The Last Witness

VIII
[ONE]

Kensington, Philadelphia

Monday, November 17, 3:21 P.M.

Driving back into Philadelphia, Ricky Ramirez knew he was on extremely shaky ground with Dmitri Gurnov.

Gurnov was the angriest he had ever been with him after he allowed Krystal Gonzalez to get her hands on the ledgers and then screwed up the chance to get them back. He shook his head, remembering what Dmitri had said.

“There’s gonna be hell to pay for this. Mr. Antonov does not like surprises.”

And now, driving back from Atlantic City when Gurnov thought Ramirez was headed to Miami would probably put him over the top.

But not if I get this woman, get the books.

Everything, it will be good again.

Especially since he called and said he hadn’t found her at none of those places.

Hector, he will know what to do.

Ricky was on his third NRG! drink in as many hours, sucking down the small cans of caffeine and sugar water to battle his hangover and exhaustion. It was starting to make him even more anxious.

It had been a miserable trip to the Jersey Shore. The drive had begun early that morning, after he had loaded into the Mazda minivan four girls who had spent the last week working out of the Players Corner Lounge. It was snowing, and the road conditions were poor, making rush hour traffic worse than usual on the way out.

It had taken more than two hours to reach Atlantic City. At Tiki Bob’s Surf Shack-which was eight blocks inland from the Lucky Stars Casino on the boardwalk and set up similar to Players Corner Lounge, with strippers downstairs and two floors of beds above-the exchange of the four in the minivan for the three girls who had worked the week at Tiki Bob’s had taken far longer than Ricky would have preferred.

Then, on the way back on the Atlantic City Expressway, just past the exit for Egg Harbor, New Jersey, a bus had been in the middle of at least a ten-car pileup.

Worse, he had been stuck listening to the girls whine.

“I still don’t get why we aren’t hitting Florida next, Ricky,” Janice, a twenty-year-old pasty-skinned brunette, had said from the backseat.

His chunky, pockmarked face filled the rearview mirror as he met her eyes.

“I told you it is now next week!” he snapped. “I had something come up!”

“But it’s, like, warm there,” Janice went on. “And I’m so, like, sick of this snow.”

“And it will still be warm there next week,” he said impatiently.

“I’m tired of being cold, too, Ricky,” Shanika, a nineteen-year-old who had pale, freckled skin and her hair dyed ruby red, chimed in.

Jasmine, the bleached blonde in her mid-twenties sitting beside him, joined in, “Why are we missin’-”

“Will you all just fuckin’ shut up?” Ramirez said.

Jasmine turned toward him. “But-”

He raised his right hand to backslap her, then realized they were in heavy stop-and-go traffic and quickly lowered it.

“Shut up!” he said. “Now!”

The girls finally got the message and, after leaning their heads against the windows, slept the rest of the trip to Fishtown.

It had taken more than three hours to cover the sixty miles. He did not want to think how long driving south would have taken.

And now I got to change the ads on that escort website. Take the ones off the Miami pages, put them up on the Philly ones.

Then change it all back next week?

Maybe just change the dates on the Miami ones, and leave them up?

Damn! Keepin’ these putas moving around is too much work!

At Players Corner Lounge, it had taken the better part of an hour to get the girls, sleepy and dragging their feet, out of the minivan and settled in the rooms above the dive bar. Then Ramirez hopped back in the minivan and headed up Frankford Avenue.

Near the circular building that was Horatio B. Hackett Elementary School, he turned onto Trenton Avenue and followed it three blocks, looking in his mirror for anyone following him, as Dmitri had taught him. He made a right turn. At the second intersection he made a left onto Tulip Street, and again checked the mirror as he drove. After three blocks he made a right onto Sergeant, found the first open spot along the curb, and parked.

Ramirez got out and pulled his coat closed against the cold. The icy breeze carried with it a sharp industrial smell. The metallic burning odor-which he guessed came from the auto salvage yard just across Lehigh Avenue, or maybe from the old distillery down the street-irritated his nostrils.

A couple hits of that blackberry brandy they make would be good to cut this damn cold, he thought, then rubbed his nose. And this smell.

He turned back a block-crossing the street with the flophouse that he realized he had not visited in a couple of months-then quickly went over two more blocks. As he walked, he hit some slippery spots on the sidewalk, recovered before actually falling, and wished he could have parked closer. But Dmitri had said to always park at least three blocks away from the grow house and approach it on foot so that he would not draw any extra attention to it. The worst thing he could do was park right out front. Cars coming and going wasn’t good, Dmitri said.

Almost to the next intersection, he saw across the street three men in their thirties sitting on the stoop of a boarded-up row house. They were all brown-skinned and gaunt and looked like they hadn’t had a bath in a long time. The tallest one, with a scraggly beard and hair matted in dreadlocks under a dirty, multicolored knitted cap, had to his lips what at first glance appeared to be a cigarette. But then Ramirez recognized it, and caught in the air the unmistakable pungent smell of marijuana.

