Tenderloin (Abby Kane FBI Thriller) (2 page)

Twenty minutes later, I arrived at the FBI Regional Offices inside the Philip Burton Federal Building on Golden Gate Avenue. When I exited the elevator at the thirteenth floor, I sensed an immediate buzz in the air, enough to elevate conversations and give everyone a purposeful look. A tingle shivered its way through my body as I joined the hustle and jostled my way forward. Times like that got me pumped.

The agency was on high alert. Agents were either hurrying in and out of offices, fast-tapping on their laptops, or gathered in small circles for tight-lipped conversations. I recognized a group; a few from the Oakland office had shown up. One I knew fairly well: Agent Tracy House.

A few months ago, I lent a bit of insight to a case she had been working on. Nothing major, but it was enough for her to turn the corner on the investigation. A doctor in Alameda had a habit of defrauding Medicare. He overbilled the government for a total of $5.6 million during an eight-year period. We had worked well together and liked each other’s company enough to grab a bite to eat every now and then. We always promised to do more but had never made it happen.

“Tracy.” I smiled. “What brings you to my neighborhood?”

She smiled back and shook my outstretched hand. “Good to see you again, Abby. We were actually called in by your boss. He needed more bodies.”

Bodies? For what?
She immediately recognized the look on my face, but we were interrupted before she could fill me in.

“Abby!”

I swung my head in the direction of the voice and spotted Reilly standing in the hall.

“We’ll talk later.” I gave her a squeeze to the arm before catching up with my supervisor. He barely waited before he turned on his heel and headed down the hall.

“I have someone I want you to meet,” he said, looking back at me.

I followed him into a large conference room. A few agents were gathered at the back of the room, talking quietly amongst themselves. I don’t think they even noticed us. Near the front of the room stood another agent, one I had never met before. He was busy hooking a laptop up to the projector.

“Abby, this is Agent Vincent Stone. He’s the one who found your guy.”

Stone focused his attention on us and stuck his hand out. “Glad to meet you. I’m sure you have a million questions.”

“You’re right about that.”

“Vincent will lead the briefing today,” Reilly said.

“Briefing? Today?”

“Sorry, Abby. I didn’t want to tell you over the phone. Not only is your guy back in the States, he’s here in San Francisco. We plan on hitting his location as soon as the team is briefed.”

I stood there flabbergasted. I had just gone from lead investigator on my case to agent waiting to be briefed.
What the hell…?

“The briefing isn’t for another fifteen minutes. He can fill you in on the details.” Reilly turned around and left me in a room full of awkward.

I wasn’t sure what to say. I had been investigating Arnulfo Carson-Ballard since my first day on the job; he was the first case handed over to me. We discovered that the financial guru had been running a Ponzi scheme that bilked a small group of investors out of $175 million in only four years. That’s a lot of money in a short amount of time. The interesting thing here was that all of his victims were rich single women. Apparently, Ballard’s financial talents played second fiddle to his romantic ways. Right as I got close to nabbing him, he disappeared like a ghost. No traces, none whatsoever. The case had gone cold until I received Reilly’s call today.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Stone said.

No you don’t.

He squinted at me, accenting the crow’s feet around his eye. “The fact that I found him was pure luck.”

Of course it was. I bet you’re one of those people who always wins lottery scratchers, too
. “How?” I finally managed, wondering if his smile could be any cheesier.

Stone went on to tell me about a diving trip he took with a few buddies in the Caymans. While there, he met a girl. She had broken up with her boyfriend and had been drinking. A lot. Long story short, she wanted to get back at her ex by having sex with the first man she came into contact with. Stone got lucky. It didn’t take long before their pillow talk turned to talk about her boyfriend, Ballard, and his business. He had heard about my case, and a few checks the next day confirmed that the Ballard his bedmate spoke of was the same Ballard wanted by the FBI.

“Where’s the girlfriend now?” I asked.

Stoned stopped fiddling and looked up. “She’s in the custody of Cayman officials awaiting extradition back to the U.S.”

“Is she involved?”

