The Extraditionist (A Benn Bluestone Thriller Book 1)

by Todd Merer

  But then the world changed.

  A door revolved, and the world chilled, and I became focused. I was in a courthouse doing what I knew. Detector. Elevator. Marbled corridor. Hushed courtroom—

  Autopilot went off.

  I shifted to manual.

  Bolivar was brought out. He smelled dank. He was gaunt, unshaven, hollow eyed. He didn’t greet me.

  Kandi appeared, perky as ever.

  “The thirty-five hundred material?” I asked.

  Her reply was a forced smile that, through bitter experience, I’ve learned is a tell of cruelties to come. She handed me a thin envelope. On its flap was written Bolivar 3500 material. I opened it, took out a dozen-odd pages, scanned them quickly.

  She watched me read, arms crossed, smiling.

  The pages were copies of DEA-6 forms recounting statements made by Bolivar’s crew that detailed their participation in the failed run six years ago. Four sixes from four typical weed-runner types—Teddy, Rocky, Fuji, JD—knock-around, white-trash, stoner surfers whose statements were memorialized in a six signed by SA Charles Scally.

  “That’s all?” I said.

  “All,” she said.

  I kept my face blank. Traum had been right. Kandi hadn’t turned over Pimms’s notes. But did they really exist?

  “All rise!”

  Judge Trieant took the bench. The clerk put our appearances on record. Trieant growled: “Jury selection July 1. Trial commences July 6.”

  The first was the Wednesday before the holiday weekend. The sixth was the following Monday. In the past, I’d have been going away for the holiday and would have requested an adjournment. But this was now and a trial bracketing the holiday was perfect. The jurors would relax. So would I.

  “Your Honor,” I said, “let the record reflect today the government provided thirty-five hundred material I am informed is complete. It consists of nine DEA-6s signed by Agent Scally.”

  “Thank you for the unnecessary commentary,” Trieant said.

  In the hallway, Kandi was talking to Scally. Over her shoulder, Scally flashed me a smile. Nearby, Nelson Cano was leaning against the wall, pretending to be absorbed in his device. But I knew he was also doing something else.

  Watching me.

  CHAPTER 80

  I’d agreed to meet with Billy’s public defender during lunch hour. We bought franks from an umbrella cart on Foley Square.

  “The cops know it’s a setup,” she said bitterly. “They don’t care so long as it closes the book on a case. Besides, they figure Billy must’ve killed someone, sometime.” She was a small woman with kinky hair pulled tight into a tail. She’d never make it outside of the public defender’s office, and I doubted she wanted to. She was an old-fashioned lawyer who liked nothing better than a cause to fight for. Right now, it was Billy. I wanted to tell her that—particularly given the inevitability of several African Americans and Latinos on the jury—she would do better than I.

  “They made an offer,” she said. “The usual.”

  “Murder two?”

  She nodded. “Twenty-five to life.”

  Just as I’d figured, but it was a gut punch. I tossed the rest of my frank away. “I’m right he won’t take it?”

  “Why should he?” She squeezed my bicep. “Superman’s gonna save him.”

  We spoke a few more minutes. I’d been right that no pretrial work was necessary. This was strictly an eyeball case. Five guys who’d swear they’d seen Billy shoot a girl to death. I’d been thinking Bolivar was going to be my swan song, but it would be Billy for whom I’d be floating like a butterfly and stinging like a bee. An eyeball-only case was a spontaneous brawl in which anything can happen.

  But nothing I could do about that yet. And I had other problems on my plate.

  I’d put off discussing Robinson’s offer to Bolivar until getting the 3500 material. It wasn’t very likely, but I’d thought, hoped, it might include a game-changer.

  It didn’t. Instead, it made everything painfully clear.

  If Bolivar turned the offer down, we’d go to a trial I most probably couldn’t win unless Traum’s crooked fantasy came true, in which case I’d waltzed into a conspiracy. For the rest of my life, I would fear it circling back and biting my ass.

  But if Bolivar lost and cooperated on his people and the Russians, sooner or later one or another of these vindictive psychos would surely take me out.

