James Grippando - Beyond Suspicion

Swyteck was right. This isn’t just about money laundering anymore.

A door slammed, and her heart skipped a beat. It was the main entrance, and she was no longer alone. She switched off the computer, ran to Vladimir’s office door, and fumbled for her key.

A man was singing to himself in the kitchen, fixing himself a morning coffee.

Vladimir! Her hand was shaking too much to insert the key and lock the door.

“That you, Katrina?” he said, calling from the kitchen.

His voice startled her, but on her fifth frantic attempt at the lock she felt the tumblers fall into place. She thanked God, hurried down the hallway, and forced herself to smile as she entered the kitchen. “Good morning.”

“Coffee?” he asked.

“No, thanks. I had some invoicing work to do.” She could have kicked herself. He hadn’t even expressed any surprise at seeing her, and she was already offering some knee-jerk justification for being in the office a little early.

“Good.” He sipped his coffee. It was so strong, the aroma nearly overwhelmed her from across the room. Then he stepped toward her and said, “Let’s you and me take a walk.”

The words chilled her. She’d known Vladimir to take many a walk with employees and even a few customers. None of them ever came back smiling.

“Sure.”

He grabbed his briefcase, took it with him.

This is it, she thought. Although she’d never been caught snooping, the scenarios had played out in her mind many times. Never did it turn out well for her. Vladimir didn’t take chances with a suspected musor .

He led her out the back door, the warehouse entrance. It was a hot, sunny morning, and the smell of baked asphalt-sealant stung her nostrils. They crossed the parking lot and walked side by side beneath the black-olive trees that lined the sidewalk, heading toward the discount gasoline station and the perpetual roar of I-95. Rush-hour traffic clogged all eight lanes on Pembroke Pines Boulevard.

“I’ve been thinking about your friend Theo.”

She caught her breath, relieved to hear that someone else was on his mind. “I figured.”

“The three of us talked openly at the Brown Bear.”

“Of course. Talk among friends.”

“He seemed to have the viatical settlements all figured out.”

“He’s a pretty smart guy.”

“Yuri thinks maybe he’s not so smart. He thinks maybe you told him something.”

“I told him nothing.”

Vladimir stopped. The traffic light changed and a stream of cars and huge tractor trucks raced toward the I-95 on ramp. “I believe you,” he said. “But Yuri has his questions. So there is some repair work that needs to be done there.”

“Repair work?”

“Rebuilding of trust.”

“Vladimir, I’ve worked here like a dog for eight months. Guys come and go all the time. But I’m right here at your side, day in and day out.”

“I know. That’s why I don’t want you to look at this as a test of your loyalty. Think of it as an opportunity to prove yourself worthy of advancement.”

“What are you asking me to do?”

“Your friend Theo got himself in some serious trouble.”

“I know. I saw the news last night.”

“So we both know this prosecutor is going to lean hard on him.”

“Theo’s no musor .”

“I wish I could believe that. But the good ol’ days are gone. No more honor among thieves, the old code of silence. These days, people get caught, they talk. We can’t risk Theo cutting a deal and telling that prosecutor what we talked about at the Brown Bear. Hell, I think I even mentioned Yuri and Fate by name.”

Katrina knew this was coming. She’d even shared those exact fears with Drayton. “Like I said, what are you asking me to do?”

He lit a cigarette, then flipped his lighter shut. But he just looked at her, saying nothing.

“Please. Theo is my friend. Don’t ask me to be part of any setup.”

He took a long drag, exhaled. “All the time you’ve worked here, I’ve never once so much as seen you hold a gun.”

“Never had a need to.”

“Seems like a waste. Two years in the U.S. Marines, you must be a decent shot.”

“Sure, I can shoot.”

He handed her his briefcase. “Take it.”

She hesitated, knowing full well what was inside.

He narrowed his eyes and said, “Friend or no, Theo has to go. And the job is yours.”

“You… you want me to take out my friend?”

“We’ve all taken out friends. We make new ones.”

She couldn’t speak.

“Is there a problem?” he asked.

She fought to keep her composure, then took the briefcase and said, “No. None at all.”

He put his arm around her, and they started back to the office. “This is a good move for you. An important step. I can feel it.”

With each footfall, the briefcase seemed to get heavier in her hand. “I feel it, too,” she said.

•

Katrina was crouched low behind the driver’s seat of a Volkswagen Jetta, waiting. The floor mats smelled of spilled beers, and the upholstery bore telltale burn marks of many a dropped joint. She was dressed entirely in black, and with a push of a button the green numbers on her wristwatch glowed in the darkness.

One-fifty A.M., just ten minutes till the end of Theo’s bartending shift at Sparky’s.

Laughter in the parking lot forced her closer to the floor. A typical ending to another “Ladies’ Night,” a totally drunk chick and three horny guys offering to drive her home. Their home. It was almost enough to make Katrina jump from the car and spring for cab fare, but she didn’t dare give herself away.

She had a job to do.

From her very first meeting with Vladimir, she’d decided that if it ever came down to a situation of either her or someone else, someone else would get it. But she’d always thought that the “someone else” would be another mob guy. She hadn’t figured on someone like Theo.

A rumbling noise rolled across the parking lot. Katrina could feel the vibration in the floor board. A moment later, diesel fumes were seeping in through the small opening in the passenger side window. She lifted her head just enough to see a huge tractor trailer parked two spaces down. The motor was running, and the fumes kept coming. But the driver was nowhere to be seen. The odor was making her nauseous. She had the sickening sensation that the truck wasn’t going anywhere soon, that the driver had simply climbed inside and started the engine to sleep off his liquor in the comfort of an air-conditioned rig.

The fumes thickened, and she could almost taste the soot in her mouth. A dizzying sensation buzzed through her brain. The noise, the odor, the steady vibration-it all had her desperate for a breath of fresh air, but she forced herself to stay put. The very act of telling herself to tough it out and stay alert was eerily reminiscent of her life in Prague, not the beautiful old city as a whole but the noisy textile mill where she’d worked more than a decade earlier.

Back when her name was Elena, not Katrina.

There, in an old factory that still bore the scars of Hitler’s bombs, the oldest machines ran on diesel fuel, not electricity. The engines were right outside the windows, and even in the dead of winter, enough fumes seeped in through cracks and crevices to give Katrina and her Cuban coworkers chronic coughs, headaches, and dizzy spells. It was just one more hazard in a fourteen-hour workday, six days a week. Katrina had often pushed herself to the verge of blacking out, but the fear of falling perilously onto one of the giant looms around her kept her on her feet. Safety guards and emergency shut-offs were nonexistent, and the machines were unforgiving. Hers was one of the newer ones, about thirty years old. The one beside her was much older, predating the Second World War and constantly breaking down. Each minute, countless meters of thread fed through the giant moving arms. At that rate, you didn’t want to be anywhere near one of those dinosaurs when it popped, and you could only hope to find the energy to duck when a loosened bolt or broken hunk of metal came flying out like shrapnel.