The Last Witness boh-11 Read online

  There of course were at least ten times that number, and much larger screens, in the casino’s security office. But Antonov believed that keeping a finger on the pulse of the complex lessened the chance of surprises. He also knew it did not hurt for those working for him-including his security men, who often were among the first to be offered bribes to look the other way-to know that the boss himself could be watching over their shoulder at any time.

  “Well, I don’t have any bad news, Nick.”

  None that I’m going to tell you.

  Starting with me having to fix what Ricky screwed up.

  And another is you not knowing that my mule just made his flight.

  You’ve never warmed up to my idea of using nonprofessionals to move product.

  Antonov grunted. “Good enough, I guess.”

  The phone on the desk began trilling softly. Antonov’s dark eyes darted to it, and when he saw its touchscreen display, he punched the speakerphone button.

  “Jorge, my friend!” Antonov said, his tone now cheerful. “Good timing. I have Dmitri with me in my office.”

  “Hey, Jorge,” Gurnov called out.

  “Good morning, gentlemen,” Jorge Perez said. “How are you?”

  “You tell us,” Antonov said. “How did it go? I got your message, but Dmitri hasn’t heard. You can give us both the details.”

  “In a word,” he said, his self-assured tone bordering on arrogant, “successful.”

  “Details?” Antonov repeated.

  There was a pause, then Perez said, “Well, the bad news is that we won the Poker Run. Worse, we did it with a damn royal flush.” He chuckled. “Where do you want your Mustang convertible delivered?”

  “Why is that bad news?” Antonov said casually.

  “Because everyone was joking that the whole thing had to be rigged, what with a casino’s boat winning the hand and all. If I’d thought that was going to happen, I would have played badly on purpose. But you know that I like to win.”

  “Bad news? I’d say it’s exactly the opposite,” Antonov said. “The press release will spin it ‘Lucky Stars Casino Shows We’re All Winners.’ Or something like that. And we give the car to charity.”

  “Now, that’s a good idea,” Perez said.

  Antonov looked to Gurnov, who nodded as expected.

  “How did the transfer go?” Antonov went on.

  “Surprisingly well. I told you that Miguel Treto was good. He’s never let me down, even when it’s gotten hairy with the damn Communists messing with him and that cargo ship.”

  “For example?”

  “Like the bastards refusing to accept shipments, just flat out making him haul it back to Miami, or squeezing him for a bribe. He said he had the feeling that they were going to do that this time, especially when they arrived late in the day, after dark. He sweated that big-time, because he knew it would have messed up the rendezvous timing. But Treto’s a pro-made it go off without a problem.”

  “What about the product?” Gurnov put in.

  Perez played dumb. “The girls or the-”

  “Both,” Gurnov snapped.

  “It all came through fine. We put the girls on the Citation with Bobby Garcia. He dropped two of them in New Orleans. I talked to him after they landed in Dallas.”

  “And the other product?”

  “Carlos is headed your way with the coke. Twenty keys.”

  Gurnov had a mental image of Perez’s short cousin.

  And mine will be here faster, and without having to drive past all those cops sitting on the side of I-95, just waiting for another smuggler to profile.

  Then bust the midget-after confiscating the coke.

  “What if some cop pulls him over for DWM?” Gurnov said, then glanced at Antonov.

  “Driving While Mexican,” Gurnov added.

  Antonov shook his head.

  Perez snapped: “He’s an American citizen, you know. He will be fine. He’s made the run plenty of times. There’s ten keys in each car, and they’re running an hour apart.”

  Antonov was quiet for a moment, then, out of the blue, he said casually, “What about that boatload of Cubans? The ones that crashed the boat ashore?”

  What is that about? Gurnov thought, surprised.

  Perez was silent for a long moment, then he said, his voice not quite so self-assured, “That went as planned, too, Nick. They were Cubans taking advantage of the wet-foot, dry-foot policy.”

  “And you weren’t taking advantage of our plans? At ten grand a head?”

  There was stone silence. Then Perez said, “Yeah, we got paid. But Miguel Treto has done that for me at least twenty, thirty times now. It’s why it all went so smoothly with your stuff. A diversion.”

  “But I didn’t know about the plan,” Antonov said evenly, as he looked to Gurnov.

  Gurnov raised his eyebrows.

  Perez said, “I didn’t-”

  “If you’re going to take chances,” Antonov said, his voice rising, “you take them on your own.”

  Perez was silent for a moment.

  “Nick, I thought it would be the perfect diversion. And it turned out to be that. Every cop in South Florida showed up when that sheriff boat called for backup to stop them from getting to shore.”

  Antonov sighed audibly.

  “You are not listening again, Jorge. That seems to be a problem with you. Let me be clear: I am not saying that it was a bad idea, Jorge. I am saying that I did not know about it.”

  Gurnov turned his attention to the quad of monitors on the wall as he thought, Who was that meant for? Jorge? Or me?

  “I understand, Nick. I thought I was doing the right thing.”

  “How did our friends do?” Antonov said, ignoring that by changing the subject.

