Fatal Secrets Page 5

  Noel Marchand deplored incompetence, and until this last week, Xavier Jones had been the pinnacle of professionalism and discretion. And while Jones had made good on providing another boy, letting the first one escape was a disaster. Perhaps not for Jones, but to Noel the boy was a threat: the brat had seen him.

  The Zamora kid needed to die or disappear—Noel didn’t much care which, as long as he didn’t talk to anyone. Though even if he did tell what he knew, putting all the damning information together would be virtually impossible. Only the fact that Noel was in the same city as the kid made the risk a sliver more than nonexistent. But what really irked Noel was that he had made two mistakes. First, he had underestimated the boy, never suspecting that Andres Zamora would run when he had the chance. Most of his captives were too scared to flee, knowing they would be hunted down and severely punished. Noel’s second error was in not leaving at least one family member alive as leverage over the two Zamora kids. Threats against family back home were the single best tool to keep the slaves in line.

  Noel didn’t make mistakes like these. He’d been furious that the mother had challenged him, that the brother had attacked him, that the girl had wanted to renege on her agreement. Allowing his anger to dictate decisions inevitably led to problems. Problems like a missing kid in California who could identify him.

  Noel was successful because he was discreet. He employed enough people, and paid them well, to ensure that he could fill the high demand for males and females of all ages and types. While he specialized in teenage and young adult females for prostitution throughout the Western Hemisphere, he also provided a few bonded workers when the money was good enough. When he was putting together his next shipment of females, he’d received an order for two boys. One of the girls he’d spoken with had two brothers. She was eager to bring them along, with his promise that they, too, would have jobs in America.

  He lied smoothly. But almost immediately there were problems with the older Zamora. And when the younger boy saw him dispose of the mother—who had become a major liability, he had had no choice but to kill her—Noel should have also shot the two boys and put the girl on the truck alone. But he was on a tight schedule and timing was critical. His trip to California was far more important than the troublesome Zamora family.

  Noel was upset by the series of events that resulted in the younger boy ending up under Jones’s watch, of course, but he could let it go because, ultimately, the situation wasn’t completely Jones’s fault. What truly frustrated him was the FBI looking at Jones. He didn’t care one iota that the warrant was for financial records, Jones was a threat to Noel if he was arrested. Noel knew exactly how the government worked. They did what he did—leveraged. You give me this, we’ll give you that. The only difference was that Noel’s punishment was far more permanent than prison if the person didn’t agree with the terms.

  Jones was a potential threat. And while Noel didn’t want to kill one of the best people he’d ever worked with in this business, he wouldn’t lose sleep over it.

  Noel was training someone to take over for Jones should it become necessary. They might have to make the change sooner than planned, since business demanded continuous adjustments in personnel.

  And if he had to let Sacramento go altogether, so be it. He dealt with other brokers like Jones. While there were few with Jones’s breadth of clients—and the added service of providing squeaky-clean money was a major allure—Noel could withstand some losses in order to protect his larger empire. Obviously, the “squeaky-clean” money Jones guaranteed was being looked at by American law enforcement. It was no longer safe to do business with him.

  Noel made his decision. He’d gather the rest of the information about Saturday’s exchange, ensure that the girls had arrived safely and were secured, and then kill Jones.

  His assistant came in through one of the suite’s doors and cleared his throat.

  Noel motioned for Mr. Ling to join him by the balcony window. Ling was Chinese, bald, and in his early forties. He could kill a man with little effort, and had a sharp intellect. He’d been with Noel for more than a decade.

  “Yes, Mr. Ling?”

  “Tobias neglected to properly dispose of the girl.”

  Noel’s fists clenched, the only outward sign of his anger. His brother was yet another liability. Had he been able to leave him behind in Mexico, he would have. But the last time he left Tobias for more than a day, his brother had disappeared for three weeks and left behind too many dead bodies for Noel to cover up. Noel resented having to care for the twisted, weak retard. Before their father had died, Noel didn’t have to see or talk to Tobias. But now he was truly his brother’s keeper—a job Noel resented.

