Guardian of Lies (46 page)

“Like Goudaz said, it’s possible the
Mariah
went somewhere else,” says Herman.

Our first hope was to find Katia’s camera with the photos from Colombia. We could prop them up in court, identify whatever was in them, and explain the significance to the jury as the reason Pike was murdered. Failing that, our backup was to locate Katia’s mother in hopes that she could either provide leads to solid evidence or testify as to what her father was doing in Colombia. The fact that she doesn’t know anything means we’re batting zero for two.

“I’m troubled by one thing,” I say.

“Only one? That’s not bad,” says Herman.

“How did Goudaz know the container would be shipping out of southwest Colombia?”

“Huh?” Herman looks at me.

“Remember when he came into the room after the phone call to his man in Puntarenas? He showered us with all kinds of information. But the first thing he said was, any container coming out of southwest Colombia would most likely ship from the place he called Tumaco. How did he know the container would be coming out of southwest Colombia?”

Herman thinks about it for a second. “Easy. He knew Maricela flew in and out of Medellín.”

“That’s what I thought, until I looked at a Google map of Colombia on Goudaz’s computer. Medellín’s not in southwest Colombia. It’s more or less in the center of the country. Maricela said she took a bus from Medellín to some small village where they picked her up in a truck and drove her to where her father was. She didn’t say how long the bus ride took, but she said the ride in the truck took most of a day and that she couldn’t remember much of it, which I don’t buy.”

“You think she’s lying?” says Herman.

“Let’s just say she’s protecting her dad. Which still leaves us with the question, how did Goudaz know?”

“If he’s wrong,” says Herman, “then everything he’s told us is out the window.”

“I’m not saying he’s wrong. Maricela didn’t correct him when he said it. And you can bet she didn’t tell him.”

“Good question,” says Herman. “Maybe we should ask him when we get back.”

I nod. “Which reminds me. Where is Maricela?”

“She took off early this morning,” says Herman. “She went up to the house to see if she could salvage anything. She was hoping to find her phone. She came back an hour later, said there was nothing but ashes. So she took a taxi over to the phone company—I think she said it was called EESAY. Said she was gonna try to buy a new phone and see if she could get her old cell number back. She’s still hoping to snag her father’s phone call.”

“She’s a good daughter.”

“According to Goudaz, she’s wasting her time. Her old phone was GSM. It ran off a chip. Larry told her there’s no way they can assign the old number to a new chip. Apparently he’s tried it before. He says the assigned phone numbers are already embedded in the chips when the local phone company buys them from the manufacturer. So if you lose the chip, the number’s gone.”

“We better keep an eye on her. She’s wandering all over town alone. Remember what Rhytag said about Katia in the hospital after the bloodbath on the bus? It was better if whoever had tried to kill her thought she was dead.”

“So what’s Maricela gonna do when we leave?”

“Fortunately you saved her passport when you snatched her purse from the fire. She doesn’t know it yet, but depending on where we go, she may be coming with us.”

As I say it, the door in this little back office opens. I turn, half expecting to see the police. Instead the man with the mustache is carrying a shoe box with the lid on and a label on the side that reads CANADA.

He puts the box on the table and lifts the lid. It is filled with passports, each one with a black cover, the word CANADA printed above the coat of arms, with the word PASSPORT in both English and French printed below it. All of the lettering and design is in gold ink.

“First you pay, then you pick out a name, any name you want as long as it’s in the box,” says the mustache. “We will take your pictures, put in the necessary descriptions, and provide the entry stamp for Costa Rica and the temporary entry document. That’s the base package.

“For five hundred dollars more you get the professional upgrade. That includes entry and exit stamps for four other countries of your own choosing, assorted artistic stains, and a press job.”

“What the hell’s a press job?” says Herman.

“We put the passport through a steam press. That bends the binding so it looks like it’s had many trips in your hip pocket. I would recommend that you get the professional package since it makes the passport look much more authentic.”

