Detective Damien Drake series Box Set 2 Read online

  And once he had the account numbers, he was able to cross-reference them with all the names that were listed on the ANGUIS Holdings accounting statements. A little brute force hacking and Screech identified the names of the primary account holders.

  “Steffani Loomis, Horatio Dupont, Boris Brackovich, and Mendes Corp.,” Screech read out loud.

  He tapped his chin and thought about these for a moment.

  “Well, it looks like I found your Russian, Drake,” he said, staring at Boris’s name. But it was the last one that held his interest. Of the four, it was the only one that wasn’t a personal account.

  And there was only one Mendes that he was familiar with: Raul Mendes.

  Eyebrows knitted, Screech went about trying to find more information about Mendes Corp. This proved considerably more difficult. For one, the account was held in the District of Colombia and even though this wasn’t the 1980’s heyday for drug lords, Screech still couldn’t get his hands on anything more than the name.

  All breadcrumbs led to… nowhere.

  Frustrated, Screech pulled up the file folder on the desktop with Drake’s name on it. Only this time he wasn’t looking for a photo, but a video; the video from the camera that Drake had set up in the basement that had held the final Church of Liberation meeting.

  He skipped forward to the part where DI Palmer met and spoke with Raul for several moments before parting ways.

  Raul… Raul…

  Screech drummed his fingers on his forehead. He was fairly certain that Ken Smith was at the head of all of this, despite none of the accounts leading back to him, but the person that kept popping up was Raul.

  But why? What makes Raul so special?

  Screech went back to his browser and started typing so quickly that his fingers became a blur. By searching for both Ken Smith and Raul Mendes, he finally stumbled upon an article from a Colombian newspaper dated more than forty years ago.

  And while Screech didn’t speak let alone read Spanish, when he saw the accompanying photo, his jaw went slack.

  “You’ve got to be shitting me,” he said, reaching for his phone.

  Chapter 23

  Drake leaned against the side of the shipping container, gun at his hip, as the man with the cigarette in his mouth approached. The man moved slowly, but Drake didn’t blame him; Officer Kramer had since awoken and was banging against the side of the container. It sounded like there was a mountain lion inside. He was shouting, too, but the words were muffled and Drake couldn’t make them out.

  Which, he thought, is probably for the best.

  “Drake? Is that you?”

  Drake stepped away from the container and showed the man the pistol in his hand.

  “That’s not necessary. I came alone, just as you asked,” the man said, taking another drag. From behind him, Mandy stepped out, a piece of Rebar in her hand this time.

  Well, if nothing else, she sure is resourceful.

  Only it wasn’t necessary. Drake shook his head and the girl dropped it. It landed softly in the gravel, but it was enough to make the man turn.

  “And who’s this?”

  Trust… you have to trust the man. You have no other choice.

  Drake slipped the gun into the back of his pants.

  “Hank, I’m in a bit of a bind here,” Drake said, moving forward. He hooked a thumb at the container. “As you can probably tell.”

  Sgt. Henry Yasiv took another haul on his cigarette. The red ember illuminated his face, and Drake was startled to see how the man had aged. He looked at least a decade older than the last time they’d seen each other.

  “I’d say,” Yasiv said. He finished his cigarette and then immediately lit another. “I don’t know if you watch the news, but DI Palmer is out to get your ass. I don’t know what you did to piss him off, other than just being yourself, but he’s right pissed. Except right now, he only wants you for questioning. At least, that’s the official line. But now there’s some chatter that he has some… incriminating… photos. I’m thinking that ‘questioning’ might soon be upgraded to ‘wanted’, especially with this.”

  Yasiv pointed at the shipping container.

  “No shit,” Drake grumbled. He gestured for Mandy to come to his side. “This is Mandy—she’s the girl I was telling you about.”

  Yasiv gave her a once over.

  “I’m Sgt. Henry Yasiv,” he said quietly. Mandy slid in behind Drake. “I’m going to—”

  The sounds from the container to their right suddenly intensified.

