The Sienna Sand

by Jeff Siebold

  “Hence federal prison,” said Zeke.

  “Nice,” said Clive. “Sounds like he’s a proper wanker.”

  They were back in Clive’s office, sitting around the low table and discussing the Cumberland FCI situation. Outside, the twilight was continuously interrupted by headlights and streetlights.

  “Does he have gang affiliations?” Zeke asked Sally.

  “Sure. It looks like it,” said Sally. “Says here he’s affiliated with the Black Monkey Family, BMF for short.”

  “What’s that?” asked Clive, distastefully.

  “The gang originated in California prisons,” said Zeke. “Made their way east to the Baltimore area because of the logistical advantages…”

  Clive said, “Logistical advantages?”

  “Sure. Baltimore’s a prime East Coast location for gun and drug trafficking. Geographical advantages…” said Zeke. “I-95 runs through there, and the river’s close by. Plus it’s close to both D.C. and to New York City.”

  “And O.Z. was in with them?” asked Kimmy. She’d been standing behind Sally’s chair, looking at the file over her shoulder.

  “BMF all the way,” said Sally. “Looks like he thinks he’s a player, too.”

  “His history?” asked Zeke.

  “Exactly. He was in the Baltimore City Detention Center for a while, a few years. He ran the place,” said Sally.

  “How bad?” asked Clive.

  Sally paused. “Says here he got four correctional officers pregnant. The FBI finally arrested them, a dozen people in all. The guards were smuggling cell phones and drugs into the prison for him.”

  “Any violent crime?” asked Clive.

  “Other than having the assault rifles, no. Not O.Z. personally, that we know of. But the BMF has some shooters that are pretty much certifiable. They’re the ‘walk-up-to-you-and-shoot-you’ type,” Sally said. “They have no souls and no mercy. And when the police take one of them off the street, another crazy pops up.”

  “Sounds like O.Z. knows his way around prisons,” said Kimmy.

  “Sounds like he knows how the contraband gets inside,” said Zeke.

  * * *

  “His real name’s Oscar. Oscar Lamar. No idea where the ‘Z’ came from,” said Sally, still looking over the file.

  “From what Carl said, he’s playing the role of dealer, selling tobacco and drugs and phones. That, rather than acting like a gang boss,” said Kimmy.

  “Another thing here,” said Sally. “There’s an FBI note in the file that says that anyone who wasn’t a BMF gang member in the Baltimore Detention Center had to pay them protection money. The prisoners got their families to pay it, or they’d end up pretty bad off.”

  “That’s cold,” said Kimmy.

  “So the question is, how do we set O.Z. up and identify the source of the contraband?” asked Clive. “It certainly sounds as if he’s a big part of this ‘prison supply chain’.”

  “He’s as good a place to start as any,” said Zeke.

  * * *

  Kimmy said, “Why are we going in here?”

  The two prison guards led her through a locked metal door and down a corridor with cells on the right and a concrete block wall painted gray on the left. Neither replied to her question.

  They turned a corner and passed through a locked wire mesh door in a metal frame, and walked some more. When they stopped, one of the guards took out his keys and opened a door and ushered Kimmy inside.

  “What’re we doing here?” she asked. Neither of them answered. Instead, they exited the room and closed the door behind them. She heard the lock turn.

  The guards had called her out of the visitors waiting area a few minutes earlier. Now she found herself alone in what looked like a prison laundry.

  “You’re Carl’s bitch,” said a voice. “And I don’t trust Carl.”

  Kimmy scanned the room in front of her. There were three large men standing by one of the laundry machines. It looked like an institutional dryer. Behind them was a folding table, a clothesline that stretched across the room, and an area housing several washing machines.

  Kimmy smiled at the closest one. “What’s your name?” she asked. “You’re kinda cute.”

  She bounced a little bit on her toes. Then she stretched her spine.

  “Don’t know nothin’ about ‘cute’,” said the man. “But we do want to know more about Carl.”

