Cyril E. King International Airport
Saint Thomas, United States Virgin Islands
Monday, November 17, 10:30 A.M.
“Mr. Garvey, nice to see you again. Headed home for the holiday?” the U.S. Airways desk agent said, her tone genuinely sincere. She was a pleasant-looking dark-skinned Crucian (one born on Saint Croix) who was maybe thirty. “I thought you might treat your family, get them out of Philadelphia by bringing them here to our paradise. Weather says it’s snowing there again.”
John Garvey, thirty-six years old, was a fit five-eight. Fair-skinned, he had a scholarly, angular face with a full head of sandy blonde hair. He wore starched cuffed khakis, a white collarless shirt under a linen blazer, and tan loafers with no socks. His business card that was on his luggage tag identified him as John A. Garvey, Jr., Associate, D. H. Rendolok LLC, Historic Restoration & Preservation, Phila., Penna.
“Nice to see you, too,” Garvey said, putting his black fabric suitcase at her feet, then automatically handing over his ID. He then lied, “Flying here was discussed, but the issue became how much of the family would get to come. When the wife’s side exceeded ten, I said sorry. Can’t afford that.”
She made the obligatory look at his driver’s license, handed it back, then noticed that he was sweating.
“Are you well, Mr. Garvey?”
“Just a touch of rock fever, I think,” he said, and forced a smile.
Rock fever was the island equivalent of cabin fever—the overwhelming feeling of being stuck in a small place for too long.
“Now, that’s just not possible!” she said, smiling. “You’ve been visiting us how long?”
“Almost six months now. Two weeks every month.”
He leaned two white plastic tubes that were four feet in length and six inches in diameter against the counter.
“More blueprints?” she said.
“And architectural renderings. My cross to bear, if you’ll pardon the pun.”
She smiled. “Oh, I’m sure it is going to be even more beautiful when you’re finished.”
Garvey—an architect who held degrees in art and in history, as well as a master’s in business administration from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business—had been hired as chief architect to ensure that the updating of Saints Peter and Paul Cathedral remained historically faithful. Built in the mid-1800s, its ceilings and walls were covered in massive murals that portrayed a dozen scenes from the Old and New Testaments. Saints Peter and Paul—on Kronprindsens Gade in Charlotte Amalie, at the foot of Frenchman Hill, not two hundred yards from the scenic harbor’s edge—served as the Virgin Islands seat of the Roman Catholic diocese.
As with all his restorative work, this project had required a great deal of research, which entailed traveling to the Virgin Islands regularly. That of course had triggered the usual expected comments from family and friends about having to quote unquote work in the beautiful Caribbean.
“Another lousy day in paradise, huh, John?”
But that had not been the reality of the situation.
He had, in fact, spent an inordinate amount of time in dark pockets of the buildings, examining construction methods—it originally had been built with stone quarried from the island, but over time new additions employed new methods—testing the load-bearing walls, even doing samplings of mortar to gauge the level of deterioration. Then there were the delicate murals themselves to consider.
By the end of the day, he was simply exhausted and headed to the hotel, which in no time had begun to feel more or less like any other hotel—a bed, a bathroom, a TV, a dusty Bible in a side-table drawer.
Instead of the sunny Caribbean it could just as well have been dreary Camden on the Delaware.
He did try to get out, break up the pattern. And, over time, he had become friendly to varying degrees with the locals. Ones at the church, of course, but also ones frequenting local spots, like the SandBar Grill, which was the next block over from his small hotel.
Two days earlier, as he had left the cathedral for the ten-block walk to his hotel, he heard his name called by a familiar voice.
He turned to see Jack Todd approaching. Captain Jack was one of what the locals called a “continental,” someone from the States, visitors either with the means to stay in the islands for a long period or working at seasonal jobs.
A backslapping friendly type, Todd—who Garvey guessed was probably forty but could have been younger; his deeply tanned skin had been severely damaged and aged by the sun—had said that he was from Texas and worked on charter sailboats. How often he sailed, Garvey couldn’t say. Captain Jack always seemed to be at the bar, in his usual shorts, T-shirt, and flip-flops, making friends and passing out business cards.
“Hey, John!” he had said, patting him on the back. “Let me buy you a drink.”
—
Captain Jack grabbed two mugs of St. John’s Mango Pale Ale draft at the SandBar Grill’s bar and carried them to John Garvey. He was sitting at a corner table on the SandBar Grill’s patio. It had a view of the big harbor, the seaplane and helicopter ports, and the main airport itself.
