A Spill of Blood Ch. 06

Regan and Bertram didn't have a new client. They had a new partner.

The PAPD credentials weren't going to get me aboard a second time. Especially not to roam around unescorted like I wanted. Even if I thought I could shimmy along one of the mooring hawsers, they passed through openings too small to fit my body. I wasn't Felix the Cat ... I wasn't going to reach into my Bag of Tricks and pull out an invisibility device or a jetpack.

That left the gangplank on the starboard side of the ship and a scaffold dangling from two davits on the stern ... probably a relic of painting the new registry. The scaffold was a good eight feet off the water. Even if I could find some kind of boat unlocked around the harbor, I didn't fancy trying to snag the platform over my head and winching it up silently in the dark, so the gangplank it was going to be.

I called Jess to kill time. "I'm going aboard after it gets dark."

"That's a stupid move, Harry."

"Maybe, but she's only in port for another day, and I need to see more."

"Call the police."

"And tell them that there's this ship that produces too much garbage, so we need a SWAT team?"

She was silent, which I took as a victory for my sarcasm.

"Why did you let Beck go?" The subject change caught me off guard.

"Because it didn't matter what I did. He was already a dead man. Once Gibson tumbled to his lies, his only hope was to go quickly and he didn't. He waited until Nikki could get clear, and that doomed him and her. Mitchell knew about Beck's cabin."

She processed that. "Because he got there so fast."

"Yeah."

"Were they tracking you?"

"Maybe, maybe not. Maybe Mitchell was in the garage that day putting something on my car, and threatening me was just an added bonus. He didn't spend a lot of effort on it and let me go quickly, which seemed uncharacteristic.

"But I think they were watching Nikki. If we knew about Beck and Nikki, they certainly did, and Regan definitely had eyes on people. He as much as told me he had other irons in the fire. I'd be surprised if he didn't know quite a bit about each of those men, including a cabin upstate for Beck.

"But I think there was one thing Regan didn't know and another thing he misjudged. He didn't know Beck had an apartment in that building. William is a good doorman. He doesn't let strangers in, so Regan's watcher had to do it from outside. He thought Beck was staying with Nikki when he went there. And because he didn't know about that apartment, he didn't tell Mitchell to find a way in. If he had, he'd have found the Albany tickets, and Mitchell would have been upstate long before."

"What was it he misjudged?"

"What kind of man Beck was. Regan judged him by his own standard, and Regan's the type that would abandon a woman in a heartbeat the second she became inconvenient, let alone a threat. He figured Beck was long gone, probably abroad. So, he had your building watched just on the off chance Nikki would fly to meet him and he could get a destination. I bet anything a car pulled out after her, and someone in it was on the phone to Mitchell. I'd also bet that the reason Mitchell got to Beck's after me wasn't just because I drove quickly. I bet Mitchell assumed she was going to JFK or LaGuardia and headed that way until someone in that car called him and said, 'She's not going to Queens, dude.'"

"If Beck had run, he'd have made it."

"Yeah, at least until Mitchell could buy a plane ticket." Jess was silent. "Hey, Jess?"

"What?"

"Why the question about Beck?"

"I like to know what makes you tick, Harry."

"Those gingersnaps you hoard and won't let me steal," I said teasingly. She didn't rise to bait. Oh well, I'm not a funny guy. "Hey, can you get me the name of the ship's captain?"

I called Murray and left a message because that guy never answered his phone when I called. I added a specific timeframe. Then I turned off my phone because I didn't think I particularly wanted to hear what he'd say when he got the message.

I went back to killing time and thinking about getting aboard the Namibian. Then I took a walk along the wharf, being careful to stay out of sight of the ship. Finally, I went to a hardware store and a sex shop.

"Where the hell is Captain Karlsson?" I demanded of the unshaven fellow sitting at the head of the gangplank. "Lindqvist wants to know why the hell he didn't get a call about some inspector coming aboard today."

"Who are you?"

"The guy Lindqvist sent to ask why the hell he didn't get a phone call. Where's Karlsson?"

He regarded me with suspicion, but he'd only make out irritation on my face in the chiaroscuro created by a dark night broken by the pinpoint pools of light from harsh ship and pier fixtures. He half-turned and drew the radio from his belt. That was his mistake. He saw the motion out of his peripheral vision and started to turn back toward me, but it didn't matter.

