Survival Is a Dying Art

by Neil S. Plakcy

  A broad-shouldered man lurked in the background of several shots. While she was in her late fifties, he was probably twenty years younger, with skin the color of a paper bag, dark hair and a nose that looked like it had been broken more than once. So more likely the the bodyguard Dash Beckett had mentioned than a romantic interest.

  Did she need a bodyguard because of all the gold she wore? Or because she had made enemies through her illegal acts?

  Either way, he was someone I had to consider if I ever met Kuroglu in person.

  30 – Leap of Faith

  The next morning the Swiss detective called me. “Why does the FBI in Miami care about the death of this motorcyclist?”

  “Shortly before he died, he wrote a blog about the manufacture of counterfeit watches in Turkey. I am investigating the sale of those watches in the United States.” I hesitated for a moment, then said, “And another man on a motorcycle died here in Florida, a man everyone says was a very careful rider. Your Mr. Albrecht—was he careful, too?”

  “Yes, so his family and friends say,” the detective said. “Everyone was very surprised that he would die that way.”

  “Did anyone mention Mr. Albrecht’s blog?”

  “Oh, yes, many people,” he said. “He was always writing these very controversial things.”

  “And is there any chance he could have been run off the road?”

  “Murdered, you think?”

  “I’m asking.”

  He was silent for a moment. “You are not the first to suggest this. But we had no evidence, you see. No one to investigate, no one to charge.”

  We talked for a few more minutes. Yes, watchmaking was a big business in their town, and Luca Albrecht had a particular interest in the industry. He had written about labor conditions and about the use of chemicals in manufacturing. The detective didn’t know anything about the counterfeit watch blog, but he said he would ask the people who knew Albrecht if they had any more information.

  Miriam called me at eleven. “Mr. Venable went out on bail yesterday, and he and his attorney are here for a meeting. He’d like you to join us.”

  I walked down the hall to the meeting room off the lobby, past the display that memorialized agents who had lost their lives in service to their country. Not a group I wanted to join, though I’d come close in the past. Miriam met me in the lobby. “What’s up?” I asked her. “Why does Venable want to see me?”

  “Caleb Lewin and I spent a long time last night first with Mr. Sandler, and then going over the evidence we have,” she said, and my heart skipped a couple of beats. Had I missed something? Failed to document a piece of evidence?

  “The bottom line is that Mr. Venable can’t give us very much on Ms. Kuroglu at all. He can’t provide us any proof that Ms. Kuroglu knows the brothel tokens were stolen, which gives us zero leverage against her.”

  I looked at her. “And?”

  “So he’s agreed to let us monitor his meeting with her in the hope that he can get her to incriminate herself on tape.”

  “You’re going to wire up Venable?” I knew it would be improper to make a joke, but I had seen Venable shirtless, and I could imagine it would require all of Wagon’s ingenuity, and an awful lot of wire, to hook him up.

  “That’s where you come in,” she said, and the balls all dropped in place. I’d be wired, not Venable. I’d have to keep an eye on him, while trying to make sure I was close enough to Kuroglu to record everything she said. I might even have to steer the conversation, if Venable wasn’t up to it.

  “How does Venable feel about it?”

  “He’s the one who requested that you accompany him.” Miriam looked at me. “You think you can manage this? It’s an awkward situation given your past relationship with Mr. Venable. And you’ll have two different suspects to keep an eye on.”

  “Not to mention the bodyguard who accompanies Kuroglu everywhere.” I took a deep breath. Time to put on my big boy pants and be a strong, confident Federal agent. “Sure, I’ll go along,” I said.

  We walked into the meeting room. Venable looked tired, with dark shadows under his eyes, though his attorney appeared to be well-rested. The difference between counselor and client. Sandler had undoubtedly gone home, confident in a big fee ahead of him, while Venable had probably not enjoyed his brief stay in the Broward County Jail.

  I slid into the seat across from Jesse Venable. I wanted to hear from him why he’d asked me to be the agent who went with him, and I asked him that.

