridge piece is clear. Although which bridge is anybody’s guess. Could be the Golden Gate, Bay, Dumbarton or San Mateo. The second piece, which one could completely overlook, is the word
crew
.”

I frowned.

“Don’t you get it, Princess? He’s talking about the crew of a boat. With all of the water symbolism and boat imagery, he is talking about a ship!”

“Not any ship,” Franklin added. “A Colombian ship.”

I swallowed loudly. “You think he is trying to point us toward the crew of a Colombian boat near one of the bridges?”

All three nodded and turned toward me. “Given what we have here, your savant was  trying to tell you there’s a boat near a bridge either with Colombians on it or a Colombian flag or something Colombian. That boat could be where your guys were taken. Whether or not your homeless guys are still there remains to be seen. But if you believe Smiley was trying to send a message, we think this is it.”

“He  hasn’t repeated himself for no reason, Princess. He is circling around it. Look at the clues: puff and blow is heroin. The Dragon Circe is found only in Colombia.”

I rubbed my face and sighed loudly. “Okay, okay. Let’s suppose you guys are right. Why on God’s green earth would anyone abduct a bunch of homeless guys and put them on a boat?”

All three guys looked at each other. It was Roger who answered. “Well, we looked up Geri, and near as we can tell, old Geri was in the ninth circle or chasm of Hell where the people were frozen up to their  necks.”

I waited, not getting it.

“Frozen, Princess. Geri was frozen enough to let him still live.”

My lightbulb began flickering. “Smiley was trying to tell us that the guys who were taken are being frozen?”

Carl sighed like a disappointed teacher whose student just failed. “No no no. We started questioning all the reasons why you would put someone on ice.”

Franklin ticked them off with his fingers. “Death, torture, and—”

“And then we decided to see what the cartel is up to these days. What’s the newest trend in money-making?”

“We started digging up articles on what the Colombian cartel is into these days, and here’s what we found.” Carl handed me a newspaper clipping he’d printed off. The paper was translated from the Venezuela press and the headline gave me the chills. Without reading the rest of the article, I looked at the boys, my stomach feeling queasy.

“Oh my God. You don’t mean—”

Danica took the paper from me and read it in silence.

“Body parts,” I said quietly, shuddering.

All three nodded. “Organ harvesting is big business nowadays. You can make a killing, pardon the pun, on fulfilling people’s desire to extend their lives if you can give them the organ they need.”

I held up my hand for them to stop. I was a little sick to my stomach. “Wait, please.”

Danica lowered the paper. “Shit. It makes total sense when you think of the clues. Smiley has been trying to tell us that someone has snatched the homeless from our streets in order to harvest their organs. Think about it! Who would miss them? No one. You said so yourself.”

Shaking off my revulsion, I nodded. “That explains why none of the missing are drug addicts. Drug-riddled organs would be of no use. They would need cleaner organs to sell.”

“Right. Drug use would make many of their organs unusable. Alcohol, not so much, unless they were needing a liver. Even then, I’ll bet some of these guys don’t overdo it.”

“So our missing men are still alive.” I said this barely above a whisper.

“If our theory pans out, then yeah, we think so.”

Throwing my arms around Carl I hugged him tightly. “Thank you. You guys are so good.”

“If your savant was trying to tell you that the men are on a ship and they are being held in a refrigerator room, the obvious question we were left with was how did he know that?”

Danica and I looked at each other. “He escaped,” we said in unison.

Franklin shook is head. “Or he knows the Judas.”

My heart sank at the thought that Dante or his people could have anything to do with this. “I’m going with he knew the Judas. Someone on the streets is leading the kidnappers to men who do not have drug habits. Whoever it is, knows Smiley.”

“Unless Smiley
is
the Judas.” This came from Danica and we all turned to stare at her. “What? Think about it. The kid could be protecting his people by turning in others and not them. If he is a savant, then he is child-like. Who better to get to point the finger at the nondruggies than a scared kid protecting his family?”

That made sense. “And Smiley travels in both cities.”

Everyone was nodding now.

“Then he wasn’t kidnapped?”

Roger shook his head as he pulled out a map of the Bay Area. “Where were your guys taken from? Let’s see if we can deduce some sort of pattern.” He pinned the map to the corkboard and I started marking red X’s where the kidnapped guys hung out the most. When I was done, I stepped back and saw the picture more clearly. “Damn it.”

Danica stood next to me and nodded. “BART.”

I stared at the map with new eyes. “They’re all near BART stations because that’s how Smiley gets around.”

We all stood silently as this sunk in. Smiley was not only acting as Judas, but he wanted to save the very people he was ratting out. I had to hand it to him, it was brilliant. Luckily for him, I had brilliant on my side, too.

“So, Smiley is alive. He comes and goes with these guys in the van, not on his bike, which we know is locked up.” I stared at the map some more. “He points out the guys he knows who are healthier than the others. They get nabbed and taken to a boat where they are put on ice until it is time to take an organ or two. Does anyone have anything to add?”

