Chapter 4 #2
“Appeared so. I didn’t get too good a look. They hustled to the copter like they were in the ‘Amazing Race’ and heading to the finish line. I thought maybe they actually were and I looked around for the TV cameras.”
“How did they get here?”
The man shrugged. “By car.”
“Where is it?”
“A guy dropped them off.”
Dane looked at Cap and smiled. They had on-island help. That gave him a lead. He turned to the heliport manager and spoke slowly and succinctly in a deep, intimidating growl.
“Think very carefully and tell me every detail you remember about the car and driver.”
The man complied. Ten minutes later Cap called in the car, plate and description of the driver.
“I can’t believe how lucky we were to get a partial plate,” Cap said. “But I’m a little disturbed that we have a connection on island to the Brazilian human traffickers.”
“Probably someone left over from the surfing competition. A local stringer.” Dane thought of his own two stringers and wondered if he might need one or both of them. This was an all-hands-on-deck situation with Shana missing.
“We may as well wait here for David and O’Keefe. They’ll be landing in ten minutes,” Cap said. “We can give them a ride back to HQ and get the results on the plate then.”
Dane nodded, but the last thing he wanted to do was sit and wait. He needed to do something. He paced around the tarmac near where they’d parked the car a few yards from the building.
“I can’t believe I let this happen,” he said.
“You had no choice but to trust Floyd. Shana … shouldn’t have followed.”
Dane whipped around. “She did what any self-respecting partner would do. Don’t blame her for that.”
Cap put his hands up. “Okay—you’re right. I’m just saying there was nothing you could do about it—you had to go to the meeting.” He paused a beat. “Maybe I should have been there backing you both up.”
Dane kept pacing. “Maybe I should have suggested it. You didn’t know Floyd Parker. I knew not to trust him.” At least deep down he’d known. “Or I should have known.”
“I thought Floyd was someone you worked with, and Oscar too? Why should you think you couldn’t trust him?”
“Something was off with him. Nothing explicit. But he was not straightforward—less so than the usual CIA character. He wasn’t a field guy either, so why was he out in the field?
It was odd that he would be here and odd that he wouldn’t give me the intel on the secure phone. There were enough red flags—”
“They called out of the blue. Purposely caught you off guard.”
Dane heard the distant whip of helicopter blades and looked up, slowing his pacing. “They won’t be catching me off guard again. Not ever. The Tavares family will not be in business much longer. They will not be in a position to do another run before I’m done. I promise you that.”
“I believe you,” Cap said. He unfolded his arms from across his chest and stood up from his leaning posture against his state police car. They headed toward the helipad where David Young and Chief Dan O’Keefe had landed.
“You know O’Keefe?” he asked Dane.
“No, but I do know he’s a childhood friend of David and Oscar’s. I know the stories. So I’m expecting he’s one of us.”
Cap nodded. They were too close to the spinning rotors of the landing copter to say anymore. Dane stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Cap and waited for the rotors to slow and the two men to disembark. A gut wrenching longing for Shana to be the one standing with him shuddered through him.
*****
Dane led the group of somber men back to his beach shack.
The police team had moved out but the place was still a mess.
Dane didn’t have the inclination to clean it.
Didn’t care. He walked through the kitchen, stepping over some broken glass and a sticky wet spot, flicked a glance at the remnants of a tequila bottle, and went straight into the dining room.
He righted a chair and pulled it up to the table, motioning for the other men to follow suit.
They did so without saying a word. Dan O’Keefe was the man in the room Dane knew the least. He was Chief of the Boston Police Department and childhood friends with David Young and Oscar and that’s why he was there. Not because they needed the Boston PD.
They’d all be updated on the intel the governor had provided about Oscar’s last known whereabouts and the case he’d been working on.
But Dane hadn’t mentioned his suspicion about the Brazil connection and the Tavares family.
Dan O’Keefe knew nothing of the details of the Surfing Competition bust the previous summer involving the Tavares human trafficking operation.
David had been in on it, but only at a high level, not on the details.
“O’Keefe has known Oscar since we were all youngsters running loose on the streets of Boston,” David said, “before my family moved back to London.” David shook his head with the memory “And we both owe Oscar a debt we can never repay.”
“Then you must know Oscar’s real name,” Dane said to O’Keefe.
O’Keefe said, “His mother named him Antonio.”
