The Death Box (29 page)

She sounded a bit like a character on
Jersey Shore
, but hey, it was Newark. I read the number deciphered by Clayton.

“Gimme couple minutes,” she said. “See what I can dofahya.”

It took less than one. “That tag you found? Musta fallen offa turret assembly for a fi’teen-ton crane. The turret got bought March a 1978, delivuhed in April to Olympia Equipment Rental in Florida. Got signed for by a man named Avram Kazankis.” She spelled it out. “Sorry, but that’s all I gahfuhya.”

“Wrong,” I told Ms Zefferelli. “You have my heart forever.”

I turned to an expectant Gershwin. “The tag came from a crane assembly delivered to one Avram Kazankis in 1978.”

“Georgie’s daddy,” Gershwin said. We punched knuckles.

“According to Kazankis, his father had a bad leg. What you want to bet Georgie was in charge of clearing the leased land?”

“Finding a big hole in the ground,” Gershwin said, finger-drumming a riff on his desktop. “He knew.”

I heard Roy’s voice booming down the hall. It was time to see how much clout my new boss had. And how much autonomy I had.

I stuck my head in his office. “I need a chopper, Roy. Do-able?”

He frowned. But his only question was, “How many you seating?”

“Zigs and me.”

“A little one, then. They’re easier. Every time I need one of the big chops, the damn Governor’s got his ass in it. No one’s gonna shoot at you with missiles, are they?”

“Hope not.”

He picked up his phone and spoke for a few seconds before zinging the phone back to the cradle. “One’s being gassed up. The heliport’s on the roof.”

Within minutes we were strapped in with mic-equipped helmets around our cabezas, Miami turning to a distant skyline as the land became gridded subdivisions set into green land broken by brown stretches of farm field. I was amazed open land existed in Florida, thinking the last piece of arable Floridian earth was in a museum somewhere.

After a bit the low sprawl of the Okeechobee prison appeared, a grid of gray boxes at first, then we saw the rec area and ball field and towers and high-wire fences topped with wire that could filet meat. The warden knew George Kazankis well enough to use the man’s first name, Kazankis visiting twice a year on average, his rehabilitation programs seemingly beneficial. I was curious at how Kazankis made his picks.

“I never figured out George’s reasoning for his selections,” Warden Pruit Sloan said. Sloan was a big, brown-suited guy in his sixties, square as a refrigerator, with longish gray hair and eyebrows that looked like tufts of dirty cotton over mobile brown eyes. “George has a high success rate, so I never argued. But his candidates were all over the board.”

“How so, sir?”

“Mainly it was guys working hard on rehabilitation. But now and then George would sponsor a candidate I never figured would get straight.”

“They stood out?”

“Some of them were freaking scary. Hardcores. But they were at the end of their stretch and George figured he could save them.”

“You know Paul Carosso?”

A nod. “Don’t know why Carosso appealed to George. Carosso was a loner with all the personality of a clam. Did max time because he wouldn’t inform on a guy already doing life. Not real bright.”

“But loyal,” I noted. “Not a bad trait in an employee.”

The Parole Board had faxed a list of cons selected for Kazankis’s program over the years. I passed it to Sloan. “We’re kind of in a hurry, Warden. Could you check the bad boys on this list? Just pencil-mark the ones you never figured for salvation.”

He scrutinized the list. Gershwin had told me Sloan had been with the prison for twenty years. I figured he knew most of Kazankis’s cons from day one.

“You want their records?” Sloan said, picking up a pencil. “I can have copies made pronto.”

We went buzzing back to Miami with dense clouds in the western sky, but a strong wind seemed to be pushing them quickly over the horizon. Gershwin and I passed the time reading Sloan’s paperwork on the men Kazankis had sponsored.

“He spends a lot of time with the prison personnel and the cons,” Gershwin said. “Gets a lot of background, sees a lot of records, hears a load of scuttlebutt. Then picks the cream of the crop, so to speak.”

“I bet most want to go straight, Zigs, how Kazankis keeps up the illusion. But every now and then I figure he finds a prize. A guy with a trade he needs. Like a knife psycho.”

“Here’s Carosso’s pages,” Gershwin said. “Everything down to cellmates: Two years with Frank Turner, four and a half with Ambrose White, two months with a guy named Orlando Orzibel. Then Carosso’s out and under the Bible-thumping tutelage of Kazankis.”

“Any cellies match with Kazankis hires?”

