by Jeff Buick
“I’m not surprised,” Eugene said. “The Texas economy relies on oil and gas, and geologists and geophysicists are in demand.” He added, “Your dad still cleaning pools?”
“Yeah, he’s thinking about retiring and passing the business along to one of us, but when my brothers are finished with college we’ll all be educated, and I don’t think any of us will want to clean pools for a living.”
“What about your sister?” Eugene asked.
“She’s already married. Her husband’s a nice enough guy, but he’s a backyard mechanic and doesn’t earn much. He doesn’t think she should work, and his people skills are lacking. He’s too rough around the edges to deal with the pool clientele. So it looks like the business will probably just die when my father’s finished.”
“Too bad,” Eugene said as they pulled up in front of his hotel. “Thanks for the lift. See you at quarter to seven.”
“Have a good night.”
Eugene shut the door and waved at the young DEA agent as he hoofed it across the hot asphalt to the lobby. He checked for messages, but there was nothing in his slot. He reached his room, turned on the shower and stepped in. It was warm, so he turned the cold handle slowly to the right until the water ran cool. It felt good after the southern Texas heat. He thought of the Garcia family as he stood under the water, wondering what change had allowed the two younger brothers to attend college. The pool business surely hadn’t picked up enough to afford two college tuitions and a place for the kids to live in Dallas. Eduardo was working, but the DEA didn’t pay enough to cover those kinds of expenses. Something wasn’t adding up in the Garcia household.
Eugene turned the handles and the water flow stopped. He listened for a second, then jumped from the tub and made a wild dash for his cell phone. It was still ringing when he picked it up and flipped it open. “Hello.”
“Eugenio?”
“Yes.”
“It’s Mario Correa, Eugenio. Are you alone? Can you talk?”
“Yes, Mario, I’m okay to talk. I’m in a hotel room by myself.”
“Good. I understand you stopped by my dealership in Miami yesterday.”
“Yeah, I wanted to talk with you, but you disappeared.”
“I’ll disappear every time a DEA agent comes knocking, Eugenio.” His cousin sounded pissed off.
“There’s nothing I could do about that, Mario. Trust me when I say that the last thing I wanted to do was bring the heat down on you. I just need information.”
“I’ve got a damn good idea what you want, Eugenio. I’ll meet with you, but only you, no DEA. Understand?”
“I understand. Where?”
“Rochester, New York. How quickly can you get there?”
“Tomorrow sometime, depending on flights. I’m in El Paso right now.”
“There’s a shoe repair shop west of the river on the corner of State and Andrews. Four Corners Shoe Repair. I’ll be there on the hour from eleven in the morning onward. Meet me at the top of the hour as soon as you get to Rochester.”
“Okay, Mario. Can you answer one question for me?”
“If it’s the question I think it is, no.” The line clicked back to a dial tone.
Eugene closed the phone and finished drying off from the shower, glad that he had left his cell phone number with Mario’s receptionist in Miami. Rochester, New York. That made absolutely no sense. Rochester was hardly a major center, and not all that easy to access from either Miami or El Paso. Why not just meet in Miami?
He picked up the phone book and called the airlines from his cell phone until he found a flight leaving in two hours for Pittsburgh. He booked his seat and quickly packed his small suitcase. He called downstairs and had the concierge order a cab, insisting it pick him up at the loading dock at the rear of the hotel.
He waited in the shipping-receiving area for about five minutes, and when the cab arrived he directed the driver to stop at a couple of banks with ATM machines, then to head for the airport. He withdrew cash against his credit card at the automated tellers, two thousand at each, until he had six thousand dollars. He tipped the driver well and checked in for his flight, with plenty of time to spare. He figured that once he reached Pittsburgh he could find a seat on a regional airline making the short trip north to Rochester from the Steel City.
His mind was racing an hour later when the plane departed El Paso. Eduardo Garcia and his brothers attending college. An informant hidden somewhere in the group of five. Mario Correa calling and setting up a clandestine meeting in Rochester. Things were happening, but where was it all leading? Then another bombshell dropped into the vortex inside his skull, a thought that closed down every other thought.