“I believe she’s the one who befriended the women before making the introduction to Ballard. From then on, she defused any concerns the women had.”

“So if they had questions about Ballard, they would ask her.”

“She kept them calm. Their targets were lonely women, and the two played off of it.”

“He must have really pissed her off,” I said, folding my arms across my chest.

“Nah, I get the feeling it’s a love-hate relationship between the two. She picked the wrong guy for a one-nighter.”

I watched him move his finger along the trackpad of the laptop. Projected on the HD screen in front of me was the desktop of his computer. The cursor arrow settled on a folder titled
Ballard,
and he clicked it open. A title card with our guy’s name on it appeared. “I think I got everything ready,” he said as he clapped his hands.

I had more questions, but time had run out, and agents were filing into the room and taking seats. All told, sixteen personnel had shown up. At fifteen minutes on the dot, Reilly walked back in.

“If I could have your attention, Agents. Thank you. If you haven’t already heard, we’re here today because we have located Arnulfo Carson-Ballard, a.k.a. the Prince.”

Reilly allowed a brief round of applause before continuing. “We haven’t had eyes on him or heard one word from the Prince for eight months, that is, until a few days ago when Agent Stone had an off-chance meeting with the girlfriend in the Cayman Islands. I’ll let him fill you in on the details.”

Stone motioned for the lights, and everyone focused on the large screen on the wall. A picture of a sultry woman appeared and enlisted a bunch of whistles from the peanut gallery.

“This beautiful bombshell is Nina Vazquez. She’s a fashion model from Portugal and the long-time girlfriend of Mr. Ballard.”

I interrupted Stone. “Excuse me. You said she’s the long-time girlfriend. How come I haven’t heard of her before?”

“Good question. This is Agent Abby Kane, the agent officially charged with investigating the case. The reason nobody here, or you, Agent, has heard of her is because she spent almost all of her time living in Lisbon and working exclusively in Paris. Through my brief interrogation before leaving the Caymans, I learned that both parties downplayed their relationship. It helped with the scam.”

“Seems like a fashion model would make plenty of money. Why help her boyfriend steal?” I continued.

“She wanted more.”

Wow, insightful. Thanks for blowing me away.
I strained not to follow up with an eye roll.

Agent Stone spent the next ten minutes informing the other agents of what he had told me earlier. Once the agents in the room finished cheering Stone for his conquests, he continued with a picture of the Prince.

“We don’t know why he came back to the States, but we have reason to believe he is staying at the home of a Korean real estate developer in Pacific Heights. As far as we know, they’re friends, and the developer is not involved in the Ponzi scheme.”

Ten minutes of background later, the tactical part of the briefing commenced. The plan was simple: hit Ballard’s location as soon as possible. He wasn’t a violent individual, but Reilly upped the manpower anyway. I suspect he didn’t want to risk the Prince slipping through the Bureau’s hands again.

Chapter 4

The decision to wait for sundown came later from the Special Agent-in-Charge of the tactical aspects of the operation. It would help with the element of surprise, and to be honest, we needed the time to get the plan right. Reilly had long ago sent agents in disguise to keep an eye on the house in case our guy went on the move.

When we arrived, we parked a block away and waited for the recon team, posing as workers for the electric company, to give the go ahead. When they did, we had fifteen agents in three SUVs pull up outside the residence within seconds of one another. I quickly slipped my FBI jacket over my Kevlar vest and exited the car. I remember facing the three-story structure, thinking it was a lot of square footage to cover. Our intelligence couldn’t confirm whether Ballard was the only person in the house. According to the recon team, the location appeared to be quiet. One might even think he had already flown the coop.

Team One consisted of five agents. Their objective was to punch through the front door. They were the first ones in—the welcoming party.

Team Two had four agents, and they moved along the left side of the house. Their objective was to breach from the side. I had embedded myself in Team Three. Our objective was to breach the rear of the house. Two agents remained at command center.

We stacked up; I positioned myself third in the line of four. We were blind as to what we would find at the back of the house and prepared ourselves for the worst. As we rounded the corner to the rear, we heard Team One enter the property. Seconds later, we heard Team Two enter.