Gershwin cross-checked as I studied the landscape. Miami lay twenty miles or so distant, looking like a prosperous Oz on the shores of an emerald sea.

“Got a match,” Gershwin said, checking against parole records, picking up where the prison records left off. “The Orlando Orzibel guy. He was also a sponsored release by Kazankis.”

“What’s the PB say about Mister Oh-Oh?” I asked. I heard myself, paused, looked at Gershwin.

“Oh-Oh,” I repeated.

“DOUBLE OUGHT!” he yelled. I saw the pilot wince beneath his amplified headset.

I scanned the pages, heart pounding. “Orzibel went to work for Kazankis three and a half years ago. He hit all his meetings with his parole officer. The reports from Kazankis were glowing: Model employee, hard and dedicated worker, always on time. Even so, Mr Oh-Oh left the employ of Redi-flow after only eight months, just as he went off parole.”

“Going where?”

“Said he planned to work in the entertainment industry.”

I grabbed the chopper’s land link and called Warden Sloan.

“I thought Orzibel the oddest of Kazankis’s choices.” Sloan said. “A good-looking SOB, big smile, articulate, but …”

I noted Sloan was no longer calling Kazankis by his first name.

“Never turn your back on him?”

“We suspected Orzibel of nasty incidents, two killings among them. One victim got his genitals carved off. Another, a rock-bodied psychotic fuck, by the way, got his neck slit. Of course …”

“No one saw a thing.”

“While I’m amazed Kazankis sponsored a borderline sociopath like Orzibel,” Sloan said, “I’m more amazed someone as violence-prone wasn’t back inside within two weeks.”

“Maybe Mr Oh-Oh got to keep cutting people apart,” I theorized. “But found he could get paid for it.”

Amili looked from her desk to the couch, currently occupied by Juan Guzman, one of Orzibel’s lieutenants. He was heavy, with dull eyes and bad skin. His fat and tattooed fingers twiddled at a video game on his phone. Another
cholo
leaned against the wall and stared at the ceiling.

“Are you to watch me all the day?” she asked Guzman.

“I apologize, Señorita, but it is Señor Orzibel’s request. You must stay in my sight and not use the phone.”

Amili studied herself in the mirror above her credenza. Who was this woman? She had two subhumans watching her, Orzibel’s foul seed within her. Music came through the floor and below danced young girls she had helped bring here under all manner of lies. There were so many others as well, stretching into Alabama and up to Georgia.

But today was the first time she had sent one to certain death.

There had been a plan once, hadn’t there? Conceived in those first days when she’d slowly gained small pieces of freedom. When she’d moved into the enterprise she’d realized both the limits of her life and its unique access. The plan was how she had kept her sanity. That and the drug … the only way she had found to sleep without nightmares.

Had the plan been a lie she’d made to herself, a way to live in long-ago dreams? A justification? There was little she could change in the Today, she had told herself time and time again. It was all for Tomorrow. Gifts came from El Jefé, raises, designer clothing, a nicer place to live. For Tomorrow, Amili had told herself. I’m doing this for Tomorrow. For many Tomorrows.

She closed her eyes against the image in the mirror and turned to Guzman. “I must do my work.”

“
Si
. But you must do it here without using the phone.”

Amili thought for a long moment. She frowned at Guzman. “It is a delivery day, you know that? The money.”

His mouth drooped open. “Uh,
si
. I think.”

“I must prepare the records for the bank. You have been given importance, so perhaps you understand.”

Guzman’s chin jutted with pride. “
Si
. I understand.”

No
, Amili thought.
You do not
. She withdrew her computer and began preparing the records.

It was becoming Tomorrow.

43

The sky was a searing blue as the chopper roared south and banked toward Miami, now a distant cluster of jagged forms breaking the horizon. I wondered what we could accomplish at our desks. We were doing damned good at present: pulling the case together a half-mile in the air with little more than snippets of history, some inside information from a prison warden, and a lap full of records. I suddenly needed a sense of place and tapped the pilot on his shoulder.

“Think you could spare time to fly over a concrete plant below Homestead?”

The pilot’s eyes shot a quizzical look. “You’re a Senior Investigator from FCLE, sir. You don’t ask, you tell.”

Well, damn
, I thought.
Score one for Roy.
We banked into a sky blazing with promise as I turned to Gershwin with more pieces assembling in my head. “Kazankis worked us like puppets, Ziggy. Expressing sorrow about Carosso while pointing us directly at him.”

