by Jeff Buick
Chapter Forty-six
Eugene spent Thursday’s daylight hours jotting down ideas and making notes on each EPIC team member. Pablo was close by. That was a given. But close didn’t count; he needed to get face-to-face with his cousin. And that wasn’t going to happen without some good deductive reasoning. The facts were in front of him but he just had to sort them out.
Someone was informing both Javier Rastano and Pablo of the team’s progress. One person was undoing all the investigative work of the team and eliminating any chance of taking Pablo by surprise. But who? There was precious little to go on.
Alexander Landry had withheld Rastano’s name, but according to him, he was about to tell the group when Senator Crandle had noticed the fax. Maybe Landry knew all along it was Rastano holding Julie and Shiara. Then there was the financial drain of having all those kids in college, yet he didn’t seem bothered by it. And, of course, Landry had spent time in Colombia in the wild days when the cartel was throwing money every which way. Maybe Landry had been on the payroll since the hunt for Pablo. Maybe.
Cathy Maxwell appeared innocent, but Eugene had noted one telling bit of information on Tuesday at EPIC. When she had complained about her hotel room and the pillows, Landry had accused her of missing her multimillion dollar home. Multi-million, not just million. What kind of civil servant makes enough money to live in that kind of luxury? And Maxwell was as entrenched in Colombia as anyone on the team. Then she had visited Pablo during his incarceration at La Catedral. But Pablo had struck back at her for stemming the flow of chemicals to the cocaine labs by sending his sicarios to Boston. No one questioned the sacrifice she had made to the cause, losing her parents in a brutal execution. Perhaps, Eugene thought, the money from her parents’ estate explained the dream house she and her family lived in. Perhaps.
Senator Irwin Crandle was an enigma. Eugene saw him as shadowy, almost untrustworthy. But the ability to lie at will and manipulate people had taken him far, especially in his political life. He certainly didn’t hurt for money, jetting about in his own private Lear. His political connections in Washington were with some of the most powerful people on the Hill, including the president. If Crandle was dirty, toppling him would be a monumental task. He was insulated from any sort of attack, unless concrete proof could be laid on the table. If the senator was the informant, he hadn’t likely left any incriminating evidence lying about.
Bud Reid was just as shadowy as the senator, but without the trappings of success and power. He had run roughshod over the narcos during the late ’80s and early ’90s, and his allegiance was to the field troops. He brought his men back from the sorties, busted the labs, took apart the jungle airstrips and brought down Cessnas filled with processed cocaine with greater skill than any other DEA man. He was revered by both Delta and Centra Spike, and that respect had to be earned. Still, Reid could have led successful raids on a few of the cartel’s labs and airstrips as a cover, while allowing the majority to thrive. Every DEA agent who spent time in Colombia agreed that they only managed to bust the tip of the iceberg. Tons of cocaine still made it through to the States.
And that left Eduardo Garcia. He was most inconspicuous of the five, having no prior DEA experience in Colombia, and thus no opportunity to cement ties with the former drug lords. But the sudden appearance of his uncle, Fernando Garcia, was a wrinkle. Did the veteran Garcia have a deal in place with Pablo and the Rastano clan prior to his death? Perhaps Eduardo was continuing the Garcia tradition. Mario Correa had described Fernando Garcia as a loose cannon, the kind of person who sometimes stepped over the line. And the Garcia brothers were in college in Dallas, even though their father was still cleaning swimming pools. What had changed there that the money was now available for tuition and living expenses in a major city like Dallas? That took money. Serious money.
Eugene rubbed his hands across his eyes. He was tired from thinking, but something was telling him that the answer was right in front of him, in black and white. He reviewed his notes, but nothing jumped out at him. There was a light knock on the door and he checked the time. Two o’clock. That would be Bill. And the cab arriving meant he could get out of the dingy hotel room and get some lunch.
Tonight was key. He was picking up Andrew and Ben outside their residence at one in the morning and they were heading back to Sarah Quigley’s house. Maybe the key he needed to put everything together was in a database out there somewhere. And maybe Ben would find it.
