Джеймс Паттерсон: Lost

Chapter 4

STEPH HALL AND I walked back through the terminal with our prisoner in tow. He didn’t want to talk, but the scam was easy to figure out. He held the passports for the kids. He’d brought the kids to the U.S. after someone had paid for their transport. Paid a lot. The kids were expected to work off the cost of their transport—usually in the sex trade. It pissed me off just thinking about it.

The other two task-force members, Lorena Perez and Anthony “Chill” Chilleo, fell in next to us. The whole team marched past the corpulent Customs supervisor. Not to show off, of course, but I hoped he’d take notice; these were the cops who’d passed the FBI requirements to join the task force on international crime.

A uniformed Miami-Dade cop took our Dutch prisoner to the tiny holding cell at the airport until we were ready to transport him to Miami MCC. The federal detention center never seemed to fill up the way it should.

Anthony Chilleo had a tough aura about him, forged by fifteen years in the ATF and five before that as a Tampa cop.

Lorena, as usual, looked like she’d just stepped out of a fashion magazine. Even after running through the terminal after us, she wasn’t flustered and her clothes weren’t disheveled.

She said, “You okay?”

“Yeah. Do I look that bad?”

“Your hand is wrapped in a paper towel and dripping blood, your shirt’s ripped, and you’re sweating like you’re in detox. Didn’t you play football in college?”

I was about to make a snappy comeback when a man wearing a nice polo shirt and madras shorts stepped in front of me. He was only an inch or two shorter than me and had a little muscle as well.

He didn’t waste any time on pleasantries. “My name is Randall Stone, and I’m an attorney here in Miami. Let me tell you something—that was some of the most careless, stupid police work I’ve ever seen. You put people at risk to stop someone who’s just trying to get into the country. Let me guess—he insulted the TSA? Or maybe it’s just another arrest to pad your statistics.”

The lawyer made sure he said this loud enough for everyone in the immediate vicinity to hear. Then a woman trying to comfort her little boy stood up and walked over to me. She didn’t say anything as everybody stared at us. Then, without warning, she slapped me. Kinda hard.

The slap brought Steph Hall over. Moving fast, she grabbed the woman by the shoulders. Steph was mad and I didn’t want this to get any more out of control. As the boss, I had to set the tone. I’d been slapped before. Punched, bitten, and stabbed as well. This was Miami, not Disney World.

The woman said, in a strong Brooklyn accent, “My son was almost crushed by the panic you caused. You should be ashamed of yourself.”

I stood there silently, staring at the woman. I wanted to point out that it was the suspect who’d fired a pistol and run, but years of experience had taught me to let this go. In fact, from an early age, I’d learned to let most things go—my lack of achievement on the University of Miami football field, my failed love life, and even parts of my family life.

Lorena said to the lawyer and the woman who’d slapped me, “How can you people be so stupid?” Then she glared at the attorney and said, “I understand an ambulance chaser like you trying to stir up a crowd, but this lady is way out of line. You have no idea what was going on.”

I cut her off and waved at the team to start walking again, away from the crowd. “It’s okay, Lorena. ‘The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.’”

Lorena said, “Socrates.”

I turned and smiled at her. “Very good. That’s impressive.”

She laughed and said, “You rotate between Plato, Socrates, and politicians. I took a shot. You’re right—no matter how much we explain, assholes like that lawyer hate whatever the police do.”

I even avoided bumping into the attorney as we took our walk of triumph.

Everything in police work depended on experience. I wanted to lead everyone away from these loudmouths before someone said or did something stupid. Lorena had a temper, something she’d have to learn to control. Maybe my example could serve as a lesson; I figured it was easier than some of the teaching methods I’d seen at local police departments.

When I was a rookie, I’d arrested a local crack dealer. The narcotics detectives set up to interrogate him and made a big deal out of allowing me, a new patrol officer, to watch it over a closed-circuit TV in the next office. I had to lock up my service weapon and promise that I wouldn’t make any noise or tell anyone I was allowed to watch the interrogation.

I sat there quietly with an older narcotics detective and watched as two of the better-known narcotics detectives sat across a small table from the thin, antsy crack dealer. One of the detectives wore a shoulder holster.

Less than a minute into the interview, the crack dealer started to shout, and then, without warning, he reached across the small table and grabbed the pistol in the shoulder holster.

It happened so fast I didn’t react until he was standing behind the table with the gun raised at the two detectives. Then he pulled the trigger. I still remember seeing the flashes on the fuzzy TV. Bang, bang, and both detectives were on the floor.

Holy shit.

I sprang out of my seat, burst through the door into the hallway, and yanked open the door to the interrogation room. That’s when I got one of the biggest surprises of my life: the two detectives were sitting on the table laughing, and the crack dealer was laughing right next to them.

The crack dealer was one of their regular informants and they’d put blanks in the gun. The idea was to have a laugh at the expense of a rookie and teach him two important lessons, both of which I have never forgotten: don’t wear a shoulder holster, because it’s tactically unsound, and don’t take a gun into an interrogation with a prisoner in the first place.

I also learned that a person could literally have the piss scared out of him from a prank like that.

Today, I’d learned never to underestimate the speed of a skinny guy. And Lorena had learned that it never paid to argue with an idiot.

Chapter 5

ABOUT AN HOUR after the airport worker had used her martial arts skills to disable our Dutch suspect, I found myself sitting at a long table in a Department of Homeland Security conference room with all six of the children Nobler had brought over. We looked like the weirdest corporate board meeting in history.

I said, “My name is Tom Moon. You can call me Tom.”

The kids and I started chatting. At eighteen, Joseph from Poland was the oldest. His accent was thick, but he spoke decent English. We talked sports. He said, “Real football players are the best athletes, both in skill and endurance.”

“I still prefer American football.”

Joseph gave me a sly grin and said, “I would too if I were as big as you.”

The two youngest kids didn’t speak much English, but I doubt they would have said a lot even if they’d understood what was going on. They were shy and quiet. Considering what had just happened to them, I got it.

Michele, a little blond girl, was only nine years old. She was not ready to talk about how she’d ended up in this situation. She spoke only French. Our office was trying to find her parents or guardians, who were somewhere outside of Paris.

The other little girl, Olivia, was eleven years old. She was from Madrid and thought she was on some kind of field trip. I still wasn’t clear on the details of how the traffickers had tricked her into coming, and I didn’t know if she had family back in Spain, but we had no problem finding a translator for her. More than 70 percent of the population of Miami–Dade County was fluent in Spanish. Even my Spanish was good enough to just chat.