Office of the General Manager
Lucky Stars Casino & Entertainment
North Beach Street, Philadelphia
Monday, November 17, 8:53 P.M.
Nikoli Antonov, his palms together and index fingertips touching his lips, was deep in thought as he looked at the plain brown paperboard box. It was on the far side of his desk, where Dmitri Gurnov, who had just left, had placed it ten minutes earlier.
Antonov was trying to figure out why Gurnov had been acting oddly.
Why is he so nervous?
He said he was distracted with the plans to get the keys from Carlos. But I do not believe that.
It is something else. He is not thinking clearly. Evidence of that is that I told him to call me about this box of muscle relaxer.
Instead, he chose to bring it here, to the casino! Careless!
I told him over and over there can be absolutely nothing associated with those killings and the casino or Diamond Development.
And this drug could most certainly be a “direct connection,” as Bobby and Mike said.
I do not like either of them. But that is different from having a professional respect for them. . . .
—
“Let’s be clear on this, Nick,” Bobby Garcia’s voice had come over Antonov’s speakerphone, his tone impatient. “This is not our first rodeo. We know what we’re doing.” He paused, then added, “Apropos of nothing whatever, per federal law, there has to be proof of a gift being given to a politician that actually caused him to act in some official fashion—and that proof has to be a direct connection.”
Antonov was quiet a moment, then said: “An example?”
“Okay,” Mike Santos had said, his tone equally impatient. “For example: Giving said senator regular use of your Citation results in him having included in another law—one wholly different, say, on immigration reform—a line item that provides a tax exemption for any corporation that engages in the gaming industry and said corporation is run by a blonde-haired former Russian national whose suit size is forty-two long.”
Antonov grunted.
“Short of that, Nick,” Garcia said, “federal prosecutors know they are pissing up a rope at any chance of conviction.”
“That’s the beauty of being a politician, a ‘lawmaker,’” Santos added. “You get to write your own damn laws.”
“And what about his chief of staff?”
Garcia laughed. “Are you kidding me?”
“What do you mean? This is no joke.”
“You know, I learned way back in boarding school that Lenin had a name for people like that. I’m surprised you don’t know it.”
“Which is?” Antonov said, ignoring the shot.
“‘Tontos útiles,’” Garcia said.
“That’s Spanish, not Russian.”
“Well, I learned it in Spanish first. The translation to English is the same: ‘Useful idiots.’”
“And when they are no longer useful, we replace them,” Santos said. “Shall we paint you a picture?”
“No,” Antonov said, after a long moment. “No picture necessary.”
—
And the manner in which Dmitri placed that box on my desk, Antonov now thought, tapping his fingertips anxiously. It was suggestive. As if it was somehow a power thing.
Antonov turned and watched the images cycling on the quad of monitors on his wall. A surveillance camera captured Gurnov carrying a casino bag out through the revolving doors.
Dmitri is more and more a liability. He must be replaced. Perez, too.
His desk phone began to trill softly, and when Antonov glanced at the phone’s touchscreen display, he snorted and shook his head.
How does he always know?
He cleared his throat, then smoothly picked up the receiver.
“Ah, Yuri,” he answered in Russian. “How are you? . . . What—? . . . No, no. Everything is perfect. And I’m very glad you called. I was just about to call and update you on the dealings with our good friend the senator. . . .”
Kensington, Philadelphia
Monday, November 17, 9:08 P.M.
“And I thought that room full of pot plants was surreal,” Matt Payne said, shaking his head. “This is beyond surreal. It’s . . .”
“Evil,” Jim Byrth said, finishing the thought.
After searching the upper floors and finding no one in the house, they now stood in the basement.
The largest object in the room was the most disturbing one—an orange 110-gallon drum near the back wall. It had a natural gas line fueling the fire box beneath it and a tin vent tube leading from its metal lid up to the ceiling. And metal ductwork ran to a hole in what was the main room of the first floor.
Coming from the drum was the same stench, though somewhat fainter, that had burned their nostrils and throats as they had approached the back door.
Byrth gestured at the long wall where “El Pozolero” had been spray-painted in highly stylized graffiti-like four-feet-high lettering.
