Brad Parks - Eyes of the Innocent

But the girl hadn’t been home when the fire was set. And that bothered Primo. After all, what if the girl hadn’t hidden the evidence in her house? What if she kept it on her person? What if she left it somewhere else?

It was a loose end and it kept eating at Primo. He realized he couldn’t be sure he committed the perfect crime while the girl-and possibly the evidence-was still out there. So he set about tracking her down and reeling her in. With all the information Byers had given him, it wasn’t going to be hard.

Except it was. He came back to the house the morning after the fire, but she wasn’t there. He rerented the New York thugs and instructed them to find her. But through the next day, they reported only a series of near misses. They chased her all over the city, they said. But somehow the girl managed to slip by them every time.

Finally, Primo came up with a new plan: stop chasing her. Make her think the heat was off. She would show up again at her house eventually-it was the only roof she had, even if it was burned. And when she did, they would grab her.

So Primo and his men set up surveillance near her house and waited. It took twenty-four hours before their patience paid off. The girl came back, dragging a friend. Primo took both of them-the last thing he needed was another loose end.

Soon it would all be over.

I had forgotten about Sweet Thang’s second cell phone. But now it came back to me, vividly: how she kept a spare for when she talked out the batteries on the first one, how I scoffed at her when she told me about it, how I shook my head as I stored both numbers. And now it looked like some kind of brilliant.

“Hello?” I said in a quiet voice.

Dead air.

“Hello?” I whispered again, just a little louder.

The reply was a long, barely audible “Sssshhhhh.”

The shush belonged to Sweet Thang, and I felt an immediate and powerful sense of relief just knowing she was alive. I gripped the phone tightly, as if holding it was akin to holding Sweet Thang herself, and if I merely managed not to let go, everything would turn out fine.

The next noise was something like static, perhaps the phone’s mouthpiece rubbing against something. Then there was jostling, like the phone was being buffeted as she walked.

I cranked the volume on my earpiece as loud as it could go. Denardo frowned at me curiously. Cradling the phone against my ear, I pulled out my notepad, turned to a fresh page, and scribbled, “It’s our girls. Shhhh.”

He nodded.

I pressed my ear against the phone and concentrated, trying to pick out some sound I could identify, something that would give me a hint as to her whereabouts. There was nothing but more jostling. Then, suddenly, I heard Sweet Thang, as loud and clear as if she had the phone to her mouth:

“It’s not in the bathroom,” she said. “Maybe Akilah will find it in the bedroom.”

Okay. So they were in someone’s residence. And they were looking for something.

“I’m getting tired of this,” a male voice replied. It was a little more distant sounding-across a room perhaps-but I could make it out okay. It had an accent that came from well south of the border, if not south of the equator. It was agitiated but also authoritative, the voice of someone used to being in charge.

Primo. It had to be Primo.

“So, tell me, honestly, do you like the paint color in here?” Sweet Thang said. “It’s a Ralph Lauren color. They called it ‘Sullivan,’ but I call it ‘Sulli’ for short.”

“You are talking to me about paint?” Primo bristled. “These gentlemen here are ready to hurt you, badly, and you’re talking to me about paint?”

“Paint is important,” Sweet Thang replied.

Was it ever. I knew that paint. And I knew where I could find it: Sweet Thang’s apartment. It was the color she had just painted her walls.

I speed-walked out the office door, gesturing for Denardo to follow me. Placing my finger over the phone’s mouthpiece, I whispered, “We have to get to an apartment in Jersey City as fast as your truck can take us,” and recited the address from memory. Then I added: “But no siren.”

We couldn’t risk the noise. Primo would get suspicious if Sweet Thang’s pocket started sounding like it had an ambulance inside it. Denardo rounded up the other two members of our rescue crew. As we hurried toward Denardo’s SUV, I held my index finger to my mouth in a shushing gesture so they wouldn’t start jabbering, then dove into the backseat with Tommy.

He mouthed the words “Call the cops?” but I shook my head. The police had already failed me once. There was no sense in wasting more time with them. And, more to the point, I didn’t need this to turn into an armed hostage situation. Someone else could worry about what laws had been broken later. I just wanted the girls returned unharmed.

“It’s not in the bedroom,” I heard Akilah saying. “It’s got to be in here somewhere. I had it when I came in and I didn’t leave with it. Let me check the couch again.”

“No!” Primo replied. “There will be no more checking and rerechecking! You will find it. Now.”

“But I don’t-” Akilah began.

“Perhaps I have not explained myself clearly,” Primo interrupted. “You are going to give me what I need. The only question is how much you suffer first. Do I have to make you suffer? Do you need to feel pain?”

“But I-” Akilah started.

“I’ve heard enough,” Primo barked. “Gag her, Johnny.”

I heard the sound of duct tape-a lot of it-being peeled off a roll. Akilah protested but was quickly silenced.

“Now,” Primo said. “Break her arm.”

Akilah struggled and grunted, then gave a muted yelp of pain. Sweet Thang protested, “Stop it! Stop it! You’re hurting her!”

But that was exactly the point. Even with Akilah gagged, the howls poured through my phone, growing increasingly frantic, crescendoing into something that could only be described as animalistic. It stayed at that bloodcurdling pitch for fifteen long seconds until it finally subsided into soft moaning. Just listening to it was horrible. Tommy, who had no trouble hearing it from five feet away, looked like he was going to vomit.

Akilah was starting to talk. But it was impossible to understand what she was saying. Apparently Primo couldn’t figure it out, either, because I heard duct tape ripping and suddenly Akilah’s voice became distinct: “My arm … my arm … Oh Jesus … Oh my God … My arm…”

“Oh, honey,” I heard Sweet Thang start to say, but she was cut off by Primo.

“You touch her, you die,” he spat. “You scream, you die. You move, you die. Davi, make sure she doesn’t move.”

“Get your hands off me,” Sweet Thang squealed.

“He can put his hands wherever he likes,” Primo insisted.

The phone jostled and I missed what came next. Primo was saying something, but it remained unhearable until either Sweet Thang stopped struggling or Davi stopped fondling her.

“… like that,” I finally heard him say. “If you think I can’t break someone, look at what I did to your boyfriend. By the end, he was begging to tell me about the thumb drive.”

Thumb drive. Thumb drive? As in the computer storage device? The kind you plug into the USB port? Why would someone possibly go this berserk just to get a thumb drive?

Then I got it. The thumb drive must have contained a copy of the Excel spreadsheet Denardo told me about, the one where Windy logged all the illegal campaign contributions Primo made. He obviously made a copy for Akilah, as a kind of insurance policy.

In the hands of, say, the U.S. Attorney’s Office, that data file was an indictment, conviction, and twenty-year prison sentence waiting to happen. It would also go a long way to establish motive for a murder prosecution should the Essex County Prosecutor’s Office get to it first.