“You said you’re the deputy chief of staff. So do more.” Holt dug in his pocket, removed the flip phone, and snapped it in half. He handed Wetzel the pieces. “I bought me a new phone on the way here.” He told Wetzel the number. “Got it?”
Wetzel nodded. “I’ll be in touch to coordinate our efforts, and we’ll give you a contact number at the DoD. We have people there we trust more than the Service. We’d like you set up away from the president but always nearby. You can shadow his movements, run your own reconnaissance ahead of our advance teams, surveil from a slight remove.”
“Like X is.”
“Just so. You’re the only one who can see this situation through his eyes.” Wetzel grinned. “It takes an Orphan to catch an Orphan.”
Holt wondered how long he’d rehearsed that line.
“I ain’t gonna catch him,” Holt said. “I’m gonna end the motherfucker.”
Wetzel nodded, his chin tight against the tie. “If you’re caught, you’re on your own. This is a full cutout operation.”
Holt considered punching Wetzel in the throat for being obvious. Instead he just stared until Wetzel cracked, fiddled with his briefcase, and rose.
“You’re welcome to stay,” Wetzel said. “This room is paid up for the next month. There’s forty thousand dollars in the nightstand drawer next to the Gideon Bible. It can be replenished as needed.” Producing a disposable phone, he thumbed in the number that Holt had told him, let it ring once, and then hung up. “That’s the contact number you’ll use should you need me.”
He started for the door and then paused. “There is one more thing.” He set the briefcase down on the cracked wooden table, opened it, and removed a last file. “Your arrest, your records, your trail in and out of the penitentiary have all been scrubbed clean. No one will remember anything or care to. Except. The prosecutor, as you might recall, is a shark. Takes cases personally. Perfect record. Dots every i, crosses every t. And, we’re told, keep tabs on every last conviction.” Wetzel rested the file on the table, tented his fingers on it for a moment as if blessing what lay within. “Provide photographic evidence when it’s done.”
“To be clear,” Holt said. “We’re talking about a federal prosecutor.”
Wetzel lifted his hand from the file and exited quietly.
Holt stood for a time in the motel room, breathing in the scent of mold and Lysol. Then he pulled open the nightstand drawer and scooped up the cash.
On his way out, he took the file from the cracked wooden table.
14
Expensive Fish
Pitch-black.
The Scaredy Bugs were running like crazy beneath Trevon’s skin, and his mouth tasted salty from the blood, but he was trying hard not to notice. The little knife slit in the trash bag over his head was just enough to let the air trickle through if he worked really, really hard. His glasses were crooked, and he could tell they were foggy from his breath even though he couldn’t see almost anything.
He wondered why they were doing this to him, but then he remembered that Mama always told him that bullies were just jealous of people who were special ’cuz they didn’t feel special themselves.
Mama.
He bit his lip to keep it from trembling, but only for a sec, ’cuz he needed his mouth open to try’n get air.
They’d been in a car for a while—actually a truck or SUV, ’cuz he’d had to step up to get in the back. So far they’d turned left, left, right, left, right, left, left—and then he’d lost track ’cuz he thought of Mama.
Mama.
There was a slurping sound from the front seat.
Raw One’s voice said, “What’s that shit?”
And then Muscley One said, “Protein drink, fifty-four grams. Check out these sick gains.”
The seat belt made creaking sounds.
Raw One said, “Be sure’n take lots of gym selfies before your kidneys fall out.”
The trash liner was wet against Trevon’s face. “Um,” he said. “Excuse me? Could you please take this off?”
They both laughed, and Muscley One said, “Sure, we’ll get right on that.”
“Thank you,” Trevon said.
They laughed again, and he waited for them to help.
He kept waiting.
*
When they tore the garbage bag off his head, he gasped and gasped. As soon as he caught his breath, he said, “Thank you.”
They were standing in a gravel lot in the middle of nowhere. There was a tall fence surrounding them, and on top of the fence there was barbed wire, except not the type that looks like little stars but the big swoopy kind with razor blades.