“And you leave again tomorrow?” Todd said, making it more a statement than a question.
“That’s right. But I’ll be back. Like clockwork.”
Todd nodded. “Yeah. I know.”
What does he mean by that? Garvey thought.
Todd then reached down and produced from the floor a dirty manila envelope. He held it out to him.
“What’s this?” Garvey said, putting down his beer mug.
“Open it,” Todd said coolly, motioning at it with his hand.
Garvey carefully peeled back its flap. He reached in and removed a short stack of five-by-seven photographs. They were not on slick photo paper. Instead, they had been printed on a standard color printer on regular white paper, two images per page, and the page torn to separate the photos.
“Sorry that the quality of the pictures is so crappy,” Todd said. “But you get the idea.”
The top one, of John’s wife walking with their son in front of Saint Mary’s in Philadelphia, initially made him wonder if this had something to do with his work at the cathedral. Then the next photograph was of his wife entering their Victorian house in Northeast Philly. And he quickly flipped to the next, a shot of his son leaving school.
“What the hell is this?” Garvey snapped.
Captain Jack met his eyes.
“They know all about your family. And their schedule. And your schedule.”
John Garvey felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up.
“I don’t understand . . . and who the hell is ‘they’?”
“If it’s any consolation, I don’t want to work for them, either. But one thing led to another here and—”
John Garvey, starting to stand, interrupted, “I don’t know where you got these, but—”
“Sit down, John. There’s no way of getting out of this. I’ve learned that the hard way.”
“Get out of what?” Garvey said, staring at Todd.
“Sit.”
As Garvey slipped back in his chair, he said, “This can’t have anything to do with the church?”
Captain Jack laughed as he looked past Garvey, out to the sea. He took a chug of his beer, then looked back at Garvey.
“Depends on what you worship, my friend. Look. It is very simple. They have a task for you to do. You’re a regular business traveler. There’s no customs to clear in Philly. You’ll zip right through, man. Piece of cake.”
“What task?”
“You do this, and nothing will happen to your family.”
“What the hell does that mean?” Garvey blurted. “Why are you threatening me?”
Todd’s face turned very serious. “Look. You better learn to control your emotions. Not doing so could cause you to screw up, and that would be a very unfortunate thing for you, for your family.”
Todd flipped back to the bottom photograph.
Garvey saw that it was of a dark-haired boy about the age of his own blonde-headed son. He was floating facedown along a dirty, rocky riverbank.
“It’s terrible when kids have accidents, no? And women, who we know can be careless, clumsy, and unfortunate things happen to them . . .”
Garvey, despite the temperature in the high eighties, suddenly felt cold and clammy.
“What is this . . . this task?”
—
John Garvey looked at his suitcase now sitting on the Toledo scale beside the desk agent’s computer terminal. The digital readout showed it weighed forty pounds, then forty-one, then settled on forty-two-five. Fifty pounds, Garvey knew, was the limit that the airline said a bag could weigh. Anything above that and he would have to pay a fee for the excess. He didn’t care about the money. He just did not want any extra attention paid to his suitcase—and its hidden contents.
Thank God. I got lucky.
I knew my room scale couldn’t be properly calibrated.
He had spent a half hour in his hotel room working with the bathroom scale. He first stood on it, and the round gauge registered his weight as two hundred. He knew he actually weighed one-seventy-five, so he would have to keep the discrepancy in mind. He picked up his suitcase. When he stepped back on the scale, this time holding his suitcase, the scale’s circle gauge spun, then slowed and finally stopped on two-eighty. He then stepped off, opened the case, and took out enough slacks and shoes that he hoped would weigh ten pounds. And repeated that process three times before the scale registered two-sixty. He had had to leave behind the extra clothes, in the closet, then called the manager from the airport, saying he’d forgotten them and would get them on his next trip.
Now he looked at the suitcase and could visualize behind the black fabric the two thick bricks that were wrapped in plastic and gray duct tape. Together they weighed right at four and a half pounds.
Two keys. Two thousand grams.
“Four hundred grand on the street,” Captain Jack had said.
Cut that once, eight hundred thousand bucks.
And it’s never cut just once.
“Don’t lose it. I hear people get killed in Philly for a pair of sneakers.”
“My favorite is the Last Supper,” the desk agent then said.
“Excuse me?”
“The mural of the Last Supper at the cathedral,” she said. “It’s my favorite.”