  “And that must be Officer Kramer.”

  Drake nodded.

  “Can he hear us in there?”

  Mandy shook her head.

  “You can hear sounds, but not words. You can only hear words when the doors are open. That’s when I heard about Drake.”

  Yasiv squinted at the girl before turning his attention to Drake.

  “I can hold off DI Palmer for a while—not forever, but for a little while, no matter what photos he has. But this… Drake, Officer Kramer is an NYPD officer. Sure, he’s an asshole, but you can’t just brain a police officer over the head and lock him up.”

  Mandy stepped forward as if to correct the man, but Drake put a hand on her shoulder, effectively silencing the girl.

  “I know. I know; I’ll take the heat for that. But there is something more important that we have to deal with.” Drake had already told Yasiv about the girls in the container over the phone and didn’t feel the need to rehash it now. “There was a man here, a short man with gray hair, taking the bodies out to sea. I shot him in the hip, but it barely fazed him. I’m thinking the tough bastard was Bolivian or Russian or something like that. Likely with ties to organized crime. I know it’s not much to go on, but we might get lucky if he was picked up recently in a drug trafficking sting, or something to do with the sex trade. Anything you can dig up might be able to help.”

  It was a shot in the dark, and both of the men knew it.

  “I’ll see what I can dig up,” Yasiv said as he made his way to the front of the container. For a brief moment, Drake thought he was going to grab the tire iron and let Kramer out. But he stopped in front of it and then squatted on the blood covered gravel. Yasiv raised his eyes, and followed the trail of blood to the shore.

  “What’s that?” he asked.

  Drake, not knowing what the man was referring to, shrugged.

  Yasiv took the initiative and picked up a small square of paper and showed it to Drake. It looked like the upper right-hand corner of a business card of some sort. Drake took the card and rubbed a dot of blood off with his thumb.

  “No clue,” he said, thinking back to the shot that the Russian had taken in the hip.

  Had it been his pocket? It could’ve been…

  “It looks like… I dunno, it looks like a leg of some sort,” Yasiv said.

  Drake nodded.

  It really did look like the pale, slender leg of a woman ending in an expensive looking shoe.

  Mandy suddenly appeared at Drake’s side and looked at the image.

  “They were handing those out in Colombia. A business card; La chica con las piernas, we called it. They said we would be working at a classy place here in America.”

  Drake chewed the inside of his lip and then slipped what was left of the business card into his pocket.

  “Think you can give me a five-minute head start before you open the cage and let the wild animal out?”

  Yasiv took the cigarette out of his mouth and looked at it.

  “You have until I’m done with my smoke.”

  Drake nodded and turned to face Mandy.

  “I want you to stay with Sgt. Yasiv. He’s going to look after you for a little while, make sure you’re safe.”

  Mandy opened her mouth to protest, but Drake shut her down before she could even get started.

  “I’m going to find out who did this to you and your friends. That’s a promise. But I can’t do that if I’m always looking over my shoulder to
make sure that you’re okay. You need to promise me that you’ll stay with Sgt. Yasiv. He’s not like the others, he’s a good man.”

  In his periphery, Drake saw Yasiv raise an eyebrow, but he ignored this. The fact that Yasiv had come here and put his career and maybe even his freedom on the line by speaking to him, was proof that he wasn’t in bed with Ken Smith and the others.

  Yasiv could be trusted… for now.

  The man took a heavy drag of his smoke, and the white paper burned another quarter inch.

  “I’ll look after her, Drake. But you better get going.”

  With that, Drake spun and hurried back toward his car, clutching the right side of his body protectively.

  He heard Mandy shout something, but he ignored her. Yasiv would keep her safe; he would do a much better job of it than Drake ever could, anyway.

  After all, he was a shitty boyfriend, more than likely a terrible father, and he was a god-awful business partner—both on the force and as a PI.

  But he was good at one thing. Really good at it.

