Exquisite Justice

by Dennis Carstens

  “They’re out. Pull over up here,” Saadaq said in English.

  “How long will they sleep?” the driver asked.

  “Not long enough. We have to be certain they cannot know where we are going.”

  They turned right onto a very narrow, dirt-covered, street and stopped. The Land Rover following them pulled up behind them and also stopped.

  Three men exited the second car and the Watson brothers were each given a shot to keep them out. Black hoods were placed over their heads and they were laid out in the back of the SUV. A light blanket was thrown over them and the two cars were back on the road within two minutes.

  At two o’clock in the morning, the two Land Rovers arrived at their destination. Of course, Saadaq had phoned ahead, so they were expected.

  They turned onto a dusty, narrow dirt road behind a row of nondescript two-story buildings. They were in a midsize village of no significance. Waiting inside for them was Saadaq’s real boss.

  A garage door was opened behind one of the buildings and the two cars drove in. Several men were there, and they gently carried Saadaq’s cargo down a flight of stairs and into a room set up for them.

  “How much longer?” the old man asked in English.

  “A few minutes, at most,” he was told.

  “Kill the lights except theirs and wake them,” the old man ordered.

  Immediately, the room went dark except for two recessed lights directly above Damone and Jeron. The man who was ordered to wake them, a doctor, went to them. They were seated on uncomfortable armchairs in the center of the room in a bright circle of light, one light directed down from recessed lights installed in the ceiling directly above each of them. They were also secured at the wrists and ankles to the chairs’ arms and legs with heavy duty, Velcro straps.

  The doctor removed the black hood from Damone first. When he did this, Damone’s head rolled slightly and he moaned. The doctor held a small vial of ammonia-based smelling salts under his nose. He kept it there for a few seconds and then Damone’s head snapped back and his eyes opened. While Damone sat quietly trying to orient himself, the doctor repeated the procedure on Jeron.

  “Thank you, Doctor. You may leave us,” the old man said.

  “I’ll wait outside.”

  “You won’t be needed.”

  “I’ll wait anyway,” the doctor said.

  The old man chuckled and said, “As you wish.”

  It took several minutes for the fog to dissipate from their heads. While waiting for this, the old man waited silently in the dark.

  “I heard you speak and in English,” Damone finally said. “Who are you and where are we?”

  Another overhead light came on illuminating the old man. He was sitting at a small, government issued, gray metal desk. The man was in his fifties but looked to be seventy. He was portly and bald except for a gray fringe around the back of his head. He also had the friendly look and twinkling eyes of a favorite grandpa. In his case, looks were very deceiving.

  The old man stood and stepped to the front of the desk. He wore a pair of brown docksiders, no socks and a disheveled white shirt with khakis. He sat on the front of the desk, one foot on the floor, one off.

  “Who are you? I demand to know,” Damone arrogantly asked to mask his fear.

  “Yes, I suppose we can now tell you some things.

  “First, my name is Chaim Ben Segal. I hold the rank of colonel in the Israeli Defense Forces. I am currently on assignment to the Israeli Institute for Intelligence. What you know as Mossad. Let me be the first to welcome you to Israel where you two gentlemen are now our guests. Permanently, I might add, which means as long as you are useful to us.”

  While the old man quietly spoke explaining who he was, Damone’s face took on the look of a terrified puppy.

  “I, I don’t understand,” Jeron said. “Who is he and why are we here? We were on our way to Syria.”

  “You took a detour. Relax,” the old man continued, “you’re not in any danger. You may not believe me, but we really don’t torture people. Your friends do. We don’t.”

  “Where are we?” Damone quietly asked.

  “A small town near Tel Aviv. Thank you for going to the trouble of disappearing from the Earth. Now, no one knows what happened to you.”

  “There is one, and he is very loyal,” Damone confidently said.

  “Ah, yes, Saadaq Khalid,” the old man replied.

  Two more lights came on above two men sitting along the back wall behind and to the right of the old man. It was not the sight of Saadaq that made Damone swallow his breath. It was the man seated next to him.

