Two Days in Caracas

by Luana Ehrlich

  I spoke quietly to her, trying to offer her what comfort I could. However, her tears continued to flow. As she began frantically searching around inside her purse for a tissue, I stepped out of the room and walked down the hallway toward the lobby.

  As soon as I saw Nikki, I motioned for her to follow me.

  When we arrived back at the viewing room, Nikki sat down on the sofa beside Carla. The moment she put her arm around Carla, my sister turned toward Nikki and gave her a weak smile.

  And then, a moment later, the two women were embracing.

  Once that happened, I returned to the lobby.

  It was deserted now.

  I was all alone.

  * * * *

  Twenty minutes later, Eddie and the kids arrived.

  After chatting with him for a few minutes, I saw Nikki and Carla walking down the hall toward us, looking as if they’d been best friends for years.

  Carla gestured toward Eddie and the kids. “Nikki, this is my husband, Eddie, and these are my kids, Brian and Kayla.”

  After Nikki had shaken hands with them, Carla said, “Nikki is Titus’ friend from Oklahoma. She and Titus met while he was down there working on a book project with a university professor.”

  Carla glanced over at me and gave me an approving smile, causing me to wonder if my friendship with Nikki might be as special to her as building a rocket ship to fly us to Mars.

  For the rest of the afternoon, a variety of people paraded in and out of the funeral home. They were mostly friends and relatives, but some of my mother’s former students also showed up.

  After exhausting my meager inventory of social politeness, I was finally able to be alone with Nikki by following her over to a small reception area off the lobby, where refreshments had been laid out for the mourners. A few other people were also in the room, but I steered Nikki over to a coffee urn in a corner of the room, where we could have some privacy.

  “Thanks for taking care of Carla,” I said. “You two obviously hit it off.”

  “Even though I hardly knew my own mother, I still remember grieving over her death. Of course, in my line of work, I deal with death a lot.”

  “You treated Carla like you were her sister. You didn’t treat her like a police officer would.”

  “Women always bond with each other after they’ve cried together. Didn’t you know that?”

  “No. My knowledge of women is sadly lacking.”

  At that moment, Uncle Harold stepped inside the reception area and scanned the room as if he were searching for someone. The moment he spotted me, he raised his voice and said, “I hear there’s a beautiful woman in here.”

  As he quickly made a beeline for Nikki, every head in the room turned in our direction.

  “Hi, I’m Harold Ray,” he said, extending his hand toward Nikki. Then, he gestured back at me. “I’m this guy’s uncle.”

  Nikki smiled and shook his hand.

  Without taking his eyes off Nikki, he asked me, “Where have you been hiding this gorgeous creature, Titus?”

  Nikki kept smiling. “It’s a pleasure to meet you. Titus has told me all about you.”

  “He’s an excellent liar. Don’t believe a word he says.”

  Nikki laughed and asked him a few questions—without sounding like an interrogator. However, her inquiries sent him off on a rambling discourse about his sales position at Knoll.

  I stepped out of Harold’s sightline and silently mouthed to Nikki, “I’m sorry.”

  Then, I left the room in search of Carla.

  I found her talking to some of my mother’s former students. When she saw me, though, she excused herself and walked over to where I was standing.

  “How are you?” I asked.

  “Oh, I’m fine now,” she said, twisting a tissue in her hands. “Nikki is wonderful. I really like her.”

  “She enjoyed meeting you too.”

  “How long have you two been seeing each other?”

  “We’re not dating,” I said. “She’s just a good friend.”

  Carla sounded exasperated with me. “Titus, a woman doesn’t fly across the country to attend the funeral of someone she doesn’t know if she just thinks of herself as a friend. Haven’t you learned anything about women yet?”

  Apparently not.

  * * * *

  When the viewing ended, Nikki said she needed to go back to the hotel because she’d promised to check in with her partner about the robbery they were working.

  As soon as we were alone in the car, she said. “I’ve been thinking about your hypothetical case.”

  “How could you possibly be thinking about my case in the midst of all those people?”

  “I do my best work in the middle of chaos. Unlike you federal types who have fancy offices, my fellow detectives and I are stuffed inside our tiny little cubicles like sardines in a can. Somebody’s always yapping, and you just have to learn to live with it.”

  “Sounds a little fishy to me.”

  “A joke? You actually made a joke?”

  “I can be a fun guy sometimes.”

  I don’t think she believed me.

  She said, “Here’s what I know. Murderers take things from their victims for several reasons. Sometimes they want a souvenir. It’s even part of their motivation for killing the person. However, since you said you already knew the killer’s motive, I’m assuming this particular reason doesn’t apply.”

  “It doesn’t.”

  “Sometimes a murderer takes something from the scene in order to destroy damaging evidence. He may have wanted to get rid of the younger man’s identification because he thought there was something there that could incriminate him.”

  I thought about the possibility Ernesto’s passport could be used to implicate Ahmed in some way, but, since he’d left the false passports behind, I wasn’t sure this made sense.

  “I’ll give that some thought.”