  Whichever my fate, it was Bolivar’s choice.

  Later that day, I went to visit him.

  The visit room was crowded with lawyers and defendants, mostly drug cases, except the one in the big conference room, again occupied by lawyers and defendants seated amid a maze of discovery cartons. Plitkin looked up, then quickly away as we exchanged gazes.

  Bolivar appeared shortly after my arrival, bony in his oversize orange SHU jumpsuit. We went into a glass-walled visit room. He sat across from me without offering his hand. I set down the DEA-6s, and Bolivar’s eyes moved across each page like a typewriter reaching a margin, then returning to the next line.

  “My old friends have good memories,” he said.

  “According to Special Agent Chaz Scally.”

  He looked up. “What about Scally?”

  “He memorialized the DEA sixes. People say the same things differently, but the statements Scally quoted are nearly word-for-word identical. Which opens the door to my attacking Scally’s credibility, insinuating that he put his words in their mouths.”

  “So, then, we win?”

  I evaded the question. My strategy wasn’t original, but it was all I had. Sharing it with Bolivar was a downer. I didn’t want the jurors seeing him mopey. “Let me put it this way,” I said. “It’s a big thing for us.”

  “You’re a fucking con, Bluestone.”

  “So are you, Bolivar.”

  We shared a laugh.

  Then I said, “Something new came up. Now that you know what you’re up against, think it over.” I paused, making sure I had his full attention. “A prosecutor offered a deal. Not Kauffman; a prosecutor from the Southern District. He says if you cooperate, you’ll be on the street young enough to still get it up.”

  “Yeah? How about you, Bluestone? You young enough? Bet you are with the blonde you’re always asking me about. Jally, Jolly, whatever.”

  “You said you don’t know her.”

  “I don’t. But you keep mentioning her name. She must be young and juicy, just the way guys your age like ’em.”

  I let the provocation slide. I’d already made Bolivar and Jilly as a couple; there was no reason to discuss the accompanying details. Like, who killed Sholty? And did Jilly have a role in hooking up Natty and Kursk with Sombra, the Shadow King of the Jungle?

  “Why cooperate now?” he said. “Maybe we win. Even if we lose, Kauffman will be interested in what I have to say. This other prosecutor, what does he want?”

  “He said you’d know what it was.”

  “What does he bring to the table?”

  “Honesty. Kandi’s a liar.”

  “You told my friends?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Doesn’t matter. They’re not stupid. They know if I lose the trial, I’ll sit on them. That’s why they’ll do anything to get me out. Why they paid you to do whatever it takes to do it. Why are you looking at me like that?”

  I’d been staring. Willing him to close his big yap. Talking walk-the-line shit was only done in whispered, coded conversations. What if the visit room were wired? No one’s ever proven it, but I’d bet my ass it happens in cases involving national interests. The kind of cases that include both CIA and foreign intelligence organizations. Cases involving international cartels opening a second front in the war against drugs.

  “What shall I tell the other prosecutor?”

  “Nothing. He’ll also be hungry if we lose.”

  He stood and crossed to the door. He’d been a singularly handsome man less than a year ago. Now he’d morphed to a feral creatur
e intent only on escaping his cage.

  “Anything else?” he said.

  “All done for now.”

  “What’s next?”

  “Trial.”

  “Tell my friends to pray it turns out well.”

  I nodded but no way was I passing that message. On my way out, I had to wait in the air lock until CONTROL buzzed me through the lobby door. Never had jail felt so oppressive.

  What do I do now?

  Ten days to go. I’d already prepped for the trial until I was blue in the face—no pun intended. Right now I desperately needed to take a break before it began.

  Elsewhere.

  CHAPTER 81

  At three in the afternoon, church bells pealed. I was sitting atop the castle wall of an old Spanish fort, shaded by a big tree inhabited by small green parrots screeching at one another. In the near distance, sunlight glittered off a tropical sea whose tranquility was occasionally disturbed by a pelican diving for lunch.

  I sat, waiting, as I had for three days now.

