INFORMANT (18 page)

Day Seventy-Seven

Afternoon

The Karma Café is hopping. A busload of hungry tourists was just dropped off at our door. Jim, our ancient hippie chef, is manning the kitchen grill while Shari and I run plates and pour coffee out front. We’ve run out of our daily specials, but nobody seems to mind. Even if the sky is gray outside, inside the Karma the music’s loud, the food’s good, and the retro tie-dyed t-shirts are flying off the shelves.

I’m in a groove—fully locked in waitress zone. A crown of daisies sits on my head as I move from table to table, chatting with tourists and hustling for tips. I’m desperate to keep myself busy, so I’ve been grabbing every shift I can. That’s my life now: I go to school, work long hours, and then fall into bed too exhausted to think about anything.

It’s been ten days since I last saw Beckett. Twelve days since I last saw Ricco. Neither one’s been anywhere near SFSU, a fact for which I am eternally grateful. Ricco’s left several messages on my cell, but I haven’t returned any of them.

All I’ve heard from Beckett is silence. Absolutely nothing.

I tell myself that’s a good thing. He’s respecting my decision. I only wish it didn’t hurt so much.

A family of four pays their bill and leaves, so I grab a plastic tray and bus the table. The next group slides in before I’ve even got it wiped down. “Welcome, folks,” I say, keeping my voice bright and cheerful. “I’ll be right back with some menus.” I lug the tray into the kitchen and park it by the sink. Grabbing a fistful of menus, I spin around to dash back out to the dining room.

Jim’s voice stops me. “Turn off your goddamned phone, would you?” he grunts from his place in front of the grill. “It’s been ringing like crazy. Driving me bat shit.”

Odd. Frowning, I reach for my purse, grab my phone, and check the screen.

Jess. Over and over, at least a dozen calls in the last half an hour.

“Order up!” Jim shouts.

Ignoring him, I grab the phone and press dial. She picks up immediately.

“Hey Jess, is everything—”

“
Kylie
,” she says, her voice caught between a sob and a scream. “Oh, my God. Kylie, they took him! They took him!”

“What? Jess, what? They took who?”

“Oh, my God! Oh, my God!”

“
Jess, what’s going on?”

“They took him!”

Jim shouts, “Order up, Kylie!”

I duck out the kitchen door into the alley and stand beside the dumpster, my phone clenched in my hand. “Jess, they took who? Ronnie?
Who
took Ronnie?”

“Not Ronnie,” she chokes out with a sob. “
Dally.
They took Dally.
They took my baby.
”

Icy dread courses through me. My vision blurs, and for a moment I think I’m actually going to black out. “What? Where is he?” I manage. “
Where’s Dally?”

“I don’t know! I don’t know!” she wails.

I suddenly hear Ronnie’s voice in the background. “Who is that? Who the fuck are you talking to?”

Jess: “It’s Kylie—“

Ronnie: “Hang up! Hang the fuck up! I’ll handle it! I told you I would handle it!”

Jess: “
No!
I need to tell her—“

Ronnie: “Give me the fucking phone!”

“Jess!” I scream.

The line goes dead. I punch redial, but nobody picks up.

I can’t breathe. I can’t fucking breathe.

Maybe a second passes, but it feels like an hour. A lifetime. I pivot around and dash back into the Karma. Jim drives a piece of shit Celica. The keys hang on a hook by the back door. I grab them without a word and sprint toward his car. His voice follows me out the door. He’s screaming and swearing, but I don’t care.

I jump inside the Celica, thrust the key in the ignition, and hit the gas. The tires squeal as I peel out. I don’t know how I manage to drive at all. I’m completely blinded by panic. I’m vaguely aware of running stop signs, swerving around Muni buses, flooring it through red lights.

Somehow I make it alive to Noriega Street Auto. I throw the car into park and dash upstairs to Jess and Ronnie’s flat.

My sister’s face is bruised. Her temple is swollen and her lower lip is bleeding. Her blouse is torn. Her eyes are puffy and red.

Primal rage fills me. I hurl myself at Ronnie before anyone can say a word. I’m beating him, clawing at him, kicking him. “What did you do?! What did you do to her? Fucking asshole! What did you do?!”

“No, Kylie, no!” Jess shrieks, trying to pull me off him. “He didn’t hurt me, I swear! Stop it! He didn’t do it!”

Her words slowly penetrate. I lower my fist, allow Ronnie to push me off him. “Get the fuck off me,” he snarls.

My chest heaves. I glance around the room, then snap my gaze back to them.  “Where is he? Where’s Dally?”

