The wicked will rise, p.1
The Cartagena Connection, page 1
Disclaimer
The Cartegena Connection is a work of fiction. Names, characters, locations, events, businesses and activities are the product of the author’s imagination. The author has also taken liberties with the geography of Baltimore City and its environs and Cartagena, Colombia. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.
Copyright c 2023, Mary Leach
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, except for brief quotations embodied in reviews and other uses permitted by copyright law.
To my husband Ronald Leach, sine qua non.
Table of Contents
PREAMBLE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
PREAMBLE
Jill Maguire leaned against the Emergency entrance to the Bethsaida Medical Center hospital and took one long drag on the cigarette she held loosely in her left hand. She expertly executed a series of smoke rings before stubbing the cigarette out, then picked up the butt to hide the evidence. Smoking was prohibited on hospital grounds, a rule frequently ignored by the medical center staff and visitors. Out of the corner of her eye she spied a tall handsome African-American wearing a police uniform. Rats, she thought, I’ve been busted.
“The Lieutenant would not like to see you smoking, you being a nurse and all,” said Sergeant Smith, a wide smile on his face. Two ambulances, sirens screaming, raced one another out of the entrance as she held out a pack of Marlboros and he took one and lit up.
“If by ‘Lieutenant’, you mean my husband, he went to his eternal reward – or damnation – two years ago, as you well know.”
“I actually meant your daughter Liz. I hear she’s working at the BMC. Better not let her catch you, with your health condition and all.”
Jill smiled as she thought of her daughter and her two adorable grandsons. What a blessing to have them living close by, instead of way off in South America. Her son-in-law was a fly in the ointment. Peculiar man, secretive, but he seemed to love her daughter. She shrugged her shoulders, unbuttoned her cardigan and watched the sun beginning to rise over the BMC campus. “What brings you to this part of town?”
“I got sent out by the watch commander of the Southern district to pick up those two drug dealers you called us about. ‘Suspected’ drug dealers, I mean.”
“Only ‘suspected’?”
“Both of them were carrying red tops, and one had the real hard stuff.”
“Heroin and fentanyl. I hope you’re able to put them away for months.” Jill beat her hands against the wall. “You know, I’m too old for this. When I began nursing it was the crack epidemic. All those deaths and all those babies born addicted. What kind of life were they going to have? We tamp down on crack and all we get is something much worse. Baltimore is getting known as the drug capital of the East Coast.”
“We have competition in that: New York, Philly, Newark, Bridgeport...”
“We also have Homicide, The Wire... Hollywood loves us, to say nothing of a former president who complained about our RAT population.” As she said that, she saw two rats lurking at the edge of the parking lot.
“Hey, pretty lady, you’re really down. You should be feeling pretty good. You and me, we caught us some drug dealers tonight.”
“We did, and your guys also brought in five or six who’d overdosed to say nothing of about twenty others who’d been shot in the drug wars. Three more dead young men to add to our crime statistics. I recognized one of the victims. He was only fourteen. The city that bleeds..isn’t that our motto?
“What really frustrates me is that we patch them up and you put them away, but they’re all small fry. When are we going to find the whales – the big money that’s behind all these drug wars. The folks who provide AK-47s to teenagers. All we get is another task force, another strategic plan, another reorganization. As the old saying goes, the politicians are just ‘rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic’. I’ve a good mind to run for Mayor of Baltimore myself on a ‘throw the bums out’ ticket.”
“I’d vote for you, even campaign for you, and there’s many others who would, too. But right this minute, it’s another day dawning. Look at that sunrise. The harbor sparkle, there are flowers and grass and trees all around this place, and there ARE some good people in the City. Can I walk you to your car?”
Jill smiled, shook her head and began to walk away. It was time for bed. “Do me a favor. If you see my daughter Liz, forget you saw me smoking. I don’t need the lecture!”
CHAPTER ONE
Monday, May 1 8:15 am
Liz Maguire couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt so incompetent. Amazing what a recalcitrant two-year-old can do to a harried mother, she thought, as she wrestled the red-haired, red-faced moppet into his yellow slicker and dived under a worn beige tweed couch for his rain boots. If only Frankie could more be like Jackie, his brown-haired, brown-eyed five-year-old brother who was standing patiently by the door. Jackie was in his rain gear, ready to go. But he always was the perfect child, her husband’s clone, and the apple of her mother-in-law’s eye.
Liz glanced at her watch. Monday morning, first day of the week, and she was going to be late for work. It was 8:15 already and it would take her at least twenty minutes to cross Baltimore to drop her kids at the university day care center in the pouring rain when traffic was always at its worst. Thirty-five minutes more likely. Then, though the day care center was no more than a ten-minute walk from her office, she had to park her rusted five-year Honda Odyssey van in the auxiliary parking lot, near the Jones Falls Expressway, miles from the campus. How she hated that parking lot.