Muscley One shoved him hard in the kidney, and he said, “Ouch,” but he moved where they wanted him to, toward a big cinder-block building that looked like a warehouse. It was dark, and there were no lights except for one over the only door he could see.
At the door Raw One tapped a code into a panel, and they stood there. Trevon looked at Muscley One’s half-skull tattoos, and Muscley One said, “The fuck you looking at?”
“Your tattoos. They’re scary.”
“Not as scary as what you’re about to see.”
Trevon said, “Oh, no.”
The door buzzed open, and they stepped inside.
They were in a front room, and there were seven other guys like Raw One and Muscley One, and they all had guns strapped to their hips like it was nothing, and they were leaning against the walls and tables and looking all sullen-like. The walls were covered with eleven thick metal plates like it was some kinda shelter to protect them from a alien invasion.
Raw One said, “How’s his mood?” and Rat-Face One said, “How the fuck you think his mood is?”
Fat One flicked his chins at Trevon and said, “That the poor fool?”
Before anyone could answer, a voice came over a loudspeaker and said, “Bring him in here.”
Raw One and Muscley One pushed Trevon toward a closed back door that was all thick and metal. Next to it was a big mirror that took up half the wall.
The voice came back on and said, “Did you frisk him?”
“Believe me,” Raw One said, “it’s not a concern.”
And the voice said, “It’s always a concern.”
Then Raw One and Muscley One touched Trevon all over like they weren’t supposed to, and he thought about Stranger Danger and that he’d have to tell Mama later.
Mama.
Instead he could tell Gran’mama or Leo, because they were family and family will take care of you. He wished Kiara was here instead of running around helping folks in Guatemala ’cuz she was the oldest and the sweetest and his favorite, and she always understood him better than anyone.
The big metal door buzzed, and then Raw One and Muscley One pushed him through. It was a nice office here in the middle of the warehouse with a desk and a blotter and tables with scales on them like they weighed lots of stuff in here, and there was a man sitting behind the desk with his boots up on the blotter.
He had a big face.
Muscley One and Raw One shoved Trevon down into a leather chair facing the desk. Behind the desk were doors that opened onto other corridors with other doors, like the building kept going forever.
Trevon was sweating a lot, and he wiped at his forehead and straightened his glasses. He looked behind him and could see right through the mirror into the front room like magic, and then he realized it was like a interrogation room on a cop show. The other men were relaxed and joking, with big hand gestures and big smiles, and Trevon watched how happy they looked and couldn’t imagine ever feeling like that again.
Big Face let his boots thunk to the floor, and he leaned forward over the blotter. “Do you know what you did wrong?”
Trevon didn’t, and he wanted so bad to cry but he didn’t, because we don’t cry and we don’t feel sorry for ourself.
Instead he said, “No, sir.”
“I’m an importer. In a particularly cutthroat business.” Big Face’s voice was calm, but it was fake calm, like when Uncle Joe-Joe got real mad. It sounded weird, stuffed-up-like but also deep. “Do you know how long I’ve been doing business successfully?”
Trevon shook his head.
“Forty-four years. How do you think I’ve gotten by this long?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you think it’s by letting myself be taken advantage of?”
“No, sir.”
“Last Friday you were working the night shift at SoCal First Bonded Warehouse when my container arrived from Suriname.”
“Yes, sir. Intermodular container, series one, number BL322-401. It weighed in at 29,456 kilograms. External dimensions: nineteen feet and ten point five inches by eight feet by eight feet and six inches. Internal dimensions—”
The voice was quiet, but it cut him off like a blade: “Do you know what it held?”
“Frozen fish.”
“Sure,” Big Face said. “Eighteen million dollars of frozen fish. My profits of forty-four years put on the line for this deal.”
Trevon said, “That’s expensive fish.”
Big Face breathed a few times. A vein squiggled in his throat, and his face was red. He looked like he might explode, but then he breathed himself back to calm. “Yes,” he said. “And this container—my container holding my profits of forty-four years—was supposed to go in the front and right out the back before the customs officials got there for the CBP examination. That was my understanding with Chava.”
“Chava got food poisoning.”
“But he told you what you were to do.”