The three, who Ramirez decided had to be from one of the nearby flophouses, did not pay him any attention as he passed.

That was not the case with the pair he encountered next.

On the opposite corner, Ramirez came up on two Hispanic teenagers-they looked maybe sixteen and were probably Puerto Rican-with a battered gray Yamaha FZ1 motorcycle on its stand between them. They wore bulky dark coats, their hands stuffed in the deep pockets, and had black stocking caps pulled down low on their heads. They talked to each other as their eyes darted between the three brown-skinned men sharing the joint and the approaching Ramirez.

The teenagers didn’t recognize Ramirez, nor he them. But he knew what they were.

Some of Hector’s halcones.

And he knew that the “hawks” had more than their hands in their coat pockets. Lookouts always carried a disposable cell phone, of course, and often a pistol.

Ramirez turned the corner, and midway down the street he crossed over. He went up to the door of the last of the five rough-looking row houses on the block. The first two houses, tagged with graffiti, had realtor signs nailed to their doors that read FOR SALE-BANK FORECLOSURE. There was chain-link fencing, eight feet high, vine-covered and topped with coils of razor wire, blocking off the side and rear yards.

Just as Ramirez knocked twice on the door, wondering if there was an eyeball on the other side of the dirty peephole, he heard dead bolt locks turning.

The door swung inward. The row house interior was dark, but just beyond the door-and behind a wall of thick, clear plastic sheeting that hung from ceiling to floor-Ramirez could make out two human forms standing midway in the room. They were aiming the Kalashnikovs he’d brought at him.

“Get inside, Ricky!” the one on the left gently urged in Spanish, lowering the AK-47 he’d converted to fully automatic.

Ricky, recognizing Hector Ramirez’s voice, went through the door. It was immediately closed behind him and the dead bolts thrown. An overhead lightbulb came on, and Ricky saw the short Hispanic male who had locked the door and hit the switch. He now was pulling the sheeting from the wall. He gestured for Ricky to go through.

There was another motorcycle, a big Kawasaki, by the door. Duct tape held more of the clear plastic sheeting over the windows, sealing them. Ricky crossed the big front room of the house. It was mostly empty except for a ratty sofa, a wooden box that served as a coffee table, and a big flat-screen TV mounted on a wall.

“Hola, mi amigo,” Hector said, his tone friendly.

Just hearing that caused Ricky to start feeling a little better. They had developed a strong relationship-maybe ’cause of our Latin thing, and being from the islands-one far better than what Ricky and Dmitri had. Hector’s calm demeanor helped ground him, balancing out Ricky’s quick temper and his tendency to be reckless.

Hector was a swarthy forty-year-old whose hardscrabble life had included spending his early thirties in a Cuban jail. After growing up on a tobacco farm in central Cuba, he had made his way to Havana. He worked various jobs in the restaurants and bars, then wound up running hookers to the tourists out of a Havana apartment building. And got busted. He discovered that his primary crime against the socialist motherland wasn’t pimping-which, unlike the prostitution, was illegal-it was his failure to pay off the correct policia with U.S. dollars or free putas or both.

In jail he had heard about the smugglers who, for a fee that he could work off, would get him to Florida. When released, he had wasted no time seeking them out. Once in the States, and owing ten grand for his passage aboard the fast boat, he had his horticulture skills put to the test. The smugglers were Cuban exiles and had grow houses near Miami. Hector found cultivating marijuana indoors much easier than hoeing rows of tobacco under the Cuban sun. He also found himself almost back behind bars-someone had tipped off the house to the DEA. His handlers sent him to Philadelphia, subtracting a little from his bill for transporting a kilogram each of black tar heroin and cocaine.

Ricky Ramirez, after getting a call from Dmitri Gurnov, had taken delivery. When he heard Hector’s story-and Hector convinced him that running a grow house would be easy money-Ricky set him up in the rented row houses in Kensington. Ricky had lied to Dmitri that that money-which had included what he advanced Hector to satisfy his debt in Little Havana-was a loan. It really was Ricky using Dmitri’s money. Hector now worked for him.

Ricky knew he’d luckily gotten away with all that. So far.

“I’m glad that you are here, Jefe,” Hector said, patting Ricky on the back. “It’s been months. I have something to show you.”

Ricky motioned in the direction of the teenagers outside.

“Your halcones look about ready to shoot someone,” he said.

Hector laughed. “They all want to think they’re sicarios. But those two, Tito and Juan, they are only couriers. One drives and the other rides to deliver the pot.”

“Courier, assassin,” Ricky said, “only difference is a shooting.”

Hector laughed again.

“Yes, I guess that is true, Ricky. Now come with me. . ”