He nodded as he thought, That’s fitting.
Jesus’ last meal with his disciples before he was killed.
This could very well be my version of it.
The desk agent went on: “I heard that Peter and Paul was built to celebrate the end of slavery. Is that right? That’s what Market Square here was, the Caribbean’s largest slave auction.”
End of slavery? There’s been no end! I’m being enslaved now.
Okay. Try to act normal. Answer the damn question.
“That’s All Saints you’re thinking of. The Cathedral Church of All Saints on Garden Street?”
“Really?”
Act normal . . .
He nodded. “You’re certainly not the first. They’re pretty much from the same period. Construction started on All Saints about the time Saints Peter and Paul was completed. Back then, when merchant ships docked here to transport the mahogany and sugar products—sugar itself, and the molasses and rum made here from it—the ballast from the cargo holds would be left on the dock to make room. Those huge arched windows in All Saints are lined with those yellow bricks. That was the ship ballast.”
And now it’s airplanes shipping bricks of coke.
“Fascinating,” she said. “God bless you for your talent in preserving that important cathedral.”
She handed him his ticket.
“Well, I have you upgraded to first class, our compliments. We appreciate your regular business.”
“Thank you. Very nice.”
Great. Free booze. I can drink my last supper.
“See you when you return, Mr. Garvey. Vaya con Dios.”
—
As John Garvey stood at the security checkpoint removing his wallet and all things metal from his person, he realized that he’d been wrong about the ridiculous ritual that was the Transportation Security Administration’s screening.
It really can get worse than the government-sanctioned and taxpayer-funded public groping.
You can be afraid of being arrested as a drug smuggler.
He cleared security with no problem.
He waited to catch the plastic bin containing his laptop before it came clunking down the rollers of the conveyor and banging to a stop. He glanced back at the unsecured area. A familiar-looking man caused him to do a double take.
Captain Jack, in T-shirt, shorts, and flip-flops, was casually walking with a small crowd toward a sign reading PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION, thumbing a message on a cell phone as he went.
Office of the General Manager
Lucky Stars Casino & Entertainment, Philadelphia
Monday, November 17, 10:30 A.M.
“Damn it! That is not what I asked for,” Nikoli Antonov snapped. He was on his phone as Dmitri Gurnov entered. “Call me back when you get it right.”
He slammed the receiver into its base on his desk, then glared at Gurnov.
“I really hope you have good news for me, Dmitri.”
Unlike Gurnov’s distinct, hard, old-world Soviet features, the dashing thirty-seven-year-old Antonov looked very Western European. He was of medium build, had dark hair trimmed short, and wore an expensive, nicely cut two-piece suit with a tie-less crisp white dress shirt. While Antonov certainly could speak his native Russian fluently, his early years of attending boarding school in Helsinki had left him with no detectable Russian accent. He generally was soft-spoken—Gurnov knew that his outburst just now would never have happened in public—an appearance that conveniently masked the fact that Nikoli Antonov could be utterly ruthless.
Behind him, a quad of twenty-inch flat-screens was mounted on the wall. They showed real-time images from closed-circuit cameras around the casino complex, every ten seconds cycling to a different camera view, including one that Gurnov saw was of him just now entering Antonov’s office. Gurnov saw himself looking at his cell phone—on which he’d been reading the text message “Mule headed uphill,” which Julio had forwarded from the cartel’s guy in Saint Thomas—then sliding the phone into his pocket.
There of course were at least ten times that number, and much larger screens, in the casino’s security office. But Antonov believed that keeping a finger on the pulse of the complex lessened the chance of surprises. He also knew it did not hurt for those working for him—including his security men, who often were among the first to be offered bribes to look the other way—to know that the boss himself could be watching over their shoulder at any time.
“Well, I don’t have any bad news, Nick.”
None that I’m going to tell you.
Starting with me having to fix what Ricky screwed up.
And another is you not knowing that my mule just made his flight.
You’ve never warmed up to my idea of using nonprofessionals to move product.
Antonov grunted. “Good enough, I guess.”
The phone on the desk began trilling softly. Antonov’s dark eyes darted to it, and when he saw its touchscreen display, he punched the speakerphone button.
“Jorge, my friend!” Antonov said, his tone now cheerful. “Good timing. I have Dmitri with me in my office.”
“Hey, Jorge,” Gurnov called out.
“Good morning, gentlemen,” Jorge Perez said. “How are you?”
