The Death Box

by J. A. Kerley

  A phone.

  The yellow tab stuck to it said simply, 911 = Emergencia.

  Amili returned to her office with Orzibel’s minions at her side. Guzman sat on the couch and ticked at the video game, the other gangster wandered the hall and sucked a soda pop. Music from below shivered the floor. Amili marked on a large pair of padded envelopes and snapped her fingers.

  “The bank deposit is prepared. Can you be trusted?”

  “Of course,” Guzman said. “I am selected by Mr Orzibel.”

  Amili handed him an envelope. “The address is there, the bank downtown. It is closed until Monday but there is an outside deposit window.”

  The man frowned in confusion. “I must watch you. Can Jorgé take the envelope?” He nodded toward the man in the hall.

  Amili rolled her eyes. “Is he smart enough to read the bank address?”

  “I will tell him where to find it.”

  Guzman passed along the package and instructions. Outside, the twilight beaconed toward Tomorrow. “Now I must go to the bathroom,” Amili said. “Are you to watch me there as well?”

  Guzman looked stricken: Orzibel was his boss, but Señorita Zelaya was also very powerful and rumored to be one of El Jefé’s lovers.

  “You have no phone?” Guzman said. “I am sorry to ask such an impertinent question.”

  “Search me.”

  “I-I will have to touch you.”

  “Then hurry, but do not let fingers linger.”

  Face averted, Guzman patted Amili down. She went to the bathroom and closed the door. Her hands moved beneath the sink and found the packet kept for long days at the office. She returned with fingers rubbing her temples.

  “I do not feel well, the migraine. I must be alone to take a nap.”

  “I-I am sorry but I am not permitted to permit it.”

  Amili frowned in thought, nodded. “Aha! There is a simple solution. I will go to the basement and take my rest there.”

  “Basement?”

  “So you can be certain no communications will take place.” She aimed an accusatory finger at Guzman. “Unless you people leave phones laying about down there.”

  “Never! Señor Orzibel strictly forbids—”

  “Then put me in a room and lock the door. I assure you Mr Orzibel will approve. You have found a good solution, Guzman.”

  “Thank you, Señorita. Thank you.”

  They descended into the stink of mold and the rustle of rats. Amili chose a small bare room centered by a yellowed mattress and stained pillow. Concrete bricks formed the horizon and pipes the sky: It was the room where Amili had been imprisoned one year ago.

  Guzman looked uncertain. “Are you sure that you wish to rest in—”

  “I will be fine, Guzman. Do not disturb me until Mr Orzibel returns. Tell him to come wake me with a kiss.”

  45

  “I bought four sleeping bags as you instructed, Orlando. And pillows.”

  “Line the trunk.”

  Leala heard tape stripping from a roll. Her ankles and wrists were crossed and bound.

  “Careful of bruises, Chaku. I promised perfection.”

  “A towel between her and the tape?”

  “Yes. But make sure the tape is tight.”

  Leala’s crossed legs pressed the small phone tighter into the junction of her thighs. Her hands were bound at her waist and she could touch the phone through her clothes. She was lifted from the warehouse floor and set into the padded cushioning of the Lincoln’s cavernous trunk.

  “How is that, Orlando?”

  “Like an egg in its nest, Chaku. A nest egg … how perfect! A symbol of our new wealth. There are other Chalks out there, and an endless supply of Lealas. Close the trunk, my large friend. Time to vamos.”

  Leala’s world turned dark. Her fingers began clawing the fabric of the short dress higher.

  We hovered afar for twenty minutes before a line of vehicles roared to Redi-flow like a cavalry charge, sirens their bugle, the blue lights beating like volleys from Remington rifles. Within five minutes a dozen men were belly-down on the lot with hands behind their heads. I aimed the glasses toward the hut, another four men on their bellies as the former slaves-to-be huddled in fear and confusion. It was time to put our feet on the ground.

  We landed in the lot and the pilot buzzed off, the chopper replaced by Roy at the wheel of his Yukon. “Come look at something interesting,” Roy said, waving us inside. “You’re gonna love it.”

