Bad Penny (25 page)
Authors: John D. Brown
Tags: #Mystery; Thriller & Suspense, #Thrillers & Suspense, #Crime, #Kidnapping, #Organized Crime, #Vigilante Justice, #Military, #Spies & Politics, #Conspiracies, #Thrillers
Frank looked left, looked right. Looked up. The shelves were stacked seven levels high. They towered over him. He saw an open pallet three levels up. He leapt to the second level, grabbed the vertical support, then hauled himself up to the third level, careful not to step on the boxes and leave a bootprint. The mostly empty pallet was perfect. Too perfect.
The forklift reached the intersection of the cross lane back on aisle three. The rubber tires squealed to make the corner.
He climbed up to the next level and then the next, working the supports like a gorilla, and stepped onto the location two levels above the empty one.
The forks appeared down in the intersection behind him, and Frank slid into the location alongside a pallet of stacked and wrapped vanilla cream fondant.
The forklift stopped. The security guard hopped off and ran through the intersection, continuing along that crossing lane, probably so he could look down all the rows. He came back a few moments later.
Frank quietly wormed back farther.
“Go slow,” the guard said.
The forklift headed down Frank’s row. Just below Frank’s position it stopped. He heard the forks lifting. Heard them pause at the empty bay on the third level. Hear them rise a bit more.
“You can’t be in here,” the guard called. “Come on out; it’s dangerous with all these forklifts.” He sounded so reasonable. He sounded like any security guard would when someone unauthorized needed to be escorted out. Maybe this wasn’t the lair of a drug lord and slaver. Maybe the Goroza names had been stolen. Identity theft
was
big business. Perfect for someone like Ed. Hector, Flor, and José could all be upstanding citizens.
On the other hand, since when did bakeries need multiple guys to guard the Twinkies? One guy would have been plenty.
The top of the security guard’s dark cap rose into view. He was standing on the forks, probably against all safety regulations, checking the shelf on the fourth level, the one above the empty one.
One more level and he’d see Frank wedged along the side looking back at him like a raccoon caught between the garbage cans.
Frank should have brought the submachine gun. He thought about shoving the pallet out onto the guy’s head. But he was alongside it with no leverage. And he couldn’t huck the buckets at anyone because they were wrapped tightly with industrial plastic.
The guard’s cap sat there a moment more, and then he said, “Nada.” A moment later the fork motor whined and the guard’s cap descended from view. A little after that the forklift’s electrical engine revved and the driver and security guy moved on.
If these guys followed normal protocol, they would be calling the cops right about now. In a town like this they probably had a four-minute response time. Maybe shorter. If the cops showed up, things were going to get a lot harder. He wriggled forward, slowly peeked out, watched the forklift roll down the lane, the guard scanning the shelves.
He looked the other way. The lane was clear. But the forklift had round convex rearview mirrors, giving the driver a wide and tall view. If the driver had any brains at all, he’d be checking those mirrors; he’d notice movement.
So Frank carefully slid back, then over the strut to the shelf behind his, and across the tops of some bags to carefully peek down the lane on the opposite side. A security guard on foot stood way down at the far end watching. The second Frank popped out of his hiding place, the guy would see him, call it in, and they’d all converge. He’d lose precious seconds climbing down to the floor.
He pulled himself back into the center of the shelf. Each pallet location was separated by nothing more than a diagonal support strut. And while the locations all had pallets in them, the bags and boxes and buckets didn’t fill the whole space right to the top. There was a gap. And at the end of the gap was a lane that ran right back to the docking bays.
Frank turned and wriggled in a good soldier belly crawl across the tops of the boxes and buckets until he came to the crossing lane. He peeked out. To his left, the lane ran to the back of the warehouse. Nobody that way. To his right, the lane ran to the loading dock, to the dude with the desk in the painted yellow square and the blue door that led outside. The guy at the desk in the yellow square was hunched over filling out some form. A truck driver stood next to him waiting.
Now or never. Frank wormed out of the row five levels up, high above the lane. Then he climbed down the metal shelving to the cement floor. Aisle five with the forklift crossed behind him. Aisle four with the security guard standing watch at the far end crossed in front of him. He was going to have to cross aisle four and two others to get to the wide loading dock and the blue exit door beyond.
