by Diane Kelly
Finally, I asked the only question that really mattered. “You’re not going to tell us anything, are you?”
He gave me one final glare and a single word. “No.”
Damn! The frustration of this case was really starting to get to me. But as they say, the third time’s the charm, right? Maybe Nasser would open up to us.
Algafari’s attorney left the room and Nasser’s came in. I noticed he didn’t take a seat. He stood off to the side, one hand holding his briefcase with a death grip, the other nervously jingling the coins in his pant pocket.
When the back door opened again, Nasser shuffled through. He wore shackles not only around his wrists but also around his ankles. He fell back into a chair and kicked out at the table with his shackled feet, shoving the edge of the tabletop into Eddie’s gut and my rib cage. Ouch! Nasser’s attorney had been smart to keep his distance. I rubbed my side and looked at Nasser. Clearly the man was not going to play nice.
So much for the third time being the charm.
As Eddie and I pushed the table back into place, the warden grabbed Nasser’s chair and dragged him backward a few feet, out of kicking range of anyone or anything in the room. The distance didn’t prevent him from impaling me with his eyes, however. His gaze bored into mine like a heated, pinpoint laser. Heck, he could probably perform LASIK surgery with that stare.
I felt an uneasy prickle along my back, but I did my best to hide my fear. Guys like Nasser feed on fear like beer-bellied men feed on barbecue. I wasn’t about to give him the satisfaction of seeing me squirm.
I looked Nasser in the eye. “Mr. Nasser, I’m Special Agent Tara Holloway with IRS Criminal Investigations. My partner and I are trying to determine how you moved funds out of the country. We know you withdrew significant sums of cash from your bank accounts and took the funds to someone who transferred the money overseas. It’s only a matter of time before we figure out who that person is.”
What a lie. Given the way things had been going, we might not ever figure out who that person was.
“Problem is,” I continued, “we’re busy people. Our time is valuable. If you would tell us who helped you it would save us some time and maybe knock some time off your sentence.” Surely he’d want to get out of jail sooner, right?
Nasser smirked an evil smirk. “You might be busy, Agent Holloway, but me? I’ve got all the time in world.”
Wang and Zardooz had informed us that Syrian officials were seeking to have Nasser extradited back to the country, where he’d surely face the death penalty for his acts of terror there. I supposed it made sense that he’d rather stay in the United States. He might live out the rest of his life in prison here, but at least he’d have a life. Hell, for his own protection the guy was probably hoping for as long a sentence as possible, maybe even additional time for bad behavior.
The odd logic meant we held no bargaining chip, had nothing to offer him in return for the information.
Nasser’s attorney jingled the coins again. “We done here?”
I looked at Eddie. He tossed his hand in a gesture of futility.
“Yeah,” I told the lawyer. “We’re done here.”
As Nasser was led out the back door, I couldn’t help myself. “It was such a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Nasser.”
He turned back and slid me an icy smile. “The same goes for you, Agent Holloway.”
* * *
Our futile visit to the federal pen now complete, I headed out to one of the few remaining MSBs on my list, a travel agency called Up, Up, and Away Vacations.
I parked in the strip center’s lot, directly in front of the agency’s office. Their glass windows boasted colorful posters of tropical locales and promised “The Best Bang for Your Vacation Buck!” and demanded that clients “Get the Heck Outta Here!”
Hmm. I could definitely use a vacation.
The Paris poster featured the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe, and a street performer with white makeup and a black-and-white-striped shirt. Another featured London landmarks, including London Bridge, Big Ben, and Buckingham Palace. With its beautiful beaches, salt-rimmed margaritas, and cute cabana boys, the poster for Cancún was particularly enticing. I’d traveled there not long ago, but the trip had been for business, not pleasure.
That’s where I’d first met Nick.