  He roared across the lot to a semi rig carrying a bus-sized metal tank marked Redi-flow Porta-Plant. An opened hatch revealed a line of rickety benches bolted inside the tank. Gershwin and I stared in amazement.

  “How’s that for a slave-delivery system?” Roy asked. “Even if the rig gets stopped by a cop, who’d look inside mixing machinery?”

  We saw a black SUV barreling in, the door bearing the insignia of Homeland Security. The driver stopped beside us and Rayles exited, the implacable and chin-led face now looking worn and too far from sleep. I waited for Pinker to exit, but Rayles seemed to have left the pet monkey at home.

  “There’s been a troubling discovery,” Rayles said as his weary face nodded toward the office. “Let’s go inside to talk.”

  I shot a look at Roy and we followed Rayles toward the empty office, all occupants outside and being readied for a trip downtown. Kazankis stood to the side with hands cuffed behind his back and doing his best to look distraught. He saw me and did several frantic come-hither nods.

  I kept walking. I’d get to Kazankis soon enough. We entered the spare meeting room and Rayles closed the door. Roy gave Rayles a what’s happening? look.

  “It’s Robert Pinker, my adjutant, assistant, whatever …” Rayles stopped and seemed lost for words.

  “What is it, sir?” I asked.

  “Pinker is … He’s dirty, I suppose, as you people say.”

  “Come again?” Roy said, eyes wide.

  Rayles sighed and leaned against the wall with arms crossed. “I’ve been bothered by Robert. It started that day at the crime scene when I passed the case back to the FCLE, reluctantly, I admit. Did you find Robert’s behavior odd?”

  “He almost went physical,” I said. “It seemed unprofessional.”

  Rayles nodded at my assessment. “It wasn’t the deferential Robert Pinker I knew, respectful of my decisions. I asked him about it later, what had angered him so. His answers were plausible: lack of sleep, a lingering sinus infection, a touch of nerves.”

  “You didn’t buy it?” I asked.

  “His answers came with troubling microfacial shifts. It was like seeing a different face, another Robert Pinker breaking the surface.”

  I hid my surprise. “You’re acquainted with microfacial analysis, Major?” Though the minute shifts in facial musculature were termed “lie-detector expressions” by some, they were not, though an experienced professional could glean such traits as evasion and stress.

  Rayles nodded. “I spent ten years at Gitmo in interrogation and studied all the techniques and situational adaptations. I analyzed faces as the interrogators asked questions. Got pretty decent at it, actually. I became intrigued by Robert’s insincerity and took a background interest in the cistern case, finding he chose an inexperienced team for a complex assignment. Then Robert handed the Paul Carosso investigation to the Miami-Dade department, which made little sense unless it was to keep HS out of the loop.”

  I looked at Rayles with fresh eyes. He was a lot sharper than I’d given him credit for.

  “Three days ago I put Robert under surveillance by our best people,” Rayles continued. “This morning he and two confederates on the Miami docks falsified records on an incoming shipment, essentially making it disappear. That cargo module is now on a truck by the Quonset hut, where it seems our investigations have become one.”

  “Jeeeeezle,” Roy said. “Pinker would be the perfect insider, access to shipment dates, cargo manifests, backgrounds of dock workers. You know how Kazank
is got his claws into your man?”

  “I figure Robert happened onto the trafficking operation and approached Kazankis or someone in his operation. The bane of our business, gentlemen, a weak employee near large amounts of money.”

  “Where’s Pinker now?” Roy asked.

  Rayles glanced at his watch. “Fifteen minutes ago Robert was arrested coming out of a downtown health club. He loves his workouts, but I hear most federal prisons have excellent gyms these days.”

  The requested jail transport was arriving, a faded blue bus with smoked windows. There was a lot of sorting out to be done. Kazankis was at the end of the line, side-whispering to a couple of men, heads bowed like a prayer session, but I figured they were getting stories straight.

  The line shuffled toward the bus as a Miami-Dade sergeant wrote their info on a clipboard. When I walked to Kazankis he produced a convincing sigh of relief.

  “Thank God you’re here, sir. Surely you know I’m an innocent man.”

  “I’m uncertain of what I know, Mr Kazankis.”

