The whine of the turbine-powered helicopter broke the early morning silence of the frost-covered ground. As the sleek aircraft hovered into an open lot, a cloud of mist formed from the surrounding grass. In the distance a sign sat perched on the lawn. With molded concrete and stamped letters, it read: United States Treasury Department, Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, Glynnco, GA.
After landing, Stephens entered one of the adjacent buildings. In the distance behind him, the chopper’s scalding turbine cooled as its rotors spun down, rotating slower with every revolution. A sight of complex coordination, the smaller tail rotor turned seven times for every revolution of the larger main rotor above. Stephens’s hundred and fifty pound, five-four frame pounded his hard soled shoes against the building’s highly polished terrazzo floor, making him sound a lot larger than he really was. The sound of his footsteps echoed from the veneer-covered walls as he made his way through the dimly lit halls. Along the way he passed pictures of graduated classes all lined in sequential, chronological order. Eleven by fourteen inch frames filled with smiling faces, happy to have graduated from the rigors of academy life. Stephens flowed through the hall like a burst of water through an empty pipe, winding through the building. He had been there before and knew his way well.
Stephens stopped in front of a group of glass doors. They were covered with steam. He stood upright, tightened his tie and proceeded inside. A gust of warm, steamy air hit his face. The room, which housed an Olympic-sized swimming pool, was empty with the exception of one. Condensation flowed off the windows surrounding the area. The pool inside stretched across the length of the room. Turquoise blue beams of light refracted from the white stucco ceiling above. Splinters of light danced around the six thousand foot expanse.
Joel Kenyon swam in his own buoy-lined lane. His breaststroke sent a small swell of water rippling from the pool’s tile sides. Stephens stood at the end of Joel’s lane and watched him approach. He was a good swimmer, raised in the better country clubs and attended swimming lessons until high school where he swam competitively on his school’s team. Joel slowed to a stop just short of the side, standing upright against the concrete bottom.
“How’s the pool?” Stephens asked.
“Okay I guess; it could use a little less chlorine,” Joel answered, clearing the water that dripped from his nose and mouth.
“You’re the pool expert,” Stephens acknowledged.
“Hardly,” he answered again, this time banging the side of his head with an open palm in an attempt to force any water from his ear canals.
“Well, you should fit into the Keys way of life without any problem.”
“You think so?” Joel asked.
“You’re ready to get out of here aren’t you?”
“You’ve got that right,” Joel responded. “I haven’t had this much structure since the Citadel.”
“This place is no Citadel kid,” Stephens said. “You’ve been goofing off for too long.”
“I’ll have you know that I’ve gained some valuable life lessons in the last few years,” Joel replied with a sarcastic smile.
“Whatever.”
“You did say that I wouldn’t finish. Now that I proved you wrong, where do we go from here?” Joel asked.
“You did well, now this is your ticket out but you’ll have to leave tonight. Tavernier is expecting you in the morning. It can’t look as though you have had any privilege. You had better be there by 9:00 a.m.”
“Nine? Are you kidding?” Joel protested.
“I’m not going to lie to you. This isn’t going to be a milk run. You’ll know what we know and I’ll deliver the information myself as soon as I get it,” Stephens said.
“Do we have any idea who we’re after yet?”
“None. You’ll meet with the local group super, Jordan Cheney. I worked with him when he was in Panama. Really helped us out after we gave back the canal.”
“Can we trust him?”
“If there’s someone to trust I would have to say it’s him, but let’s keep things on a need-to-know basis, just to be on the safe side.”
“How often do you want to meet?” Joel asked.
“We’ll communicate weekly, just remember to document everything, and for God’s sake, get tape whenever possible. And kid, I’ve told you before and I’ll tell you again, you can’t trust anyone.”
“Anyone?” Joel asked, looking up at his suited superior.
“I’m different, shithead. We’re family, remember?”
“I’d just like to develop a friendship, you know, a lifelong relationship, someone who could someday be the best man at my wedding or maybe the godfather to my kids.”
“That will happen someday, but right now we have a real problem down there in Florida. Someone is betraying his oath to our country and I intend to find out who that is. If you crave a relationship, buy a dog. For now, you’re mine.”
* * * * *
Current
Tessa Alazar walked through her immaculately kept sixth floor apartment as the plush carpet that stretched across the floor massaged her bare feet. The windows were open and the cool breeze from the nearby Haulover Inlet blew fresh air through the spacious flat. Tessa, with Old English furniture polish in one hand and a saturated rag in the other, kept a watchful eye on Monica who was playing contently on the balcony, blowing bubbles from a small plastic bottle of a soapy, dime-store concoction. Bubbles left a trail from the balcony through the lavishly decorated living room, leaving a filmy residue over the freshly cleaned furniture. Tessa patiently wiped the spots clean again.
Three and a half months earlier, a seven-year-old fell from a balcony on the eleventh floor on the opposite side of the building. The small community of condo owners was appalled by the senseless accident, and while the child lay motionless in the intensive care unit of Jackson Memorial Hospital, the homeowners’ association voted unanimously to disallow children from playing unsupervised on the condominium grounds. They also voted to refuse any new tenants or owners who had children to move in, a far cry from the sales pitch Tessa and Bobby were fed over three years earlier. She remembered the salesman who promised a “family-like” atmosphere, high above the crashing waves below on the breakwaters of Haulover.
