by Jeff Siebold
“I’m pretty lucky,” he said.
“As am I,” said Tracy. She twisted and kissed him, a lingering kiss. “Mmm, I love this moment,” she said.
“Savor it,” said Zeke. “I surely do.” And he kissed her again.
* * *
“So where are you on all of this?” Tracy asked.
They’d finished their meal and had moved to the living room and were sipping glasses of a Chilean Pinot Noir.
“The Julia Conners thing?” asked Zeke.
Tracy nodded.
“We tracked her to New York. It looked like she was working for Ghafran Khoury, the CEO of Byblos, LLC, but it turns out his father Ferman is in charge. We think Julia did a job for him.”
“How would she know him?” asked Tracy.
“She was the Risk Manager at Pawn 4 All, the pawn shop franchise we closed down for money laundering. While she was there, we’re pretty sure she hired two goons to kill Kimmy and me.”
Tracy nodded that she remembered.
“But they didn’t make it,” she said.
“No. So we didn’t have a chance to talk with them about the chain of command, or Conners’ role in the attempt to eliminate us.”
Tracy nodded. “What do we know about Ferman Khoury?”
“Sally dug pretty deep, found out that he’s an arms dealer based in Manhattan. He’s been around, but it appears that he’s never been connected directly to the sale of guns.”
“Why not?” asked Tracy.
“Well, according to the FBI he doesn’t actually come in contact with the guns. He arranges delivery through an offshore company and the money is deposited into his Grand Cayman bank account. Most of the deliveries are made in third world countries or in countries that don’t tend to cooperate with our government,” Zeke said.
“You think the father, Ferman, hired Julia Conners?”
“Judging by the intel we gathered from the bug in her apartment here, the phone number she called in New York, and my brief conversation with Ghafran Khoury, I’m leaning in that direction,” said Zeke.
“Will you be able to link her to Khoury? Or put her in jail?”
“I’m not sure,” said Zeke. “But I’d like to know more about her.”
“That sounds like something Clive can arrange.”
Chapter 23
“Hey, Zeke, how’re things in the Hostess City of the South?” asked Sally when he’d answered his cell phone.
Zeke smiled and said, “Savannah? This is a great town.”
“I’ll need to visit. Traffic can’t be anything like DC…”
“It’s not. What’s up?” Zeke asked.
“All business. I get it,” said Sally. “Hold on while I put you on the speaker. Clive’s here, too.”
A moment later Clive’s rich voice said, “Cheerio!”
Zeke returned the greeting and then said, “Go ahead, Sally.”
“Well, remember the call Julia Conners made to Ireland? The one we monitored when she talked with Erin?”
“I do,” said Zeke. “Did we find anything out about that? Who’s Erin?”
“Been working on that. Our best guess is that Erin is her daughter,” Sally said in her light and melodious voice.
“She has a child in Ireland?” asked Zeke.
“Her husband was killed in the early 2000’s in Northern Ireland. The Provisional IRA was fighting with the British soldiers. He was killed when a British soldier shot him after he threw a petrol bomb- essentially a molotov cocktail- at their unit.”
“What was his name?” asked Zeke.
“Terrence Conners, but he went by Tommy,” said Sally. “Very colorful character. He was in the middle of a lot of the fighting back then.”
“Tommy Conners. And they had a daughter?” asked Zeke. “She’d be in her late teens or early twenties about now.”
“We don’t have an exact DOB, but we’re thinking that you’re right,” she said.
“Where was the call made to?” he asked.
“The one from Conners’ apartment? She called a number in County Londonderry. We were able to trace that down to a cell phone that was later triangulated by the police. Records show that this Erin was in a wee house on Sevenoaks Street at the time of the call,” said Sally.
“A wee house,” said Zeke. “How do you know that?”
“Easy. Google Maps,” said Sally. “Here’s the address.”
* * *
“Who do we think Erin is staying with?” asked Zeke.
