The Death Box (31 page)

The line shuffled toward the bus as a Miami-Dade sergeant wrote their info on a clipboard. When I walked to Kazankis he produced a convincing sigh of relief.

“Thank God you’re here, sir. Surely you know I’m an innocent man.”

“I’m uncertain of what I know, Mr Kazankis.”

“I never suspected the terrible things those men were doing. I’m sick at what I’m hearing happened. Those poor, poor people.”

“Sure. Illegals traveling a thousand miles to be deposited a thousand yards away. A Redi-flow tank has its guts replaced with seating. Your employees driving the truck.”

“They’re ex-cons, Detective. I’m a victim of scoundrels. Men I thought I’d saved from sin, like poor Paul Carosso.”

I nodded toward the false plant atop the semi-trailer. “One of the drivers of the truck built to hold illegals was Thomas Scaggs, who supposedly watched Paul Carosso get mysterious packages. Scaggs said he was able to see all this because he worked in the tower. Yet he was caught driving a truck with a tricked-out concrete plant.”

A pause to re-calibrate. “I-I made Thomas a driver a few days ago, Detective. At his request. I missed what was happening. It sickens me to my soul.”

I put my hands in my pockets and rocked on my heels. “You somehow missed a human-trafficking operation that brought in how many people annually, Mr Kazankis? One hundred? Five hundred?”

“I sit in the office and make schedules. I gave my men too much leeway and some fell into old ways. I trusted them to the fullest and they repaid me with deceit.”

“The story ain’t working for me, Mr Kazankis,” I said. “Someone’s gonna talk. You think maybe it’ll be Pinker?”

I waited for him to freeze at the name, but he stayed cool, giving me rumpled-brow curiosity and a four-beat pause. “Pinker? Who’s that? I have no idea who you’re talking about, sir. Never met a man with that name.”

After speaking to Rayles I figured we might use Pinker to directly incriminate Kazankis. But if Mr Redi-flow was telling the truth, that road was gone. It hit me that a schemer like Kazankis likely used a middleman to communicate with the HS turncoat. He could spout that
never met the guy
shit into a lie detector and the needle wouldn’t flicker. Like everything I was learning about Kazankis, he was a brilliant strategist.

“How about Orlando Orzibel?” I asked. “He’s your knife-kissing enforcer, right.”

My shot in the dark drew the rumpled-brow again. “Orlando worked here a few years ago. As far as I know he’s not been in any trouble since. But I haven’t seen him in months.”

“Which came first?” I asked, angry that Kazankis was finding an answer to everything. “The redemption project or the trafficking business? Hell, it doesn’t really matter: You’re a soulless piece of garbage whose only god is money, and you found a way to invest in human misery. Oh, and it brought you into contact with a lot of naïve young girls. You do the preacher act with them, or do you play Daddy?”

A twitch; I’d hit a nerve somewhere. Kazankis’s eyes moved left and right, making sure we were the only two people within earshot. “You’re a big Boy Scout, aren’t you?” he whispered, his voice as cold as death. “My lawyers are gonna piss in your mouth, Ryder. I’ll end up suing you for false arrest.”

When I turned, he was staring straight ahead, as if he’d never uttered a sound. A cold wind began to blow across my spine: I imagined Kazankis on trial, his select hardcase employees taking the heat without ratting, part of an upended honor system. I saw Kazankis blubbering on the stand, invoking God and all the angels, not to mention personal testimony from men honestly claiming salvation through the ministry. All it took was one doubtful juror and the scumbucket was back in business with the FCLE hauled through the mud for terrorizing a modern-day Samaritan whose only crime was trusting those he tried to heal.

The probability was real and even a mid-level lawyer might pull it off.

I pushed Kazankis toward the bus, only barely avoiding wringing his neck. “Put this trash in the can,” I told the sergeant as Gershwin sauntered up, hands in his pockets.

“Kazankis is nailed tight, Big Ryde,” he smiled, clapping his hands. “We got him.”

“No,” I said, suddenly wishing I was back in the air and atop the world. “We probably don’t. Plus Leala is out there. So is Orzibel. You found nothing on the guy?”

Gershwin hadn’t expected my gloom, but he lacked experience with the Kazankises of the world: sociopaths who didn’t expect to get caught, but planned for it.

