Good Junk

by Ed Kovacs

  “A security guard in New Orleans working nightshift, and he’s awake? I need to take a photo and send it to Ripley’s Believe it or Not!” I said.

  We watched the guard for an hour to time his movements; he was utterly predictable with a circuit around the yard every fifteen minutes. So Decon and I timed our approach, ran like hell to the back of the trailer, and went to work.

  We’d both brought our B&E kits. Before even thinking about the lock or alarm, Decon used a modified multi-range bug detector scanning in the 20—45 kHz range to check for any sensors inside the office.

  “Ultrasonic area sensor alarm inside. Most likely will be in one of the four corners.”

  “So we’ll have thirty seconds once we get in to find it.”

  He nodded. “Should be a breeze.”

  Decon put away the bug detector and then used a tiny external magnet to maintain the circuit on the simple magnetic door switch alarm on the double-wide’s door. I picked the locks in under five minutes and we were in, with the door closed behind us, as I hit the stopwatch function on my TechnoMarine chronograph. One alarm down, one to go.

  Now we had thirty seconds, the delay time before the ultrasonic alarm would begin to screech. Since motion-sensing-type alarms were usually placed in corners. I had the two corners on the right, Decon, the two on the left. We moved quickly and came up empty.

  “Look for something disguised as a speaker or a thick book with some generic bullshit title!” said Decon.

  I spotted two speakers on a shelf. “I got speakers.” But they were really speakers. “Negative as alarms,” I said.

  “Got it!”

  I turned to watch as Decon grabbed a large book with two square lens covers on the binding. He simply flipped the unit over and powered it off.

  “Two seconds to spare,” I said, checking my watch.

  “The owner is being sneaky.”

  “No doubt because he’s got something to hide,” I replied quietly.

  We obviously couldn’t turn on the lights, but within minutes I rifled through file folders containing hard copies of bills of lading, invoices, and other paperwork. I couldn’t find a file for Breaux Enterprises, but Chu’s FBI dossier stated he had an export company called Jade International. I found that folder and recent paperwork showing that a shipment had been picked up from Michoud and delivered to Scrap Brothers last Saturday. The pickup point was “Michoud, J-19.” I stuffed the single piece of paperwork in my pocket and replaced the file folder.

  We waited for the golf-cart-riding guard to do another circuit. Decon returned the book-alarm to its shelf and activated it. That gave us thirty seconds to clear out. Outside the back door I relocked the locks. Decon removed the external magnet, and we melted into the darkness, no one the wiser.

  The food arrived just as I came back from the men’s room. Decon had ordered a beer and a club sandwich; I’d asked for an Original Tequila Sunrise and a cheeseburger. The Jimani Lounge in the Quarter was packed pretty tight. More than a few Bourbon Street strippers had just gotten off shift at 4 AM and were drinking with prospective johns they’d met earlier in their strip clubs.

  “You didn’t think I’d duck out while you were in the head?” Decon asked.

  “No, now that we’re working together and you’re on my payroll.”

  “Wow. Yes sir, boss.”

  I figured it was a safe bet Decon would be waiting for me. We’d just bonded by committing a burglary, after all.

  “Not many people trust me. Maybe only you and one other.”

  “Yeah, who would that be?” I asked, not really caring as I started to sample the fries.

  “Maybe you know this person.”

  He smiled but he wasn’t going to say the name. I let it slide; I was hungry.

  “I gave you a hard time the other night,” he went on. “You’re probably having a tough enough time. There is redemption, you know. Maybe not for me, but for you, absolutely.”

  I took a huge bite of my cheeseburger and looked at him as I chewed. I finally asked, “What do you mean?”

  “You know, the fighter you killed at your gym. Accidentally,” he said, casually lighting a cigarette.

  I looked at him hard. I wasn’t sure if he was trying to provoke me. First, by suggesting someone I knew trusted him, and now this. “How would you know about that? I didn’t see a TV in your crypt.”