  I didn’t mind waiting. I was in Viejo San Juan, and my cares and woes were two thousand miles away, in New York. In another week, I’d have to return to do whatever was necessary to free Joaquin Bolivar. I had a bad feeling about that. But that would be then, and this was now, and there was something I needed to do.

  At seven, the bells pealed again.

  Across the water, the sky was streaked with all the colors of the spectrum, the low sun refracting through the fine Sahara dust atmospheric winds carried across the Atlantic to the Caribbean.

  I continued waiting, occasionally looking around.

  Behind me, houses were still shuttered against the day. Far below the seawall, people were walking along the paseo that ran along the harbor. But not the person I was looking for. Not a problem. I’d wait as long as it took.

  My first day, I’d rented a car and driven to the nearby town of Bayamón, made my way through its sleepy streets, gone through an untended gate, and slowly driven through the Puerto Rico National Cemetery. One hundred ten acres of razor-cut, rolling lawns beneath which were interred 150,000 Puerto Ricans who’d served America. I parked and walked a marble path that wound between bronze plaques, most slightly sunken and too tarnished to read, but here and there shining like a newly minted penny. Beneath one of those lay Mady’s brother.

  It was the anniversary of his death, the day Mady always visited.

  She wasn’t there. Perhaps she’d come and gone. Perhaps she would come later. There was a grove of trees nearby, and I sat in their shade. Overhead, the sky was deep blue, but to the south, dark clouds were rising above the central mountains. In the far distance, lightning crackled; long moments later, thunder rolled overhead. Boomers. Maybe it would rain, or maybe the clouds would retreat to the high mountains and try again tomorrow.

  Mañana.

  The way of the tropics. Not now, later. Patience.

  The clouds neared. The sunlight now shafted between them, reflecting off the long rows of graves. So many men still boyishly thin and brimming with laughter in the moment before death . . . so many good husbands and sons whose dreams were not to be.

  I’m not a sentimental kind of guy, but I wiped a sleeve across my eyes. The fucking injustice of life. Uncle Sam’s boot on Puerto Rico’s neck. Sorry, we won’t admit you as a state, but not to worry, you can be a, ah . . . commonwealth.

  Translated: colony. As in, an occupied country where the natives are deemed inferior. Nothing personal, some of my best friends are, uh . . . Spanish. Motherfucking politicians. Man, I do love the United States, but my country does some very fucked-up things.

  The second day I waited outside Mady’s house, but again, she was a no-show.

  At sunset on the third day, I saw her.

  Standing alone at the end of the pier jutting from the old city gate into San Juan Bay. I went downhill past La Fortaleza and through the gate to where the paseo offered entrance to the pier. I was about to go onto it, but the way Mady stood there made me think she wanted to be alone.

  Again, I sat, waiting for her.

  People passed. Young and old lovers and families with lots of kids. Waves beat softly against the seawall. There was laughter, the throb of salsa, gulls squawking.

  Mady started from the pier.

  I stood to meet her. As she neared, her face lit up, and I let out the breath I’d been holding. I didn’t know how she’d react at seeing me, but her smile said it all—

  Only it wasn’t meant for me.

  It was directed at the tall, silver-haired man behind me. The man Mady had been with on New Year’s Eve. As she hugged him, I turned to leave, but too late—

  “Benn? What are you doing here?”

  For once in my life, I was tongue-tied. I fumbled in a cargo pocket and took out two things: the acrylic slab encasing a golden horseshoe, and an envelope. I thrust both at her.

  “For you. The good-luck charm you gave me.”

  Curious, she held the horseshoe, then smiled. “Oh, I remember this . . . but why?”

  “It’s a housewarming present. Open the envelope.”

  She opened it and saw inside the deed conveying Casita Azul to her. She cocked her head and studied me in a way I recalled, her eyes gazing through mine, into my thoughts. “You could have mailed it.”

  “Could’ve, would’ve, should’ve. Wanted to make sure you got it.”

  She tilted her head the other way. “Are you okay?”

  “Sure,” I said brightly. “Never better.”

  “You keep this,” she said, returning the horseshoe. “Benn, this is Father Enrique Morales.”

