The Death Box (12 page)

The door from the lobby opened and the pair turned to a man in an immaculate vanilla suit cut to make the most of a mesomorph build, the lapels slender and the shoulders padded for extra width. His shirt was cobalt blue, the tie a muted scarlet. The man’s face was smooth and strikingly round, with a button-dab of nose and high, pudgy cheeks above a red pout of mouth. His mouse-brown hair fell coyly over an eye, pushed back every few seconds, like a tic. Though the man was in his early thirties, he wore the face of an insolent child, a caricature, almost, like a smug ventriloquist’s dummy.

The man paused inside the entrance and electric-blue eyes vacuumed the lounge, absorbing every detail, as if crucial to survival. The lips pursed in self-satisfaction and his beurre manié loafers sauntered lazily toward the bar.

“Oh, Christ,” Ballentine said. “It’s Chalk. I thought he’d gone to one of his homes on the mainland.”

“For some reason he’s stayed in KW this summer.”

“How about you serve him, Alberto,” Ballentine said. “He’ll leave a twenty-buck tip on a thirty-buck tab.”

“No,
amigo
,” Fuentes’s grin was wide beneath the expansive mustache. “I am in charge, and you need the money more.”

Ballentine snapped his vest straight. He took a deep breath, forced a smile to his lips and walked to the guest, now pulling back a stool.

“Good evening, Mister Chalk. Can I get you the usual?”

The man started to sit but paused, head suddenly canting as if hearing a single discordant note in an otherwise perfect symphony. The blue eyes lifted and fixed on Ballentine.
He doesn’t look at you
, Ballentine realized.
He looks through you.

“My usual?” Chalk said as he resumed sitting. His voice was high, almost feminine. “When did I start having a
usual
, Michael?”

“I, uh – don’t you generally order a Sazarac, Mr Chalk?”

The guest regarded Ballentine. Seconds ticked by.

“I have ordered Sazaracs before, Michael. That is quite true.”

“Then may I prepare you a—”

The man’s rising hand cut the barkeep off. “But I have ordered gin and tonic and the occasional margarita, Michael.”

“Well, I can sure make you any of—”

“Wait, Michael. I’m curious. How has the Sazarac become my signature drink?”

Ballentine had served people for a year and had been in dozens of meandering, pointless, and often incomprehensible conversations, learning to handle people with skill and diplomacy. But somehow, with this guy, it was like being dropped in a box with the air drained out as the sides closed in.

“I … my mistake, sir. I should have asked if I could get you what you had the last time I served you.”

“And you recalled that as a Sazarac, Michael? It that my understanding?”

“Yes, sir, I’m sure that’s what I recall.”

“What if it was a gin and tonic, Michael? Did you consider that?”

Ballentine slapped his forehead. “That’s what it was! I don’t know how I could have forg—”

The man shook his head sadly. “It wasn’t a gin and tonic, Michael. Not a gin and tonic at all.”

“The margarita, then?”

“Absolutely not.”

Ballentine frowned, perplexed. “What was it, sir?”

The man looked at Ballentine as if he were mentally challenged.

“A Sazarac, of course.”

Ballentine retreated into professionalism, bowing slightly and spinning away to the mixing station. “What is it about the guy, Alberto?” he said as he poured ingredients. “It’s like he’s from another planet.”

Fuentes lowered his voice to a whisper. “Mr Chalk has wealth, and when people bow to his dollars he believes they are bowing to him. It gives him the illusion of strength and the more he plays with people the stronger the illusion. Yet for all his dollars, Mr Chalk is a confused child, albeit a nasty one, I think.”

“Where did he get all this money?”

“His parents give him vast sums of money to not bother them. They have homes across Europe and he gets the United States as his playground. There is no communication between them but money.”

“That’s sad. It almost makes me feel for the guy.”

Fuentes shook his head and waggled a
no-no
finger. “Mr Chalk is a
monstruo
and you must feel nothing for him, because that’s exactly what he feels for you. Be pleasant and professional, give him what he requests and nothing more. And never, ever tell him anything about your personal life.”

“Why?”

“He will use it to wound you.”

Ballentine shot a glance at the guest, now smiling blankly into the air, if enthralled by a single, glittering thought.

“
Monstruo
, Alberto? What is that?”

