Chasing the Dragon Page 8

  “It wasn’t supposed to happen the way it did,” she offered with hooded eyes.

  “It never is, is it? Your actions,” he said, pointing a finger so close to her face, he could almost touch her forehead, “have caused bloodshed and chaos. Not only are three DEA agents dead, but five members of the Gangster Disciples are in jail right now awaiting trial for a crime they didn’t commit. If found guilty, they will more than likely get life in prison since your State of Chicago no longer allows the death penalty; but trust me, if it did, they’d be on death row faster than your head could spin. Not only that, there is blood running in the streets.”

  Her brows dipped and her lips parted. “What are you talking about?”

  “Your fucking cousin is gone, Tiffany. He flew the coop, leaving you holding the bag, and now that’s garnering attention. And oh, look! Now you’re gone, too … you’re marked for death from all angles. I don’t have to shoot you.” He shook his head. “You’ve already written your own death certificate.” After a moment or two, her expression showed it all; she knew he was telling the truth, and that reality was grim.

  “I’d like to strike a deal with you … if I can.” She swallowed, her large eyes glazing over once again.

  “What type of deal?”

  “You said you have connections still with the DEA and the FBI, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t they have some sort of witness protection? Like, maybe I can get that?”

  “Why in the hell would anyone protect you, Ms. McCall? I think you’ve lost valuable brain cells while in the deep freeze.” He grimaced.

  “No.” She shook her head, holding a sudden air of confidence. “I’m definitely in my right mind. I can help you find Gable. He’s the only one I care about. But, I can give you all sorts of information—names, connections, things that would take years, maybe even decades, for the DEA to discover on their own. All I ask in return is that this is kept quiet; that Gable isn’t killed, and that there’s no trial for me, no prison time. Witness protection and I’ll put it all in your hands.”

  His jaw tightened as he mulled over her words, thinking it all through.

  She’s meticulous. She definitely keeps notes … I’ve seen some. Hmmm, maybe there’s more. Things we could really use.

  After a few moments of contemplation, he came to a decision.

  “All right, here is what I can offer, Ms. McCall. I will get you up north and across the border as soon as this is over and I locate him. You staying here long term is not feasible, at least not right now.”

  “Wait? I’d have to leave the country?”

  “That’s what across the border means.”

  “But I can’t—”

  “That’s our deal. I can’t promise what will happen to Gable once I alert my team and they find him, but what I can do is ask that they not use extreme force to capture him. Undoubtedly, he’s armed, so if he tries to shoot them, they will take him down. I will give them instructions to help avoid an escalation, but that’s the best I can do.” She nodded in understanding. “As for you, you will start a new life and be in protective custody for a promised minimum of ten years, maximum of fifteen, contingent upon the capture of Gable Johnson, and the provision of valuable information about the Gangster Disciples’ narcotic and other illegal activities. At the bare minimum, this information should lead to the capture of at least five top tier drug dealers in the country. Think you can handle that?”

  “Definitely.”

  “Good. Now, tell me what you know.”

  “Gable isn’t in Chicago, that much I do know. He really did leave.”

  “I know he’s not in Chicago. He’s not in Michigan as he told others, either; I already cleared that. He’s not in Canada or New York. Do you think he left the country?”

  She shook her head. “No, my guess is he is either in Texas or California. He knows people there, people who can help him in a situation like this.”

  “What are these people’s names?”

  “In Texas, there are two suppliers he is cool with; they look out for one another. One is Francisco Guerra and the other, Roberto Fuentes.”

  “And California?”

  “Hector Martinez, Penny Akens, and Terrance Lost.”

  “Thee Terrance Lost? Cowboy?” He knew that name all too well. She nodded. “All right, now I want you to give me the complete run down of what happened that night you and Gable put your little plan into play.”

  Less than ten minutes later, she’d told her twisted tale. As she spoke, her tone was devoid of emotion, cold and callous. He hated her all the more for it. Not an inkling of a sign of remorse.

  “I didn’t shoot anyone,” she blurted at the end.

  “Where are the guns that were used?”

  “He tossed them in the Chicago river.”

  “Who told you about the deal between the agents and the Disciples?”

  She swallowed, looked away, then back into his eyes.

  “No one. I overheard some conversations. Gable began to take me around there, and I got in good with a few of them.”

  “Why did he start taking you?”

  “Because I said we needed to form a better alliance with them. They could be good runners in some of the areas I couldn’t get in. They already had a foothold but Gable and I had better suppliers and more connections.”

  “All right, so you were arranging to go into business. Then what?”

  “They started to speak freely around me after I provided them with some new, trustworthy associations of my own. They made more money because of that, and I helped another one open a liquor store. Because of that, they started to trust me. After I overheard them talking about meeting with John and another guy—they thought they were some rich billionaires from Germany I believe—I really paid close attention to what was being said.

  “I then let Gable know about the plan, telling him that the Disciples had a big deal with some heroin and cocaine about to go down, over a million dollars worth. It was as pure as you could get, premium. I wanted my hands on that. Pure profit, no middleman, out the door and settled. After doing a bit more research and watching for weeks, I spotted one of the agents coming and going in a nearby apartment building, and knew something wasn’t right.”