My heart simultaneously fluttered and ached at the memory of him emerging from the ocean, of water droplets glistening on his dark hair, broad shoulders, and expansive chest. I’d nearly fallen out of my lounge chair at the spectacle. And when he’d stopped to apply sunscreen to my back, ay caramba! I could still feel the spots on my skin where he’d touched me. God, how they longed to be touched again.
Still, though the women perusing the Big D site were no doubt attracted to Nick’s hard candy coating, I knew his yummy exterior was not what truly defined him or why I’d fallen so hard for him.
What was it about Nick that attracted me? It was his drive to see justice done. The fact that he looked out for the little guy, whether it be Josh or a taxpayer who’d been duped in a financial scam. The occasional glimpses of vulnerability, like when he talked about his father suffering a heart attack after losing his entire investment in Enron, the company Nick had worked for years ago.
Nick might look like a badass on the outside, but he was a good guy on the inside. Yep, he could have a hunchback like Quasimodo and his face could be covered in warts and I’d still think he was all that and a bag of chips.
It wasn’t just about my feelings for him, though. Part of my attraction to him was how he made me feel about myself. Smart, capable, sexy, even. He never doubted that I could get the job done. He brought out the best in me.
Admittedly, though, Nick was also capable of bringing out my worst. Intense, petty jealousy. Frustration that threatened to cause self-combustion. Longing that made me feel as empty and hollow as a spent shotgun shell.
I climbed out of my car and entered the travel agency. Three women sat at desks configured into a horseshoe shape. Each desk featured a placard indicating that the agency was affiliated with American Express travel services.
All three women were on their phones. One of them wore a head scarf, indicating she was Muslim.
“Up, Up, and Away! Where can we send you today?” another said cheerily as she answered a call.
I took a seat on a padded chair and waited for one of the women to become available. After a moment or two, the woman with the hijab finished making plans for a high-school band to travel to Disney World. She returned her phone to the cradle. “Hi, there,” she said in perfect English. “How can I help you?”
I explained who I was and that I was there to take a look at their records relating to traveler’s checks, money orders, and money transmission.
She introduced herself as Lilith. “We handle quite a few of those types of transactions,” Lilith said, directing me to a special computer apparently reserved exclusively for that purpose. “Is this a routine examination or were you looking for something in particular?”
I wasn’t sure whether she was trying to be helpful or digging for information. “A little of both,” I said.
She smiled and gave me a knowing nod. “I understand. Just let me know if you have any questions.”
I spent a couple of hours digging through their records. Lilith hadn’t been kidding. Their agency handled two or three money transfers a day, many of them in significant amounts. The vast majority of the funds were sent to parties in Mexico, Canada, and countries in Europe and Central America. Still, there were a number of transfers to Arab countries. Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Libya, Lebanon, Bahrain, Djibouti. That last one always made me chuckle. It sounded like “booty.” Real mature for a federal agent, huh?
The transactions also included a number of transfers to Syria, though none were to the parties who’d been implicated in the terror plots there and none were on or near the relevant dates. It was possible there had been unrecorded transfers, however.
I p
ulled the photos of Algafari, Nasser, and Homsi from my purse and showed them to Lilith. “Do you recognize any of these men?”
She looked each one over carefully. She handed Homsi’s photo back to me. “I don’t know this man,” she said. She held up the photos of Algafari and Nasser. “These two look familiar. I believe they pray at my mosque, but I don’t think they have attended prayers in quite some time.”
My heart halted in my chest.
Lilith was the first person I’d spoken with who recognized any of the men. Was she a possible link? Was this travel agency where the terrorists had transmitted their funds overseas?
I decided to push a little further, eyeing her carefully to gauge her response. “Do you know what might have kept them away?”
She shook her head, offering two raised palms and a smile. “Maybe a vacation?”
I watched her a moment longer. “No. They aren’t on vacation. They’ve been arrested.”
Her smile faded and her face became serious. “Arrested? Why?”
I pulled out more photos, including the one of the school bus, and handed them to her. “They were involved in terror plots overseas.”