Maybe.
Chapter Forty-seven
Nadeem Chadi looked like she was about to keel over. She grabbed the door jamb and leaned against it, staring at Alexander Landry’s credentials.
“What happened to my husband? He’s been in an accident?”
“No, Mrs. Chadi. Nothing like that. We just want to know where he is.”
“He’s in trouble?” she asked, pulling herself off the jamb, a stern look crossing her face. She smoothed her sari and said, “I told him he was probably doing something illegal. Nobody pays a taxi driver five hundred dollars a day to chauffer him around. People who want a car for the entire day rent one. But no, he insists that this is just a nice man with lots of money.”
“So he’s taken a few days off to drive one person around Rochester. At five hundred a day?”
Nadeem Chadi bit the end of her tongue. “Did I say five hundred? Maybe that was high.”
“Mrs. Chadi, we’re not from the IRS, and we don’t care if your husband is pocketing some cash on the side. But if you don’t cooperate, I can have the IRS here in under an hour. Now, where is your husband?”
“He said something about picking up his fare in Henrietta. They were going somewhere after dark. I don’t know where.”
“Does he carry a cell phone?” Alexander asked.
“Usually. But it needed repairs, and when he got this job he decided he wouldn’t need the phone for a day or two, and took it in to get fixed.”
“Well, he’ll be on dispatch,” Cathy said, turning away and starting down the steps toward their rental car. “We can have the cab company call him and get his location.”
“That won’t work,” Bulbinder’s wife said, stopping both Alexander and Cathy in their tracks. “If he’s not working he turns off the radio. The dispatch calls bother him.”
“All right,” Alexander said with resignation. “Thanks for your time.”
“One more thing,” Cathy said. “When do you expect him to get home?”
Mrs. Chadi shrugged. “I don’t know. Tomorrow morning sometime.”
The two agents left the tiny bungalow and trudged back to their car. They drove to the local police station and asked the sergeant on duty to put out an APB for the taxi. They recited the plate and taxi numbers that the dispatcher had given them, thanked the officer for his cooperation and left after jotting down both their cell phone numbers. It was just a matter of time before one of the police cruisers spotted the cab and called it in.
“What now?” Alexander asked.
“We can canvass the motels and hotels in Henrietta,” Cathy said. “And when we get the call we’ll decide what to do with Eugene Escobar.”
As they exited the restaurant, both Bill and Eugene noticed the police at the same time. Two officers were scrutinizing the cab, which was parked in the stall next to the handicapped parking, and they were jotting down the license plate number. Neither cop glanced up, and Eugene pulled the cab driver back into the restaurant.
“Am I in some sort of trouble?” Bill asked.
“No, but I might be. I’d better get out of here. Give me a couple of minutes and then go to your car. You’ve done nothing wrong.” Eugene counted out five hundred dollars and handed it across. To his surprise, the man didn’t take it.
“I haven’t earned the money,” he said. “But I can, if you want me to.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve got a brother who lives a couple of blocks from here. We could borrow one of his cars for the day.”
�
��You’re sure?” Eugene asked. “You don’t mind?”
“No, it’s okay. Follow me. It’s not far.” They left the diner through a side door and walked down the street at a brisk pace.
An hour later they were driving a four-door, dark blue Saturn with six thousand miles on the odometer. Eugene suggested they get out of Rochester, especially Henrietta, as quickly as possible. If the cops knew about the cab, they knew about the room at the Super 8. Eugene didn’t care. The only items left in the room were his toiletries and a change of clothes, and he could pick up replacement items easily enough. He still had some cash left, although it was dwindling quickly.
He sat next to Bill as they drove toward FLCC. The EPIC team was in Rochester—one or two of them, anyway—as he had known they would be. The cops weren’t singling out parked taxi cabs and scrutinizing them without a reason. And that reason would be a request from the DEA or the CIA. Either organization had plenty of clout and would have the local cops jumping when they suggested a height. It was still midafternoon, and hours to go before meeting with Andrew and Ben. But without the information from the DMV database to cross-correlate against the hotel records, none of the names meant anything. What he needed was for one name to appear on both the hotel guest list and on the registration for a new Renault.