  “How’d you know?”

  “It was in the way he moved … his mannerisms. I don’t know.” She shrugged. “I can just pretty much spot a narc or police officer a mile away. I started going over to the other apartment building, full of Disciples too, and I’d just kind of listen and pay attention. My suspicions, as far as I was concerned, were confirmed. He was setting them up. While he was in the apartment one night, I took photos of his car, the license plate, the interior. I went back home and enlarged everything, looking at it, and saw a torn piece of paper with some writing on it, folded in half. When I zoomed up on that, I could make out some of it. Not enough to get his name, but to confirm he was an agent. When I ran the plates, I found they were registered to another car. I knew then that was part of his cover.”

  “You’re a real smart fuckin’ cookie, aren’t you?” He snarled down at her. “It was time to crumble. All that work … that time invested, knowing what to look for and how to do it. You’re like some snake slithering around searching for a warm rat to strangle. It’s by instinct, isn’t it?”

  “I suppose so…”

  “Did you ever find out who the agent was that you saw?”

  “It wasn’t John, your friend, but the guy in the backseat of the car when we did the heist.” Phoenix cracked his knuckles as he listened, taking it all in. “I didn’t tip off the Disciples though. I paid close attention to their many encounters from afar, never making eye contact when they were talking about it. Instead, I pretended like I was on the phone or distracted. The Disciples completely trusted this guy because they’d dealt with him for years. He said two of them would come and do the drop. I was surprised to see a third agent.”

  “What you accomplished took
more than just running a license plate with an illegal police software program. How did you find out DEA classified information? That is rather difficult to obtain.”

  “I studied for weeks, day and night … found out how these operations usually take place from a few sources and cross-compared them. I got classified papers from former takedowns, too.”

  “Yes, but from where?”

  “I paid hundreds of dollars from a merchant who specialized in these sorts of documents online.”

  “Deep web?”

  “Yes. I read about how you all store the drugs in your vehicles, how you handle transport, things like that. I knew I couldn’t do anything if the agents were in the middle of the deal. I had to find a way to stop them before they even arrived. So, during one of the agent’s visits—the same guy—I put a tracker on the outside of his car while he was inside the building in hopes that they’d used the same car that the Disciples were used to seeing. He did.”

  Phoenix took a deep breath and rubbed his forehead.

  This woman is fucking unbelievable…

  “Then what?” He got down on one knee and glared at her, not wishing to miss one tiny detail of the inner workings of the monster’s mind.

  “He’d done a practice run, which I read is common for you all, and I picked a spot that was as isolated as possible to put my plan in motion. No one was supposed to get killed, Phoenix. I never wanted that.”

  Phoenix rose to his feet. “Sit tight. I’m going to investigate your claims. If I come up empty handed and find out you’ve bullshitted me on any of this, I’m going to come back in here, no questions asked, and hand you right over to the FBI. Then you’ll serve a life sentence in prison, which is still too damn good for you. If you’re telling the truth, I will send my squad out for Gable and get you in protective custody, just as we agreed.”

  He walked away then, leaving her alone in the room and praying all the way she hadn’t just blown smoke up his ass. It would be a damn shame to waste someone so bright, so resilient, so vile, and so fucking magnificent…

  Her soul ached far more than her body ever had under his tormenting control…

  She’d ratted out the one person who’d always had her back, and this hurt her more than anything. She rested against the headrest of a platinum Lexus white leather car seat, pretending to be asleep as Phoenix drove her away into the darkness of the night. He’d gotten what he wanted; that was evident by the fact that her heart still pumped blood. She was still alive and no FBI agents were carting her away to prison. There was no denying the fact that the man had the trappings of a cold-hearted killer, much like Gable, only the government sanctioned him to do it, allowed him to be an assassin in broad daylight without so much as a pause. Regardless, she had no one to turn to; her entire world had been shifted off its axis, turned upside down and shaken to death. Regret set in; tears she’d never shed were now threatening to fall as her eyes moistened.

  She hadn’t liked looking at the picture of John. She didn’t like the way Phoenix Hale stared at her. Something about his gaze when she’d confessed her sins made her feel two inches tall. He had a way of causing her to drown in a pool of shame, and the foreign emotion felt devastating.

  He’s all I got. He’s going to turn me over to protective custody, but how can I trust anyone to keep their word? He made the agreement with me and no one else. I hate this man, and yet, until this is all over, I’d only feel safe with him and no one else. If word gets out about what I’ve done, it’s over. He was right.

  She’d be tossed into the streets of Chicago only to be mauled by the anxiety-ridden and anger-fueled mob she’d created with her actions, or worse yet, sent to prison where the same bitches would get word from their Disciple boyfriends and husbands to take her out. They’d plot her death, then execute her without so much as a forethought. She wasn’t afraid of doing time, but she was afraid of losing her mind. Her life.

  There was so much no one knew. People simply wouldn’t understand. But, specifics didn’t owe her a lifeline; in fact, they would probably fall on countless deaf ears and speed up her path into the line of danger. As things stood, she had something this man needed in a lockbox, hidden far, far away.