When she’d accepted the job as a therapist in the behavior health division of the Psychiatry Department of the Bethsaida Medical Center, the $70,000 salary offer – with benefits and a flexible work schedule – seemed like a dream come true. The day care center on campus was the cherry on her sundae.
She’d wanted, how she’d wanted, to get out of DC and the expectations placed on her as the wife of a junior diplomat. Embassy life was wonderful for some – Luis thrived on it – but she couldn’t stand it. She was far too independent.
She parked her van in the driest spot she could find and stomped through the puddles. Hating herself for looking away, she tried not to make eye contact with the drug addicts and alcoholics and mentally ill who had created a tent city next to the university’s parking lot.
She was trained as a social worker; the denizens of the tent city were exactly the people she wanted to help. She should stop to talk to them, it should be her job. Instead, she was rushing off to the medical campus on the south waterfront, its newest tower barely visible through the miserable weather. She tried to tell herself that her Messianic complex was getting out of control. Baltimore City was one of the most drug-infested cities in the United States. The poor addicts huddled under the bridge, even if she could have housed, fed and found medical care for all of them – and she couldn’t -- were just the tip of the iceberg. It was the dealers, large and small, who preyed on these poor unfortunates and on their families who were to blame.
She’d tried to explain that to her husband, who didn’t want to hear it. Luis had promised to come to Baltimore on Saturday morning to be with their two kids, and to spend the weekend. Of course, he didn’t show. Or rather, he did show, Sunday evening, in an Embassy limousine, complete with a driver in uniform and Colombian flags flying on each front bumper. Her neighbors in Canton came out in full force to see this ‘alien’ who’d invaded their quiet street. And then the drug dealers came out, complete with their grim-faced, mean-eyed, watchful bodyguards with automatic weapons showing from their waistbands. The police, of course, were nowhere in evidence.
The neighborhood-know-it-all broadcast in a stage whisper. “That’s a Colombian Embassy car. Colombia is the center of the cocaine industry, and everyone knows their government officials are on the take. I bet they’re here to be paid off and to restock the dealers’ drug supply.
Luis, beautifully dressed as always, snarled at her in Spanish, pushed her and the children into the house, slammed the door and lowered the window shades. The Embassy car remained on the street blocking traffic. “You tell me this neighborhood is safe for my children? You lie! I want them to leave Baltimore immediately, and come with me to my Embassy.” He glanced at her with curled lip. “You may come with them if you wish.”
Liz had sent both kids upstairs to Jackie’s room, and had told them to close the door. She then let loose on her husband, informing him that the police and her mother would be arriving momentarily and that he and his driver had better leave immediately, if they didn’t want to be arrested. “Don’t give me any back talk about ‘diplomatic immunity’... My father was
In her mind, Luis had caused the situation by showing up in that car. He could have driven himself in an ordinary Ford or Chevy sedan, something inconspicuous that a Baltimorean would drive. No, he had to show up looking like the King of Bonkonkia. And then he’s surprised when the drug gangs show up?
“If I didn’t love him,” she muttered, “I’d wring his neck.”
Liz had won the battle, sort of. Luis had gotten back in his car, but he hadn’t spent any time with the kids. He’d thrust a piece of paper into her hands that turned out to be a check to cover his share of day care and housing expenses. She’d glanced at the check this morning, planning to deposit on the way to work. The check was written in Colombian pesos and drawn on a bank in Cartagena. She was pretty sure that her local credit union wouldn’t honor it, leaving her in the lurch once again. The Embassy would replace it with a local check in dollars, she was sure, but that would mean driving forty miles to DC to straighten things out. She had a job to do in Baltimore. This was just Luis’s cute little way of getting even, and she was sick of it.
She kept glancing at her watch. Already nine-fifteen, and no shuttlebus in sight. She’d be late again. Angela would smirk, Dave would shake his head more in sorrow than in anger, and she’d feel dreadfully inadequate. On days like this she didn’t belong at the storied BMC. She wasn’t sure she belonged anywhere.
While Liz Maguire fretted and stewed over her challenging work and home life as she waited in the pouring rain in a dilapidated bus shelter that stank of unwashed bodies and bodily fluids, she was about to find out that her life would soon become even more complicated. She would play a major role in helping to resolve a controversy that was beginning to play out between the chairs of Psychiatry and Surgery. That controversy would enmesh her in a burglary, a murder, and an international drug scandal.
CHAPTER TWO
Monday May 1 8:30 am
“Dr. Meyers will be with you shortly. Please take a seat,” the chubby, pink-haired thirtyish African-American receptionist said, barely taking her eyes off the Candy Crush game on her computer.
Bruce Howard, MD, FACS, chair of the BMC Department of Cardiac and Thoracic Surgery snorted. He was not used to being told what to do, and particularly not by a sassy minion in a psychiatrist’s office. Patients waited for him, not the other way around. Still, he and Dave Meyers had been colleagues for many years. If he had to find someone to help him sort out his marriage, Dave was better than most.