“The sick bastard takes a perverse pride in being called the Stew Maker,” he said. “Like it’s something to boast about. Incredible.”
In the middle of the room was a heavy cast-iron incinerator the size of an office desk. It also had a natural gas line feeding it, a vent tube, and metal ductwork that ran to the first floor. A digital gauge on its ductwork read CAUTION! CO2.
Beside the incinerator, on the raw concrete floor, were two cardboard boxes, each labeled “Technical Grade Sodium Hydroxide Lye Beads.” One was empty.
—
“This is getting worse by the second,” Matt Payne said ten minutes later, kneeling by the cardboard box. It was half full of women’s clothing, and he was using the tip of his pen to carefully look through it.
He had just put back a leather string necklace with an Eleguá medallion threaded on it—the clay disc of a child’s face that was the Santería god of destiny—and uncovered an unusual purse.
Some damn destiny, he thought.
He looked at the purse for a long time, dug some more, then looked back at the purse. He pulled out his cell phone and went to the folder he had made with the files Kerry Rapier had sent him in the Keys. He opened one and clicked through the images.
“How can it get worse?” Byrth said.
“Here. Look at this photograph of the Spencer girl.”
Byrth saw that it showed the tall twenty-seven-year-old in jeans and a Temple University sweatshirt and carrying a gold sequined purse that was glinting in the sunlight.
“Okay, the same photo from her file,” he said. Then he turned to look in the box. “Jesus Christ . . .”
Payne met his eyes. “I didn’t find a Temple sweatshirt in any box, and I’m sure there’s more than one purse like this in Philly, but . . .”
Byrth nodded. “There will be plenty of DNA in that purse to see if it’s a match,” he said.
Payne pulled out his phone and hit a speed-dial number. “Mickey, drop whatever you’re doing. I’m about to call in this scene. You’re not going to believe this. . . .”
After he gave O’Hara the address and broke off the call, he saw Byrth watching him.
“What’s the worst that would happen, Jim? They’d fire me, thus denying me sublime moments such as this?” he said, gesturing around the basement. Then he looked back at Byrth. “Remember what Eisenhower said at that Nazi death camp at the end of World War Two, when he was supreme commander of Allied forces?”
Byrth nodded. “Indeed I do. ‘Get it all on record now—get the films, the witnesses—because somewhere down the road of history some bastard will get up and say that this never happened.’ To this day those images are hard to look at.”
“And,” Payne said, “no one would believe that this is happening now. That, however, is about to change.”
Payne hit another speed-dial key and after a moment said, “Kerry, are you picking up my location from this phone?” He paused to listen, then said, “Right. That’s it. We were at the Hazzard address. I need you to send a Crime Scene unit here. I’ll call you back.” He broke off the call and speed-dialed another. “Dr. Mitchell, Matt Payne. You too busy to break away . . . ?”
—
“We’re talking with Philadelphia’s chief medical examiner, Dr. Howard Mitchell,” Mickey O’Hara said, panning the broadcast-quality high-definition digital video camera around the basement of the row house, the lens tracking across the wall with the elaborate four-foot-tall “El Pozolero” graffiti.
He stopped when he had in view the balding, rumpled doctor in the well-worn two-piece suit. The medical examiner stood to the right of the giant orange drum, which towered over him.
“Dr. Mitchell,” O’Hara said, holding a microphone in front of him, “you were calling this process alkaline hydrolysis?”
“That’s correct,” Mitchell began, then stopped as he furrowed his brow. “This is not for public broadcast or any other publication, correct?”
“Not for broadcast, Dr. Mitchell,” Matt Payne confirmed. He was standing behind O’Hara. “Just for documentation purposes.”
Mitchell, looking beyond the camera, nodded and said, “Okay, Matt, I take you at your word. I damn sure don’t want to see myself in those fifteen-minute TV news loops, over and over discussing such an indelicate topic. And that’s what would happen, because I’m too old to try to be politically correct.”
He then looked back into the lens and went on: “The university’s medical school has what is called the Tomb—a large stainless steel cylinder that is about the size, not surprisingly when you consider it, of a human coffin. When bodies are signed over by the families of the deceased and these bodies meet the needs of the medical school, they’re used for teaching gross anatomy, et cetera. Afterward the carved-up cadavers are taken to the Tomb.”
