the Viking Funeral (2001) (28 page)

Jose shook his head. "Don't be so sure. There are frequent kidnappings and murders surrounding parallel-market transactions in Maicao. It's out in the desert. There is no law, no police or civil government. Worse still, there is only one road in and out. Once you go in, you are in a trap. Making things more complicated, the leftist guerrillas and the right-wing death squads hide in that desert preying on each other and the San Andresitos' shipments. As white Americans, you will be easily spotted. Everyone in Maicao will know you are there from the first minute you arrive. There are no Anglos in Maicao. You will have only Paco Brazos standing between you and all this, and Paco cannot easily be trusted."

When they arrived at the port, Eric drove the Mercedes to a fenced-off wharf with a guarded gate. Signs identified it as the MANTOOR SHIPPING COMPANY FREE-TRADE ZONE. NO TRESPASSING warnings were printed on the gate i
n f
our languages. A uniformed guard with an out
-
of-date carbine swung the bar arm up and allowed Eric to drive the German-made SUV down the bustling pier. There were several old three-hundred-foot freighters tied to the wharf. All the ships were registered to different countries. English, Japanese, Dutch, and Venezuelan flags tugged at their halyards, snapping energetically in the stiff breeze. Crane engines roared as loaded containers swung from cables over the dock and above rusting freighters, creating a deafening racket. Green John Deere forklifts, piled high with boxed merchandise, were zipping around, scooting loads of duty-free in and out of ten huge warehouses located on the pier.

The wharf was immense, almost fifty yards wide, and swarming with people and product.

"How come they don't warehouse onshore?" Shane asked. "Why store all this stuff out on the dock?"

"Because none of it is going to stay here more than a day or two," Jose answered. "It's all contraband. Parallel-market goods heading into Colombia."

"All of this is going to Maicao?" Shane asked as he watched a forklift with three crated washing machines whiz by in front of their vehicle.

"Maicao and Culcata, Panama," Jose said. "It is no wonder the Mantoors control so many businesses, no? They have much mone
y t
o invest."

Shane nodded as he again remembered th
e m
aps he had found in Jody's airport house. Culcata was the other city that was circled.

Eric drove the Mercedes into the last warehouse on the pier and parked. "This building contains only cigarettes and liquor," Jose told them.

Shane was looking at billions of cigarettes from every U
. S
. manufacturer: Phillip Morris, Reynolds Tobacco, Liggett & Meyers, and Lorillard. On the other side of the warehouse were the liquor products: huge wooden pallets were stacked forty feet high with cases of Seagram's, J&B, Early Times, and Beefeater.

"Our cigarettes came from Norfolk, Virginia, yesterday, on that Dutch freighter tied up across the pier. They are now on those pallets over there." He pointed to more than three hundred large shipping containers stacked near the door, with the AAT logo stamped on every box. Each carton also sported a big red duty-free sticker. "They will soon be loaded on a Venezulean ship to cross the channel."

"How many cigarettes is that?" Shane asked.

"There are twenty cigarettes in a pack," Jose began. "Ten packs to a carton, fifty cartons in each case, and nine hundred sixty cases in each of these containers. We have shipped three hundred fifty containers." He paused for effect. "That comes to ninety-six million cigarettes."

As soon as they got out of the SUV, Sandro Mantoor came out of a door a few yards away and headed toward them, his leather soles clacking on the shiny concrete. "This way, my
F
riends
"
he said, and led them through another door and up a flight of stairs, into a plush suite of offices. They walked down an air-conditioned corridor, then entered a small conference room. A plate-glass window dominated the far wall, overlooking the bustling warehouse operation below.

There were four men standing in different parts of the room, and despite their expensive tropical clothing, they all looked like extras from the movie Rio Lobo..
. R
ound, sweating men with crooked teeth turned brown by tobacco. Greasy smiles lurked menacingly under hungry eyes. If one of them had started cleaning his teeth with a knife, it wouldn't have surprised Shane. Tucked in their pants, under loose shirt
-
tails, he could see handguns bulging.

