Shadows of Deceit (A Series of Shadows)

by Mell Corcoran

  It was nearly 4:30 p.m. when Lou got the email from Agent Callahan at Homeland Security. The information he obtained put Manuel Rojas, Johan Esterhuizen and the Salazar brothers all on the same freighter leaving Panama and coming in to the Port of Los Angeles in San Pedro. Once again, San Pedro was in the mix and that was definitely no coincidence. Earlier an informant listed in the MI5 report mentioned a shipment of guns scheduled to come out of San Pedro. Lou knew immediately that was a breadcrumb trail they had to follow.

  Terminal Island is situated between Long Beach Harbor and the Port of Los Angeles, the busiest container port in the United States. Major parts of the Port are located on the island as well as a low-security federal prison for men. Agent Callahan was particularly annoyed since he was based right down the street and a boat load of bad guys had walked right past his building without him knowing until now. One, if not all the men could have been smuggled in on a cargo container, loaded up on a train and hauled out to just about anywhere if the right palms had been greased. Lou was once again not feeling very warm and fuzzy about the Nation’s security given three known international criminals just sailed in to her back yard with such ease.

  “We now know which ship they came in on. The problem is that there were more than seven-thousand containers on it.” Callahan explained.

  “But there is an inventory of what those containers carry and a list of who they belong to, right? Lou asked.

  Callahan blew out a breath before responding. “Yes, theoretically.”

  “Excuse me?” Lou didn’t like the word theoretically being used.

  “A third of all U.S. imports come through Los Angeles and Long Beach.” Callahan paused a moment. “The truth is that only nine percent of cargo containers are inspected. Documentation is sometimes glossed over when there is a crunch to get cargo loaded and out of port. We are doing our best but so far we have found a few containers that had bogus paperwork and we are not even a quarter of the way through the manifest.”

  Lou felt her stomach churn. “Can I get a copy so that we can try to narrow things down? Anything?” Lou’s voice squeaked she was so frustrated.

  “I’m faxing copies to you right now.” Callahan told her. “You find something and we will back you up one-thousand percent. I wrote my home and mobile numbers on the cover sheet but I’m not going anywhere for a while.”

  “I appreciate that.” Lou really did. “Let me get my team on that manifest. Talk to you soon.”

  Lou hung up the phone and recounted her disturbing conversation with Agent Callahan to Vinny and Dillon as she retrieved the manifest from the fax. There were so many pages that Lou had to stop to refill the paper reservoir so it could continue spitting out pages. Callahan had noted on the cover that there were one-hundred, forty-four pages coming, excluding the cover, but that Lou and her people should start on page seventy-two since he and his team were working on the first half already.

  The freighter carried exactly seven-thousand, two-hundred and fifty containers on that trip. Each container had it’s own spot on the list rather than lumping the sum into a total for each shipper. It seemed like a horrible waste of paper to Lou.

  “Of course this is all done by container number, not alphabetically according to shipper.” Vinny grumbled behind his glasses.

  “We need to go through this list for anything that even remotely looks like it could be linked.” Lou instructed them.

  “Yeah like Onus Global.” Dillon added.

  “What about it? Because it was bogus? We couldn’t have known that just from the name.” Vinny glared at Dillon from over the rim of his reading glasses.

  “I think I’ll have to disagree with you on that.” Dillon looked at him apologetically. “Onus means a few different things and the more I think about it, the more I think it’s relevant.”

  Lou stopped what she was doing and stared at Dillon. “You planning on sharing any time this century?”

  “It means Burden, responsibility, I mean literally the burden of proof. We’ve all have heard the phrase ‘The onus is on you’ right?” Dillon laid it out.

  “Yeah.” Vinny recalled the word. “I knew it sounded familiar but I didn’t get it until you said it.”

  Lou clicked the keys of her laptop. “the weight, responsibility. A difficult responsibility or burden.” She read the definitions off her screen then pondered it as she spun around in her chair. “Onus Global can translate quite literally to world burden or world responsibility.”

  “It’s more a negative word though, isn’t it?” Vinny was falling in line with the train of thought. “I mean, its kinda like saying ‘It’s on you buddy!’ Like in a bad way, right?”