Sally said, “The house is leased to a Shelagh O’Neill. It has been for four years. The local police, the Gardai, ran that down for us.”
“Who owns the cell phone Conners called?” asked Zeke.
“Also Shelagh O’Neill. She’s apparently a school teacher who moved there from Dublin.” Sally was obviously reading from her notes now.
“Any relation to Julia Conners?” he asked.
“No, none direct,” said Sally. “But Miss Shelagh, it turns out, was married to Tommy Conners’ brother.”
“She’s married?” asked Zeke.
“No longer,” said Sally. “He died in an auto accident about five years ago.”
Clive asked, “You plan to go, Zeke?”
“Go where?”
“Across the pond, old boy. To talk with Shelagh O’Neill, and more importantly with Erin Conners. Now that we have an ID.”
Zeke was quiet for a moment. “I hate to tip our hand, alert them that we know where they live and who they are. It might be better to let them feel secure for now, maybe keep a check on the cell phone and have the local police contact us if they see any sign of anyone moving out of the house.”
“We can ask,” said Clive.
“Also,” said Sally, “when we talked with the Gardai, they told us they have paper out for Julia Conners.”
“A warrant? She’s wanted?” asked Zeke.
“She is. She’s wanted in Ireland under their Offenses Against the State Act. It’s sort of like our Patriot Act in the U.S. Widespread powers and all that,” Clive added.
Zeke thought for a minute.
“We might like to question both of them, Erin and Shelagh. But at the right time, I think,” he said. “It may not be necessary yet. Talking with them may tip them off.”
“Agreed. And we have the cell phone information, and their GPS. We can continue to monitor that for any signs of them packing or leaving,” said Sally.
“Good, let’s do that. Meantime, we need to find Julia Conners.”
* * *
“And so, Ghafran, I must ask you to leave Miss Conners alone,” said Ferman Khoury. “You must stop embarrassing her. She is our guest.”
Ghafran Khoury rolled his eyes to himself and turned away from his father’s gaze. He looked out at the horizon, the low sun sparkling off the translucent blue water. He watched a large sailing craft being pushed along by the gusty wind, its sails filled and billowing.
He bit his tongue until the feeling of anger in his chest subsided. Then he simply said, “She is nothing to me, yebba.” He used the Arabic term to address his father.
“Even so,” said Ferman, “she is my guest, and possibly an employee in the future. I believe that Julia Conners could be a valuable asset in our organization. I’d like to keep that option open.”
“I understand,” said Ghafran. But he thought, So she went around me to tell my father? We’ll see about that!
* * *
“We found her car,” said Sally. “Well, actually the Hilton Head Island police did.”
“Where was it?” asked Zeke, from the other end of the phone line. “Near the dock, I’ll bet.”
“Mmm, good guess,” said Sally. “It was parked near Harbour Town Yacht Basin, on the south end of the island.”
“They found it from the APB you issued?” asked Zeke.
“Well, you gave me the tag number, and I arranged for the APB in Savannah. Then I remembered what you’d said about her disappearing on a boat, and so I contact
ed the local police, up and down the coast for fifty miles. They checked the marina parking lots. It seems to have paid off,” she added.
“Nice work, Sally,” said Zeke. “How long has the car been parked there?”
“We don’t know yet. We’ve requested the marina’s security camera data files, but they haven’t come in yet.”
“It’s very likely Julia is on a boat somewhere. Perhaps off the East Coast, and perhaps in the eastern Caribbean,” said Zeke.
“Most likely, and incognito,” said Clive. “But she won’t be there forever, I’d say.”
“And we’ll be here when she returns,” said Zeke.
* * *
He pushed the mop around the floor in the empty dining room, making sure to clean under the benches. Cappy moved slowly, methodically, with the slow gait of a much older man. He enjoyed the solitude of the work, and he enjoyed its mindless, repetitive nature. It gave him time to plan, time to manage, and time to reflect.
