Black Market

“Excuse me. You must be mistaking me for somebody who gives a shit. Why don't you please sit down.” Carroll spoke without getting up from his cluttered work desk.

“Why? Who do you think you are?”

“I said sit down, Marqueza. I ask the questions here, not you.”

Arch Carroll leaned back in his chair and studied Isabella Marqueza. The woman had shoulder-length gleaming black hair. Her lips were full and painted very red. There was an arrogant tilt to her chin. Her hair, her clothes, even her skin looked expensive and cosmopolitan. She had on tight gray velvet riding pants, a silk shirt, cowboy boots, a half-length fur jacket. Terrorist chic, Carroll thought.

“You dress like a very wealthy Che Guevara.” He finally smiled.

“I don't appreciate your attempt of humor, senhor.”

“No, well, join the crowd.” His smile broadened. “I don't appreciate your attempts at mass murder.”

Carroll already knew this striking woman by reputation, at least. Isabella Marqueza was an internationally renowned journalist and newsmagazine photographer. She was the daughter of a wealthy man who owned tire factories in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Though it couldn't be legally proved, Isabella Marqueza had sanctioned at least four American deaths in the past twelve months.

She was responsible, Carroll knew, for the disappearance, then the cold-blooded, heartless murders of a Shell Oil executive and his family. The American businessman, his wife, and their two small girls had vanished that past June in Rio. Their pitiful, mutilated bodies had been found in a sewer ditch inside the favelas. Isabella Marqueza reportedly worked for the GRU through Francois Monserrat. According to rumors, she had also been Monserrat's lover. A classic spider woman.

She tossed Carroll a cold, indignant look. Her dark, sullen eyes smoldered as she stared him down in practiced silence.

Arch Carroll shook his head wearily. He set aside the steaming coffee container. The impression he got from Isabella was that of a tempest about to unleash its force. He watched as she leaned forward and thumped her hands on the desk-the fiery light in her dark eyes was really something.

“I want to see my lawyer! Right now! I want my lawyer! You get my lawyer. Now, senhor!”

“Nobody even knows you're here.” Carroll spoke in a purposely soft, polite voice. Whatever she did, however she acted-he would do the exact opposite, he'd decided. Step one of his interrogation technique.

He said nothing further for the first uncomfortable moments. He'd learned his interrogation technique from the very best-Walter Trentkamp.

Carroll knew that two of his DIA agents had illegally intercepted Isabella Marqueza as she'd walked down East Seventieth Street after leaving her Upper East Side apartment that morning. She'd screamed out, struggled, and fought as they'd grabbed her off the street. “Murder! Somebody please help me!”

Half a dozen East Side New Yorkers, with the anesthetized look of people observing a distant event that interested but didn't particularly involve them, had watched the terrifying scene. One of them had finally yelled as Isabella Marqueza was dragged, fighting and sobbing, into a waiting station wagon. The rest did nothing to help.

“You people kidnap me off the street,” Isabella Marqueza complained angrily. Her red mouth pouted, part of her routine interrogation act.

“Let me confess to you. Let me be honest, and kind of frank,” Carroll said, still going gently. “In the last few years I've had to kidnap a few people like yourself. Call it the new justice. Call it anything you like. Kidnapping's lost most of its glitter for me.”

The louder Isabella Marqueza got, the softer Carroll's speaking voice became. “I kind of like the idea of being a kidnapper. I kidnap terrorists. It's got a nice ring to it, you know? Don't you think?”

“I demand to see my lawyer! Goddamn you! My lawyer is Daniel Curzon. You know that name?”

Arch Carroll nodded and shrugged. Daniel Curzon worked for both the PLO and Castro's Cubans in New York.

“Daniel Curzon's a piece of sorry shit. I don't want to hear his name again. I'm serious about that.”

Carroll eyed a manila package on his littered desk, a plain-looking folder wrapped in brown string. Inside was his moral justification to do whatever he needed to do right now.

Inside the envelope were a dozen or so black-and-white and color 35-mm photographs of the Shell Oil executive, Jason Miller, and his family, formerly of Rio, all of whom had been murdered. There were also grainy photographs of an American couple who had disappeared in Jamaica, pictures of a Unilever accountant from Colombia, and a man named Jordan who had disappeared last spring. Isabella Marqueza was suspected of murdering all eight individuals.

Carroll continued softly. “Anyway, my name's Arch Carroll. Born right here in New York City. Local boy makes good… Son of a cop who was the son of a cop. Not a lot of imagination at work in our family, I'll admit. Just your basic poor working slobs.”

Carroll paused briefly and lit up the stub of a cigarette Crusader Rabbit style. “My job is to locate terrorists who threaten the security of the United States. Then, if they're not too strongly politically co

Carroll slowly untied the string bow on the manila envelope. Then he slid out the handful of photographs. Casually he passed them to Isabella Marqueza. The pictures were the most obscene pornography he'd ever seen. Still, he remained calm.

“Jason Miller's body. Jason Miller was an engineer for Shell Oil. He was also a financial investigator for the State Department, as you and your people in São Paulo know. A fairly nice man, I understand… Information gatherer for State, I'll admit. Basically harmless, though. Another poor working slob.”

Carroll made soft clicking noises with his tongue. His eyes briefly met those of Isabella Marqueza.

She was quiet suddenly. His putting-green voice was throwing her off. She obviously hadn't expected to encounter the deck of photographs, either.

“Miller's wife, Judy, here. Alive in this photo. Kind of a nice midwestern smile… Two little girls. Their bodies, that is. I have two little girls myself. Two girls, two boys. How could anybody kill little kids, huh?”

Carroll smiled again. He cleared his throat. He needed a beer-a beer and a stiff shot of Irish would go real good right now. He studied Isabella Marqueza a moment. He had an urge to get up from his desk and whack her. Instead he kept speaking gently.

“In July of last year, you ordered and then participated in the premeditated murders, the political assassination, of all four Millers.”

Isabella Marqueza instantly shot up from her seat. “I did nothing of the sort! You prove what you say! No! I did not kill anybody. Never. I don't kill children!”

“Bullshit. That's the end of our friendly discussion. Who the fuck do you think you're kidding?”

With that, Arch Carroll slapped the wrinkled portfolio shut and jammed it back in his lopsided desk drawer. He looked up at Isabella Marqueza again.

“Nobody knows you're here! Do you have that memorized? Nobody's going to know what happened to you after today. That's the truth. Just like the Miller family down in Brazil.”

“You're full of shit Carroll-”

“Yeah? Try me. Push me a little and find out for sure.”

“My lawyer, I want to see my lawyer-”

“Never heard of him-”

“I told you his name, Curzon-”

“Did you? I don't remember-”

Isabella Marqueza sighed. She stared at Carroll in silence, her expression one of exquisitely cold hatred. She folded her arms, then sat down again. She crossed and uncrossed her long legs and lit a cigarette.