  Dillon nodded then started typing away on his laptop. “Yeah, I agree with you there.” Once he stopped typing, Dillon started scanning the manifest pages, going down each line with his finger tracing the words.

  Lou could see Dillon was on to something. “What are you thinking, Evelyn Wood?” She teased over his apparent speed reading abilities, making Vinny chuckle.

  As soon as Dillon spotted it he slammed his fist down on the desk, startling both Lou and Vinny. “Odium Elite International!”

  “What the hell is that?” Vinny frowned.

  “Check the thesaurus!” Dillon shot up out of his chair and brought the page over for Lou to inspect. “Look!”

  Vinny tapped at his keyboard, squinted then looked a bit surprised. “Huh. How about that.”

  “Read out loud please!” Lou demanded as she looked at the manifest entries Dillon was pointing to.

  “Odium means intense hatred and dislike. Comes from Latin for hatred.” Vinny told her as he scratched his head

  “Alright,!” Lou contemplated Dillon’s theory. “Check the business address for this Odium Elite.”

  “On it.” Dillon scrambled back to his desk and started typing away again.

  “Fifty bucks says it’s the same address that was listed for Onus.” Lou winked at Vinny when he eyeballed her. “The donut shop.”

  “You’re on.” Vinny pulled out his wallet and flicked the money on her desk. “No way in hell they are connected and even if they are, no way they would be that cocky, using that address twice.”

  “Don’t bother grabbing your wallet, Lou.” Dillon spun around in his chair. “You were right. It’s the same business address.”

  “No shit?” Vinny was the one gawking now as Lou scooped up the bills and stuffed them in her pocket with a smirk.

  “Give me a few minutes, I need to see which trucking company hauled the containers out, if they ever did.” Dillon told them as his fingers continued typing away. “This is where we may get a break. I got the company name but how are we going to get them to tell us where they hauled the containers to?”

  “That is a very good question.” Lou responded but had no real answer. Instead she called Callahan back and asked him if there was a way he could find out.

  It took a minute or two for Callahan to register that they already had a lead. “Give me a little bit to find that out.” He requested. “God bless the Patriot Act.”

  Lou grinned. “Thanks again, Callahan.”

  “You bet!” He chuckled then hung up.

  “Lou, if the DEA or ATF gets wind of this, you know they are going to swarm all over this case.” Vinny was back at abusing his stress ball.

  “Well, then we better find out where the hell those containers went quickly and quietly before the wind shifts.” Lou smiled sweetly. “Wherever they are, I’ll bet you another fifty that Manuel and Ernesto are there too.”

  “Uh...” Dillon stammered as he looked at more of the manifest pages. “Uh guys...”

  “Spit it out!” Vinny barked at him.

  “You think it’s a coincidence that Odium and Arcano had four cargo containers on the same freighter?” Dillon asked.

  Lou’s eyes lit up and she couldn’t dial the phone fast enough. “Quick, what was the name of the freighter?”

  Dillon scurried to fi
nd the first page, making papers fly all over the place. “The DSC Freya!”

  Lou nodded. “Hello? Joe?” She was yelling in the phone. “I can barely hear you. I need a huge favor...”

  As Lou suspected, her step-father knew the shipping company that owned the freighter in question and he agreed to try and see if he could use his considerable influence to find out where the containers were offloaded. It was a long shot but Lou needed to try every angle possible to find the missing Sanguinostri blood born, Manuel Rojas and Ernesto Vargas before someone else turned up dead. When she hung up with Joe she realized Dillon was on the phone rattling off in Spanish again.

  “Who’s he talking to?” She asked Vinny.

  “Maria Arcano.” Vinny told her as he looked at his cell phone, squinting to read the display. “He had an idea about seeing if he could get a list of Arcano shipments scheduled to land here. He thought four containers was small for a coffee shipment and I agree with him. Did you know that last month alone the U.S. imported almost two-million 60 kilo bags of coffee?”

  Lou snorted. “Of which you and I will drink most of this month.”

  Vinny chuckled. “I’m putting a serious dent in that figure today.”

  “Those 60 kilo bags are how the beans are packed, then they are put into containers for shipment.” Dillon broke into the conversation as he hung up the phone. “I confirmed that with Maria just now. Some companies use plastic lined cargo containers but the jute or sisal sacks are how Arcano’s beans are packed and transported. As far as Maria was able to check, Arcano didn’t have a shipment on the DSC Freya scheduled at all. She is going to double check though.”