“And how does the Tomb work?” O’Hara said.
“The cadaver is placed in a lye solution in the cylinder, which then is sealed and heated to three hundred degrees Fahrenheit under a pressure of sixty pounds per square inch. In about three hours the alkaline hydrolysis turns the cadaver into a liquid that’s about the color and thickness of motor engine oil. It is an inexpensive and efficient process.”
“But is it safe?”
“Of course. Completely. Safer, in fact, than the embalming fluids that get washed down drains. There is only a bit of bone shadow left over.”
“Bone shadow is what?”
“Calcium phosphate. It’s what makes up most of our bone and teeth mass. This can then simply be ground to a harmless fine powder and disposed of.”
Dr. Mitchell motioned with his hand at the enormous drum.
“And this is essentially the same process—the use of lye and heat. Clearly, the drum here is much more crude than the pressurized Tomb. And considerably less efficient. But lye is cheap and readily available for soap making, biodiesel manufacture, and many other general uses. Any farm supply house in Amish country will sell it to you, or you can order it on the Internet. I would estimate that two hundred dollars’ worth could easily cook four or five bodies. Just add water. And boil.”
—
After O’Hara recorded Dr. Mitchell releasing the row house to the Crime Scene Unit—video that the medical examiner said O’Hara did have permission to use on Philly News Now—he followed Mitchell out the door.
Jim Byrth now watched the Crime Scene blue shirts photographing the large room with its clear plastic tent and small forest of ready-to-harvest marijuana plants. He had his handcuffs in his right hand, having gone back and retrieved them from the Jamaican after confiscating his knife and throwing it in the nearby dumpster. Byrth and Payne had agreed they had more pressing problems and that the stoner had had enough justice served for one day.
“That Rastafarian would’ve pissed his pants over this hydro,” Byrth now said. “It’s maybe four, five times as potent as average Mexican pot. Which is why it goes for a premium. A pound of average weed runs around four hundred bucks. That puts hydroponic at four grand, at least.”
“This room is worth a fortune.”
“Was . . .”
After a long moment, Payne said, “Have you ever seen an operation like this, Jim?”
Byrth turned to him.
“Well,” he said, “I have seen acre after acre of pot fields. And I have seen grow houses in everything from Houston condos to suburban Fort Worth ranch homes. And, I’m sorry to say, to my grave I will take the memory of seeing the horror in the barrels of Pozole. But all this?” He slowly shook his head. “I have never seen anything close to this place. And pray I never do again.”
Byrth felt his phone vibrate. He pulled it from his pocket and read the text message:
Byrth looked at the message for a long moment and thought, And how many more girls were killed and then put in those barrels of acid?
That bastard probably called himself “El Pozolero,” too.
He shook his head as he replied:
A moment later Byrth read:
As Byrth typed the bar’s name into an Internet search on his phone, he said, “You ever hear of a strip club called Players Corner Lounge, Marshal?”
“Sounds just like my kind of place. Sorry. Never heard of it.”
“Apparently it’s at Front and Master.”
“That’s Fishtown. Not far. What’s the significance?”
“Sheriff Pabody just said they found more of those stripper cards in the trailer, and this Players place was one of them.”
Payne checked his phone. There was no message—not from Maggie, not from anyone.
“It’s more or less on the way home. Should be hopping at this hour. Crime Scene’s got this place. Let’s get the hell out of here.”
With the exception of Payne issuing the most basic of directions as Byrth drove—“Two blocks hang a right,” then “Left here,” then “Straight a couple miles”—they were quiet, lost in their thoughts. To break the silence, Byrth turned on the radio, its volume low but clear. The station was broadcasting the national news.
Payne listened for a moment, then his mind flashed back to the macabre image it had created—thanks to Dr. Mitchell’s vivid alkaline hydrolysis description—of the case workers being boiled down.
They basically turned into a vat of Valvoline 10-W-40 . . . Jesus!
There’s no way Maggie could’ve known about that hell and not said something to someone.
