Kensington, Philadelphia
Monday, November 17, 3:21 P.M.
Driving back into Philadelphia, Ricky Ramírez knew he was on extremely shaky ground with Dmitri Gurnov.
Gurnov was the angriest he had ever been with him after he allowed Krystal Gonzalez to get her hands on the ledgers and then screwed up the chance to get them back. He shook his head, remembering what Dmitri had said.
“There’s gonna be hell to pay for this. Mr. Antonov does not like surprises.”
And now, driving back from Atlantic City when Gurnov thought Ramírez was headed to Miami would probably put him over the top.
But not if I get this woman, get the books.
Everything, it will be good again.
Especially since he called and said he hadn’t found her at none of those places.
Héctor, he will know what to do.
Ricky was on his third NRG! drink in as many hours, sucking down the small cans of caffeine and sugar water to battle his hangover and exhaustion. It was starting to make him even more anxious.
It had been a miserable trip to the Jersey Shore. The drive had begun early that morning, after he had loaded into the Mazda minivan four girls who had spent the last week working out of the Players Corner Lounge. It was snowing, and the road conditions were poor, making rush hour traffic worse than usual on the way out.
It had taken more than two hours to reach Atlantic City. At Tiki Bob’s Surf Shack—which was eight blocks inland from the Lucky Stars Casino on the boardwalk and set up similar to Players Corner Lounge, with strippers downstairs and two floors of beds above—the exchange of the four in the minivan for the three girls who had worked the week at Tiki Bob’s had taken far longer than Ricky would have preferred.
Then, on the way back on the Atlantic City Expressway, just past the exit for Egg Harbor, New Jersey, a bus had been in the middle of at least a ten-car pileup.
Worse, he had been stuck listening to the girls whine.
“I still don’t get why we aren’t hitting Florida next, Ricky,” Janice, a twenty-year-old pasty-skinned brunette, had said from the backseat.
His chunky, pockmarked face filled the rearview mirror as he met her eyes.
“I told you it is now next week!” he snapped. “I had something come up!”
“But it’s, like, warm there,” Janice went on. “And I’m so, like, sick of this snow.”
“And it will still be warm there next week,” he said impatiently.
“I’m tired of being cold, too, Ricky,” Shanika, a nineteen-year-old who had pale, freckled skin and her hair dyed ruby red, chimed in.
Jasmine, the bleached blonde in her mid-twenties sitting beside him, joined in, “Why are we missin’—”
“Will you all just fuckin’ shut up?” Ramírez said.
Jasmine turned toward him. “But—”
He raised his right hand to backslap her, then realized they were in heavy stop-and-go traffic and quickly lowered it.
“Shut up!” he said. “Now!”
The girls finally got the message and, after leaning their heads against the windows, slept the rest of the trip to Fishtown.
It had taken more than three hours to cover the sixty miles. He did not want to think how long driving south would have taken.
And now I got to change the ads on that escort website. Take the ones off the Miami pages, put them up on the Philly ones.
Then change it all back next week?
Maybe just change the dates on the Miami ones, and leave them up?
Damn! Keepin’ these putas moving around is too much work!
—
At Players Corner Lounge, it had taken the better part of an hour to get the girls, sleepy and dragging their feet, out of the minivan and settled in the rooms above the dive bar. Then Ramírez hopped back in the minivan and headed up Frankford Avenue.
Near the circular building that was Horatio B. Hackett Elementary School, he turned onto Trenton Avenue and followed it three blocks, looking in his mirror for anyone following him, as Dmitri had taught him. He made a right turn. At the second intersection he made a left onto Tulip Street, and again checked the mirror as he drove. After three blocks he made a right onto Sergeant, found the first open spot along the curb, and parked.
Ramírez got out and pulled his coat closed against the cold. The icy breeze carried with it a sharp industrial smell. The metallic burning odor—which he guessed came from the auto salvage yard just across Lehigh Avenue, or maybe from the old distillery down the street—irritated his nostrils.
A couple hits of that blackberry brandy they make would be good to cut this damn cold, he thought, then rubbed his nose. And this smell.
He turned back a block—crossing the street with the flophouse that he realized he had not visited in a couple of months—then quickly went over two more blocks. As he walked, he hit some slippery spots on the sidewalk, recovered before actually falling, and wished he could have parked closer. But Dmitri had said to always park at least three blocks away from the grow house and approach it on foot so that he would not draw any extra attention to it. The worst thing he could do was park right out front. Cars coming and going wasn’t good, Dmitri said.