“Who gave Carosso the occasional packages? The guys Scaggs saw from the Redi-flow tower?”

“Pure fiction, I’ll bet. Scaggs was likely one of Kazankis’s hardcores shoveling more dirt on Carosso. Packages, my ass, Kazankis invented the solution while we were in his office: lay the action off on Carosso, make him a lone wolf. When Carosso got his throat cut, Redi-flow became a dead end.”

“Brilliant. And cold.”

“Five minutes to destination,” the pilot said. We were riding the edge of the ’glades southward. The subdivisions were replaced by lone roads and solitary buildings. I saw Homestead to the east, the cistern site nearby. A minute later I saw the branch between the main highway and the road to the Red-flow complex.

“Glasses?” I asked the pilot, hands cupped around my eyes.

“Binocs under the seat. Gyro-stabilized. You can see up someone’s ass from a thousand yards.”

I pressed them to my eyes, finding the high water tank of Redi-flow, the cross sailing over the compound. “Stay back,” I cautioned. “Don’t want to spook anyone.”

He pointed to another chopper a couple miles away. “We’re in the flight lanes of helicopter tours of the ’glades, sir. They’re used to choppers.”

We flew closer. I ID’d the Redi-flow building and the closed Olympia Equipment structure nearby. I saw an old Quonset hut a thousand meters south. The treeline kept it hidden from ground view.

“Swing south.” I frowned. “Let’s check that q-hut.”

The semi-truck rumbled down the sandy lane in the South Florida coastal backcountry, a battered red tractor pulling the kind of intermodal container loaded on ships.

“You looked worried a few miles back, Joleo,” Landis said. “Any reason?”

“Ain’t nothing. I thought we was being followed but looks like we’re clean. I get wired up. Nerves.”

“This how it’s supposed to be?” Landis asked, nodding to the spare, scrubby land. “Just us and nothing else.”

“Quiet and peaceful. I climb atop the cab and keep watch while you open the trailer. It’s gonna stink. The guy I told you about – Mr Orzibel – he’ll come and inspect the load, and grab some for local use. The others head to that hut to get fed and watered. From there they move wherever they’re supposed to go. I don’t ask.”

“I expect I know, now that I know the hut’s here. Redi-flow, where I work, is on the far side of those trees.”

Joleo looked at Landis.

“We got a couple guys at the plant,” Landis continued. “Drivers who haul the portable concrete plants. I’ve seen them drive a dirt path behind Olympia, come out a bit later and hit the road. Sometimes they return after just a couple days, still hauling the stuff, like all they were doing was taking the equipment for a ride.”

“I know,” Joleo said, pulling the rig into the dirt. “I worked at Redi for a year. Best keep all that to yourself and let’s git busy.”

Landis grabbed the bolt cutters and jumped from the cab as Joleo climbed atop the rig. “Looks clear,” he called. “Set ’em loose.”

“What about that chopper over there?” Landis pointed to the west.

“Glades tours. They’re too far to see anything, so we’re fine.”

“Glades tours?” Landis said. “What? They lookin’ for ’gators up there?”

Joleo laughed.

I fixed the glasses on the Quonset hut as we approached. On the far side I was surprised to see a semi rig, even more surprised by what was atop the cab.

“That semi rig parked beside the Quonset hut – can you see it? There’s a guy standing on the cab.”

“Weird,” the pilot said.

“Another guy’s moving to the trailer, the rear. He’s … at the door.”

Even with the gyro I was getting a lot of bounce from the glasses. Add in heat distortion and it was like watching a jittering film. “Uh … the doors are swinging open and … and … uh, one, four … uh, eight, ten, fourteen, fifteen, nineteen and twenty-one, two … twenty-three.” I dropped the glasses for a moment’s relief.

“Twenty-three what?” Gershwin asked.

“Twenty-three people leaving that trailer. They’re heading for the hut.” I lifted the binocs again. “Well, looky here.”

“What?” said the pilot, now as transfixed as Gershwin.

“A loaded semi moving from Redi-flow. Not north onto the highway, but south toward the Quonset hut.”

“Are you seeing what it seems like you’re seeing?” Gershwin said.

“Watching hell from the heavens,” I said. “Wonder how that fits into Kazankis’s theology?”

I grabbed the phone and dialed Roy. Perhaps it was adrenalin or maybe being loosed from the bonds of blindered earth, but as it rang I felt a moment of pure triumph, the sense of pulling victory from thin air, of fulfilling my heart’s every desire in law enforcement.