  It took Perez a moment to respond. “They said they were very pleased. They said they wanted to go again on the next one.”

  “Which is?”

  “There’s another Poker Run in three months.”

  “Good. If they’re happy, then they will make their boss happy.”

  –

  Dmitri Gurnov could not get Antonov’s voice out of his head as he drove the dark blue Audi toward South Philly.

  “I am not saying that it was a bad idea, Jorge. I am saying that I did not know about it.”

  Gurnov glanced at the clock on the dash. The US Airways flight from Saint Thomas was due at Philadelphia International in two hours. He’d have his product an hour after that.

  Meantime, he figured, Jorge Perez’s pint-sized cousin would probably still be stuck in Fort Lauderdale traffic with ten different cops watching him.

  Gurnov stopped at a traffic light, then looked at himself in the rearview mirror. His sunken eyes stared back as he thought for a long moment. He ran his hand over his scruff of beard, then nodded at himself.

  Don’t be stupid, he thought. Nick was saying that for my benefit, too.

  But I’m not about to walk in and drop those coke bricks on his desk.

  “Here. No surprises, Nick, like you said.”

  And then explain everything?

  “I’ve got my own game going on the side. . ”

  That would be suicide.

  I have to figure out something. But first I have to finish Ricky’s botched job.

  Gurnov double-checked the second of the three addresses that were handwritten on a sheet of paper on the passenger seat. Ricky Ramirez had handed him the sheet at five o’clock that morning, when they loaded four girls into a minivan for the trip to Florida.

  The first address, which Gurnov had just driven past in Society Hill, was the burned-out town house where Krystal Gonzalez had been killed. The other two, Ramirez had said, were the houses where the girls had lived when he’d had them recruited.

  From the dead girl’s go-phone, Gurnov had a name linked to two phone numbers-“Ms Mac 1” and “Ms Mac 2”-both of which when called went to voice mail. And he had the three addresses from Ramirez.

  And that was all he
had on the woman he was hunting.

  I’ve worked with less. .

  As he tossed the sheet back on the seat, his hand bumped the Sig-Sauer 9mm that was tucked in the right pocket of his leather coat.

  [THREE]

  Tradewinds Estate

  Saint Thomas, United States Virgin Islands

  Monday, November 17, 2:30 P.M.

  Maggie McCain had gone through the spiral notebooks, then ordered a salad and grilled fish from room service, ate that poolside, and then went through the books again.

  She quickly had decided that “meticulous” was not a word that could accurately be used to describe them.

  They’re sloppy.

  They certainly wouldn’t pass a high school accounting class, forget a college one.

  But there’s a lot here-the challenge is making sense of it all.

  It wasn’t just that the handwriting bordered on illegible. The entries in the books were at times illiterate-words misspelled or written phonetically in a rudimentary “Spanglish”-and structurally undisciplined.

  I don’t think Ricky would recognize a ruled line, much less a spreadsheet.

  But there’s no mistaking the numbers. Hundreds of thousands of dollars in drugs alone. They’re not selling on street corners. These are retail and wholesale figures.

  One of the books tracked the girls, their locations and activity, how much they earned and how much they owed. The other tracked the drugs. It hadn’t been difficult to discern which notebook was which. The first clue was the crude doodles of female anatomy and of marijuana leaves, bongs, crack pipes, and other paraphernalia.

  And there were lots of phone numbers. Each of the girls’ names had one-and Maggie figured they were go-phones given to them, just as Krystal had had hers. And the drug book listed pages of phone numbers. Some with names, some without names, and some names with multiple phone numbers, some of which, apparently the older ones, having been crossed through.

  With a few exceptions, most of the area codes were local-a lot of 215 and 267 for the Philadelphia area, and 732 and 856 for New Jersey.

  There’s got to be a way to use these numbers if I can’t get to Ricky through the dive bar.

  But that’s just going to be a nightmare-worse than hunting a needle in a haystack.

  She booted up the laptop and powered on the satellite antenna.

  Back online, she launched the program that allowed for video and telephone calls. She clicked on the icon that mimicked a ten-digit keypad on a phone, looked in her computer address book under Krystal’s name, and found the number for Players Corner Lounge.

  A woman’s harsh voice on the recording answered: “Players. Leave a message. .”

  What do I say?

  Maggie clicked END CALL.

  She looked at the first page of numbers in the notebook that tracked the girls. Then she clicked REDIAL. Then she clicked to hang up again.

  Before I do that. .

  She then typed her personal cell phone number and dialed it.

  When she heard her own voice recording say, “Hey, it’s me. Sorry we missed-” she clicked twice on the keypad’s pound sign. That took her past the automated voice-mail recording and to her voice-mail box.

  The familiar computer-generated female voice politely but mechanically said, “You have forty new messages. You have ten old messages. Five messages older than seven days have been automatically deleted today.”

  Forty? No surprise.

  Not as bad as the hundred-something e-mails.

  But then, there’s not a fifty-message limit on e-mails.

  She clicked on the keypad’s numeral “1” and the female computer voice said, “First message. From Monday, nine P.M. . ”

  Then the voice mail played: “Hi! It’s Krystal. Call me back!”