  Father Enrique? It wasn’t until he pumped my hand that it dawned on me that the man wore a Roman collar.

  “Good meeting you,” he said. “Wish I could chat, but I must be off. Vespers.”

  He pecked Mady on the cheek and left. His absence left a void. After a moment, Mady said, “Leaving New York to come to Puerto Rico. Must have a big case here, I bet.”

  “I escaped New York. I’m done doing that work.”

  “You came all the way here to tell me that?”

  “To say I’m sorry. And goodbye.”

  “Where are you going?”

  No need to burden Mady with my problems. I didn’t want to lie, but my only truth was that, win or lose, I would be done lawyering. After that, I’d either be in the slammer or the wind.

  “Don’t know. Someplace the weather’s good.”

  She chewed her lip thoughtfully. “Like here?”

  It wasn’t a question. “Like here.”

  “Benn?”

  “What?”

  “Why don’t you . . . fly a kite.”

  With that, she spun on a heel and walked off.

  I slumped to the bench. How had I ever let it come to this? Bad enough we were history; now she was dumping on me. Go fly a kite?

  Then I remembered something.

  About flying kites.

  CHAPTER 82

  As we’d done many times, Mady and I bought a kite from a stand outside the great lawn of Castillo del Morro. We assembled the kite and cast it aloft where it joined dozens of others, specks swirling in the offshore breeze from the Atlantic, which boiled against the rocks below the great old stone bastion.

  Through the spool, I felt the kite darting, straining to be free. Mady took the spool. She let it run to the end, and the kite flew out to sea.

  “Freedom for all,” she said. “You got a problem with that?”

  “No problem. So long as you don’t punch me.”

  “Why on earth would you think I would?”

  “You used to, when you were angry.”

  “We were together then.”

  I raised my chin. “Punch me. I’m dreaming.”

  She balled a fist, touched it to my jaw.

  “Almost but not quite,” I said.

  “If at first you don’t succeed.”

  I nodded, and we both smiled.

  I wouldn’t exac
tly call that exchange the beginning, more like the beginning of the beginning. A few more days passed, and we both knew we were coming back together. But two dark clouds on the horizon threatened to come between us.

  The first had been there all along: I had to return to New York for the trial. I figured I’d tell Mady I had to go to New York briefly to tie up some loose ends. If things worked out, I’d catch the first flight back. If they didn’t, well, at least I’d done my best to do right, and I wouldn’t darken her door again.

  The second was a tropical storm. I’d been following it online for a few days. The forecast said it would be near Puerto Rico later tonight; one of its predicted tracks was directly across the island. As a precaution I had booked a seat on an afternoon flight, to be sure I wasn’t stranded if the electrical system went down.

  I was staying at El Convento. I went down to the city gate to meet Mady.

  During the years we’d been apart, Mady’s mother had died, and her ashes had been scattered from the pier. While ill, she’d been cared for by the sisters of Servicio de Maria convent, whose Moorish walls overlooked the pier. Truly one of the most beautiful spots in all the world. The reason Mady had been so intent on having Casita Azul in her name was because when she passed, she wanted to leave the house to the nuns who had taken care of her mother.

  Today was the anniversary of her mother’s death, and Mady was spending a long time on the pier. I sat on a bench and looked at my device, hoping the storm would miss the island, allowing me a few more days with Mady before I returned for the trial.

  No such luck. Not only was the storm on a direct path to the island; it was expected to become a hurricane and had picked up speed, due to hit earlier than expected. Already, flights were being canceled. If it were severe, flights could be canceled for days. I had to leave the island now.

  I called the airlines. Too late. My flight was already canceled. I had no choice but to stay on the island and hope that the damage was minimal and that flights would resume as soon as the storm passed.

  We dined that evening in a restaurant overlooking the water. The place was usually packed, but not this night. People were home, securing shutters, preparing. Every few minutes, foghorns blared. Below the seawall, cruise ships were leaving port to ride out the storm at sea, away from the eye. There was a feeling of expectancy. A waiting. We were still eating when the waiter brought the check.