  “I know you,” Venable said. “And you always treated me like a human being the whole time you were doing your job. I admire that, and if I’m going against Evren, I want somebody I can trust by my side.”

  Well, I’d done the job Katya had spoken of. I’d gotten Venable to trust me. Then I’d betrayed him, but he still trusted me. Either that, or he was setting me up for some kind of betrayal of his own, to Evren Kuroglu.

  We hammered out details of what we hoped to accomplish. We needed Kuroglu, on tape, acknowledging that she was receiving stolen property. Without that, all we’d have would be Venable’s word against hers.

  “What if we can’t get her to admit that?” I asked. “We can’t just hand over the tokens and walk away, right?”

  “Our worst case scenario is that Mr. Venable has to hand them over in exchange for payment. Then I step in with a couple of guys from the SWAT team to back me up and announce that the deal is off because the tokens are stolen. We leave with Mr. Venable and focus on the case we can make.”

  Start here.

  “But what about the immigrant smuggling? We just let that go?”

  Miriam opened her hands to me. “We work with what we have.”

  I hated that, but I couldn’t argue with her, at least not in front of Venable and his attorney. She was right; we couldn’t go after Kuroglu, or the smuggling operation, without more evidence.

  “But if Jesse or I get her to cop to acknowledging the tokens are stolen, then we have a chance to use that as leverage for these other cases, right?”

  Miriam nodded, and I felt my pulse accelerate. The fate of unknown refugees could rest on my shoulders.

  Wagon came in then and hooked Venable’s cell phone into a gadget that would relay the conversation into headsets for me and Miriam so that we could hear the call he had to make to Evren Kuroglu.

  The room was silent as Venable called his client, and the loud ringing in my ear startled me. I stilled myself and focused on the sounds coming through my ear. Kuroglu answered, in a gravelly voice like the purring of a cat, with the slightest hint of an accent.

  Venable explained that he had the tokens and suggested he bring them to her house, but she said she was about to leave on her yacht for a cruise to the Bahamas, and she wanted to meet at the marina where her boat was stored.

  Miriam nodded at him, and he agreed. They made arrangements to meet at one o’clock at the boat storage facility, just off the 17th Street Causeway. After the call ended, Venable and I made plans to meet at a restaurant called The Boatyard, next door to the storage facility, and he and Sandler stood up. Venable reached out to shake my hand. “You’ll take care of me this afternoon, won’t you, Angus?”

  His hand was clammy and his grip was weak. I pressed my hand against his and said, “With everything I can.”

  He smiled, though his eyes remained sad, and he and Sandler walked out.

  “How do you feel about this?” Miriam asked me.

  “Honestly? I’m conflicted. I mean, I’m totally willing to do this for the Bureau. But Venable...” I shook my head. “I don’t understand him. It was my job to get to know him, get him to trust me, and then to betray him. And he knows all that, but he still trusts me.”

  “Those feelings are all part of being undercover,” Miriam said. “Can you get past any personal feelings you have and carry this operation out to completion?”

  I didn’t have to hesitate. “I can. I feel sorry for Jesse Venable, don’t get me wrong. He has a lot of money
and a fancy house, but fundamentally he’s a sad guy, and prison’s not going to be a picnic for him, even in one of the low-security operations. However, he picked this path, and he’s got to pay for what he’s done.”

  As I walked back to my office, I thought about that. Yeah, Venable was a sleazeball, but I still had no evidence that he’d been directly involved in any deaths. He’d probably negotiate a plea deal based on handing us Kuroglu, and maybe never serve any time at all.

  Back at my desk, I pulled up images of the boat storage facility where we were to meet Evren Kuroglu, located on a canal that ran into the Intracoastal Waterway. It was a huge building, the equivalent of four stories tall, with automated lifts that moved boats up to slots where they were safe from hurricanes and other damage. The front of the building was on a narrow access road. A series of garage doors led to stalls where vehicles could be stored, and beyond that to the narrow piers where yachts could be docked.

  The layout made me uncomfortable – there were too many entrances and exits, too many opportunities for Kuroglu – or even Venable – to slip away. I’d really have to bring my A game to make sure the operation went off smoothly.