I wasn't wearing socks anymore. That was because I'd put one inside the other, then filled them with eighty half-inch washers I'd bought. They made a nice sap. Even a forearm raised reflexively wasn't enough to stop it whipping over. I wasn't an expert, but I got it pretty much right. He slumped to the deck. By the time he shook it off, his wrists were behind him in cuffs and a ball gag was firmly in his mouth.

According to his driver's license, his name was Mario. That didn't sound very Swedish to me, but I guess slave dealers picked up crew where they could. Come to think of it, the first mate's accent had been American.

Mario's eyes crossed as he stared up the maw of the Sig. It seemed reasonable that would be the first thing to get his attention; I bet it looked huge from three inches away. A slight tug with my left hand drew his focus to his neck.

"Feel that? It's an industrial cable tie. You know, like one of those little zip ties, only a lot bigger. They only ratchet one way, and it's already tight enough that it's cutting hard into your skin." I showed him my end where I'd jury-rigged using a vise-grip and a piece of strapping around my wrist. "You jerk to get away, this tightens and doesn't loosen, and you choke out your last minutes. Now, let's go. I want to see where you keep them, and you're gonna show me."

We went.

The aft lower hold was a scene from a nightmare. Four long rows of cubicles had been constructed that ran the length of it. Two sides of each were heavy sheets of metal, welded top and bottom to the decks. The sides that faced the walkways were barred with poles of metal set close together and reinforced with lateral supports every foot or so. Each cell had a door that sported a conspicuous lock.

Heavy rings were welded onto the solid walls. Each cell had a small opening in the deck ... slit toilets. The smell was an eye-watering chlorine disinfectant that couldn't quite hide a hint of sewage. Moisture coated every surface, probably the residue from when the fire hoses at each end were employed to sweep out the filth. It was no different conceptually from the etchings of eighteenth-century slave ships with their manacled lines of prisoners.

The walls were covered in some rust-inhibiting primer, defaced with the scratching of the inhabitants: names, hash marks counting days, some in scripts I didn't recognize. I stared at the nearest and revised my theories once more.

Albert Ndadaye était là 2014

Seven years ago. Anders Lindqvist wasn't a new partner. Anders Lindqvist had been a partner all along.

The overhead wasn't even six and a half feet above the deck. It made the place even more claustrophobic. The hold above it probably looked full-sized. I counted. Four rows of five. Each with six sets of rings. A hundred and twenty prisoners in twenty 7'×10' cells. Less than twelve square feet to live a month of your life, not subtracting space for the toilet slit.

I'd seen enough and it was time to go. Then I heard a noise. Not a feet-pounding-toward-me noise, a faint rustle from farther aft.

The last cage on the starboard side wasn't empty. Two pairs of dark brown eyes stared at me in utter terror. Or maybe it was at the gun and the handcuffed-and-gagged man.

I wasn't good with ages on Oriental faces, but I'd have guessed both were in their late teens or early twenties. Both wore shapeless shifts and clutched cheap, woolen blankets as if they would shield them. I jerked Mario's leash.

"Still some to sell, huh?" He made some gurgling noise. "Just these two?" He made some more.

"More," one of the women said. She held up fingers: both hands, closed them, four fingers. Then she gestured to the side. Looking around, I realized some of the nearby cages still had thin yoga mats and the same blankets strewn in them. I counted. The fourteen she'd just signaled plus these two.

"No sell yet. Sex." She pointed up.

On-board crew entertainment, she meant. A perk of the job until they were traded in for the next shipment.

"Some go off ship. They come for us later." She waved at herself and her companion. Her tone didn't spell dread. It spelled resignation. It had been her life for the last month. She was used to it, and that made my gut burn.

"Where's the key, asshole?" I asked Mario. He shook his head and I rammed the barrel of the Sig into the hollow of his jaw. That got a cheep of fear from the quiet woman. "The key!" His eyes said I better not take those cuffs off, but he gestured his chin upward.

"They key's with someone upstairs?" He nodded. I looked over at the talking woman, and she gave a grimace in confirmation.

"Leader," she said.