“The address on Orzibel’s driver’s license doesn’t exist. No tax records, he’s off the grid. You look worried, Kahuna.”

“I’m bad worried, Ziggy. Leala was a runner, Orzibel lives to punish people.”

Roy rolled up and told us he’d left us a vehicle for the ride back, and roared to Miami to coordinate the arrests. I told Gershwin I was heading home and did he need a ride?

He shrugged. I’d deflated his victory balloon. “It’s outta your way. I’ll see who here’s heading downtown.”

“Or,” I said, “you could come home with me. We’ll catch a few hours’ sleep and start tomorrow hot on the trail of Leala.”

46

The phone Leala had hidden in her panties felt the same as the phone of her aunt in Tegucigalpa. Her aunt had let her use the phone to call cousins in the city.

“Marica, guess who this is? And how I am calling you?”

Did the US phones work the same? She pressed where the On button had been on her aunt’s phone. A sparkly sound and …

Light! Coming from the box and behind the
numeros
! Praying, Leala dialed the three digits. Ringing. But not too loud.

“911 Emergency services. What is the nature of your call? Hello?”

Leala tried to speak at the phone but not enough sound came through the soft cloth taped over her mouth.

“What? Is anyone there? Hello?”

Ten seconds later the phone clicked dead. Leala felt like bursting into tears. Every call would end the same. Did the phone have the text? Her aunt’s phone did not because the text cost too much. Leala had no idea how the text worked or if this phone had it.

In anger and frustration Leala slammed the phone against her thighs.

thump

Gershwin and I were sitting on the deck in the light of a single citronella candle, watching a cloud-shrouded moon float above the water. We’d gotten to my place and found neither of us ready for sleep. The freshening breeze generated enough wave action to create a rhythmic hiss in the dark and keep mosquitos at bay. I’d explained the way Kazankis could slip through our fingers and we weren’t celebrating.

“The weather service says a thin band of rain’s gonna slip in from the west,” Gershwin said, sipping at his light rum and tonic.

“Maybe it’ll wash the stink from Redi-flow.”

“It’s just a couple showers, not a monsoon.”

My cell phone rang. I checked the screen:
Unknown Caller.
“Ryder,” I said.

Nothing.

“Hello?” I said again. I looked at Ziggy and shrugged, clicking the call off. The phone rang again. And again, nothing.

“What is it?” Gershwin asked.

“Empty air,” I said, pushing the phone to my ear. “The line’s active, but no one’s talking.”

“I sometimes get ghost calls on my cell,” Gershwin said. “Glitches in the system.”

I clicked the call off. Ten seconds passed and it rang again.

“An insistent ghost,” Gershwin said. I cranked the volume to max and held it up so we both could hear. Nothing but a buzz, a hissing sound. Then, a muffled
thump
. Followed by two more thumps. Then three more. Gershwin gave me a quizzical look as it started again: one thump, pause, two, pause, three. The thumps were erratic, not electronic. A human was on the other end.

“It’s her,” I said. “Leala.”

“How do you know?”

“It’s the only thing that makes sense. She has my number.”

It began again:
Thump. Thump-thump. Thump-thump-thump.
Like a heartbeat. My mind ran the possibilities. “I think she has a phone but can’t talk.”

“Gagged, maybe,” Gershwin said. “She’s hitting the phone on something. Can she hear us?”

“Leala,” I said, “Make one thump if it’s you.”

thump

“Is there something over your mouth?”

thump

I turned to Gershwin
.
“I can barely hear. Call tech services. Explain the situation. See what they can do.”

He ran inside while I tried to figure out the best way to communicate, given the limitations. “Here’s the code, Leala: one thump, yes, two is no, three is you don’t know. Do you understand?”

thump

Gershwin returned. “The techies are on it. What’s happening?”

“I’m trying to figure out what to ask.”

Gershwin put his ear to the phone. “The background sound. Tires? A vehicle, maybe?”