  Drake was good at catching bad guys. And the people who had done this… they weren’t your run of the mill purse-snatchers.

  These were murderers who had no shame, no morals, no code of ethics.

  And they had to be stopped.

  Chapter 24

  Drake had only just opened the door to Triple D when Screech ran toward him, eyes wide.

  “You’ve got to see this, I think that—” he glanced behind Drake. “Wait… where’s Mandy? I thought you said she was with you.”

  Drake stepped inside and closed the door behind him.

  “She was with me,” Drake confirmed. “But now she’s with Sgt. Yasiv. He’s going to look after her.”

  “He’s not… you know, in the Mayor’s pocket?”

  Drake shrugged.

  “I don’t think so. I mean, if he was, he more than likely would’ve arrested me on the spot after what happened to officer Kramer.”

  Screech shook his head.

  “I’m not even going to ask,” he said, leading Drake to his desk.

  Without another word, Screech pulled up a photograph surrounded by Spanish text. In it, Drake saw a younger looking Raul, but one with the same bristly mustache, the same flat features.

  “It’s Raul,” he said mostly to himself.

  “Sure is: Raul Mendez. But can you guess who has his arm on his shoulder?”

  It was an American soldier, that much was clear by the fatigues that he wore. He had a shock of black hair and the beginnings of a beard on his tanned cheeks. The man looked familiar, but Drake couldn’t place him.

  “Look closer, look at his eyes,” Screech instructed.

  The man’s pale blue irises were also familiar.

  “Now picture him with the cigar in his mouth.”

  This was the trigger that Drake needed.

  “No shit,” he said. “That’s Ken fucking Smith. That’s the Mayor. Where is it taken from? When?”

  “From Colombia, 1983 or 84, I can’t tell for sure. You know what happened in 84 in Colombia?”

  “Well, I was five so, no,” Drake replied quickly. He kept studying the photograph as he listened to Screech talk; there was something about it that was a little off.

  “Fair enough, I wasn’t even born yet—but here’s the thing: in 1984 the RAND Corporation was hired by the Department of Defense to look into whether or not military intervention would stem the shipment of cocaine from Colombia in the US.”

  “And let me guess, in an ironic twist, the RAND Corporation needed a military escort to conduct their study.”

  “Very good, my young squire. So, with this in mind, I want to introduce you to Cpl. Ken Smith.”

  Drake nodded. He knew that Ken had served in the Army in the 80’s. It had, after all, been a selling point for his campaign. After his stint in South America, Ken had returned and had enrolled in law school. The details from this period of Ken’s life—from law school to founding Smith, Smith, and Jackson—were sketchy, but the consensus was that several shrewd investments and high-profile mergers had set him on his trajectory to become mayor.

  “So this is where and when he met Raul,” Drake said, thinking out loud. “But what’s this mumbo-jumbo Spanish shit all about?”

  “Just wait.”

  Screech enlarged the image and focused his pointer on something behind the two men.

  Drake leaned closer to the monitor. There appeared to be a sign just over Raul’s left shoulder. The words were in Spanish, and they were cut off by the mens’ faces, but there was a particular symbol that transcended language.

  “A snake eating the eyeball,” he muttered.

  “And they say you’re just a pretty face,” Screech said. Upon seeing Drake’s frown, he quickly continued. “Yeah, that the same goddamn symbol that was on the drugs and matches the tattoo on Raul’s arm. And that sign? The one that’s cut off? It says the Church of… you guessed it, Liberation. I also managed to translate some of the article and the gist of it is that while the U.S. Army was helping the RAND Corporation they came across this church. Apparently, it was just a front for a drug lab. What’s more, the people working in this drug lab had been kidnapped and written off as dead years beforehand. And guess who jumped in and saved the day? G.I. Ken, that’s who.”

  Drake was sure to wrap his mind around everything that he’d just heard. He wasn’t surprised about Raul’s connection to Colombia, of course, or the drug trade. What was alarming was how deep Ken’s ties appeared to run.

