“Not at all,” I respond. “Like I said, you’ve got a lot of talent. I’m glad they’re finally seeing it.”
“Thanks, E,” she smiles. “Now, let’s get back to just how big of a moron you are.”
“E? I think that’s even worse than Echo.”
“Stop trying to deflect here,” she grumps. “We were discussing your idiocy.”
“Right. That,” I say. “What did you find on our new friend?”
“Only that he’s not somebody you’d want to call a friend,” she replies. “Seriously, this guy is bad news. Very bad news.”
After leaving the club, I’d picked up some food and came back to the hotel. I started to dig into the club and quickly found out it’s owned by a man named Narek Agajanian—the very man who threw me out. There was surprisingly little about him that I could find. And what I did manage to dig up was mostly puff pieces. Stories about his philanthropic work in Minneapolis and what he does for the immigrant Armenian population. He seems to be a real pillar of the community and has a rags-to-riches story that people love.
Agajanian immigrated here with his family when he was three. His family didn’t have much money for him growing up, but he overcame the odds, and through his sheer hard work and determination, got into the best schools and made a name for himself in investments and business management. Now he’s a very wealthy man who gives a lot back to his community.
That’s his public face, though. That’s the carefully crafted image he’s honed and polished over the course of his lifetime.
But I knew there was more. A lot more. His story of achieving the American Dream is all bullshit. Oh, I know it’s partly true. But you don’t associate with wannabe skinheads if you’re clean. I may not have my memories, but I still have my instincts. I know when something is fishy. I just don’t have the computer savvy to find the breadcrumbs that will lead me to the bigger picture as quickly as Justice can. It takes me days to find stuff that only takes her hours. Which is why I sent her an email shortly after getting back to my room. If there’s dirt to be found, she’ll find it.
“Lay it on me,” I tell her.
“Well, all of that public image stuff is more or less true. But he’s got a past. A nasty one,” she says. “I was able to unseal some juvie records, and he’s got a rap sheet longer than a CVS receipt. Assault, attempted murder, more assault, you know the drill.”
“Pretty much, yeah,” I say as I open a bottle of water then take a long swallow.
“There are also open investigations with the entire alphabet. The FBI, DEA, and ATF all have open cases hanging over this guy’s head,” she went on. “Prostitution, drugs, human trafficking, multiple murders, gun running—if it’s a crime, your guy is up to his tits in it.”
“Why hasn’t anybody made their case yet?” I ask. “Why is this piece of crap still walking the streets?”
“From what I’ve gathered, among other issues, witnesses have a habit of turning up dead,” she tells me. “Evidence gets lost or accidentally destroyed, and the case crashes and burns.”
“Wonderful,” I mutter. “He’s got people inside those agencies.”
“Seems that way,” she nods. “Which is exactly why you should stay away from this.”
“Can’t.”
“Echo, this is not some two-bit street gang you can overpower. What you did in Chicago isn’t going to work there,” she urges me. “We’re talking about the damn Armenian mafia. They’re more ruthless than the Italians or Russians.”
“That’s debatable.”
“Shut up. Seriously, you should walk away from this one.”
I sigh, then drain the last of my water bottle and toss it at the trash can. It bounces off the rim and hits the floor. I look back at Justice’s face on the screen; concern etched into her features.
“I’m afraid it’s not that simple,” I sigh. “If I don’t find a way to get my guy Bob out from under Agajanian’s boot, I don’t get the information I came here for.”
“Is it worth it?”
I look at her for a long moment, considering my answer.
“Try waking up with no memory of who you are or how you got that way,” I say. “Try having only bits and pieces of your past in your head. And what memories do come to you are in snippets and flashes, but you don’t remember or feel any connection to them. Try living like that and then ask me if it’s worth it.”
She runs a hand over her face and looks away. We sit there in silence for a few long, agonizing seconds. But then she turns back to me with that glint of determination in her eye I’ve gotten used to seeing.
“What are you going to do?” she asks.
“Not sure yet.”
“That’s comforting.”
“Best I can do right now,” I offer.
“You know I’ll help you any way I can.”
I nod. “And I appreciate that, kid.”
She laughs. “Anytime, Grandpa.”
I give her a small smile. “Sometimes, I feel older than Methuselah. It’s doing the job,” I muse. “It catches up with you. Wears you down. I may not remember it, but my body and brain both do.”
“You paint such a rosy picture.”
I chuckle softly. “Yeah, this work isn’t all James Bond glitz and glamour,” I tell her. “Which is why I keep telling you to be sure you want this life before you go full bore into it.”
Justice looks down at something in front of her, and her expression darkens. I can tell this is highly emotional for her. But she bites it all back, compartmentalizing her pain. She raises her eyes again, and her face is absolutely neutral and free of all emotion.
“Between my father dying in the Towers and my brother being killed in Afghanistan, I don’t know that I ever had a choice in the matter,” she says, unable to banish the thick emotion in her voice. “I feel like I owe it to them. I’ve made it my life’s mission to do this.”
“And I respect that.”
“You know what I’ll respect?”
“What’s that?” I ask.
