by Jeff Buick
“I remember. What can I do for you, Mr. Escobar?”
“I’d like to speak with the team. But by phone, not in person. I need to know where they’re staying.”
“They’re at the Hyatt Regency Rochester on Main Street.”
“Thanks,” Eugene said. He dropped the phone back in its cradle. He got out the phone book, looked through the yellow pages for the number, then dialed and asked the switchboard operator for Eduardo Garcia. She put the call through. It rang a few times, then went back to the operator.
“Mr. Garcia is not answering right now,” she said. “Would you like to leave a message?”
“Yes. But not on his voice mail. I’d like the message I leave to be personally delivered to Mr. Garcia when he is alone. This is extremely important.”
“Yes, sir. What is the message?”
“Tell him to call Eugene Escobar.” He gave her the cell phone number. “But make sure Mr. Garcia knows that he is not to say a word to anyone until he’s spoken with me.”
“I understand.”
“Thank you.”
Eugene returned to the cab and had Bill drop him at three different banks, in quick succession. He withdrew the daily maximum of two thousand dollars from each bank, pocketed the six grand, and they headed for Finger Lakes Community College. He had a debt that needed paying.
Chapter Fifty-three
Irwin Crandle powered up the computer system and waited. He initiated the Internet and checked the history to see which sites had been accessed recently. The hackers had not taken the time to clear the files from the memory, and he followed the path Eugene had used the previous evening. When he reached the highly classified file that detailed the raid on Rastano’s lab, he closed the files and deleted the path from the memory. Then he took the second path, the one Eugene had traveled just a few hours ago. Crandle’s personnel file flashed on the screen, then quickly disappeared. He swore under his breath, and deleted that path from the memory. Then he shut the machine off, wiped the keyboard clean and left the house.
His suspicions were confirmed. Eugene Escobar had pieced together his involvement with Mario and Javier Rastano. Time was now the enemy. The longer Eugene was on the streets with this knowledge, the greater the chance that he would pass it along to someone else. What would Eugene do with the information? Go to the DEA? He doubted that. Try to contact someone at Langley or in the FBI? Again, doubtful. The truth was, he had no idea what the son-of-a-bitch might do. Eugene was proving to be a far more resourceful person than he’d thought. Go figure. A dive master from Venezuela with information that could bring down one of the richest and most powerful men in the United States. What a crazy world.
His phone rang. He answered it as he started his car.
“Senator Crandle, this is Bobby Akins at the Rochester City Police. I think we’ve got a hit on the car your suspect is driving.”
“Really?” Crandle said. “What kind?”
“This Bulbinder Chadi has a relative who lives near where we found the cab who admits that he loaned Bulbinder a blue, 2005, two-door Saturn coupe.” He recited the license number. Crandle jotted it down.
“Thanks, Bobby,” he said. “Listen, when one of your squads spot this car could you do me a favor? I want them to back off and call in the location. When you get the call, please forward the information along to me. Just me. On this line. I’ll have this cell phone with me all day.”
“Yes, sir. Of course. I’ll instruct the officers not to approach the car if they spot it.”
“Thanks, Bobby.”
Crandle jammed the rental into gear and pulled out of Sarah Quigley’s driveway. It wouldn’t take the police long to spot a blue Saturn. Eugene’s hours to live were dwindling quickly.
Chapter Fifty-four
Bill pulled over at a quaint, mom-and-pop restaurant in Bloomfield, a five-mile jaunt from the northern edge of Canandaigua Lake. It was almost lunchtime, and both men were hungry. They ordered homemade dishes from a thick menu. Eugene jotted down some notes while Bill perused a local newspaper.
The first question on Eugene’s mind was why was there no match between the names on the hotel registry and the new Renault owners? What was he missing? When Pablo wanted to talk with Mario, he had Correa fly up from Miami and meet him in Rochester. Eugene presumed that Pablo wanted the meeting in the city because it was convenient for him. And convenience meant that Pablo must live nearby. That was the assumption that he had been basing everything on. That Pablo was living somewhere close to Rochester. But if that were true and Pablo had a house close by, then why would he stay at the Clarion?