  Maggie felt her throat constrict.

  She clicked the pound sign, fast-forwarding past that and the older messages.

  The female computer voice then announced: “New message from Saturday, ten thirty-one P.M. . ”

  Maggie then listened to her mother’s voice, calmly asking Maggie to call when she had a chance.

  “Nothing important,” her mother said, her voice tired. “Good night.”

  Well, Mother, that didn’t happen.

  Maggie deleted the message.

  The next message was her mother again, almost two hours later, just after midnight. Her voice now was frantic.

  “Maggie! Please answer! Call us! We need to know you’re okay!”

  It hurt to hear her mother so distressed. She deleted the message.

  That bastard Ricky is causing everyone pain. People who’ve done nothing to deserve it.

  She listened to the next one. It was her father, his gravelly voice trying to sound calm.

  And that really hurt to hear, too.

  She listened to the entire message-felt the moral obligation to do so-then deleted it. And then she did the same with the rest-played them all, ones from family and friends and the police, and deleted them one by one.

  The tone of her mother went from the initial frantic to hysterical crying to sheer exhaustion. Maggie thought that if there was any silver lining, it was that some of the messages had been thankfully brief. But toward the end, a few were just one or two words-“Maggie?” “Please call. .” “Hello?”-almost as if her mother had called the number simply to hear Maggie’s voice on the recording.

  Listening to them all had been emotionally exhausting. Maggie was glad to finally hear, “You have one new message. From Monday, at twelve-ten A.M. . ”

  “I believe you have something that belongs to me,” a man’s steely voice said. “Call me at 267-555-9100 and I’m sure we can come to some arrangement that is mutually satisfying.”

  Maggie shivered at the sound.

  That is one cold voice.

  And what is that accent? Eastern European?

  It’s certainly not Hispanic. Not Ricky’s.

  And “mutually satisfying”?

  Like what? What happened to Krystal?

  She played the message again, this time writing down the number on a piece of paper. She stared at it for a long time.

  It’s a Philly area code.

  Then she opened a new window on her browser and typed the telephone number in its search field.

  The first search result read: “267-555-9100, a KeyCom Mobile Device. Month-to-month service. Never be locked in a long-term cellular contract again!”

  Well, only a fool would use a landline number that could be traced.

  So, it’s a go-phone.

  I don’t trust myself to call it.

  But I can see what happens when I text.

  She opened another new browser window, then went to myfreetexts.net and, registering with false information, created a new account that assigned her a new telephone number with an 831 area code.

  That page was then replaced with one that was almost a mirror image of the text message screen she had on her cell phone. Almost, because the difference was that both sides of the My Free Texts page had annoying advertisements scrolling from top to bottom.

  A small price to pay, I suppose.

  She watched the cursor blinking in the field for the recipient’s cell phone number. After a long moment, she typed in the phone number.

  And then her stomach suddenly knotted.

  That could be the killer. Probably is the killer.

  Or, if not the killer, then a killer.

  She inhaled deeply, then slowly let it out.

  I’m okay. He can’t get to me here.

  And if I’m going to get to him. .

  She hit TAB, putting the cursor in the bubble that represented the message field, and typed:

  MAYBE I HAVE YOUR BOOKS. MAYBE I DON’T.

  She read that three times, nodded, then added at the end, “Who is this?”

  She read it all once, then clicked SEND.

  Maybe whoever it is will be stupid enough to tell me.

  Or, more likel
y, lie to me.

  She stared at the screen. She picked up the water bottle on the table beside her and sipped.

  She then realized that she was shaking slightly.

  I’m terrified.

  What if I screw this whole thing up?

  She drained the water bottle.

  Well, I can’t sit here forever waiting.

  Who knows when they’ll reply?

  She put her fingers to the keyboard and started to sign out.

  Under the bubble that held the message she sent, a new bubble suddenly popped up:

  267-555-9100

  WHO THE HELL IS THIS?

  She immediately yanked her fingers back.

  She stared at the reply.

  Why do I read anger in that?

  And not just any anger.

  A fury.

  She caught herself typing:

  WHO THE HELL DO YOU THINK?

  She stared at that, then immediately tapped the DELETE key over and over.

  When the bubble was blank, she turned her head in thought-and realized her impulse had been the right one.

  These bastards are killers.

  I can’t show weakness.

  She typed:

  WHO THE HELL DO YOU THINK?

  AND WHAT THE HELL DO YOU CONSIDER AN ARRANGEMENT THAT IS MUTUALLY SATISFYING?

  It was a long moment before a new bubble popped up:

  267-555-9100

  MY APOLOGY. AREA CODE 831 IS CALIF

  I KNOW NO ONE THERE

  That’s probably a lie.

  She sighed.

  This is all a damn lie. A nightmare.

  What am I doing?

  Another bubble quickly followed:

  267-555-9100

  WHAT MAY I CALL YOU? MS MAC?

  Maggie felt her heart race.

  That’s what Krystal called me!

  Don’t let your guard down!

  I can hear that Eastern European voice in his sentence structure.