by Dan O'Shea
“Diamonds?” Lynch asked.
“Yep,” said McCord.
Lynch hung up the phone, filled in Starshak and Bernstein.
“So diamonds from West Africa, which is where this Hardin just came from,” said Starshak.
“Yeah,” said Lynch.
“And we have this Membe guy, also from there, who maybe had his hand lopped off for stealing diamonds,” said Bernstein.
“Yeah,” said Lynch. “Kinda feels like an actual lead.”
CHAPTER 19
Munroe stifled a yawn, popped a go pill and looked out his hotel window across Michigan Avenue and Grant Park at Lake Michigan. Needed about ten hours sleep, but the go pill would take care of that. Jet lag was for pussies who hadn’t been shot much.
Munroe hated Chicago. His first time had been during the convention in 1968 a few years after he’d officially crossed over to the dark side. Got lent out to track down a Soviet agent provocateur who had been whispering unpleasant ideas into the Yippies’ ears, been teaching them to blow shit up. The Chicago cops found that guy bobbing in the lake, bouncing off the breakwater by the Planetarium, bump on his head. They wrote him off as some stoned fuck who didn’t know that getting high and going for a swim didn’t mix.
Next day, Munroe was out of his hippie mufti, back in his Brooks Brothers, trying to flag a cab out of town, when some long-hair pelted him with an open baggie full of human shit. Shouldn’t blame the city, he supposed, but the whole exercise left a bad taste in his mouth. And, of course, there was Hurley the First: classless troglodyte every bit as venal and ham-fisted as any third world thug Munroe had ever had to make nice with. Kind of guy that made you wonder if you were really on the right side.
But the new Hurley? At least this guy loved his cameras.
Munroe was scrolling through a slide show of al Din shots the tech boys had pulled together for him. Pretty clear that al Din knew about the cameras, too, and understood there was no way he could stay off them, so he did the next best thing. He stuck his mug in front of every camera he could find. North side, south side, west side – if there was a camera, al Din was on it. Suburbs weren’t wired up, not like the city, but al Din was doing his level best to pop up out there, too. Mall security, ATMs. If Munroe was going to piece together al Din’s play based on video footage, al Din was not going to make it easy.
The slippery little bastard still had his ways of dropping off the radar every now and again – an hour here, a couple hours there. Never could track him to a hotel, a base. But that’s how you got to the top of the game. If radical Islam had an MVP badass right now, al Din was it.
Munroe’s phone peeped. He looked at the screen. Guy at the NSA that was riding herd on the electronic intel for him.
“Yeah?”
“The Chicago PD just ran some prints against the DoD database. An ex-Marine, Michael Xavier Griffin. Two tours, made Scout/Sniper. He mustered out in 1994. This will not be in anything the Chicago police see, but during Gulf War I, he was detailed to Mossad to help on anti-SCUD efforts.”
“So he might have a Mossad tie? Might know Stein?”
“Yes. And he is from the Chicago area. He left the Marine Corps after being involved in an altercation with a local drug dealer and two of his enforcers. He killed all three of them. One of them was Jamie Hernandez’s younger brother.”
“Hernandez as in Mexican cartel Hernandez?”
“Yes. Hernandez put out a contract on him and Griffin left to join the Foreign Legion. He did a hitch there, and has been working as logistics and security support for TV news crews in Africa ever since, using the French ID he received coming out of the Legion, Nicholas Hardin. According to a source with FRANCE 24, he tried to pitch them a story on the evolution of the blood diamond trade a few months ago, but they were not interested.”
Munroe closed his eyes a minute, rubbed the bridge of his nose. “You telling me this Hardin has the stones? This whole thing is just a straight-up robbery? Only reason al Din’s still in town to run him down?”
“Best theory based on the evidence.”
A pause, then Munroe again. “Wait, you said prints. Why was Chicago PD running this guy’s prints?”
“Found them on a murder weapon. Two Chicago mafia soldiers were killed at an abandoned industrial site. It appears that Hardin killed one of them.”
“One of them?”