Almost to the next intersection, he saw across the street three men in their thirties sitting on the stoop of a boarded-up row house. They were all brown-skinned and gaunt and looked like they hadn’t had a bath in a long time. The tallest one, with a scraggly beard and hair matted in dreadlocks under a dirty, multicolored knitted cap, had to his lips what at first glance appeared to be a cigarette. But then Ramírez recognized it, and caught in the air the unmistakable pungent smell of marijuana.
The three, who Ramírez decided had to be from one of the nearby flophouses, did not pay him any attention as he passed.
That was not the case with the pair he encountered next.
On the opposite corner, Ramírez came up on two Hispanic teenagers—they looked maybe sixteen and were probably Puerto Rican—with a battered gray Yamaha FZ1 motorcycle on its stand between them. They wore bulky dark coats, their hands stuffed in the deep pockets, and had black stocking caps pulled down low on their heads. They talked to each other as their eyes darted between the three brown-skinned men sharing the joint and the approaching Ramírez.
The teenagers didn’t recognize Ramírez, nor he them. But he knew what they were.
Some of Héctor’s halcónes.
And he knew that the “hawks” had more than their hands in their coat pockets. Lookouts always carried a disposable cell phone, of course, and often a pistol.
Ramírez turned the corner, and midway down the street he crossed over. He went up to the door of the last of the five rough-looking row houses on the block. The first two houses, tagged with graffiti, had realtor signs nailed to their doors that read FOR SALE—BANK FORECLOSURE. There was chain-link fencing, eight feet high, vine-covered and topped with coils of razor wire, blocking off the side and rear yards.
Just as Ramírez knocked twice on the door, wondering if there was an eyeball on the other side of the dirty peephole, he heard dead bolt locks turning.
The door swung inward. The row house interior was dark, but just beyond the door—and behind a wall of thick, clear plastic sheeting that hung from ceiling to floor—Ramírez could make out two human forms standing midway in the room. They were aiming the Kalashnikovs he’d brought at him.
“Get inside, Ricky!” the one on the left gently urged in Spanish, lowering the AK-47 he’d converted to fully automatic.
Ricky, recognizing Héctor Ramírez’s voice, went through the door. It was immediately closed behind him and the dead bolts thrown. An overhead lightbulb came on, and Ricky saw the short Hispanic male who had locked the door and hit the switch. He now was pulling the sheeting from the wall. He gestured for Ricky to go through.
There was another motorcycle, a big Kawasaki, by the door. Duct tape held more of the clear plastic sheeting over the windows, sealing them. Ricky crossed the big front room of the house. It was mostly empty except for a ratty sofa, a wooden box that served as a coffee table, and a big flat-screen TV mounted on a wall.
“Hola, mi amigo,” Héctor said, his tone friendly.
Just hearing that caused Ricky to start feeling a little better. They had developed a strong relationship—maybe ’cause of our Latin thing, and being from the islands—one far better than what Ricky and Dmitri had. Héctor’s calm demeanor helped ground him, balancing out Ricky’s quick temper and his tendency to be reckless.
Héctor was a swarthy forty-year-old whose hardscrabble life had included spending his early thirties in a Cuban jail. After growing up on a tobacco farm in central Cuba, he had made his way to Havana. He worked various jobs in the restaurants and bars, then wound up running hookers to the tourists out of a Havana apartment building. And got busted. He discovered that his primary crime against the socialist motherland wasn’t pimping—which, unlike the prostitution, was illegal—it was his failure to pay off the correct policía with U.S. dollars or free putas or both.
In jail he had heard about the smugglers who, for a fee that he could work off, would get him to Florida. When released, he had wasted no time seeking them out. Once in the States, and owing ten grand for his passage aboard the fast boat, he had his horticulture skills put to the test. The smugglers were Cuban exiles and had grow houses near Miami. Héctor found cultivating marijuana indoors much easier than hoeing rows of tobacco under the Cuban sun. He also found himself almost back behind bars—someone had tipped off the house to the DEA. His handlers sent him to Philadelphia, subtracting a little from his bill for transporting a kilogram each of black tar heroin and cocaine.
Ricky Ramírez, after getting a call from Dmitri Gurnov, had taken delivery. When he heard Héctor’s story—and Héctor convinced him that running a grow house would be easy money—Ricky set him up in the rented row houses in Kensington. Ricky had lied to Dmitri that that money—which had included what he advanced Héctor to satisfy his debt in Little Havana—was a loan. It really was Ricky using Dmitri’s money. Héctor now worked for him.