With the girl’s murder and the firebombing of her home, I damn sure can’t blame her for wanting to control everything.
But this?
How do I begin explaining this to her parents?
And Amanda? I don’t want to lie to her, but until we catch these bastards I’m going to have to come up with some cover story she won’t see right through. . . .
From the radio speakers, the familiar grating voice of the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security filled the vehicle. It was a news report from Capitol Hill, and Payne heard the DHS head declare in a politician’s dispassionate monotone, “Our borders, sir, are more secure than ever.”
“Bullshit!” Jim Byrth blurted, practically spitting it out.
Payne glanced over and said dryly, “You really should learn to speak your mind, Jim. Holding things inside is not healthy.”
Byrth grunted. “I just get tired of the damn political lies. You know how long the border with Mexico runs, from the Pacific to the Gulf?”
“A couple thousand miles?”
“Right. The reality is there’s no way that’s secure—and certainly not ‘more secure than ever.’ At the San Ysidro entry plaza, the border checkpoint just across from Tijuana, eight million pedestrians cross into the U.S. every year. Another twenty million come in cars. That’s just one border checkpoint. Texas’s busiest, Laredo, has a daily average of five thousand trucks coming in from Nuevo Laredo, which happens to be the main smuggling route of the Gulf Cartel. We don’t know how much contraband gets through our checkpoints—only what we catch—therefore it’s impossible to quantify how much crosses at uncontrolled points. Which is why it’s disingenuous at best to declare the border secure.”
A couple of minutes later the United States attorney general’s voice could be heard over the speakers: “. . . these financial institutions, Senator, have become so enormous that we can only fine them, because we have found that if we in fact brought criminal charges there would be a negative impact on the United States economy, and, to coin a phrase, as goes the U.S. economy so goes the world economy . . .”
“You been following this?” Payne said, pointing at the radio. “Banks caught methodically violating laundering laws? Then fined only a couple billion dollars after moving tens of billions in cartel money?”
Byrth nodded. “Congress should have never done away with the Glass-Steagall Act. Banks in bed with investment brokerages? Banks used to be just banks, and could only operate intrastate. Now we have an alphabet soup of corporate finance giants, some headquartered here, some in other countries, with branches around the world.”
“And laundering money.”
“Laundering money and who the hell knows what else,” Byrth said, reaching over and punching the dash button that turned off the radio.
“And that makes me think of that poor bastard Garvey,” Byrth then said. “What kind of world is it when a guy just doing his job gets busted as a mule moving two lousy keys while worrying that the cartel will kill his family? Meantime, these big boys in their ivory towers, willingly moving cartel money and counting their profits, get a Get Out of Jail Free Card from no less than the AG himself.”
“They’re calling that ‘too big to fail, too big to jail.’ Apparently Garvey’s mistake was he didn’t move enough volume.”
Byrth shook his head. “I fear we are slowly selling our collective soul to the highest bidder.”
“I fear you’re right,” Payne said, then added, “Master is next street after the light.”
Maybe that’s what I need to do to get a response from that bastard—raise the bid.
Payne looked back at his phone and reread the first message he had sent to the number on the grease-stained note. He started typing:
Then his phone began vibrating, the screen showing the call was to his personal phone number. The caller ID read: UNKNOWN.
He sighed, then switched over to that number and answered it.
“Yeah?” he snapped, unintentionally.
“Matt?” a female voice said, clearly distressed.
“What?” he said impatiently. Then, slowly, added, “Wait . . . Maggie?”
“Look, I’m sorry. I need help. Fast. In twenty minutes . . .”
Lucky Stars Casino & Entertainment
North Beach Street, Philadelphia
Monday, November 17, 9:55 P.M.
Dmitri Gurnov walked out of the revolving doors of the casino carrying one of the big black bags. He glanced up, saw the security camera, then looked forward, snugging his fedora lower.
What are the odds Antonov is watching . . . ?
Gurnov followed a crushed-rock path that wound through the snow-covered park-like area and out to the boardwalk. A stiff wind was coming down the Delaware River. The cold cut to his bones.
As he walked his eyes scanned the area. He did not notice another soul anywhere.