“You getting out of this with your ass intact,” she says. “You still have a lot to teach me.”
I laugh. “That I do.”
“So if you’re dead set determined to take on the Armenian mob, watch your ass, Echo,” she orders. “If you die out there, I’ll bring you back just to kill you myself.”
I snap her a sarcastic salute. “Yes ma’am, understood.”
I disconnect the call and sit back in the chair, pondering the situation again. Dealing with street thugs is one thing. You can intimidate them. Break them. Dealing with an organization like the Armenian mafia is something else. You can’t just break them; you have to roll them up entirely because if you leave a power void, somebody will step into it. And then they will rise up and bite you in the ass again.
Upon reflection, in a way, it’s no different from what the Hellfire Club does. Sure, I’ve taken some big names off the board. But they will just keep reshuffling things until they are back at full strength again. You can’t just nip at the edges; you’ve got to go for the head.
No, if you’re looking to break an organization like this, the destruction has to be thorough, and it has to be complete.
Chapter Eight
“Did you know?” I ask.
“Know what?”
“Who these goddamn skinheads who are hassling you are hooked up with.”
“I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about, man.”
I lean forward on the bar and study Bob’s face closely. The man is either really good about controlling his features, or he really doesn’t know what I’m talking about. Given his history as an operator, I’m choosing to believe the former.
He pours me out a glass of bourbon and sets it down in front of me. I glance at my watch then back at him, a grin curling the corners of my mouth upward. He bores his eyes into mine and gives the barest hint of a twitch pulling his eyebrows up. The message is clear: Be discreet.
“It’s eleven o’
clock,” I say.
“Seems like you need it,” he replies.
“Yeah, maybe,” I note, downing half of it in one swallow.
I feel the amber liquid burn its way down my throat and settle into my gut, where it begins to warm me from the inside. Letting out a long breath, I lean back and scrub my hands over my face. There are a couple of people in the bar already—hardcore barflies who spend their days drowning their misery in glass after glass of beer. Everybody has their thing, I guess.
There are two guys on the other side of the bar, their faces in their glasses the same way kids’ faces are in their phones these days. They’re far enough away that they can’t hear us. Not that they’d care to anyway. They seem pretty absorbed in their misery and uninterested in anything around them.
I turn my eyes back to Bob. “Turns out the head—fundraiser, for the orphanage you support, is Narek Agajanian,” I whisper lowly. “Ring any bells?”
Bob’s face darkens, and his mouth compresses into a tight line. He looks at me for a long moment then whistles low.
“Sure. Everybody knows him,” he says, his tone bitter. “Real salt of the earth. Pillar of the community, that guy.”
His tone, as well as the twitch at the corner of his eye, tells me he knows exactly who, and what, Agajanian really is. But I can also see in his face that he fears the man. Rightly so, probably. But that also means he’s going to be able to provide me with some solid intel on him.
“Listen, if you want to walk away from this, I’d understand,” Bob says.
After talking to Justice last night, I went over all the reasons I should do just that. And there was a compelling list of reasons for me to turn my back on this mess. But then I went over the reasons I need to take Agajanian down. There were few, but they were compelling. And surprisingly, the need to get the information about my life that Bob’s got wasn’t at the top of the list.
With the cops in his pocket, Agajanian is running roughshod over the people in this community. He uses and abuses the very same people who support him. Who look up to him as a pillar. They believe him to be a good man. But he simply wears a good man’s face to hide the monster that lurks beneath. He victimizes these people, and they don’t even know it’s him doing it. They continue to blindly support him, never knowing that this man is a beast that preys on them.
As much as I’d like to, I can’t just walk away from this any more than I could walk away from the murder of that little girl in Chicago. Because once again, how can the Tower claim that we are trying to protect the people of this country if we continue to let them be victimized by evil people within it?
It’s a micro solution to a macro problem. And while yes, we do need to destroy the cancer that’s spreading inside the highest echelons of power, we also need to do everything in our power to protect the weakest and most vulnerable among us. Otherwise, what is the point of this invisible war we’re waging against the Hellfire Club?
“Nah. I’m not walking away,” I respond. “Not until the orphanage is out of business.”
I feel a little lame sticking to the orphanage analogy, but it gets the message across.
“That might be too big a bite for you to take, man.”
“Somebody needs to,” I reply.
I drain my glass of bourbon, and he quickly refills it. I hold it in my hand, staring down into the bottom of it as if it will provide me with all the answers. It doesn’t, but it does help numb me a bit, so I take another drink. I look up at Bob and flash him a grin.
“You know I dug up your real name, right, Arthur?” I ask. “Arthur Adams.”
He chuckles. “Yeah, I figured you might.”
“Wasn’t hard to find out who the owner of Hushpuppies is.”
“Hell, it don’t matter. Leonard Graves, Bob Smith, Arthur Adams. Been around long as I have, you end up with too many names to count.”
I nod. I remember all the fake identities I found in my safehouse back in Chicago.
“But why still? You’re out of the game now.”
“Listen, Echo. No one ever gets out of this game. Not really.”
“You did.”
