Make Them Sorry

by Sam Hawken

  She heard them talking as she walked down the hallway. Bamanian’s place had five offices, three of which appeared to be occupied and two devoid of anything save a desk. There were not even chairs for those desks. She stopped to glance around a corner toward the receptionist, but the young woman didn’t look her way. Camaro moved on.

  Bamanian’s office had his name on the door in gold paint. She entered and left the door open just a crack.

  He had a flag framed on his wall, but it was one Camaro didn’t recognize—a tricolor of red, blue, and orange stripes, arranged horizontally—and pictures from his service days. It was easy to recognize him, even though he didn’t have his mustache in all the photos. She had clung to Bamanian while he suffocated. She had felt his last heartbeat.

  His desk had a fancy pen set and a leather blotter. His filing cabinets were locked and secured with a steel clasp from top to bottom to keep the drawers from being forced. He had a computer and a printer-fax combination tucked away in the corner of his work space.

  Camaro checked the desk drawers. They were unlocked, except for the lap drawer, and Camaro had no blade to pry with. She cursed under her breath. She found a drawer stacked with invoices. She put them on the blotter and turned to the computer. It was secured with a password.

  She went back to the invoices. Each was tagged with a date and an account number, the name and address of the responsible party neatly printed. Camaro paged through twenty invoices before she realized what she saw. She backed up and checked again. She took the top sheet, folded it into fourths, and put it in her jacket pocket. The rest of the invoices went back in the desk.

  At the door she listened for anything different. Ignacio and Tate still talked. She let herself out and went into the restroom. She stayed inside long enough to flush the toilet and wash her hands. In the hallway again, she poured herself a paper cone of water.

  She crumpled the cone and tossed it into the trash. Tate emerged from his office. “Oh, there you are,” the man said. “I was checking on you.”

  Camaro put on a smile. “Sorry I kept you waiting.”

  “Not at all. I was talking to your partner. You are?”

  “Detective Amado,” Camaro said. She offered her hand. They shook.

  Tate laughed quietly. “I don’t meet too many women with your kind of grip.”

  “I work out.”

  “CrossFit?”

  “Right.”

  Camaro saw Ignacio standing at the office door, his expression dark. “I was about to tell Mr. Tate the bad news,” Ignacio said.

  The man turned from Camaro. “Bad news? I thought this was just routine.”

  “About that,” Ignacio said. “Actually, come back to your office. You better sit down.”

  Chapter Forty-Six

  THEY SAT IN Ignacio’s car. “‘Detective Amado’?” he said. “What did I say? What were my exact words?”

  “What did you want me to do? He needed a name. I gave him one.”

  “And what happens when he mentions it to someone else? I should never have brought you along.”

  “Why? So you could give him your hankie and let him cry into it? He didn’t tell you anything.”

  Ignacio scowled. “Comforting victims’ friends and loved ones is part of the job.”

  Camaro looked through the windshield. Heat shimmered on the hood. “I didn’t sign up for that. I want to know who my problem is.”

  “I sense a dead person in my future.”

  “You have a better idea?”

  Ignacio made an aggravated noise. He hit the steering wheel. The horn chirped. He shook his head. “Listen, I represent law and order, okay? So long as you play in my yard, I have no problems, but if you commit a crime with my foreknowledge…you get what I’m saying?”

  “You knew what you were getting into.”

  “That’s what they’re going to say at my internal affairs review.”

  “What do you want me to do?” Camaro asked.

  “Give me a second to think.”

  “While you’re thinking, look at this.”

  She gave him the invoice. Ignacio unfolded it on the steering wheel. “They billed a bank,” he said. “So what? And you know this is theft, right? You take things that don’t belong to you, it’s a crime. Remember what I just said about crimes?”

  “Forget that. You didn’t know about it. When you were talking to Tate, what did he tell you about their client list?”

  “He said it was mostly corporate accounts. Secure facilities. Background checks.”

  “Nothing about banks,” Camaro said.

