Bait the devil, p.12
Bait the Devil, page 12
“It’s a don’t ask, don’t tell kind of deal. Once it arrives here, I make the necessary arrangements, that’s it.”
“Two hundred K ain’t enough for that kind of risk,” T.J. said and shifted to leave.
“A quarter of a mil,” Follman threw out.
Dot scowled. “What’s your take in this? Seeing as you’re the one not taking the risks.”
In the moments of weighted silence, Follman studied them while he fiddled with a gold band on his right hand. The wheels were grinding hard inside his brain.
With an exasperated sigh, he held out his hands in supplication. Yet, somehow Dot didn’t believe for one minute that he was at all being supple.
“My cut is five million. It’s small potatoes, but with enough of these shipments, you can make a lot more. Do this one time, we can talk a more permanent partnership.”
“We’ll think about it,” T.J. said. Now he was talking sense.
As one, they both moved to the door.
“Don’t call us,” Dot threw back over her shoulder. “We’ll call you.”
Chapter Seventeen
“The balls on this woman,” Stevo crowed.
T.J. grinned as Dot slapped the back of Stevo’s head as she passed his seat. “I wouldn’t provoke the she-wolf any more than she’s been,” he warned his old second-in-command.
“No, let him dig. He can help you make your grave, then join you,” Dot said then sank into a chair placed next to him, a burning cigar pinched between her fingers.
The three of them were seated in a hexagonal-shaped shaded arbor with huge paddle fans stirring a fair amount of cooled air down on them. Each of the five sides were draped with blackened netting that kept flying pests out and shaded them from the slanting sunrays.
Dana was inside her and Steve’s home, finalizing details on a case she’d been assigned. Leaving the three old army chums to themselves.
After leaving Follman’s casino suite, Dot hadn’t said a word the entire drive to Stevo’s place. She was pissed with him for changing the mission parameters and practically selling her skills without her permission. Give her enough time, and T.J. knew she’d come around and allow him to explain his reasons.
Her continued silence might be an indication she was plotting through this—or plotting his demise. T.J. couldn’t blame her for wanting to leave him twisting in the wind on this one. If he admitted to her his actual reasons for letting Follman offer them this job, she’d probably end this partnership, tell him to fuck off, and return to her previous life at the Ybarra ranch.
Sad part was T.J. himself couldn’t grasp a solid reason for running down this path half-cocked and less informed. Every time he thought about Caleb’s situation, the harder the pull to find this guy became. Trying to explain it to Dot was difficult still, because each reason sounded weak and stupid. Like he was making excuses to justify his needs.
Why was it so damn hard to admit that he should never have involved them in this at all? She’d been right last night when she’d tried to talk him out of even going to Follman’s horse auction. This was not bounty hunting. This wasn’t even PI work. This was a personal agenda for T.J.
He glanced at her as she removed the sweet-scented cigar from her lips and blew out a thick cloud of smoke. They’d both switched out of their finery and were back in their usual get-up of worn-in jeans and tees. Stevo and Dana had prepared them all a hefty meal and now they were letting it digest. Hopefully the wind down was easing her into a rational plan.
It certainly wasn’t doing him any favors.
“You know, Ybarra, I always knew you should have been placed in a combat unit.” Steve tilted his beer bottle toward her.
Dot drew on her cigar and said nothing. It was a common topic of discussion from the past. One that never really went anywhere, just gave them all something to talk about. Dot’s path in life had put her where she was best suited, and they all knew it.
“What’s your next step?” Steve asked after they stewed in their own thoughts.
“See how desperate Follman gets,” T.J. said and finished his beer.
“Actually, I’m more interested in knowing who wanted me to have this,” Dot said as she pulled out the phone T.J. had completely forgotten about. She set it down on the stone ledge of the unused firepit centered between them.
Steve leaned forward and studied the black phone. “A burner? How’d you get this?”
“Before all the hoopla started, some woman led me out of the arena into a stable and left it on a stall door,” Dot explained.
