Wicked Is the Whiskey: A Sean McClanahan Mystery (Sean McClanahan Mysteries Book 1) (16 page)

“Wake up,” said someone, smacking the side of my face.

As I came to, the back of my head was pressed against a concrete floor. I felt like someone set a locomotive on my chest.

“I said wake up,” said Little Terry, kneeling beside me, smacking me again.

Big Tony stood next to him, his gun pointing at my head.

Then I saw Victoria Hall.

“McClanahan, you dumbass,” she said. “You could have cut a sweet deal for yourself, but you had to go and try and become some kind of hero. Tell us where the girl and the ledger are and your death will be as painless as possible.”

I said nothing.

“We can do this the hard way or the easy way,” said Hall. It’s up to you.”

“Go to hell.”

“Have it your way. Here is how this is going to finish. Terry will keep injecting you and keep letting you come down. In three or four days, you'll crave this drug more than you have craved anything in your dumb life. You’ll do anything for another injection. You will tell us what we want to know.”

“I’m going to hurt Tony first,” I said. “Terry is such a twit, I’m not so worried about taking him out. But you, Vick, you will die a painful death because of what I’m going to do to you.”

Hall laughed loudly.

“You ass clown,” she said. “You have been outmatched from day one. You have no idea who you have been up against. And you’re going to lose. Now tell me what I want to hear.”

I said nothing.

“You’re awfully proud for a heroin addict,” said Hall. Tony laughed and Terry cackled.

Terry pulled a plastic billfold out of his breast pocket and opened it. He pulled a syringe from it. He pulled off the needle protector then squirted some fluid out of the top.

As he knelt toward me, I fought to get up. Tony pressed my shoulders to the ground, then held my right arm up for Terry to inject it. I kicked up my heels and nearly caught the Terry in the head.

“That's no good,” said Terry.

He nodded to Tony, who hit my head with a powerful right. My vision blurred. He pinned me to the floor. I felt like a child, too weak to fight him off.

Terry knelt again and this time succeeded in injecting me in the neck with his needle.

My pain disappeared instantly — the sluggishness, the weakness, all of it gone.

“You’re probably dumb enough to stash her in your little apartment above your bar,” said Hall. “If you don’t give me what I want, your friends, employees and patrons may suffer some horrible collateral damage. It’s your call.”

I wanted to respond but could not.

I knew I should be mad, but it was impossible to feel mad.

No, I felt grand — like all was right with the world.

I fell into a wistful, troubled, euphoric sleep.

I woke, lying on the cold concrete floor. No one was near me. I was alone in a small room surrounded by block walls and bright fluorescent lights.

I fought to push myself up. I got onto my knees. After some effort I got onto my feet and leaned against the wall. I was dizzy, weak and nauseous.

I heard talking — it was muffled talking in another room. I pushed myself along the wall toward the door. It was coming back to me now. The way I was caught and injected with heroin in that room.

My jaw began to throb and I felt the dried blood on the side of my face. I pushed myself to the door and pressed my ear against it.

“I told you we will just keep at it until he finally talks,” said high-pitched Terry.

“But what if he doesn't tell us,” said Tony. 

“He will,” said Terry. “I gave him enough to knock out an elephant. When he wakes, he'll be weak and tired, then we'll inject him again. Go get me more juice in the processing room.”

“Now?” said Tony.

“Now,” said Terry.

I could hear his footsteps grow faint as he walked down a corridor.

Thanks to Dr. Joe, I got an idea.

I pretended that I was vomiting and suffering a seizure — typical symptoms of a heroin overdose. Hall would be mighty upset if Terry killed me before I was of use to her.

Little Terry, surely thinking` he gave me too much, rushed into the room, leaving the door open. I kept up my act.

Terry pulled the leather case out of his suit pocket and, removed a syringe, then put the case back in his pocket. He pulled a small bottle out of his pants pocket — the heroin antidote Narcan, no doubt.

Anxious to inject me, he fumbled with the bottle and dropped it as he attempted to fill the syringe. He knelt to pick it up. I grabbed him by the neck and got him to the floor. I hit him with everything I had, which wasn’t much, considering the condition I was in, but it was enough to knock out the little man.

I reached into his pocket and pulled out his billfold. He had two syringes left. I stuck a needle in his carotid artery and squeezed. His breathing got suddenly easy and relaxed.

I searched his pockets and found my Glock and truck keys. I put them in my pocket.

I dragged him to the corner, closed the door and waited.

A few minutes later, I heard Tony walking toward the room. The door opened and he entered.

I jumped in front of him and tried to drive my forearm into his trachea, but I didn’t get a square shot.

He smiled.

Assuming I was no great threat to him in my current state, he didn’t reach for his gun, thankfully. He reached into his breast pocket for his blackjack. Holding it is his right hand, he began moving toward me.

He swung and I ducked. He swung again and I ducked. He swung a third time and I didn’t duck. I raised my arms and let him hit me. It hurt like hell. I fell to my knees and leaned against Tony’s legs.

He laughed. He liked beating people up. It was his Achilles heel, because he let me get too close.

