Jerry Langton Three-Book Biker Bundle (64 page)

Maria motioned for him to take the other bed. Confused, Ned sat on the bed and waited for her to tell him what was going on. Instead, she started taking off her clothes. Shocked, he stopped her. “No, no, that's not what I'm here for . . .” he said.

Maria smiled. “They told me you might be a
tia
,” she said, using the Spanish word for “aunt,” which in Sonora was slang for a gay man. “It's okay, I should bring you up some food . . ., but I should wait a few minutes, so that they think you are a man, you know.”

Ned wanted to tell her he was not gay, just scared, but he also didn't want to antagonize her or make the situation any more complicated than absolutely necessary. “What am I doing here?” he asked.

“What do you mean?” she looked confused.

“What am I doing here . . . in this room?”

“Oh, you don't understand,” she smiled. “You work here now.” She said, as though that would answer all his questions.

“Work? What kind of work?”

“They will tell you.”

“Who will?”

“The men, downstairs,” she said, getting a little frustrated with his inability to understand what to her seemed obvious.

“Yes, I know. Who are they?” Ned was getting frustrated, too, but knew he should not get her angry.

She looked at him, as though he had just asked her the stupidest question she had ever heard. “They are the men,” she said. “El Apestoso is the boss here, his boss is the big boss.”

Ned knew he wasn't going to get any further by questioning Maria. Instead, he smiled weakly and thanked her. She looked at him for a few minutes and her face softened. “Here,” she said. “You need this more than me.” She handed him a necklace. It had a round gold charm with the face of a man with a halo and the name “Judas Tadeo” embossed on it. Ned wasn't Catholic, but he knew it was St. Jude, the patron saint of hopeless cases.

Maria went back downstairs to fetch the food and was surprised, when she returned, to find Ned sound asleep.

* * *

Meloni and O'Malley sat at a simple pine desk across from Andersson in his office at Hawkridge. Even though he was being questioned by two FBI agents about a fugitive from justice who worked for him, and a girl who was kidnapped and smuggled into the country, he betrayed not a hint of nervousness or guilt. The fugitive in question was Ned Aiken, a man he knew as Eric Steadman, the erstwhile head of his shipping and receiving department.

“I find it strange that you would hire a man like Steadman for such a senior position,” said Meloni as though it was a question.

“It has always been my policy to give people chances to succeed, rather than to expect them to fail,” Andersson answered. “Many people come in with résumés that are impressive, but do not strike me as smart or ambitious; Steadman did, even though his résumé was lacking.”

“And how did you find him?” asked O'Malley.

“He found us,” Andersson said, his eyebrows raised to indicate surprise that they would ask such a question. “This is still a small town in many ways; we do things in the old-fashioned way—I put an ad in the local newspaper, people talk about such things as a job opening.”

“And you knew he was in the witness-protection program?”

“Not until after I hired him,” Andersson made a show of looking at Steadman's employment file. “He mentioned in the interview that there could be complications; then one of your people, a Lieutenant Kuzik, called me and filled me in.”

“And that didn't bother you?”

“Not really,” he said. “The fact that he risked his life to put that sort of thing behind him actually made me a little more impressed with him.”

“And how was he as an employee? Any problems?”

“Not at all, very efficient and well liked around the office,” Andersson said. “As I look at his record, I can see no complaints, no disciplinary orders, and just one sick day.”

“Anything suspicious about him—unexplained phone calls or visits?”

“No, nothing like that. I supplied the lieutenant with an update of his activities every two weeks,” he answered. “You should have all that information.”

“Now, about the little girl . . .” Meloni interrupted himself when he saw Andersson roll his eyes. “I know you have told this story a hundred times; we just need it once more.”

“Yes,” said O'Malley. “I'd love to hear it—just start at the beginning.”

“I was in the back of our display at the Javits when I heard gunshots and screaming,” he recounted. “So I ran out to see what was going on.”

“Most people would have run the other way,” said O'Malley.

“My military training prevented that.”