  “I should have killed him when Father died.”

  Mr. Ling bowed in agreement, though both men knew that Noel wouldn’t have done it at the time. His father had asked him to spare Tobias. And Noel had genuine affection for the brilliant man. After traveling throughout South America for years, Johan Marchand settled farther north, in Mexico, and turned a small brothel into a thriving international organization of prostitution. Because Noel had the charm, good looks, and ability to lie as smoothly as he killed, he went on the road most of his early adulthood, recruiting or kidnapping young women to feed the business. It was lucrative and satisfied the wanderlust of his youth.

  Women were good for not much outside of sex, and most of them couldn’t even do that right. So when Tobias killed for the first time, when he was fifteen and screwing one of the whores their father had given him as a birthday present, Johan finally admitted what Noel had known from the beginning: Tobias was not right in the head. Not just dumb as an ox, Tobias had been killing animals from when he was young not for sport or pleasure, but just because, as he once told Noel, he liked to hear their bones break.

  Johan had allowed Tobias an occasional whore. Four out of five ended up dead, and Noel had had to clean up after him, until Noel convinced his father he was a better recruiter. Johan agreed and taught Tobias to clean up after himself when Noel traveled.

  Obviously, the lessons hadn’t stuck. Noel could no longer afford to spare his brother’s life. His father would understand. Hadn’t Noel risked enough by letting Tobias play? It was over.

  “Where is he?”

  “In his room.”

  “Watch him. I don’t trust anyone else. I’ll come up with a plan, but he won’t be returning to Mexico with us.”

  “Of course, sir.”

  “Send a team to retrieve the body.”

  “They’re already on their way. She was left in a potentially exposed place.”

  “What the fuck did he do?”

  “He dumped her in the river, but her arm got caught on a bush and he didn’t want to get wet.”

  Tobias couldn’t swim. Noel should drown him. Would serve him right.

  Have mercy on him, son. Tobias doesn’t have full mental faculties.

  Noel would live up to the promise he made his father for mercy. He’d put a bullet in his brother’s head before he weighted him down and tossed him into the river. By the time his body surfaced, Noel would be long gone, and he had no plans to return to the States. Ever.

  “Four days,” Noel said. “Four days was all I needed and he screws up in less than six hours.”

  “And Jones?”

  “We’ll see to him tonight. In the meantime, I want full backgrounds on all his employees—”

  “You have that, and—”

  “Go deeper. I want to know who they’ve talked to and where they’ve been in the last two months. I want to know who tipped off the FBI about Jones, and how much they know about me. I don’t give a fuck what happens to Jones, but I’m not going to let them take me down with him.”

  And at this point Noel would prefer to just kill everyone involved in Jones’s operation. Unfortunately, in the States, the murder or disappearance of a couple dozen people would cause more than a small ripple in the landscape.

  “Give me everyone
who has any hand in our business, and everyone who’s just window dressing. We’ll pick and choose, decide who stays and goes. Start building a list of people I can trust to do their job right.”

  Noel would find out who tipped off the FBI and make a clear statement. No one would dare turn against him.

  Not that it would matter. In four days he’d be back home, safe, far away from the long arm of American law enforcement. They’d need an army to get him.

  CHAPTER

  FOUR

  Sonia could have taken half a day personal time after working through the night, but she had too much on her plate to even think about sleeping. And if she did stop home for a couple hours of downtime, she feared that seeing Charlie again would trigger the nightmares she’d buried long ago.

  She had to get this part over with.

  She dialed the assistant special agent in charge of the San Francisco Regional ICE office—based in Oakland.

  Toni Warner supervised all field offices in the large, multistate territory. Sonia had met her nearly ten years ago when she was transferred from Texas to the San Francisco office, and though they butted heads as often as not, there was no one in the business Sonia had more respect and admiration for. Toni was smart, savvy, chic, and ruthless.

  “Warner.”

  “It’s Sonia. I have news.”