He was reflecting now. Simpson, the guard, is still under control. But a little more leverage is necessary. I’ll have someone talk with his wife. And that creative merchant O.Z. tends to get out of hand frequently, usually when he starts using his own inventory. A little blow and you forget your place and get crazy. It’s OK. He’s not long for this world.
The Black Monkey Family was itching to take over, but Cappy knew they had too much contention in their ranks to make a meaningful coup.
The money filled his bank account like clockwork, automatic deposits each time someone died. And with the help of the ex-guard Kirby, he’d organized the drones that breached the prison wall at night, carrying everything from drugs to cigarettes to porn to, well, steak knives. He smiled, eyes on the floor as he pushed the mop around, aware of the cameras in the dining room.
The guards were easy to manage. Most of them were little more than bullies and criminals themselves, stealing from the prisoners, doing drugs on the clock, even having sex with the female staff from administration. Just a gang of thugs, he thought. But who else would take that unrewarding job for less than fifty thousand a year?
The mop slid across the floor, back and forth, spreading water and sopping it back up.
They’re like all bullies, he thought. They make a lot of noise. They puff up and strut around. But in the end, they’re cowards. And they’re stupid.
A voice from behind the man said, “You ‘bout done, trustee?” He turned to see a huge man standing behind him. The new guy, a blackie, what was his name? Carl something. Carl…Turow, he thought.
He nodded briskly to Carl and said, “Just about, sir. Yessir.” Kill them with kindness. Make them think they’re a big kahuna.
“I’ve gotta get in here and start setting up for dinner,” Turow continued. He looked at the floor. “You been doing this long?”
The man nodded again, and said, “Yessir. Been mopping the dining room for about four years, sir.” Cappy winked.
Carl Turow said, “I’m gonna start bringing stuff out now,” and he turned away from Cappy and went to work.
The man nodded nervously and said, “Yessir,” again and then he started coughing hard, apparently having breathed in some spittle. Carl looked back at Cappy.
What Carl saw was a thin, scarred man with pale skin and blue inked jailhouse tattoos on his hands and wrists. His hair was dry and straight and cut in no style whatsoever, and his gray beard was dirty and unkempt. He looked as if he’d blow away in a strong wind. Carl put him at forty years old, but based on his skin and eyes he could be much older.
* * *
The plan had been conceived over several months, and quite by accident. As a long-time Trustee, Cappy Askew had access to areas of the prison most prisoners never saw. As well, he had access to the working areas, the kitchen, the laundry, the library, the storerooms…most anywhere on the inside.
Then one day they’d asked him to do them some favors, those skinheads did. The Devil’s Disciples, they called themselves. They wanted some inmates killed. They wanted the ones that crossed them to be dead.
And now Cappy could do all of that, be the one, without even tipping his hand. With no one inside knowing. Cappy Askew was content to remain invisible.
But to do it, he had had to decide. Oh, Lord, it was a hard decision. Finally, in Cappy Askew’s mind it came down to ‘them or me’. And it had to be them, no question about it. Cappy had given up too much. So he agreed.
And he’d almost lost everything a year or so ago. He’d been minding his business, watching, remembering, when he started receiving the threats. Extortion, he called it.
But Cappy was no fool. They wanted him to do things for them. They wanted to take over his position.
He’d found out who was behind the takeover, and he’d asked Bobby and Franz, a couple of skinhead prisoners to dissuade him. It was a short, arrogant black Puerto Rican with an attitude to match who had stuck his nose in it. When Cappy grew up in rural Mississippi, there was a certain order to things. But when one of the blackies- he’d always called then blackies like his papa did- when one of the blackies in prison tried to take over, they almost always failed.
The thing was, trust. There was no trust between the blackies. Or most of the prisoners, really. At some point in every situation it became every man for himself, and the infighting and deceit intensified until they pretty much imploded.
But Cappy was beyond all that. No one in the prison knew that he’d gone to school for electrical engineering, with a minor in psychology. He wanted to be an engineer, but more than that, he wanted to be on the cutting edge. He saw himself leading the space program into the next decade, landing a manned shuttle on Mars, or better yet, discovering the source of the black holes, or anti-matter itself. He always knew that he could do that.