The child died seven days later. A subdural hematoma, undetected by numerous CAT scans, squeezed the life from her fragile skull. The family, still in mourning, sold their three-bedroom flat. That left two children in a complex of ninety-eight apartments.
The Rosenblats on the ninth floor had a very bright twelve-year-old who by all means was a child prodigy genius like his father, a cellist in the greater Miami Philharmonic. Young Ivan practiced relentlessly. He was highly revered in his circles and the pedigree was very much appreciated by the homeowners’ executive board of the Edgewater Condominium Association.
After five years of marriage, Tessa and Bobby became restless. She made no apologies, admitting that she had married him to get back at her father. He was upfront also, openly telling people that he married to produce a grandchild for the parents he adored. While she remained faithful, he, on more than one occasion, came home with an unfamiliar scent lingering to his nightclubbing attire or a red splotch on or about his collar or crotch.
“You’re so damned insecure,” he would say. “Mima gave me a hug before I went out. You can’t blame a guy for hugging his mother can you?”
“And your mother gives you head too I guess?” she would ask.
And that’s how it would go. Two young adults trading barbs and occasional glancing blows as their two-year-old daughter hid in her closet until it was over.
He hit her three times during their marriage. After the first, she vowed to leave him, but after his pleas of sorrow and his begging, she took him back. After that it was just easier to make excuses for his behavior. It was a Cuban thing, she would tell herself. I married him and I have to take responsibility for that decision. Still, she would stay up at night and wonder how an independent woman
could end up like this.
Tessa made one final sweep over the black acrylic coffee table before joining her child on the balcony. The cool air felt good against her smooth olive skin. The wind blew through her curly black hair. She looked very Latin. The gray-haired elders of the Edgewater complex simply assumed she was. Her recently deceased husband was a very flamboyant Cuban who flouted his Italian-Cuban style amongst these much older Anglos in the complex. Little did they know Tessa’s mother was Greek, born on the island of Amorgos in the Aegean Sea, and her father, Irish, born in Orlando and about as Anglo as they come.
The elders saw her as part of a bigger threat: the ensuing invasion of Cubans and Haitians polluting the racial purity of their beloved home, Miami Beach, and the Edgewater Condominium. More than one Cadillac and Lincoln Mark Five in the Edgewater parking garage displayed the bumper sticker: Will the last American to leave Miami please bring the flag! This was comical since the elders themselves were all from somewhere else, mostly the New England area, New Jersey, and some from Connecticut and New York. The Rosenblats migrated from Massachusetts. Ivan Sr. played his cello, third row, up stage, with the Boston Pops for seventeen years.
Tessa pulled her baby Monica close to her as she panned out to the busy inlet in front of them. The Haulover Inlet was a man-made channel and vented a lot of tidal pressure. Tessa saw it as a mirror reflecting back at her own life. As the tide changed, the current raced by the jagged breakwater rocks at a fast pace. Water churned and frothed causing turmoil under the bridge that spanned across the two-hundred-foot waterway. She simply watched and wondered.
Bobby had left her financially secure, but he had also left her with some serious scars. Her feelings of trust and love had been cauterized from her soul long before his accident, one painful stab at a time. A large Hatteras Sport Fisherman blasted its way past the condo with the roaring of the twin diesels echoing from the seawall; its immense wake shuttered the pilings as it passed under the bridge. Tessa held her daughter’s head tight and realized that this was her chance to make things right.
* * * * *
Invocation
The afternoon was overcast. A light rain fell from dark gray skies as cars lined up at the gate to the Academy. Security guards in bright orange raincoats waved the vehicles past the entrance with lighted orange batons guiding them to designated parking areas. Roped areas marked an open field of wet grass, dividing it into neatly segregated rows.
One hundred and eighty-six recruits were ready to graduate. The official count was one hundred and eighty-seven but during the exercises of the last week, one recruit made a very serious mistake. How could it have happened? the instructors had asked themselves. It was a reasonably hot day and the recruits were taking turns making forced entry in an exercise that would teach them how to serve a search warrant. A team of five men was formed and one lone agent was picked to guard the entrance while the other four bolted in through the front door. The building they were practicing in was an old Navy barracks. FLETC itself was formed from an old Navy base, with rows of vacant buildings left decaying in the weather. As part of a revitalization effort, FLETC had been awarded a grant to remodel some of the buildings for future use as classrooms and scenario sets. As the four men made their way into the structure, the fifth stood watch outside. The instructors, those who were not acting as suspects, followed the entry team as observers who would later make a critique of the scenario. The exercise took a turn for the worst though as the men inside the building heard yelling in the front.
“Hands over your head asshole! Yeah, you, motherfucker! I will blow your spick head off!”