Christ, that was it. Pablo drove into Rochester for the meetings. He didn’t stay at the hotel, he simply used it as a meeting place. That’s why his name wasn’t on the hotel registry. Eugene kicked himself for making that wrong assumption; the mistake had cost him time when he should have been looking elsewhere for corroboration of Pablo’s new name. So the hotel registry was out. But the much shorter list of new Renault owners was in. That was good; it would be much easier to deal with a list of nine individuals than page after page of names and addresses, most of them from out-of-state.
He jotted that down. Pablo not registered at hotel, need another source for his name. Without some sort of corroboration on Pablo’s new name, he was left with chasing down all nine Renault owners and hoping he found Pablo first, rather than last. Too much risk that he would run out of time. He needed something more definitive. But what?
Think. Why did Pablo choose the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce in the Bahamas? Why not some other bank? A local bank with the head office in the Bahamas or the Caymans. Why a Canadian bank? He pulled out the map and stared at it. Rochester was as far north as you could go and still be in the United States. The southern border of Canada was just across Lake Ontario. Was there a connection? Is that why Pablo had chosen to live in such a cold climate; because he needed access to Canada? But if that were the case, then why not just live in Canada? He had no answer to that question. But maybe that explained why Pablo had chosen Rochester. He needed to be close to the border.
Okay, now he was getting somewhere. Pablo needed to be near the Canadian border. But why? Did he have family in Canada? No, that didn’t make sense. Juan Pablo and the rest of his immediate family were in the Caribbean. What about a business? Was Pablo running some sort of legitimate business based in Canada? That would explain the transfers from the offshore CIBC branch in the Bahamas. Maybe. But why? Pablo probably didn’t need money, or he’d have withdrawn funds from the Swiss account years ago. Maybe he’d been reluctant to withdraw money from the Swiss account because the activity could raise red flags, which was exactly what had happened. But maybe he did have a thriving business, and he didn’t need money. Maybe he was living off the profits of his latest venture. Pablo may have figured Mario and Javier Rastano would finally lose interest in monitoring the account. If that were the reason for finally transferring some of the money, his judgment had been very poor. The Rastanos had not forgotten the billion-dollar account.
Their very efficient waitress, a smiling woman in her mid-thirties, set the check on the table, and asked, “Anything else?”
“No, thank you,” Eugene said, laying down forty dollars and telling her to keep the change—more of Rastano’s money going to a nice person, he thought. “Let’s go,” he said to Bill, “I want to get the money to Ben and Andrew.”
“No problem,” Bill said, smiling. He had fifteen hundred dollars in his pocket and was one very happy man.
The drive to Finger Lakes gave Eugene more time to think. But this time it wasn’t about Pablo. Irwin Crandle occupied his mind. The senator was a disgrace, and he needed to be toppled. It wouldn’t be easy. But with the evidence on the DEA computers, all he needed to do was get the truth rolling and it would find its way out. Cran- dle’s connection to the Rastano family would destroy him, just as a murder conviction would see him rot in jail. And the rat was gone. If Eduardo Garcia could take care of Crandle,
then Rastano’s eyes and ears inside the team were silenced. Then Eugene had another thought, one that made his stomach bile rise.
Jorge Shweisser, the banker murdered in the picturesque city of Zurich. Murdered because he had succumbed to the lure of working for both Pablo and Rastano. But it was not in Rastano’s best interest to kill the banker. The only person who would have wanted Shweisser dead was Pablo. But how could Pablo have known that the team was sending someone to visit Shweisser unless Pablo was being kept in the loop. And one thing was for certain: Irwin Crandle was not playing both sides of this mess, or he would have brokered a deal for the ten-digit code without involving Eugene Escobar, Cathy Maxwell, Alexander Landry and Bud Reid. And the last thing Crandle needed was to have Fernando Garcia’s nephew hanging around. No, it wasn’t Crandle who was feeding Pablo his intel. Which could only mean one thing.