Ricky knew he’d luckily gotten away with all that. So far.
“I’m glad that you are here, Jefe,” Héctor said, patting Ricky on the back. “It’s been months. I have something to show you.”
Ricky motioned in the direction of the teenagers outside.
“Your halcónes look about ready to shoot someone,” he said.
Héctor laughed. “They all want to think they’re sicarios. But those two, Tito and Juan, they are only couriers. One drives and the other rides to deliver the pot.”
“Courier, assassin,” Ricky said, “only difference is a shooting.”
Héctor laughed again.
“Yes, I guess that is true, Ricky. Now come with me. . . .”
Liberties Bar
502 N. Second Street, Philadelphia
Monday, November 17, 4:45 P.M.
“Teenaged kids in foster care are ripe for the picking by pimps,” Mickey O’Hara said, sliding the files on the two missing West Philadelphia Sanctuary case workers that Matt Payne had given him back in the envelope. He then put that in his laptop case at his feet. “It is tragically simple.”
Payne and Jim Byrth, having arrived at Liberties first, were seated at the far end of the enormous dark oak Victorian bar that ran along most of the wall. They had a view of the entire room, including the front window—through which could be seen the back of the bar’s five-foot-tall replica of the Statue of Liberty—and the front door. O’Hara, his back to it all, stood near them at the corner, leaning with his forearms against the bar as he nursed a Guinness Black Lager. Matt had before him a half-finished eighteen-year-old Macallan single malt whisky, slightly cut with water and two ice cubes. Jim sipped at a Jack Black on the rocks. They picked at two overflowing baskets of hand-cut onion rings and fries.
The narrow brick-faced three-story Liberties was at the end of a hundred-year-old building that went the entire block. A half circle of canvas awning with an inviting Lady Liberty painted on it overhung its front door.
The heavy wooden interior was rich in character, warm and intimate, what came from decades of crowds drinking, eating, laughing, living. The crowd was light now—only one other man at the bar, close to the window and talking with the bartender, and two couples, one at a table in the middle of the room and another in one of the wooden booths lining the opposite wall—but it would quickly build as people stopped in on their way home from work.
O’Hara went on: “Like all kids, the ones in foster care are hungry for love and attention. Arguably more so. Their fathers and mothers who should have provided that instead failed them miserably—often because their parents had failed them, too. It’s a vicious cycle.”
He paused and took a sip of beer. Then he chewed on an onion ring as he gathered his thoughts.
“Okay,” he went on, “so here’s the fairy-tale version. Let’s give our foster child a name. Call her, oh, say, Joyce. She’s fourteen. Her parents die in a car wreck, leaving her an orphan with no other family. The courts take custody, put her in the care of CPS. She’s matched with a foster family, who raise Joyce as their own. She graduates high school, then at eighteen exits CPS and maybe goes to community college down Spring Garden Street here, or to a beautician’s school, or just gets married. And Joyce lives happily ever after.”
“And we all know that’s not what happens . . .” Matt said.
Jim grunted, nodding as he sipped his bourbon.
Mickey looked between them.
“And we know that’s not what happens,” Mickey parroted. “The cruel reality of what happens is that Joyce is fourteen going on twenty-four. She has a father she’s never known. Her mother, who might have two or three baby daddies, is bipolar, a crackhead, a hooker, dead. Pick one, or more. The courts send Joyce to CPS. But there are no available foster homes, so Joyce winds up, if lucky, at a place like Mary’s House, run by someone like Maggie. Or at a larger facility that has, shall we say, less considerate caretakers. Now, one of two things can happen. One, Joyce remains there in the group home due to the lack of an available foster family. Or two, she gets placed in a foster home, where she learns that the foster parents may mean well but really are not a helluva lot better than the caretakers in the large group home. Many foster parents do not supervise the kids. Cannot, because they’re working to keep food on the table and a roof over their heads.”
“There’s the subsidy check,” Payne said.
O’Hara nodded. “There is that. But try covering your monthly nut with three hundred bucks from CPS, maybe another three hundred in food stamps.”
Payne shook his head. “That’s not even seven grand a year.”