  “No, nothing about banks. Maybe he forgot.”

  “Then he’s an idiot. This is one bill, but there are tons more. I went through a whole stack of invoices, and there are a bunch for this same bank, and this same guy, going back a year. Maybe more than that, if I kept looking. Bamanian had everything locked up, but he left this stuff where anyone could find it. That invoice is from a week ago. Look at the amount.”

  “I’m looking. Okay, that’s a lot of bread. Are they all like this?”

  “The amounts go up and down, but they’re never cheap.”

  Ignacio scratched the back of his neck. “The feds told me this was all about banking. Dirty money goes in, and it comes out the other end of the hose perfectly clean. Faith Glazer got hold of that information and started parceling it out in pieces to the FBI. Maybe she was trying to win a good citizen award, or maybe she was looking for a payoff. Either way, she had access to things she shouldn’t.”

  Camaro shifted in her seat until she faced Ignacio. “They find out she’s got information. They can’t go after her directly without letting anyone in on their secret. They need someone else to handle the hard part.”

  “Right. And they have a relationship with Bamanian already. He’s an outside contractor. He’ll do the job without even knowing what it’s for.”

  “Plus he’s got these Armenian assholes working for him, so when the bank decides to take it to the next level, they hand that off because they know he’ll handle it,” Camaro said. “They subcontracted the whole thing. Maybe Serafian was only supposed to watch her, but he had a screw loose they didn’t know about.”

  “Yeah,” Ignacio replied. “He snaps. Oh, man.”

  Camaro let the silence grow inside the car. The engine hummed. The air conditioner whirred. She was cold. “Can you get these guys?”

  “I might. I can get a warrant to search Bamanian’s records. We already know what we’re gonna find when we look, so we won’t have to try too hard. This guy Tate, he’s all right. He probably doesn’t know anything about what Bamanian did on the side. He won’t try to destroy evidence, and even if he does, there have to be backups. Afterward all we have to do is walk right up to this guy…Brandon Roche? This guy Roche at M&I Bank and Trust. He’ll have to give us something, or we’ll link him to three deaths.”

  “So how do you want to do it?”

  Ignacio waved the invoice. “The first thing I do is send you home. I appreciate what you did in there, but this has officially become too hot to handle. It’s bad enough I’m gonna be explaining who Detective Amado is, but now I have to keep the feds from stealing my case. They want the bank. That’s fine. I want the guy putting killers on the street. The bank’s not my area.”

  “I have to do something,” Camaro said.

  “Do you hear what I’m saying? You’ve done enough. This is not gunning down people in the Everglades and walking away. This is some serious shit—pardon my language—and if you get caught up in it then it’s federal time. You want to do federal time? They have holes so deep you won’t even remember your name by the time you get out.”

  “You need to stop treating me like I’m somebody you have to take care of.”

  “I’m not…Listen, right now you’re in a good spot. You’re clear of anything that went down with Faith, and it’s self-defense for the two guys you wasted in your house. But what are you gonna do next? Kill some guy in
his office at the bank? It’s not gonna happen. From here on out it’s boring stuff like handcuffs and court orders. Go clean up your place. Or, better yet, move, because your neighbors hate you.”

  Camaro frowned. She opened her mouth to speak. Ignacio’s phone rang.

  “Hold that thought,” Ignacio said. He answered. He listened. “Yes, Agent Mansfield, I’m all ears.”

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  LAWRENCE KAUR LAY in bed staring at the ceiling. The sun was over the house and headed steadily west, where daylight dissolved into the element of night. He reached for a tumbler of whiskey on his nightstand. “You really ought to try this,” he said. “I’ve been drinking too much of it. It’ll be gone soon.”

  Roche sat up and pulled back the sheets. He sat on the edge of the bed, staring out at the ocean. His back was dark from the sun, a long scar along the line of one shoulder blade, but the muscles underneath were still taut. Neither of them was a young man anymore, but they hadn’t lost everything. Roche had the stamina of someone twenty years his junior. “We’re wasting time,” he said without looking back at Kaur.