Steve resumed his previous lounging position. “Remember what the woman looked like?”
Dot sat in silence, smoking her cigar and squinting her eyes. Steve went to say something; T.J. held up a hand and cut him off. With a nod, Steve closed his mouth and waited.
T.J. had been around Dot long enough to read her features to know which mode she was in and to not pull her out of it. That serious contemplative face said she was in memory recall. When the crow’s feet in the corners of her eyes relaxed and she lowered her cigar, T.J. knew she was ready.
She didn’t get a chance to say a thing.
The mysterious phone rang.
How fucking convenient.
Dot reached for it, but T.J. took the phone. The number crawled across the screen; no name joined it. He answered the call and put it on speaker, then sat it down on the firepit ledge. No one spoke.
“Ms. Ybarra, for a minute there, I figured you would ignore the call.” The voice from the other end was higher pitched than T.J. expected, but male.
Dot removed the cigar from between her teeth. “If I’d known I was dealing with a paper pusher, I would have. And Ms. Ybarra is my mother.”
“Apologies, Dorothy.”
T.J. had to bite his tongue to stop the chuckle. This knucklehead was pushing the wrong buttons left and right.
“Only two people ever called me Dorothy, and one of them is dead,” she said.
“I’m really at a loss here. What am I supposed to call you?”
Dot took two puffs on her cigar with a wide grin. She released the smoke in a small cloud from her mouth. “Just plain Ybarra will do. Or you can call me Al.”
Steve lost it and roared with laughter.
“Are we quite through with the childish games?” the voice on the line demanded as Steve died down.
“You opened yourself to the sport when you decided to play spy with me today,” Dot said.
“My tactics were the cleanest and easiest way to get in contact with you without blowing this whole operation. You and Mr. Roman have already fouled it all up.”
T.J. bent forward, catching Dot’s stream of cigar smoke full in the face.
“We fouled up nothing,” he said, pulling out his NCO voice, the roughened, battle-worn one that always put ass-kissing, rank-climbing officers up against a wall. “By the way things are playing out, I’m going to take a stab in the dark and say we’re dealing with one of the thousands of alphabet soup agencies run by bureaucrats who have no fucking clue how the real world works. Either you take a different tone of voice with us or go find someone else to fuck in the ass.”
In the subsequent silence, Dot slowly ground out the last of her cigar in an Elvis-shaped ashtray.
“Again. Apologies,” the man said with a tone of contrition. “I’ll start over. I’m Kurt Eriksson. I lead a multiagency taskforce through the DOJ. And I’m Cade Porter’s handler.”
“What the shit?” Steve muttered. “What did you two get caught up in?”
“I’ll assume the voice I’m hearing is Steven Arturo Bautista. He needs to step away from this conversation. If not, then we’re through conversing.”
Steve was about to say something, but T.J. signaled for him to shut up. He circled his finger and Steve nodded then vacated the arbor. As he passed T.J., he tapped his ear and jerked his head toward the house. T.J. smiled and winked.
“Now that he’s gone …” Eriksson said after enough time passed to let Steve get inside the house.
“You can stop with the magic tricks,” Dot said. “What do you want?”
“Were you able to get an in with Meyer Follman?” Eriksson asked.
“What are the mission parameters of this taskforce?” Dot countered.
There was a moment of silence. T.J. met Dot’s calculating gaze. She had Eriksson’s ticket, and she was going to punch every last one of those holes. The woman didn’t give herself enough credit when it came to verbal warfare with clients and defendants.
“Fair enough. If you’re going to cause me more of a headache, Dot, then I think we’re officially through speaking.”
“You gave me the phone.”
Eriksson made a sound on the other end. “That was not how the handoff was supposed to happen. My agent decided on the best course of action and you were the one to take the bait.”
Dot sat upright and leaned toward the phone. “Are you saying that your agent meant to give T.J. the phone?”
“He is the one with the clandestine mission experience, is he not?”
“You have to be fucking kidding me.”