He approached the dog park. It had artificial turf, a series of wooden ramps for exercise, and an oversized red plastic fire hydrant in its center. It was surrounded by a four-foot-high fence, in each corner of which was a pole that held a plastic bag dispenser and, below that, a trash receptacle.
He walked toward the closest pole, took one of the small bags—I cannot believe I’m doing this—and tied it to the handle. Then, turning up the collar of his coat, he walked to the boardwalk and out on the short pier.
It, not at all surprisingly, also was deserted.
And colder, if that’s possible.
He passed a series of iron benches, then came to the end of the pier. There, next to the last bench, he saw the heavy metal trashcan. It was square, with a horizontal slit on each side just below its flat top.
A gust of wind blew, and he stepped quickly to the can.
He tried stuffing the bag into one of the horizontal slits. It would not fit.
Damn it!
His hands bare, he moved around the stacks of cash, then folded the bag over and tried shoving it in the slit. It still did not fit.
He looked at it for a long moment, considered throwing the cash bundles in loose, then decided against that. Then he grabbed the slit—the cold metal almost burning his bare skin—and with some effort pulled up the heavy lid, tilting it. He shoved the bag in through the gap, then dropped the lid back in place with a loud clang.
What if she cannot get that out . . . and if she does, then I have to dig out the bag she puts in?
Damn this!
The wind gusted again.
He turned his back to it, crouched, and tried to light a cigarette. It took three tries, but he finally had it going. He stuffed his hands in his jacket pockets and started off the pier.
—
Matt Payne had already started to open his door as Jim Byrth brought the SUV to a skidding stop in the casino parking lot. They both jumped out. Then Byrth gave Payne a thumbs-up gesture as they heard the faint wop-wop-wop of the rotor blades of the police helicopter coming from the direction of Northeast Airport.
When Payne had called in for backup, Kerry Rapier said he also would alert the Aviation Unit to have Air Tac One circling nearby.
“That helo will light up the place like it’s daytime,” Rapier had said.
Byrth and Payne, guns drawn and staying in the shadows, began running toward the river. As they’d planned in the SUV after pulling away from the Fishtown dive bar, Byrth moved southward, to the far side of where the pier went out from the boardwalk, and Payne to the north.
—
After a ten-minute circle of the parking lot, Dmitri Gurnov flicked the butt of his third cigarette into the dog park.
And then he noticed a man standing on the boardwalk. The man held one of the casino’s bags.
And then Gurnov recognized what was tied to its handle.
I will be damned! He has the money!
He reached into his jacket pocket, pulling out the Sig 9mm.
As he approached the man, he raised his pistol.
He heard someone behind him yell.
He quickly fired two shots, then a third.
The man went down. He rushed to him and knelt to grab the bag.
Then he saw the man’s face. It was that of a swarthy, fortyish Latino. Bright red blood flowed down his hard face from the hole in his forehead.
Who the hell are you? Gurnov thought.
As Gurnov stood, he heard running on the boardwalk. Another man was rushing him, holding a Kalashnikov at hip level.
He saw his face as bullets fired.
“Ricky?”
—
Matt Payne watched the man in black clothing and the gray fedora raise a pistol at another man on the boardwalk.
Payne speed-dialed Rapier.
“Send the damn helo, Kerry!”
“On its way, Marshal.”
“Police!” Payne shouted. “Drop the gun!”
There were two shots. With each muzzle flash, the man on the boardwalk staggered back a step. Then a single shot followed, causing his head to jerk backward. He dropped the bag he was holding, and then his knees buckled.
The man in the gray fedora grabbed the bag.
Then a third man ran up. He was firing an AK-47 from his hip. The man in the gray fedora fell backward. The third man knelt briefly by the first man, then bolted down the boardwalk.
Payne heard Byrth shout, “Stop!”—and fire a two-shot burst.
—
Payne, pounding down the boardwalk, heard the wop-wop-wop of Air Tac One’s rotor blades growing louder. He looked over his shoulder and saw the beams of the floodlights from the helo’s belly sweeping the surface of the dark river.
Payne ran in the direction he’d seen Byrth’s muzzle flashes.
A moment later, a floodlight beam washed over him, then moved up ahead. It lit up the man, who was still up and moving fast.