  “Allow me to introduce you to the two gentlemen you thought you knew. Saadaq Khalid is actually Captain David Lavi. The man next to him in the gray Italian wool suit, white silk shirt and wrap around Ray Bans, known to you as ‘the recruiter’, is known to us as Major Elon Dayan.”

  The remaining lights in the room came on and showed two more people in attendance, a man and a woman.

  “The gentleman to my left is Michael Fuller and the lady is his boss, Sharon Cartwright. They both work for an agency of the U.S. Government whose headquarters are located in Langley, Virginia.

  “You see, gentlemen,” he continued turning to Damone and Jeron, “you have been working for us since the day you left prison.

  “We used you to find sources of funding for certain radical groups opposed to our existence. It isn’t only your money we traced. We used that to find many more such conduits to these terror groups.

  “Although,” the old man said picking up a piece of paper from the desk, “your operation––you were very good, very organized––netted us one hundred eighty-four million, six hundred and thirty-four thousand US dollars and change. The government of Israel thanks you for your generous contribution to its continued existence. In fact, the total we have diverted from your cause to ours is close to four hundred million dollars and we have cut off several sources of funding for terrorism.”

  “You are far worse than we are,” a now viciously angry Damone practically spat at him. “You let us sell tons of addictive, deadly drugs to your own people for this!”

  “Yes, that was a very difficult, even immoral decision, we had to make,” the woman from the CIA admitted. “Right now, thanks to your record keeping…”

  “The accountant is not dead,” Saadaq/David said. “I lied about that. The FBI has all of your records.”

  “Wait,” Damone said. “How did you know to call me? To warn me? You did not have connections with the police…”

  “We gave him a bit of a heads up,” the woman from the CIA said. “We have sources and, well, we wanted you here, not in Washington.

  “Anyway,” the woman continued. “The US Government is going to quietly contact every one of your former customers and pay for their rehab and compensate them.”

  “You’ll never be able to keep that quiet,” Damone said.

  “Perhaps,” Cartwright replied. “But you’d be surprised what enough money, a non-disclosure agreement and the threat of a prison sentence will accomplish. We’ve done it before.”

  Elon Dayan removed the sunglasses then stood up, walked to a table and poured himself a glass of water. “The young men who we recruited for jihad are all in excellent health. They are being held, quite comfortably, not far from here. When the time is right, they will be sent back to America where they can convince the Americans they are no longer radicalized or face prison.”

  “What we have done may seem wrong or even immoral. But, at least for now, we have broken the back of a significant amount of financing for terrorism,” Colonel Ben Segal said.

  Michael Fuller, the other CIA agent, said, “The innocent people who have been hurt, and we know there have been, can be helped and made whole. You should know, not a single person was sold opioids through you who wasn’t getting them before. We realize that makes no difference, but at least now they have a chance to get clean.”

  “You gentle
man will remain our guests for as long as we say,” Ben Segal said.

  “And if we refuse to cooperate?” Damone arrogantly asked.

  “Then it will be my pleasure to handcuff and gag you. Then drop you off into a certain neighborhood I know of in Damascus with a sign around your neck. It will read: ‘Israeli collaborator.’ And you can take your chances,” Saadaq replied.

  Epilogue

  As the media came out with more and more stories about Lionel Ferguson, the anger over the dismissal of charges against Rob Dane quickly dissipated. No one wanted the embarrassment of being linked to a pedophile, serial rapist and greedy hustler linked to the sale of drugs.

  An odd thing happened concerning the news of the indictments. For a couple of days, the bust of Damone Watson’s empire was a very hot item. By the Wednesday following the Sunday morning raids, it was as if it never happened. Philo got his inside scoop from Carvelli and wrote up his articles expecting a Pulitzer nomination. Instead, according to what he would tell Carvelli, most of the story was spiked. The cause, again according to Philo, was their concern about Somali involvement. Since immigrants in general and Muslims in particular, having been declared a protected class by liberals, this story needed to die. On top of that, within days, the U.S. Government was throwing a blackout over everything.

