by Jon Mills
On the flight over he thought about Agent Baker. She was a good-looking woman, and he could tell there was something different about her. Isabel’s determination to bring him in almost bordered upon obsessive. The feds were good at spending months observing and gathering Intel before they swept in and nabbed their man but that usually involved taking down more than one person. What was their fascination with him? What did they really think he could provide that any other mobster couldn’t?
A stewardess came by and asked him if he wanted a drink. He asked for bourbon and allowed his mind to drift back to the days when he was working for Gafino. He’d seen many of the crime families taken down. Most of the time if they were small fish, the FBI would try to arrange a plea deal where they would provide information on other members in exchange for a lighter sentence. Many of them took it. There was no honor among thieves. Once nabbed, in cuffs and staring down a ten or twenty-year sentence, even the hardest would crack and give up their own mother for a few years off their stretch.
He’d always thought it was cowardice. Even when he was arrested he never mentioned a single person’s name. It wasn’t that he feared for his life, Gafino could have had him killed on the inside; it was a matter of principle. You didn’t rat on those you ran with. Back then he didn’t think right. Jack’s entire life revolved around maintaining business and keeping the heat away from his boss.
Looking back on it now, he wondered if he had ratted that perhaps he would have got out within a year instead of wasting away years of his life behind bars for people who didn’t give two shits about his well-being.
“Your drink, sir.”
“Thanks.” He took it and downed it in one gulp, then settled back. In a matter of forty minutes they would be on the ground and then he had to act fast.
Chapter Eighteen
Jack held up the photo of Danielle to the fourth person in the marketplace. After landing and booking into a central hotel he ventured into the streets and began doing what he did best —hunting for those who didn’t want to be found. If Danielle had managed to get a message out, someone must have helped her.
“Think.”
A woman dressed in traditional Peruvian clothes showed the image to a man and he shook his head. When she handed it back to him she stretched out her hand in the hope that she would receive a dollar. She hadn’t given him anything, but regardless he dropped a few notes into her grubby fingers.
After working his way through at least thirty different stall and store owners in the west side of the city, he headed into the Plaza de Armas, the central hub for everything. Speakers, presentations and music were being played on the steps of a church. Restaurants with balconies were packed with people drinking coffee and looking down on the colorful array of locals and tourists in the bustling streets.
Jack took a seat on the edge of a knee-high concrete wall that encircled a two-tier water fountain and took in the sights, smell and sounds of the historic city. He watched a young couple take photos of each other as a very old wooden tram passed by jam-packed with tourists snapping photos and munching on snacks. Off to his left was the Qorikancha sun temple and further down was a large Gothic cathedral.
He couldn’t help feel like a fish out of water. The city was huge and with the pure number of people streaming in and out of its stores, marketplaces and venues, how could anyone recall a face that perhaps they had only seen once a month?
On the far side of the square was a strip of stores side by side. One of them was a cyber café that was advertising printing services. He contemplated having her photo printed off and plastering it around with his number on it. On one hand it was a risky move; on the other it might allow him to quickly attract the attention of anyone who had seen her without having to spend hours going from store to store.
Screw it, he thought.
Inside the café it was nothing like a printer’s. They had a machine at the back that scanned, copied and printed with a computer beside. On the wall were a few accessories that could be purchased such as envelopes, tape, cardboard and stuffing. It was minimalistic. Jack bought a coffee, borrowed a pen from the owner and scanned a copy of the photo on an 8x11 sheet of paper. He wrote a short message in English and Spanish at the bottom that let people know if they had seen her to contact his number. After that he printed out two hundred copies. He bought some tape and then spent the next hour going around to posts and sticking up the paper. He would have never done this in the Big Apple but desperate times called for desperate measures.
He continued to do this over the next twenty-four hours without even a bite. On the second day he was sure he would receive a phone call from Isabel. He figured she would have made her way here but another day passed and there was nothing but crickets. No one seemed to respond.
By the third day he was beginning to think that he had bitten off more than he could chew. What on earth made him think that he could find her?
By noon on the third day he was taping up another sheet on the east side of Cusco when he felt a tug at the hem of his coat. He looked around to see a young girl. Her face was dirtied by the dusty air and she looked as if she hadn’t changed her clothes in forever. They were stained and one part was torn. He assumed she wanted money as he’d seen a number of them around her age selling necklaces laid out on top of colorful, hand-woven blankets near street corners.
“Here you go, kid,” he handed her what amounted to twenty bucks and went back to taping the last corner to a wooden phone pole. He felt the tug again but this time she spoke in broken English.
“The woman. I see.”
“You speak English?”
She nodded. She couldn’t have been more than fifteen years of age. He bent slightly at the waist and thumbed off another one of the leaflets before holding it out to her. “You know this woman?”
The girl pointed in the direction of the washrooms.
“She’s over there?”
She shook her head. “She was...” she searched for the word. “Here.”