Four days. He had only four days to find Pablo. Or Julie and Shiara were dead.
Chapter Thirty-five
Javier Rastano had never prided himself on his patience. In fact, if there was one attribute he was sorely lacking, it was patience. He wanted to know which of the two men the snitch was, and he wanted to know now. He had one of his men monitor the gym area where Luis worked out in the morning, and a team of two follow Pedro, at a distance, as he ran through the pampered streets of Colonia Escalón. His instructions to the three men were simple. If either boxer’s phone rang they were to listen to the conversation, if possible, then get their hands on the phone before either man could clear the number from the phone’s memory. Whoever was feeding Eugenio Escobar the information was using his cell phone, and the incoming or outgoing number would be traceable. There was no possible way that Eugenio or his informant could know he was on to them, and therefore no reason to cut the lines of communication. Eugene would call, or one of the boxers would call him, of that he was certain.
He wanted the rat, and he would get him.
Javier stood at his bedroom window at the center of the house overlooking the rear gardens, and watched Pedro stretch prior to his run. Javier glanced at his watch, just after five-thirty in the morning. Was it Pedro? Neither man had shown any signs of skulking about, although Luis did like to let himself into the kitchen late at night to fix a snack. But none of the guards had seen him do anything but fix some food and head back up to his room. It was quite the puzzle.
The whole thing incensed him. How dare someone come inside his house under false pretenses? One thing was certain: that person was looking for an opportunity to snatch the women. But that was not going to happen. Actually, there was another certainty. One of the boxers was a dead man. Javier just needed to know which one.
Pedro finished stretching and jogged around the corner of the house toward the front gate. Out of sight, but not out of mind. Javier hit five on his speed-dial and one of his guards answered. “Pedro’s on his way to the front gate,” he said. The other man acknowledged and terminated the call. Javier smiled.
It was show time.
Eugene used the restroom in the Rochester airport to freshen up. He splashed water on his face, brushed his teeth and changed his shirt. It had taken him the entire night to get from El Paso to the city on the shores of Lake Ontario. The airline staff in Pittsburgh had insisted on seeing his passport when he bought the ticket to Rochester, which he had expected, but when the gate attendant scanned the bar code through her machine he knew it was only a matter of time before Irwin Crandle and his team located him. Her reaction to his ire was to smile and tell him to have a nice day. He felt like killing her.
He stepped into the brisk northern air and hailed a cab. He checked his watch and did the math to convert to Pedro’s time zone in San Salvador. Five-forty-three in the morning. Pedro would be calling soon.
“Where are you going, sir?” the Pakistani driver asked cheerfully in lilting English.
Eugene glanced up. He replied in English, although after consistently speaking Spanish ever since arriving in the United States, it felt kind of strange. “Do you know a good place for breakfast?”
“Of course,” the driver said. “I know many. What kind of breakfast would you like?”
&n
bsp; “Coffee and anything edible.”
The driver grinned. “I know the place with the best coffee in all of Rochester. Twenty minutes and we’re there.”
“Sounds good.”
Pedro had completed about one-quarter of his usual route through Colonia Escalón when he dialed and hit the send button, initiating a call to Eugene. The connection was poor, almost entirely static, and after fifteen or twenty seconds he hit the end button. Before he could dial again, a black Maserati accelerated around a bend in the road and came racing toward him. It stopped a few inches from where he stood and two men jumped out. Pedro recognized one of the men from Javier Rastano’s estate.
Both men approached quickly and one of them said, “Could I have the phone, please?” He held his hand in front of him. Under his suit jacket Pedro could see a handgun in a holster.
“Sure,” Pedro said, holding out the phone. The guard took it, punched something on the keypad and the hint of a smile appeared on his lips.
“I’ll need to keep this for right now,” he said.
“That’s my phone,” Pedro protested. He reached out to take it back, but the phone disappeared into the man’s inside suit pocket.
“Mr. Rastano has asked us to bring your cell phone to him.”