There was another snitch in the group. If Crandle wasn’t working both sides, then someone else was Pablo’s spy.
Eugene rubbed his temples and tried to clear the cobwebs. Christ, he had just figured out the identity of one informant and now he had another. His brain ached as he tried to keep the neural pathways from shorting out under the stress. Three people were left in the running: Maxwell, Landry and Reid. One of them was dirty. He placed Cathy Maxwell extremely low on the list because Pablo was responsible for her parents’ deaths. Landry and Reid were about even. They were both involved in the search for Pablo after his escape from La Catedral prison, and either one could have been on Pablo’s payroll all along. Pablo had had many miraculous escapes from the American forces under Centra Spike and the Colombian army. Too many. And this explained why. One of the major players had been taking his plata and feeding him information. He closed his eyes and wished the whole mess would just go away.
It didn’t happen.
They skirted the village of Canandaigua and pulled onto the campus grounds at one-thirty. Eugene went to the Registrar’s Office and persuaded them to tell him which class Ben Chadi was in. Computer Sciences, third floor, room 312. He took the stairs and found the classroom without any trouble. When he poked his head in the door, Ben saw him, spoke to the teacher, and joined Eugene in the hallway.
“Hi,” Ben said. “Good to see you. Everything okay?”
“Fine,” Eugene said, handing him a pre-counted stack of bills. “All even. Thanks a million, Ben.”
“My pleasure.” His face was glowing at the sight of the cash. “Any problems with using Quigley’s house?”
“None that I know of.” He looked up and down the empty hallway. “Do you know where Andrew is right now?”
“Yeah, he’s in a chemistry lab. I’ll show you, if you want.”
“Sure. That would be great.” They started walking, and Eugene said, “Andrew and I were talking while you were in Sarah Quigley’s computer. I thought he was a biology major.”
Ben steered Eugene down the stairs onto the second floor. “He is, but the two overlap. He takes chem, biology, zoology, and a lot of math.” They reached a door on the lower floor, and Ben rapped sharply. A teacher opened the door.
“Can I help you?” she asked.
“Andrew Livingston, please,” Ben said. “His uncle’s in from out of town.”
She smiled at Eugene, and said, “He’s almost finished. If you can wait a minute, I’ll get him.”
Eugene and Ben stood at the door looking in at the rows of lab tables that were covered with beakers, test tubes and burners. The twenty or so students were all busy with experiments, and paid no attention to the diversion at the door. Andrew’s head was down and he was writing something in a log book. The teacher tapped him on the shoulder and pointed at the door. She said something to him, and he smiled, removed his safety glasses, gathered his books and approached the door.
“Hi, Eugene,” he said. “How are things?”
Eugene didn’t answer. He was staring into the lab room. Something was in the recesses of his mind, trying to get out. Something important. He stared at the assortment of lab equipment for a moment longer, then answered Andrew. “Everything’s great. I’ve got your money.”
“Hey, a man of his word.”
“Yeah,” Ben said, exposing the tip of the wad Eugene had given him. “Check this out.”
“Holy shit,” Andrew said. “The freakin’ mother lode.” He accepted the cash from Eugene. “Thanks, buddy.”
“You guys helped me out. It’s the least I can do. Thanks again.”
They shook, and he left them, two very happy students with no worries about where their weekend beer money would come from. He exited the building, but glanced back. The chemistry lab was bugging him; some bit of information was locked away in his brain but he didn’t have the key. Why would a college chemistry lab create a spark somewhere in his memory banks? He thought back to the ill-fated day at Pablo’s Nápoles estate. The cocaine lab in the jungle, the realization that Pablo was indeed a narco. They weren’t pretty memories.
But how were the two related? Cocaine couldn’t be processed without certain chemicals. Along with being the enforcer, one of Pablo’s main functions for the Medellín cartel had been to procure the hydrochloric acid, acetone and ether for the labs. Centra Spike and DEA had gone after the chemicals, attempting to stop the shipments before they reached Colombia. Without the chemicals there would be no processed cocaine.