  “You have Jones in custody and a solid case to turn over to the DOJ.”

  “Not yet.”

  “Please don’t tell me to turn on the television.”

  Sonia cringed. Last year, she’d been caught on film in an unfortunate situation taken completely out of context. She’d led the raid of a sweatshop that “employed” illegal aliens. Only these illegals were indentured servants—not only smuggled into the country but held against their will making a dollar an hour, half of which went toward their room and board. When she’d burst in, one of the supervisors had cracked a whip across the back of a minor, a twelve-year-old boy Sonia later learned had been working there since he was seven. Sonia had seized the whip and snapped it toward the asshole who abused children. It cut across his face—she had never intended to actually hit him, only scare him. When she escorted him out in cuffs, she still had the whip and the press filmed them—highlighting the bastard’s split face.

  Sonia wouldn’t have changed anything—she’d wanted to do so much more when she saw the squalid conditions in which these people lived and worked—except in hindsight, she should have put a bag over his head and handed the whip to Trace.

  “I saw Charlie Cammarata this morning.”

  Toni was silent. Sonia squirmed uneasily, speaking quickly. “He’s driving for Xavier Jones. I saw him get out of the Escalade with Jones early this morning while surveilling the house. He’s up to something.” She dreaded asking, but had to. “Has he been reinstated? Without telling me? I understand, but I should have—”

  Toni interrupted. “Charlie hasn’t been reinstated, at least to my knowledge, but I’ll find out. I can’t imagine ICE bringing him back, but stranger things have happened.”

  “Is he working undercover for another agency? The FBI maybe?”

  “The FBI?”

  “They served a warrant on Jones this morning. Tax evasion or money laundering, I didn’t see the papers, but I’m meeting with the head agent this afternoon.”

  “Did Cammarata see you?”

  “No. The last time I heard from him was four years ago, when he called me from Mexico about the container ship going through Panama with captives from eastern South America. You know that.” And Sonia had had nightmares for months after just hearing his voice. She’d felt weak and stupid for letting the past hurt her. Why couldn’t she just forget? But seeing Charlie today was already stirring up the awful memories. Ten years was a long time; it should be enough time to get over nearly dying.

  It’s not as simple as death.

  “I didn’t know the FBI had an open investigation on Jones.” Toni sounded as ticked off about it as Sonia had been when she first saw the Fibbies roll on scene.

  “Neither did I, but I think this goes way high up the ladder. The agent in charge is Dean Hooper.”

  “Assistant Director Dean Hooper?”

  “The one and only, and Sam Callahan—he’s the SSA in charge of white-collar crimes—he’s answering to Hooper. Not only is it highly unusual, I don’t remember ever hearing about an A.D. in the field serving warrants.”

  “Hooper’s an anomaly,” Toni said. “We have jurisdiction here. Do you want me to knock heads together and find out what’s going on?”

  “I’d love it, but that’s not going to help nail Jones. I’m going to find out what Hooper has. If Jones has been playing with his books and we can prove it, maybe that’ll give me the leverage to make a deal. Names, routes, places. We can do heavy damage to the human trafficking business in the western U.S. if I can entice Jones to cooperate.” Sonia didn’t want to cut any deals with that bastard, but she had to look at the bigger picture. Either way, Jones would go to prison.

  “I like it. You have my support.”

  “What I’m really worried about,” Sonia continued, “are the Fibbies coming in wanting to make a big splash. The economy sucks, and politicians are always looking for scapegoats. Taking down a rich tax evader like Jones gives them headlines and crowing rights. And you know damn well the FBI wants those headlines to justify their existence and their budget.” Homeland Security, and ICE as a major investigative agency, took care of potentially deadly situations quietly and out of the prying eyes of the media. The public knew little of what ICE and other agencies had thwarted not only now, after 9/11, but before.

  “I’ll make some calls—about Hooper’s investigation and about Cammarata. Quietly. No need to get feathers ruffled unless we are prepared to pluck them.”

