The Night Charter (17 page)

THE KEY TO
the motel room rattled loosely in the lock as Camaro let herself in. She had two bags of food from McDonald's, but no drinks. Lauren was on her bed watching television. “Hi,” she said.

“Hi,” Camaro said. She put one of the bags beside Lauren. “I brought food.”

“No soda?”

“I don't have cupholders on my bike.”

“I'm thirsty.”

“Drink water from the sink. There are glasses.”

Lauren got up from the bed. She went to the sink, where two water glasses stood with paper wrappers over their mouths. She tore the wrapper off one and filled the glass, then returned. “I didn't think you were coming back.”

“I had some things to do,” Camaro said. She tore open her bag to lay it flat on the bedspread. She had a Double Quarter Pounder and a large fries. “Eat,” she said.

Lauren was slow to her meal. She took small nibbles. “Where did you go?” she asked Camaro.

“My house.”

“Is it far?”

“No.”

They ate silently after that. Camaro finished off her burger and fries and went to the sink for the second glass. After a moment's consideration, she left the room with the ice bucket and returned with it filled. Plain water tasted better chilled. Camaro remembered long, hot days and drinking water the temperature of blood from a hydration pack.

It was only when Camaro balled up her trash and threw it away that Lauren spoke again. “What are you going to do with me?” she asked.

“What do you mean?”

“You can't keep me here forever. You said the police would be looking for me. And Uncle Matt is out there, too.”

Camaro sat on the edge of her bed. “I think the first thing you need to do is stop calling him ‘Uncle Matt.' He's not your uncle. You have a real uncle.”

“That's what my dad told me. But I never met him, I don't think. Not since I was real little, anyway.”

“You're going to meet him now. We're going to figure out where he is and contact him and get him here somehow. If he has you, the state won't try to take you away. Or maybe they might, but he's family, and family counts for something. It won't be like before.”

Lauren thought about this. Her burger was half-eaten, but she showed no further interest in it. “My dad told you about what happened to me when he went to prison?”

“Yes.”

“It wasn't good. They sent me to a house where they had bunk beds in all the rooms like we were in the army or a jail or something. The family was real strict about stuff like water and electricity. And then there was all the church. They were super churchy.”

Camaro thought a moment. “That's not a life for a kid.”

“So that's why you don't want me to go with the cops?”

“Yes. I said I'd look out for you. I don't think dumping you in some barracks qualifies. So it's your uncle or it's nothing.”

“My uncle's name is Richard. Not Dick. Richard.”

“Richard Story,” Camaro said. “Out in Texas.”

“I've never been to Texas.”

“It's all right,” Camaro said. “It's a lot like here. Hotter, maybe. Drier. I guess it depends on where he lives. There's some nice hill country, and the coast is pretty.”

“When were you there?”

“Not too long ago. Finish your food.”

Camaro waited while Lauren forced herself to eat. The television blathered. She would have preferred it off, but at least it put some sound between them when there was no talk. Camaro had not spoken to a fourteen-year-old girl in a long time.

“Can I ask you something?” Lauren said after she was done.

“Sure.”

“Are you going to kill Unc—? Are you going to kill Matt?”

“Does that bother you?”

“No. He was always weird with me. Asking for hugs. Touching me.”

“Did you tell your dad?”

Lauren shook her head. “Not about that.”

“He might have done something about it,” Camaro said.

“My dad would never go against Matt.”

“You don't know what people will do when they find out about that,” Camaro said. “I know.”

“Did somebody touch you?”

“No. But if they did, I would have killed them. I had a friend, though. She wasn't so lucky.”

“Did you kill the man who touched her?”

Camaro let a long breath out. “No, I didn't. But I wish I had.”

“Have you killed a lot of people?”

“Yes.”

“How many?”

Camaro got up from the bed and changed the channel on the television to a game show. “I think it's better if we talked about something else,” she said. “Like what you're going to say to your uncle about what's happening here.”

“I'll tell him the truth.”

“That might not be a great idea.”

“He has to know what happened.”

“He'll find out what he needs to know to make you safe,” Camaro said. “Nothing else matters.”

“Should I tell him about Matt?”

Camaro looked at the TV. “Maybe someday. When Matt can't hurt anybody anymore.”

W
HEN HE FINALLY
made it home, Ignacio fell into a long, black sleep while still wearing his clothes. He awoke feeling especially dirty and sweating under his collar, so he shed his clothes for a long shower that finally managed to throw off the last twenty-four hours. Afterward, he luxuriated by donning only boxers and a T-shirt and cooling from the hot water.

It was getting dark outside while he prepared himself a sandwich in the kitchen. He ate by the window, staring out at the varicolored sky as the sun went away. Afterward, he put real clothes on and holstered his gun at his side. It was a twenty-minute drive to the station in light traffic. He went straight to his desk.

Ignacio checked his voice mail and found a message from Pool. The man's desk was empty, and Chatman said Pool was out on a call. Ignacio called from his work phone, and Pool picked up right away. “Hey, Nacho,” Pool said. “Up and at 'em again, huh?”

