Rivers of Gold (28 page)

The third interrogation room was on loan to two teams of Feds. The FBI team was comprised of two squat special agents, Saltarello and Bassadanza, and their supervisor, a towering, cadaverous deputy SAC named Totentantz. They were arguing jurisdiction with the supervisor of the Treasury team, a dapper mocha-colored man named Reale. His two burly underlings, Gilliard and Rondo, glared at Santiago and More, clearly itching for a fight. They had been in the tail car during More's mad sprint across the Queensboro Bridge.

The Feds were sitting on one Mark Shewkesbury, head of the True Apothecary Fund, one of the new feeder funds started by Urbank under the strict new federal regulations imposed in the wake of the Jagoff trial. They had surprised him at his office earlier in the day, while he was kibitzing with a state assemblyman whose name was well known to the cops, a fat swarthy Greek named Ommatokoita who sat on the financial oversight committee. The assemblyman had hauled ass when the Feds came in (his name not being on the warrant), and Shewkesbury had started howling for a lawyer. That stopped when they cuffed him to the table in the interrogation room, at which point he began rambling incoherently. The Feds had grudgingly told the cops about Shewkesbury's financial records, which showed a series of payments to Bacchanal Industries—which turned out to be a premium brothel in a brownstone on West Eighty-third, just off the park. When the Narc Sharks (accompanied by an armored ESU team More swiftly whistled up) took the door, they found a bonanza. “Six different kinds of pills and counting,” panted a breathless Liesl into his phone. Even better was the company computer, the hard drive of which a slender young woman in lingerie tried in vain to fry before Turse drew a bead on the center of her forehead and gently advised: “Don't fucking move, dear.” Both Narc Sharks had GTL light/laser attachments on their Glocks, along with tactical Fobus holsters that permitted a concealed carry for the modified rig, which were hardly standard issue.

“I wonder who gave them the idea for those,” Santiago muttered, glaring at More, who shrugged.

So the Feds were arguing and stealing angry glances at the cops, the Narc Sharks were writing their own ticket to OCID, and Santiago was stuck with More, two surly cabbies, and Shewkesbury, who had stopped ranting and now stared, glassy-eyed and drooling, at the old Micronta clock on the wall, watched through the one-way glass by Santiago and McKeutchen.

“Guy used his own credit card at a brothel,” Santiago said, shaking his head. “How can people who are so successful be so stupid?”

“Y'know, maybe Oswald Spengler was right,” McKeutchen observed.

“Who?”

“Get the fuck out of here,” McKeutchen growled gleefully. “Get the mope his translator.”

Santiago started to walk off, but More tapped him on the shoulder, shook his head, then tapped his own chest and vanished into the stairwell. The lawyers from Legal Aid and the Taxicab Workers Association insisted on a translator who spoke either Swahili or Bantu for the Congolese cabbie, who glowered through the glass like he'd done it before. Santiago figured he'd try his luck with the Indian burnout first.

Closing the door of the interrogation room behind him, Santiago surveyed his prey. Short, spindly, expensive-looking haircut poorly maintained, with a short-sleeve plaid button-down over a T-shirt that read
I LOVE GRAVITY
. This was Santiago's first full-length CAB interrogation, and since he knew he'd be in the spotlight, he wanted to make sure he did everything by the book.

“So,” he began, “you want a—”

“Fuck you, man,” snarled the little brown cabbie.

“Okay, so you
don't
want anything to eat or drink,” Santiago smiled. This would be easier than he thought. He pulled out the second chair and sat backward on it facing Arun. “Guess why we picked you up?”

“Fuck you, man.”

“It wasn't 'cause you had any outstanding summonses.”

“Fuck you, man.”

“Wasn't 'cause you failed a drug test.”

“Fuck you, man.”

“Wasn't 'cause your license expired.”

“Fuck you, man.”

“Who's Nightclub Guy?”

That tripped him up. This time he hesitated just a moment before repeating his favorite line.

“We know the switch is in the cabs. Where do you re-up?”

See previous line.

“Who does the money?”

Ditto.

“Look,” Santiago said in his best Reluctantly Helpful, “we've got you on conspiracy and possession with intent to distribute. Your trip sheet shows you making runs to Newark, so we can make it interstate trafficking, too. You're looking at fifteen years minimum, twenty if I tack on an obstruction charge.”

He was getting somewhere. The cabbie was morosely silent. He had no idea the charges being leveled at him were baseless, there being no dope in Arun's cab and no cash other than what the cabbie had on him at the time of his arrest. Still, Arun was acting like he was already facing the judge. That was fine with Santiago, who wasn't so sure where any part of this fucked-up case stood on a purely legal basis.

“You give us a name, we give you a deal. Otherwise, call your union head.”

The cabbie snorted. “Who—the
chaakha
? What's she gonna do for me?”

This was such an unexpected break that Santiago nearly dropped the ball. “Probably nothing. Your hack license is history, most likely your personal one, too. The Legal Aid lawyer you'll get will just ask the judge for leniency. That means half the maximum, if you're lucky. Say ten years minimum. Unless you play ball with us.” Santiago hoped he wasn't overdoing it.

The cabbie looked down at his lap. Santiago got the feeling that he'd been through this before, and was getting sick of it. Maybe if he—

“Get it from the African,” the cabbie snapped, startling Santiago. “I don't give a shit about him.”

Throughout his life Santiago had repeatedly, sometimes violently, experienced the seething racism between black and brown firsthand. What was true in New York and Hispaniola apparently held on both sides of the Arabian Sea as well. He would never understand it. He shook his head, got up, and left the room.

McKeutchen gave him a firm pat on the back after the door closed behind him. “That was a ground-rule double, kid. Not bad for your first time at the table, not bad a'tall. Now if More gets that translator, we might get out of here by dinnertime.”