Frank headed for the dock and door. He crossed aisle four, saw the security guard spot him, saw him call it in. Frank hurried his walk. He passed the next aisle watched by a forklift guard combo. Passed the next. Walked out from the rows of shelves onto the loading dock floor.
Up ahead the guy at the desk handed the driver a slip of paper. The driver walked to the blue door, opened it. The bright light of afternoon shone in. Then he exited and shut the door behind him.
Sam said over the Bluetooth in Frank’s ear, “A police cruiser just entered the parking lot. It’s heading fairly quickly toward the front door.”
“Keep an eye on it,” Frank said. “Let me know where the officers go.”
In the warehouse, the desk guy turned around and spotted Frank. He frowned. “Hey,” he said. “What are you doing out there? I told you to walk on the path.”
Behind Frank in the warehouse someone began to run. A couple of forklifts beeped down the aisles at high speed.
Frank said, “Dude, I got lost.”
The guy was clearly annoyed. “You with White Transport?”
White Transport, the truck that had been parked in the bay next to the stairs. That was probably the truck that belonged to the driver who’d just been standing here. Frank was about to answer, when a voice came over the intercom at the desk.
“We’ve got a code four.”
The guy at the desk looked down at the intercom. Looked back up at Frank and narrowed his eyes. The guy at the desk wasn’t some skinny pencil type. He wasn’t fat and slobbish either. He was a guy who looked like he could take care of business. Like maybe he’d taken care of business a time or two. He stepped to the left and blocked Frank’s path to the door.
“What are you doing here?” he asked.
“Leaving,” Frank said.
“I don’t think so,” he said and slipped his hand into his pocket.
Frank didn’t wait to see what surprise he had there. He headbutted the guy in the face.
The guy reeled back.
Frank rushed him, put his foot behind the guy’s leg, and shoved.
The guy tripped and slammed into the cement floor all akimbo, which made it very easy for Frank to stomp his gonads.
The guy groaned, curled in on himself, and rolled to the side.
Frank strode past and opened the blue door.
“The officers are going in the front door,” Sam said.
Back in the warehouse, a forklift with its security guard attachment rounded the corner into the lane leading directly to the loading area.
Frank exited the building and shut the blue door behind him.
The police cruiser was parked right in front of the main entrance some distance down the front of the building to Frank’s left. To Frank’s right the White Transportation semi and trailer was pulling out. Frank leapt over the step railing, ran around the back of the semitrailer and up alongside the trailer of the slowly accelerating truck to the front. The round drum gas tank had a step built into it to make it easy to access the passenger side door. Frank hopped up onto the step and steadied himself. He looked up into the mirror and saw the driver watching the road in front.
The semi’s motor rumbled and the vehicle picked up speed. Back at the truck bays someone shouted. If they were shouting for the driver, he didn’t hear them. Frank didn’t think he could hear them. The guy was listening to some book on tape so loudly Frank could hear the narrator through the door.
The road out of here curved just a little to the left, which kept the semi between him and the front of the building. A few seconds later the driver braked at the entrance to the main road facing the bakery. He waited for a group of cars to pass, then gave the truck some gas. The diesel engine rumbled; the dark exhaust rose out of the tall exhaust pipes, and the truck lumbered out into the intersection to make a left-hand turn.
This time the driver did notice Frank in the mirror, but he was in the middle of the intersection. This was no place to stop; he had to continue forward. He began the turn, but before he could buzz down the window to holler, Frank leapt off the step, ran to the curb, and into the parking lot where Sam and Carmen waited in the minivan. He opened the door just as the semitrailer rolled by out on the road. Back at the bakery across the road, men were fanning out across the front of the building, some running round back, others to check the parking lot. The cop was talking to the old gal from upstairs.
Frank ducked in the van and slid the side door shut.
“That was close,” Sam said.
“We’re not out of Dodge yet,” Frank said.
“Did you get anything?”
“Nothing,” Frank said and sighed with frustration. He pulled the folded photographs out of his pocket. “Just some high-quality mug shots. A fragment of an address. We’ve got nothing.”
Carmen was sitting in the front passenger’s seat. She held her hand out for photographs, and Frank let her take them.
“What do we do?”