T.J. reached over and grasped her arm. She glared at him, then relaxed against the seat. Damn it, she was more pissed off than he expected. It took a lot to get her this far gone, and obviously today’s events had taken her right to the edge. Eriksson’s remarks had just pushed her over. In his years working with Sloane, they had never butted heads like he and Dot were doing now. Then again, he and Sloane hadn’t ever had sex and always kept their partnership business only.
“We’re a packaged deal,” he told Eriksson.
“I’m well aware,” Eriksson said. “I needed to speak to both of you.”
“Then speak,” T.J. said.
“What do you know about the Israeli mafia?” Eriksson’s question sliced through the arbor’s quiet.
Dot gestured to T.J., passing the torch in this case.
“They have a tenuous foothold here in Vegas. Mostly low-key. Drugs and gambling are typically their thing.”
“That’s what you know about them in Las Vegas, and it doesn’t even scratch the surface,” Eriksson said. “Meyer Follman has allied himself to one of the most powerful crime families in Israel. This family has ties in Morocco and Mexico with a slim thread leading into Afghanistan.”
T.J. latched on to the Afghanistan part. “Opiates.”
“Yes. In fact, ecstasy with heroin as the base. They like it as pure as they can get it, making these drugs worth billions. It’s what put them on our radar. And it’s where Cade comes in.”
“You mean Caleb.”
“Cade is his name as far as this conversation is concerned,” Eriksson shot back. “I know you have the real files on him.”
“How the hell …” Dot started.
“It doesn’t matter how I know. What matters is, not only have you put yourselves in danger, you’ve included your cousin. The shooting at the lawyer’s house is just one of many ways for them to get to you. Yes, they were going after the Jones family and got you instead; by now they have become aware of you. They’re seeking you out. And so is Cade,” Eriksson said.
“If your intent is to scare us off, it’s not working,” T.J. replied.
“Not in the least. I’ve done my research on you two, and I like what I read. I’m even impressed by Bautista’s record, but I can’t bring him into this any more than you two have already done.” Eriksson sighed. “Here’s where my initial question comes in. Have you managed to get inside Follman’s operation?”
Dot eyed him. Follman made the request for both of them, but he really wanted Dot’s skills as a helicopter pilot. T.J. was probably just the dressing on this salad.
“We have been given an offer,” she said. “Told Follman we’d think about it.”
“What was the offer?” Eriksson asked.
“A shipment coming in from Canada into Idaho. No details on what this shipment is, only that it’s soon and it comes with a huge price tag,” Dot said.
“Canada? That’s new.” There was the sound of shuffled papers. “We had the intel that a new shipment was inbound. Thought it was coming through the usual channels, up through Mexico into Nevada and then dispersed accordingly.”
“How do those shipments come?” T.J. asked.
“By the trailer load. Our intel pointed to them using the horses as cover. Get some buyers in another place, load up the horses, and haul them out. No one, until Cade, was able to get close enough to learn how they did it.”
T.J. looked at Dot. “Would explain why Follman was so anxious to give you that horse and haul him up to Idaho for free.”
“Until you told him I flew a helicopter. He jumped all over the idea of using a helicopter to move the shipment,” she said.
“He wanted to use a helicopter?” Eriksson asked.
“Wanted to fly it out of the horse farm in Idaho down here. If they’re transporting trailer loads of drugs, what I fly isn’t the way to go,” Dot said.
“Unless this shipment is smaller than the usual fare,” Eriksson added.
“Follman was cagey about what this shipment was,” T.J. pointed out. “Do you think they’ve changed up the goods and kept him out of the loop?”
“No, he’s read in on every transaction. If he was cagey, it was to keep you two in the dark as long as possible. But it still doesn’t explain the attack on Cade.” Eriksson sounded absentminded. “The family Follman has gone into business with aren’t trifled with. Intel has placed a former Mossad agent in their ranks.”
“Back the fucking truck up,” T.J. spat. “Mossad?”
“No way any of those men Cade and I killed were Mossad,” Dot pointed out.