“I understand,” said Meloni. “You were in the special forces in Sweden?”

“Oh, no, nothing like that,” Andersson laughed. “Just an ordinary foot soldier.”

Meloni chuckled. “Okay, and then what happened?”

“People were screaming and running around . . . like idiots, if I may,” he looked embarrassed by the frankness of his own remark. “That's when I saw Sophia—she was just standing there, obviously in shock—I was scared she was going to be trampled with all those wild people in there . . .”

“So you ran to her?”

“Yes I did.”

“And you grabbed her?”

“No, I took her by the hand . . . I have children of my own, I did not want to panic her . . . If she were to run in that crowd . . . she was so small.”

“You called her ‘Sophia.' Didn't they tell you her name was Sopho?”

“Yes, but we have been in touch a few times since . . . thanks to St. Nino's, she asked them to contact me,” he said. “She is an American girl now. She likes to be called Sophia like other American girls.”

“And she went with you willingly?”

“She was in shock.”

“And you knew she was Georgian how?”

“My company has been manufacturing components in various Eastern European countries for almost thirty years,” he said. “I go there all the time. I know some of the languages well, but I only know a few words of Georgian. It's almost unique. I recognized it right away.”

“And where did you take her?”

“Back to the display,” he said. “It seemed the safest place with all the mobs at the exits.”

“And then what?”

“After the SWAT team evacuated us all, I looked for a sergeant—they wear white shirts in New York City, all the other cops wear blue—and told him what had happened.”

“Were you surprised to see Steadman there?” O'Malley asked.

“He was there?” Andersson looked surprised. “As I told the previous investigators, I had not seen him since the day before the convention. Are you sure he was there?”

“Yes,” said O'Malley, scanning Andersson's eyes. “We have an eyewitness.”

“Who?”

“You know we can't tell you that.”

“Was he involved with Sophia? With the shooting? When he didn't come back to work and didn't call, I just assumed he had broken probation or something . . . you know, with the motorcycle.”

“Right, the stolen motorcycle,” asked O'Malley. “What do you know?”

“I didn't believe it at first, that Eric would steal his own bike,” he said. “I suspected that Matt had cooked up a plot to cash in on the insurance . . . after all, Eric did sell it to him for next to nothing. When Eric didn't come back to work, I assumed he was in on it.”

“An eyewitness said that Steadman had a child with him.”

“I had not heard that.”

O'Malley sighed and looked at Meloni. They started in on Andersson, asking him basically the same questions over again, and he answered the same each time, not wavering even the tiniest bit from his story.

After they finished with him, they used his office to question Matt, the warehouse worker who had bought the motorcycle from Ned, and Matt's wife, Katie, who had worked closely with him. Neither said they had noticed anything odd or suspicious about Ned, who they actually knew as Eric, until he sold them the motorcycle. Matt had inquired several times about buying the motorcycle—a painstakingly restored Indian—but Ned had turned him down every time. Then one night out of the blue, Ned called them and told them Matt could have the bike cheap if he just hauled it away. He had told them some story about not wanting it anymore. They didn't believe all of it, but Matt really wanted the bike, so he bought it.

Some weeks later, Matt was working in the warehouse when Esteban, one of the other warehouse guys, came running in shouting that someone was stealing his bike. Matt hadn't been able to see who had taken it, but he was pretty sure it was Eric because he never saw him again after that. Eric was one of the few people who knew how to start the thing and, as its former owner, it made sense that he would have a spare set of keys.

Meloni and O'Malley then interviewed Esteban, who was worried that he might be deported back to El Salvador. Meloni assured him repeatedly that he wouldn't be, that all they were interested in was what he saw on the day the motorcycle was stolen. It took a while, but Esteban eventually revealed that he saw a man and what could have been a little girl or a boy get on the Indian. He had seen them when he heard the man begin to kick-start the big machine.

He knew it was Matt's bike. It was all Matt had talked about for weeks. He wasn't sure if the man was Eric or not. Eric had worked upstairs and rarely came down to the warehouse. The thief had looked a bit like Eric, but Esteban had only seen him from behind and from a distance, so he wasn't sure.