I plunged the syringe into his groin and squeezed every drop of heroin out of the syringe. I didn’t pull the syringe out.

Big Tony shouted like a wounded bear.

“Take it out.” he said, screaming. “Take it out.”

I left it where it was. He dropped the blackjack. He stood there and just fell to pieces — until the opiates in the heroin worked its way through his system. His panic gave way to a calm. His eyes got glassy. His face formed into a dumbfounded peacefulness. He fell back against the wall and slid to the ground.

I got to my feet and picked up the blackjack. I swatted the side of his head with everything I had. He fell over sideways onto the floor, slobbering dripping out of his mouth, the syringe sticking out of his pants.

I stumbled down the hallway toward the first door I could find with an exit sign. The door appeared to open into a garage. As I neared it, I heard a powerful engine roar. I continued moving and could see it now. It was a late-model pickup truck, a high-riding 4x4. It was tricked out with big chrome wheels and large dual exhausts — very loud exhausts that rumbled as the truck idled. The bed of the truck was covered with a thick vinyl tarp.

I moved behind a large container to conceal myself. I could see in the back corner, behind a wall of glass, eight large men, two of them weighing and packaging a white substance. The other six had semi-automatic rifles strapped around their shoulders. There were bags and bags of the stuff piled high. The two men worked at a swift pace, cutting the material, weighing it and repackaging it into smaller bags.

It was a hell of an operation.

The driver got out of the truck. He was a young man wearing blue jeans, a Hawaiian shirt and sneakers. He had thick blond hair — surfer hair — and he walked to the other side of the truck to talk to another man, a dispatcher of some kind who was looking at a chart. He signed some paperwork and handed over a satchel that was filled with money, no doubt. While he completed his paperwork, a couple larger men loaded a few containers in the back seat of his truck. When they completed their work, they closed the back doors.

The man with surfer hair was taking his time talking with the dispatcher. They clearly knew each other and appeared to be on a friendly basis. He was telling the dispatcher a story that caused the dispatcher to laugh.

I moved as well as I could to the other side of the room. I walked as low as I could as I moved to the driver’s side door. I picked up a clipboard and pretended to be fast at work. I don’t know if it worked or not but as I got into the truck, the man in the Hawaiian shirt said, “Dude, what are you doing?”

I pointed my Glock at his chest.

“Shut up,” I said, slurring my words.

I kept the gun pointed at him as I started the truck and closed the door. I popped it in gear and spun the wheels as I headed toward the steel garage door. It was closed. But it wouldn’t be for long.

The steel door made a spectacular noise as the truck blasted through it. I imagine the truck’s owner was sick to his stomach witnessing what I’d just done to his prized drug-purchased possession.

I laughed to myself for the first time in days. I sped through town and jumped onto Rt. 837 and pushed the truck as fast as it could go.

Nobody was able to follow me.

“Sean, are you OK?” said the sweetest, most angelic voice I'd ever heard.

I was dreaming again — dreaming of the simple love of a woman I adored. Why was such a simple concept so difficult for me to make happen? My father loved my mother — adored her. He couldn't wait to get home every night to see her. And the first thing he'd do when he entered the house was to find her and kiss her on the lips — every single night of his life.

“Sean?” said the sweet voice. “Sean?”

I opened my eyes.

Her face was less than a foot from mine. Her eyes were large and round as walnuts. Her teeth were white and even. Her skin was white and soft and she had small freckles on her nose.

“Hello,” I said, looking into Erin’s eyes.

I was groggy. My limbs felt heavy.

“We were so worried about you.”

She hugged me tightly.

“Where am I?” I said, pretending I wasn't as delighted by her burst of affection.

“You're back in your apartment.”

“How'd I get here?”

“We heard banging on the back door and found you lying on the ground,” said Erin.

“When?”

“Yesterday. We were so worried about you. Maureen and Mick took turns going out searching for you. They were planning to raid Hall’s operation, thinking maybe you had been taken there. We're so glad you are back.”

“Me, too.”

“We had the Dr. Joe check you out,” said Erin. “He said that since you’d be drugged up for one day, most of the withdrawal effects should pass in the next day or two.”

“That’s good news,” I said, trying to sit up.

My head was suddenly throbbing.

“Hall’s men took me to the building that houses her heroin operation,” I said. “They wanted to know where you were. They wanted to know what I know.”

“I'm so sorry,” she said. “I’m nothing but trouble for you. I need to leave here.”

“No,” I said, pushing myself up. “No, you can't leave. We need to resolve this situation. You'll not be safe until we do. None of us will be safe until Hall is in jail.”

She held my hand and then hugged me tightly. My throbbing head didn't bother me so much anymore.

“You need to rest,” said Erin.

As she sat there holding my hand, a great calm came over me. I fell back asleep and dreamed happy dreams.

The next morning Vinny visited me at the pub.

“It's called social engineering,” he said, sitting across from me. “It's a common tactic for infiltrating a company's business systems and gathering information.”