As much as I wanted to charge up there, find the captain or first mate or whoever was in charge right now and beat the key out of them, I knew that was stupid. If it took fourteen women to entertain them, it was more men than I could handle.

I was deep inside a box made of metal. There'd be no cell signal down here. I'd have to call the police from on deck. Hopefully, I could stay undetected that long.

No.

"Mario, where the fuck are you? We got an intruder." The voice sputtered out of the belt radio.

"Shitter," I muttered into it, hoping my voice sounded roughly like Mario's.

No. There was a pregnant pause.

"Whoever the fuck you are, you're not getting off the boat."

"Too late, asshole. This rope runs right down by that little hut there, and that's where my car is." The bow hawser was, indeed, made fast down by a little equipment shack. Of course, I'd moved to the stern part of the stern hold when I heard the noise.

"I'll get help," I said to the two women, already shoving Mario in front of me. He tried to resist, so I jerked hard on the cable tie. He started gagging for real. He wasn't going to suffocate, I judged, not if he calmed down and took slow breaths. I undid the Velcroed strap from my wrist and wrapped it around a cell bar. With his hands behind him, that would take a moment. Then I went up the aft companionway as quickly and silently as I could.

If this were an action movie, the disembarkation would go something like this. There'd be a cat-and-mouse game through the hold, across gangways with maybe a gut-clenching tiptoe across a gantry, all dimly lit by some ill-explained pervasive light source. Silence and stalking until ... suddenly ... shots would ricochet everywhere.

The hero would race up from the depths, probably being surprised by the cook lunging out of the galley. There'd be some bullet-thwarting power of thin aluminum and hurled kitchen equipment. It would somehow involve a giant butcher knife or a cleaver.

In the next-to-last moment, there'd be a chase across the main deck with numerous crew members doing unexplained things high up in the rigging. They'd plummet to their deaths cinematically when shot by the protagonist before he plunged over the side in a graceful swan dive. The underwater shot would show bullet traces ripping downward from the surface but never reaching their target.

Finally, the incredibly-not-explosive fuel tanks of the ships would explode, and we'd wait while the hero pulled himself up onto the dock and strode toward the camera, backlit by orange gouts of flame reaching up stories-high.

Mine was a lot more mundane, which is not to say I wasn't borderline pissing my pants.

Whoever I'd talked to on the radio wasn't stupid. I'm sure men did go to the bow to check that I wasn't monkeying my way down the mooring line. But as I ascended the upper hold's after companionway, flashlights stabbed down the forward one, accompanied by the clatter of feet on its metal stairs. I heard at least two sets of footsteps drumming across the deck above.

I got to the hatch before those footsteps and waited, tucking myself in the shadow to the side. It was jerked open and the first man stepped over the raised sill of the weather-tight door, flashlight in one hand, gun in the other.

One thousand lumens from my Maglite—hardware shops can be such toy stores—snapping on in his eyes as he turned my way got the expected reaction. He reared back, causing his companion to jostle into him from behind. I slammed the muzzle of my pistol into his throat underneath the arm he'd thrown up to shield his eyes and pushed. He tripped going backward over that sill, crashing into his companion.

And then I was in the doorway. Guy Number One was no longer a threat. He was lying on the deck trying to breathe. Guy Number Two fought to recover his balance and bring up his gun, but he stopped at my terse "No," reinforced by my gun pointing unwaveringly on his chest.

A shout came from across the hold. A bullet spanged off metal in my general vicinity, then another. I think Guy Number Two thought I might jerk to return fire and give him an opening. He started to make a move. I squeezed the trigger and put one right above his shoulder. I'm sure he heard the whistle as it sped past his ear, given his flinch. It was roughly out to sea, and I prayed there was nothing solid in line with that for a mile or so. He froze and I stepped out on deck.

My heart was pounding a mile a minute, but a hundred-foot pistol shot, in the dark at a dark target, who's at a different elevation, and you're moving to catch up with him, and adrenaline is pumping into your system ... those fuckers at the front of the hold would have to be damn lucky.

"Turn." I frog-marched Guy Number Two to the rail. Then I clubbed him with the Maglite enough to rattle his brains, and put a shoulder into him. He went over in a screaming tangle of limbs. I suppose he might have broken his neck hitting the water, but the Namibian actually didn't have that much freeboard.