"Paco, mi amigo> " Sandro said expansively as he embraced Paco Brazos, who was only five foot four and bald on top but wore his fringe hair long and pulled back in a ponytail.

He had on tan slacks and a Mexican guayabera with two Snickers bars stuffed into the breast pocket.

"Buenos dias, mis companeros, " Paco said to all of them with something approaching two
-
faced warmth. Then Papa Joe introduced Jody, who introduced the rest of the Vikings.

"These are my dear friends and trusted business associates,
"
Papa Joe said first in Spanish, then turned to Jody and translated it all into English.

"Bueno, bueno," Paco Brazos said, nodding and bowing all in the same motion, the
n i
ntroduced the three other men in rapid Spanish.

Spartacos Sococo was the tallest at around five-seven. He had the worst haircut Shane had ever seen. It looked as if he had attempted to cut it himself using garden shears. Emilio Hernandez was five-five, fat, and had a recent
-
looking red-welted scar that cut through his left cheek, running down his neck into his collar. Octavio Randhanie, the only skinny San Andresito, just smiled at them, never removing his straw hat or dark glasses.

The San Andresitos kept stretching their humorless grins over hard eyes that were expressionless as licked stones. Shane had done enough undercover gun and drug deals in Los Angeles to spot the deadly crosscurrents.

The six men began speaking rapid Spanish. Shane was struggling to keep up, but their Colombian accents sounded different from the Mexican Spanish he'd encountered on the streets of L
. A
. It appeared that the San Andresitos were arguing over how many containers of cigarettes each family would handle. At one point, Spartacos Sococo slammed his fat brown hand on the table. "Ay te huacho!" he said angrily as he got up and made an elaborate false exit.

"Tu no tengas miedo, vete," Paco replied sharply, calling Spartacos's bluff, challenging him to go ahead and leave.

Spartacos finally turned and went back to his chair. More shouted conversation was followed by more curses and posturing. Then
,
ten minutes later, the men stood quickly and glowered at one another. Nobody shook hands as Paco showed them out of the room.

"The deal's done." Jose sighed. "Paco got an additional ten percent of each of their profits, which they are all very unhappy about. He also got the most product--fifteen million dollars in cigarettes. Each of them got only five. They wanted an even split, but this is more than they would normally handle, so hopefully they will get over it."

They left the warehouse and drove to Sandro's bank to disburse the fifty million dollars.

The First Mantoor Bank of Aruba was magnificent. Brass and leaded-glass doors fronted the executive offices, which were done luxuriously. English antiques squatted on white plush pile.

Jody presented his wire-transfer confirmation slip from the West Valley Bank of Commerce, then accessed the fifty million in L
. A
. drug cash that Rusty Miller had wired to the bank to be held under the name of Lewis Foster. Jody showed the bank president his phony ID, took possession of the account, then wrote out the instructions to wire thirty million dollars to American Global, which was All-American's European company in Geneva. It was payment in full for the cigarettes. Five million was wired to Blackstone in Geneva, which covered their commission for brokering the deal. Fifteen million was put in escrow to be jointly held by Papa Joe until the Vikings had delivered the cigarettes to Maicao, Colombia. Once the product was safely there and the four families had taken delivery, the money would be released to the Vikings. The Bacca drug cartel would be repaid its original L
. A
. drug cash once the cigarettes were sold in their cartel-owned black
-
market malls, completing the laundry.

Chapter
36.

LOOK'T THAT RUSTING bastard," Jody said to Shane. They were standing on the duty-free pier, studying the old Venezuelan freighter being loaded with containers of cigarettes. It was four P
. M
. that same afternoon. The only paint on the vessel's brown steel hull was some fresh white lettering on the stern that read Subu Maruy which Papa Joe had explained meant "bright star." Shane thought the rusting bucket looked more like a falling star. They had been told the ship was leased by the King Trading Company: a Mantoor-controlled Venezuelan shipping line.