  “We have eight containers, four listed as Odium and four as Arcano.” Lou was thinking out loud. “Were the Arcano containers picked up from the same trucking company?”

  Dillon checked the manifest “It sure was.”

  Lou called Callahan back but got his voicemail. She figured he was busy working his magic to try and get the information on the Odium containers so she left a voice message then followed up with a text asking him to add the Arcano containers to his search. Even thought it was after 6 p.m. Lou knew there was no way Callahan would have clocked out with what they had going on. It was going to be a long night and she knew it. Lou heard Vinny’s phone beep for the tenth time in so many minutes and could see he was growing more and more agitated.

  “What’s up?” She finally asked him.

  Vinny grimaced as he looked at his phone again, then blew out a breath. “Vera’s mother came in this morning. She is freaking out that I’m not home yet to be all warm and fuzzy with family time.”

  “You didn’t tell me her mom was coming into town.” Lou wondered what else she had been missing. “Isn’t she the super hippie?”

  “Yeah.” He grumbled “She’s vegan too so my life is a living hell until Sunday.”

  “Vegan? That’s the no animal products of any kind, right?” Lou always got confused between vegan and vegetarian.

  “Right, not just in diet but in every day life. Clothing, household items and so fourth.” Dillon explained. “Vegans don’t like the exploitation of animals on any level. They don’t wear leather, wool, down or silk.”

  “Exactly!” Vinny shouted. “Vera cleaned the kitchen out yesterday of anything that might offend her mom. Nothing but fruit, vegetables, soybean this, bean curd that. Her mother picks apart everything! She makes me feel guilty over my damn belt and shoes!” Vinny stuffed his hands in his pockets and literally began to pout. “Last time she was here she cut my favorite tie right off my neck because it was silk! Doesn’t silk come from worms? Those are bugs for Pete’s sake! And don’t even get me started on the whole politics deal either! Freaking nightmare!” Vinny’s phone beeped again but he didn’t bother looking at it. “I’m sorry guys but I’m going to have to take off. She thinks I’m hiding behind this case as is.”

  Lou laughed. “Go, we got this covered. I’ll need to take a couple hours personal tomorrow anyway with the park dedication.”

  “That’s fun stuff, not crap like dealing with your mother-in-law from Granolaville Oregon and her hand woven hemp shoes! If you get something you let me know, OK?” Vinny started gathering his things as his phone started stuttering with beeps. He rolled his eyes making Lou laugh. “If you come up with something, make it good so I can get out of the damned house!”

  “You got it.” Lou continued giggling as the image of Vinny’s mother-in-law in macrame shoes popped into her head.

  “Night boss.” Dillon smiled at him. “Good luck!”

  “Yeah yeah.” Vinny scoffed. “Good luck all around tonight I guess.” He waved and headed home.

  “I’m a total animal lover but I will not give up ice cream and cheeseburgers.” Lou said as she watched Vinny disappear out the door. “It may seem stupid but I make myself feel better by only buying free-range chicken, eggs, organic milk from local farms and stuff where I know the animals are happy and roaming free. I may be deluding myself but it’s working!”

  Dillon smiled at her. “I do the same thing. I like farmer’s markets. That’s something I do miss about Washington. Where I lived, it was a pretty tight agricultural community. The farmer’s market was awesome.”

  “So we do our part then.” Lou smirked. “Balance out the universe a little.”

  “I agree.” Dillon grinned. “Hey! Maybe I can get some chickens and a couple goats! The new house has plenty of room.”

  Lou looked at him like he just grew a horn out the center of his forehead. “If you think I am coming over to help you milk goats, you are out of your freaking mind.”

  Dillon laughed. “I can do that. I can even hire someone to do it. How cool would that be to have fresh goat cheese and fresh eggs?”

  “You’re making me hungry.” Lou frowned. “If you hire someone to do it, it’s a great idea. Whatever.” Just then Lou’s phone chirped. It was a message from her step-father listing the delivery address for where the trucking company dropped off the cargo containers. “Shit, he got something!” Lou shouted and typed the address into the mapping program on her laptop as Dillon slid his chair over to look.