At the mention of Dally’s name, Jess breaks down again. Tears pour from her eyes as she collapses to the floor. “They took him,” she wails. “I was walking home from the store. He was in his stroller, but I didn’t have him buckled in. I tried to, but he was too fussy. I didn’t think it mattered—we were almost home. They rushed me. There were three of them. They jumped out of a van, knocked me down, and grabbed Dally. I tried to fight back, but it happened so fast… They drove off with him. I couldn’t stop them.”

“Oh, my God,” I say. “Oh, my God.” Horror fills me. Devastation. Disbelief. Then I look around their flat. Blink. “Where are the police? Why aren’t the police here yet? Are they out looking for Dally? Did you give them a description of the guys who—”

“We haven’t called them,” Ronnie says.

What? What the fuck?
I stride across the room and pick up the phone.

Ronnie grabs it out of my hand and slams it down. “We
can’t
call the cops.”

“You have to.
Now.
You have to call them
now
.” I know how this works. With every minute that passes, the odds of getting Dally back unhurt get slimmer and slimmer. I swing around to stare at Jess. “You said they were driving a van. Did you get a look at the license plate?”

She glances at Ronnie and then stares vacantly into space, her eyes wide and unseeing. Ronnie hangs his head.

“Jess,” I press, “we’ve got to call 911.
Now.
We need help. They’ll find him. The police will find him.”

Silence.

My stomach seizes. There’s something going on. Something they’re not telling me. I look from Jess to Ronnie, waiting.

“We know who took Dally,” Ronnie says. “That’s why we can’t call the cops.”

“
What? You know who took him?” 
This information sends me over the edge. Suddenly I’m trembling all over. None of it makes any sense. “If you know who took him, why are we just sitting here? Why—”

“The men at Lucky Dragon think Ronnie stole from them,” Jess says, in a hollow voice I’d never recognize as her own. “They say if Ronnie gives them the money back, they’ll give us Dally back. Otherwise…”

The Lucky Dragon. I find a chair and sit down before my knees give out. I was so caught up in my own private drama with Beckett and Ricco, I completely forgot about that. My gaze locks on Ronnie.

“You were running drugs for them,” I say. It isn’t a question.

“I had to.” If he’s at all surprised that I know about this, it doesn’t show. He’s pacing back and forth, frantic. “I was careful, I swear. We needed the money—”

I hold up my hand to stop him. “How much?”

“I didn’t take their fucking money! That’s what I tried to tell them! I’m not stupid! I’m not an idiot!” He drags in a ragged breath. “I made the drop like I always do. The guy passed me a duffle. It was heavy. I assumed the money was in there. I didn’t check because nothing’s ever gone wrong before. Even if I had checked, how would I have known those were counterfeit bills?” He claws his hands through his hair. “Jesus Christ. They took my kid. They took my fucking kid.”

“How much?” I repeat.

Ronnie wheels around, his face a mask of fury. “I didn’t take—“

“How much do they
think
you took?” I grit out. He doesn’t reply. Neither does Jess. “
How much?
Ten thousand? Twenty thousand?”

“Half a million.”

Oh, sweet Jesus.

Ronnie’s voice is ragged, hopeless. “I didn’t take the money, Kylie. I swear to Christ I didn’t take it. I was just trying to make some quick cash on the side to buy the garage, and then I was going to get out.” He sways sideways, and I almost think he’s going to faint. He catches himself before he does. “I was just trying to do the right thing. I was trying to take care of my family, that’s all. I never thought this would happen.
I didn’t steal the fucking money
.”

I nod, but my mind has already moved on.

“We’ll call the police,” I say. “We’ll tell them everything.
Everything
. You made a mistake, that’s all. You might go to jail Ronnie, but it doesn’t matter. We’ll get Dally back.”

Ronnie looks at me. The expression in his eyes is almost pitying. “You don’t know these people. These are Chinese fucking warlords, or some shit. Half a million is
nothing
to them. This is about respect. They want to punish me.”

Jess wraps her arms around herself and curls into a ball, sobbing.

A sensation of eerie calm flows through me. I feel as though I am floating, watching the three of us from above. I’m in shock, or I’m already dead, and this is my out-of-body experience.

Ronnie keeps talking. “These guys, they have connections in this city. Power. You call the cops and they’ll know about it before you even hang up the phone. They’ll kill Dallas. They’ll kill my baby boy.” 

My mind is spinning. This can’t be happening. This can’t be happening. But it is. My beloved Dally,
an innocent baby
, is in the hands of sadistic criminals who are threatening to kill him unless we come up with half a million in cash. It is unfathomable. We need help.
Now
.

I pull my cell phone out of my pocket.