“Lemme see if I got this straight,” says Herman. “We can pay twenty-five hundred dollars and get your base unit, which is probably good for a stint in a Costa Rican jail, or we can pay three thousand and get a passport that might get us out of Costa Rica and into another country. Is that pretty much it?”

“Up to you.”

As Herman is haggling with the man, I turn my back and start fishing in the cash in the money belt under my shirt. When I turn around I’m holding fifty one-hundred-dollar bills. I lay them all out on the counter. He looks at them, the green reality being much better than talk.

In my other hand I’m holding three more one-hundred-dollar bills. “You can keep the press job and the stains. You give us the four extra entry and exit stamps on each passport, you get three hundred more. Otherwise we’re walking.”

Ordinarily I might not have pressed him. But given the fact that we can no longer use credit or debit cards without leaving a trail like bread crumbs, cash is now king.

“The stains and the bending are very important,” he tells us.

“I can spill my own coffee,” says Herman. “And I bet you if I sit on it, my ass will bend the binding. You want me to try one and see?”

“Take it or leave it,” I tell him. “You can always tell the mayor we went for the base package. He’ll never know, in which case you just made three hundred bucks.”

He looks me in the eyes, tries to read my resolve. When he can’t be sure, he glances back down at the money.

I start to pick up the bills from the counter.

“Okay. You got a deal,” he says.

Liquida spent almost forty minutes trolling the San José neighborhood in his car, never drifting more than three or four blocks from the burned-out house. He wore the oversize shades and the baseball cap.

He pulled up in front of a boutique hotel, rolled down the passenger window, and told the guard out front he was looking for a man named Lorenzo who lived in the area. Perhaps he knew him as the mayor of Gringo Gulch.

The guard laughed, shook his head. “Never heard of him.”

“Thank you.” Liquida drove down the street. He talked to a pedestrian on the sidewalk a block down and got the same reply. The lady with the hose was wrong. The mayor of Gringo Gulch did not know everybody.

He passed a large old colonial house with the words HOTEL VESUVIO painted on the front wall, above the awning. He drove to the end of the block and had started to turn left when he saw two gray-haired gringos in sandals and shorts crossing the street just ahead of him. He hesitated for a moment. What if one of them was the
alcalde
himself?

Liquida’s mind quickly came up with a cover story. He pulled up next to them, rolled down his window, and said, “Excuse me. I am looking for a man who lives near here. His name is Lorenzo. I don’t know his last name, but his friends sometimes call him the mayor of Gringo Gulch.”

“You mean Larry Goudaz,” said one of them.

“You know him?”

“Yeah, he lives down the street.” The guy leaned down toward the car window. “Just go straight down, through the next intersection. Go one more block and you have to turn right. If you park at the curb after you make the turn, you’ll be right in front of the Casa Amarilla, big yellow house, can’t miss it. Larry’s place is in the apartment building right across the street, on your left. Second floor.”

“Thank you,” said Liquida. “
Muchas gracias.”

“Or you could wait until four and catch him at the bar inside the Sportsmens. Larry’s got a stool there with his name engraved on it.” The gringo laughed.

Liquida smiled, rolled up his window, and drove on. But instead of following the directions he turned at the next intersection and went halfway up the block until he found a space to park.

He took his time inching into the space. The streets in San José were layered with so many pours of asphalt that the roadways arched like rainbows. Drive too close to the edge, your car might roll on its side and disappear into the canyon at the curb. To be safe Liquida left the rental car three feet out from the sidewalk.

He locked it up and crossed the street on foot. He had walked one more block, passing under some trees and overhanging bushes that arched above the sidewalk, when he saw the big yellow house off to the right. It was an old colonial from the plantation period. Behind it, on the same grounds, was a modern high-rise office building that looked as if it had wandered into the wrong century. The entire compound was sealed off from the street by a high, spiked iron fence that surrounded the L-shaped block.