“Yeah, I needed the sleep. I was like the walking dead there at the end.”

“We're getting old, man. Used to be I could pull forty-eight hours without blinking. Nowadays? No way.”

“I was calling because you said you had something,” Ignacio said.

“Yeah, I do. Have you checked your email?”

“No, not yet.”

“Go now. I sent you some stuff I turned up this afternoon while you were playing Sleeping Beauty.”

Ignacio opened his email. There were a dozen or more new messages, from department notices to reminders about the police softball tournament. There were two from Pool at the bottom. He clicked on the first one and left the second for now. “What am I looking at?” he asked.

“Those are the files for two of the dead guys in Liberty City. Turns out they're both Cubans, and they have a real interesting history. You ever heard of Alpha 66?”

“No. Should I have?”

“They're an anti-Castro group that formed up in the '60s. I put some information on them in the email.”

“They still have anti-Castro groups?”

“Oh, yeah. As long as there are communists in charge of Cuba, the Cuban community isn't gonna let it go. Anyway, both of those guys, Pol Mendiola and Arnau Crusellas, are known associates of Alpha 66. And it gets better: both of them have weapons charges on their records. Nothing that put them in jail, but it's the kind of thing that rings my bells when I find guys shot to death in an auto yard.”

Ignacio looked at the booking photos of both men. They were not exceptional in any way. If anything, they appeared to be ordinary people getting a snapshot taken for a passport photo and not for police records. One had been wearing a suit at the time of the Liberty City killings. The other had worn black combat clothing and was armed with a rifle modified to fire fully automatic. He browsed their sheets. “You think this Alpha 66 thing has anything to do with what happened?” he asked Pool.

“It's too good to just be a coincidence. Alpha 66's a paramilitary deal. Used to train out in the Everglades for an invasion of Cuba. I don't know if they still do that kind of thing after the president decided to make nice with the government over there, but now that we have a whole squad of them dead at the scene of a gun battle…there's fire to go with that smoke.”

“Thanks for checking into this,” Ignacio said.

“No problem. Keep me in the loop. I'm working a convenience-store shooting, but I'll lend a hand where I can.”

“Okay. See you around, Brady.”

“Not if I see you first.”

They ended the call. Ignacio sent the files for Mendiola and Crusellas to the printer and went to pick them up. He spread them out on the desk, comparing known associates. A few names cross-indexed, and Ignacio looked them up in the system, too. Some were clean, with nothing so much as a traffic citation on their records, but a couple others had minor violations, like discharging a weapon illegally. These men, taken together as a whole, were not a hardened gang of criminal masterminds. They had families and mortgages, and there was nothing about them to suggest anything like what happened in Liberty City.

Ignacio read through the information Pool had sent about Alpha 66. Most of it read like history, stretching back to the sixties and the seventies and then going silent by the time the eighties and nineties rolled around. Two men associated with Alpha 66 had run for local political offices and won with heavy support from the Cuban community. Ignacio was not embarrassed to admit he'd never heard of them, or about Alpha 66 either.

The second man in a suit had been identified as José Valle, another Cuban American, but with no priors to his name. The men with the guns, with exception of Crusellas, were nameless, their fingerprints not in the system.

He made a note of the addresses of both the identified men, plus their known associates. It was too late to go around knocking on doors, which meant another long night waiting for an even longer morning and afternoon doing legwork. He'd start with the dead men first, then work his way around to the others systematically. There was no trick to it, only focus and determination.

There was still a single email from Pool that was left unread. Ignacio opened it and saw there were files attached. He read the message and sat back in his chair sharply. “Oh, boy,” he said.

C
AMARO WAS RELUCTANT
to head out with Lauren, but there was a place to get breakfast only a block away from the motel. They rose early. Camaro waited on Lauren to wash in the shower and put her old clothes back on. “We need to get you a change of clothes,” Camaro said.

“And a toothbrush,” Lauren replied.

“Okay. I also need to stop by a bike shop and find a helmet for you. If we need to move, you'll have to ride with me, and the last thing we need is some cop pulling us over because you're a minor without a helmet.”

They went to the eatery and took a table far from the door, though Camaro sat where she could watch the whole dining room. Lauren chose pancakes and sausage and eggs for her breakfast. Camaro opted for an omelet with four eggs, cheese, and ham. She asked for coffee and it came quickly.

The other diners were mostly Latino and mostly older folks who slept little and needed somewhere to go early in the morning where they could read their newspapers or meet up with friends and chat. Camaro estimated she was younger than the next youngest patron by thirty years. Only Lauren carried fewer birthdays.

Service was prompt. They tucked into their meals. Camaro's omelet was good, and she ate it more quickly than she intended. Lauren smothered her stack of pancakes in blueberry syrup and washed all the sugar down with a glass of milk.

Lauren was the first to speak. “We need the Internet,” she said.