After they excused him, Meloni asked O'Malley if she thought Aiken was the man who had stolen the bike. “At the risk of jumping to conclusions,” she answered, “yes.”

* * *

Nina, a Russian model who had once befriended Ned, was grilling sturgeon and lobsters on their friend Viktor's yacht . . .

“Wake up, sleeping beauty!”

Ned's eyes sprung open. A short, stocky man wearing a red western shirt and jeans, and carrying an AK-47, was kicking his bed.

“Come on, downstairs,” he ordered, and waited until Ned went in front of him before leaving the room.

In the main room, he saw three men at the table. El Ratón, the obese man who had interrogated him; beside him was the guy he saw passed out the night before; and on the other side of the table sat a man Ned did not recognize. He was smaller and darker and dressed differently than the other Mexicans he had seen in Nogales. His clothes looked homemade and simple. They fell silent as they saw Ned enter the room.

“Ah, El Espagueti! My best gringo friend,” El Ratón said in what seemed like a friendly way, but still sent chills. “Don't be sensitive, my friend. You are obviously a man of the world. You must know that we have to protect ourselves.”

Ned understood the group's need to protect itself, but did not know who they were. Even though he had been in Mexico for a while, he had tried to lay low and his knowledge of organized crime in the country was limited. His first experience of criminal gangs was his involvement with and eventual membership in the Sons of Satan Motorcycle Club in the States. At first, he thought bikers were just guys who rode Harleys, smoked weed, and generally had a good time together. But he soon learned that the gang was a cutthroat corporation based on drug and human trafficking, and that the penalty for failure or disloyalty was death.

He took a moment to piece together what had happened and how he had gotten there. The “Federales” who had originally stopped him were clearly working for one of the cartels. Realizing he was of little value, they were letting him go when he was attacked and caught in the crossfire. As far as the explosion was concerned, Ned attributed it to a car bomb or a rock-propelled grenade, both of which were in common use by the cartels.

Ned also knew that the big cartels often increased their manpower by kidnapping people off the streets, but wondered why they wanted him in particular. Perhaps, he thought, somebody knew who he was. And it suddenly dawned on him that he had been working in association with the cartels for years.

The bikers bought drugs, mainly cocaine, wholesale from the Italians and then sold them to street-level dealers to retail. He never really thought about where the drugs came from before the Italians had them, but he had guessed Colombia or Bolivia.

Later, he had become mixed up with the Russian mafia and learned that they got drugs from terrible, war-torn places like Afghanistan and Chechnya and sold them around the world. The Russians were far more sinister, capable of far worse horrors than any biker gang.

But Ned never really thought that much about Mexico. Like many Americans, he always considered Mexico just a slightly rougher version of his own country. He associated it with weed because of movies and TV and because all the Mexicans he knew were big pot smokers. But he also knew from experience that there's no real profit in pot. Sure, for a small operator it can make a few bucks, but because it sold so cheaply—everyone seemed to be growing the stuff—it was generally for small-timers.

These guys were anything but small-time. They had expensive weapons and they used methods—like bombings and impersonating cops—that most bikers could only dream about and the Russians didn't have to bother with. It was a sophisticated operation, even if all the guys running it seemed a bit sloppy.

All of that ran through his head in the second or so between what El Ratón said to him and his response. “I understand.”

“Good—Jessica! Go get him breakfast—please sit down,” the big man said, motioning for him to take a chair beside the little guy in homemade clothes. As he got closer, Ned was shocked by how small the man was. “El Espagueti, this is El Chango,” he gestured to the little guy, whom he had just called “the Monkey.” Then he pointed to the other man. “And you know El Vaquero Loco from upstairs.” Ned didn't know which of the company El Ratón was referring to, but assumed he was the one who'd been passed out on the bed. Aside from El Ratón, who looked a little like a Mexican version of Biggie Smalls, he couldn't have picked any of these men out of a police line.