The instructors ran out the front of the building just in time to see the lone guarding agent kicking and yelling at a group of men who were dressed in paint-stained construction uniforms laying face down on the pavement. Workers, it turned out, who were remolding the next building over.
This guy was a week away from walking out the door and into the field, the FLETC management said amongst themselves. It was a perplexing problem as to how close the cadet had come to graduating from the Academy and no one had caught this student’s inability to make rational decisions in the heat of a crisis. The next question that was invariably raised was how many others were out there that simply passed through the cracks?
Inside FLETC’s main auditorium was an audience filled primarily with recruits’ family members, loud with the rumble of impatient voices. On the stage sat a panel of men, all dressed in suits. Before them in the first six rows sat the graduating class and behind them, their families and friends.
A small, balding man approached the podium. As he tapped on the microphone, the large room filled with a screech of feedback and then the noise in the room fell to a quiet hush.
“It is my distinct pleasure to announce the keynote speaker for these proceedings. Mr. Patrick Stephens has been this area’s Special Federal Prosecutor for sometime now and he has flown down here to offer a few words of advice and direction for today’s graduating class. Mr. Stephens…”
Pat walked slowly across the stage, taking his position behind the podium. Stephens didn’t need the interruption of feedback. He didn’t have to ask for it. His presence merely demanded it. Attention.
“On behalf of the staff here at Glynnco, especially the director of training who was gracious enough to invite me all the way down here from Atlanta, I would like to welcome all of the families and friends attending the graduation commencement for the United States Customs Service class of October 25th, 1984. And to those of you who will walk down this stage in a few minutes, congratulations on a job well done. All of us in the U.S. Attorney’s Office know training like this is not easy. It takes guts and determination to leave our loved ones and venture out on a quest for a better life, especially when it involves the safety and security of our country and the future of our children and our children’s children. In my office in metro Atlanta, we are seeing generations of families destroyed by the lure of illegal drugs available on many of our street corners. The position you have been chosen to uphold is more than a job or a GS rating. It’s a lifestyle of determination, long hours and many sleepless nights. Family members: it’s your support and understanding that will make all the difference in the world. I thank God for my wife Jhenna. If it were not for her and the support she gives me on a daily basis, I don’t think I would have made it past my first case.
As a prosecutor in the federal system, I am constantly reminded of how the backbone of our cases relies on the agents in the field. It takes more than good ole’ fashioned police work these days. Agents fighting today’s complex war on drugs need to anticipate the criminal’s move before he makes it. They need to stay one step ahead and three steps behind. This is an intellectual war. It will not be won with bullets and brawn, but rather with computers, databases, adding machines and sophisticated electronics. Each and every one of you has been handpicked from more than twenty thousand applicants because in one way or another, you’re special. You are the elite. You can be proud and confident that with the expert training gained here coupled together with the qualities you already possessed when you walked through these oak doors four months ago, you are prepared to make a difference.
My job is simple: put the bad guys behind bars for as long as legally possible. But I can’t do that without a Tupperware tight case and that’s where you will come in. As you depart from this center, you will receive your assignments, some taking you to remote parts of the country. Just remember that it all comes back to the training you received here at Glynnco. Good luck and Godspeed gentlemen, let’s all do some good.”
* * * * *
Discharge
The waiting room at the Eglin Federal Detention Facility in Fort Walton, Florida, resembled an ordinary room in an ordinary government building. It was lined with oddly colored plastic seats all affixed to a pair of chrome bars that spanned the twenty-foot depth of the room. Peter Delgado, called Del by his friends, sat two seats from the wall with his
unshaven face held in both hands, looking at a highly polished asbestos tile floor. He was in street clothes: a faded burgundy T-shirt, jeans, the bulge of a billfold in his back pocket and white Keds with soft socks, the first set of “real” clothes he had worn in over eighteen months. His shoes felt better than the surplus military issue boots he had used for most of his stay at Eglin.
“I’m going to need to give you a ride to the bus station, Delgado,” a deep voice called out from the duty desk across the room.
Bureau of Prisons transport agent, Percy Moore, had seen newly released prisoners wait in these chairs before. Most, sitting for hours anticipating a girlfriend or wife who never arrived. His routine was time-tested and pretty standard. He’d usually wait three or four hours before insisting they take the fifteen-minute jaunt to the Greyhound terminal in downtown Fort Walton.
“No thanks, they’re coming up from Miami. My friend said he was expecting some road work around Gainesville.”
“Very well Delgado, you’ve got until 3:30.”
“Yes sir,” he replied.
Peter Delgado was loved and missed by his friends and family. He had spent the last eighteen months at the Eglin facility missing them also. He kept his mind busy completing his GED and learning the valuable trade of a machinist, all in the year and a half at the minimum security camp. Five days a week, fifty-two weeks a year, he developed his skills turning lathes and working high speed drill presses in hot, sweaty shops making parts for other government agencies in need of the costly craft. When Del arrived in Key West five years earlier from Mariel, he stepped off an overcrowded shrimp boat, having just been released from the Cabotivo Caliché Prison in Havana. He carried a black leather satchel that had belonged to his father, a simple carpenter who was killed when he was a young boy.
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