“If that much,” Mickey said. “Further, a lot of foster families, sad to say, are not going to win Parent of the Year by, for example, slapping around Joyce for not cleaning house quietly enough while they’re on their fat asses watching the Eagles lose. And if there are other kids in the house, and there usually are, either other foster kids or biological ones, they take advantage of the new kid on the block, including abusing Joyce physically and/or sexually.” He paused, then raised an eyebrow. “Maggie phrased it, ‘Think Cinderella but a triple-X-rated version.’”
“Kids can be incredibly cruel,” Jim said matter-of-factly.
“And so much for any chance of Joyce’s fairy-tale ending,” Payne said bitterly, then shook his head. He took a healthy swallow of scotch.
“So,” Mickey went on, “Joyce, enduring a living hell, has limited options. She can go back to step one, the group home, and hope for a better foster family to come along and take a chance on her. Or she can run away. Let’s say Joyce is sixteen now. What is she going to do to survive? How does she provide basic food and shelter? And safety?”
He looked between Jim and Matt.
“So, she goes back to square one,” Matt said.
“And reserves the runaway option,” Jim added.
“Joyce is still essentially a child and operating in survival mode, doing the best she can with what little she has learned the hard way. Keep in mind that she has never had any good adult role models.” Mickey sipped his beer for a moment, then went on: “Okay, so she’s back in the group home. She’s frustrated to the point that she’s contemplating the runaway option when one of the staff—say, someone in the kitchen who’s been watching her—approaches Joyce and says, ‘You’re a beautiful girl. I know how you can make a lot of money. I can hook you up with this guy. . . .’ And Joyce hears all about the other girls who at her age went to work waiting tables or as a hostess and earned enough money to get out on their own.”
“Bingo,” Matt said. “Just what Joyce wants to hear. She’s sold.”
Jim grunted again. “Literally. Sold out.”
“For a lousy hundred-buck kickback,” O’Hara said, nodding. “You’ve got kitchen staff making maybe eight bucks an hour. At forty hours, that’s three-twenty a week—sixteen grand a year—before taxes, et cetera.”
“And the social workers don’t make a helluva lot more,” Payne put in, grabbing an onion ring.
O’Hara, still nodding, said, “At this level they average about forty grand, give or take. To get that, they have to have a good degree, which means they’re strapped with college student loans to repay. A couple hundred bucks coming in tax-free is golden. Better than manna from the heavens! They justify it by saying what they’re doing is a matching service. They’re just getting the girls a job, an opportunity. If the girl decides to go and dabble in something on the side, that’s the girl’s decision. So, one girl goes out the door, and new ones come in.”
Payne was shaking his head. “I was about to say it’s disgusting that people in a position of power over kids would take advantage of them. But then I had the mental flash of those high school teachers banging their students.”
“Obviously not everyone’s dirty,” O’Hara said. “But that certainly doesn’t ease the pain caused by those who are.”
He waved for the bartender to bring them another round.
“Meanwhile,” O’Hara went on, “Joyce meets the guy, who then says he has no openings for waitresses. He tells her he’s got something higher paying but he’s not sure she can do the job—which of course only makes her want it more. Then he quote unquote reluctantly agrees to give Joyce a chance, saying he’ll personally show her the ropes. He says it’s a massage business. Really just body rubs. He tells her that he will bring in the customers, she massages them for a half hour, then they split the hundred bucks.
“Suddenly she sees that the guy is giving her the attention she’s been craving. He lays on the affection and the material things to make Joyce feel special. Then he feeds her drugs, her inhibitions go down, and next thing she knows it’s no longer massages. She’s being paid for sex. And he’s keeping all the money. And she’s trapped.”
“Did Maggie say she’d seen this happen?” Payne said.
“Last time we spoke, I guess maybe six months or so ago, she said she’d heard about it from the girls and other case workers. Nothing concrete that she could take to the cops. And she said absolutely nothing at Mary’s House.”
“Well,” Payne said, “that would be an expected answer. But clearly Maggie would never do it. Money is not an issue. Not to mention sex trafficking a minor carries a sentence of ten years minimum. But what about the other women, Emily Quan and Jocelyn Spencer?”
O’Hara shrugged. “Who can say? I don’t think so. But it cannot be automatically dismissed.”
Payne, looking at O’Hara, then looked beyond him to the front door. “Here comes Jason. And he doesn’t look happy.”
Little Bight Bay
Saint John, United States Virgin Islands
Monday, November 17, 4:50 P.M.
Maggie McCain, holding the fifty-foot-long white-hulled catamaran on a fast course, looked up from under her navy cap and smiled. The sails were finely tuned to the point that the big cat hummed with the steady stiff wind. It felt alive, knifing with a smooth rhythm through the waves. And that had made Maggie feel more alive. And given her time to think.