  “I never suspected the terrible things those men were doing. I’m sick at what I’m hearing happened. Those poor, poor people.”

  “Sure. Illegals traveling a thousand miles to be deposited a thousand yards away. A Redi-flow tank has its guts replaced with seating. Your employees driving the truck.”

  “They’re ex-cons, Detective. I’m a victim of scoundrels. Men I thought I’d saved from sin, like poor Paul Carosso.”

  I nodded toward the false plant atop the semi-trailer. “One of the drivers of the truck built to hold illegals was Thomas Scaggs, who supposedly watched Paul Carosso get mysterious packages. Scaggs said he was able to see all this because he worked in the tower. Yet he was caught driving a truck with a tricked-out concrete plant.”

  A pause to re-calibrate. “I-I made Thomas a driver a few days ago, Detective. At his request. I missed what was happening. It sickens me to my soul.”

  I put my hands in my pockets and rocked on my heels. “You somehow missed a human-trafficking operation that brought in how many people annually, Mr Kazankis? One hundred? Five hundred?”

  “I sit in the office and make schedules. I gave my men too much leeway and some fell into old ways. I trusted them to the fullest and they repaid me with deceit.”

  “The story ain’t working for me, Mr Kazankis,” I said. “Someone’s gonna talk. You think maybe it’ll be Pinker?”

  I waited for him to freeze at the name, but he stayed cool, giving me rumpled-brow curiosity and a four-beat pause. “Pinker? Who’s that? I have no idea who you’re talking about, sir. Never met a man with that name.”

  After speaking to Rayles I figured we might use Pinker to directly incriminate Kazankis. But if Mr Redi-flow was telling the truth, that road was gone. It hit me that a schemer like Kazankis likely used a middleman to communicate with the HS turncoat. He could spout that never met the guy shit into a lie detector and the needle wouldn’t flicker. Like everything I was learning about Kazankis, he was a brilliant strategist.

  “How about Orlando Orzibel?” I asked. “He’s your knife-kissing enforcer, right.”

  My shot in the dark drew the rumpled-brow again. “Orlando worked here a few years ago. As far as I know he’s not been in any trouble since. But I haven’t seen him in months.”

  “Which came first?” I asked, angry that Kazankis was finding an answer to everything. “The redemption project or the trafficking business? Hell, it doesn’t really matter: You’re a soulless piece of garbage whose only god is money, and you found a way to invest in human misery. Oh, and it brought you into contact with a lot of naïve young girls. You do the preacher act with them, or do you play Daddy?”

  A twitch; I’d hit a nerve somewhere. Kazankis’s eyes moved left and right, making sure we were the only two people within earshot. “You’re a big Boy Scout, aren’t you?” he whispered, his voice as cold as death. “My lawyers are gonna piss in your mouth, Ryder. I’ll end up suing you for false arrest.”

  When I turned, he was staring straight ahead, as if he’d never uttered a sound. A cold wind began to blow across my spine: I imagined Kazankis on trial, his select hardcase employees taking the heat without ratting, part of an upended honor system. I saw Kazankis blubbering on the stand, invoking God and all the angels, not to mention personal testimony from men honestly claiming salvation through the ministry. All it took was one doubtful juror and the scumbucket was back in business with the FCLE hauled through the mud for terrorizing a modern-day Samaritan whose only crime was trusting those he tried to heal.

  The probability was real and even a mid-level lawyer might pull it off.

  I pushed Kazankis toward the bus, only barely avoiding wringing his neck. “Put this trash in the can,” I told the sergeant as Gershwin sauntered up, hands in his pockets.

  “Kazankis is nailed tight, Big Ryde,” he smiled, clapping his hands. “We got him.”

  “No,” I said, suddenly wishing I was back in the air and atop the world. “We probably don’t. Plus Leala is out there. So is Orzibel. You found nothing on the guy?”

  Gershwin hadn’t expected my gloom, but he lacked experience with the Kazankises of the world: sociopaths who didn’t expect to get caught, but planned for it.

  “The address on Orzibel’s driver’s license doesn’t exist. No tax records, he’s off the grid. You look worried, Kahuna.”