  “The last reason the guy may have taken the identification was to use it for himself. You didn’t give me a description of the two men—other than the fact one was older than the other—so I don’t know if that’s a possibility or not. Could the older man pass himself off as the younger man? Is there any reason he would want to do that?”

  I pulled in the hotel’s parking lot and thought about the viability of Ahmed trying to use Ernesto’s passport.

  Since Ahmed had been waiting on a new passport, this concept didn’t seem to fit either, but I didn’t discard the theory entirely, especially since his new Venezuelan passport was also in the name of Montilla.

  “That’s something to consider. Thanks. You’ve been a big help to me, Detective.”

  “You mean I’ve been a big help in a hypothetical sense, don’t you?”

  I turned sideways in the driver’s seat and faced her. “You’ve been a big help to me all day, Nikki.”

  She smiled. “This may sound strange under these circumstances, but I’ve had a really good time today.”

  She unbuckled her seatbelt and added, “Despite the bad joke.”

  As she took hold of the door handle, I impulsively grabbed her hand. “Would you go out to dinner with me tonight?”

  My question seemed to amuse her.

  “Of course,” she said. “We’ve already eaten breakfast and lunch together, why not dinner?”

  “No, I want to take you someplace special. I want it to be our first date.”

  For a split second, I thought she might say she was too tired or she couldn’t stand to be around men who told bad jokes or she never went on dates with men who had uncles who talked too much.

  Instead, she said, “A first date sounds wonderful. I can’t think of anything I’d like better.”

  “I’ll knock on your door at seven.”

  “That sounds perfect.”

  It did.

  Chapter 23

  When I arrived back in my hotel room, I sat down on the king-sized bed and waited. I knew Carlton would call me. I just didn’t know when. />
  In the meantime, I thought about Ernesto’s passport, and the points Nikki had outlined in the phony homicide scenario I’d given her.

  My best guess was that Ahmed had originally planned to travel to Venezuela in the company of Ernesto. If he hadn’t found it necessary to get rid of Ernesto, then, presumably, the two of them would have cleared Venezuelan customs together. Ernesto would have used his own passport, and Ahmed, using the new passport provided by the cartel in Costa Rica, would have come into the country as Alberto Estéban Montilla.

  That situation brought up several questions.

  Now that Ernesto was dead, did Ahmed still plan to use Ernesto’s passport in some way? How did Ernesto’s father, Roberto, fit into this picture? Did he know his son was coming to Venezuela in the company of Ahmed? Was Roberto himself the person responsible for supplying the false passport to Ahmed?

  Suddenly, I saw an image of Ahmed’s face on the deck of El Mano Fierro. I knew this must have something to do with Ernesto’s passport, but I couldn’t quite make it fit into the puzzle.

  I asked myself why an image of Ahmed had come to mind when I’d been thinking about Ernesto’s passport, but the more I thought about it, the less sense it made.

  Finally, I tried dismissing it entirely, hoping my brain would just arrange everything for me in a neat little package; the neurons coming together, the connection sparking across the plasma membrane, and suddenly, right there, the answer would pop in my mind.

  Sometimes it happened that way for me.

  However, this time, when I tried thinking about something else, I got nothing—a great big fat zero.

  Once Carlton called me, though, everything came together.

  * * * *

  “Are you free this evening?” he asked.

  “No, I have a dinner engagement.”

  For the first time in my career, I found myself hoping Carlton wasn’t about to tell me the operation had split wide open, and I was about to have to cancel those plans.

  “That’s fine. I don’t want to take you away from your family at a time like this.”

  Could Nikki be considered family?

  I tried prodding him into giving me a progress report on events transpiring in the Operations Center by telling him I still had some time left before I had to leave.

  “I don’t have anything to discuss with you that can’t wait until your briefing on Saturday. Speaking of which, Travel has you booked on a Delta flight at 3:47 tomorrow afternoon. They’re sending you the details by email. I’m assuming that time works for you?”

  “That’s perfect. I’ll be finished here by then.”

  “Ben Mitchell arrived at Langley this afternoon.”

  “How was he?”

  “As to be expected. He was definitely worked up about losing Toby.”

  “Will you have him vetted for Level 1 status?”

  “Yes, I’ll be doing that tomorrow. When I told him about your request to have him assigned to the operation, he seemed very surprised to hear you’d asked for him.”

  “Did he refuse?”

  “No, he agreed to do it.”

  “Good.”

  He cleared his throat. “Titus, if there’s something going on between the two of you, I need to know about it.”

  If I’d been looking for an opportunity to tell him about Mitchell’s breach of security with Sonya, this was definitely it.

  “Understood,” I said.

  “If there’s something there, I’ll need those details soon.”

  “Understood.”

  “Nothing can compromise this mission.”

  “Got it.”

  I thought I heard him tapping his cherished Classic Century Cross pen on the edge of his clutter-free desk.

  “One other thing,” he said. “Our analysts have been able to identify all the men we saw on the yacht yesterday. As we suspected, they’re members of the Zeta cartel.”

  “So Toby was killed by the cartel.”

  “That seems obvious now.” He paused. “I should have said we were able to identify all but one of them.”

  “Which one wasn’t in the database?”