“Nice.” I leaned to the microphone. “Leala? Are you in a vehicle?”

thump

“Trunk?”

thump

“Do you know your destination?”

thump thump

“Were you in Miami?” Gershwin asked. Another good question.

thump

“That’s my partner, Leala,” I said. “Ziggy. When you meet him you can ask how he got such a weird name. He knows Spanish. Do you need him to talk to you?”

thump thump

I thought a moment, though my heart knew the answer before I asked the question. “Leala, is the driver a man named Orlando Orzibel? Do you know?”

thump

I blew out a long breath and shook my head, then asked Leala to relax and let us listen. Gershwin and I put our heads together and listened intently for long minutes. The tire sound would slow and stop, then pick up again, traffic lights, we assumed. Or stopping at intersections. The vehicle wasn’t on an interstate or deserted highway. We also heard traffic in the opposite direction or passing, and the occasional growl of a motorcycle or horn honk.

Gershwin looked at his watch. “Twenty-five minutes. If she started in Miami …” He let it hang and I knew where he was going.

“Do you know how long you’ve been …” I asked. “No, wait. Have you been in the car longer than a half-hour, Leala?”

thump

“She’s outside the city by now,” Gershwin said. “But which direction?”

It started raining. We retreated to the kitchen and I plugged my phone into the charger and set it on the counter.

“Check this out, Big Ryde.”

Gershwin had turned on the TV and was pointing to the regional Doppler radar. A slender circle of showers was crossing swiftly from northeast to southwest, the lower band now crossing over Upper Matecumbe. The northern edge was swinging into central Miami. Brilliant.

“Leala,” I said. “Can you tell if it’s raining?”

thump

Rain meant she’d headed south from Miami. There wasn’t much land south, everything turning to water save for the Keys.

“Hello?”
an electronic voice said. The gate.
“Hello in there?”

I opened the gate and seconds later saw a cop cruiser whip down the drive and slide to a halt. An older guy jumped from the cruiser with a brown duffel in hand, said, “Should just take a few.” He crouched under rain, a short, pudgy man with twinkling eyes behind silver glasses. “I’m Frank Craig, a ham from Islamorada, ten minutes away. I got a call you might need some help.”

Ham was shorthand for an amateur radio operator, folks whose hobby was communicating around the world on special radio frequencies. I’d never met a ham who wasn’t a default electronics geek.

“You’re not with the FCLE?”

“No way your people could make it here fast enough. I brought a couple things. That the phone?”

I nodded. Craig produced what seemed a shoebox-sized tackle box with electronic gizmos inside and a couple small speakers facing outward. “A reception booster for the signal and output amp to enhance volume and fidelity, especially in the voice spectrum. I build these things for hearing-impaired folks.”

He duct-taped the phone to the box and attached some wires. It looked like a makeshift bomb. “You can charge everything by plugging it into a wall socket,” Craig said, which he did. “If you need to move, this is the plug for the car socket.”

“Any way to block our voices from going out unless we want them to?” Gershwin asked.

“Not without getting inside the phone, dicey. Best thing is this.” Craig handed Gershwin a small square of soft putty. “Put it over the mic when you need muting, lift to speak.”

Craig flipped a switch and sound filled the room, the hiss of wet tires now so distinct I heard seams in the roadbed. We could hear the moan of a powerful engine, the shifting of the transmission.

“Damn,” Gershwin said. “It’s like being there.”

“Leala,” I said. “You still OK?”

thump

The sound filled the room like a bass drum. Craig picked up his duffle and boogied away to our complete admiration. We turned back to the phone and startled to a furious scratching sound that seemed to echo from my walls.

Then, utter silence.

“What the hell?” Gershwin said, eyes wide.

“They’ve stopped,” I said, leaning close to the speaker. “I can’t hear an engine.”

“Leala,” I whispered to the phone. “What is it?”

No response. I thought I could hear a faraway drumming of rain on metal. Or maybe it was a terrified heart.

“Jesus,” Gershwin said, a shade whiter. “What was that sound?”

“I’m hoping it was Leala hiding the phone,” I said.

47

Orzibel parked to the side of the roadhouse, the wipers beating against slackening rain. Seconds later Morales splashed into the lot in the Escalade and strode into the bar. A minute later Orzibel saw a man leave the roadhouse. He wore a creamy white suit, a briefcase in his left hand, umbrella in the right. Orzibel flashed his headlamps and exited the car as the suited man approached.

They went to the rear of the Lincoln and Orzibel opened the trunk. The light inside had a yellow cast, like buttery candlelight.