Dr. Meyers poked his head out of his office. “Sorry to keep you waiting, Bruce. When you pulled me aside at that Board of Trustees meeting last week, you mentioned that you and your wife Patsy would like to discuss something with me.” Dave had a strong suspicion that Patsy wanted a job in the Psychiatry department. He’d had taken an instant dislike to her when they’d met six months ago at the dean’s holiday party, and doubted he’d hire her. As a professional courtesy, and because Bruce held a position of prominence in the medical center, Dave agreed to the meeting. “Patsy’s not with you?”
“No. I’m sure she wanted to be here. She’s still fretting about a dreadful wedding she attended last month, so I came by myself.”
“Hmm,” said the psychiatrist, stroking his chin. He’d guessed wrong. This wasn’t about Patsy’s job prospects. The wedding was last month. Pretty long time to brood. Must have been some wedding. “As we shrinks are fond of saying, ‘Life happens when we’re making other plans’. Glad to see you at any rate.” Dave smiled. “Please have a seat. No need to lie down on the couch, unless you want to of course.”
Bruce chose the least comfortable chair in Dave’s office, and sat ramrod straight, arms held tightly across his chest. “I’m fine here.” He started to say something then stopped.
Dave let the silence build, then said very quietly. “What would you like to talk about?”
“I want to consult you professionally. My marriage is in the toilet. Patsy wants a divorce.” Bruce got up and began to pace. “This chair is ridiculous. Don’t think I’ve ever sat in one that’s so uncomfortable. This office is a dump. It brings down the reputation of the whole medical center. Do the Trustees know about this? Where’s your pride? Those drapes are filthy and I bet you haven’t had it painted in years.”
“Let’s ignore my office decor for a minute and talk about why your wife’s not here. You said she wants a divorce. You also said she was at a wedding some time ago. Whose wedding? Did you go with her? Is this connected to the divorce?” Dave turned away from Bruce and looked at the drapes. They were pretty bad, but still.. He thought he’d try to lower the temperature. “At this wedding you mentioned that you didn’t go to. Did Patsy meet a tall, dark and handsome young man who’s swept her off her feet?”
Bruce tried to chuckle. “No tall, dark gigolo. It was Kate’s wedding. Our very accomplished niece, Kate. I didn’t go. Didn’t feel like it. The wedding was a mess – a muddy barnyard, too much booze, I’m not fond of Kate’s parents and well... The real problem is the groom...”
“Not good enough for Kate?”
“From Patsy’s point of view, no one could be.” Bruce sighed. “Even as recently as six or seven years ago, Patsy would have seen the humor in the situation. The thought of her pompous brother Judge Murphy and his second and much younger wife Anna-the-interior-decorator having to wade through the muck would have reduced her to giggles. But now....”
“OK, I get that the wedding was uncomfortable...” Dave assumed his best quizzical expression. He’d found it useful when clients seemed to be delaying getting to the point, in this case, the possible divorce.
“It’s not just Kate’s wedding. Patsy is angry all the time. Whatever I say or do, I’m wrong. Sunday when she came back from the wedding, I opened the door for her. I had poured myself a glass of wine. She snatched it out if my hand and guzzled half of it, and she doesn’t even drink.
Guzzled half of it? “Are you sure she doesn’t drink?”
“I’m sure. Her father was a ‘functioning” alcoholic – textbook Irish Catholic, successful in business, great with his friends and colleagues and miserable to his family.”
“So, does Patsy think that since you drink wine – when you’re home alone – you’re becoming an alcoholic? Are you also a ‘textbook Irish Catholic’?” Dave smiled to take the sting out of his words.
“No, of course not. As a matter of fact, I’m Jewish. She fought her bigoted family to marry me. She thinks that Jews aren’t alcoholics.”
“Little does she know! Not alcohol, I’m assuming not another woman?”
“No, and not another man for either of us. We don’t have money problems, we’re both in pretty good health.... By the way, Dr. Meyers, shouldn’t you have done some sort of tests before we began today?”
Dave laughed. “You mean like weigh you, blood pressure, pulse? Nah. I figure you’re about 6 foot, 180 pounds.”
“6’2’’, 178.”
“I sit corrected! Heart rate, you could check your smart watch; I expect your pulse is elevated...”
“157. But I meant psychological tests...Ink Blots or something? Personality Inventory. Comprehension test; or maybe you put some wires on my head to measure brain waves?”
“Uh, no. Not for you. In here we talk and you’re avoiding me. Why is Patsy not with you? Why is she so angry with you and with Kate? Has she always been an angry person?”
“No, she is not an angry person. She’s a social worker for God’s sake. A DSW, in fact, so she’s also ‘Dr. Howard’. That’s why this wedding thing was so off the wall. I can’t understand it, but maybe you can if you listen to this tape.
“You TAPED your argument with your wife? Do you do that a lot?” Dave wondered if Bruce was storing negative information to limit any potential property settlement...