It had taken Maggie a half hour to reach the north shore of Saint John, the next island over from Saint Thomas. Farther east, she could make out Sage Mountain rising on the horizon at Tortola—where not even a mile of water separated the British Virgin Islands from the USVI.
Maggie, the wind whipping her ponytail, scanned the Saint John shoreline looking for her landmark. The lush green hills rose steeply above the enormous volcanic boulders and the strips of white sand beach.
She loved the seclusion of Little Bight and the fact that few could find it. The mouth of the small bay was barely twice as wide as the catamaran’s beam of twenty-five feet. It was tucked in behind a mass of boulders that formed a crescent at the foot of a tall hill, making the entrance all but invisible.
After a moment, among a line of brown boulders, she found the landmark—an enormous rock softly etched by wind and water that to her eye resembled one of Picasso’s contorted human faces.
She spun the big stainless steel wheel, putting Pablo’s big-eyed boulder dead ahead. Then, coming up on the gap to the bay, she uncleated the mainsheet, letting the air spill out. She dropped the mainsail. Minutes later, sailing on just the jib, the big boat smoothly slipped behind the crescent of boulders and into the protected bay.
What a difference being on the water makes.
I am back in control.
—
An hour earlier, Maggie had felt completely overwhelmed. Shaking out of control, she had taken the heavy shot of Cruzan rum to calm her—and then immediately knew that she could not keep drinking. She needed to clear her mind, and to think.
She had looked out at the sea and seen the small white triangles that were the sails of boats moving between the islands. She then immediately hopped up and grabbed her gear.
She went through the gap in the thick wall of sea grape trees Beatrix had told her about and found the stone path that cut back and forth down the hill to the beach and marina.
The dockmaster turned out to be in his thirties, a very tanned bald-headed man named Captain Jesse, who was the epitome of efficiency. Just as Beatrix had said, he had had the boat ready to go and insisted on a thorough walk-through, even after Maggie’s announcement that she had sailed the very small model catamaran a few times.
“As you know,” Captain Jesse said, “no two boats are the same.”
The layout of the boat was basically similar to all other catamarans—the main cabin, with the galley and large living area, was between the two big hulls. Steps on either side of the main cabin led down to the four staterooms in the hulls, two queen-sized beds forward and two aft, which were separated by their lavatories.
Back up on the deck, the dockmaster had shown her that the electronics—from the VHF radio to the GPS to the wind-speed and water-depth gauges—all were in working order. He then pointed out the location of everything else she might need—the three anchors to the life jackets, emergency flares, first-aid kit—as well as the array of black panels affixed to the topside of the main cabin.
“Not all our boats have those,” Captain Jesse said. “They’re the solar cells that charge the batteries. Don’t want to step on them.”
He had shown her that the fuel and freshwater tanks were topped off, and that the galley was freshly provisioned. There was food enough to last a week, if Maggie stretched it, as well as nice wines—including two bottles of champagne—and beers.
“And,” he’d said, “enough of our ubiquitous rum to throw a wicked party.”
She smiled. “My friends I’m about to pick up will be excited to hear that.”
He leaned forward and quietly added, “And if there’s anything else they might need, I can handle that, too.”
Else? What else?
Oh . . . that.
“It’s quality. Only the best. There is a lot of bad stuff sold here.”
Careful. Don’t come off as a prude. . . .
“That’s always good to know.”
He handed her a card. “My cell is on here.”
“Thank you,” she said, then shook the dockmaster’s hand, discreetly slipping him a folded hundred-dollar bill.
“Just let me know,” he said, hopping onto the dock.
As he began untying lines, she pushed the starter button on the small outboard diesel engine. A couple of minutes later, all lines free, she eased the boat out of the slip.
—
At anchor in Little Bight Bay, the big catamaran floating in water so clear and still it looked to be suspended in air, Maggie pulled out the laptop and the satellite antenna and powered them up.
The window for her e-mail was up, so she clicked to update the list that was her in-box. There were a dozen new e-mails, including one from Matt Payne, and that made her curious.
The voice mail Amanda left me said she was in the Keys with Matt when she heard about the attack from Chad.
She clicked on Payne’s e-mail, nodding thoughtfully as she read it. When she had finished, she realized she had begun to tear up.
If Matt has that e-mail I sent, then my father is behind this.
But Amanda has to have something to do with it, too.
