The Night Charter (18 page)

C
AMARO CHOSE A
small restaurant with a Spanish name, tucked between a hair salon and a Cuban grocery in a strip mall. The place had only six tables, and four of them were already filled with workmen in sweaty clothes, some of them smelling of road tar. Somewhere nearby there was street work going on.

They both ordered mixtos. Lauren had an iced tea. Camaro had a Coke. They waited for their food, and Camaro saw Lauren watching her from across the table. “What?” Camaro asked after a long while.

“What's going on?”

“I told you.”

“You didn't tell me anything.”

“I told you everything you needed to know.”

“That shoot-out in Liberty City,” Lauren said. “Was that where it happened? Where my dad…died?”

Camaro looked sidelong toward the table beside them. The four men eating there continued their conversation in Spanish and paid them no mind. No one but the waitress seemed to speak English at all, and even she talked to the customers in Spanish. Camaro could make herself understood in Spanish if she had to, but it was not easy. Following the rapid stream of talk around the dining room was nearly impossible for her. “It's where it happened,” Camaro said. “But I don't think you should worry about that. There's plenty of time for you to find out everything. Think about yourself right now.”

“What does Sergio Chapado have to do with it?”

“It's not important.”

Lauren glared. “It
is
important! I want to
know!
”

One of the men at the table near theirs glanced over at the tone of Lauren's voice. Camaro smiled at him apologetically and then leaned forward to speak quietly. “Even I don't know it all,” Camaro said.

“Just tell me. Please.”

Camaro exhaled. “Your dad's friend Matt had something going on with a bunch of Cubans,” she said. “I don't know what. They had me bring a man out of Cuba. His name was Sergio Chapado. Before today, I didn't have any idea who he was or where he came from except that he was coming into the country illegally. They paid me ten thousand dollars to do it.”

“Why was my dad doing this?”

“Because Matt had his hooks into your dad. I think you know that.”

Lauren sat back. Her lower lip trembled. Camaro feared she might cry. Everyone would notice them then. “My dad wasn't a bad guy. He was a good guy. When my mom left, he worked really hard to take care of us both. And when he went away…I always knew he would come back for me. They told me he never would, but he did. Then Matt came, and things went wrong again.”

“Your dad seemed like one of the good ones,” Camaro said.

“How long were you friends?” Lauren asked.

“Not very long. But I liked him. I get a feel for people, and he felt all right to me. And once I found out about you and how he took care of you, I knew I was right.”

“He should never have gone out that night,” Lauren said.

“No, he shouldn't have. But you can't blame him.”

“I don't blame him,” Lauren said. “I blame
Matt
.”

“That's good.”

“Who's going to stop Matt?”

“I don't know,” Camaro said. “The cops maybe. Or the Cubans he crossed. It might take someone to put it all together, though. Matt seems like the kind of guy who slips out of things when he ought to go down for them. I've met his type before.”

Lauren looked at her. “Can you stop him?”

Camaro looked back. “Maybe.”

“Will you?”

“I don't know yet.”

The food came. Camaro's mixto was enormous, swollen with meat. Lauren's was much smaller, on a petite bun. Once more they lapsed into silence as they ate, as if putting food into their bodies was the most important thing before them. They ate until they were both stuffed. Camaro paid.

Outside, Camaro swung onto the Harley and waited for Lauren to climb on behind her. The girl paused. “Are we going back to the motel?”

“For now.”

Lauren seemed about to say something else when Camaro's phone rang. She answered it, and Ignacio Montellano's voice came down the line. “Ms. Espinoza,” he said, “can we talk?”

L
AUREN OPENED HER
mouth again, but Camaro waved for silence. The girl obeyed. “Now's not a really good time,” Camaro said. “I'm kind of in the middle of something. How did you get my number?”

“It's on your website,” Ignacio said. “Coral Sea Sport Charters. I notice you don't have any pictures of yourself on there.”

“I didn't see the point,” Camaro said.

“Sure. And I can think of other reasons, too. Like maybe you didn't want anybody to come snooping around after your name and find your face plastered all over some web page somewhere.”

“I don't have anything to hide.”

“Don't make me laugh, okay?”

“What do you want?” Camaro asked.

“I want to meet. Where you want to do it. Your place, the station…wherever.”

Camaro was aware of Lauren watching her. She turned her face away. “I don't want to meet anywhere. We had our talk.”

“We had
a
talk, but that was before some things came up that are really interesting. Do you want me to tell you all about it?”