He stared down at her unable to believe his luck. He still wasn’t sure she had seen her, perhaps she was confused but after all the days he had spent asking and posting up leaflets, he was willing to follow even the smallest inkling. Noticing that she looked a little worse for wear he thought it was best to take care of the most immediate issue. Her.
“You hungry?”
She nodded.
“Come on, I’ll buy you some lunch.”
He began walking back to the café but then noticed she wasn’t beside him. He cast a glance over his shoulder. She was standing in the same spot.
“Well? You coming?”
She looked around nervously and he figured that perhaps others had approached her before but for all the wrong reasons.
“I’m not going to harm you,” he said before motioning to his lips with his hands, the universal symbol of eating as if she needed to have it explained to her in sign language. She was hesitant at first but eventually followed him across the square back to a café.
Inside he got a seat close to the window but out of the direct light. It was getting hot and he was already sweating buckets. He bought two cold drinks and bought two bowls of causa rellena. It was a traditional meal in Peru made from sliced potatoes, eggs and avocados. It was a sort of casserole.
The waiter placed a dish in front of the kid and she immediately started scoffing it down like a little bird that hadn’t eaten in days. She didn’t bother with utensils and instead scooped it into her mouth using her hands. Jack smiled ever so slightly and she looked up then gazed over to a few people who were staring at her.
“When did you last eat?”
She spoke with her mouth full. “Last night.”
“You didn’t eat breakfast?”
“I didn’t…” she washed it down with a mouthful of juice, “eat yet today.”
The girl had thick dark hair that extended halfway down her body. Her lips were full and her face looked as if it held wisdom far be
yond her years. She was wearing a grey T-shirt and what may have been white shorts at one time. A red and brown necklace hung around her neck. Jack reached for it and she slapped his hand acting all defensive.
He backed up. “It’s okay, I wasn’t going to take it. I just wanted to take a closer look. That’s fine.”
She studied him with suspicious eyes. Her eyes were a deep brown.
“It was my mother’s.”
He nodded. “Where are your parents?”
“I don’t know where my father is. My mother left me.”
Jack screwed up his face. “To go where?”
She shrugged. “When I was seven, I woke up one morning and there was a note and a bag of candy beside my mattress. I never saw her again. I looked but haven’t found her.”
“So who looks after you?”
“Myself.”
She said it in a way as if it was a common thing down here. Like no big deal.
“What’s your name?”
“Mia.”
“How old are you?”
She stared out the window and began counting on her fingers. “Fourteen.”
“And where do you stay?”
She motioned with her head outside. Jack pointed. “On the streets?”
He continued watching her eat until she was done. He had barely touched his and she was staring at the bowl so he shifted it across. Without even saying a word she began tucking in. This kid was famished. He couldn’t even begin to imagine a fourteen-year-old girl living on the streets in the United States. It was practically unheard of.
“Are the others like you? I mean, that live on the streets?”
She nodded and made a sound with her cheeks full of food. After swallowing she told Jack that she sold jewelry on the streets. Occasionally a store owner would give her some bread but not very often. Most of the time she ate out of the dumpsters or used what little money she gained. She bathed in the river and when she wasn’t sleeping on cardboard she sometimes slipped into the local church and slept there.
“What about grandparents?”
“I don’t have any.”
“Friends?”
She looked out of the window at some of the other kids that milled around. “I keep my distance. Many of them have tried to pull me into what they do but I don’t like it.”
She didn’t need to explain what that meant, he could see it for himself. Older men approached kids on the streets, and exchanged a few words and walked off with them only to return ten minutes later to the same spot. Jack shook his head. His own upbringing was hard. He knew what it was like to sleep on the steps of a building because he was too afraid to come home. He knew what it was like to go hungry or steal because he couldn’t see his way out of his situation. But at least he had Eddie Carmine watching out for him. She had no one.
“You said you had seen this girl, Danielle.”
She nodded continuing to eat.
“How long ago?”
She gave a rough estimate.
“Did you see which direction they went?”
She nodded and pointed towards a bus terminal.
“They caught a bus?”
“No, they have their own van but they park there.”
“Yeah, that’s not going to be much use to me,” he muttered. “They could be anywhere.”
Mia shook her head. “No, she said they fly out to Puerto Maldonado and are somewhere in the Tambopata Reserve.”
“What is that?”
She looked at him as if he was stupid. “A reserve in the Amazon basin.”
“The Amazon rainforest?”
She nodded. He sat there and watched her finish up her meal. She burped at the end and smiled. He noticed her teeth looked as if they could use some dental treatment. Jack glanced out the window at the vast crowd of people watching performers. There was a magic to be seen in this city and yet lurking below the surface of smiles, laughter and color was a very dark side that few knew about. And those that did, weren’t sure how to deal with it so nothing was ever done.