She looked down at the photos, shaking her head. She quickly handed the photos back to me. “I can hardly believe it.” She shook her head once. “I didn’t know the men personally, but to think that they prayed where I prayed … It’s … upsetting.”
“Do you know if these men ever used your agency’s services?”
“For travel or financial transactions?”
“Either.”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I never took care of anything for them, but it’s possible they came in at a time when I wasn’t on duty.”
I showed the photos to the other two women. Neither of them recognized the men.
I thanked them all for their time and stepped outside.
I wasn’t sure whether Lilith had been completely honest with me or not. But there was one way to find out. I could contact American Express directly and compare their records to those kept at the agency, to make sure there hadn’t been undocumented transfers.
I climbed into my car, drove out of sight, and parked.
I called American Express and asked them to provide copies of their records relating to Up, Up, and Away Vacations.
If something was up at Up, Up, and Away, someone would be going down.
chapter twenty-one
There’s Neau Stopping Beau
Monday evening I headed back to Zippy’s Liquor.
Israel was working again that night. I greeted him and asked to speak to Jesús.
“Sorry,” Israel said. “He went home sick.”
“Already?” It was only six thirty. He sure hadn’t stuck around long. If he was feeling that ill, why had he even bothered to come in? “Did you tell him I was coming to speak with him?”
Israel nodded.
Damn. I should’ve told the guy to keep that information under wraps. I had a sneaking suspicion that the sudden illness Jesús Benavides was suffering had more than a little to do with my visit.
“You’re here alone then?” I asked Israel. Though the customers on a Monday night were not nearly as numerous as the crowd had been on Friday, there was nonetheless a steady stream coming in the door.
Israel took a bottle of vanilla vodka from a customer and rang it up. “Gloria is on her way to fill in.”
Good. I’d wait to speak to her. At least my trip out wouldn’t be a total waste.
I browsed around while I waited for Gloria to arrive, stopping at the whiskey section and gazing lovingly into a bottle of Jack Daniel’s Black Label whiskey, the golden-brown liquid the same color as Nick’s eyes. Brett’s were the same color as green apple schnapps. I pondered this for a moment, realizing that while the schnapps was fun and could provide a nice buzz, whiskey was a hard-core drink for those who took their alcohol seriously. The whiskey was also far more addictive and dangerous.
“Miss Holloway?” Israel called, raising a hand to wave me over when I looked up. “Gloria is here now.”
I made a beeline for the checkout counter, where Israel introduced me to Gloria, a woman with mannish features and short, layered hair dyed a bright copper.
“I didn’t handle any of the transfers to Honduras,” she said after I inquired about the wire transactions. “That was Jesús.”
I thanked her for her time and left the store, knowing now, without a doubt, that I needed to speak with Jesús Benavides.
* * *
The rest of the week was pure hell, no two ways about it.
American Express provided all of its documentation relating to the travel agency and it jibed with the agency’s records. Nothing was up at Up, Up, and Away. I reluctantly scratched the agency off my list, knowing that the possibility of catching the person who had helped the terrorists move their funds grew smaller each time that the list of remaining MSBs grew shorter.
Brett was busy in Atlanta, repairing both the country club’s golf course and his relationship with the club’s management. I was stuck in limbo, waiting for Brett to return, agonizing over Nick.
Damn those Japanese beetles!
I spent the next four days visiting money transmitter offices and driving through trailer parks. I even paid a visit to Madam Magnolia, but she claimed her vision was blocked. I asked if a hundred dollars might clear her vision and she’d been insulted by the insinuation. Hey, I just figured the woman needed to make a living. Despite my profuse apologies, she’d asked me to leave.
I’d returned to Zippy’s Liquor on Tuesday, only to learn that Jesús Benavides had phoned earlier in the day and quit his job. I pulled up his driver’s license information online and swung by the address listed. The new tenants in the duplex informed me they’d moved in several months ago. They didn’t know Jesús, though they recognized his name from a few items of mail that had been delivered to the duplex after he’d moved out.
