Beyond Suspicion

35

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Katrina Padron had blood on her hands. It was all in a day’s work. The vial had leaked in her hand. One of the idiots at the mobile unit had failed to seal it properly, something that occurred far too often in the shipment of product from the source to the distribution warehouse. Mishaps were inevitable when dealing with untrained workers. What else could she expect? A month earlier the crew had been operating a video rental shop, next month they might be hawking gemstones. For now, it was human blood. Diseased blood. Lots of it.

Thank God for latex gloves.

Katrina was in the back of the warehouse, scrubbing her hands with a strong soap and disinfectant, when her assistant emerged from the walk-in refrigerator. He was dressed in a fur-lined winter coat and carrying a box large enough to hold a dozen vials packed in dry ice and wrapped in plastic bubble wrap.

“Where’s this one going again?” he asked.

“Sydney, Australia.”

He grabbed a pen and an international packing slip. “I saw a travel show about Sydney on the TV a while back. Isn’t that where England used to send its worst prisoners?”

“A long time ago.”

“So that means everybody down there descended from some guy who was in jail.”

“Not everyone.”

“Still, prison is prison. You’d think they’d have enough AIDS-infected blood already. What do they need us for?”

Katrina just rolled her eyes. Morons, I work with. Total morons.

He sealed up the box with extra tape and attached the shipping label. “All set. One Australian football ready for drop-kick shipment,” he said as he went through the pretend motion.

“Don’t even think about it.”

“What do you think, I’m stupid or something?” He removed his coat, hung it on the hook beside the big refrigerator door, and started for the exit.

“Hey, genius,” said Katrina. “Aren’t you forgetting something?”

He turned, then groaned at the sight of the unfinished paperwork in her hand. “Aw, come on. I’ve been in and out of that refrigerator for three hours. Can’t you at least do the invoicing for me, babe?”

“Only if you stop calling me babe.”

He winked and smiled in a way that was enough to make her nauseous. “You got it, sweets.”

She let him and his remarks go. It was easier that way. She wasn’t planning on working this job forever, and if she wasted her time trying to get others to do their fair share she’d never get home at night. The paperwork wasn’t really all that time-consuming anyway. One genuine invoice for a legitimate purchase and sale of diseased blood, four phony ones to fictitious customers for extremely expensive inventory that never existed. Bio-Research, Inc., had just enough employees, just enough inventory, and just enough sales to look like a real company that supplied real specimens for use in medical research. It was anything but real.

Most amazing of all, the blood business was a huge step up from her first job.

A dozen years earlier she’d come to Miami from Cuba by way of the Czech Republic, having spent four long years in Prague under one of Fidel Castro’s most appalling and least known work programs. At age seventeen, she was one of eighty thousand young Cuban men and women sent to Eastern Bloc countries to work for paltry wages. The host countries got cheap labor for jobs that natives didn’t want, and Castro got cash. Katrina had been lured across the ocean by the prospect of exploring a country outside her depressed homeland. Once there, she’d ended up seeing little more than the inside of a sweatshop and the two-bedroom apartment she shared with seven roommates. Not even the wages were as promised, which only galvanized her determination never to return home to Cuba. In time, her sole mission devolved into nothing more than getting out of Prague alive.

At times even that had seemed too lofty a goal.

“Katrina?”

She looked up from her paperwork to see her boss standing in the doorway. Vladimir was strictly a front-office guy. He didn’t usually spend any time in the warehouse. Especially since they’d gotten into the dirty-blood business.

“Yes, sir?”

He came toward her, stepping carefully around the boxes scattered about the concrete floor. Under his arm was the glossy red folder that held the latest slick marketing brochure for Viatical Solutions, Inc., which told her that he’d come to see her about his other business. The two companies shared office space.

“I just got off the phone with some guy who says you referred him to me.”

“Says I referred him?”

“Big, deep voice. Sounds like a burly old football player. Says he wants to meet and talk about a huge book of viatical business for us.”

“What’s his name?”

“Theo. Theo Knight. You know him?”

Katrina instantly recognized the name but forced herself to show no reaction. “I do.”

“I told him I’d meet him at the Brown Bear for dinner. He pretty much insisted you come along. Can you join us?”

She put the blood invoices aside, struggling to keep her own blood from boiling. “Sure. I’d love to chat with my ol’ pal Theo.”