“Al Din killed the other.”
“What the fuck? Could they be working together?”
“Evidence shows al Din arrived after Hardin left.”
Munroe stopped for a minute, trying to decide what to ask next. “OK, so what’s the mob’s interest in this? Stein got popped and Hardin had to shop for a new buyer, tried them, maybe they got greedy?”
“Don’t know.”
“Who’s playing godfather around here these days?”
“Anthony Corsco. He controls most of the Midwest.”
“OK, get me Corsco’s info. Me and him need to chat. See if we can get a line on this Hardin guy, too. Play the Legion angle; see who he’s in touch with.” Munroe paused for a minute, something eating at him. “One more thing. Hardin get hit during this cluster fuck? Did al Din grab him up maybe?”
“No evidence to suggest that. Why do you ask?”
“Trying to figure out why he’d leave a piece behind with his prints on it.”
“Wasn’t a piece.”
“You said murder weapon. What did they find his prints on?”
“An Air France ballpoint pen.”
A long pause, Munroe shaking his head. “Sure,” Munroe said finally. “Why not?”
CHAPTER 20
Hardin headed east from the Aurora train station, walking through the neighborhood just past the tracks. The area had been pretty Hispanic when he left town and was more so now. That meant there would be enough illegals around that folks here wouldn’t be that big on paper checking.
Three blocks in, Hardin found what he was looking for. Ten year-old Honda Civic, pretty beat up, sitting at the curb with a For Sale sign on the dash. Half an hour later, Hardin drove off. The guy had been a little suspicious about an Anglo at his door, but Hardin spoke Spanish (hell, Spanish, French, bits of half a dozen African dialects, enough Italian to get by), so that helped. And paying the ridiculous asking price in cash helped more. The info he gave the guy would never fly with the Secretary of State’s office whenever they got around to processing the title transfer, but that was weeks out. If Hardin was still driving the Honda around Chicago by then, he would have way bigger problems.
Hardin cruised through his old neighborhood, taking Spring Street east, cutting down Union to Galena. A decent-sized shopping area had sprung up at Union and New York – bakery, music shop, clothing store, grocery. Hardin remembered when he was a kid, the whites who could afford to all moving out, the Mexicans moving in, all the bad talk about spics and drugs and gangs. It was the same shit his great-grandparents had heard about the Irish back in the day. But the houses were looking better, the shops were going up. It was the way it always had gone. A new wave of immigrants moves in, figures out the game, and joins in on it just like everybody else. On the Honda’s radio, some blowhard was going on about immigration and sealing the borders and all the jobs these people were stealing from hard-working Americans. Hardin spun the dial, found a Cubs spring training game on WGN.
Hardin checked into the Motel 6 at 59 and 88.Told the teenager at the counter he didn’t have a credit card, so the kid told him he had to leave a $100 deposit against expenses. The kid didn’t even look at the expired license he flashed as ID. Anonymous as he could get. He got a room on the ground floor near the back, put his clothes away, and called Fouche.
“Hope you got something for me, mon ami,” Hardin said.
“I do. The Russians want to play, and they’ve got a middleman in your area who’ll make the buy. Guy named Bahram Lafitpour in some town called Oak Brook. That work for you?”
“Oak Brook’s close enough, that
’s good. Lafitpour, though, that’s Iranian. Makes me a little nervous.”
“Not that kind of Iranian. Guy went to the US just after the Shah went down. Used to be SAVAK. He’s not a Koran thumper, that’s for sure.”
“OK. How do I get in touch?”
Fouche gave Hardin a number.
CHAPTER 21
Bobby Lee and Courtney Schilst were waiting for a table at BD’s Mongolian Grill in Naperville, across Washington from the Barnes & Noble. Twenty minutes on her Facebook, he had all he needed to make his play – the chick was big into poetry, modern guys, liked this Bukowski or whatever his name was. He followed her Twitter for a bit, found out she’d just got dumped, that her birthday was today, and that she was going to spend it “at B&N, with CB, the only man worth loving.” So Bobby had done some quick research, found out Bukowski was the poet laureate of American low life and so forth. He got to the Barnes & Noble early, grabbed one of the two Bukowski books they had in stock, slouched into the chair closest to that shelf, and waited.