“You tell us,” Antonov said. “How did it go? I got your message, but Dmitri hasn’t heard. You can give us both the details.”
“In a word,” he said, his self-assured tone bordering on arrogant, “successful.”
“Details?” Antonov repeated.
There was a pause, then Perez said, “Well, the bad news is that we won the Poker Run. Worse, we did it with a damn royal flush.” He chuckled. “Where do you want your Mustang convertible delivered?”
“Why is that bad news?” Antonov said casually.
“Because everyone was joking that the whole thing had to be rigged, what with a casino’s boat winning the hand and all. If I’d thought that was going to happen, I would have played badly on purpose. But you know that I like to win.”
“Bad news? I’d say it’s exactly the opposite,” Antonov said. “The press release will spin it ‘Lucky Stars Casino Shows We’re All Winners.’ Or something like that. And we give the car to charity.”
“Now, that’s a good idea,” Perez said.
Antonov looked to Gurnov, who nodded as expected.
“How did the transfer go?” Antonov went on.
“Surprisingly well. I told you that Miguel Treto was good. He’s never let me down, even when it’s gotten hairy with the damn Communists messing with him and that cargo ship.”
“For example?”
“Like the bastards refusing to accept shipments, just flat out making him haul it back to Miami, or squeezing him for a bribe. He said he had the feeling that they were going to do that this time, especially when they arrived late in the day, after dark. He sweated that big-time, because he knew it would have messed up the rendezvous timing. But Treto’s a pro—made it go off without a problem.”
“What about the product?” Gurnov put in.
Perez played dumb. “The girls or the—”
“Both,” Gurnov snapped.
“It all came through fine. We put the girls on the Citation with Bobby Garcia. He dropped two of them in New Orleans. I talked to him after they landed in Dallas.”
“And the other product?”
“Carlos is headed your way with the coke. Twenty keys.”
Gurnov had a mental image of Perez’s short cousin.
And mine will be here faster, and without having to drive past all those cops sitting on the side of I-95, just waiting for another smuggler to profile.
Then bust the midget—after confiscating the coke.
“What if some cop pulls him over for DWM?” Gurnov said, then glanced at Antonov.
“Driving While Mexican,” Gurnov added.
Antonov shook his head.
Perez snapped: “He’s an American citizen, you know. He will be fine. He’s made the run plenty of times. There’s ten keys in each car, and they’re running an hour apart.”
Antonov was quiet for a moment, then, out of the blue, he said casually, “What about that boatload of Cubans? The ones that crashed the boat ashore?”
What is that about? Gurnov thought, surprised.
Perez was silent for a long moment, then he said, his voice not quite so self-assured, “That went as planned, too, Nick. They were Cubans taking advantage of the wet-foot, dry-foot policy.”
“And you weren’t taking advantage of our plans? At ten grand a head?”
There was stone silence. Then Perez said, “Yeah, we got paid. But Miguel Treto has done that for me at least twenty, thirty times now. It’s why it all went so smoothly with your stuff. A diversion.”
“But I didn’t know about the plan,” Antonov said evenly, as he looked to Gurnov.
Gurnov raised his eyebrows.
Perez said, “I didn’t—”
“If you’re going to take chances,” Antonov said, his voice rising, “you take them on your own.”
Perez was silent for a moment.
“Nick, I thought it would be the perfect diversion. And it turned out to be that. Every cop in South Florida showed up when that sheriff boat called for backup to stop them from getting to shore.”
Antonov sighed audibly.
“You are not listening again, Jorge. That seems to be a problem with you. Let me be clear: I am not saying that it was a bad idea, Jorge. I am saying that I did not know about it.”
Gurnov turned his attention to the quad of monitors on the wall as he thought, Who was that meant for? Jorge? Or me?
“I understand, Nick. I thought I was doing the right thing.”
“How did our friends do?” Antonov said, ignoring that by changing the subject.
It took Perez a moment to respond. “They said they were very pleased. They said they wanted to go again on the next one.”
“Which is?”
“There’s another Poker Run in three months.”
“Good. If they’re happy, then they will make their boss happy.”
—
Dmitri Gurnov could not get Antonov’s voice out of his head as he drove the dark blue Audi toward South Philly.
“I am not saying that it was a bad idea, Jorge. I am saying that I did not know about it.”
Gurnov glanced at the clock on the dash. The US Airways flight from Saint Thomas was due at Philadelphia International in two hours. He’d have his product an hour after that.