  “I read the newspapers that people leave behind at the coffee joints. But if you’re asking what I know about redemption, let’s just say I’m a serious student of the concept due to my past behaviors. You and I might be more alike than you imagine.”

  “I doubt that.”

  “Wait and see. But don’t wait to forgive yourself. The longer you wait to do that, the longer it’ll take to get over this. Have you talked about what happened to anyone? Not a ‘just the facts’ conversation, but talking freely, from your heart.”

  I wasn’t interested in Decon’s pop psychology. “Thanks for the friendly advice, but let’s discuss your work at Scrap Brothers. When did you leave there?”

  He shook his head with a sad and knowing expression on his face. “You haven’t. You’re keeping it buttoned up inside, the strong alpha male. It’s going to eat you up, man. Trust me, I know. Because you’re not some stone killer, you haven’t sold your soul, if you can appreciate my point. You can save yourself, but you have to face this sooner or later.”

  “When did you leave Scrap Brothers?” I repeated.

  “Denial is not just a river in Egypt. But don’t get me wrong, I’m not some armchair therapist. Or pacifist. Actually I’m a staunch proponent of righteous violence, to put it mildly.”

  “When—”

  “I’ll answer your questions posthaste; but first, I’d like to have a conversation with you, if you’d be so kind. See, I’m someone who is willing to sacrifice in order to serve a higher cause or ideal. It’s not an easy step to take. The sacrifice is a physical one, but I’m also talking about sacrifice of an inner, personal nature.”

  Decon was off on a tangent, but what the hell, he wasn’t going anywhere, and neither was I. And the last tangent he’d gone on had led me to the cargo container full of weapons. “You talking about compromising your morality or something?”

  “I’m talking about being willing to chip off pieces of your soul as a result of having to do what needed to be done. Let’s say, for example, that pretty girl at the next table was a terrorist asset who had the names of American agents in her purse. Names she was about to turn over to her terrorist handlers, resulting in the deaths of those American agents: men and women, people with spouses and kids and homes in the burbs, people who worked in dangerous conditions to serve their country for not-great pay. And if you don’t put a bullet in her brain, grab her purse, and run out the door right now, those American agents will die. You can’t arrest her, you can’t call for backup, there is no other option: it’s just you and her in the here and now. Get the picture? Would you do it? Would you make that sacrifice? And it is a sacrifice, because when you start to kill people who are posing no immediate threat, you’re applying lethal force under a much broader set of parameters and it messes with you in a different way.”

  “Anyone who makes a jump to those kinds of killings has crossed a Rubicon of sorts.”

  “You are right,” he exhaled.

  “Pretty soon, it seems to me, you start to justify whacking bad guys simply because they are bad guys. No legitimate law-enforcement agency does that.”

  “Forget law enforcement. I gave you a specific example.”

  “Probably not, is my answer then.”

  “Good people would die.”

  “Good people die all the time.”

  “But you could prevent those good people from dying.”

  “There is no black and white, you know that. Only gray,” I said.

  “What if the people who were going to die were simply innocents, not agents?”

  “I don’t like these kinds of hypothet
icals.”

  “What if children were going to die? What if one of those who absolutely was going to be killed was a friend of yours? Maybe Detective Baybee.”

  “Then I would be more inclined to act.”

  “Yes. It’s all about gradations isn’t it? And gradations are like the steps of the Great Pyramid at Giza. They begin to erode over time. And that’s when redemption becomes more problematic.”

  Decon crushed out his cigarette in the ashtray.

  “There’s an old saying,” he continued, “and I’m paraphrasing: ‘Evil thrives when good men fail to act.’ What should good men do, when taking action to oppose evil stands in opposition to existing social mores? Or to what has become standardized civilized behavior in our country? This reminds me that America can never win another war. Our rules of engagement are too civilized. It’d be better just to bring the boys home, you know? Why have them die for nothing if we are not willing to fight to win? War is a dirty, ugly thing, and if you are not willing to get dirty and ugly, don’t fight, because you won’t win.”

