“So then Kana comes to you and says, ‘Hey, I have some people to move.’”
“That’s right. And that they’d pay us five thousand a head. Which was, shit, a lot of money.”
“How many heads?”
“Kana said ten. Six adults. Four kids.”
She kept her face frozen. “Tell me about the kids.”
“Well, first he said ten people. But I said, look, I need to know what we’re moving. How much food to bring. Blankets. I mean, fuck, we’re practically putting together a week-long camping trip, how do we prepare? He said, okay, six adults, four kids. I said, what the fuck do I know about taking care of kids? He said, don’t worry, the adults will look after the children, and anyway, two of them are sisters, they’ll take care of each other.”
She suppressed the urge to raise the Glock and shoot him in the face. “There were only three kids. What happened to the fourth?”
He cocked his head slightly as though in thought. “What, was the fourth one your sister? Is that what this is about?”
Her gun arm trembled and she fought to keep her voice level. “What. About. The other. Kid.”
He raised his fingers from the table. “Okay, okay. He didn’t explain. We met at Terminal Six in Portland, which was the plan, and all he said was, turns out nine people, not ten, he’d been mistaken.”
She wanted to scream. She was so close to knowing. She could almost feel Nason. Feel her, but not touch her.
“Nothing else about the sister?”
“Nothing. I swear. I’m telling you what I know.”
“Who arranged the barge?”
“Kana, I guess. It wasn’t us. He just gave us the information. We got on the barge. The container with you and the other people was already loaded. Our job was just to get you to Llewellyn.”
There was so much here she needed to examine. She pushed it away and forced herself to focus.
“Why didn’t you give any of this to the AUSA? You could have saved yourself a lot of prison time.”
He laughed. “Yeah, getting killed isn’t exactly my idea of how to save myself prison time, but thanks.”
“Why were you so afraid?”
“Are you kidding? Everyone knows how well the Thais are connected. They’ve got every kind of organized crime in Bangkok-Russian, Italian, Japanese, Mexican. They do business with everyone. And if you say one word about the business, your shortened prison sentence will end even shorter with a shank in your kidney. Hell, you think the Brotherhood would have protected my peckerwood ass from Black Gangster Nation and the Mexican Mafia if I’d come in with a snitch jacket? Are you crazy? Everyone would have known why I got the easy time. Especially when there were follow-up busts. I would have been a dead man.”
She thought about his story. It tracked with what she knew. But what was he leaving out?
“You said you’d never moved people before this.”
“That’s right. Just ganja, that’s it. Hey, you mind putting away the piece? I told you, I’m cooperating, all right?”
She ignored him. “So why did Kana want you to move people this time?”
“I asked the same. He said they had a buyer, simple as that.”
That told her nothing. She clenched her jaw, walling off the emotions, willing herself to think.
“Kana,” she said. “Did he deal with anyone else in the Northwest?”
“You think he would have told me if he did?”
“I didn’t ask what he told you. I asked what’s known. The way it’s known his people are connected with the various international criminal organizations you just mentioned.”
There was a pause, then he said, “No. I never heard of him dealing with anyone other than Hammerhead. I mean, why else would he have used us for you and those other people? If he knew other smugglers experienced with that kind of cargo, I’m guessing he would have used them instead, right?”
“Maybe,” she said, thinking aloud. “Or maybe… you think a little Thai ganja offers profit margins? You should see what traffickers make moving people. Dope gets smoked and it’s gone. But slaves? Slaves are an investment.”
“Well, I don’t know anything about that. I told you, I never moved people before, or obviously since. The one time I tried it, my brother and best friend got killed, and I got sentenced to twenty years in Victorville.”
“My point is, maybe you peckerwoods were small-time to your guy Kana. Maybe he used you because his organization didn’t care if you got rolled up.”
“You think I haven’t wondered about that? I had sixteen years to wonder it. But why would Kana set us up? Paid us fifty thousand to move that cargo, and the cargo never even gets to the buyer? Doesn’t make any sense.”
No, it didn’t. But…
And suddenly she was hit by a cop epiphany. He saw it in her face and flinched.
“You ever think it was strange, Weed, that some of your cargo didn’t make it?”
He swallowed. “What? I told you. Kana just told me they were one short. It had nothing to do with me.”
“I’m not talking about the fourth child. I’m talking about the ones who were on the barge.” She felt the dragon stirring and breathed in and out steadily, trying to calm it. “You know, the ones who died of food poisoning. Along with one of the adults.”
His eyes shifted from side to side as he looked for the right lie. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Except it wasn’t food poisoning, was it, Weed? It was just plain old regular poisoning.”
He shook his head. “That’s crazy. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I’d never thought about it before. I didn’t have the context. The way you and the other two fed us on the barge. Handing out the food individually. Watching us eat. Collecting the waste. Why were you so careful to monitor who ate what?”
“We weren’t, we just, it was just-”
She pulled the Glock from under the table and pointed it at his face. “You better tell me what I already know. Or I will search that bag and send you back to Victorville for the rest of your fucking life.”
He looked at the muzzle of the gun, his eyes wide, and then to her face. “Okay,” he said, raising his hands, palms forward. “Okay. Kana gave us a vial and told us to put five drops in the other kids’ food when we were a day away from Llewellyn. Only theirs. Not yours. He said it would just make them sick.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t ask, and he wouldn’t have told me anyway.”
“What about the woman who died?”
“He said we had to do some adults, too. We did. But I’m telling you, we thought it would only make them sick.”
Five drops. A fatal dose for a child, probably. Probably borderline for an adult.
“Why the other children? Why not me?”
“I don’t fucking know. Think about it, why would Kana tell me something like that?”
No, she realized. That would have been too much to hope. Probably Tyler was telling the truth, at least about that much.
For the first time, she glanced down at the bench to her left, where he’d set the bag. It was unzipped, but she couldn’t see inside it. She reached over and moved one of the flaps. Inside was a large, plastic-wrapped brick of what must have been meth.
On top of it, a Smith & Wesson.357 revolver.
“Don’t,” he said. “Don’t look in the bag. Come on, this is bullshit, we had a deal. I told you everything. I did. I don’t want to go back. Don’t fucking send me back. Like you said, I’ve got a wife and daughter. Please.”
“You’re not going back,” she said. “I’m leaving. You stay here after I’m gone.” She pulled on the helmet.
His shoulders sagged with relief. He nodded and smiled. “Okay. Good. I gotta say, you scared me there for a minute.”