Meantime, he figured, Jorge Perez’s pint-sized cousin would probably still be stuck in Fort Lauderdale traffic with ten different cops watching him.
Gurnov stopped at a traffic light, then looked at himself in the rearview mirror. His sunken eyes stared back as he thought for a long moment. He ran his hand over his scruff of beard, then nodded at himself.
Don’t be stupid, he thought. Nick was saying that for my benefit, too.
But I’m not about to walk in and drop those coke bricks on his desk.
“Here. No surprises, Nick, like you said.”
And then explain everything?
“I’ve got my own game going on the side. . . .”
That would be suicide.
I have to figure out something. But first I have to finish Ricky’s botched job.
Gurnov double-checked the second of the three addresses that were handwritten on a sheet of paper on the passenger seat. Ricky Ramírez had handed him the sheet at five o’clock that morning, when they loaded four girls into a minivan for the trip to Florida.
The first address, which Gurnov had just driven past in Society Hill, was the burned-out town house where Krystal Gonzalez had been killed. The other two, Ramírez had said, were the houses where the girls had lived when he’d had them recruited.
From the dead girl’s go-phone, Gurnov had a name linked to two phone numbers—“Ms Mac 1” and “Ms Mac 2”—both of which when called went to voice mail. And he had the three addresses from Ramírez.
And that was all he had on the woman he was hunting.
I’ve worked with less . . .
As he tossed the sheet back on the seat, his hand bumped the Sig-Sauer 9mm that was tucked in the right pocket of his leather coat.
Tradewinds Estate
Saint Thomas, United States Virgin Islands
Monday, November 17, 2:30 P.M.
Maggie McCain had gone through the spiral notebooks, then ordered a salad and grilled fish from room service, ate that poolside, and then went through the books again.
She quickly had decided that “meticulous” was not a word that could accurately be used to describe them.
They’re sloppy.
They certainly wouldn’t pass a high school accounting class, forget a college one.
But there’s a lot here—the challenge is making sense of it all.
It wasn’t just that the handwriting bordered on illegible. The entries in the books were at times illiterate—words misspelled or written phonetically in a rudimentary “Spanglish”—and structurally undisciplined.
I don’t think Ricky would recognize a ruled line, much less a spreadsheet.
But there’s no mistaking the numbers. Hundreds of thousands of dollars in drugs alone. They’re not selling on street corners. These are retail and wholesale figures.
One of the books tracked the girls, their locations and activity, how much they earned and how much they owed. The other tracked the drugs. It hadn’t been difficult to discern which notebook was which. The first clue was the crude doodles of female anatomy and of marijuana leaves, bongs, crack pipes, and other paraphernalia.
And there were lots of phone numbers. Each of the girls’ names had one—and Maggie figured they were go-phones given to them, just as Krystal had had hers. And the drug book listed pages of phone numbers. Some with names, some without names, and some names with multiple phone numbers, some of which, apparently the older ones, having been crossed through.
With a few exceptions, most of the area codes were local—a lot of 215 and 267 for the Philadelphia area, and 732 and 856 for New Jersey.
There’s got to be a way to use these numbers if I can’t get to Ricky through the dive bar.
But that’s just going to be a nightmare—worse than hunting a needle in a haystack.
She booted up the laptop and powered on the satellite antenna.
Back online, she launched the program that allowed for video and telephone calls. She clicked on the icon that mimicked a ten-digit keypad on a phone, looked in her computer address book under Krystal’s name, and found the number for Players Corner Lounge.
A woman’s harsh voice on the recording answered: “Players. Leave a message . . .”
What do I say?
Maggie clicked END CALL.
She looked at the first page of numbers in the notebook that tracked the girls. Then she clicked REDIAL. Then she clicked to hang up again.
Before I do that . . .
She then typed her personal cell phone number and dialed it.
When she heard her own voice recording say, “Hey, it’s me. Sorry we missed—” she clicked twice on the keypad’s pound sign. That took her past the automated voice-mail recording and to her voice-mail box.
The familiar computer-generated female voice politely but mechanically said, “You have forty new messages. You have ten old messages. Five messages older than seven days have been automatically deleted today.”
Forty? No surprise.
Not as bad as the hundred-something e-mails.
But then, there’s not a fifty-message limit on e-mails.
She clicked on the keypad’s numeral “1” and the female computer voice said, “First message. From Monday, nine P.M. . . .”