“They wouldn’t be,” Eriksson said. “More likely they were low-hanging fruit looking for way up the ladder. We made Cade out to be a broken-down veteran who was scared of his own shadow. He was supposed to be an easy mark.”
“Joke’s on them,” Dot muttered.
“With you eliminating more of their men, they’re out too many foot soldiers. The next step is the militants, and these guys won’t be so easy to kill.”
“Why turn on Cade? Right before a new shipment is coming in?” T.J. asked.
“Only Cade knows that. With him off-grid, we’re never going to find out.” What Eriksson said rang false.
He knew. He damn well knew what it was that drove Cade or Caleb, whatever he called himself, to doing an undercover job as a wounded and disabled man.
“We need to find him,” T.J. said to Dot.
“No,” Eriksson broke in. “He can handle himself. When he’s ready to return, we’ll get the message. The problem is the here and now. Work with me and take Follman’s offer. We’ll never get another chance like this. If this is bigger than drugs, I need to know.”
“What do we get out of this for being dragged into the middle of a national taskforce?” T.J. demanded.
“You’ll be generously compensated for your work and time,” Eriksson said.
“Like we haven’t heard that line of bullshit before,” Dot said, reaching for the cigar butt.
“We’re not the army, Ybarra.”
“I stand by my statement.” She stuck the dead cigar between her lips, looking very Winston Churchill with a perpetual scowl as she stared at T.J.
She was leaving this up to him. He’d already dragged them further into this mess than she would have liked. Between dealing with repressed memories, people trying to kill them, and an uncooperative partner with his own agenda, Dot was doing a damnable job of not throttling him for this shitshow.
While he watched her gnaw on the cigar tip, he recalled the tattoos. “Eriksson, this Israeli family, do they have any special rituals or markings?”
Dot frowned and removed the cigar butt, then understanding dawned on her.
“Yes. I’m aware you two found the tattoos. Anyone associated or part of the family gets one. It’s their universal mark to prove their loyalty.”
“Would that loyalty extend into Afghanistan?”
“If they have ties to the family and the operations, yes, yes it would.”
“No fucking way,” Dot muttered.
T.J. didn’t give her chance to back out. If he could make it connect with Abbey Gate, she’d be further invested. And maybe her drive to resolve this would be the piece of the puzzle he was seeking to fit in place for his own reasons. He still got a kick in the gut when he remembered the look on her face when she told him about the dead refugee with the tattoo.
It had to be about saving a fellow veteran. It had to be.
“We’re in,” T.J. said. “We’ll tell Follman tonight. You just provide us with the backup we’re going to need.”
Chapter Eighteen
Eriksson’s people were watching the woman lawyer.
They did a decent job of staying unnoticed, but they weren’t as good as Armand Revach’s men. He was having damn difficult time trying to locate them himself, and he knew they were following Eriksson’s men.
Caleb Podolsky had been undercover with Follman for more than a year before he had his first encounter with Revach and his right-hand man, Yonatan Hassin. Both men paid Caleb, a lowly farm manager, no mind. They had visited the Idaho horse facility as a favor to Follman, or that was the reason given to Caleb at the time.
Next came Follman’s lawyer. A man so puffed up with himself, he paid Caleb a tip to move his car. Then the constant flow of horse trailers began. And the steady stream of new faces driving those trailers. Eventually, Caleb was banned from certain areas of the farm. His cover as a drug addict made those people coming and going disregard him. Even fooled Follman.
Until it didn’t. And Caleb got caught where he wasn’t supposed to be.
Now here he sat, in a beater truck, staked out not far from Tailored Suit’s, aka Hal Jones, law firm. The same law firm where Vivian Montgomery worked. Here Caleb watched and waited for Revach’s men to make a move.
Caleb should have never involved Hal Jones in his whole scheme. Shoulda, coulda, woulda.
He’d gone outside of the parameters of Eriksson’s task force mission by making Hal’s role in this whole thing bigger than it already was. Hal reluctantly went along with the behind-the-scenes changes after Caleb revealed there was a rat in his law firm. A giant one at that.
