Time of Death

57

When Ren got back to the office, there was an email waiting for her: the legal attaché in Prague asking her to call urgently. She Googled the time zone — it was eight a.m. The leegat answered the phone right away. Ren listened and took notes. She thanked him and put down the phone. She let her head fall to the desk and said a prayer. She didn’t know if Daryl Stroud would want to be disturbed at three in the morning, but she didn’t care.

When he answered, she could hear the sound of his bedclothes brushing against the receiver.

‘Daryl, it’s Ren. I just got a call from Prague. This could be it.’ She waited for it to register.

‘Ren? OK…go ahead.’

‘They’ve got a Jakub Kral, now sixty-one years old, convicted pedophile who was released from a Czech prison in 1978, which means he was a free man in 1981, the year Louis Parry disappeared. He worked as a roadie — if that’s the word — for the orchestra. Kral was back inside again from ’82 to ’87 and ’89 to ’93. He’s been a free man since then, but as of two hours ago is sitting in a cell in Prague awaiting questioning.’

Ren could hear Daryl readjust his position in the bed. ‘Jesus, Ren. Let’s hope it’s him.’

‘And let’s hope he remembers Louis Parry,’ said Ren.

‘Yes.’

‘I’m sorry for calling so late,’ she said.

‘Don’t worry about it. I know how much it means.’

Ren put down the phone. She expected that the Czech authorities were currently listening to the sound of silence. What had Kral to gain by admitting to crimes he had gotten away with almost thirty years earlier? He would claim he was being victimized by the police, he would talk about his human rights, the fact that he was a changed man, the fact that he was in his sixties now, an old, broken man. The usual bullshit.

Ren let out a deep breath. Please, God. Please let him be the one. And please let him own up to that.

The next morning, an update came in on the Sarvas case. Gary was about to make the call, but Ren told him no. ‘I’ll do it,’ she said. ‘Continuity of care, remember?’

Ren went straight to her desk and dialed the number. Catherine Sarvas answered on the first ring.

‘Catherine, they’ve found Michael,’ said Ren. ‘And I’m afraid the news is not good. He passed away yesterday.’

Catherine let out a terrible moan. ‘What happened to him?’

‘He was in Tijuana. He was found by two young boys…he had collapsed on the street. He had a bacterial infection from a contaminated needle.’

‘Needle?’ said Catherine.

‘I’m afraid so,’ said Ren. ‘That’s what the cartels do. Get people hooked on drugs.’

Through her sobs, Catherine’s voice turned to ice. ‘Greg did this. My husband did all this.’

Ren left Catherine Sarvas to her grief. She put the phone down gently and rested her head on the desk. After a minute, she looked up.

‘Imagine your son is missing eight months and you hear that he died,’ she said. ‘But that it happened the day before — you don’t hear he was killed as soon as he was abducted or four months later. You are told, “Your son died yesterday.” He would feel within reach. It would have to make you feel like you could have done something or that you could still do something. That would fuck with my head. And also that it was your husband’s fault.’

‘Catherine Sarvas, right?’ said Cliff.

‘But how could you not know what your husband is doing?’ said Ren. ‘Wouldn’t you see papers lying around? Didn’t he talk about his work? Wouldn’t you know? I mean, Gregory Sarvas got up in the morning, ate breakfast with his wife and sons, drove them to school, came home, went downstairs to his home office — hello? — and worked as an accountant and lawyer for a top Mexican cartel. How could you be so out of touch with your husband’s job?’

‘I’d say she knew,’ said Colin.

‘But she didn’t,’ said Ren. ‘She had no idea. You should have seen her face. It was awful. Hey — I’m just flying in here from Denver to tell you that your husband was a liar, oh, and he clearly didn’t give a shit about you or your kids and whoops, he sucked you all into one of the most dangerous situations on the planet-’

Colin looked up. ‘Ren, stop trying to put yourself in other people’s positions: that whole “God, if it was me, I’d…” thing. It’s not you, it’s never you, and you don’t know how you’d react until you’re in a situation.’