I know the last thing she wants is Matt doing police work. Especially chasing another murderer.
She’s carrying his baby . . .
She had to give her blessing for him to help me.
Maggie sighed, then quickly opened another browser window and typed in PhillyNewsNow.com.
“Well, so there you go,” she said aloud, after reading the lead story’s headline: “Update: Society Hill Home Invasion.” Tailor-made real-time proof.
She reached into her canvas sail bag, pulled out a small digital camera, then, holding her head beside the laptop screen while holding the screen at such an angle that there would be only blue sky in the background, she forced a smile and snapped a series of photographs. Using the camera’s wireless function, she sent the images to her laptop. And, after picking the one that clearly showed the headline, she went back to her e-mail window, clicked on REPLY, attached the photograph, and wrote:
From: Maggie <magpie417@libertymail.com>
Date: 17NOV 0510
To: <w.earp.45@pa.blueline.net>
CC: SGT M.M. Payne <payne.m@ppd.philadelphia.gov>
Subject: RE: Your safety
Attachment: 1
Dear Matt,
Thank you for writing. It is difficult to express how much I deeply appreciate your concern.
I hope the attached photograph is what you need to know that I am genuinely safe.
With all due respect, and with admiration for your proven skills as a police officer, considering the circumstances I could not be in a safer place.
Please know that while this is an arduous situation, one that I do wish were resolved, I feel there are a few things that I have to do before, as you put it, life is back to normal.
I sincerely hope to see you and Amanda soon.
Fondly,
Maggie
She read it over, nodded, then sent it.
Then she thought: Why should my family get it secondhand?
And she then forwarded it to her parents and to her cousin Emma.
She then went to the My Free Texts page, punched in the California telephone number it had assigned to her, then her password.
The conversation string of text message bubbles was still there, along with a new bubble. She read it.
He wants me to bring him a page from the book as proof?
How stupid does he think I am?
“A place of my choosing”?
How absolutely magnanimous of him.
She read the message again.
I need to give him something, though.
She took the camera inside the cabin. She pulled from her backpack the notebook that was the ledger on the girls. She turned to a page that had a list of the girls’ names and the cities where they were working. At the top of the page there also was a crude doodle of a woman’s crotch.
She took a couple of photographs of that page, then repeated the process of sending it to her laptop.
Sliding the notebook inside the backpack, she had to work it around the thick brass-zippered bank pouch. And then she had an idea.
She pulled the pouch and the plastic bag that was imprinted in gold with Lucky Stars Casino & Entertainment from the backpack. Then she removed a handful of the hundred-dollar poker chips that were in the bag and fanned a wad of the hundred-dollar bills from the pouch. She took shots of the chips on top of the cash and bank pouch.
At My Free Texts, she attached one of the images of the ledger page to her reply and wrote:
She sent it, and a minute later was about to sign out when a new bubble popped up:
We are not meeting, she thought, even if it were physically possible.
Not now. Not ever.
Maggie, after attaching an image of the poker chips and cash, fired back:
Kensington, Philadelphia
Monday, November 17, 3:30 P.M.
Ricky followed Héctor out the back door of the row house. As they walked toward a gate—the same razor-wire-topped chain-link fencing that surrounded the three backyards also separated them—he noticed that there was another heavy smell in the air, a different one, not quite as metallic as earlier.
On the other side of the gate, Ricky saw the large-gauge electric power cables, more or less concealed, running to the center row house from the PECO meters of the houses on both sides of it. He followed Héctor past the enormous air-conditioning unit, a new one that had been spray-painted in clouds of black and gray so it would not stand out, then onto the small wooden back porch.
The industrial smell was getting stronger. Ricky turned toward it and saw where it was coming from. A sheet-metal hood, bowl-shaped and also spray-painted with gray-black clouds, was mounted outside a rectangular hole at the foot of the back wall. It covered what had been a small window to the basement. Ricky visualized the four-inch-diameter vent tube behind it. The tube went down to the heavy steel lid that was cinched tight to the top of a 110-gallon drum, a ring of flames from a gas burner flickering under it.
Héctor, approaching the back door, saw him looking at the vent.
“Another day and then that’s done.” He shrugged. “Bigger ones take a little longer than usual.”
Héctor slipped a key in the door’s dead bolt, turned the knob, and swung it open. When they stepped inside, Ricky saw that there was another curtain of floor-to-ceiling clear plastic. Immediately beyond it, at the top of the stairs that led down to the basement, there were two cardboard boxes, their sides labeled “Technical Grade Sodium Hydroxide Lye Beads.” One bulged with women’s clothes. The other, half full, contained shoes and purses.