  “That’s less than five miles from the port.” He noted, clearly surprised.

  “I think it’s been abandoned since the Navy Shipyard closed. Grab your crap.” Lou hit print then scrambled to grab her gear. “We’re checking it out.”

  “No warrant?” Dillon did as she instructed but he was a little concerned about the legalities.

  “No time.” She shut down her laptop and stuffed it into her bag before sprinting for the door. “Callahan’s office is only a few minutes away from this address. I’ll text him what we are up to as soon as we get close. That should be enough to cover our asses.”

  “What about Vinny?” Dillon asked her as they hit the parking lot and he fished his keys out of his pocket.

  “He’s buried in traffic and headed home. I’m not going to piss Vera off by calling him back here.” Lou looked him dead in the eye. “You want to piss her off by calling him back?”

  “Hell no!” He admitted as he got in the SUV and started the engine.

  “You’re a quick learner.” Lou grinned as she closed the car door and buckled herself in.

  It took them forty minutes to make the bulk of the trip given traffic at that hour. Lou threatened Dillon with blunt force trauma if he took the Vincent Thomas Bridge so he ignored the pleasant British voice of his car’s GPS system and turned off the 710 freeway and headed up Navy Way instead. Lou was not fond of bridges and even though they didn’t have to actually cross it, she didn’t want to get any closer to the thing than necessary. The sun was hanging low in the west, reflecting off the ocean so intensely that it hurt Lou’s eyes to the point of watering. To her right, she began noticing just how many cargo containers occupied this area of the city. It was daunting. The roads were monopolized by big-rig trucks all towing cargo containers. The train that threaded through the ugly gray terrain was nothing
but cargo containers hitched end to end as far as she could see. As they made the turn on to Terminal Way she noticed the city had tried to spruce things up by lining the road with evenly spaced trees and small pockets of grass. Still, it was a bleak and grimy area that screamed industry wherever you looked.

  It was interesting to Lou how even though her own step-father had made a fortune in shipping, she rarely thought about how stuff was brought in to Los Angeles. As they rounded the bend and peeled away from the water side of Terminal Way, Lou was seeing huge lots all packed with cargo containers. They were all surrounded with tall chain-link and barbed wire fences. Hundreds and hundreds of containers blurred by as they moved along. When they hit the intersection of Terminal Way and Earle Street, Dillon suggested it was time to call Agent Callahan and let him know where they were. Just then Lou was noticing the lot on the north-west corner had cargo containers packed so tight, there was no way anyone could squeeze between them. She figured they could definitely use the help navigating the mess they were likely heading into. Callahan was just at the FBI building in Long Beach, not more than six miles away, so waiting this long to call him wasn’t that bad. After making the call and giving Callahan the address, the transportation depot on Lou’s right caught her eye. In the distance she could see a freight train being loaded with containers. Another way for those containers to taken out of this ant hill. Dillon made a left turn, away from the depot and Lou noted it was the street they were looking for. It was impossibly close to the depot. Barely a quarter mile from the entry gates, access to the main artery that would put those cargo containers on their way to pretty much anywhere on the continent.

  The warehouse was on Barracuda Street but if they hadn’t had an exact address, finding the right one would have been easier said then done. On their left a huge cinderblock warehouse butted smack up against a corrugated steel one. An old wood shack served as an odd spacer between the next cinderblock building and on and on it went. Non-descript industrial warehouses, unmarked and all almost identical to the other save for a few structural differences. To the right there was another expansive lot with a towering chainlink and barbed wire fence but this lot was less than a quarter full of containers. Down the street a bit further there was an old abandoned warehouse placed awkwardly within the nearly empty lot. The placement was neither centered nor adjacent to the street but askew and back a bit making it look out of place. When Dillon slowed to almost a stop, Lou realized that was their target location. Obscuring the view of the odd warehouse was a neatly arranged clump of containers. Four rows of fifteen, stacked three containers high. There was little to no space between them and Lou had no idea how they were going to figure out which containers were the ones they were looking for. Dillon sped up a little as they got closer to the abandoned warehouse. The windows of the structure were blacked out but that didn’t necessarily mean because they couldn’t see in, someone inside couldn’t see out.