“What for?” Pedro asked. “Mr. Rastano has his own phone. He certainly doesn’t need mine.”
But he was talking to their backs. The two guards returned to their car and Pedro watched the high-end sports car turn around and head back to the Rastano estate. It didn’t take a Mensa member to figure out what was going on. Rastano was suspicious and checking up on him. But why? And what did he hope to gain by taking the cell phone? Pedro started jogging again, sorting the disjointed facets of what had just happened into a logical sequence. First, the car hadn’t appeared until seconds after he had placed the call. That would suggest that the men were following him and somehow listening. One of those spy microphones, perhaps. That wasn’t much of a stretch, given Javier Rastano’s wealth. Whatever toys he wanted, he could buy. So Rastano had instructed his boys to listen in on any incoming or outgoing calls, then grab the phone. And one of the goons had checked the phone and smiled. Then it hit him; he hadn’t cleared the outgoing number. Rastano wanted to know who he was calling.
Rastano knew Eugene had someone on the inside.
But how? The last contact he’d had with Eugene was yesterday morning, almost twenty-four hours ago to the minute. No one had been watching him then, at least, not that he knew. Perhaps the problem was at Eugene’s end. Maybe the person feeding Pablo information was playing both sides of the fence.
He kept his pace up in case they were still watching from some unseen location. Sweat formed on his forehead and dripped down on his shirt. He ignored it and kept pumping his legs, his Nikes gliding over the smooth asphalt. That might be the answer. If so, Eugene was in danger. Everything he did would immediately be conveyed to both Javier Rastano and Pablo. It would be childishly simple for both men to adjust their strategies to compensate for any gains the DEA-CIA team made. The efforts of five people were being undermined by one.
Pedro recognized his problems as two-fold. Straight off the top, he was now in harm’s way. At some point Javier Rastano was going to rip off his flimsy cover and expose him. And that meant torture and imminent death. But leaving now was unthinkable. Julie and Shiara wouldn’t survive through the upcoming weekend, and Eugene wasn’t closing in on Pablo’s location quickly enough to find him and get the ten-digit code. As Eugene had put it, he had problems on his end.
Getting word to Eugene was now imperative; he had to let him know that someone was feeding information to both Rastano and Escobar. It was risky, but not impossible. Rastano would probably keep the cell phone, which meant he would have to dial out on a land line. He made his decision as the gates to the Rastano estate came into view. He would find a phone somewhere in the mansion and make the call. Perhaps the one in the gardener’s shed. The benefits outweighed the risks.
Pedro turned into the estate and doubled his speed up the driveway. He reached the house and ground to a halt, taking his pulse and keeping his legs moving to burn off the lactic acid. He walked around the south edge of the house to the backyard, wiping the sweat from his face on his shirt. As he rounded the corner, one of Rastano’s men appeared at the back door and motioned to him.
“Mr. Rastano wants to see you,” he said.
Pedro nodded. This was it. He was either okay or he was a dead man. The next five minutes would tell which.
Chapter Thirty-six
“What do you mean, he’s gone?” Senator Irwin Crandle yelled at Eduardo Garcia. Crandle locked his upper and lower teeth together. There was a distinct grinding sound as his lower jaw moved back and forth.
“Eugene Escobar is not at the hotel, sir,” Garcia repeated. “I checked with the night desk clerk. She said the concierge ordered him a cab last night, and that he instructed her to ask the driver to pull up at the back entrance. He didn’t return.”
“You assigned men to watch the hotel, Agent Garcia. You didn’t think to station one of those men behind the building?”
“There are four entrances to the hotel, sir. I only had two men. They watched the main entrance.”
“Shit,” Crandle said, slamming his fist on the desk. The sound echoed through the small command center at EPIC. Landry and Maxwell sat at their desks, watching. Reid leaned against the far wall, coffee in hand. “The one person I wanted close at hand in case we found Pablo is gone.” He pointed at Reid. “Get on the phone. Check on his credit cards, see if he’s used one in the past twelve hours.” He pointed at Cathy Maxwell. “Check every airline that flies out of El Paso. See if he flew out last night. And Alexander, you pull the taxi logs for last night and find out where the driver dropped him. Also, check the bus depot. Eduardo, check any incoming and outgoing calls Eugene made last night.”