“All that,” Héctor said, “is to get incinerated.”
Ricky nodded.
Héctor pulled the plastic curtain aside, and they entered.
Héctor grinned and made a sweeping gesture toward what was the main floor of the house. It held a giant tent made of the plastic sheeting—inside which was a small forest, two long rows of bushy green plants six feet tall—and what looked, at least by comparison to the old house, like a space-age array of hoses and wires and tubes supporting the tent.
“My controlled growing environment,” Héctor said, waving Ricky inside the tent. “This is much better than what I started with in Miami. And soon we start another one in the first house.”
Héctor had stripped the interior shell of the house bare. Then a framework of two-by-four studs had been added, and between the studs thick fiberglass insulation installed.
The entire room was then outlined in the tent of heavy plastic sheeting. Industrial-sized sheet-metal vents brought in the air-conditioning while other sheet-metal boxes drew the air out of the tent, sending it to activated carbon charcoal filters that removed odors and contaminates, then routed the scrubbed air back to the air conditioner. The complete volume of air in the tent was refreshed once an hour. The recirculated air was augmented with carbon dioxide created by burning natural gas in what once had been the kitchen and in the basement.
The forty plants were in two neat rows of twenty. They grew in plastic pots that sat on wooden racks built two feet high, allowing warm air to circulate around the roots. A web of black irrigation lines, on an automated pump system, regularly fed the plants a solution of nutrients from a sterilized stainless steel reservoir that resembled an oversized hot water heater.
Hanging a few feet from the ceiling were two rows of fluorescent light fixtures, each with ten one-thousand-watt lamps. The ropes passed through pulleys mounted to the ceiling, allowing the lights to be raised as the plants grew. Wall-mounted fans, above and below the height of the lights, circulated the air, as did big box fans, some set up to push air through the thick plant leaves while others pulled the air.
While it had been chilly outside the tent, the air now felt very warm and, with the high humidity, almost steamy.
And there was the strong, distinct smell of marijuana.
Ricky remembered what Héctor had told him when he first started the project. It sounded like another language.
“When the plant terpenoids evaporate, there is produced a chemical. It has an odor that is organic and heady. It smells the same as pot when it burns. If that gets to the outside, word would spread and we will have a rip-off. Or what happened to me in Miami—the cops come. So I will create a sealed space.”
“These plants are healthier than our first ones,” Héctor now said. “With more air flow, their stalks grow bigger. And with bigger stalks, the nutrients can travel better. And with more nutrients, the yield is bigger and better.”
Héctor showed him the bank of monitors.
“This is the perfect growing environment,” he said proudly.
Ricky saw that the readouts showed:
TEMPERATURE: 78 DEGREES F
HUMIDITY: 50 PERCENT
CO2 (PARTS PER MILLION): 1,500
“And see these leaves?” Héctor went on. “No webs of mites, no bugs, no nothing but perfect formation.”
Ricky nodded. “How did you get rid of them?”
“Same as we kill all pests, whether they have two legs or eight. We turn up the gas burners and create more carbon dioxide—the see-oh-two.” He pointed to the monitor. “If we crank that up to ten thousand parts per million for an hour or two, spider mites and everything else is wiped out.”
Héctor pulled from his pocket a jeweler’s loupe and handed it to Ricky.
“Check the color inside the heads of the trichomes. Almost perfect. This crop is about ready to harvest.”
Ricky nodded, made a cursory look with the magnifying glass, then handed back the loupe.
He looked him in the eyes.
“It is good, Héctor. Really good. But I came for something else. I need your help again.”
Ricky glanced at the cardboard boxes labeled “Technical Grade Sodium Hydroxide Lye Beads.”
“Another?” Héctor Ramírez said. “Just say who and when.”
Ricky Ramírez looked back at him and began: “When is right now. Who is not as simple. That is why I need your help. That woman Krystal ran to? She is . . .”
—
Five minutes later, Ricky finished, “. . . and we don’t know how to find her to get the books.”
Héctor began to laugh.
“What?” Ricky snapped, thinking he was being mocked.
“No, Ricky. But this also is simple. You have already called it.”
“Called what?”
“The halcónes. You said they want to be assassins. Then we can make them assassins.”
Ricky thought about that for a moment.
“How can they shoot this woman if we don’t know where she is?”