“A freak, Michael,” Fuentes said. “The man is a freak of nature.”

I returned to the site convinced I was seeing a trafficking operation gone awry. Evidently the news preceded me, Roy pacing outside the white tent smoking a cigar. “Doc Morningstar just found a man’s sandal in the mix, clearly made in Honduras. Everything’s pointing to a single origin for the bodies, which screams human trafficking.”

“I’ve just come from a meeting with a specialist in the area, Roy.”

He nodded. “I’ve heard Victoree Johnson speak before. She’s big on public awareness, talks at libraries, social clubs, political get-togethers. Impressive woman who knows the ugliest aspects of the trade, which you’d expect.”

“Because she studies it?”

“Victoree was a slave herself. Haitian, sold by her parents when she was eleven. She was bought by a wealthy American couple to do housework. She did other things for hubby and the teenaged son. Oh, and the wife, too. Some family, right?”

“Jesus,” I whispered.

“They got tired of Victoree when she turned fourteen and gave her to a pimp who sold her to men who liked ’em with big eyes and little ages. She finally tried to run. But Mr Pimp wanted to teach a lesson to his other girlies so he carved out an eye and sliced off an ear, that’s why she wears her hair so long. Victoree stayed with the guy – what happens when being a piece of sexual commerce is all you know. He put her on the street doing mouth jobs at twenty bucks a pop, working from sundown until the last drunk john finally headed home. That was all Victoree Johnson knew for the next three years.”

“How did she get free?”

“She woke up one morning in a fourth-floor walkup and found her best friend dead on the floor, an OD. The friend looked so peaceful Victoree decided she wanted to go there. She didn’t have enough dope for a hot shot so she figured she’d dive off the fire escape. She had her hooking bag slung over her shoulder, some huge leather thing. Victoree drops two stories onto a freakin’ flagpole sticking off the building and snaps her spine. But the strap of the bag catches and holds because Victoree weighs about seventy pounds. She’s hanging up there like the ragged flag of everything that could go wrong until someone calls it in.”

“That was it? All over?”

“Some cop got her into a program. She was clean in a month and in school in three. Intercessions were made on her behalf and she was naturalized. She’s about to get a PhD in Sociology and fights against human trafficking. It’s an incredible story. Most sex slaves never live to see forty.”

“It’s amazing that she did.”

A laugh from Roy.

“What?” I asked.

“Victoree Johnson will be forty in eleven more years, Ryder. It’s a rough life.”

Roy reluctantly stubbed out his cigar against his heel and we entered the tent, the over-cranked air conditioning feeling like a meat locker. “Jesus,” Roy said. “One second it’s ninety-five, the next it’s sixty. Bet you won’t miss coming here, Carson.”

His words threw me. “Is the operation heading to the morgue? Are they that close to dismantling the column?”

“The case is over, bud. Gone.”

“What?”

“We thought the site was a dumping ground for a serial killer’s vics. But it’s a grave for victims of trafficking. Not our jurisdiction.”

Five days into the case and I finally thought we had an angle to pursue. If Carosso’s murder was part of the scheme, we might make a connection and start zeroing in on the mastermind. And the case was getting stripped away on a turf technicality? “We’re looking at as many as seventeen bodies, Roy,” I argued. “And the person behind this is as cold and calculating as any sociopath.”

“That may be true. What’s also true is the jurisdiction is shifting to Homeland Security. The borders got breached, bud. That’s their biz and fifteen minutes after I called, they were here.”

We neared the column. I saw two suited men studying the diminished structure, which now resembled a four-foot gray pencil-tip poking from the ground.

“Homeland Security, Roy?”

“As soon as I called to say they had a new case in their bag, they were on their way.”

“Will they be as fast to solve it as they were to claim it?” I asked, trying to keep my anger in check.

Roy didn’t seem to hear, instead giving me a fast background as we approached the stairway to the pit. “The senior guy is Sherman Rayles, a former US Army major and West Pointer.”

“What was Rayles’s last military assignment?”

A pause. “He worked at Gitmo.”

Guantanamo. Where his assignment could have involved anything from grilling suspected terrorists to managing the purchase of salad forks. Roy saw my uncertainty.

“He’s spit’n’polish, Carson. Dedicated to the mission, y’know?”

“But will his mission including solving the case?”