That was a good question. They could wait here and hope to waylay that old secretary when she left and wring the truth out of her. But who knew when the shift ended? She was probably calling Hector right now, which meant the element of surprise, their biggest weapon, had just been blown.
743 Lu—what was that?
Lupine? Luna? Luke? Ludwig? Lucifer? Lucky? Lube? Lugworm?
Yeah, they lived on Lugworm Drive.
Or had that U been an O? Frank pinched the bridge of his nose then drew his hand down his face.
Carmen unfolded the photographs. Looked at the first and second. When she saw the third, her eyes went wide. She looked again. “Mi madre,” she said in shock.
“What?” Frank asked.
“The woman.”
“What about her?”
Carmen held the unfolded photograph up and turned it around so they both could see. There were two faces looking back at them, Carmen’s above, the woman’s underneath in the photograph. She said, “The woman that came for my sister.”
Just then Pinto took his phone off mute and the sound of the plane came in. “Look out your windshield, coming out of the bakery’s parking lot. Is that what I think it is?”
Frank looked. It was a two-toned Nissan with cola glass. It stopped at the entrance to the main road. The Hispanic driver looked both ways, then made a right turn.
“Is that it?” Sam asked.
Frank said, “I believe that’s the dent I made in the side panel with Jesus’s head.”
The two-toned car sped up and merged with the traffic.
The license plate started with VAG. “Those first letters were on the car they took Tony in.”
“You want me to follow?” Pinto asked.
“You’d better believe it,” Frank said, then turned to Sam. “Let’s get this thing moving. I think we’ve got ourselves a lead.”
25
Tail
SAM BACKED OUT of his parking stall and drove to the exit.
Across the road the Twinkie guards and police officers were still doing a search. Even though Frank was in the back seat with tinted windows, he still ducked down.
Sam made his left hand turn and accelerated along the main road.
A few moments later Carmen said, “We’re good. You can sit up now.”
Pinto cut in. “The Nissan is turning left at the light.”
“Got it,” Sam said.
Frank looked back at the bakery and verified that nobody was following them. Then he turned back around. “You’re sure that’s the woman?”
“I’m positive,” Carmen said. “Look at the birthmark on the side of her neck.”
Frank hadn’t noticed it at first, but there it was like half of a small flower.
“How is it possible?” Frank asked. “Out of all the people in Colorado we find her.”
“There are dozens of slave sites between here, New Mexico, and the western part of Texas. But they’re run by only a handful of trafficking organizations. We got lucky.”
“We’ve been living right,” Sam said.
Frank said, “Plan A—we take the driver of that car and beat him until he talks.”
“Plan B?” Sam asked.
“I don’t think we’ve gotten that far yet.”
The Nissan went through the intersection. Sam rolled up a number of seconds later to a red light.
Pinto said, “He’s running south.”
They waited for the cross traffic making left turns. Then waited for the cross traffic going straight through.
“He’s easily a mile ahead of you,” Pinto said. “Taking a right.”
The light turned green and Sam hit the gas, made the left-hand turn, accelerated down the road.
“Watch it,” Frank said. “Last thing we need is a ticket.”
Sam let off the accelerator a bit.
“You got him, right Pinto?”
“I got him,” Pinto said.
It took about ten minutes before they finally were able to see the Nissan ahead of them. The driver made a left off the main drag and then a quick right past a 7-11 and an auto parts store into a residential neighborhood. It was an older neighborhood with smaller houses. A little run down, but a few of the houses had conscientious owners. He parked in front of a bungalow and ran to the house and banged on the door.
A cholo opened the door.
“That’s one of the slave sites,” Carmen said.
“How can you tell?” Sam asked. “It looks like all the other houses.”
“There are a couple of profiles for these places. When they’re in the city, they’re often at the edge of a residential neighborhood, usually next to a business area, or a road that gets more traffic. There’s easy access from behind, maybe an alley; in this instance a parking lot. I guarantee there’s a gate in the back fence. And then you have the windows—the blinds are always down. You’d think they were vampires.”
“They’re worse than vampires,” Frank said.
Sam drove past the house.