Héctor shook his head.
“You know where she works . . .” he began.
“But she might be there. She might not. There is no time to wait.”
“So you repeat what happened with that Krystal. You do not wait. You draw the woman out with bait. Use the girls from the home. Kill one or two to make a point. Then leave a message: ‘Another dies every day until you bring my things.’”
Ricky thought about that, then nodded. “Or every hour. That could—”
He jerked his head at the distinct sound of gunshots coming from down the street, then exchanged glances with Héctor.
Wordlessly, both men hurried toward the rear door.
—
As Ricky followed Héctor back through the first row house, with Héctor again holding his Kalashnikov, he saw the short Hispanic was leading the lookouts in through the front door.
“What happened, Jaime?” Héctor demanded.
“Tell him,” the short Hispanic said to the teenaged lookouts.
Héctor looked at the heavier of the two.
“Tito?”
Ricky saw that Tito was grinning.
“That scrawny-ass Jamaican bastard came up to Juan demanding weed,” Tito then said. “I told him to get him and his stinky ass homies off our street. Then he took a swing at me—and missed ’cause he’s fucked up and all—and then the other two started coming across the street at us, and Juan pulled his nine out.”
“That didn’t stop the fuckers,” Juan picked up, holding his right arm straight out, his palm parallel to the floor with his finger and thumb mimicking a pistol. “So I squeezed off a pop at ’em.”
Héctor exchanged a look with Ricky.
Told you, Ricky thought.
“One?” Héctor challenged. “We heard more.”
Juan shrugged. “Maybe three, four. That got ’em turned around.”
Chubby Tito started laughing.
“What?” Héctor snapped.
“You shoulda seen that Jamaican dude then. I never thought he could get that scrawny ass runnin’ that fast!”
Juan said, “Sure did. Ran right past the others. Left ’em.”
“Did they see you come here?” Héctor said.
“Never looked back,” Juan said.
“Assholes and elbows, that’s all we saw,” Tito added.
Héctor looked between them, then turned to Jaime.
“Go get the motorcycle. Take it around back.” He pointed at the Kawasaki motorcycle by the door. “Then take that one out back. And call in more lookouts.”
Jaime nodded and started for the door.
“You two,” Héctor said to the teenagers. “Come with me.”
Forty minutes later, Tito and Juan, in different winter coats than earlier and now wearing helmets, sat on the idling Kawasaki in South Philly. They waited on the sidewalk that edged Girard Park, Juan with his gloved hands on the handlebar grips, chubby Tito on the higher seat behind him, holding a small cardboard box with UNCLE OOGIE’S PIZZERIA printed on the lid.
Tito was getting parts of his face, helmet, and gloves greasy while more or less successfully stuffing a steaming slice of Italian sausage and peppers in his mouth.
They had been there not quite five minutes, looking at the well-kept duplexes lining the opposite side of the street, when Juan nodded in the direction of an overweight girl walking down the sidewalk. She was maybe fourteen or fifteen.
“Think she’s one?” Juan said.
“Shit,” Tito mumbled, trying to finish the chewy slice.
She approached the duplex with the address that Héctor had written on the outside of the folded notepaper. Juan had it in his coat pocket.
“She is,” Juan said. “Get ready.”
“Shit,” Tito said again, then swallowed hard.
He reached in his coat pocket and pulled out the folded paper. He tossed it in the pizza box, then with some effort got the lid finally closed with the flaps tucked in.
The overweight girl took a shortcut across the front yard of the duplex.
“Here we go,” Juan said, quickly checking for traffic, then revving the engine with a twist of the right grip and dumping the clutch.
Tito quickly squeezed his knees and thighs against the seat as the big bike jerked into motion. He switched the pizza box to his left hand and put his right on the nine-millimeter semiautomatic in his coat pocket.
The motorcycle roared across the street, then bumped up onto the opposite sidewalk.
They closed fast on the girl. About the time she heard them approaching and started to turn her head back, Tito threw the pizza box onto the walkway ahead of her. He pulled out the pistol and tried to aim as Juan almost ran over her with the front tire.
Tito began squeezing the trigger repeatedly, the pistol bucking as the plastic grips slipped in the greasy glove.
The overweight girl went down.
Tito slapped Juan on the back.
“Got her!” he said, looking over his shoulder. “Go! Go!”
Juan saw the door of the duplex open. A heavyset dark-skinned adult woman came out, then screamed as she ran down the steps to the girl lying facedown in the snow.