The Kill Room

When you move…

As they made their way downtown she asked, “Did you hear what they talked about, Mr. Moreno and Lydia?”

“Yes, yes. But it wasn’t what I thought it would be, about her job, so to speak.”

Voluptuous…

“He talked much about politics. Lecturing in a way. Lydia, she was polite and asked questions but they were the questions you ask at a wedding or funeral when you’re a stranger. Questions you don’t care about the answers to. Small talk.”

Sachs persisted. “Tell me what he said.”

“Well, I remember he was angry with America. This I found troubling, offensive really. Perhaps he thought he could say these things in front of me because of my accent and I am of Middle Eastern descent. As if we had something in common. Now, I cried when the Trade Towers came down. I lost clients that day, who were my friends too. I love this country as a brother. Sometimes you are angry at your brother. Do you have?”

He sped around a bus and two taxis.

“No, I’m an only child.” Trying to be patient.

“Well, at times you are angry with your brother but then you make up and all is well. That makes your love real. Because after all you’re joined by blood, forever. But Mr. Moreno wasn’t willing to forgive the country for what it had done to him.”

“Done to him?”

“Yes, do you know that story?”

“No,” Sachs said, turning toward him. “Please tell me.”

CHAPTER 18

In all endeavors mistakes happen.

You can’t let them affect you emotionally.

You try to whip cream without chilling the bowl and beaters and you’re going to end up with butter.

You and the tech department datamine the name of a client’s regular driver at a limo company and it turns out he was sick the one  day you need to ask him about. And even removing a few careful strips of flesh couldn’t get the man lying in front of you to give up the substitute’s name. Which meant that he didn’t know.

Silverskin…

Jacob Swa

Everything.

Only then do you assemble, cook and finish.

He now cleaned up quickly in Vlad Nikolov’s house, reflecting that the hour wasn’t a complete waste of time – refining your skills never is. Besides, Nikolov might have known something helpful to the police (though as it turned out, he hadn’t). Since he had people like that ADA Nance Laurel and the whistleblower to take care of, he wanted to keep Vlad Nikolov’s corpse a secret for as long as possible. He wrapped the oozing body in a dozen towels and then in garbage bags, taping them shut. He dragged the corpse to the basement, thud thud thud  on the stairs, and eased it into a supply room. The odor wouldn’t begin to escape for a week or so.

He then used the man’s mobile and called Elite Limousines, reporting in hesitant English with a functional Slavic accent that he was Vlad Nikolov’s cousin. The driver had learned of a death in the family, back in the old country (he didn’t mention Moscow or Kiev or Tbilisi, since he didn’t know). Vlad was taking several weeks off. The receptionist protested – only about scheduling, not that the story seemed incredible – but he’d hung up.

Swa

As he was about to leave, he received an encrypted email. Well, it seemed that NIOS had learned some very interesting information. The whistleblower was still unknown, though Metzger had people looking into that. However, the tech department had discovered some names of other people involved in the case, in addition to Ms. Nance Laurel, the prosecutor. The lead investigators were two individuals – an NYPD detective named Amelia Sachs and a consultant, someone with the curious name Lincoln Rhyme.

It was time for some more digging and datamining, Swa

CHAPTER 19

“Do you know about panama?” Tash Farada asked Sachs, in the passenger seat of the Town Car. He was animated and seemed to enjoy speeding through traffic as they headed toward Wall Street.

She said, “The canal. Some invasion or something down there. A while ago.”

The driver laughed and accelerated hard to avoid a slow moving lane of traffic on the FDR. “Some ‘invasion or something.’ Yes, yes. I read history a great deal. I enjoy it. In the eighties Panama had a regime change. A revolution. Just like our country.”

“Yes, Iran. In ’seventy nine, wasn’t it?”

He glanced at her with a frown.

“Persia, I mean,” she corrected.

“No, I’m speaking of seventeen seventy six. I’m American.”

Oh. Our  country.

“Sorry.”

A wrinkle of brow but a forgiving one. “Now, Panama. Noriega used to be an ally of America. Fighting the Communist evil. Helping the CIA and the DEA wage war on the scourge of drugs…Of course, he was also helping the cartel heads wage war on the scourge of the CIA and the DEA. That game caught up with him and in nineteen eighty nine the U.S. had had enough. We invaded. The problem was that Panama was a dirty little war. You’ve read George Orwell?”

“No.” Sachs might have, long ago, but she never bluffed or tried to impress with knowledge she didn’t have command of.

“In Animal Farm , Orwell wrote, ‘All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.’ Well, all wars are bad. But some wars are more bad than others. The head of Panama was corrupt, his underlings were corrupt. They were dangerous men and oppressed the people. But the invasion was very hard too. Very violent. Roberto Moreno was living there, in the capital, with his mother and father.”

Sachs recalled her conversation with Fred Dellray, who’d told them that Robert Moreno also went by Roberto. She wondered if he’d legally changed it or just used the Latino version as a pseudonym.

“Now, he was a young teenager. That day in the car he told Lydia, his voluptuous friend, that he didn’t have the happiest home life, his father traveling, his mother had sadness problems. She was not much there for him.”

Sachs remembered too the father’s oil company job, the demanding hours, and the woman’s eventual suicide.

“The boy, it seemed, made friends with a family living in Panama City. Roberto and the two brothers became close. Enrico and José, I think were their names. About his age, to hear him tell it.”

Tash Farada’s voice faded.

Sachs could see where the narrative was headed.

“The brothers were killed in the invasion?”

“One was – Roberto’s best friend. He doesn’t know who actually fired the shots but he blames the Americans. He said the government changed the rules. They didn’t care about people or freedom, like they said. They were happy to support Noriega and tolerate the drugs until he grew unstable and they were worried the canal would close and the oil tankers could not get through. That’s when they invaded.” A whisper now. “Mr. Moreno found his friend’s body. He still had nightmares about it, he told the woman Lydia.”

Although the evidence might point to Moreno’s being less than a saint, contrary to what Nance Laurel would have liked, Sachs couldn’t help but be moved by the sad story. She wondered if Laurel would have been. Doubted it.