  “I’m bad worried, Ziggy. Leala was a runner, Orzibel lives to punish people.”

  Roy rolled up and told us he’d left us a vehicle for the ride back, and roared to Miami to coordinate the arrests. I told Gershwin I was heading home and did he need a ride?

  He shrugged. I’d deflated his victory balloon. “It’s outta your way. I’ll see who here’s heading downtown.”

  “Or,” I said, “you could come home with me. We’ll catch a few hours’ sleep and start tomorrow hot on the trail of Leala.”

  46

  The phone Leala had hidden in her panties felt the same as the phone of her aunt in Tegucigalpa. Her aunt had let her use the phone to call cousins in the city.

  “Marica, guess who this is? And how I am calling you?”

  Did the US phones work the same? She pressed where the On button had been on her aunt’s phone. A sparkly sound and …

  Light! Coming from the box and behind the numeros! Praying, Leala dialed the three digits. Ringing. But not too loud.

  “911 Emergency services. What is the nature of your call? Hello?”

  Leala tried to speak at the phone but not enough sound came through the soft cloth taped over her mouth.

  “What? Is anyone there? Hello?”

  Ten seconds later the phone clicked dead. Leala felt like bursting into tears. Every call would end the same. Did the phone have the text? Her aunt’s phone did not because the text cost too much. Leala had no idea how the text worked or if this phone had it.

  In anger and frustration Leala slammed the phone against her thighs.

  thump

  Gershwin and I were sitting on the deck in the light of a single citronella candle, watching a cloud-shrouded moon float above the water. We’d gotten to my place and found neither of us ready for sleep. The freshening breeze generated enough wave action to create a rhythmic hiss in the dark and keep mosquitos at bay. I’d explained the way Kazankis could slip through our fingers and we weren’t celebrating.

  “The weather service says a thin band of rain’s gonna slip in from the west,” Gershwin said, sipping at his light rum and tonic.

  “Maybe it’ll wash the stink from Redi-flow.”

  “It’s just a couple showers, not a monsoon.”

  My cell phone rang. I checked the screen: Unknown Caller. “Ryder,” I said.

  Nothing.

  “Hello?” I said again. I looked at Ziggy and shrugged, clicking the call off. The phone rang again. And again, nothing.

  “What is it?” Gershwin asked.

  “Empty air,” I said, pushing the phone to my ear. �
��The line’s active, but no one’s talking.”

  “I sometimes get ghost calls on my cell,” Gershwin said. “Glitches in the system.”

  I clicked the call off. Ten seconds passed and it rang again.

  “An insistent ghost,” Gershwin said. I cranked the volume to max and held it up so we both could hear. Nothing but a buzz, a hissing sound. Then, a muffled thump. Followed by two more thumps. Then three more. Gershwin gave me a quizzical look as it started again: one thump, pause, two, pause, three. The thumps were erratic, not electronic. A human was on the other end.

  “It’s her,” I said. “Leala.”

  “How do you know?”

  “It’s the only thing that makes sense. She has my number.”

  It began again: Thump. Thump-thump. Thump-thump-thump. Like a heartbeat. My mind ran the possibilities. “I think she has a phone but can’t talk.”

  “Gagged, maybe,” Gershwin said. “She’s hitting the phone on something. Can she hear us?”

  “Leala,” I said, “Make one thump if it’s you.”

  thump

  “Is there something over your mouth?”

  thump

  I turned to Gershwin. “I can barely hear. Call tech services. Explain the situation. See what they can do.”

  He ran inside while I tried to figure out the best way to communicate, given the limitations. “Here’s the code, Leala: one thump, yes, two is no, three is you don’t know. Do you understand?”

  thump

  Gershwin returned. “The techies are on it. What’s happening?”

  “I’m trying to figure out what to ask.”

  Gershwin put his ear to the phone. “The background sound. Tires? A vehicle, maybe?”

  “Nice.” I leaned to the microphone. “Leala? Are you in a vehicle?”

  thump

  “Trunk?”

  thump

  “Do you know your destination?”

  thump thump

  “Were you in Miami?” Gershwin asked. Another good question.