It took less than ten minutes to find out what they needed. Eugene had taken a United Airlines flight to Pittsburgh after stopping at three different ATM machines. At each of the banks, his credit card had been used to secure a cash advance for two thousand dollars. He was on the run. But why Pittsburgh?
“Have we got anything in this mess that points to Pittsburgh?” Crandle asked, waving his arms over the piles of paper burying the desks.
“Nothing that I’ve seen,” Cathy responded.
Alexander shrugged his broad shoulders. “Nada.”
“Not even close,” Bud Reid said.
Garcia shook his head.
“Well, we know he was in Pittsburgh at eleven o’clock last night. Someone’s got to head up to Pennsylvania. Any takers?”
No one raised a hand. Crandle didn’t waste a breath on indecision. “Cathy, you and Alexander get up to Pittsburgh. My plane’s at the airport. I’ll have the pilot file a flight plan and be ready to fly within the hour.” He addressed the entire room. “It’s Wednesday morning, which means Eugene’s only got three days before the deadline. He didn’t waste his time flying to Pittsburgh for nothing. I’m starting to think that if we find Eugene, we might find Pablo.”
Eduardo’s phone rang and he answered it. He thanked the caller and hung up after just a few seconds. “Eugene took a phone call on his cell last night just before he disappeared. It originated in Miami.”
“Mario Correa called him,” Crandle said quietly. He pushed some files aside and sat on the edge of Landry’s desk. “Correa ducks us in Miami, waits for a time when Eugene would be alone, then calls him. What for?”
“He knows where Pablo is,” Bud Reid said.
“Maybe,” Crandle replied. “Maybe not.” He stopped pacing the room and sat on the corner of Landry’s desk. “He knows something of value, that’s for sure.” He glanced down at the desk, looked up, then quickly looked down again. He read for a minute, then slowly picked up a sheet of paper. It was a fax. But what had caught his eye was that the correspondence had originated in El Salvador. “What’s this?” he ask
ed Alexander Landry.
“I just received that this morning,” he said. “I was going to share it, but we’ve been concentrating on what happened to Eugene.”
“You’ve been talking with covert DEA agents in Panama and El Salvador,” Crandle said.
“I thought it might help things if we knew who had Eugene’s wife and daughter,” Landry said, feeling guilty when he had no reason to feel that way. “I’ve got a few friends down south. One of them narrowed it down to two possible people. Antoine Alzate or Javier Rastano. But another source eliminated Alzate. He’s in Europe right now, left four days ago.”
Crandle glared at him. “So you knew Javier Rastano was holding Julie and Shiara Escobar but said nothing.”
“I told you, I was going to bring it up. I just didn’t have time,” Landry said, defensively.
“That’s not proper procedure, Alexander,” Crandle said. “Don’t do it again. You find out something that’s relevant to our case, you tell us.”
“Yes, sir,” Landry said.
Eduardo Garcia said, “I know this guy, Javier Rastano.” That turned every head in the room. Garcia expanded on his statement. “I don’t mean I know him personally, but the El Paso division has seen his name on a few of our reports. Not nice stuff. The guy may be a psychopath; he likes to see people suffer. We’ve got three files where he brutally tortured and then murdered informants in Colombia. We suspect him of at least five killings in El Salvador. He runs a tight ship. His men are extremely well paid and very loyal. Most of them have military experience and know how to use their weapons. No rent-a-cops here. And we think he’s moving some serious quantities of coke.”
“Why is he still operating?” Crandle asked.
Garcia shrugged. “He’s untouchable. Never goes near the drugs himself. We don’t have a clue where he ships it from. We know it’s not Colombia. The coke is going overland and being loaded on freighters in Central America somewhere, but we can’t seem to get a handle on it.”