Byrth took another two-round volley at him. That caused the man to suddenly turn back.
He was now running straight for Payne.
The helo hovered, its lights now brightly illuminating the entire boardwalk and most of the park. The pitch of its rotors changed with the wind gusts. Payne saw Byrth moving in his direction but away from the boardwalk.
Then Payne saw the dot of a red laser bouncing wildly across the boardwalk near the man.
Too damn windy for the sniper . . .
The man suddenly looked up and fired a half-dozen shots at the helo, then continued in Payne’s direction.
“Police! Stop!” Payne yelled, taking aim.
The man took two wild blind shots in his direction.
Payne squeezed the trigger. His first round hit the shooter in the shoulder. But he continued running. Payne squeezed off two more rounds, the shots hitting the man in the left chest.
He was now within thirty feet—and still advancing.
Payne squeezed off his next five rounds in rapid succession, and when the slide locked open, he smoothly thumbed the magazine release, replaced the empty mag with a fully charged one, then thumbed the slide release, chambering a new round as he brought the sights back on the shooter.
Just as he was beginning to squeeze the trigger, the man collapsed at his feet.
—
Five minutes later, with more backup units arriving, their sirens screaming and lights flashing, Matt Payne waved off Air Tac One. Just as the helo’s floodlight went dark, the Texas Ranger flicked a small black bean on the dead shooter’s back.
Byrth turned and saw that Payne was staring at his hands. And that they were trembling.
“That was good work, Marshal. Sometimes these bastards—full of adrenaline, drugs, whatever—just won’t go down.”
Payne nodded. “Someone once told me, ‘Always, always, always empty your mags.’”
Off Key West, Florida
Thursday, November 20, 10 A.M.
The Viking, its engines at idle speed, skimmed almost silently across the glass-slick Atlantic Ocean. Matt Payne, at the flybridge helm talking on his cell phone, turned the wheel as the sleek Sport Fisherman passed the outer markers of the Boca Chica channel. That put the bow just to the right of the sun on the horizon, its golden rays glowing brighter and brighter.
“Yeah, Tony, last night Amanda got a nice photograph from Maggie McCain. It’s of her and her parents on the sailboat leaving Saint Thomas.”
“Speaking of Saint Thomas,” Anthony Harris said, “I got a call from one of the DEA guys. He reported that they found Captain Jack floating in the harbor. And it wasn’t pretty.”
“How so?”
“You know boats have those emergency signal guns . . .”
“Sure.”
“. . . well, someone wanted to send a signal, all right. They fired a twenty-five-millimeter white phosphorus one into his chest.”
“Damn! That’s an illumination flare. Once it starts burning it doesn’t stop until it burns out. That’s fifteen, twenty minutes.”
“Yeah, and apparently he lit up the harbor pretty good. They said folks from a cruise ship got video of it and put it online, thinking it was part of some celebration.”
“Well, in a warped way I’m sure it is cause for celebration. For Garvey at least. But what about the coke?”
Tony chuckled. “Damnedest thing, Matt. You know the men’s room over the evidence room? Night before last, a waterline to one of the shitters broke loose. Initial blame went to maintenance—or lack thereof. Then someone said it looked like the line might’ve got cut. Who knows? Regardless, the result was three feet of standing water. Flooded the shitter and, a floor below, all the evidence brought in during the previous forty-eight hours.”
Matt heard steps and turned to see Amanda approaching the helm with a cup of coffee and a copy of Cruising Guide to the Bahamas. She slipped the cup into the holder on the console, then put the book in with the towels that were in a beach bag at Matt’s feet.
Matt smiled at her and said, “Well, Tony, I guess once in a great while there is a little justice in this screwed-up world. Talk to you later.”
He broke off the call.
Amanda tugged the phone from his grip. She turned it off.
“No more talking,” she said, then tossed it into the bag. It disappeared under a towel. “Enough with the phone.”
She then turned up the sound system.
Bob Marley was singing “Is This Love.”
She put her arms around his waist and leaned in. They kissed.
“Now the fun begins,” Amanda said, putting her hand on the throttles and shoving them forward.