But then it all went south for him. It wasn’t his fault or anything; it just went bad. He was home from college for the summer, he and his brother working on his father’s farm during the day and partying with their high school friends at night. And he’d been with the Coulson girl back then. They were an item, Renee Coulson and Cappy Askew. Her daddy was a big-time lawyer.
There was a party, like any other party, and they decided to run on over to Tuscaloosa, not far over the border, to see what was happening at the University. They’d done it before; they had friends at Big Red.
But that night it went bad when Cappy, drunk, skidded his Honda Civic part way under an eighteen-wheeler, cleanly decapitating Renee in the process. She was DOA, and his troubles had just begun.
Over the next several years, Cappy found himself jailed on capital murder charges, along with a large number of lesser charges, including kidnapping, then crossing a state line. That brought the FBI into the picture, as the angry Mr. Coulson intended. Cappy had known that Renee Coulson was seventeen. She would have been eighteen that July, and it never occurred to Cappy, then nineteen, that he could get in trouble for seeing her. They’d been dating for almost a year.
But ‘get in trouble’ turned out to be the understatement of Cappy’s life. He was tried and convicted on multiple counts and remanded to Federal Prison at the young age of twenty-one. After all of the trials were over, he was sentenced to life without parole and sent to Cumberland FCI.
His father had mortgaged the farm, and subsequently lost it, while trying to provide for the boy’s defense. His father, one of Cappy’s only relatives who would still talk to him, although not pleasantly, had subsequently died of cirrhosis.
Just one more to go, thought Cappy Askew. He walked back to his bucket and carefully placed the mop in it. Then, using the mop handle to guide it, Cappy slowly, patiently pushed the bucket down to the exit door and left the dining room.
* * *
Back in his cell, Cappy used the toilet and washed his hands. He was one of the few prisoners assigned a single cell. He liked it that way. It was more private, and he didn’t need to worry about another inmate going through his things.
“Hey, Cappy, you need anyt
hing?” asked a high, reedy voice.
Cappy turned around slowly and saw Darrell Combs in his cell door. A low level street dealer, thought Cappy. He wants to sell me a hit.
Cappy shook his head back and forth slowly. “Naw, I’d better not, Darrell.” He shifted from one foot to the other and looked at the floor, avoiding Darrell’s eyes. “Naw.”
“I’ve got Oxys and Vikes right now,” Darrell persisted, clearly pleased with himself. Oxys were oxycodone and Vikes was short for Vicodin. Hydrocodone.
“Naw, that’s OK, Darrell,” said Cappy. “Maybe another time.”
“OK, but they won’t last long.” Darrell was already walking away, talking to Cappy over his shoulder while moving on to his next potential customer.
Cappy waved after him. Then he turned and reached under his bunk and eased out a pair of latex gloves.
* * *
Disposing of each knife at the scene of the crime was smart, Cappy knew, but only if they couldn’t be connected to him. After he’d hatched his brainstorm, and decided how to kill the inmates targeted by the Devil’s Disciples he quietly arranged for the steak knife set to find its way into the prison on the back of a drone sent in by his brother Carl and that ex-guard Kirby.
It had been risky, early on, and Cappy had almost been caught, while retrieving the knives from the prison yard in the early morning. But retrieve them he had, when walking a PUP dog, and then he set his plan in motion.
On the outside, he had his brother Carl, and the ex-guard Kirby. Inside he had some of the prison guards, who everyone assumed were at the top of the food chain.
* * *
And now, there was one more thing to do. Cappy nodded to himself as he stowed the mop and pail in a janitor’s closet. He wiped his hands on a greasy towel, getting the sweat from his fingers. Then he pulled on the pair of latex gloves, the kind that janitors use, and reached down into the metal mop bucket, through the black, dirty water, and retrieved the fifth steak knife of the set.