“Go on,” I said, sipping a mug of coffee, groggy and miserable. I felt nauseous, fidgety and fatigued all at once. But there was no way I was going to delay learning what Vinny had found.  

“Several of my clients — large global organizations mostly — have hired me to see if I can penetrate their computer systems. It's much easier to do than anyone can imagine.”

“They pay you to break into their systems?” I said.

“Exactly. They pay me to find weak spots into their information before sophisticated adversaries are able to do so. What I first do is dress up like I'm with an electric company or a telecommunications company employee. It's one of my favorite roles to play. I've played a UPS driver, a postal carrier, an IRS agent and many others, but I prefer the role of the telecommunications-company employee best.”

“You dressed up like a telephone-company employee to get into Preston's firm?” I said. “You could have been hurt.”

Vinny smiled.

“But I'd have to have been caught first, and that is unlikely,” he said. “In any event, I was able to temporarily jam the fiber lines inside Preston’s company with a little blocking device I created. Aware that someone would report the fiber outage, I intercepted the call and said a serviceman as on his way.”

“How did you do this?”

“I climbed the phone poll a block away from the campus that houses Preston’s company.”

I shook my head and laughed.

“You are amazing,” I said.

“All I had to do next was pose as a telecommunications-company employee and enter the facility,” said Vinny. “Once inside I gained access to the switch closet. It’s there that all the lines enter the building and are routed to different equipment across the computer network. I was able to install a small electronic device that would first record all data activity on the high speed lines and then, in the wee hours, broadcast, via a high speed satellite link, all the data it had collected throughout the day. I was able to capture that data on my own computers right in my own office.”

“What did you discover?” I said.

“Some very fascinating and disturbing information,” said Vinny. “Every weekday, a large sum of money is wired directly to Preston's firm from a bank in the Cayman Islands.”

“What kind of money are you talking about?”

“It varies, but I would say the average amount is about $500,000 to $1 million per day,” said Vinny. That would be, roughly, $3.5 million to $7 million per week or $180 million to 360 million per year.”

“Holy cow.”

“These large amounts of ill-gotten gains pose a huge problem for the criminals who wish to bring the funds back into America in a fully laundered manner that allows them to use those funds to live the high life,” said Vinny. “That’s why Preston’s firms was used to launder the funds.”

“Can you elaborate?”

“In the old days, when everyone purchased things with cash, organized crime would set up legitimate businesses such as restaurants or laundromats — hence the term ‘laundering money.’ They would then take the cash that was got through illegal means and wash it through these businesses. They would create dummy orders and dummy invoices and make it appear a lot more business activity was taking place than actually was. The business would then turned a 'profit' that would be legally taxed and that profit would be legally accessible, free and clear.”

“I'm familiar with the concept,” I said. “But why did Hall use Preston’s firm?”

“The trouble,” said Vinny, “is what to when you have millions of dollars to launder? That’s the dilemma Hall faced.”

“So she’s been transporting money to the Caymans and wiring it back into Preston’s Company?”

Vinny nodded.

“What’s most fascinating to me is what happens the day each of these transfers take place,” he said. “The amount of money that is wired, whatever it was, is retrofitted by a powerful in-memory processor to mimic credit card orders that would appear to come in from all over the world.”

“Phony orders?”

“That’s right,” continued Vinny. “Hall hired someone to create a very clever program that makes the huge infusions of cash appear to be orders coming in through credit card transactions all over the world. The most interesting part is that the credit cards are real.”

“I’m not following.”

“Whoever wrote this money-laundering program also breached thousands of real customer credit cards from all over the world, but had no interest in actually stealing from those cardholders,” said Vinny. “Rather, by using legitimate credit cards, they are able to create authentic records that the IRS would never suspect. The credit card owners have no idea their information has been breached. It’s a brilliant scheme, I must admit. I’ve never seen anything quite like it. It’s how money-laundering looks in the modern era.”

“The means you used to gather this information would not be admissible in court,” I said, “so if I want to prove Hall is doing what you say she is doing, how might I go about it?”

“There are a couple of ways to do this,” said Vinny. “One would be for the authorities to get a search order. I could then tell them where to look for the information. That could take some time, however.”

“What’s the other way?” I said.

“You need to find out who Hall hired to mastermind this laundering scheme,” he said. “He or she may be brilliant, but that person broke the law. You catch that person and he or she will likely testify against Hall.”

“Hall is keeping a handwritten ledger in code,” I said. “What do you make of that?”

“My guess is that she is not transporting all of her cash to the Caymans,” said Vinny. “She still has many people to pay to run her drug operation and payment is typically in cash. She has to pay her suppliers and that is also paid in cash. She needs to keep track of those records.”

“John Preston had a copy of that ledger and we hope to find it,” I said.

“Well, between finding the mastermind who wrote the money-laundering code and finding and decoding that ledger, I’d say you’d have enough on Victoria Hall to put her away for a very long time.”

“But first I need to find the mastermind and ledger,” I said.

Vinny nodded.

“Your line of work is not for the faint of heart,” said Vinny, smiling.

He sure had that right.

As soon as he left, I crawled back into bed and prayed for my good health to return.