Carmen said, “That’s the door watchman. They’ve already done a telephone interview. But they’ll do another screening here. Where are you from? Where do you live? How did you hear about us? If the cochino passes, the watchman lets him in. He pays the money to the ticketero who gives him a playing card or maybe a poker chip. Then he waits in the living room on the couch with the other men. When it’s his turn, he chooses a girl, but sometimes there are only two in the house, so maybe he doesn’t have much choice. He gives her the card, they go to one of the rooms, and then he rapes her.
“In his mind, it’s not rape, right? It’s business. Because the girls aren’t tied up; they’re working off the cost of the coyote; they’re making an investment in their future. It’s Walmart—high volume, low price. The girls are making it rich. But they’re not. They’re forced to service sometimes thirty to forty men a day. And they keep nothing. She gets maybe five or ten dollars a card. But then the padrotes charge her hundreds for condoms, more for room and board, for shampoo and clothes, more for protection. So much she’ll never pay the debt.”
“I’d wager most of those customers know exactly what they’re doing,” Frank said.
Back at the house, the door watchman yelled something to those inside, then he hustled down the front porch and out to the Nissan with the first guy.
Sam slowed and pulled to the side of the road.
The two cholos got into the car and drove back out of the neighborhood.
“Go around the block,” Frank said. “We’ll catch them on the main road.”
They did catch them and followed them to a second house much like the first. It couldn’t have been more than a mile and a half away. This one was down the street from a church.
The second watchman joined the other two men in the Nissan. On his way to the car, he made a show of his gun.
“They’re gathering their forces,” Frank said.
“Or going out for food,” Sam replied.
They followed the Nissan to an auto shop and picked up another guy. This one pulled the gun out of his waistband before he got into the back of the car.
“That’s four guys with guns,” Sam said. “We still going with plan A?”
“We’ll follow them and see,” Frank said.
They followed them onto I-25 which runs straight through Denver. Half an hour later they were running south, leaving the Denver metropolis behind.
To the west, the Rockies rose up and towered over the landscape. Here the land stretched out in gentle hills with very few trees. They traveled down I-25. Before they reached Colorado Springs, the Nissan exited the freeway and headed east into the country. There were plains, plains, and more plains, as far as the eye could see. And then they started seeing hillocks covered in patches of ponderosa. They were close to the Black Forest area.
Pinto had been their eye in the sky this whole time. It had allowed them to keep out of sight, to follow the Nissan with more than a mile between them. But Pinto came on the line. “I’m going to have to drop down and fill up the plane.”
“How long?” Frank asked.
“I’ll be back in forty-five.”
“Roger that,” Frank said.
Sam sped up. A few minutes later they spotted the Nissan way up ahead, and Pinto flew off. Sam closed the distance until they were maybe only a half a mile back. The area was pretty here. Miles of pines and meadow and more pines. They followed the Nissan into a little town; on the way out the Nissan turned down a road flanked by pines.
Sam was slowed by a truck hauling hay and traffic coming the other way. He finally made the turn, sped down the road, but the Nissan was nowhere. They came to a T with a little gas station and bowling alley on the other side.
They looked left, looked right. There was nothing on the road.
“Crap,” Sam said.
There were some teenage boys in the parking lot by the bowling alley. They were lounging up against a big yellow pickup, talking to some girls in a Volkswagen.
Frank said, “Lets go talk to those kids.”
Sam drove across the road, but the teens were packing up. They were in their cars and moving before Sam could get to them. He rolled down his window but they motored over to the bowling alley and exited the parking lot there.
“Should I chase them down?”
“Pull up to the front,” Frank said. Sam drove past a car at the pumps to the front by the ice chest. Frank took out his phone and found their position with GPS. The little town they’d gone through was Calhoon. He Googled Calhoon with Lupine and Luke and Ludwig, but didn’t find anything. Tried Lucifer and Luna. Even tried Lugworm. Nothing. He got out of the van and went inside the station to the stout blond woman at the cash register. There was a rack of gum on the counter. Frank took out a package of bubble gum and put it on the counter. “Got a question,” he said. “I’m looking for the Goroza place.”
The woman shrugged and shook her head, rang in the bubble gum.
“The owners of the big bakery,” Frank said.
“I don’t live around here,” she said.
A twenty-something guy standing by the candy bar aisle had been listening to the conversation. “You talking about that place on Lullaby?”
Lullaby, of course. “Why, yes,” Frank said.
The guy gave the woman at the counter a look.