Then the voice mail played: “Hi! It’s Krystal. Call me back!”
Maggie felt her throat constrict.
She clicked the pound sign, fast-forwarding past that and the older messages.
The female computer voice then announced: “New message from Saturday, ten thirty-one P.M. . . .”
Maggie then listened to her mother’s voice, calmly asking Maggie to call when she had a chance.
“Nothing important,” her mother said, her voice tired. “Good night.”
Well, Mother, that didn’t happen.
Maggie deleted the message.
The next message was her mother again, almost two hours later, just after midnight. Her voice now was frantic.
“Maggie! Please answer! Call us! We need to know you’re okay!”
It hurt to hear her mother so distressed. She deleted the message.
That bastard Ricky is causing everyone pain. People who’ve done nothing to deserve it.
She listened to the next one. It was her father, his gravelly voice trying to sound calm.
And that really hurt to hear, too.
She listened to the entire message—felt the moral obligation to do so—then deleted it. And then she did the same with the rest—played them all, ones from family and friends and the police, and deleted them one by one.
The tone of her mother went from the initial frantic to hysterical crying to sheer exhaustion. Maggie thought that if there was any silver lining, it was that some of the messages had been thankfully brief. But toward the end, a few were just one or two words—“Maggie?” “Please call . . .” “Hello?”—almost as if her mother had called the number simply to hear Maggie’s voice on the recording.
Listening to them all had been emotionally exhausting. Maggie was glad to finally hear, “You have one new message. From Monday, at twelve-ten A.M. . . .”
“I believe you have something that belongs to me,” a man’s steely voice said. “Call me at 267-555-9100 and I’m sure we can come to some arrangement that is mutually satisfying.”
Maggie shivered at the sound.
That is one cold voice.
And what is that accent? Eastern European?
It’s certainly not Hispanic. Not Ricky’s.
And “mutually satisfying”?
Like what? What happened to Krystal?
She played the message again, this time writing down the number on a piece of paper. She stared at it for a long time.
It’s a Philly area code.
Then she opened a new window on her browser and typed the telephone number in its search field.
The first search result read: “267-555-9100, a KeyCom Mobile Device. Month-to-month service. Never be locked in a long-term cellular contract again!”
Well, only a fool would use a landline number that could be traced.
So, it’s a go-phone.
I don’t trust myself to call it.
But I can see what happens when I text.
She opened another new browser window, then went to myfreetexts.net and, registering with false information, created a new account that assigned her a new telephone number with an 831 area code.
That page was then replaced with one that was almost a mirror image of the text message screen she had on her cell phone. Almost, because the difference was that both sides of the My Free Texts page had annoying advertisements scrolling from top to bottom.
A small price to pay, I suppose.
She watched the cursor blinking in the field for the recipient’s cell phone number. After a long moment, she typed in the phone number.
And then her stomach suddenly knotted.
That could be the killer. Probably is the killer.
Or, if not the killer, then a killer.
She inhaled deeply, then slowly let it out.
I’m okay. He can’t get to me here.
And if I’m going to get to him . . .
She hit TAB, putting the cursor in the bubble that represented the message field, and typed:
She read that three times, nodded, then added at the end, “Who is this?”
She read it all once, then clicked SEND.
Maybe whoever it is will be stupid enough to tell me.
Or, more likely, lie to me.
She stared at the screen. She picked up the water bottle on the table beside her and sipped.
She then realized that she was shaking slightly.
I’m terrified.
What if I screw this whole thing up?
She drained the water bottle.
Well, I can’t sit here forever waiting.
Who knows when they’ll reply?
She put her fingers to the keyboard and started to sign out.
Under the bubble that held the message she sent, a new bubble suddenly popped up:
She immediately yanked her fingers back.
She stared at the reply.
Why do I read anger in that?
And not just any anger.
A fury.
She caught herself typing:
She stared at that, then immediately tapped the DELETE key over and over.
When the bubble was blank, she turned her head in thought—and realized her impulse had been the right one.
These bastards are killers.
I can’t show weakness.
She typed:
It was a long moment before a new bubble popped up:
That’s probably a lie.
She sighed.
This is all a damn lie. A nightmare.
What am I doing?
Another bubble quickly followed:
Maggie felt her heart race.
That’s what Krystal called me!
Don’t let your guard down!
I can hear that Eastern European voice in his sentence structure.
And then came another bubble:
With what? Another bullet?
Slow down, Mag . . .
