Lost(60)

Marie assured Magda she’d be able to speak to her brother shortly. First, we needed to know more about her ordeal so we could construct a case around her statement.

Magda calmed down and talked to us through occasional sniffles. “When I saw the container, I got scared. It didn’t look safe. Hanna kept leading more and more people inside. By then, it was too late to back out.”

Marie interrupted with a few questions, looking for details.

Magda said, “I cried the first day in the container. A lot of us did. But toward the end, it got so much worse.” She had to stop and blow her nose.

She identified Hanna Greete and her brother, Albert. That, along with some of the information Marie had gathered, was enough to make a decent case against them. But I was after bigger game.

I’d been careful not to inject myself into the interview too much so far. Now I asked, “Did you meet any Russians during all this?”

She shook her head. Then she said, “Perhaps. I’m not very good with English.” She paused, gathered her thoughts, and said, “I’m not very good with accents in English. There was one man. He beat a homeless man. Beat him badly. Blood everywhere.”

“What did the attacker look like?”

She gave a vague description, but when she mentioned the blue goatee, I knew who it was. I told her, “He’ll get what he deserves soon enough. You’re safe now. You’ll be back with your brother before long.”

Marie handed the teenager a cell phone and coaxed her to speak. Magda said, “Hello?” Then: “Joseph?” I heard the catch in her voice as she realized who she was talking to. She spoke rapidly in Polish, alternating between laughing, squealing, and weeping.

This was the kind of day I lived for.





CHAPTER 88





I HAD THE whole team meet me east of Biscayne Boulevard in the parking lot between a Holiday Inn and Bayfront Park. The H and I in the first word of the motel’s sign had faded. It had been like that for so long, some of the street people called it the “Olday Inn.” It was known for cheap rooms in an expensive city.

Stephanie and Chill pulled up about the same time and we met next to my car.

Neither of them wore completely civilian clothes. Tactical pants and polo shirts covering the guns on their hips would fool most of the public, but criminals, street people, and other cops could always spot a plainclothes cop.

Lorena Perez had had to sit this deal out. She was on a ten-day leave while the shooting on the ship was investigated, standard practice in most police agencies. I’d called her earlier in the day, and I could tell she wanted to be out here with us. I would’ve liked to have her. She’d proven how tough and tactically sound she was last night.

I remembered my first shooting. Shit, I still dreamed about it.

I’d pulled over a shitty, beat-up Dodge Charger for running a stop sign. That kind of stop, it’s simple: You give a lecture and let ’em go, unless they have attitude. For attitude, you might give the guy a ticket, although it’s not like anyone ever pays ’em. There’s a competition in parts of Miami to see how many tickets a single person can rack up. (The current record, sixty-one, is held by a lawn-service worker in Allapattah.)

As I approached the Charger, I noticed how dark the windows were tinted. I couldn’t see a thing in there. Before the alarm traveled to my brain, someone poked a TEC-9 out of a cracked-open window.

You’ve heard of an Oh, shit moment? I literally said, “Oh, shit,” as I fell back, drawing my service weapon as I went down. I don’t know how many times the asshole in the car fired. I’m not even sure how many times I fired. I just pulled the trigger on my way to the ground. Forensics later found three slugs in a parked car and one in a tree behind me.

The car squealed away, but three hours later, a twenty-two-year-old convicted carjacker showed up at Jackson Memorial with a bullet deep in his shoulder and a wounded left ear. The surgeon later told me it was almost a perfect circle in his lobe, like the wide-gauge ear-piercings kids have. The surgeon was amused. He’d seen a lot of bullet wounds, but this was the most entertaining.

Good for him, but personally, I’ve never found bullet wounds or gunfights entertaining.

I was on leave for only three days before I was cleared of the shooting, but it left me shaky. For almost six months after that, I was nervous whenever I approached a car. It didn’t help when the shooter pleaded guilty and got only a year in the county jail. There are always side effects to a shooting for a cop. And the effects are cumulative.

I hoped Lorena snapped back quickly. Like any nice Cuban girl born in Miami, she had plenty of family around her. The same family that had begged her not to go into police work in the first place. I once met her father, a dermatologist who lived in Weston. He didn’t seem like he would ever give up trying to convince his daughter that it wasn’t too late for her to become an accountant.

I briefed Chill and Steph about finding Magda, now safe at the station with my friend Tosha watching her, and told them that Miami Police had located all the other people from the container.

Chill said, “What now?”

“We can make a case against the traffickers from Amsterdam, but it’s the Russians I want to tie up in this mess. No way we can let them skate,” I said.

“Can’t let that prick Rostoff get away with shit like this.”