The rear of the house consisted of a patio and a pair of French doors which we promptly destroyed with a battering ram. We cleared five rooms on that level before heading up the stairs. As we neared the main floor, we heard the continuous shouting of the word “clear.” In my experience, that was a good thing, but in this case, it was a bad sign.

When we reached the main floor of the house, Team One had already holstered their weapons while Team Two made their way back down the stairs. “Top floor is clear,” said the first agent.

Apparently Ballard had slipped through our fingers again.

“Look at this.”

I turned around and saw Agent House holding a handwritten note she had found. On it I could see a crude drawing of a hand giving the middle finger. It read, “Sincerely, Your Prince.”

“I’m guessing our guy wrote this,” she said.

It wasn’t hard to find Stone; I looked for the one person who had his jaw dragging across the floor. “Agent,” I called out.

“I don’t get it,” he said, his arms out in a shrug. “I was so sure he would be here.”

“According to this note, you were right.”

Stone lowered his head and shook it slowly. “Yeah, but he should have been here. It’s like he knew we were coming.”

“Anybody else know—”

“No, no one knew. Ballard doesn’t know we have his girlfriend in custody. I don’t get it.”

“Either he’s very lucky, or somehow he found out. How trustworthy are the officials in the Caymans?”

“I didn’t vet them if that’s what you’re asking.”

Clearly he was in a foul mood. I guess I would be too if I had thought I was Super Agent Man riding into town to save the day only to fall flat on my face. I headed for the exit.

Outside I saw Reilly, and I walked over to him. “I’m assuming you heard.”

“I did. It’s disappointing.”

I nodded. Just then, we both heard someone gasp.

A woman, one of the neighbors across the street, pointed at the roof. “There’s someone up there.”

I spun around and looked up. Even though the sun had set, we could make out a figure crawling on the roof.

A couple of agents removed handheld spotlights from their vehicles and lit the figure up. More reaction from the peanut gallery except this time, the agents joined in. Crouched on the rooftop was Ballard.

He stood up and seemed to struggle to stay on his feet. He wore a black robe and had no shoes on. His hair was matted against his head, he appeared to be sweating badly, and he hadn’t shaved in days. I had never seen the fashionable Prince display this look before. He was the poster child for metrosexual, and now he’d fit in as a zombie extra in a horror flick. He really looked to be out of his mind. A nut.

“I thought the house was cleared,” Reilly commented.

“It was.”

An agent appeared on the balcony near where Ballard stood on the roof.

“Stay away!” he shouted. “Keep away from me!”

He took a step backward, and my concerns heightened.

“He’s got a rope around his neck,” I radioed to every agent. A suicide was last thing we wanted. From where he stood, it was a thirty-foot drop to the ground—plenty of hanging room.

It caught me off guard when I heard Reilly shout out, “Mr. Ballard, talk to us. What can we do for you?”

“What can you do? It’s over. There’s nothing left to do.”

No, don’t do it.

Before another word could be spoken, Ballard ran forward and leapt from the rooftop. A woman’s scream pierced the silence. All eyes watched as his bare feet left the tiled roof. His arms reached out in front, and his mouth fell open. He didn’t scream or yell. He only had a look of shock on his face. Had he changed his mind?

The jump propelled him straight out before he started to fall, at which point the rope picked up its slack and snapped tight, nearly decapitating him. It seemed as if hours had passed before a voice shouted, “Get him down from there.” Only then did we break from our voyeuristic lock on Ballard’s swaying body.

Chapter 5

The girl was nineteen. He was twenty. They both lived at home with their families, where privacy was a foreign word. The only place these two lovebirds, and many others, could find any time alone was in a field near the edge of their neighborhood. Such was life in Mitú, Colombia.

That night, they had the field to themselves.

The dull, reddish glow from a crackling log used to roast a chicken earlier lit the couple on the blanket—bright enough that they could stare into each other’s eyes, but not enough that they were visible to a passerby on the adjacent road. The jug of wine had been drained dry, and their bellies were pleasantly plump. The only satisfaction left to fulfill was their want for each other.