But the evening rush hour was nearly over when More came up the stairs behind a gigantic bald man with glossy black skin, who wore the smallest sunglasses Santiago had ever seen, shaped to cover the almond arc of the eyelids rather than the bony ocular orbit. Extra chairs were brought into the second interrogation room for McKeutchen, More, Santiago, and SAC Totentantz. Wiliad Ngala exchanged a few gruff-sounding words with the translator, then nodded his head once.

“
Tafadhali
,” the translator said, gesturing for Ngala to begin. The room's hidden recording devices were already running.

“I look at you policemen,” began Ngala, “and I wonder if you really know what you are up against. Far be it from me to debate the efficacy of law enforcement, as I have seen firsthand what becomes of society in its absence.

“I was born in Ndeko, north of Goma, which as you may or may not know is on the border between what is bemusingly called the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda, with Uganda to the north and Burundi to the south. I grew up in the refugee camp nearby at Kibati. For as long as I can remember there has been trouble between all these nations I have mentioned, which are superimposed over a map of tribal battle lines going back centuries. When the Hutu began slaughtering the Tutsi in earnest in Rwanda about twenty years ago, each of these surrounding nations picked a side. When the militias blurred the national boundaries by melting into bush and town, massing periodically for hit-and-run massacres on each other's villages, I was just a boy. I played in garbage and drank polluted water and thought nothing of it. This was simply the way the world was, why fight about it? I never knew my father. My mother passed away when I was five. She wouldn't stop vomiting blood and died before I could bring a doctor back to our house. By ‘house' I mean whatever slabs of plastic my brother and I could drag together from inside the zone where the UN troops patrolled. Going out into the woods alone was much too dangerous.

“After the Ugandan troops pulled out, the militias came through the streets. These were boys not much older than my brother and me, drunk and stoned and barely strong enough to carry their weapons. Everyone knew what became of those who were captured and forced to join the militias. We stayed just long enough to see the first killings. Boys forced people out of their homes and stores, made them kneel in the street, and executed them. Those victims from rival tribes were disemboweled and their entrails eaten raw.

“My brother and I ran into the woods. After two days, when the shooting died down, we decided to cross the river. A group of others we had met up with while traveling offered to help us across; they said they knew of a fisherman with a boat. We believed them. But after they had gathered us and several others into a clearing, they demanded that we hand over all our money and possessions. My brother and I ran back to the woods. The
gumagumas
opened fire and my brother fell down. I went into the woods and stayed for another two days, gathering whatever rainwater and insects I could to survive. On the third day, I crawled out to see if they were still there, but they had gone. I dug a makeshift grave for my brother by the clearing where he had been killed.

“I lived in the woods, starving, moving from place to place along the river, staying off the roads. I heard bits of news here and there, so many names, Matata, Ngudjolo, Nkunda, warlords came and went. I grew up on the river, always trying to head west, doubling back to avoid soldiers and militias. There was no point in going north, the Lord's Resistance Army controlled the woods, and we all knew what happened to those they captured. I was lucky not to have been shot by Ugandan or Rwandan security forces; your government trained them well.

“Everyone told me if I could get to Kinshasa and somehow get across into the Republic, it would be as though I had died and gone to heaven. Clean water, all the food you could eat, drugs for malaria and cholera, even air-conditioning. And after a year, I finally made it across, with the help of some men who worked for drug dealers bringing in cocaine from South America. I worked for these men for a year, showing them the best crossings, until I had enough money to get to Brazzaville. There I worked for another year cleaning toilets until I qualified for passage to the U.S.

“I arrived here in the fall of 2010, just in time to watch the city fall apart. Some other Africans told me I could find work as a cabdriver, which is what I did. I was on the job maybe six months, living in a homeless shelter, trying to save what money I could, when I was approached by someone I recognized to be another drug dealer, who said he could triple my pay. I believe you have this man sitting in the next room.

“When you are starving, officers, when you have not known a real home since childhood, when you have watched everyone you have known and loved die, when you have seen children turned into monsters that eat the flesh of their elders, you would be hard-pressed to turn down such an offer. It was a small matter for me to ignore the rude and distasteful ways the people of this city demonstrate to cabdrivers, for I have seen people do much, much worse. But such aloofness neither puts food in my belly nor places a roof over my head. The man in the next room explained how the system worked; in its way, it's really quite effective and elegant. And I was always paid cash at the end of each night's work. And since I was already accustomed to how badly New Yorkers treat cabdrivers, dealing with my annoying contact was also a small matter. For the first time, officers, I had enough money to influence my own fate. For the first time in my life, I had enough to eat. If you do not send me to prison or deport me back to Africa, perhaps I will one day be able to save enough money to go back there on my own. They say that the shooting has finally stopped, that the warlords are all in jail or dead. Maybe someday I will be able to go back and find my brother's bones, and give him a proper grave.”

The enormous translator took off his minuscule sunglasses and began to cry. The cops were silent. McKeutchen's fat face was pressed into a doughy visage of grimness; Totentantz and More were expressionless. Santiago experienced a gnawing hollowness in the pit of his stomach; he desperately wanted to leave the room. Ngala reached out and gently patted the translator's enormous shoulder but continued to glare coldly at the cops in front of him.

Everyone in the room except Ngala jumped when More snapped, “
Et qui pourrait être vôtre contact
?”

The huge translator was so shocked he stopped sobbing. Ngala grimaced angrily at More for a moment, then lowered his eyes and muttered something in Swahili.

“He has very unusual hair,” the giant translated.

The room went dead silent except for the faint drone of the overhead fluorescents and the sound of the penny dropping in Santiago's head.