  I memorized the interior and exterior of the boat storage facility until I could see it with my eyes closed. The real thing would probably be even more complicated, with boats in some of the bays, the sound of machinery working, the smell of salt water and diesel fuel.

  A short time later, Wagon called me down to the huge two-story lab. “These should fit your waist,” he said, holding up a pair of cargo pants with big pockets. “We’re going to need to hide whatever you carry out to this meeting.”

  I stepped behind a partition and changed from my dress slacks into the khaki-colored pants. They fit loosely, which was good. I wasn’t out to show off my personal assets to everyone I met.

  I left my shirt open so that Wagon could once again hook me up with a wire. One of the other techs was using super glue to lift fingerprints from a laptop computer, so the big garage doors were open and fans were running. It was hot and humid, and I was embarrassed when I started to sweat. Wagon had to hand me a couple of paper towels to dry off so the tape attaching the wires would stick.

  “You’re sure these will stay on?” I asked. “I’m going to be outside, by the water. What if start to sweat again?”

  He turned to his cabinets and rummaged for a while. I remembered a sticker I’d seen on a refrigerator at a friend’s house. There are haves, and have nots. We’re a can’t find.

  Eventually, though, he came up with a small antiperspirant stick and handed it to me. “This is a pretty strong blend, all natural ingredients. Rub it into your armpits before you get out of your car and it should carry you for a while.”

  Should. But what else did I have?

  He ran the wire to a transmitter at my waist. My gun slid easily into one of the side pockets, a pair of slim handcuffs into another. Plenty of room left over for my wallet, my badge holder and a couple of other small tools Wagon suggested I take with me. “Just in case,” he said.

  In case of what, I wanted to ask. But I had learned by then to expect anything and everything to go wrong.

  Once I was hooked up, I returned to Miriam Washington’s office. “I reviewed the layout of the boat warehouse with the agent in charge of the SWAT team, and he’s going to lend me a couple of agents to place in strategic locations within the boat warehouse. I don’t want you walking into this situation without backup.”

  “I appreciate that.”

  Together we counted out the twelve brothel tokens, each of them still wrapped in their original paper, and placed them in a dark purple velvet bag. “I sprayed them with something to make them shine, though I wouldn’t dare clean them,” she said. “I suggest you hand the bag to Venable before you approach Kuroglu. Let him take the lead in showing the goods to her. There’s a cloth roll in the bag, too, that he can use to display the tokens.”

  She handed the bag to me. “Just keep your eye on the tokens. We don’t want any funny business.”

  I drove up to Fort Lauderdale with the air conditioning blasting and the velvet bag on the seat beside me like a prized passenger. After I parked I opened my shirt and applied the roll-on antiperspirant liberally. I gave it a moment to dry, then buttoned up, checked my hair in the mirror, and put on my game face.

  Jesse Venable was waiting for me in front of the restaurant where we’d arranged to meet. He was dressed more formally than I’d ever seen him, in a pearl-gray button-down shirt that stretched over his expansive belly, a pair of black silk slacks, and shiny black loafers.

  Looking beside him, through a screen of trees by the front, I saw a phalanx of round tables with umbrellas, lining the water’s edge. I was reminded of Venice, the way that water was everywhere, that Lauderdale was often called the Venice of America.

  I handed him the velvet bag and explained about the cloth inside. “Perfect,” he said. “That’s just the way I would do it.”

  It was a bright sunny day, and the heat beat down on us as we walked together down the one-way street that led to the boat warehouse. Up ahead of us, I identified Evren Kuroglu’s SUV by the custom license plate, ALTIN, which I had discovered was “gold” in Turkish.

  It was parked in one of the garage bays, with the back hatch open. “You think this will clear me with the FBI?” Venable asked as we walked. “I don’t want to go to prison, Angus.”