“Antonio what?” Dane pressed.
“Antonio never-goddamn-mind,” O’Keefe said. “He created the alter ego for a reason. A very good reason.”
David exchanged a glance with O’Keefe and put up his hands for a truce. “If you need to know for some specific reason, Dane, I’ll tell you.”
Dane shrugged. He knew Oscar’s real name. Antonio Rizoni. It was a good test. O’Keefe had failed. In spades. He didn’t reveal his friend’s real name because he didn’t trust Dane.
“How soon until we get any IDs on fingerprints?” O’Keefe asked.
A typical police-type question. Dane knew O’Keefe was referring to prints from the ransacking of the beach shack. But Dane was way ahead of that lead.
“Maybe later today. Maybe never. But no matter. I know who’s behind this.
” He addressed Dan and then turned to David and Cap.
He saw the flinch in David’s eyes, the flash of the light bulbs going off above his head.
David got it. He’d made the connection. The only one left to be enlightened was Dan.
“The Tavares family,” Dane said. He turned back to O’Keefe to elaborate.
“We had a run-in with two of the brothers last year, Aldo and Bento. The family has a well-run organization headquartered in Brazil. Aldo and Bento teamed up with a French con, Jean Luc Ruse, and had him front a surfing competition scam for them. Our interest was in a missing heiress named Susan Whitaker, but it soon became apparent we were up against a larger agenda—human trafficking. More specifically, high-end, refined beauties for an elite clientele. The Tavares brothers were getting creative in their recruiting methods. We set them up using Shana George, David’s Scotland Yard recruit fresh in from Australia—a former surfing champion—who was the perfect bait. ”
Dane looked down and took in a deep breath. His heart had accelerated. He felt a bead of sweat trickling down his spine and along the hairline of his temple. He resisted swiping at it. Cap rose from his chair.
“I could use something cold,” Cap said. He helped himself and handed Dane a bottle of the local craft beer from Edgartown, Bad Martha beer.
Chief O’Keefe prompted, “So now you think these Tavares brothers came back for Shana—a year later?”
Dane didn’t hold the skepticism against him.
“In the process of taking down their operation, we killed the younger brother—Bento Tavares. The other, Aldo, was sentenced to a long stretch in a federal prison.”
“The U.S. Penitentiary in Marion, Illinois. Not supermax, but high security,” Cap said.
Dane took a swig of his beer. He studied O’Keefe. “How much do you know about what Oscar was up to recently?”
“Next to nothing. He didn’t talk business. I only knew he was in Haiti—and that he would be one of the good guys in whatever operation he was involved in. That’s for certain.”
Dane nodded. This he knew. He only hoped to hell his suspicions about Floyd Parker were wrong.
David said, “So we think the Tavares family—a half dozen cousins and at least two uncles—are doing business in Haiti recruiting women. They ran into Oscar and figured out his connection to Shana and used him as bait to get her—to retaliate—an eye for an eye.”
“No,” Dane said. “They took Shana to get to me.”
“Then why didn’t they take you when they had their chance?” Cap said.
“Because they want both of us—in Brazil. In Rio. I’m sure there’s a larger agenda than pure revenge or retaliation.
They probably wanted high value hostages—maybe in exchange for Aldo’s early release—and figured we’d fit the bill.
They’re not fond of us. Revenge and prisoner exchange.
” Dane didn’t mention that they might have a third motive—that they might want to keep Shana.
He flicked a gaze at Cap. Dane could see in his eyes that he had the same thought.
“I don’t understand how they would make the connection between Oscar and you—or Oscar and Shana,” David said. Dane did not want to share his theory yet about Floyd Parker’s role in that.
“And I still don’t understand why they wouldn’t have taken the both of you then—when they had you,” O’Keefe said.
“I know—that’s why it only makes sense if they have a larger agenda. One involving me going to Brazil. Possibly involving a whole posse of us going to Brazil.”
“What is it? What’s their end game?” O’Keefe asked.
“Wish I knew. I’m still working on that.”
“We’ll have my office and the governor work on it too—see what we can find out from our contact in Interpol and I.C.E.,” David said.
“As long as Peter is quiet about it. We especially don’t want to raise any suspicions with the CIA.”
“You’re thinking the CIA is involved in this—I mean on the wrong side?” David said.
“Strong possibility,” Dane said.
“I tend to share your concern,” David said.