  “But you weren’t talking about war before,” I said.

  “No, I wasn’t.”

  I took a healthy drink, which was probably healthier than the cheeseburger that I pushed away from me, and then lit a cigarillo. “I think you know that I’m not a guy who always operates within the rules. But we still need the rules, because otherwise, where would that leave us? I’m not going to say that I never, for instance, planted dope on some abusive, ruthless, drug dealer to make the bust and get him off the street. I did. He ditched his stash the first time; I got him the second time using a little something I had in my pocket.”

  “Right,” said Decon. “Then you made a sacrifice: You risked your career, your livelihood, your freedom—you could have gone to jail for doing that—to put a bad guy away. A guy you one hundred percent knew was bad. You broke the rules to oppose an evil, to serve a higher good.”

  “That’s not the same as killing the pretty girl sitting over there and running out with her purse because somebody has told me it will save lives.”

  “Gradations,” he said, staring off into nothing, maybe recounting a past memory. “Anyway, about four months ago is when I quit Scrap Brothers, to answer your question. I got tired of punching a clock, and a few other opportunities dropped into my lap.”

  “Del Breaux warehoused his merchandise in the city. Could it have been somewhere at Scrap Brothers?” I asked.

  “Not unless it was in the welded cargo container. But if you weld the doors shut, you can’t get to it. If you’re in business and warehousing merchandise, you need access.”

  “You don’t have any idea what was in that silver container?”

  “It drove me crazy. I tried to figure how I could pop the welds, check the container, then mix paint in with putty to try and fake the seal. But I never did; they would have noticed.

  “You know that container is gone. Taken during the murders.”

  It was the first time I saw Decon look genuinely surprised. “No, I didn’t know that.”

  “So who killed Herbert and the Jefferson brothers?”

  “Well, now you’ve got me wondering if they were killed for what was in that container.”

  Could the silver container have been full of secret materials Breaux had siphoned off from his black-projects work? If the container had only contained run-of-the-mill weapons, it didn’t seem likely the Jeffersons would be killed in such a brutal way for it.

  “You have a cell phone?” I asked.

  “Fresh out.”

  I gave him a cheap one. One from which I could surreptitiously monitor all incoming and out-going calls and texts.

  “You remember that piece of metal that was shrink-wrapped on a pallet all by itself?”

  “Next to the crates of weapons? Yeah, I couldn’t figure that one out.”

  “Plant some seeds with those Chinese TDF drivers that you know. Tell them you stripped my Bronco in retaliation for me trying to arrest you for the stolen bronze plaque. Float the story that you found the sheet of metal with my notes on the Breaux murder, and put two and two together that it’s worth money to the right buyer.”

  “You want to set up a sting? That’s a good idea. And there are plenty of witnesses to you and Detective Baybee assaulting me in Metairie. That will lend credence to my righteous anger, if you know what I mean.”

  “We assaulted you?”

  “A figure of speech. My credentials as a crooked character have been long established with a couple of those Chinese drivers. We did some off-the-truck specials together when I worked at Scrap Brothers, if you get my drift.”

  “You’re a thief, I get it.”

  “Only in between regular jobs.”

  “I’m sure the chamber of commerce appreciates it.”

  I handed him two hundred bucks.

  “So what is it about this piece of metal that’s so valuable?” asked Decon.

  “Take my advice and just stay dumb about that.”

  “This is exciting. I wanted those fuckers shut down, and now I get to be part of it.”

  “A guy like you, Decon. Why would you care that these guys are dealing in weapons?”

  “I look forward to the day when we know each other well enough that you will understand the answer to that question before having to ask it. But I will tell you what I told Miss FBI: for a cup of coffee, a baguette, and two nickels I would kill each and every one of those leeches. Think of it as a cancer that needs to be cut out for the patient to survive. Lessons need to be relearned from time to time, and sometimes the lessons are harsh.”