  With the fall from grace of Damone, the Minneapolis political class went into a furious spin mode. By the end of the week, no one in city government had ever heard of Damone Watson.

  On the first Tuesday of November, the usual slate of Democrat suspects were elected or re-elected to run the city. Unfortunately, Jalen Bryant was defeated by the grossly inexperienced Betsy Carpenter. She was able to hang Damone’s support around Jalen’s neck. If that was not enough, local TV was filled with ads depicting Jalen as a friend of the police in Minneapolis. Since the local media themselves were the ones who did this, no one tried to explain how Bryant could be both tied to Damone and the police.

  The U.S. attorneys in Minneapolis and Chicago would, eventually, rack up a 98% conviction rate of those indicted. Of course, most of that gaudy number came from plea agreements. A significant number of the lesser players were allowed to plead to one or two minor felonies. Usually in exchange for testimony against their boss.

  Carvelli’s “boss,” Jimmy Jones, was not one of the lucky ones. He was forced to trial and convicted of more than twenty federal felonies. Being a four-time loser, Jimmy finally hit the jackpot: he was sentenced to life plus forty. The extra forty was a specific request by the prosecution.

  When Jimmy was arrested, he was in the process of getting at the machine gun he kept under his work table. He was lucky he was not shot dead on the spot. In order to ensure that a future grossly inexperienced president would not foolishly pardon him as a nonviolent, urban entrepreneur drug dealer, the machine gun charge was not dropped in exchange for a plea. The idea that gang bangers and drug dealers were not violent shocked most police and prosecutors. Gun charges were no longer being treated as a throwaway charge for a plea.

  Bennie Solo, Carvelli’s ex-cop, rehab clinic operator friend, saw a significant increase in business. Carvelli and Wendy Merrill sought out every one of their customers. For those who could not pay or use family funds, Vivian Donahue would pay for their rehab. In just a few months, Bennie had almost all of them free of opioids.

  Arturo Mendoza, Damone’s pipeline of information, got lucky. Once the time of death for Lewis and Monroe was established, Arturo was cleared of obstruction of justice for warning Damone. His phone call, recorded on Lewis’ phone that Saturday, came at least an hour after Lewis was dead. Damone was already gone.

  As for his other problems stemming from taking money from Damone, Arturo agreed to surrender his license to practice law permanently. The authorities agreed, with Marc’s approval, that this was punishment enough.

  Ten days after the raids, having gone over their entire inventory of drugs and the money, Carvelli called Jeff Johnson. He told Johnson he was ready to come in and hand over everything all accounted for that was done undercover.

  He met Johnson at FBI headquarters North of Minneapolis. Johnson helped carry the drugs and money to be surrendered up to a conference room. It was supposedly all set for this and would only require a few signatures.

  Instead, when they walked in, Carvelli was read his rights and told he could not leave. An apoplectic Jeff Johnson about exploded at the deception. It seems there was a new assistant U.S. Attorney brought in from Washington specifically to handle this case who had squelched Carvelli’s deal.

  Within a half an hour, Marc was there representing Carvelli. At one point, the new assistant U.S. Attorney, an arrogant, twenty-eight-year-old hotshot with Washington political connections, threatened to arrest Marc as a co-conspirator. Everyone else involved on the government’s side sat sheepishly, keeping quiet to protect their careers. On his way to the meeting, Marc had the good sense to make a phone call to someone.

  Shortly after 4:00 P.M., a serious looking, fifty-something woman opened the door. The local U.S. Attorney and an elegant looking woman strolled in followed by the fifty-something woman who was holding the door open. One look at the woman made the hotshot prosecutor almost melt.

  “Yes, Mrs. Hanson,” he said addressing Charlene Hanson, a Deputy Attorney General of the United States, the one who held the door for the others. “What can I do for you?”