  Kaur drank. He made a satisfied sound. He sat up. The silk sheets pooled around his waist. He touched Roche’s back. “It’s going to work out.”

  “You don’t know what I know,” Roche said. “If you did, you wouldn’t be so sure.”

  “Then tell me.”

  “I thought you wanted me to handle it.”

  Kaur let it go. He left the bed and fished for his boxers on the floor. He put them on and his robe and slippers. He took the empty whiskey tumbler to the bar. The bottle of Macallan sat apart, mostly empty. He weighed the bottle in his hand before opting not to pour another drink. He rinsed the tumbler and set it aside. Roche still sat on the edge of the bed. “It’s always been my policy to let you handle the things you’re best at doing,” Kaur said. “Maybe I leaned on you too heavily sometimes. That’s my fault. But if you need to put some of the burden on me, do it. I’m ready for it now.”

  Roche glanced at him. “How much do you have put away? And I don’t mean the funds I took care of for you. How much else is there?”

  “Enough. We could take it and disappear. Maybe we couldn’t live like kings forever, but if we picked the right country and we invested wisely…there’s a lot of opportunity available.”

  “Investments,” Roche said, and he laughed. “No matter where we go, you still try to make deals.”

  Kaur sat beside Roche on the bed and put his hand on Roche’s bare thigh. Naked, Roche was defiantly hairy, his chest a thicket of darkness. He wore a gold medallion engraved with the face of some Southeast Asian figure Kaur never could remember the name of. He leaned close and kissed Roche on the ear. “Money is what keeps us safe and happy,” he said. “It’s nothing more than that.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Then don’t believe me,” Kaur returned. “You want me to admit I like the game? Yes, I like the game. It takes skill and time, but when you get really good at it, there’s nothing like it. I couldn’t make you understand.”

  Roche sat still until Kaur became uncomfortable with his stillness. After a long while Roche turned his head toward Kaur. He looked at Kaur with dark eyes. “I think it’s time to admit the game is over. It’s only a matter of time before Lorca realizes the situation is out of our control. The best we can hope for is to move before he does. Do you understand what I’m saying, Larry? Listen to what I’m telling you. Bamanian screwed us. He screwed us both. He missed with the woman and he missed with the other one, too. And he got himself killed in the process. It won’t take a master detective to link Bamanian to me, and I am the only thing standing between you and the law.”

  Kaur tried to smile, but Roche didn’t. Kaur frowned instead, and brushed a lock of Roche’s hair from his forehead. “Then we’ll leave. Once we know there are no other options, we’ll go. It’ll be the end.”

  “I’ve spent years protecting you, Larry,” Roche said. “You know if there was more I could do, I would do it.”

  “I know. We’ve been playing a long game here. My father played it, and now I’m playing it. But I think even he knew it wouldn’t last forever. These things have a limit. And as much as I’d like to pretend otherwise…”

  Roche took Kaur’s hand. “I’m glad you know it now.”

  Kaur shook their clasped hands. “Who knows? Maybe you can still kill those two before it gets any worse.”

  Roche rose sharply from the bed. He ran his hands through his hair and stood naked in front of the windows. “That’s exactly what I’m talking about! I’m out of cards to play, Larry. We missed our window of opportunity.”

  “So Bamanian didn’t work out,” Kaur said. “There have to be a dozen other contractors like him. A hundred! Get one of them to do the job. It doesn’t matter if it’s not as neat as we’d like it. Tell me how much they need and I’ll make sure they get paid. They take care of our problem and everyone walks away happy.”

  Roche’s face fell. His cheeks were shadowed with a day’s beard growth. Hair fell across his forehead again. “No. Our priority needs to be shutting down the operation without undue exposure. Not to the FBI, not to Lorca or the local police. Get things in order and be ready to move when I say. It’s the only way I can be sure to keep you alive.”