  I wanted to tell him that if that was the case, he should never have broken the law. “I can’t make any promises,” I said. “I’m not the district attorney, and honestly, I haven’t gotten involved in the charges for any of the cases I’ve worked so far. But Caleb Lewin seems like a straight-up kind of guy, and I know that the immigrant smuggling case is a big deal. If we can nail Kuroglu, then I feel confident Lewin will treat you well.”

  Venable blew out a big breath. “I guess that’s what I have to count on.”

  Ahead of us, Kuroglu stood beside the SUV, looking like she’d just stepped out of a fashion magazine, in a beige linen dress, black ballet flats and that same heavy gold necklace around her neck.

  The man I’d seen in the background of the art museum photos stood beside her. I couldn’t help noticing his resemblance to Lester. At least six-three, broad-shouldered and muscular. He wore a tight-fitting T-shirt that showed off his biceps and had tattoos up and down his arms.

  “Who is this?” Kuroglu said to Venable as we approached.

  “My friend Angus. He’s the one who brought the painting back from Italy for me.”

  She raked her glance over me in a way that immediately dismissed me as a brainless twink hanging around Venable because he had money. That was exactly what I hoped she’d see.

  “You have the gold?”

  He nodded and pulled the dark purple velvet bag out of the pocket of his silk slacks. We stepped into the shadows of the warehouse bay, up to the front of the SUV.

  As he removed and unrolled the cloth with the expertise of someone who’d done this a thousand times, I looked around us. The building was dark and gloomy, and only a couple of the bays were lit. Directly ahead of us was the yacht I assumed was Kuroglu’s, because it had “Altin” written in a curling script on the transom, with “Istanbul, Turkey,” beneath it.

  I wondered where the backup agents were. Everyone in the building looked like they belonged there, from a couple of guys in jeans and T-shirts polishing the brass on a yacht nearby to a man and a woman drinking wine on the transom of another.

  I turned back to Venable as he carefully unwrapped the first token and laid it on the black cloth.

  “Beautiful,” Kuroglu said. She picked it up, and stepped toward the open bay to see it better. I kept shifting my glance from her to Venable and back. I didn’t like having the tokens separated.

  I couldn’t tell which one she had, but the gold glittered in the sunshine. While she examined it, Venable unwrapped each of the other tokens and laid them out on the black cloth. The big bodygua
rd hovered by her side, and I felt the first trickle of sweat under my arms, despite the antiperspirant Wagon had given me. I had to hope we got this deal completed before the sweat reached my chest and possibly cut out my transmission.

  I resisted the urge to look back to the street, to see if I could spot Miriam and her backup anywhere. They had to be close, if they were going to move in as soon as we had something incriminating on the tape.

  When Kuroglu stepped back inside, Venable said, “You see I’ve got all twelve I promised you. You have some money for me?”

  She picked up her cell phone from the hood of the SUV and began to tap keys. “I am sending the money to you now.”

  That wasn’t enough to incriminate her, because she hadn’t acknowledged that she knew the brothel tokens were stolen merchandise. She turned and motioned to a deckhand on the yacht behind us, and a moment later I heard the big engine begin to rev.

  Kuroglu was going to get on that boat and leave the country, taking the tokens with her. There was no way we’d be able to retrieve them once she was gone.

  She replaced the token she held on the velvet cloth on the hood of the SUV. She rolled the cloth up and placed it in the pocket of her slacks, the black velvet sticking out. I remembered the guy who’d tried to pick my pocket at Trader Tom’s a few weeks before, and wished I had his skill.

  In desperation, knowing I needed to delay her departure and get something incriminating on the tape, I asked, “You know those were stolen from a museum, don’t you?”

  She glared at me. “Why is it your business?”

  “Just asking.”

  “I am a Turkish citizen, and I am not governed by the laws of this country. I can buy whatever I want. I want these, and I don’t care if they were stolen or not.” She pressed her thumb against her first two fingers. “It is the golden rule. Gold rules.”

  A Bureau SUV pulled up then, blocking Kuroglu’s vehicle, and Miriam jumped out, along with two guys from the SWAT team. She looked cool and collected in her suit, a dark green that day. But then, she’d been waiting in air conditioning while I was sweating it out in the gloom of the warehouse.