Red Alert(NYPD Red #5)(33)

I took it. I rousted Kylie, dressed, and was in front of my building in five minutes. She picked me up three minutes later, and we made the hour-long trip to the Canarsie section of Brooklyn in thirty-seven minutes.

The Karayib Makèt on Rockaway Parkway was a half-block-long supermarket catering to the largest Haitian population in America outside Florida. Kylie pulled up to the front at 3:54 a.m. We were greeted by a welcoming committee of four men, all large, all tattooed, and all in need of dental work. The store was closed, but a fifth man opened the front door, and we were ushered past aisles of produce, meats, and groceries you don’t find on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.

We walked through a steel door into a vast cold room. There was a second door on the opposite side. One of our escorts tapped out a code on a keypad. The door was opened from the inside, and we were led in.

The far wall was covered with a large flag: two horizontal bands, one blue, one red, resting on top of large gray letters that spelled out Zoe Pound. The final letter, d, was spattered with the same blood-red color as the bottom band. In the center was a white panel bearing a multicolored coat of arms proclaiming L’UNION FAIT LA FORCE. I didn’t know Haitian Creole, but I spoke enough French to understand: Unity makes strength.

In the center of the room was an oversize scarred wooden desk. Six armed men stood at key points around it. A seventh sat behind it.

“I am Malique La Grande,” he said.

“I’m Detective Zach—”

“I know who you are, and I know why you’re here,” La Grande said. “You think Zoe Pound is responsible for the deaths of Fairfax and Zimmer. I am delighted that they are dead, but Zoe does not blow people up.”

“So you’re saying you didn’t kill them,” I said.

“Trust me, Detective. If we had killed them, it would have taken them a lot longer to die.”

“But you did have a motive. They ran drugs for you, and it went south.”

“They did not run drugs for me. It was my predecessor’s call. I warned Dingo against it. I told him mules should be desperate. These were spoiled rich kids. I was right. They came back to New York empty-handed.”

“Did they give you a reason?”

“They said they made the buy, and were about to fly back to the U.S., when the police stopped them at the airport and confiscated the drugs.”

“Heroin,” I said.

“Four kilos. Dingo fronted them a hundred large. When they came back empty-handed, I knew they were lying, and should have been put to death, but Dingo said it would be bad for business if we killed four rich white boys. So he settled for a payout of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, even though the shit would have been worth five times that once we cut it and put it on the street.”

“You don’t believe the drugs were taken by the authorities at the airport?”

“No.”

“What do you think happened?”

“I think they set us up. They bought the dope, planted some of it on that Guatemalan kid, let him take the fall, paid off the cops, and flew back to New York with a couple of kilos of Zoe Pound heroin. But we couldn’t prove—”

“Excuse me,” Kylie said. “What Guatemalan kid?”

“The one they took with them on their fucking private jet. He was dirt-poor, but he got a scholarship to their fancy white school, so they took him along for the ride. And then they hung that little brown boy out to dry.”

“There was a fifth kid on the drug run with them?” I said. “Do you know his name?”

Malique nodded. “Segura. Geraldo Segura.” He looked at his watch. “Your time is up.”

“Thank you,” I said. “You’ve been a big help, Mr. La Grande. One more quick thing: We’d like to talk to this Mr. Segura. Do you know where we can find him?”

Malique laughed. A few of his bodyguards cracked smiles as well.

“Geraldo Segura is in the same place he’s been for the last twenty years,” La Grande said. “The same place he’ll be for the next thirty.”

“Where’s that?”

“The Bangkok Hilton.”

My mind started to race, and I repeated the word in my head. Bangkok. Bangkok. Bangkok.

As in Thailand.





CHAPTER 32



We’d been blindsided, and Malique knew it.

“Well, well,” he said. “It seems that the do-gooders from Silver Bullet failed to mention that they left their boyhood friend rotting away in a hellhole in Thailand.”

I nodded. “Do you think Segura could be connected to the bombings?”

“What do you mean connected?”

“Could he be orchestrating the hits?” I said.

“Strange question, Detective. I don’t know what would make you think that a man chained to a prison wall in Thailand could be responsible for setting off bombs in New York. Unless…” Malique ran a hand under his chin and stroked his wiry beard. “Unless there’s something you failed to mention.”

Danny Corcoran had warned me about Malique. “You can fuck with him,” he had said, “but don’t try to con him.”

“There is something,” I said. “But I didn’t fail to mention it. I just wasn’t going to walk in here with my kimono wide-open. But now that I know there’s good faith, I’ll tell you.”