  “I flew out here today to find out just what the hell you are up to,” she replied. “We received a phone call this morning from the woman who came in with me,” she said, nodding at the elegant older lady, “who told the attorney general that you had gone back on a deal we had made with a close, personal friend of hers. Now I find out that is true. Do you want to explain why you decided, on your own, why the DOJ does not have to keep its word to people who are instrumental in helping us close out a significant investigation?”

  The young lawyer stood opposite across the table from his superior from Washington and sensibly kept quiet.

  By now, the other woman who came in was sitting next to Marc. Vivian Donahue had made a couple of calls after Marc called her.

  Hanson looked at Carvelli and said, “Mr. Carvelli, you’re free to go. Your record of this fiasco will be cleaned up.

  “As for you,” she continued turning back to the red-faced young man, “on the flight here, I made a personnel decision. It is my understanding that an Assistant U.S. Attorney slot is opening in Anchorage. Get your bags packed. When we make a deal, we keep it. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Hey, happy Thanksgiving,” Carvelli said to Jeff Johnson as he sat next to him on a bar stool.

  “Well, look what the cat dragged in,” Bonnie, the woman behind the bar in Artie’s, said to Carvelli.

  “Hello, lover, how’s my girl?” Carvelli replied reaching over the bar to take her hand, pull her forward and give her a kiss.

  “My day is perfect, now,” she replied. “What can I get you?”

  “I’ll just have a bottle of Miller,” Carvelli said. “And put it on the government’s tab,” he added pointing at Johnson.

  “Let’s get a booth,” Johnson said.

  “Okay, here’s the latest and I thought you had a right to know. I have a couple of good friends, contacts, with a certain agency in Langley. The word from them is our dearly departed friend, Damone, and his charming brother are guests of a friendly, Middle Eastern democracy.”

  Carvelli leaned forward and quietly, incredulously asked, “The Israelis have them?”

  “It would seem,” Johnson said and tipped his beer to his mouth.

  Carvelli rubbed a hand across his mouth and chin while staring across the table. He took a drink, set the bottle down on the table and said, “What the hell is going on?”

  “My guy, and I believe him, tells me this whole thing was a CIA and Israeli operation from the beginning. They had Damone wired and an insider on him from the moment he walked out of prison. They kn
ew everything.”

  “You mean the CIA and Israelis set up a drug cartel to sell opioids to American citizens? If this gets out…”

  “There will be hell to pay. But it worked. They found and shut down a huge funding source for Islamic terrorists. And the government is already in the process of quietly cleaning up the mess,” Johnson said.

  “And you guys weren’t in on it?”

  “Nope. The FBI and DOJ knew nothing about it. They were fed just enough from the CIA through Homeland Security to keep us investigating for them until they were ready to pull the plug. You know why?”

  “Because they no longer trust you,” Carvelli said.

  “That’s right. After the way the last president, his White House, the two AG’s and the FBI higher-ups corrupted the FBI, IRS, DOJ and probably NSA, no one in law enforcement or the Intel community can trust us. It will take years to fix the damage the Chicago Democratic Mafia did.”

  “Holy shit,” Carvelli slowly, quietly said. “Keep your head down. The shit could still hit the fan over this.”

  “Don’t I know it.”

  Carvelli was still thinking about his conversation with Johnson when he got home. He parked the Camaro in the garage then took the narrow sidewalk along the side of the house to the front door. After getting his mail, he used his key to unlock the front door and went in.

  The kitchen light was on providing enough light to see. He thought that was a little odd since he did not remember leaving it on.

  Carvelli dropped the mail on the wrought iron, glass-topped coffee table in the living room. He took off his leather coat and tossed it on the couch. He took one step toward the kitchen when his entire body went into uncontrollable convulsions. Carvelli’s knees buckled and he dropped face down on the carpeted, living room floor.

  Despite the excruciating pain, he knew exactly what had happened. And he also knew who did it.

  “You’ll be okay,” Carvelli heard a voice above him say. “Give it a few minutes.” He then felt his gun being removed from his holster and heard it being placed on the coffee table.