He was careful not to look when she walked in. Watched out of the corner of his eye while she checked out the shelf. Saw a little frown – she must have wanted the book he had. She grabbed the other one. Bobby had piled his shit on the chair across from him. People liked to sit in the easy chairs along the windows, but one thing he’d learned in Naperville was none of the white folk were going to ask a black guy to move his stuff, not so long as he was wearing his intense Malcolm X face. He’d pulled his backpack and coat off the chair when he saw Courtney grab her book.
She looked at the line of chairs, saw that the one across from him was available, and sat down.
It was like fishing. You couldn’t force it. You had to wait for it. Finally, he could feel it, could feel her seeing the book, looking at him. Still he gave it a second. Finally, he lowered the book a little, looked over the top.
She held up her book, the other Bukowski. “I’ve never seen anyone else reading him in here before,” she said.
He shrugged, gave a little half smile, just being polite. Made her make another move.
“I guess, around here, I mean the life he led, that’s just not their experience.” She was hooked now. She wanted to talk. And he had his play. The Bukowski, the hint of contempt when she said “their experience.” She wanted to slum.
“Yeah, well, I ain’t from around here,” Bobby said. “Where I grew up, I mean I get this shit, you know?”
“Do you really?” she said, leaning forward a little now. She was wearing a scoop neck, and it drooped down, giving him a nice shot. “I mean sure, maybe the poverty, but there’s something in his take on things, his own genius. I keep thinking I’ve connected, and then I realize I haven’t, I just…How do you get inside that, you know?”
“Don’t try,” Lee said. Bukowski’s epithet, had it on his tombstone. Lee’d read about that. It was perfect.
So an hour of bullshit at the bookstore, then across the street for dinner. Lee had figured her for a project, was ready to invest a week. The way it was going, he’d be boxing her compass tonight.
Lee felt his cell vibrate on his hip, checked his screen. It was a guy he knew in the Chicago PD who’d feed him tips here and there for a little extra scratch. He excused himself and stepped outside to take the call.
“It’s Lee. What you got?”
“Hey, Bobby. Remember way back you said if I ever see this Griffin guy pop up to give you a shout?”
Lee had to think for just a second. Hernandez, the drug lord. He’d been referred to Lee maybe a year or so back, some gang shit, somebody messing with his distribution network, wanted some faces run down. Lee had turned the job around in maybe an hour. Then Hernandez tells him about this Griffin. Michael X. Griffin. Just that it was personal, it went back a long way. This Griffin had gone overseas or something, disappeared all the way down the rabbit hole. But if he ever popped up on Lee’s radar and Lee got some solid intel to Hernandez, Lee would be looking at a big fucking payday.
“Yeah, OK, Griffin. I remember.”
“We just ran his prints. They turned up at the crime scene on some homicide down in Area 2.”
Bingo. Lee and his guy settled on a number, the guy saying he’d e-mail Lee a copy of the data as soon as he got off work and could get on a clean keyboard.
Lee headed back into the restaurant. Nice meal, couple hours of blonde stranger for dessert, then see what he could squeeze out of Hernandez. Not like that guy had a budget. Ought to be a lot of zeros coming out of this.
CHAPTER 22
Dave Fansher was pissed. You don’t leave a fine animal like this in its saddle, and the way this one was rubbed raw, it had been in the saddle for a few days at least. He’d found it drinking from the ditch along the east road, dirty, matted, sores all along the cinch and the edge of the skirt after he got the saddle off. That pretend rancher, what’s his name, Heinz? Guy who’d paid way over market for the hundred acres or so of land the Feds sold off a few years back? Horse had to be his.
Pretend cowboys – the West was getting overrun with them. Make their money doing whatever pencil-neck geek work it was they did, and all of a sudden they think they’re John Fucking Wayne. Gotta have their toy ranches, build their big-ass log houses, mistreat their $10,000 animals, have their goddamn family over come summer, tear-assing around on their stinking ATVs, scaring the shit out of his cattle.