“Could I stop you?”

Ignacio chuckled slightly. “One of my fellow detectives put your name through the system, and it turns out that you have some trouble in your past. Multiple homicides in Brooklyn, New York, where you're a person of interest, which is just the latest.
And
it turns out you have a bench warrant out for failure to appear, which means you're a fugitive up there.”

“I don't know anything about any murders,” Camaro said.

“Yeah. Just like you don't know anything about what happened in Liberty City. But you know, I called up there and talked to a detective named Hernandez, and he told me all sorts of things about how you breezed into town one day and got yourself tangled up in something bad. Next thing they know, they're picking up bodies in a pool hall that got shot to pieces, and you're in the wind. Detective Hernandez got
really
interested when I told him about our shoot-out, because it was pretty much the exact same thing: lots of dead guys and your name in the middle of it. Only this time you didn't disappear afterward.”

“I'm not hiding from you,” Camaro said. “I didn't leave the city.”

“That's good. I appreciate it. Especially because Hernandez is really hot for me to pull your chain and maybe get you shipped up to his neck of the woods to answer questions about what happened up there.”

“So why don't you?”

“Because I'm more interested in solving Miami cases than New York cases,” Ignacio said. “Which is why I called. I wanted to know if you feel like telling me a little more truth than you laid on me yesterday.”

“I told you everything I know.”

“I'm starting to disbelieve you.”

“Believe whatever you want,” Camaro said. “I'm not involved in this. I told you my part in everything and that's it.”

Ignacio paused, and then he said, “I really want to close this thing. You know what I'm saying? I've got a whole bunch of homicides and not a lot of time on my hands. This is a busy city. I've got a captain who's breathing down my neck and new homicides rolling in every day. So I'll take whatever you got. I'll even do it off the record. No one has to know it was you who talked, and you'll never hear from me again once it's all over. How about that? Is that a deal, or what?”

Camaro looked at Lauren. She looked away again. “I can't help you. Not now.”

“When?”

“Soon. Maybe.”

“Are you playing games with me?”

“No, I'm not.”

“Good, because so far I've been real nice to you. I could have you in a cell right now and have someone hauling you out to sweat you every hour on the hour, around the clock. Who's going to look after little Lauren then?”

“I'll get back to you,” Camaro said.

“Don't make me wait a long time, Ms. Espinoza.”

“Call me Camaro,” Camaro said, and she killed the call.

“What's happening?” Lauren asked. “Who was that?”

“Police. Get on.”

“Are they coming to get you?” Lauren asked her.

“No, not yet. Come on, get on the bike. We need to move.”

Lauren shook her head. “From here on out I want to know everything. If the cops come to get you, I need to know what's going on.”

Camaro looked at her with hard eyes and then she sighed. “People saw me at your dad's house. They saw us leaving together. This detective, he knows I'm hiding you, but he isn't coming for me yet. He thinks I can help him.”

“Can you?”

“I don't know. Until I find out more, I can't make a move.”

“You're going to get killed,” Lauren said. “Just like my dad. You're going to go away, and you're not going to come back.”

“That's not going to happen.”

“How do you know for sure?”

“I don't. But I'm not going to break my promise to your dad, and that's to keep you safe until we can get you to your uncle. I'll promise you, too.”

Lauren shook her head. “Why do you even care?”

Camaro put her hands down on the warm gas tank of the Harley and willed a stillness into herself. Only when she felt it in her center did she speak again. “You know how you told me your dad was one of the good guys, even though he did bad things sometimes?”

“Yes.”

“The same goes for me.”

They stood looking at each other without speaking for a minute. “Okay,” Lauren said, and put on the helmet.

Camaro waited until Lauren was settled in behind her before she started the bike. The engine spoke. She touched the throttle to make it exclaim. Then she let the clutch go.

They rolled.

I
G
NACIO PUT HIS
phone in his pocket and looked down at the technician. The man's name was Liles. He was a gearhead like all the other gearheads, buried in a forest of electronics in the bowels of the station. On a broad flat-screen monitor was a grid map of the city, and on that map a red dot pulsed. “That's it,” Ignacio said. “Did you find her?”

“Yeah,” Liles said. “She's in Coral Terrace. I can get you everything right down to the street number. You want me to call out and mobilize a unit?”

“No,” Ignacio said. “I just wanted to see where she was hanging out.”

“What did she do?”

“According to her? Nothing.”