Eugene pulled out the list Ben had given him last night, and scanned it again for the eighth time. Nothing. Not one of the names was familiar, and there were no easy-to-spot aliases. He’d read that most people chose an alias with the same initials as his or her real name. But there wasn’t even one guest with the initials PE.
Bill steered into Naples, a hamlet at the southernmost tip of Canandaigua Lake, and parked the car. They walked the streets, looking through the shops, killing time. It seemed so strange to Eugene that with so little time left to track down Pablo, he was walking aimlessly down the main street of a tiny community, looking through crafts stores. One of them, alive with replicas of brewery paraphernalia from the days when over fifty breweries operated out of Syracuse, had a table in the rear with a computer connected to the Internet. Eugene bought a coffee and thirty minutes on the machine. He accessed the DEA homepage, at www.dea.gov, and scrolled down to the Wall of Honor. One click took him into the list of DEA agents and staff killed accidentally or in the line of duty. He found the file on Fernando Garcia, and read the script.
Garcia was stationed in Bogotá in February of 1993, assigned to the logistics sector, a specialist in aviation routes in and out of Colombia. In late February, Agent Garcia was transferred to Medellín, taken off the desk and put to work in the field. He scouted airfields and labs by helicopter with technical assistance from Centra Spike. Few details were given of his exact function while in the field, and the communiqué ended by stating that Agent Garcia had been shot while conducting a raid on a suspected laboratory. The article failed to mention which drug lord owned the lab or who Garcia was working with when he died. Eugene printed the page, folded it and stuck it in his back pocket. It was food for thought. He signed off the computer, and checked his time to ensure he hadn’t gone over his half hour.
As he left the shop, he realized that he had only one avenue of attack on the go, and that if the foray into the DMV database didn’t yield something conclusive tonight, he was sunk. As the afternoon dragged on and evening arrived, his mood grew more somber. After supper, he picked up some information that gave him a shred of hope. He purchased a pie for the boys to eat, when the woman manning the till asked them where they were from.
“Venezuela,” Eugene said, not seeing any reason to be dishonest. “It’s lovely there in the spring, just as it is here,” he added.
“This is nothing,” she responded cheerfully. “You should see it in the summer. Absolutely stunning. In fact, Canandaigua is Iroquois for “the Chosen Place.”
Eugene wondered if the name had influenced Pablo’s decision to live there.
And with that small shot of encouragement came hope.
Chapter Forty-eight
“He’s closing in on you,” the voice said. “And he’s showing no sign of slowing down.”
Pablo didn’t respond for a few seconds, then asked, “Where is Eugene now?”
“Last we heard from him he was in Henrietta, a suburb of Rochester, earlier today. But we haven’t managed to get our hands on him. The police found the cab, abandoned, but no driver. Eugene’s no fool.”
“No, Eugene is no fool. Has he managed to uncover your identity yet?”
“No. I don’t think so. And I’m not worried. He’s concentrating on finding you, not me.”
“He may surprise you,” Pablo said.
“Any surprise like that will result in him dying very quickly,” the voice had turned icy.
“I’m beginning to prefer that my cousin live through this. But if the situation gets out of hand, either you or I may have to kill him.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m ready to move if I have to. Javier’s deadline is approaching quickly, and if he follows through with his threat and kills Julie and Shiara, Eugene will be heading straight to El Salvador to kill Rastano. So I may not have to do anything. It’s all a matter of timing now.”
“You think Javier Rastano will kill the women?”
“I know he will. If Eugene can’t uncover me in the next forty hours or so, his family is going to be a lot smaller.”
“All right. I’ve got to go. Just be warned, he’s getting close.”
“I can take care of myself,” Pablo said viciously, and hung up the phone.