Jack’s phone began buzzing on the table. He looked down at the phone ID but it said Private Caller. He answered it thinking it was someone who might have seen one of the sheets.
“Yeah?”
There was quiet on the other end of the phone and then she spoke.
“Looking good, Jack.”
He felt his blood run cold at the sound of Special Agent Baker’s voice. His eyes immediately darted around the street outside. He screeched his chair back.
“Startled?” He didn’t answer. “Did you really think that I wouldn’t come looking for you?”
“Oh I figured you would. Maybe not this soon.”
“I must say, I appreciate you making my job easy. This flyer of Danielle is golden. Now where are you?”
“That depends. Where are you?”
She let out a laugh as if they were embroiled in a game of wits.
“Now, Jack, let’s not make this any harder than it already is. There are a lot of tourists in this square. I’m guessing you are not far from here.”
He ducked down even though he hadn’t seen her. He continued eyeing the square, his pulse racing. That’s when he spotted her, in the middle of the square by the fountain. She was looking around.
“Love to chat. Gotta go,” Jack said hanging up.
He saw her turn sharply as if trying to pinpoint his position.
“Here, Mia,” Jack reached into his pocket and handed her close to five hundred dollars. “Take this, buy yourself some clothes, food, water and find shelter at a motel or something for the next week or two. I will be back and we will meet here, okay. Check this café every day at around noon. I will return.”
Her eyes widened as he released the roll of notes in her hand.
“Keep it hidden and out of sight. Don’t tell anyone you have it. You understand?”
She nodded looking at him on the ground as if he was having a mental breakdown. A few other patrons in the café were doing the same thing. Jack shuffled towards the back of the store and then rose up and asked the owner if there was a back exit.
He nodded and Jack immediately went to go through the doors.
“Hey, you can’t go back there.”
He pushed his way into the kitchen past a chef and several staff members. The commotion he was creating was going to attract attention. If he didn’t get out of here soon she would notice.
A large man with a dirty white muscle shirt came out of one of the washrooms and someone yelled something in Spanish and he immediately went for Jack. It was like being attacked by a sumo wrestler. Stuck inside a small corridor he found himself slammed against the side of the wall. He drove his knee up into his groin but the guy barely registered it. He tried again but without any luck. With both of his wrists held against the wall he did the only thing left, he head butted him as hard as he could, driving his forehead against his nose. It burst and blood covered the front of his face. The guy reached for his face. A sharp hook to the side of his face and Jack slid by him but now there was even more shouting. Though this time it wasn’t a staff member or Isabel but local police. He turned and saw two of them pushing their way into the kitchen. He dashed out of the exit into an alley that smelled rancid. A whistle was blown. Looking to his left he saw that there was a fence at the far end; the other way took him back out into the square. He bolted towards the square and was about thirty yards from it with the police coming up behind him, when Isabel came into view at the mouth of the alley. His eyes flared as he found himself sandwiched between Peru’s finest and the FBI.
Chapter Nineteen
Jack held up his hands. The police were the first to reach him. As the officer grabbed one hand, Jack spun around and kicked him back into the other one. They attempted to do a takedown tackle but missed him as he slipped along the wall. All the while Isabel was shouting and rushing towards them. Jack bolted for the fence.
“Winchester, stop or I shoot.”
He kept runnin
g even when the sound of a bullet went off. He had no way of knowing if she was aiming directly at him but he wasn’t going to be taken into custody, especially not in Peru. He’d heard the horror stories of Americans getting tossed in jails down in South America. It wasn’t pretty. Jack didn’t stop to look back. He vaulted up and over that fence with all the prowess of a tiger. When he landed on the other side he felt a shot of pain in his ankle.
I’m getting too old for this shit, he thought.
There was no time to slow down as he heard Agent Baker scaling the fence behind him. He pressed on down the alley and darted into a busy intersection. Taxi drivers beeped their horns and threw their fists up at him as his entrance into the road forced them to hit brakes. One taxi nearly plowed him over. He slipped over the front of the hood and kept running down into the next alley. Every now and again he would glance over his shoulder and see Isabel and the two officers behind her.
His heart was pounding in his chest and his foot was in agonizing pain as he dashed between gates, clambered over fences and scaled up and over a wall using pallets of wood that were stacked up against it. Jack heard another shot echo and he knew that she was gaining on him. As he came out onto the second busy street, he saw a taxi driver helping a lady get her luggage into the back. The driver had left his door wide open. Jack practically dived inside, hit the gas and swerved out, causing the taxi to slam up against another vehicle. His eyes darted to the rearview mirror just in time to hear the windscreen shatter. She was still firing at him. Crazy bitch, he muttered as he tried to navigate his way through the heavily trafficked roads. It wasn’t like he could move fast. One moment he thought he was in the clear, and the next he was beeping his horn for people to get out of the way. It might have worked if he was in New York but here, no one paid any attention, it was common for taxis to beep non-stop at other vehicles.