Fansher spit on the barn floor, put out some oats for the horse, and gave it a good scratch behind the ears. Wasn’t the animal’s fault. He would have called that Heinz fuck – let him know he had the horse – if the guy had ever left a number, anything like that, but he never had. Fansher had gone over once to say hello, right after they guy had bought the place. He wasn’t crazy about having some rich fuck move in the next spread over, but how he was raised, if you were neighbors you were neighbors. Guy had pretty much blown him off. Said hi on the porch, didn’t even invite him in.
Fuck it. Getting late. Animal was OK. He’d cleaned it up, treated the sores, fed it, watered it, got it into a clean stall for the night. He’d run over and check in with Heinz in the morning, let him know where the horse was in case the guy ever wanted to get around to picking it up.
CHAPTER 23
Munroe should have been sleeping, but his mind was humming now, the jet lag all the way gone.
So this Hardin had whacked Jamie Hernandez’s brother almost two decades ago. Hernandez had come a long way since then. Cartels in Mexico weren’t as big back in 1994, not like today. Mostly they were middlemen, buying off the Columbians, offloading to whatever US networks they could cobble together. Munroe did some quick checking. Hernandez ran powder into Chicago, but had the bright idea of basing his operation out of Aurora, on account of it had a pretty big Mexican population, lots of family contacts he could exploit, and being almost fifty miles west of the Loop, it tended to stay off the DEA radar. That’s why he’d had his kid brother up there riding herd on the local gangbangers.
Didn’t work out so well for the brother, but Hernandez had come a long way. Ran the most powerful cartel in Mexico. And the most violent. That was his modus operandi – overwhelming, unmitigated violence in response to any challenge, any threat, any insult. Which, Munroe figures, meant he was on his way to town. A guy like that, he hears his brother’s killer is in Chicago, he’s not going to farm it out.
Which was giving Munroe ideas. Hernandez and al Din in the same place at the same time. Throw in better than $100 million in hot diamonds and two criminal organizations with complimentary problems, and Munroe could whip up a tasty little dish.
See, Al Qaeda had diamonds they needed to turn into cash. And Hernandez had a shit load of cash he needed to turn into almost anything else. Which suited Munroe just fine, because what he needed was a way to turn the foreign affairs spotlight off the Mideast a little bit and get people to pay attention to the southern border.
The Mexican drug situation was getting way out of hand. To your average voter, it was
just a crime story and a foreign one at that, but Munroe knew better. Christ, look at Juarez. A few years ago, that city had maybe two hundred homicides a year. Per capita, that was more or less like any major US city. Last year? Something like three thousand. And you could throw a stone into Juarez from El Paso. The violence was ramping up and leaking over the border. That was already raising issues – the possibility that some other bad actor would piggyback on the drug trade to import some serious trouble into the US. And, after the PRI rode the last election back into power, they’d stopped playing nice with the DEA, which wasn’t making keeping an eye on things any easier. But the bigger picture was even worse.
The cartels were already states within a state down there, more powerful in parts of the country than the real government. Hernandez was first among equals in that dogfight right now, and the trend was toward consolidation. And once one of the cartels came out on top, the US could end up with a full-fledged narco-state on its southern border. We wouldn’t be neighbors with a nation anymore, we’d be neighbors with the world’s largest criminal enterprise. Well, the largest if you didn’t count Russia. But Putin wasn’t in the same hemisphere.
National security, that was Munroe’s gig. All enemies, foreign and domestic. Radical Islam? A problem, yeah, but a fragmented problem with too many internal rivalries to coalesce into the threat most people saw it to be. A decade since 9/11 and your average American still didn’t seem to understand that it was just a tragedy, not a threat to national security. The ragheads were driven by ideology. That made them predictable. They had no permanent political base. That made them vulnerable. They had to move money through criminal channels to operate. That made them relatively easy to track.