Okay ... I didn't consider that; I just didn't really care.

While he was bellowing, I slithered down to the painting scaffold dangling off the stern. My plan prior to discovery had been to use the rope pulleys to lower it the rest of the way and slide silently into the water.

My plan post-discovery was to dangle from the lip to shorten the drop to the water.

The screech of a bullet ricocheting off the hull mere inches from my head threw all plans out the window, and I went over the side of the scaffold in a lunge that bore no resemblance to a graceful swan dive.

My thought in that stretched half-second before I hit the water was: how the fuck were they shooting at me back there?

When I pulled myself onto a small floating dock a bit farther away from cars and safety, I was glad there were no gouts of flame from the Namibian adding to the illumination. The harsh, industrial lights that dotted the pier cast deep shadows. I slid from one to another, keeping an eye to make sure none of the busy-bee lights fanning out from the ship were getting close. They were heading toward parked cars and pier exits. I'd lost the Maglite in the plunge, but I still had the .45 I'd jammed into a pocket so I could swim.

Very cold turned to bitterly freezing as the air hit me, and I moved quickly before my coordination went. My dad's voice when teaching me to sail the little Hunter 15 he bought used. "Forty degrees, forty minutes. That's until you go unconscious and drown, Harry. Five and you have trouble swimming because your muscle control starts to go." The water I'd just left had been ten degrees warmer than that, but the air was at least ten degrees colder.

I slithered over the rail of the small runabout that was moored there and cast off. I was trusting the offshore breeze of night to drift me away. Then I stripped naked and grabbed the heavy blanket I'd stashed there on my earlier trip. The shakes were starting to hit me as I wrapped myself tightly in it and popped a couple of hand-warmer packets inside. I tucked under the console as much as I could and pulled out my phone.

The screen lit and I breathed a sigh of relief. I wouldn't have to write a strongly worded letter to the makers of ziplock bags.

"Morgan, what the—"

"Shut up a moment, Murray. There's no time."

And there was the value of the man ... he did. He took in everything I had to say in silence. He said, "I'll get on the horn to New Haven now," and hung up.

Then, because there were sixteen young women who might be spirited away—or worse, killed and dumped to cover up—I made another call to add urgency to things. It was a prepaid phone and would go over the rail when I was done so it wasn't traced to me.

"911. What's your emergency?"

"There are gunshots down at the harbor. Lots of them. They're coming from the Namibian that's tied up at ..."

I spent the next half hour slowly warming back up. Despite the gradually growing distance from the shore, I saw when the berries and cherries came screeching in but I couldn't make out what went down.

I took note a minute later when another vehicle started up a hundred yards away. Moving slowly, it slid out of the commercial area. As it passed under one of the light poles, I saw it was a large black SUV, something the size of a Yukon or an Expedition.

Suddenly I knew where that bullet when I was below the stern had come from. I also realized how the voice on the radio knew that there was an intruder aboard. He'd received a tip off.

There'd been a black Escalade parked next to the Bentley Mulsanne at Regan's house. Somehow, Mitchell seemed like a black-Escalade kind of guy.

I called the two women I cared about who were involved in this and told them to get to a hotel for safety until this was over.

Then I huddled until I had drifted away from the mess, praying the engine would start when I needed it and I wouldn't have to use the radio to explain a naked man in a stolen boat.

I didn't have a phone, so the drive back to New York allowed me time to think things through. I went to the office first. I had changes of clothes there, and that's where my gun-cleaning stuff was. Saltwater residue and firearms were not a good combination.

Jess was there. Apparently, "stay in the hotel until it's clear" went in one ear and out the other. The defiant look as I'd come in the door said it all. I'd sighed and dumped it into the mental trash bin with all the other changes around the office during the last year.

"Detective Murray's called twice. Says he can't get you on your cell. I'm guessing you got rid of it." She didn't wait for confirmation. "Regan called, wouldn't leave a message except for you to call him back. Lexie called."

A laugh exploded out of me. "That's just perfect!"

"You should probably call her, Harry."

I stared at her in amazement.

"She's not happy about how things ended." As I started to protest, she hurried on. "I'm not saying you were wrong. You weren't. But it wouldn't cost you anything to let her apologize."