"This rusting piece a'shit only handles contraband for the drug trade," Jody said.

The Subu Maru was at the end of her days, stuck in the service of the devil, making the short, twenty-five-kilometer run from Aruba to the port of Maracaibo, which sat just inside the Gulf of Venezuela.

As they stood on the dock, watching their containers of cigarettes being lowered into the black hold, something strange happened to Shane--a darkening of Shane's spirit, worse by far than any of his other episodes. It kept building throughout the afternoon, until his chest was tight with anxiety and he was short of breath. Suddenly, he felt he couldn't stand to go on for even another hour.

Although the rest of the Vikings had left the pier, Shane and Jody watched until the last containers were loaded on board. The sun had begun to set, treating them to a luscious, multicolored sunset, before slipping below the surface of the Caribbean Sea, bringing down the curtain of night.

"I'm gonna see if I can find a woman," Jody said with a grin. "How 'bout it? Wanna come? No pun intended."

"No... No... I think I'll get something to eat at the hotel, walk around a little," Shane said as a frightening notion began to haunt him.

"If you change your mind, call me."

"Gimme your cell-phone number," Shane said as he picked up a Spanish newspaper off the dock and handed it to Jody, who wrote down his number and handed it back. Shane folded it carefully, then put the newspaper in his back pocket.

He caught a cab to the hotel but didn't want to go to the room for fear that Lisa would be there, stripped down to her high heels, waiting to destroy what was left of him. Shane got out of the cab, and as he walked through the lobby, he knew that he was at the end..
. K
new he couldn't go on. Spiritual darkness overwhelmed him. All of his thoughts, no matter the content, just served to drive him lower.

He wandered toward the pool, looking for something, anything, to free him from this suicidal grip. It was a few minutes past eight. Nobody was out there. The lights in most of the cabana suites were on. He could see guests moving back and forth in front of the curtains, getting ready to go out, their lives full of adventure and romance, while his was now only about loneliness and despair. He sat in a pool chair and rubbed his eyes.

There was nothing that mattered to him anymore--not even his pledge to destroy Jody. There were Jodys everywhere, men who lived violent lives without remorse. What was one Jody, more or less?

He felt himself sink deeper.

In desperation, he tried to lock onto something positive.

Chooch.

He focused on the feelings of love for his son. He loved Chooch desperately but now began to realize that his son would be better off without him. He sat on the corded pool chair, wondering how he had become so completely lost.

He got up suddenly and walked into the lobby. "Could I have a piece of paper and an envelope, please?" he asked the pretty island girl at the concierge desk.

"Of course, sir," she said, handing it to him.

He walked across the lobby, then sat at the small writing desk and began a short letter.

He couldn't address it to anyone in particular, because he had no one left at the LAPD whom he trusted, so he began:

TO WHOM IT MA Y CONCERN: The following facts have been obtained regarding a massive money-laundering scheme involving the illegal sales of parallel-market V-5 All-American Tobacco products into Colombia...

Then Shane laid out the entire scheme, with every detail he could remember. The letter went on for three pages. He named all of the Vikings and included Jody's admission that he had killed the two heads of the Detective Services Group. Shane wrote about Leon Fine, dead and buried on the beach up in Oxnard; he named the All-American Tobacco executives: the Prussian general, Lou Petrovitch, and his two helpers, Chip Gordon and Arnold Zook. He described the Mantoors, how they used their power and influence in Aruba to subvert their own dutyfree zone for illegal profit. He named the five San Andresito families, spelling their names as carefully as he could, hoping he had them right. Then he confessed to pulling the trigger on Alexa Hamilton in the Tony Filosiani-- supervised plot, intended to set his cover for the Vikings, explaining how he fired, not knowing Jody had reloaded his gun with a Black Talon. Finally, he wrote about Lisa St. Marie, who probably, more than even Jody, had presided over his ultimate corruption. He asked the LAPD Scientific Investigations Division to scan the enclosed newspaper for Jody's fingerprints, proving that he was still alive at the date of publication.