He gives me a dark look and shrugs. “And yet here we are, with a Tower operator in my bar.”
I raise my hands in protest. “I swear, I’m only here on personal matters.”
He pours a drink of his own, toasts me, and downs it. “I know. And believe me, I’m glad you’re here. But you caught me off guard at first. Thought they sent you here to kill me.”
“Why would they kill you?” I ask. “Especially after all this time?”
“Don’t know that they would,” he replies. “But when you have an operator show up out of the blue like you did, you tend to get nervous.”
“Why’d you leave?”
“Got tired of the politics. Tired of having to live my life lookin’ over my shoulder. From within or out,” he explains. “After you spend as many years as I did in the game, you get burned out. At least, I did. I just woke up one day, and I was done. Wanted to live a quiet life. Had to pull a lot of strings and call in a lot of favors to get all the way out.”
I nod. “I get that. But do you ever miss it? That rush of being out on an op?”
His laughter is a deep rumble in his chest and sounds like thunder rolling in.
“Sometimes. But I ain’t had that rush since I lost my leg,” he sighs. “With the Tower, I wasn’t out runnin’ and gunnin’ like you. I was middle management. At best. That kinda life gets boring.”
“And owning a bar doesn’t?”
“Nah. It’s exciting in its own way,” he offers. “And at least here, I don’t have to worry about catching a bullet in the back of the head.”
“Unless you miss a—charitable donation,” I note.
“Right.”
“What can you tell me about his businesses?” I ask.
“Not a whole lot. I try to keep my head down, so I don’t much pay attention to the man or his business interests,” he replies. “All I know for sure is that he owns that social club and a trucking company. But I know he’s a hell of a lot more diversified than that.”
I nod. “A trucking company, huh?”
He nods to me. “Out there on the outer edge of the warehouse district. There’s still a couple o’ trucking companies doing business out there.”
“Good to know.”
I finish up my drink and say goodbye to Arthur, aka Bob, aka Leonard. Whatever his name is. I need to get a few supplies since I’ve got plans for the night.
Chapter Nine
The night is dark, which is good. And it’s overcast, which is even better. No moonlight means it’ll make it easier to move about undetected. Moving from pool of shadow to pool of shadow, I make my way across the truck yard, carefully avoiding the security cameras as well as the forklifts that are running here and there.
I approach a stack of cargo containers in the perfect location. Just out of sight but with enough breadth to give me a full view. I quickly climb on top of them and drop flat to my belly. I roll the balaclava up to my nose so I can breathe freely and wait. I pull the night vision scope out of my pack, flip it on, and scan the yard of Agajanian Trucking below me.
After leaving Arthur’s bar, I spent the day doing my homework. I figured out that whatever shipments he’s getting, be they drugs, guns, or girls, are probably coming out of Canada, across Lake Superior, and into Duluth, where I’m sure he’s greased enough palms that his shipments sail through customs with ease. From there, it’s a quick hop down here to Minneapolis, where he offloads his goods and does whatever he does with them.
My best guess, though, is that he uses his social club as a clearing house first. He is the sort of man who would want total control over his product until it leaves his possession. And he can’t have that sort of control here. Nor would he risk doing it at his residence. Which, from what I was able to dig up, leaves his social club.
I had Justice dig up some blueprints of the place. Althou
gh nothing stood out, I’m pretty sure there are some rooms built into it that aren’t on the official plans filed with the city. It’s a hunch right now, but one I’m planning on confirming for myself.
Before I make a move on Agajanian, I need all of the intel I can possibly scrape up. I need to be ready for anything and eliminate the greatest number of surprises that I can. Obviously, I can’t plan for every contingency, but if I can reduce the number of things that could go wrong that are controllable, the better off I’ll be, and the greater my chances are of getting out of here with my skin still intact.
I see a large truck emblazoned with the Agajanian logo backing into the warehouse. I really want to see what’s in that warehouse, but that means I need to get to a better vantage point. Which also means I need to get closer.
I pull down my balaclava again, leaving only my eyes exposed. Then I slip the scope into the pocket of my tactical pants and sling my bag over my shoulders. Running in a low crouch, I move along the tops of the stacks of shipping containers, edging closer to the warehouse. And when I get as close as I want to, I drop back down onto my belly. I pull the scope out again and turn the night vision off and raise it to my eye. The inside of the warehouse is lit up well enough that I can see just fine without it.
Standing on the loading dock are two men in dark suits, both of them holding what look like H&K MP5 submachine guns in hand. They pace the dock with tight precision. The truck pulls to a stop with a loud hiss and whine as the engine shuts down. The driver gets out and climbs up onto the loading dock, then shows his clipboard to one of the gunmen, who nods and gestures for him to open the back doors of the shipping container.
I see four men in dark coveralls appear with pallet jacks. They disappear into the back of the shipping container, and a couple of minutes later, haul out pallets of various items, none of them what I’m looking for. I watch them unload the truck for twenty minutes. Still nothing. I’m about to move on when at last, I see it: one last pallet comes out of the truck, but this one is wrapped in a heavy black tarp.
Without a Trace Page 4