I tried everything else I could think of to track him down. I contacted his former landlord but was told Jesús had provided no forwarding address. I checked telephone listings and utility company accounts with no luck. Oddly, his previous year’s tax return showed an address in Houston and listed his occupation as History Teacher. Why would a history teacher leave his job to work at a liquor store? Had he encountered some trouble on the job?
Jesús had failed to update his address with the DMV. That alone could get him in some trouble. I put in a call to the DMV, asking them to flag his license. Now I just had to hope he’d be pulled over for a traffic violation and detained until I could speak with him.
Utterly frustrated, I revisited the quiet spot on the lake, taking a thermos of sangria with me and having my own private unhappy hour.
Nothing was panning out. Nothing, nothing, nothing! All I got for my efforts was a glimpse of an aged hippy’s bare, saggy ass as he hung his dripping tie-dyed T-shirts from a makeshift clothesline strung between two trees at his campsite. Frustration gnawed at my insides, threatening to consume me alive like some type of flesh-eating bacteria. It wasn’t just my investigations that were going nowhere; it was my personal life, too. I was stuck in love limbo, with two relationships essentially on hold. I’d been too busy with work to wash my towering pile of laundry and forced to wear mismatched socks today. How much more could a girl endure?
If I couldn’t relieve some of this frustration soon, I feared I’d explode. Maybe I should consider the battery-operated boyfriend Christina had sent me. A round or two with the jackhammer would probably rid me of some of this tension. But, alas, I wasn’t that type of girl. It was the real thing or nothing. I hoped B.O.B. would understand.
On Friday morning, Lu called me and Eddie into her office for an update on the terrorist case. On her desk sat a huge bouquet of pinkish-orange mums, the exact color of Lu’s hair. The card stapled to the ribbon read: To my gorgeous gal. XO, Carl.
Looked like things were going well for the Lobo and Comb-over Carl. I was glad things
were going good for someone. They sure as hell weren’t going well for me.
The flowers’ sweet, cloying smell made me think of Brett, of the rosebushes he’d planted in front of my town house. I felt a twinge in my already-aching heart. Maybe I should just forget about Nick and stay with Brett. It would sure as hell make things easier. But I knew that was impossible. Nick wasn’t the kind of guy a woman could easily put behind her.
Lu held a Slim Jim aloft between two fingers as if it were a cigarette. Old habits die hard, I suppose.
I gestured to the bouquet. “I take it you and Carl are hitting it off?”
She batted her false eyelashes, smiling like a schoolgirl with a crush. “He’s the sweetest thing. We’ve had dinner three times this week.” She reached out and stroked a rose petal before looking back to me. “I suppose I shouldn’t settle for the first man I find, though, should I? I’ve had several more hits. I haven’t been this popular since I was the first girl in junior high to grow boobs.” She punched some keys on her keyboard, performed a few clicks on her mouse, and turned her computer screen so I could see it, too. “What do you think of these fellas?”
The screen displayed photos and bios for three men. The first man was roundish and totally bald, with a smile as bright as his shiny dome. His bio identified him as Fred, a widower and charter bus driver. The second guy had a head of thick silver hair with a matching full beard. His expression was self-assured but perhaps a tad too serious. His bio identified him as Harry, a divorced upper-level manager at a brokerage firm. It also identified him as a smoker, the last thing Lu needed after successfully fighting lung cancer. The final match was Gerard, a stocky retired high-school basketball coach with wavy white hair. He’d never been married. Perhaps it was presumptuous of me, but if a man made it to his sixties without ever having tied the knot there was probably something wrong with him.
“Try Fred,” I suggested. “He looks friendly.”
“I thought so, too,” Lu said. “Fred it is.”
Lu turned her screen away and turned her attention back to me and Eddie, all business now. “The terrorist case. What’s happening?”