“What?” Frank said.
“Nothing,” the guy said.
“No really,” Frank said.
“Just take a left out of here,” the guy said. “Head down the road. Lullaby’s a couple miles down on your left.”
Frank turned to the woman. “What’s he not telling me?”
The stout blonde said, “That’s that place with the grotto, right?”
“Yeah,” the younger guy said.
“Ah,” the woman said and dismissed him. “They’re Catholics. They’ve got this grotto thing with the statue of Mary in it. They light candles. Prayers. That kind of thing.”
“It isn’t always Mary,” the young guy said.
“Oh, no?” Frank asked.
“I haven’t seen it, but some say they perform other rites.”
The stout woman rolled her eyes. “Don’t listen to him; he doesn’t even have a job. Nothing to do but think up weird things.”
Another car pulled up to the pumps. It was a man and woman with bicycles riding in a rack up on top.
Frank motioned at the road. “So I take a left, go a couple miles, and then another left.”
“You got it,” the guy said.
The price for the bubble gum appeared on the register display. Frank handed the woman two one dollar bills. She made change, and Frank picked up his gum.
“Have fun,” the guy said.
“They’re bakers,” Frank said. “They make frostings and snack cakes.”
“See,” the stout woman said.
Frank left the two behind to argue about the propriety of talking about your neighbors and walked out to the minivan. He Googled 743 Lullaby, Calhoon, Colorado. A moment later he was looking satellite view of a big old rambler with wooden shingles, a long drive, and a swimming pool. It was a pretty big spread nestled in the middle of huge swaths of ponderosa pines.
There was a barn, what looked like another smaller house, and some outbuildings. There were adjacent fields and corrals ringed by white post fences. One field looked like a place to ride horses. Frank zoomed in. Sure enough, the satellite had captured someone on a horse in that field. Frank zoomed out and then a bit more. A little farther away a stream ran through the pines to a fishing pond.
Sam said, “What is that? Forty acres?”
“A regular gentleman’s ranch,” Carmen said.
“Let’s get down the road,” Frank said. “Make sure this is the right place.”
They found Lullaby right where the guy at the gas station said they would. It was a country road running through a landscape of pines and prairie grass. The land on the right of the road was fenced off. About a mile down the road they came to a newer section of fence. Every fifty feet the barbed-wire fence had a square No Trespassing sign.
“I think this is the start of their property,” Frank said.
They passed pines and fields and a lot more No Trespassing signs, and then the entrance to the long driveway came into view. Alongside the drive was the riding field he’d seen from the Google maps with the white post fence. At the end of the drive were a bunch of SUVs. At the back to one side sat the Nissan.
“The troops have gathered,” Frank said.
A number of men sat at a table on a shaded patio next to the house. Colorful chickens milled about the yard. Behind them a peacock sat on a fence post. Beyond the peacock, in the far corner of a field, stood a gaggle of ostriches.
Frank shook his head. “The Gorozas have got their fingers in all sorts of pies.”
“Their oldest son has an MBA,” Carmen said.
“Which goes to show that college degrees don’t make a man smart,” Frank said.
Sam continued a mile past the house then stopped along an empty section of road running through more prairie and pines without a single No Trespassing sign. This was probably some rancher’s land used to graze cattle.
“Okay,” Frank said. “That was the first pass. Now we need to do some close recon.”
“We’re just going to walk up?”
“We’re going to drive up,” Frank said. He put on his no prescription black-rimmed glasses. “It’s a courtesy call to inform the owners of the property that Xcel Energy will be conducting a gas line survey in the area. If all goes well, I’ll get in and check their furnace.”
“What am I going to do?” Carmen said.
“You’re going to take the binoculars; between Google terrain and this first pass I found the perfect spot for you to keep an eye on things. You’re going to watch our backs.”
“What about me?”
“You’re going to sit in the van.”
“Okay,”
Frank took out his bubble gum. “Have a piece.”
“It’s full of sugar; it will rot your teeth.”
“You ever seen a bad guy blowing bubbles?”
“No.”
“All right then. You’re bored. You’re in the van. You’re blowing bubbles.”
Sam took the gum, unwrapped his piece, and began to chomp. Then he put it in gear, made a three-point turn, and headed back toward the house.