“Only that to a savant, or a child, the dumping of a body overboard would give the appearance of a heliotrope as it hit the water.”

I nodded. Perfect clues.

“Now all we have to do is figure out which boat out in the bay has your guys.” Roger shed his traditional smoking jacket and ran his hands through his hair.

“If we’re talking about organ harvesting, my guys may already be dead,” I said softly.

“Maybe not.” This came from Franklin, who was reading something on
Google
. “The reference to the ninth circle is about being frozen. They wouldn’t freeze our guys because that would do damage to the organs. Organ harvesting has to come from a live, healthy  human being.”

Roger was by his side now, reading. “You’re right.”

“They won’t freeze them, but they
will
keep them on ice, as it were, at least until they harvest the organs. Maybe to detox them. These guys are all drinkers, right?”

I nodded, feeling hope fill my chest.

“He didn’t mean literally frozen then. They may be in a cooler or a locker where it’s cold, but not frozen.”

“So we’re looking for a fishing boat or other ship with something Colombian on it.” I rubbed my hands together. “Excellent.” Looking over at Danica, I wondered why she was still staring at the map. “What are you thinking, Dani?”

Slowly turning, she frowned. “I know why they have them in a boat.”

“Why?”

“Body disposal. They can harvest the organs and then just dump the bodies over the side. That’s the heliotrope. They turn blood red when dropped into the water; so do the bodies. I hate to say it, but that’s what Smiley’s seen: the dead bodies going overboard. We may be too late.”

I swallowed hard.

“Not unless…” Roger ran to his computer and started pulling up more information. “The liver and kidneys are the most sought after organs. I think Franklin is right. They might wait a few days or more for those organs to clean themselves out before removing them from the bodies. After all, there’s no hurry. No one is going after them, right?”

“It is more likely they are dead,” Carl said. “If I’m going to kidnap a bunch of people in order to yank their organs, I’m not going to keep them around so they can plot and plan. I’m taking whatever they have that’s viable and then dumping the evidence as fast as I can.”

Franklin stepped away. “You’re creeping me out, man.”

“Just realistic.” To me he said, “We’ve taken this as far as we can, Princess. One way or the other, your guys are or were on a boat flying a Colombian flag or bearing some Colombian markings near a bridge. It’s up to you, now.”

Up to me? “How confident are you about this?”

Carl looked at the others. “Pretty confident. Think of all the homeless people living up and down the West Coast, from Seattle to San Diego. They’re ripe for the picking because nobody cares.”

“Human cargo,” Franklin said. “Human cargo would be best transported by boat because the Coast Guard is about as ineffective an organization as ever existed. How hard would it be to hide organs in a fishing boat or drop bodies over the side?”

Franklin pointed to a map of the United States on another monitor. “Well over twelve thousand miles of coastline, the Coast Guard can’t defend much, if any, of it.”

“Boats come in, boats go out and no one is the wiser. Only two percent of the incoming boats are ever boarded and investigated. What percent of outgoing vessels do you think are ever inspected?”

“Less than that?”

“Bingo. Princess, there’s a humungous Black Market for viable organs.” Carl undid and redid his ponytail. “The cartel is nothing if not progressive. Why sit around waiting for a hundred thousand dollars worth of cocaine to be sold when you can make that much on just one organ transplant?”

I finally had to sit down before I fell down. “I knew it was big business, but a hundred grand?”

Carl nodded. “At the bare minimum. It’s not big business but dangerous company, Princess. When the word Colombia came up, the Boss wouldn’t let us do anything else.” He shot a look over to Danica. “She knows this warped from story to danger in the blink of the proverbial eye…which are also harvested, by the way.”

I glanced over to Danica, who was staring at me with an eyebrow raised. I knew what was coming next.

“Dangerous folks come from there, Clark. Dangerous and violent criminals who destroy everyone and everything who gets in their way.”

Carl nodded. “There’s no beating these guys. They’re like what the Mafia used to be—ruthless, efficient, unstoppable. The FBI, CIA and Interpol are helpless against them. And as the American need changes, so does the cartel’s ability to fill that need. Organs are one such need.”

“Right. Plenty of rich Americans are unwilling to wait for the donor list to cough up an organ. There’s always been a way around that, and here it is, in our backyard.”

I looked over at Franklin’s computer. There was a graph showing how many Americans needed a transplant and how many organs would be available. The odds were not good. Only thirteen percent of those on the list received organs. Eighty-seven percent of our population would die before they received the transplant. Who wouldn’t scrape up a hundred thousand dollars to save the life of their child? Of their spouse? I realized we were on to something really huge.

Dangerously huge.

“So they put them on ice, clean them up a bit, and then basically dissect them.”

Carl pulled a couple of sheets out from a file and handed them to me. “It happened off the coast of India a dozen years ago. They didn’t find them, but they did find the boat. What they discovered on that boat was something out of a horror flick.”

I took the printout and scanned it. They were, as usual, impeccable in their homework.