Ronnie lunges for it. “What don’t you fucking understand?” he spits out. “
We can’t call the cops
. They can’t help us.”

“You’re right,” I say, maintaining my grip on my phone. “The police can’t help us. But maybe there’s someone who can.”

I think of all the people I’ve recently come into contact with. Underworld criminals. DEA agents. Sleazy attorneys. People who speak the same brutal language as the men running the Lucky Dragon. People who have power and connections, and who are willing to meet violence with violence. Ricco. Agent Reardon, Brad Morris. Beckett.

Oh God,
Beckett.

In the end, there’s only one person I can call. One person capable of handling this situation. Only one person capable of saving Dally. I scroll through the contacts on my phone.

In truth, I should have deleted his number days ago, when I said I was out of the game. I didn’t. Now, even though his face still haunts me, even though I never thought I’d ever hear his voice again, I’m glad that we are still connected.

It’s not over between us. Not yet.

I find his number and push the send key.

Miguel Diaz answers on the first ring.

*    *    *

PART THREE

*    *    *

Dear Judge Ellis,

Think of your worst nightmare and multiply it by a thousand.

Your worst fear multiplied by a million.

Then you’ll have some idea of what Jess, Ronnie, and I were going through.

I sincerely hope you never find yourself in a situation like mine. I hope you are never so overcome with terror that all you can do is blindly react. Even now, looking back on it, it’s impossible to describe the horror that overwhelmed me when I found out that Dally had been taken. The emotional and physical agony.

Maybe calling Miguel Diaz wasn’t the best choice. But it felt like my only choice.

My name is Kylie Porter, I’m nineteen years old, and this is my Testimony.

Day Seventy-Seven

Evening

When the buzzer to the downstairs door rings, Ronnie, Jess, and I all jump. I mean that in the literal sense. Our bodies jerk as though struck by electric cattle prods. We are beyond strung-out. Imagine three terrified mice trapped in a box of exploding firecrackers. Our nerves are so frayed that it’s impossible to keep it together.

Dally, our beloved baby boy, has been taken. Torn from my sister’s arms in the middle of the street, in the middle of the day. It is inconceivable, unfathomable, but it happened. Each of us is still struggling to process the magnitude of this horror.

“The men at Lucky Dragon think Ronnie stole half a million dollars from them,” Jess says, in a voice so hollow I’d never recognize it as her own. “They say if Ronnie gives them the money back, they’ll give us Dally back. Otherwise…”

Otherwise we’ll never see him again.

Maybe they won’t kill him. He’s such a beautiful baby. Dimpled smile, soft creamy skin, pudgy thighs, gorgeous blue eyes. Maybe they’ll decide to sell him into slavery, or place him in a child prostitution ring.

Oh, my God. No.
No.
Wouldn’t that be worse than death? Maybe. I simply cannot allow it to happen.

I will do anything—
anything
—to get Dally back.

We hear footsteps coming up the stairs. I throw open the door to the flat, expecting to see Miguel Diaz. Instead, I find two of his men waiting in the hall. I recognize them—they are huge, hulking men who make no pretense of hiding their guns. Their weapons are tucked, steel grip up, into the waistband of their pants.

One of the men—a guy with a shaved head and the muscles of a prize fighter—gives a curt nod. “Senor Diaz will see you now.”

We all move to follow him, but bald guy stops us. He points one beefy finger at me, and then one at Ronnie. “You and you.”

Jess lets out a cry of alarm and frantically shakes her head. She clutches Ronnie’s arm, gripping him with both hands. “No! You can’t leave me behind. You can’t! That’s my baby! I have to come.
I have to
. Tell him.”

Ronnie looks at her helplessly. Jess’s reaction is understandable, but I’m a bit more ruthless. This is exactly the kind of hysteria Diaz wants to avoid.

I pull my sister out of her husband’s arms and shake her.

“Jess,” I say, “Listen to me.
Listen.
Ronnie doesn’t call the shots here. I don’t call the shots here. We don’t have a choice. If we want Dally back, we will do exactly what we are told.
Exactly
what we are told. Do you understand?”

A glimmer of hope flashes through my sister’s eyes, then it disappears. Her gaze is once again vacant, utterly devoid of hope. Her eyes are puffy and red, bits of dried blood cling to her bottom lip. I’ve never seen her so broken.

“No,” she chokes out. Fresh tears stream down her cheeks. “No, I don’t understand. I just want my baby. I just want Dally back.”

In that instant, deadly rage replaces the panic that had overwhelmed me earlier. I want to kill. I want to kill whoever dared hurt my sister, kill whoever stole an innocent baby and decided to use him as a pawn in this ugly battle.