He appreciated being kept abreast of the situation, but he didn’t need to be told the same thing more than once. The Crown Royal bottle on the bar was almost empty, and he poured the final couple of ounces in a glass and added ice. He sipped the drink, thinking about Eugene. He hardly knew him. The man had avoided him, and never asked for anything. Unlike many of his other relatives. He had never met Julie or Eugene’s daughter, but he suspected they were good people. Sometimes good people died. It was a fact of life.
He shook his head at Eugene’s tenacity. He had progressed much further in the hunt than anyone had expected, had succeeded where law agencies, armed with the latest technology and specially trained agents, had failed. Not that anyone had been seriously hunting him since December of 1993, but in the two years prior to his apparent death even Centra Spike couldn’t catch him. And that was partially thanks to the informant he had just spoken with. What a relationship. Fourteen years and counting. It had been exceptionally useful then, and was proving equally valuable now. And this allegiance to him was based on one small favor. Amazing.
He punched the intercom, and a few moments later Miguel entered the room. He had aged since the days when he worked as one of the guards at Nápoles, but his allegiance was without question, just as it had been the day he took Eugene into the jungle on the dirt bikes. Miguel reached the desk, and waited.
“I want you to run into town and get a few things. If we have to leave I want at least a couple of bottles of Crown Royal.” He pointed to the empty bottle. “And that was the last one.” Pablo handed Miguel a handwritten list. “Get the stuff on this list and pack it in the Lincoln.”
Miguel checked his watch. “Too late to go today. The shops will be closed. I’ll have to go tomorrow.”
“Not a problem.”
Miguel pocketed the list, and asked, “Anything else?”
“Back up the computers tonight. Get all the current bank balances and make sure you have all the account numbers and transit codes. I don’t want to be scrambling if we have to leave quickly.”
Miguel nodded and left. Pablo glanced at the empty whiskey bottle, and wished it were full. Then he shook his head at the futility of wishing for things. It was always a waste of time. Reality always told another story. He wondered briefly if Eugene was wishing for things right now; his wife back in his arms, his daughter safely at his side.
“Just wishes, Eugene, that’s all they are,�
� he said quietly, to no one.
Chapter Forty-nine
The Learjet touched down in Rochester at just before midnight Thursday. Cathy Maxwell and Alexander Landry were on the tarmac to meet Crandle and the rest of the team. They rode together in a rented Infiniti Q45 SUV, their scant luggage thrown in through the back hatch.
“What have you got?” Crandle asked, as Landry steered the vehicle off the access road and onto the expressway.
“Nothing new. We’ve asked the local cops to watch the cab driver’s house in case he comes home. But his wife says he’s gone until tomorrow morning, at the earliest.”
“But you’ve got the cab,” Crandle said. “They don’t have wheels.”
“Maybe they jacked a car.” Landry entered the fast lane and accelerated to eighty miles an hour.
“Maybe this cab driver has relatives or friends with a car,” Crandle said. “Have you checked out the people he knows who live near where the cab was found?”
“No,”
“Do it,” Crandle snapped. “They had to get their hands on another vehicle somewhere. I want to know what they’re driving.”
“Okay. We’ll get on it right away.”
Crandle stared out the window at the passing scenery. Gas stations with neon signs that cut through the blackness popped up at irregular intervals along the road. An occasional late-night restaurant awash in light flashed by. But most of the buildings were dark and shuttered for the night. Rochester, New York. In a million years, who would have dreamed that Pablo Escobar would live in such a cold climate. Perhaps that was just another of the drug lord’s crafty moves that always kept him several steps ahead of his pursuers.
“Tomorrow is Friday,” Crandle said, breaking the silence. “Our last full day to find Eugene and Pablo. After that, the wife and kid die, and everything changes. One day, people. That’s it. Let’s be at our best tomorrow.”
Chapter Fifty
The Saturn glided into Sarah Quigley’s driveway at six minutes before two. The adjacent properties were dark, and no dogs barked as the four men piled out of the car and made their way to the house. Andrew had the key in his hand and had opened the door by the time Eugene and Bill reached it. They entered and made their way to the rear of the house to the computer. Ben fired up the machine. The other three sat, and waited.