“Well, of course. But maybe he’ll come at it from a different angle.”

We descended the steps and the two men turned to inspect us. The older man was Rayles, a bit under average height with a face that would look at home on a recruiting poster: rectangular head, aquiline nose, square jaw with a pinch of dimple, salt-and-pepper hair buzzed short on the sides. He stood as straight as if a bolt of lightning had fused his spine into a plumb line drawn from earth to sky, and his chin jutted like it was his primary sensory organ.

“Carson, this is Sherman Rayles, Deputy Director of Homeland Security, South Florida Division. And this is Robert Pinker, his assistant.”

I shook hands with the pair. Rayles leaned back with his knuckles beneath his chin and studied me. Chances were that Homeland Security agents – fingers-in-every-pot types – had noted my move from Mobile and vetted me before I arrived. Depending on who they talked to I would be a free-rolling problem solver or a loose cannon. Unfortunately, HS was a bureaucratic hyperhive, and folks admiring of hive structure didn’t generally admire mine.

“Carson Ryder,” Rayles recited as if reading from a bullet-point presentation. “Eight-year homicide investigator with the Mobile Police Department. Three years as a street cop before that. Youngest patrol officer to ever make detective. You’ve earned a reputation for apprehending deranged criminals.” He paused. “Among other things.”

“Best man with psychos in our business, Sherm,” Roy beamed, his hand slamming my back like I was choking. “Nails ’em like nailing boards to a barn.”

“Um-hmm,” Rayles said, the eyes narrowing.

“Seems like human trafficking gone bad.” I nodded toward the diminishing obelisk to give Rayles’s eyes something different to study while I returned the once-over. Rayles’s black shoes were polished to an icy luster. His charcoal-gray suit, like his crisp white shirt and blue tie, was pressed so board-hard I knew the combination was his work uniform. He would wear a specific and unvarying uniform for gardening, another for golfing. When he wore pajamas he would think of them as his sleep uniform.

“I read the background,” Rayles said, the sturdy chin bobbing. “All the ID’d bodies are Honduran and I expect the pattern will hold.”

“How deep is Home Sec’s interest in trafficking?” I asked. “After no threat to the Homeland is detected.”

Rayles cleared his throat. “We’re interested in the routes used by the traffickers. This time it’s a bunch of peasants trying to slip in, next time it’s a team of bin Ladenites with a tank of ricin.”

Robert Pinker, Rayles’s adjutant – a thirtyish guy with solid neck and shoulders and green eyes that followed his boss’s every move – nodded like a good employee, then bent to study the column. I figured Pinker’d heard all this before.

“Really think you’ll find a route?” I asked.

“We’ll rattle cages in Honduras. After time goes by people down there will wonder where family members are and break their silence.”

I shot a glance at Morningstar. She was leaning back, but her full attention was on Rayles.

“Time goes by?” I said.

“Right now all these bodies –” Rayles nodded to the column – “are no-names. If the traffickers discover we’re on the case, they’ll change whatever happened here. A lot of times they know we’re coming, so by the time we get there, they’ve moved on. It’s frustrating.”

Pinker’s phone buzzed and he jogged to the pit wall to take the call. I watched as he made quick notes on a pad before slipping the phone back into his jacket and making subtle eye contact with Rayles, who excused himself. The pair went to the edge of the pit to discuss the notes. I realized Pinker carried Rayles’s phone for him, the Major obviously too important to answer his own messages.

As Rayles huddled with Pinker, I considered what he’d said about staying ahead of illegal activities. Few enterprises are as Darwinian as a profitable criminal one. If one lineage to profit is impeded, the organization evolves to circumvent the impediment. If a tunnel beneath the border is discovered via sensitive microphones that detect the sound of shovels, the next tunnel is burrowed near a building site, the construction noise masking the shoveling.

But it bothered me that Rayles’s first instinct was providing reasons why he might not succeed, and not the ways he would. Back in Mobile, Harry and I started with the idea that we would prevail, and when reality got in the way, we ignored it or beat it into a means more amenable to our ends.

But I was no longer in Mobile. And Harry Nautilus was no longer by my side.

Rayles rejoined us with Pinker a perfect two steps behind. “I guess that’s it for you folks,” Rayles said, checking his watch. “I’ll pass the files over to a team of our people and they can get started.”