  Decon wasn’t making complete sense but then I suspected that his brain was one tadpole short of being a swamp. Cheap trash talk about killing can come easily and I had a hard time envisioning him as the guy who so far had whacked five local yokels. His passion, however, was unmistakably genuine; harnessing that in furtherance of my goals was the horse I had chosen to ride. When Decon got the word to a TDF driver about the GIDEON sample, it should get to Chu. And executing the right kind of sting on a master Chinese intelligence agent would be very satisfying indeed.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  News of Nassir Haddad’s bust was nowhere to be found in The Times-Picayune the next morning. Nor had it made any TV news reports. The FBI CI-3 boys must have had a busy night buttoning up the story in the interests of national security. This enhanced the great respect I had for the Buyer’s Club’s reach and influence. And Haddad was already out on bail, free as a bird. No judge would issue a search warrant for his ship.

  I finished the last of my take-out coffee, tossed the newspaper on the floorboard, and considered the power of the forces I faced. What in the world have I gotten Honey and myself into? Before I could dwell on that too long, Ralph Salerno stepped out of his Metairie home. It was 8:10 A.M., I’d gotten two hours of sleep, but didn’t look as ragged as I felt. I sat parked half a block away, so I quickly pulled up behind Salerno’s Ford Escape before he could drive off. He turned to face me as I approached.

  “No flashing lights to embarrass me?”

  “Just a friendly visit,” I said.

  “You have my cell-phone number. But this morning I have an early meeting with—”

  “Did you plant the bugs in Del Breaux’s house?”

  The question took him aback. I handed him one of the listening devices I’d found at Breaux’s—I’d only logged one into evidence control and kept the other.

  “No,” he said, examining it carefully. If I could legally do that, my job would be a lot easier. This is a high-end unit.”

  “Someone was spying on him. How long have you suspected Breaux of selling secrets?”

  He handed the unit back to me. “I had absolutely nothing on Del Breaux.”

  “Really? When did you discover the GIDEON sample had gone missing?”

  “What sample are you—?”

  “Cut the crap, Salerno. CI-3 is asking me and my partner about a missing sheet of
material from the GIDEON project.”

  He shifted on his feet, deciding what to say. “Off the record?”

  I nodded.

  “About an hour after you left Michoud on Sunday is when we found it missing.”

  “Let’s make this give and take, since CI-3 is probably keeping you out of the loop and I imagine you don’t like that. Breaux sold it for two and a half million to the Chinese. But they may not have possession of it.” I left out the small detail that I had it.

  He nodded, grimly. “No, they didn’t tell me that.”

  “Is Michoud becoming some kind of weapons R and D and manufacturing facility?”

  “Weapons? No. We’re still part of NASA. Everything we do is space-based, but nothing that’s weaponized.”

  “What else could Breaux have sold to foreign agents? Any hardware missing?”

  “Only the one GIDEON piece. If what you say is true and he became a traitor, then what he had to sell were all the secrets he had from a lifetime in black projects.”

  “Computer files,” I said.

  Salerno nodded and looked troubled.

  “My instinct tells me you had him under suspicion, even if you didn’t have anything on him. Why?”

  “I can’t go there, even off the record.”

  “Let me help you then. Global Solutions Unlimited.”

  Salerno flashed me a look and an almost imperceptible nod.

  “You and I are on the same side, you know. Just trying to get rid of some bad apples.” Salerno remained silent, so I tried another tact. “If you’re willing to confirm something I say, scratch your elbow,” I whispered, just loud enough for him to hear me.

  I was somewhat surprised to see him scratch his elbow.

  “You knew Breaux had become an arms dealer?”

  He scratched his elbow.

  “Okay, that explains your concern. You had a guy working on a super-secret program at your facility who also, as a side business, started running guns about a year ago after General Clayton Brandt showed up. I’d be concerned, too.”

  He scratched his elbow.