  “So, Ken saves the day, liberates these people and then… what? Takes over the shop? Uses Raul to ship the drugs to the US? Forms ANGUIS holdings to cover everything up?”

  Screech shrugged dramatically.

  “Your guess is as good as mine… but I’m thinking it’s a pretty good guess. I tried to find if there was anything about this whole Church of Liberation in US papers, and only found one small article about it. No names were used, only the mention of the Church and how it had been… uh… liberated. It appeared in the Times about six months after it happened.”

  Drake scratched his head. Mandy was from Colombia, so it wouldn’t be a stretch to think that Ken was somehow behind what had happened to these girls. The drugs, the logo, the tattoo on Raul’s arm: they all depicted a snake eating an eyeball.

  It was definitely connected.

  And then there was the matter of the woman’s leg on the business card that he’d blasted out of some Russian midget’s pocket. There was that, too.

  “Good stuff; keep digging, Screech. Anything we can—wait did you say the Times?”

  Screech nodded and pulled up another newspaper article.

  “Yep, the Times.”

  “And let me guess who the author is: Ivan Meitzer.”

  Screech clicked his mouse until a byline appeared on screen. The article was indeed written by Ivan Meitzer.

  Drake’s thoughts turned back to the day in the hangar when Meitzer had been beaten by Raul to get him up to stop posting articles about Drake’s activities.

  It appeared as if their relationship went back a ways, too.

  Drake pulled the business card out of his pocket and held it out to Screech. The man noticed the blood on the corner and raised an eyebrow.

  “I’m not gonna ask about that, either. What’s this card all about?”

  “I think… I think this is where Mandy and the girls were headed in New York. I’m guessing it’s a gentleman’s club of sorts. What I do know for sure, is that if Ken is behind this, he won’t be happy that his girls are dead. I also bet that he’s going to try to bring more into the city.”

  Screech’s face suddenly grew dark.

  “If they survive the journey overseas, that is.”

  “Shit,” Drake grumbled. He leaned back and rubbed his side absently. “And now that his drop point is compromised he’s going to be looking for another. Another location that is owned by ANGUIS.”

  “One of about a hundred an
d fifty.”

  This sobering thought brought about silence that lasted a full minute before Drake pulled an about-face.

  “What about the other thing I asked you about? The people behind ANGUIS? Anything on that front?”

  Screech pulled up another document.

  “You’re in luck. I managed to trace recent money sent from ANGUIS to four accounts. None linked back to Ken, unfortunately, but there is a Russian name on the list.”

  “Boris Brackovich,” Drake read out loud. Unlike the other information that Screech had provided, however interesting, this was something he might be able to act upon. “Get me a printout and send one to Yasiv. See what he can dig up on this Boris guy.”

  Chapter 25

  Beckett closed the door to the mass spec machine and watched the mechanical arm take the sample inside. As he waited for the readout, his mind turned to what had happened on the yacht. He had tried to push these images from his mind, but no matter what he did, they kept coming back.

  Despite what he’d said, Screech was right; it was all related. It had to be.

  And Beckett wasn’t naïve; he knew that Bob Bumacher intended to use the yacht to smuggle the drugs that were on board. Hell, he was fairly certain that the yacht had actually belonged to Donnie DiMarco.

  That didn’t change the fact that DiMarco deserved to die. Bob on the other hand… up until this point, he hadn’t killed anybody, at least not to Beckett’s knowledge.

  Now, however, after hearing about what had happened to the girls, Beckett was beginning to think that Bob didn’t deserve his free pass.

  The machine beeped and produced a readout, drawing him out of his head. Beckett took a quick look at the screen and then whistled.

  “Well slap my ass and call me Sally,” he said under his breath.

  The heroin was of Colombian origin and was almost laboratory grade shit; ninety-five percent pure, cut with…

  Beckett didn’t recognize the second, much smaller peak, and used the embedded software to search for a comparison. It took all of thirty seconds to come back with a match.