‘Woo,’ said Ren. ‘No, I don’t.’

‘So…Gregory Sarvas was lying about one part of his life. It sounds like he was a good husband to this woman, right? She loved him, right?’

‘Yes, but how could she not be-’

‘Maybe that’s all that mattered to her,’ said Colin. ‘That she had a husband who loved her and was good to her. Not every woman is so lucky.’

Ren shook her head slowly. ‘Oh my God. Have you ever had a conversation with a woman that didn’t begin and end with “Nice rack”?’

Colin said nothing.

‘You have no clue,’ said Ren. ‘Please — stay away from women.’ She called out. ‘Run, Naomi, run. Save yourself!’

‘El Coyote Panzón,’ said Cliff, drumming his fingers on the table.

‘Funny, isn’t it?’ said Ren. ‘Gregory Sarvas wasn’t who his wife and children thought he was. He wasn’t who we thought he was. He didn’t even work as a coyote. He was good, very good.’ She paused. ‘He was fat, though. The big guy with the gray hair and the big beard that reminded someone somewhere of a coyote.’

‘I don’t get how it worked,’ said Robbie. ‘Sarvas was lawyer for the Puente cartel.’

‘Yes,’ said Ren, ‘He knew everything inside out, how the business worked, who the players were, blah blah blah. So he could also see the vast amounts of money coming through. He’s obviously being paid a small fortune to do this job, but it’s nothing compared to what he could be making. He lines up Domenica Val Pando, who’s been sniffing around; he’s seen what she’s done before, but knowing her mistakes he knows how she can avoid making them again. He recruited Domenica Val Pando, not the other way around.

‘But at the same time, Sarvas had hooked up with the Mexican authorities, planning to get safely out the back door of the Puentes — under their protection. The authorities think Sarvas is on their side, but his only interest is in dismantling the cartel. Because waiting in the wings is his very own operation with Domenica Val Pando, who will keep it running in his absence. He does the front-of-house good-guy shit.

‘The problem with these cartels is that, as soon as the authorities chop off one head, a new head grows back — an uglier one. The rest of the drones scuttle off into the darkness, then come out again and regroup. They may have learned some lessons, they may not, but no matter what, things will have to change and the cops are going to have to start looking at them again from scratch. I mean, what else can they do, but arrest and jail the kingpins? It’s just that there are queenpins and jackpins and straightpins…’

‘So,’ said Robbie, ‘Sarvas is getting out of one cartel knowing exactly how it operates. He quietly sets up his own organization to rival it and has all the inside information he could possibly need to beat them-’

‘Yup,’ said Ren. ‘I mean, he may have decided that would be enough, that that would be all he needed to trump them. But I’d say when things got really intense down there over the past few years, he went for overkill — trying to bring the Puente cartel down and get rid of the competition before he even started trading, selling them out and setting himself up as the good guy to the authorities.’

‘What was he thinking?’ said Colin.

‘That he was invincible, that he was smarter than any of them,’ said Ren.

‘Why would Domenica want to play second fiddle to Gregory Sarvas?’ said Colin. ‘I mean, whatever about agreeing to it — realistically, could she follow through?’

‘He was a mine of information,’ said Ren. ‘He effectively had eleven years on her — so much had changed while she’d been gone. He knew how everything worked along the border. And he had a list of the players living in the pockets of the kingpins.’

Colin shook his head. ‘He was crazy to think he could get away with that.’

‘These people don’t live in the real world, or at best they’ve one foot in it. They’re permanently on the edge, they just push themselves further and further until there’s nowhere else to go.’

Gary walked into the bullpen. ‘The lab just got in touch. The reason Safe Streets got that call to that warehouse crime scene was because someone knew the victim was on our Fifty Most Wanted — DNA matched our number four — Javier Luis.’

Ren’s heart started to pound.