“What for?”

“For my uncle. I don't know how else to find him.”

“I don't know if there are any Internet cafés around,” Camaro said.

“What about a library?”

The waitress came back to refresh Camaro's coffee. “Excuse me,” Camaro said, “but do you know if there's a library around here?”

“In this neighborhood?” the waitress asked.

“Anywhere is good,” Camaro said.

“I think there's one up by West End Park. Do you know where that is?”

“I can find it,” Camaro said. “Thanks.”

Lauren waited until the woman was gone and Camaro had tipped cream into her coffee. “They'll have computers you think?” she asked.

“Probably. I should go alone.”

“No. I don't want to spend all day in that room again.”

“It's not safe out here. I told you that.”

“I want to
go,
” Lauren said.

Camaro stirred her coffee, the spoon ringing against the sides of the cup. “Okay, fine. We'll go together. But I need to get those things for you first. We'll head out around lunchtime when it's busy on the street. Is that all right with you?”

“It's fine.”

They finished their meal, and Camaro paid before they made the quick trip back to the motel. Once Camaro was certain Lauren was comfortable, she headed off again, angling west out of Coral Terrace until she saw a Target. She parked in the lot and went inside where the icy cold made the small hairs on her arms stand up.

It had been a long time since Camaro was a teenager, and she didn't know what teenagers wore. She selected two blouses, some jeans that seemed all right, and some underwear. After she put a bag of socks in the cart, she went looking for toothbrushes for both of them and toothpaste, mouthwash, and sticks of deodorant.

She put everything she bought into one of the bike's saddlebags and then circled back toward her own neighborhood. There was a bike shop not far from her house, and by now it was open. She stayed only long enough to buy a helmet that would cover Lauren's face completely. Soon she was back at the motel.

Camaro dropped the Target bags on the bed. “I hope you like it,” she said.

Lauren's face was unreadable as she sorted through the things, until finally she smiled and said, “Thank you.”

The girl changed in the tiny bathroom, and then she and Camaro took turns brushing their teeth and freshening up with the deodorant. They did not have to look or smell like fugitives, though Camaro wondered if the slightly mildewed scent of the room clung to them when they left.

At noon exactly they went out. Camaro rode with Lauren tucked away on the pillion seat behind her, clinging to her waist through the turns. It was busy like Camaro had hoped, and they weren't the only motorcycle on the road.

They found the library on the same block as an animal hospital and a ratty strip mall filled with businesses catering to the Spanish-language community. The small parking lot was almost empty. Camaro took a space near the door. They went inside.

It was not a large place. Camaro feared that it was too small to have computers until they found the stations tucked away in the farthest corner behind shelves crammed to overflowing with books.

Lauren parked herself in front of an old CRT monitor. Camaro pulled up a chair. “Richard Story. Texas,” Lauren said out loud.

It took less than a minute to find the information they were looking for. First they identified Richard Adam Story in Del Rio, Texas, and then they were able to use a white-pages lookup to get his telephone number. Or at least the last phone number he'd used. The library provided pads of paper by the computers, and Lauren took down his address and other information.

“I want to check some more things,” Camaro said.

“What?”

“Look up the name Sergio Chapado. Add ‘Cuba.'”

Lauren did as she was asked. There were many results. The girl chose the top one, and a site opened up. It was a blog called
Cuba Libre,
and it prominently displayed the Cuban flag. Some of the entries were in Spanish, but the one with Chapado's name in it was written in English. “What do you want to know?”

Camaro pointed. “Scroll down so I can see all of that.”

The entry was short and featured a photograph of a group of people protesting with signs in Spanish. The protesters were identified as pro-democracy activists, and Sergio Chapado was mentioned as a “prominent voice.” He was not in the picture, but he was quoted. “The world is freeing itself everywhere,” he said. “And now it is time for our little island to do likewise.”

“Who is Sergio Chapado?” Lauren asked.

“I don't really know,” Camaro said. “Is there any way to search this thing for his name?”

“There's a search box.”

“Do it.”

Chapado's name appeared in four more entries, all dated within the last three years. In each, he was associated with the same pro-democracy groups. A Canadian reporter informed her newspaper Chapado feared no reprisals for speaking out. The times in Cuba were changing. But maybe not so much, even with the thawing of relations with the US.

“I need to know more,” Camaro said.

“You can send a message to the blog owner.”

“Okay. Send him my email address.”

Camaro gave Lauren the address and watched as the girl input the note with Camaro's words. It was sent. “That's it,” Lauren said.

“There's one more thing. Search the news for anything about a shooting in Liberty City. Maybe look on the
Herald'
s site.”

Lauren found the story quickly and Camaro read. There were no pictures and little information to share. No names had been released to the public, the police citing an ongoing investigation. Even the detail that some of the men had been armed with fully automatic weapons did not make it into the story. Camaro finished. “Let's get going.”

“Can we have lunch?”

“Sure. Clear that browser. I don't want anybody seeing where we went.”