  “I’ll let you know what Hooper has and we’ll go from there.”

  “I’ll back you up, Sonia, but let me be the bad guy. You know I love you and you’re my favorite agent, but you’re impulsive, and your temper is going to get you in trouble.” Again.

  “Understood. Thanks, Toni. And let me know what you learn about Charlie as soon as possible. If he’s in this on his own, I have to get him out. He could screw up our investigation big-time.”

  “You certainly don’t have to tell me Cammarata is dangerous. Are you prepared to arrest him?”

  The pastry she’d scarfed down on her way to the office swam uncomfortably in the pool of coffee sloshing in her stomach. “Absolutely. I’ll do anything to protect the integrity of this case. I’m not about to let Jones walk free on a technicality.”

  CHAPTER

  FIVE

  At FBI headquarters Dean Hooper coordinated the organization of evidence they’d seized from Xavier Jones’s house that morning. He had nearly the entire white-collar crimes team working on analyzing every piece of paper and computer file, but he took the one thing he really wanted back to his desk. With everyone else on his team in the conference room or out in the field, he was alone.

  Dean turned the day planner over in his hands. It was a half-size seven-ring executive planner, one day per page, covered in black leather. Pages could be removed or inserted as needed. It was in the seemingly innocuous details of Jones’s daily activities that Dean would find the path leading to hard evidence and, ultimately, a conviction. Everything he had now was circumstantial. Dean needed solid proof.

  Jones was meticulous, and judging from how he reacted to agents going through his things, he was likely obsessive-compulsive. He practically had a coronary when Dean moved a vase an inch off-center. Jones strode over to the table and put the vase back dead center, perfectly symmetrical.

  Oh, yeah, the guy was anal to the nth degree.

  Technically, Dean didn’t have a warrant for the day planner, but when he looked through it at the house he noted that Jones listed all his bank account numbers and meetings he had with his accountant. That put the planner under “financial” in Dean’s book, so he seized i
t.

  Jones wouldn’t be so dumb as to write down anything blatantly illegal, but he would have a schedule of his meetings and within the meetings, and the empty spaces, there would be a pattern. Next, he would check the planner against Jones’s known whereabouts and determine if there were any codes in the seemingly innocuous content. In addition, if specific meetings coincided with seemingly legitimate bank deposits or withdrawals, Dean could look at those entities to see if he had cause to get a warrant for their records.

  Criminals had become extremely sophisticated over the last decade, and money laundering increasingly complex. While many bad guys use the tried-and-true methods—such as putting their cash into small, legitimate businesses to clean it—with the sheer amount of illegal money changing hands, criminals had to develop new and innovative ways to wash large amounts of money and get it circulating.

  Dean could have delegated this rather mundane task of inputting Jones’s schedule into a database, but he had better luck identifying patterns and anomalies when he was the one typing the information. His mind processed it differently, he supposed, or maybe it was simply that how he wanted the information logged maximized his ability to recognize patterns. His database was easily sorted by date, dollar amount, entity, account number, or any other field, but Dean preferred analyzing the raw data by date. He’d found that while criminals tried to randomize their activities to avoid detection, they usually set meetings or bank deposits on a regular day or time. Dean had taken down Thomas “Smitty” Daniels because he cleaned his money on the first Monday of every month.

  Daniels’s scam was good. Dean wouldn’t have figured it out so quickly without the specific time frame. Daniels was a landlord purported to own dozens of rentals. He deposited rent—in cash—on the first Monday of every month. That was a big red flag. How many landlords had all their tenants pay on time? Dean scoured the property records and found that Daniels was claiming to own property that he, in fact, didn’t own, and collecting “rent” from people who didn’t exist. He wouldn’t have been caught if he hadn’t had to increase the deposits, which alerted the FBI to a change in deposit history. By law, all banking transactions over $10,000 were reported to the FBI. Most were legitimate and, in real estate, substantial deposits and withdrawals were common. But Daniels had gone from deposits of between forty and fifty thousand a month to deposits of ninety thousand.