As he moved farther along the fence toward the yellow house, Liquida noticed a gate with a guard kiosk. There were a dozen or more expensive cars, Mercedeses and Lexuses, parked inside the grounds. Men in dark suits with briefcases and women in tight power outfits, some of them carrying file folders, walked with an air of consequence between the yellow house and the high-rise. To Liquida, the uniformed security, power people, and expensive cars meant one thing—high-level government offices.

The guard kiosk was directly across the street from the apartment building the two gringos had told him about, the place where Lorenzo lived.

Liquida slowed his stride for a moment as he studied the situation. There was no heavy traffic. The quiet lane that separated the gray-masonry apartment house from the government compound made a dogleg, turning to the left almost directly in front of the entrance to the apartments. Liquida figured he had nothing to lose by walking along the sidewalk and checking it out.

When he came to the end of the block, he crossed the street and ended up directly in front of the apartment building. Turning to his right he strolled along the narrow sidewalk as it curved toward the dogleg in front of the building. It was possible there was another entrance into the building, either around the corner or in the back, where he could pick the lock and not be seen entering by a guard in the kiosk across the street.

He was approaching the entrance to the apartments when he heard the clang of metal. The steel gate at the front door suddenly opened. It blocked the sidewalk directly in front of him. The man stepping out didn’t see him. He nearly collided with Liquida.

“
Perdón!
Excuse me.” He stood there confused for a moment, hanging on to the gate and blocking the way.

Liquida smiled, said, “Excuse me,” and stepped through the open gate and into the building as if he belonged there.
“Gracias.”

“De nada,”
said the man. He locked the gate from the outside as the Mexican closed the front door. Why look a gift horse in the mouth?

The entrance area was small, a kind of tower with concrete stairs that spiraled up around a central core to the next level. Liquida quickly climbed to the second floor. Finding the right apartment wasn’t going to be difficult. The stairs continued up, but on the second level there appeared to be only one apartment with a single door.

Liquida carefully approached it and put his ear gently to the small pane of translucent glass in the top section of the door. If no one was home, he would take a few minutes to check the place out, make sure he had the right apartment, and look for any trace of the woman. He listened for voices and movement inside as he felt for the small box of picks in his pocket.

The ship
Amora
was a coastal cargo carrier but with sufficient fuel capacity for long-range travel. Because it had been traveling empty-handed to Guatemala to pick up a load of lumber, it was operating with a skeleton crew. Its tanks had been topped off with cheap Venezuelan diesel for ballast. It had been designed originally as a Great Lakes freighter, with the wheelhouse and superstructure forward, near the bow.

It was less than three hundred tons in gross weight. This meant that it was exempt from the international automatic identification system, otherwise known as AIS. The system tracked the location and identity of large cargo ships around the world by using satellites. It broadcast information as to their identity and location every two minutes over VHF radio frequencies. Originally designed for collision avoidance, the AIS system was now being used increasingly to guard against terrorism and escalating acts of piracy.

Alim had coordinated with the Tijuana cartel. Two of the cartel members had joined the
Amora’
s crew in Colombia. Armed with handguns, they had disabled the radio and seized the bridge just moments before the container was delivered on board.

Alim and two of his gunmen cornered the last crew member shortly before midnight. By one in the morning, the bodies of the dead were weighted with chain, pitched over the side, and the decks washed clean with high-pressure hoses.

Only the captain remained alive, up on the bridge where Afundi held him at gunpoint until he could rendezvous with the other boat. He would be replaced by a skipper provided by the cartel, along with a new crew, and the
Amora’
s captain would join his men in the eternal chain locker at the bottom of the sea.

“The Costa Rican government is getting nervous. They’re asking a lot of questions. They want to know why the FBI is making such a big deal out of a case involving a single fugitive.” James Rhytag sat behind his desk in his Washington office and talked into the telephone as he looked at the report from Thorpe’s agents in San José.

“Listen, Jim, give us another day and my people will have him. We’re that close.” Thorpe was on the other end of the line, trying to buy more time.