Shadow Kill (Nick Teffinger Thriller) (32 page)

Yoan Foca.

Yoan Foca.

“No.”

“That’s good for you,” he said, “because just hearing his name takes you halfway to death. He lives in Havana, Cuba, and has never once in his life left the country, at least to my knowledge. His minions though are all over the world. There’s no place they can’t go. There’s no one they can’t kill.”

Teffinger hardened his face.

“Why do I care?”

“You care because Yoan Foca is my client,” Rail said. “He’s the one who originally owned the Van Gogh. He’s the one I was in the process of selling it for when Dandan took it. He’s the one out there in the shadows hell-bent to get it back. He’s the one who killed Savina Bandini last night. He’s the one who’s a heartbeat away from getting his fists around the throat of Dandan, whether she knows it or not.” A beat then, “He’s the one who will hunt you to the ends of the earth once he knows you refused to help me.” He nodded towards Del Rey, focused back on Teffinger and said, “And your pretty little girlfriend here? She’s nothing more than a scream in the night. Then, poof, she’s gone. She’s gone so far and so deep that it’s questionable whether she ever even existed.”

“Is that one of his men in town?”

“Meaning what?”

“The one who’s after me or her,” he said. “The one who rips the wings off birds—”

“Him? No, he’s not one of Foca’s,” he said. “Foca doesn’t hire people that sloppy. You’re going to have a talk with your little Dandan friend. You’re going to let her know just how deep in she is. You’re going to explain to her that the only way to come out of this alive—and un-tortured for that matter—is to turn over the painting while she still has a chance. Like I said, Savina Bandini’s dead. She was killed before the new buyer sent her any money.”

“She told me the opposite.”

“If she did she was lying,” Rail said. “Even if she wasn’t, Dandan would will never see a cent of it, not at this point. The woman has no upside in keeping the painting. It’s not going to bring her riches. It will only bring her death, worse than death, actually. This is your chance to save her from a horrible, horrible thing. I’ll call you in two hours. Have some good news for me.”

He shoved the weapon in his waistband and headed for the door.

“Hey, Rail. Where’s Susan Smith?”

The man stopped and said over his shoulder, “I’ll tell you in two hours when you have that good news for me.”

Then he was gone.

Teffinger
didn’t get up. Instead he pulled out his cell phone and dialed Leigh Sandt in Quantico. “It’s me, Nick. Look, I know I’m being a huge pain in the ass but I need whatever you can get me on a Havana, Cuba guy named Yoan Foca.”

“Yoan Foca—”

“Right. Yoan Foca.”

“Why?”

“He has henchmen out here in San Francisco that are a heartbeat away from killing someone. I’d like to figure out who those henchmen are.”

He hung up
and said to Del Rey, “I’m not a huge fan of Rail’s style but I have to agree with him that Dandan is playing at an end-game that’s about to take her down.”

“So what do we do?”

“We find her and knock some sense into her.”

95

Day Ten

July 17

Thursday Morning

An hour passed
and nothing good happened. Dandan hadn’t shown up at the Green Dragon, the kimono girl had no new information and Teffinger had no idea where to look next. Then Sydney called and said, “Get a pencil, here’s the address of where that cell phone connected.”

Teffinger’s blood raced as he wrote it down.

“It didn’t come easy,” Sydney said. “I officially owe two blowjobs. Plus—”

“Syd, I got to cut you short, I’m sorry, I’ll explain later. Good work. No, not good work,
great
work. I’ll call you later today.”

He hung up.

The address was in Chinatown, two blocks from the Green Dragon, and belonged to a small shop that sold pastries and tea and coffee. Dandan wasn’t there. The customers were few. Teffinger smiled at the woman behind the counter and said, “I’m looking for Dandan. Do you know her?”

“No Dandan.”

“Does that mean she’s not here or you don’t know her?”

“Know no Dandan.”

Teffinger’s shoulders went limp.

“Okay, thanks.”

Outside a stiff wind blew.

Teffinger called the woman’s cell phone again. Like every time before, he got nothing. She had destroyed the phone just like she said she would.

“Now what?” Del Rey said.

Teffinger surveyed the street.

There was buzz, cold buzz, cold buzz that wouldn’t help him.

Then he looked up.

Above the shop were two stories, both living quarters judging by the window coverings and the balconies.

“She’s staying in one of those,” he said. “That’s where she was when my call connected.”

“How do you know?”

“Because it’s time for something in my life to work out the way it’s supposed to.”

The entrance was a plain wooden door to the right of the shop labeled
Private,
invisible unless you were looking for it. They quietly climbed narrow wooden stairs to the second level and listened at the door. No sounds came from inside. They continued up and listed at the top door. From inside came the sounds of kids speaking in Chinese and the occasional muttering of a woman who wasn’t Dandan.

They went back to the second floor.

No sounds came from behind the door.

Teffinger tried the knob.

It was locked.

He knocked.

No one answered.

“Come on,” Teffinger said.

They headed down onto the street and then found an alley that led to the back of the building. As suspected, a fire escape ran up the side, a beautiful, beautiful fire escape. Teffinger scouted up and down the alley. A few eyes were around but none were paying attention.

They headed up to the second floor landing.

A window was open.

It had no screen.

A fan was blowing.