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  CAMARO DROVE IDLY for an hour or more after leaving Ignacio at Bamanian’s office. She was cruising through commercial areas and shaded streets, listening to BIG 105.9 at low volume, her mind a hundred miles away.

  There was anger. It came first. There was frustration. It passed. Now there was a sense of something about to happen, an expectant quality Camaro could not name.

  She stopped outside a bar in a strip mall, its windows blacked out, neon beer signs fighting against the day. She went inside and breathed the unmistakable stink of stale brew and cigarette smoke. Scratchy rock played from speakers in all four corners of what was essentially an open space crowded with places to sit and two pool tables. A few die-hard drinkers were there early, some against the short bar smoking and nursing beers.

  The bartender looked her up and down. He wore a black vest over a Victory Motorcycles T-shirt, and a cross the same silver as his hair dangled from a leather thong. He was broad and strong, and his beard was white, too. A second cross glinted in his ear. “You lost, miss?” he asked.

  “Huh?” Camaro asked.

  “There’s a nice tapas place a few blocks east of here.”

  Camaro shook her head. She took a seat at the bar. “Give me a double Jack and beer back.”

  The bartender’s eyebrows went up. “Yes, ma’am.”

  Camaro thought while the whiskey poured and the bartender pulled the beer. She ran her finger around the edge of the whiskey glass. She picked it up and put it back. She picked it up again and drank. She quelled the burn with beer. The bartender watched her. “What?” Camaro asked him.

  “Bad day at the office?”

  “You could say that.”

  The bartender leaned against his side of the bar. “Business types tend to steer clear of here. We’re more a leather and jeans kind of place.”

  “Okay, leather and jeans. Give me another.”

  He poured. Camaro didn’t knock it back immediately. She had more beer. In the mirror behind the bar she saw herself in the suit jacket, hair and makeup done just so. The floor of the place was dirty and the vinyl of the stool on which she sat was split, the stuffing coming out. Miami had holes like these all over. She had lost count of them.

  “Hey, honey,” said an old man farther down the bar. “You got a cigarette?”

  “I don’t smoke.”

  “Pretty thing like you ought to get your lips around something.”

  Camaro gave the old man a black look. He and another decrepit drunk enjoyed the joke. “Sorry,” the bartender said.

  “Comes with the territory.”

  “I get the feeling this ain’t your usual look,” th
e bartender observed. “Am I right about that?”

  “Leather and jeans are all right.”

  The bartender shot a finger gun at her. “Called it. You dressed up for a job interview or something?”

  “Or something. Are you bored?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Because you’re still talking to me. Whatever your name is.”

  “It’s Amos.”

  “Camaro.”

  “No shit? Good to meet you.”

  They shook hands over the bar. Camaro raised the glass of whiskey and watched lights dance in the liquid before she polished it off. “Another,” she said.

  “You driving?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Maybe you ought to slow it down.”

  “Maybe you ought to mind your own goddamned business, Amos.”

  Amos put his hands up in surrender. “Okay, sorry. But I have the legal responsibility to make sure nobody drives away drunk.”

  “I’m not drunk. I’m not going to be drunk. I need to take the edge off.”

  Amos bobbed his head before pouring out a single of Jack Daniel’s for Camaro. “Last one for a little while,” he said. “If you don’t mind. I don’t want to see you spread out all over the road in pieces.”

  Camaro thought to say something. She turned her attention to her beer and sipped at it. The brand was unfamiliar, but it was cold and bubbly. She drank and she rubbed her temple softly. It felt as though something was in there, but wouldn’t come out.

  “What do you do?” Amos asked.

  “Jesus Christ,” Camaro said. “What is it with the questions?”

  “It’s slow,” Amos replied. He smiled. “And you seem like a nice lady.”

  “I’m not. I’m difficult to get along with and I have an anger problem.”

  “Get that from a shrink?”

  “It’s what people tell me.”

  “I can see where they’re coming from. But you seem all right to me. Wound up a little, like you’re trying to do calculus in your head.”

  Camaro let the wind sough out of her. “I can’t figure something out.”