  “The younger guy, the one who came aboard with the crewmen after Hernando had left. He was wearing a backpack and listening to his iPod.”

  Finally, the synapses fired, and it wasn’t Ahmed’s face I saw, but the iPod guy.

  I thought he looked familiar when I’d first seen him on the dock.

  Now, I realized he looked a lot like Ernesto. He certainly wasn’t an exact match, but, depending on Ernesto’s passport photo, he might look enough like him to enter Venezuela on his passport.

  “Could that guy be a stand-in for Ernesto?” I asked Carlton. “I just now realized how much he resembled him.”

  “Is this your explanation of why Ahmed took Ernesto’s passport? You think he’s going to pass this kid off as Ernesto?”

  “It’s a possibility.”

  “For what reason?”

  “I’m not sure yet.”

  “I’ll discuss this with Salazar and get back to you. Let me know the minute you come up with something.”

  “Wait a minute. Why are you conferring with C. J. Salazar about our operation?”

  He groaned. “Salazar and I are a duo on this one. It’s my operation, but since it’s taking place in his territory, the DDO wants us to work together. There’s even a possibility the DDO will send his own man to the briefing.”

  “So what happens when I’m in country? Who will be running me then?”

  “I’m not sure, but you don’t need to be concerned about that right now. Go to your dinner engagement. Let me worry about Salazar.”

  “If Salazar worries you, then I’m in trouble.”

  “I have this under control, Titus, and I know how difficult this may be for you in your circumstances right now, but try and have a good time this evening.”

  “As hard as that may be, I plan to enjoy myself.”

  * * * *

  I went up to the third floor and knocked on Nikki’s door. It was precisely seven o’clock.

  “My kind of date,” she said. “You’re right on time.”

  I tried to look her over without being too obvious about it. “You look absolutely stunning.”

  She had on a slender black skirt with a long-sleeved white blouse, and when the light caught the blouse just right, it seemed to shimmer. Her hair was piled on top of her head, exposing her slender neck and showing off a set of long, silver earrings.

  She picked up an envelope-size purse from the dresser.

  “Thank you. I wasn’t sure what to wear, but I assumed you weren’t taking me bowling.”

  “You assumed correctly.”

  “One look at you and that’s obvious.”

  I was wearing a gray suit with a navy pinstripe, a white shirt, and a solid navy tie. I’d never set eyes on the suit before. It was one of two included in the suitcase provided by Chuck, and as expected, it was a perfect fit.

  When we got in my car, I asked her about her robbery case. Unlike my mission, she was able to describe in detail exactly how her case was proceeding and what she and her partner had done to find their suspect.

  Twenty minutes later, we were on the outskirts of Flint at a restaurant called D’Amico’s Italian Steakhouse. It was nestled in a wooded area with a curved roadway leading up to the front entrance. The outside of the red-roofed building resembled an Italian villa with overflowing urns of flowering plants and Italian marble statuary anchoring the front doors. The melodic strains of piano music met us as we approached the hostess desk.

  Since I’d called and made a reservation earlier in the evening, we were seated immediately.

  The table I’d requested was positioned in front of a set of windows overlooking a river. The trees lining the pathway down to the water had been strung with tiny white lights, and as the sun descended over the horizon, the combination of lights and water created a magical glow.

  “What a romantic p
lace,” Nikki said. “Did you take all your dates here when you were in high school?”

  “Only on Prom Night.”

  “Seriously? You came here on Prom Night?”

  I nodded. “My date and I weren’t alone, though. Six of us came here, plus our dates, so the waiter put us in a back room in another section of the restaurant. It didn’t have a view. I don’t believe it even had a window. It was nothing like this.”

  She looked thoughtful. “When the waiter seated us, he said this was the table you’d requested. How did you know about this room, if you hadn’t been in here before?”

  I smiled at her. “Even on a night off, Detective, you remain observant.”

  She shook her finger at me. “Huh uh. You’re not getting out of answering my question by that diversionary tactic.”

  I shrugged. “Okay. Here’s the story. The evening of the Senior Prom, I got mad at one of the guys. I can’t remember why, but I decided to go outside and cool off. That’s when I took a wrong turn and ended up in here.”

  I paused and looked out the window.

  Nikki’s face was reflected in the glass.

  “A man and a woman were seated right here where we are now, and they were holding hands across the table and laughing together. I remember wondering what it must be like to be that happy.”

  I turned and looked at her. “But, right now, sitting here with you, I believe I’m much happier than that man could ever dream of being.”

  As it turned out, dinner was also delicious.

  * * * *

  On our way back to the hotel, I brought up the subject neither one of us wanted to discuss.

  “What time is your flight tomorrow?” I asked.

  “Tomorrow night at nine. What about you? Are you staying over for the weekend?”

  “No, I have to be at the airport tomorrow by two.”

  We both fell silent as the reality of our lives confronted us.

  A few minutes went by, and then she asked, “Is it okay for me to know where you’re going tomorrow?”

  I considered that for about two seconds.

  “I’m flying into D. C. tomorrow, and I have to be at a briefing at Langley on Saturday.”