She quickly typed:
Where did that come from?
She hit SEND, then clicked to shut down the connection with the satellite. Then—unnecessarily, but it made her feel better—she unplugged from the computer the cable that linked to the antenna.
I have to think this through.
She then looked at her hands and realized they were shaking uncontrollably.
With some difficulty, she got the top unscrewed from the bottle of Cruzan gold rum, sloshed some into a glass, and drank it all at once.
Philadelphia International Airport
Monday, November 17, 2:35 P.M.
John Garvey walked down Concourse A, his nerves on edge despite all the free first-class alcohol he had consumed on the flight.
Once the aircraft had rumbled down the Saint Thomas runway and left the island, he had felt some relief. And the drinks had certainly helped calm, if not numb, him. But now that that period was over, his mind had begun to spin again.
What guarantee do I have these animals will live up to their end of the bargain?
Once I’ve done this, what’s to stop them from coming after me, making me do it again and again? I should’ve gone right to the cops. But they’re watching—and he said that would’ve been a swift death sentence.
The piece of paper with the telephone number that he was supposed to text after he had his suitcase felt like it might burn a hole in his pocket. As a precaution, in case it did burn a hole or otherwise got lost, back at the hotel he had punched the number into his cell phone.
What if whoever I’m supposed to text doesn’t show?
Who am I kidding? I have their drugs.
And they know how to find me. Find us.
—
John Garvey heard the loud warning buzzer sound over the baggage carousel. Then came the huge metallic clunking of the carousel starting to turn.
The first bag slid down, a black one similar to his. Then another followed it.
They’re all black. All the same.
What if someone grabs mine by mistake?
What if mine doesn’t show up at all?
Then what?
He tried to look as if he were casually glancing around the baggage claim area. He thought that a couple of people were paying him unusual attention, one a Latino by the exit looking up from his cell phone, but finally told himself he had to be imagining things. He then noticed in the ceiling the black plastic semicircles—ones half the size of a baseball—that he knew concealed security cameras.
Those I’m not imagining.
Three bags later, his suitcase showed up.
Okay. Almost home free . . .
He dragged it from the carousel, then turned it onto its wheels. He forced back his sudden desire to sprint madly for the door.
That bastard Jack was right—I did just zip right on through.
No wonder so many drugs make it here.
He pulled out his telephone, found the 215-555-3582 number, and texted: “PHL.”
That was both the airport code and the code that he had the suitcase in hand and awaited direction as to what to do with the coke.
Then, as directed, he went to get a taxicab.
—
As John Garvey came closer to the exit doors that were already open, he saw parked at the curb a white Chevrolet Tahoe with Drug Enforcement Administration markings. On the window of the back door was: WARNING! DO NOT APPROACH. K-9 INSIDE.
Easy does it. Those guys are always here with their dogs.
You’re just noticing it now because you’re looking for cops.
John Garvey stopped, then felt a firm hand grip his left bicep.
“Excuse me, sir.” It was a man’s voice, a deep, authoritative one. “Can I ask you a question?”
Garvey whipped his head around.
When he saw that the man was a uniformed Philadelphia policeman, his heart beat so hard he thought it might burst out of his chest.
“Of course, Officer,” Garvey said, and then saw the patch on the sleeve of his blue shirt: PHILADELPHIA POLICE AIRPORT UNIT.
“Is this your suitcase, sir?”
Damn! I grabbed the wrong black one!
He glanced at it and recognized his luggage tag.
Then he blurted: “It’s not mine!”
The policeman turned his head to read the luggage tag.
“Then if you’re not John A. Garvey, why . . .”
“No, I mean . . . I mean . . .” Garvey started shaking visibly, then quietly said: “The packages . . . they’re not mine.”
“Yes, sir. Would you mind if we take a look inside your suitcase?”
—
Twenty minutes later, as John Garvey sat in a battered aluminum chair in a secure room near the baggage claim area, staring at his open suitcase on the steel table, the Philadelphia policeman sauntered in with another uniformed officer on his heels. The second man, wearing a jacket reading DRUG ENFORCEMENT ADMINISTRATION, was stocky and had an inquisitive look on his face. He stopped at the door and said nothing.
Garvey looked at the Philly airport cop.
“Sir, I am advising you that you have the right to remain silent . . .”
Garvey, elbows on his knees, buried his face in his hands.
“He said they’d kill my family.”
“. . . you have the right to an attorney . . .”