  “What’s your name?” asked Kimmy again, with a smile.

  The man in the back, standing behind the other two said, “This ain’t a meet and greet. We gonna rough you up, then ask you some questions. And you better be answerin’ them.”

  Kimmy walked up, closer to the men. “OK,” she said. “What questions.”

  The man closest to Kimmy said, “Shut up, bitch! You dealing with O.Z. now.” He stepped closer to assert himself, and violently shoved her, his hands thrusting at her shoulders.

  Except he missed.

  Kimmy, who had pivoted subtly to her left and just out of his path, slapped his arms down and away. Her left hand wrapped itself around the man’s head as he went by, his momentum carrying him a few steps forward. She spun and pulled and laced her fingers and now, with a firm two-handed grip on his face, she pulled backward and yanked him down. The man hit the ground, leading with the back of his bent head, which bounced off the concrete floor.

  He was out. Kimmy looked around at the other two men. They looked stunned at the sudden brutality of the scene. And the sudden shift in power.

  She hummed as she watched their reactions. The man on the floor moaned. Blood was pooling around the back of his head.

  The man in the back, furthest from Kimmy, found some bravado and said, “You just signed your own death warrant, bitch!”

  Kimmy smiled and nodded.

  Suddenly the man in front, closest to Kimmy, flashed a butcher’s knife he’d taken out of his jumpsuit pocket. Then he looked back over his shoulder at the other man as if asking what to do next.

  The man in the back nodded toward Kimmy, and said, “Get her, Bo,” and the man in front turned and set himself. He walked up to Kimmy quickly and swung the blade overhand, violently, intending to crash it down on the side of her neck near her carotid artery.

  Kimmy parried with her left forearm and stepped in and away from the blade. Simultaneously, like a flash she jabbed the man in the eye with the stiff fingers of her right hand. Then she grabbed his knife hand with both of hers and twisted down and in toward his stomach. As he tended to his eye, she easily leveraged the sharp knife from his fingers. Then she kicked him in the nuts, hard. He fell to the ground and screamed.

  And then she looked up at the only man still standing.

  The man in the back, O.Z., turned and ran.

  * * *

  “We’ll have to pull you off the prison detail,” said Clive. He, Zeke, and Kimmy were debriefing the recent action in the prison. “It’s too dangerous.”

  “Sure, for the prisoners,” said Zeke.

  Clive ignored him. “We’ve informed the warden, and he agrees that the best course of action might be to avoid anything that could distract from our primary purpose, which is to solve the killings.”

  Kimmy nodded. “No problem,” she said. “I’ll work on the Calexico thing with Zeke.”

  “Meantime, Carl’s got his ear to the ground inside the prison. Sally’s researching the cell phone numbers called from the prison to see if we can find anything that relates to the killings. Or to the smuggling,” said Clive.

  * * *

  What struck him about the man first was his arrogance. Paco was not new to the cocaine business, having run drugs for the cartel’s former leader, Manuel Rodriguez, for several years until Rodriguez’s latest arrest. Paco had started as a low level lieutenant, smuggling people, mostly Hondurans, and cocaine over the border at night in places without the wall.

  Then he’d risen through the ranks of the cartel and moved into enforcement and kidnapping, holding U.S. businessmen
for ransom. When the cartel leadership shifted in favor of this man, Tatouage, it surprised everyone. One day he had been considered a sidebar, a joke, and the next he was solidly in control. And his competition had seemingly disappeared.

  Paco looked across the small room at the short, muscular man, shirtless and with blue tattoos visible everywhere. He had a dark tan and oiled, shoulder-length black hair. He was ranting in Spanish and French unintelligibly, about something that seemed to bother only him. But none of the men in the room dared interrupt him.

  The story, Paco remembered, was that Tatouage’s mother had been a French woman, a whore who had become a concubine of the cartel’s former leader many years ago. Her name was Lydia.