“What do you
think
she did?”

Ignacio frowned at Liles. “Why are you geeks always so curious? Don't you have enough to do around here?”

“Sorry. I like knowing something about what I'm doing, that's all. Especially when I'm not technically allowed to do what I just did without a warrant.”

“Okay, fine. If I wanted to, I could probably pin her with kidnapping and maybe false imprisonment. Obstruction of justice. All the good stuff.”

“So why don't you?” Liles asked.

“That's a really good question.”

“Is it?”

“Yeah. And I'm not gonna answer it. See you around, Liles.”

Ignacio left the room and headed for the elevators. He got to the third floor and made his way back to his desk. He sat down. When he nudged his mouse, the screen saver on his computer clicked off, and he saw the article he'd been reading earlier. Nestled in the text were black-and-white pictures of Cuban exiles doing military-style exercises in the swamp. Men in crisp uniforms lining up for inspection. Men shooting on a makeshift firing range. Alpha 66 in the midsixties.

A new report was in his email in-box and he opened it up. The VIN of the abandoned Mercedes had been tracked back to a dealership owned by Álvaro Sotelo. Ignacio instigated a search for Sotelo's name in the system and came up with nothing. Another man without a criminal past, mixed up somehow with the shooting deaths of seven men.

He looked up the website for Sotelo's dealership and wrote down the number. His desk phone rang. He answered. “Detective Montellano.”

“Nacho, it's Brady.”

“Hey, Brady. What's happening?”

“I'm on my way in. Did you get much use out of what I sent you?”

“Yeah, lots. I spent the morning following up on the two we identified but didn't find anyone at home. I still have a whole list of names to go through. Known associates. That kind of thing.”

“You think they're all in on this Alpha 66 business?”

Ignacio clicked back to the article. The pictures were grainy, almost antique looking. Another world. He had been three or maybe four when the photos were taken. “I don't know for sure, but it makes sense. I just can't figure out what a bunch of Cuban fossils have to do with these young guys. I'm looking at some of this stuff, and the original Alpha 66 members have to be in their seventies or eighties. Everybody we pulled out of that auto yard was under forty.”

“You'll figure it out. How about the rest? The Espinoza woman.”

“Camaro,” Ignacio said. “She told me to call her Camaro.”

“First names, huh? When's your date?”

“I don't think we're going to go out dancing anytime soon. She's a strange one. I can't figure if she's holding out on me or if she really doesn't know anything.”

“She's wanted out of New York. Lay into her.”

Ignacio puffed air at the thought. “It's misdemeanor bail jumping at best. Besides, if I squeeze her too hard, she might up and disappear on me. She has that boat, and all she has to do is get on it and it's
adiós
.”

“Don't give her too much line,” Pool said.

“I won't. I got one of the eggheads downstairs to ping her telephone for me, so I have a pretty solid idea where she's at. She didn't go too far from home. The guy says he can do it again even if she's not talking on it, just so long as it's switched on. Something about bouncing signals off cell towers. I don't get it.”

“I'll see you in thirty,” Pool said.

“I'll be here.”

Ignacio hung up the phone and returned to the article. He scrolled down to the final paragraph and read a line that had been highlighted:
Despite all of this, Alpha 66 is still considered by the United States government to be a potential terrorist organization.

“Terrorists,” Ignacio said to himself.

He opened a side drawer in his desk and came up with a printed directory with a spiral binding. Ignacio paged through it until he found the section for federal agencies. The FBI was listed halfway down. He picked up the phone and tucked it into the crook of his neck as he dialed out.

A woman answered. “Federal Bureau of Investigation,” she said. “How may I direct your call?”

“This is Detective Ignacio Montellano of the Miami Police Department. I'm calling to talk to somebody about terrorism.”

“Terrorism in general, sir, or do you have something specific in mind?”

Ignacio wasn't sure if she was mocking him or not. “Don't you have some kind of antiterrorism guy I can talk to? I mean, that's what you guys do, right?”

“Maybe you'd be better off speaking with the Department of Homeland Security, Detective Montellano.”

“Look, whatever. I'll talk to whatever agent you have. Give me anybody.”

“One moment, please, sir.”

The line beeped and was silent. After thirty seconds it beeped again. Ignacio waited.

Someone picked up. “This is Special Agent Mansfield,” said a man.

“Agent Mansfield,” Ignacio said, “I'm a detective with the Miami PD. I wanted to ask some questions about a group called Alpha 66.”