Then, like a blast of water from a high-pressure sprayer, it hit him. The chemicals. Pablo had not only been an expert on violence and moving cocaine into America, he was also an expert on the chemicals used to process the raw coca leaf. Eugene was shaking with anticipation when he got back to the car.
“Bill,” he said, barely able to breathe. “Get me to an Internet café. I need to go online.”
Chapter Fifty-five
Eduardo Garcia took the stairs two at a time. Since he wasn’t able to get to the gym and keep up his regular workout, the stairs helped keep him in shape. He reached the fire door on five and yanked the handle. He walked briskly down the hall, fished his room key from a pocket, swiped it through the reader and opened the door. Moments after he closed the door, there was a soft knock. Garcia opened the door and found the woman from the front desk in the hall.
“Mr. Garcia, I have a message for you. But I must ask, are you alone?”
“Yes. Why?”
The receptionist fished a piece of paper from her pocket. “Could you please tell me the last eight digits of the credit card you used when you checked in?”
“What the hell is going on?” Eduardo asked, getting angry.
“Mr. Garcia, I have a message for you. But it is only for you, no one else. I must make sure it is you.”
“All right,” Garcia said, pulling out his wallet. Palming the credit card, he read, “6493 9018.”
“Thank you. The message is from Eugene Escobar. Please call him at this number.” She handed him the piece of paper. On it were written his credit card number, and Eugene’s phone number, including the area code. “And Mr. Garcia, Señor Escobar was adamant. Only you must know about this.”
“Thank you.” He closed the door and sat down on the edge of the bed, fingering the tiny piece of paper. Eugene Escobar, the very man they were hunting, had called and left a message for him. Why him? He plucked the receiver from its cradle and dialed the number. The connection was filled with static, but he recognized Eugene’s voice at the other end of the line.
“Eugene, it’s Eduardo Garcia. What can I do for you?”
“Thanks for calling. Anyone else with you right now?” Eugene pressed his back into the hard, wooden slats on the chair and looked away from the computer to concentrate on the phone call. The small Internet café was quiet, and despite a bit of static, he was able to hear Garcia quite clearly.
“No. I’m alone in my hotel room.”
“I’ve got some information which you may find rather unsettling. But I think you deserve to hear it.”
“Go ahead.”
“Your uncle, F
ernando, he was a logistics expert with the DEA and stationed in Bogotá back in ‘93. Correct?”
“Yes.”
“Then they moved him to Medellín?”
“Yes. They wanted him closer to the labs and airstrips.”
“Well, the storyline the DEA was fed by the agent in the field about how your uncle died is a lie. He was killed by another agent, not drug traffickers. But I think you suspected that, didn’t you?”
There was silence for a minute, then Eduardo said, “It was his sister, my aunt, who suspected they were covering up something. She tried to dig into it, but she got stonewalled. The agency was hesitant to give her any information; everything was always deemed classified. She finally gave up about three years ago.”
“But you’ve continued to look around, in a covert sort of way?”
“Sort of,” Eduardo said. “Listen, Eugene, I like my job and I don’t want to say anything to jeopardize it. If the agency finds out I’m digging around in an old file, I could get fired.”
Eugene almost laughed at the absurdity of it. Him going to Alexander Landry and tattling on one of his agents. “Eduardo, I’m going to tell you what happened to your uncle. And who has been passing information back to Javier Rastano.”
Eugene spent the next five minutes detailing out his findings and giving Eduardo the file names in the DEA database for confirmation. He gave the young agent Crandle’s code name and explained how he had cross- correlated the two files and discovered it was Crandle who was working for Rastano. He had Garcia copy the path Ben had taken through the DEA computer to the two files. It would be much easier for Garcia to find the elusive files with the pathway.
“Now you know,” Eugene said when he was finished.
“Christ, Eugene, this guy is a United States senator. Who is going to believe me over him?”
“He’s also a traitor and a murderer, Eduardo. And the proof is on the DEA database. And from what I’ve been told, it’s protected with some sort of anti-erase software. The evidence to convict Crandle is there, you just have to be ready to use it.”