Teffinger poked his head in just in time to see the backside of a woman darting out the front door.

It was Dandan.

“Dandan! Hold on!”

She didn’t even slow enough to slam the door behind her.

Her footsteps pounded down the stairs.

Teffinger wedged through the window, twisting and struggling a lot more than he expected. Then he was across the room and down the stairs.

At street level he looked to the right.

She wasn’t in sight.

He looked to the left.

She wasn’t that way either.

He checked both directions again, got nothing, and then raced to the right with a fifty-fifty chance.

96

Day Ten

July 17

Thursday Morning

Teffinger’s sprint
to the right turned out to be a bad, bad, very bad choice. Dandan didn’t appear ahead of him, not in fifty steps, not in half a block and not in a full block, at which point he gave up. Del Rey wasn’t at street level when he got back to the apartment. He found her inside with the door closed.

In front of her, on a small kitchen table, was an aluminum case.

It was open.

The Van Gogh was inside.

“This was under the bed,” she said. “Is this it?”

He nodded.

“Yeah, that’s it.”

“It’s okay,” she said. “But to be honest, I don’t know if I’d hang it on a wall.”

“You’re in luck then because you’ll never have to.”

She smiled and closed it up.

“Let’s go.”

He considered it and then surprised himself by sitting down.

“We’ll wait for Dandan to come back,” he said.

“What for? We don’t need her anymore—”

That was true.

“It’s her life on the line,” he said. “She deserves a say in what happens.”

Del Rey tilted her head.

“I thought we already concluded that the painting would kill her if she tried to hang onto it. I thought getting it away from her was her only chance at living.”

He nodded.

“It is.”

“So what’s the issue?”

“The issue is it’s her life,” he said. “She deserves a say in it.”

“Yeah, but if she says anything other than
get rid of the damn thing
, she’ll be dead. There is no other right answer, none, not now, not tomorrow, not next year. If she gave any other answer, all that would mean is that she’s not thinking clearly enough to save herself. She’s too drunk with the money, which will never come. Plus, don’t forget about Susan Smith.”

“I haven’t.”

“Personally I think Rail’s lying through his lips when he says she’s still alive, but you never know. The only way to find out for sure is to give him the painting.”

Half a pot of coffee was on the counter.

Teffinger found a cup, splashed a little milk in and topped it off from the pot.

It was hot.

It was good.

“We’ll wait for Dandan,” he said.

Del Rey shook her head.

“I can’t believe you’re doing this.”

He took a careful slurp.

“They might kill her even if we turn the painting over,” he said.

“Well, that’s a risk she took when she stole it,” Del Rey said. “We didn’t get her into this mess. She got herself into it. So, yeah, they might kill her on general principles even if we turn it over. But they’ll definitely kill her if we don’t.”

Teffinger nodded.

That was true.

“I want her to turn it over voluntarily,” he said. “I think that will bode better for her. Rail was going to give her a million for it. Maybe we’ll go back to that arrangement. Then at least she’ll have some money to help her disappear.”

His phone rang.

It was Leigh, the profiler.

Teffinger took a sip of coffee and said, “What do you got?”

“Did I just hear coffee?”

“Yeah, sorry.”

“You’re drinking coffee?”

“Yes.”

“While you’re driving somewhere?”

“No, I’m sitting at a table.”

“You’re sitting at a table drinking coffee?”

“Yes.”

“How come I’m busting my butt on your case—repeat,
your
case, not mine—while you’re sitting at a table drinking coffee?”

“Because you’re a better person than me.”

“This is wrong, Teffinger, this is wrong on so many levels that I don’t even know where to begin.”

He took another sip, a noisy one.

“Ah, good. Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m going to do some work tomorrow, or the day after for sure. Now, tell me what you got. This is about my little Havana friend, Yoan Foca, right?”

It was.

It was indeed.

What she had
to say about the man wasn’t pretty.

He was a mean, powerful bastard.

He was a mean, powerful bastard who rode the riches of drugs, weapons, human trafficking, extortion, computer crimes, political rigging, and all the filthy little things in between.

He was the uncontrolled and uncontrollable King Kong of Cuba, rich beyond numbers, although that wasn’t his defining mark. No, that honor went to his power. Inside the country he had a network of lawyers, judges and politicians slithering up to his feet with puckered lips whenever they were summoned. Outside Cuba he was networked into the deepest depths of filth and violence.

The smart thing was to never become his enemy.

He could reach you no matter where you were in the world.

His arms were long and stretched across oceans.

His primary areas of operation were Mexico, the Middle East, the Bahamas and Europe. All of it was orchestrated from his compound outside of Havana, which he never, ever left.

Because of his size and the ripple effect into the United States of what he did in Mexico, the CIA kept him in its peripheral vision. To date, though, as far as they knew, he’d been smart enough to stay outside the borders. There was no current operation in progress to take him down in whole or part.

The compound sat on a hundred barbwire-encased acres, meticulously monitored with weapons, dogs and cameras. Inside were three mansions, each more opulent than the other, each with ready access to a labyrinth of tunnels and secret escapes.

He liked women, young women, young women of all races and designs, and maintained a well-stocked supply.

Teffinger hung up,
grabbed the Van Gogh and said, “Let’s go.”