Jess is older than me by almost two years, but I have always been the one to protect her. That instinct is so deeply ingrained that it is kicking in even now. My gaze meets hers. I take her hand and give it a soft squeeze. “We’ll get him back back
,”
I softly swear.
“Trust me. These men will help us get Dally.”

“Now,” the bald guy grunts.

I force a trembling smile. “It’s gonna be okay.”

I can’t tell whether Jess believes me or not. I think she is still in too much shock to fully grasp the reality of our situation. At least she no longer clings to Ronnie. Instead, she numbly steps back and lets us leave.

A shiny black Lincoln Town Car sits at the curb with its engine idling. Ronnie and I climb into the back bench. Diaz’s men settle into the front.

I look up and find Ronnie watching me. Our eyes meet. I read pain, fear, and gratitude in his gaze. Unlike Jess, Ronnie is no innocent. He may not know who Diaz’s men are, but he’s savvy enough to recognize blunt criminal force when he sees it. How I know these men doesn’t matter to him. I made a phone call and they came. For the time being, that’s enough.

More than enough. They’re Dally’s only hope.

As to the fact that Ronnie got us into this mess, that he’s been running drugs for the Lucky Dragon…none of that matters anymore. We are well past blame and recrimination. All we can do now is get through this.

Please God, let us get Dally back.

I expected the driver to take us to Miguel Diaz’s penthouse suite at the Fairmont. Instead, we are delivered to a building off Dolores Street in the heart of the Mission. A vivid mural artfully depicting human rights violations in Central America covers the outer walls. The irony—a mural of political protest adorning a building owned by a brutal drug lord—doesn’t escape me, but I don’t care. I just want to see Miguel.

We walk up four flights of rickety wooden stairs. Men dressed in camouflage fatigues and holding high-powered rifles are positioned at the landings of each floor. They eye us with cocky disinterest, clearly dismissing us as a threat, but keep their hands on their weapons just in case. Miguel’s private army. No one is getting close to their boss without permission. The man is
protected.

No wonder Beckett hired me to work for the DEA. The sheer impossibility of getting someone on the inside to turn against Diaz is vividly apparent. I should be miked, I realize with a start. This is his private sanctuary, and he’s letting me inside. I am being allowed a glimpse of how he actually operates. I should be wearing my mike. The only way for Beckett to nail Diaz is if he hears what’s going on.

That thought tumbles and slams into another. I can’t be miked. I can’t help the DEA capture Diaz. I need him in order to save Dally. With that, I fall into a mental spiral so crazy, so dizzying, that I summarily shut everything down. I can’t think of Beckett or the DEA. Not now. If I want to survive, if I hope to ever see my beloved nephew again, I’ve got to stay focused.

We reach the final stair and are ushered through a door. The entire top floor is one enormous unfinished space. Floor-to-ceiling windows combined with rough plaster walls and crude plank flooring. Exposed beams, vents, and drainage pipes. The openness of the space is interrupted only by an occasional steel support column.

In the middle of this vast room sits Miguel Diaz. He is lounging in a throne. Yes, a throne. I can think of no other word for the seat he occupies. It is at least six feet high and three feet across, intricately carved with what appear to be Latin American motifs: snakes, skulls, blooming roses, burning suns. Not only is it striking, it is the only piece of furniture in the room.

Gathered around Diaz, like a royal court, is the group I first encountered that night at the Fairmont. Bodyguards and street lieutenants, dealers and bookies, bankers and debt collectors, wives and whores. All of them are employed by The Corporation—the Cuban mob. And if Miguel Diaz is the king of this enterprise, there is no doubt at all that Ricco is prince. The heir apparent.

My eyes lock on Ricco. He doesn’t move. Doesn’t acknowledge me at all. He simply watches me, his expression aloof and impersonal. I know why. He’s thinking about the night of Carnaval, how I left him so abruptly. How for days afterward I ignored his phone calls, deleted his texts. Although my action was fully justified (hadn’t I seen him dragging a corpse through an alley?), clearly I wounded his pride. He’s angry.

The insanity of
him
being mad at
me
doesn’t matter. I’ve got exactly three seconds to make our relationship right again. Dally’s life depends on it. Leaving Ronnie standing alone, I rush across the room and throw myself into Ricco’s arms. I bury my cheek against his shoulder and grab a fistful of his shirt.

“Ricco,” I choke out, “Ricco. Thank God you’re here. I didn’t know who else to turn to.”