  The woman had found favor with the jefe, and had borne him two children, a boy and a girl. The birth of the boy had assured her a prominent place while the jefe was in power. When he was arrested by the Mexican federales, she moved south to Sinaloa with her children, seeking protection from the cartel. When the jefe was subsequently shot trying to escape, she quickly allied herself with his successor and former partner, a leader in the Sinaloa Cartel.

  Tatouage’s rise to power, according to some, was largely due to his mother’s influence. “He is ruthless like his father was,” the woman had said. “But he is loyal, like a son to you, jefe.”

  And she had convinced her bedmate, the new head of the cartel, to include Tatouage in his operations, to make him a lieutenant and to entrust him with a portion of the business. So at the age of twenty the boy had been gifted this position, overseeing an important part of the cartel’s drug business.

  Tatouage’s part of the operation was keeping the pathway clear for the cocaine, from Colombia north through Mexico, and on into the United States. He quickly proved to be competent and ruthless, and his tactics and results were soon admired by the jefe.

  “He is crazy,” Paco had heard the jefe say. “But he is crazy good. He uses it to keep the others off balance. He uses it to keep control.”

  * * *

  He has always been a little bit crazy, thought Paco. But even more so now that his mother has died.

  He remembered that day well. Paco had been in Sinaloa retrieving a truckload of the white powder to be driven north and smuggled through a tunnel into the California desert. A few miles north of the border and the wall, land across which Paco and his men would carry the cocaine in backpacks, they were to be met by a small plane. There, out of range of the radar and cameras, most of which were pointing south anyway, they would load the drugs and disappear into the night.

  Theirs was one of a hundred planned illegal border crossings that night, and Paco was nervous, anxious for the darkness of the night to envelope them. He smoked his cigarette nervously and paced, checking the truck, then checking it again.

  As Paco and his men left the town, they passed a military convoy heading south toward Sinaloa. It was made up primarily of armored personnel carriers filled with soldiers in bulletproof vests, holding their rifles.

  * * *

  The soldiers had surprised them, surrounding his complex and overpowering the jefe’s men with a rare show of force. They had used smoke bombs and white phosphorus grenades and had even used two truck-mounted machine guns to intimidate and subdue the jefe’s men. The battle was over in a few minutes.

  But Tattoo’s mother, Lydia, and the jefe were not ready to surrender. They used an underground passage to escape from the compound with one small suitcase full of money, secreted and at the ready for just such a moment. Unfortunately, the tunnel surfaced in a small knoll, a wooded area just in front of the truck-mounted machine gun. Enthusiastic soldiers shot and killed them both as they climbed out of the escape tunnel.

  And now, Paco knew, so much was riding on the mortar. The tattooed man had initiated the effort. The concept was his, and the equipment was not cheap. There was constant pressure to perform, to find new ways to get the cocaine over the northern border and to turn the white powder into money.

  * * *

  “That whole border drug thing sounds pretty serious,” said Clive.

  Zeke and Kimmy had taken a return flight from Imperial Valley to arrive in D.C. to update Clive.

  “I’ll be back in the Cumberland prison again tomorrow. What have we heard from Carl? Has anything else happened?” asked Zeke.

  Kimmy lounged in one of Clive’s leather wingback chairs, her feet pulled up under her.

  “Actually, there has been some activity,” said Clive. “The warden is investigating the three guards you identified, Simpson, Cornfeld, and Dix. Carl’s been able to confirm their criminal involvement, at least secondhand. He’s reported some of their tactics, things he’s learned from other prisoners inside.”

  “Good. It’s a start,” said Zeke.

  “It is. And Warden Clark’s confiscated forty-six of the illegal cell phones.”

  “Then we’ll want to go slow with the three guards, just observe them for awhile. We don’t want someone to think there’s suddenly too much going on and start looking for a leak on the inside,” said Zeke. “That could be dangerous for Carl.”

  “Good point. I’ll mention it to Clark,” said Clive.