  I still have some control here. It’s not over till I say it’s over.

  “Where are we going?” she asked, trying to maintain her sanity.

  He tossed her a glance, hands at 10 and 2 on the leather-bound steering wheel, then looked back at the road.

  “Home.”

  Phoenix looked at his to-do list and checked off items one by one. He’d confirmed their airline tickets, booked their hotel for the evening, and made Tiffany’s private doctor appointment. It was protocol after an ordeal such as the one she endured. A complete physical would help ensure that any concerns or medical issues were found and addressed. He’d called his constituents, sent the information needed over to the appropriate parties, and even spoke to the President about a totally unrelated matter—the review of jail time laws in Arizona for minor marijuana charges, to be exact. A new report was coming out regarding incarceration of minorities who were found with weed on them, being treated much worse than their Caucasian counterparts. The evidence didn’t look good.

  Closed door meetings were held on more than just an occasion about such concerns. The NAACP and other civil rights organizations made their voices heard, and he was expected to say something, anything, regarding the matter. He had on many occasions, but it was demanded that he offer a filtered, watered down version although his written documents often showed a much grimmer truth.

  If those findings and educated opinions he possessed were brought to the public light, and if he were allowed to speak up, he imagined he’d find himself in a different sort of assembly altogether. Things were far more complicated that the public realized. There was no war on drugs; only small battles between concerned citizens and the dealers. The influx of drugs into the country could be cut in half overnight if that was the actual mission. The true war was far more complex and didn’t come coated in powdery residue or stuffed in suitcases smuggled in from Cuba.

  No, the truth was cloaked in green, in the faces of dead presidents, bits of paper that would never make their way to the states’ and country’s tax coffers. The true war was that of vigilant combat on organized, illegal profit with the government not seeing one red cent of it. Period. Greed was the root of all evil, and power the water and sun that kept it nourished.

  Phoenix pulled up to a strip mall and parked the Lexus. He’d make arrangements to have the old battleax picked up and shipped to Washington in the next couple of days. Opening the passenger’s side door, he let her out and they entered an establishment. They perused the aisles of a huge drugstore where he instructed her to get whatever snacks and beverages she wished while he stayed close by her side. Along the way, she selected various toiletries such as clear gel deodorant, chap stick, and a box of tampons. After he paid for the items, he ushered her to a nearby store within walking distance. They moved about, side by side, his hand gripping his gun in his jacket pocket, ready for action should she decide to have a change of heart, and get any strange ideas.

  “Let’s go down here.” A few storefronts lined the footway, shops with brick siding, including a beauty supply distributor. He escorted her along the uneven, sloped sidewalk, opened the door to the chime of a bell, and marshaled her inside. The tightly packed, long corridors were filled with shelves of lipstick displays, ethnic hair pomades, colorful nail polishes, and body oils. Some annoying song boomed from the speakers, a rap tune he hadn’t heard before. Along the walls sat hundreds of creepy mannequin heads, their drawn-on lips lifted in clownish grins, and each fitted with a different style of wig. He pointed at one of the walls, directing her attention to them.

  “Why do you want me to look at—” She stopped in midsentence, seemingly answering the question for herself. Moving towards the hairpieces and ponytails, she perused the selections.

  Growing quickly tired of
being inside and overcome by the strong, cheap perfumes and burning incense, he decided to help get them out of there as fast as possible.

  “What about that one?” he suggested, pointing to a reddish-brown wig in a long, poker straight style.

  “No.” She shook her head. “It looks unnatural.” She gestured at a short, kinky textured bob. His lips curved at her selection.

  “That one?” an elderly Asian woman asked, making her way from behind the long counter that framed the majority of the floor area.

  “Yes. Can she try it on?” he asked.

  The woman shook her head vigorously. “Hygiene. Try on, must buy.”

  “Fine. Bag that one up for me. Pick out one more just in case.” Tiffany looked about the place and spotted a curly, shoulder length one. “Looks too much like your natural hair, only shorter.” She nodded and kept looking about.

  “How about over there?” He caught sight of one with tiny, intricate braids. He’d never think it a wig, but of course, this wasn’t his expertise.

  “That’s human hair, hand braided, very expensive,” the storekeeper said.

  “She can afford it. Get it for us,” he barked, sick of the old woman already. Her small, slightly yellowed teeth showcased in a forced smile, she headed towards the wig, removed the thing from the dummy, and returned to the cash register. He took closer notice of the cosmetics. A selection of faux eyelashes caught his attention. “Get some of those.” Tiffany took several down from a hook and gripped them tightly.

  “They need glue. These don’t come with it,” she said.

  He turned towards the old woman. “Eye lash glue?”

  “Right here, behind counter.” She picked up a bottle and waved it in their direction. Several minutes later, after he paid the bill, they left, holding a basket filled with their purchases, in addition to a couple of pieces of gold costume jewelry, lip glosses, scarves, a pair of black leggings, and cheap Bob Marley, Betty Boop, and Wonder Woman printed T-shirts.