He draws back and looks at me. His dark eyes soften slightly and in that instant I no longer see the sociopathic killer who is following in his father’s footsteps. I see Ricco, the friend who teased me about buffalo chicken pizza, who I brought to my favorite park to see the city skyline at night, and who joined me in belting out a karaoke version of
La Bamba
.

The friend who smiled at Dally, told me he was beautiful, and offered to bring him a plantain.

The memory of that moment crystallizes in my mind: Jess, Dally, Ricco, and I are sitting at a table in the SFSU quad. The sun is shining and we’re happy. Safe. I remember everything so vividly it’s almost real again. I can hear Dally’s gurgling nonsense words, smell the soft talcum scent of his skin, feel his squishy weight in my lap.  

The tears that spring to my eyes are genuine. I blink to hold them at bay, then tilt back my head. “Ricco,” I manage weakly, “They took him. The men at the Lucky Dragon took Dally. They took my sister’s baby. They’re going to hurt him unless we do something to stop them.”

My words get through. I watch his jaw tighten at they penetrate. Ricco knows Dally—he’s held him, played with him. He knows my sister. He knows what a good person she is, knows how much she means to me. He even knows how I worried about my ‘lowlife’ brother-in-law.

It’s incredible that I once wanted to keep those areas of my life entirely separate. Thank God that didn’t happen. My gratitude that Ricco knows my family has no bounds. He studies my face for a long moment, then his gaze shifts from me to his father. He gives a curt nod.

My relief is so intense it nearly chokes me. For the first time since Jess’s hysterical call interrupted my shift at the Karma, a tiny kernel of hope blossoms in my chest. We might actually get Dally back—if Ronnie plays this right. I should have coached him earlier, told him what I was bringing him into, but now it’s too late.

It doesn’t begin well. Ricco sets me away from him and moves to stand beside his father’s throne. Miguel motions for Ronnie to approach them. Ronnie steps forward, flanked on both sides by the two hulking men who delivered us here.

Miguel’s lips curl in distaste as he surveys Ronnie from head-to-toe. He is the antithesis of sleek Cuban grooming. Baggy cargo pants, loose shirt, tattooed arms and neck, unkempt hair. His slouched posture conveys nothing but vague menace and shiftless indifference.

“Speak,” Miguel orders.

Ronnie’s words pour out. How he was broke, desperate, stupid, so he took a job at the Lucky Dragon making deliveries. How he learned he could make a hell of a lot more money if he ran drugs between deliveries of pork fried rice and lo mein noodles. How he picked up a duffle that turned out to be filled with counterfeit money, and then all hell broke loose.

“Please,” he finishes, his voice hoarse with desperation, “You have to help me get my son back. You have to.”

Miguel is still for a long minute, then his gaze flicks to the bald, hulking man to Ronnie’s right. He nods, and the bald guy slams his fist into Ronnie’s gut, doubling him over.

I give a startled cry, but don’t move. No one does. We all wait, watching, as Ronnie absorbs the blow and then slowly straightens.

“I
have
to do nothing,” Miguel says.

Ronnie manages a nod. “You’re right,” he gasps out. “I’m sorry.”

“Did you steal the money?”

“No.
No
. I swear to Christ, I didn’t take it. I was the delivery guy. That’s all. I’d drop off, pick up. Hell, most of the time I was just delivering food. I didn’t pay attention.”

Ricco shakes his head. “Why should my father believe you?”

“Look, I’m a mechanic. I fix cars. My wife and I are trying to save up money to buy the building we’re in—that’s why I took the job. Even Kylie’s been helping us out financially. If you don’t believe me, you can ask her.”

“So you admit you needed money,” Ricco persists.

“Yes,
yes
. I was trying to earn a quick thirty or forty thousand for the down payment. But what they’re saying I did doesn’t make sense. I wouldn’t take
half a million dollars
from these guys and then stick around.
No one
would do that.
That’s insane. The guys who stole the money—the guys who gave me the counterfeit bills—they left town. They’re gone. I’m just the fucking idiot who got caught in the middle.”

Miguel steeples his fingers and silently studies Ronnie. “If you are lying to us,” he says, “you will die. Painfully.”

“I’m not lying.” He takes a deep, shuddering breath. “I swear on my son’s life, I’m not lying.”

“So. A simple miscommunication.”

A simple miscommunication?
Miguel’s summation of events—beating my sister and kidnapping an innocent baby—is so outlandish I nearly scream. I catch myself just in time. I am a guest here, and it is imperative that I show the proper respect.

I step forward, standing beside Ronnie to present a unified front. “Please,” I say meekly, “we don’t know what to do. The men at the Lucky Dragon threatened to kill Dally unless we came up with half a million cash. We don’t have it. They also threatened to hurt him if we went to the police.”