  “The three guards essentially told me that I’d be bringing contraband into the prison for them. I suspect they’ll move pretty soon to make that happen. It’ll reinforce the power structure and give them leverage over me,” said Zeke.

  “So watch for contact from them,” said Clive. “And be aware, there are a number of angry prisoners without their cell phones right now.”

  “I assume someone is cross referencing the numbers in each cell phone,” said Zeke.

  “Well, Sally’s doing some research on that. And the Bureau of Prisons turned the information over to the FBI. The FBI has computers already set up that do that sort of thing,” Clive added.

  “I’d like to see a copy of that list, when they’re done,” said Zeke.

  Clive nodded. “I would as well.”

  “OK, so I’m back in the prison kitchen tomorrow. One good thing…” said Zeke.

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s a pretty sure thing the prisoners will hurry to replace their cell phones. They’ll need to maintain their authority on the outside, and in order to do that, they need to be able to communicate,” said Zeke.

  Kimmy said, “Sounds right.”

  Clive nodded.

  “Next we’ll need to see how they do it,” Zeke said.

  * * *

  “Where’ve you been the last few days?” asked the guard named Simpson.

  “I was off, and then I spent a day at the home office. Had some paperwork to fill out about the transfer, and an evaluation…”

  The three guards were waiting for him in the kitchen area when Zeke arrived at Cumberland FCI. Two were standing in his small office, and the third sat in the chair behind Zeke’s desk.

  “We need you to do something for us,” said Dix, the leader, who was seated.

  “Yeah, sure,” said Zeke. “No problem. What is it?”

  “First give me your cell phone number,” said Cornfeld. Zeke rattled off a number and the guard wrote it down on a sticky note.

  They’re trying to keep me off balance, thought Zeke.

  “OK, someone will call you after work tonight. Call on your cell phone. They’ll want to bring you a box. You need to get it and bring it in with you tomorrow. Bring it in first thing, into the kitchen like you do the other groceries. Stack it with them.”

  “What’s in the box?” asked Zeke.

  “That’s not important. We’ll meet you right here at the start of the shift and take it off your hands,” said the third guard, Simpson.

  “OK,” said Zeke. “I can do that.”

  * * *

  At seven-twelve Zeke’s cell phone rang. He answered it.

  A man’s voice said, “I’ve got a package for you. Where are you? I’ll bring it.”

  “Do you want me to pick it up?” asked Zeke.

 
“No, I don’t want to know you that well. Where are you?”

  Zeke said, “Cumberland,” and gave the man an address on Seymour Street, an older home not far from downtown and within the price range of a food service manager.

  “OK, stay there. I’ll be there in ten minutes. I’ve got a dark blue pickup, a Chevy.”

  Zeke said, “OK. Tell me your name.”

  The man said, “Just call me Kirby.”

  The Agency had arranged the rental house for Zeke to use while he was in Cumberland. It was an older, two-story house with shingles that needed a coat of paint and with a sitting area covering the right half of the porch. The front door and entry took up the left half.

  Kirby and another man pulled up eight minutes after Kirby had hung up the phone, obviously anxious to be done with their chore. “Zeke Traynor? I’m Kirby. Here you go,” he said as he and the other man stepped onto the porch. The other man set a produce box down on the porch and stepped back a half step. The box was taped shut with red strapping tape.

  Kirby was a big man, maybe two hundred thirty pounds, but much of it gone to fat. He looked like he was in his early thirties. His hands and forearms were muscular and tattooed, and his legs were short and bowed.

  The other man was younger and more muscular than Kirby, and he was black. He wore a leather jacket and jeans and his wallet was attached to his pants with a chain that looked like a dog collar. His face was covered in old cuts that had healed badly.

  They turned to go and Zeke said, “Anything else?”

  Kirby said, “Naw. Just take that in tomorrow morning with the groceries. They’ll tell you what to do after that.”

  The men stepped up into the pickup simultaneously. Kirby started the engine and they drove off, paying no further attention to Zeke.