Death, Taxes, and Peach Sangria (21 page)

The odd logic meant we held no bargaining chip, had nothing to offer him in return
for the information.

Nasser’s attorney jingled the coins again. “We done here?”

I looked at Eddie. He tossed his hand in a gesture of futility.

“Yeah,” I told the lawyer. “We’re done here.”

As Nasser was led out the back door, I couldn’t help myself. “It was such a pleasure
to meet you, Mr. Nasser.”

He turned back and slid me an icy smile. “The same goes for you, Agent Holloway.”

*   *   *

Our futile visit to the federal pen now complete, I headed out to one of the few remaining
MSBs on my list, a travel agency called Up, Up, and Away Vacations.

I parked in the strip center’s lot, directly in front of the agency’s office. Their
glass windows boasted colorful posters of tropical locales and promised “The Best
Bang for Your Vacation Buck!” and demanded that clients “Get the Heck Outta Here!”

Hmm.
I could definitely use a vacation.

The Paris poster featured the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe, and a street performer
with white makeup and a black-and-white-striped shirt. Another featured London landmarks,
including London Bridge, Big Ben, and Buckingham Palace. With its beautiful beaches,
salt-rimmed margaritas, and cute cabana boys, the poster for Cancún was particularly
enticing. I’d traveled there not long ago, but the trip had been for business, not
pleasure.

That’s where I’d first met Nick.

My heart simultaneously fluttered and ached at the memory of him emerging from the
ocean, of water droplets glistening on his dark hair, broad shoulders, and expansive
chest. I’d nearly fallen out of my lounge chair at the spectacle. And when he’d stopped
to apply sunscreen to my back,
ay caramba!
I could still feel the spots on my skin where he’d touched me. God, how they longed
to be touched again.

Still, though the women perusing the Big D site were no doubt attracted to Nick’s
hard candy coating, I knew his yummy exterior was not what truly defined him or why
I’d fallen so hard for him.

What was it about Nick that attracted me? It was his drive to see justice done. The
fact that he looked out for the little guy, whether it be Josh or a taxpayer who’d
been duped in a financial scam. The occasional glimpses of vulnerability, like when
he talked about his father suffering a heart attack after losing his entire investment
in Enron, the company Nick had worked for years ago.

Nick might look like a badass on the outside, but he was a good guy on the inside.
Yep, he could have a hunchback like Quasimodo and his face could be covered in warts
and I’d still think he was all that and a bag of chips.

It wasn’t just about my feelings for him, though. Part of my attraction to him was
how he made me feel about myself. Smart, capable, sexy, even. He never doubted that
I could get the job done. He brought out the best in me.

Admittedly, though, Nick was also capable of bringing out my worst. Intense, petty
jealousy. Frustration that threatened to cause self-combustion. Longing that made
me feel as empty and hollow as a spent shotgun shell.

I climbed out of my car and entered the travel agency. Three women sat at desks configured
into a horseshoe shape. Each desk featured a placard indicating that the agency was
affiliated with American Express travel services.

All three women were on their phones. One of them wore a head scarf, indicating she
was Muslim.

“Up, Up, and Away! Where can we send you today?” another said cheerily as she answered
a call.

I took a seat on a padded chair and waited for one of the women to become available.
After a moment or two, the woman with the hijab finished making plans for a high-school
band to travel to Disney World. She returned her phone to the cradle. “Hi, there,”
she said in perfect English. “How can I help you?”

I explained who I was and that I was there to take a look at their records relating
to traveler’s checks, money orders, and money transmission.

She introduced herself as Lilith. “We handle quite a few of those types of transactions,”
Lilith said, directing me to a special computer apparently reserved exclusively for
that purpose. “Is this a routine examination or were you looking for something in
particular?”

I wasn’t sure whether she was trying to be helpful or digging for information. “A
little of both,” I said.

She smiled and gave me a knowing nod. “I understand. Just let me know if you have
any questions.”

I spent a couple of hours digging through their records. Lilith hadn’t been kidding.
Their agency handled two or three money transfers a day, many of them in significant
amounts. The vast majority of the funds were sent to parties in Mexico, Canada, and
countries in Europe and Central America. Still, there were a number of transfers to
Arab countries. Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Libya, Lebanon, Bahrain, Djibouti. That last
one always made me chuckle. It sounded like “booty.” Real mature for a federal agent,
huh?

The transactions also included a number of transfers to Syria, though none were to
the parties who’d been implicated in the terror plots there and none were on or near
the relevant dates. It was possible there had been unrecorded transfers, however.

I pulled the photos of Algafari, Nasser, and Homsi from my purse and showed them to
Lilith. “Do you recognize any of these men?”

She looked each one over carefully. She handed Homsi’s photo back to me. “I don’t
know this man,” she said. She held up the photos of Algafari and Nasser. “These two
look familiar. I believe they pray at my mosque, but I don’t think they have attended
prayers in quite some time.”

My heart halted in my chest.

Lilith was the first person I’d spoken with who recognized any of the men. Was she
a possible link? Was this travel agency where the terrorists had transmitted their
funds overseas?

I decided to push a little further, eyeing her carefully to gauge her response. “Do
you know what might have kept them away?”

She shook her head, offering two raised palms and a smile. “Maybe a vacation?”

I watched her a moment longer. “No. They aren’t on vacation. They’ve been arrested.”

Her smile faded and her face became serious. “Arrested? Why?”

I pulled out more photos, including the one of the school bus, and handed them to
her. “They were involved in terror plots overseas.”

She looked down at the photos, shaking her head. She quickly handed the photos back
to me. “I can hardly believe it.” She shook her head once. “I didn’t know the men
personally, but to think that they prayed where I prayed … It’s … upsetting.”

“Do you know if these men ever used your agency’s services?”

“For travel or financial transactions?”

“Either.”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I never took care of anything for them, but it’s possible
they came in at a time when I wasn’t on duty.”

I showed the photos to the other two women. Neither of them recognized the men.

I thanked them all for their time and stepped outside.

I wasn’t sure whether Lilith had been completely honest with me or not. But there
was one way to find out. I could contact American Express directly and compare their
records to those kept at the agency, to make sure there hadn’t been undocumented transfers.

I climbed into my car, drove out of sight, and parked.

I called American Express and asked them to provide copies of their records relating
to Up, Up, and Away Vacations.

If something was up at Up, Up, and Away, someone would be going down.

chapter twenty-one

There’s Neau Stopping Beau

Monday evening I headed back to Zippy’s Liquor.

Israel was working again that night. I greeted him and asked to speak to Jesús.

“Sorry,” Israel said. “He went home sick.”

“Already?” It was only six thirty. He sure hadn’t stuck around long. If he was feeling
that ill, why had he even bothered to come in? “Did you tell him I was coming to speak
with him?”

Israel nodded.

Damn.
I should’ve told the guy to keep that information under wraps. I had a sneaking suspicion
that the sudden illness Jesús Benavides was suffering had more than a little to do
with my visit.

“You’re here alone then?” I asked Israel. Though the customers on a Monday night were
not nearly as numerous as the crowd had been on Friday, there was nonetheless a steady
stream coming in the door.

Israel took a bottle of vanilla vodka from a customer and rang it up. “Gloria is on
her way to fill in.”

Good.
I’d wait to speak to her. At least my trip out wouldn’t be a total waste.

I browsed around while I waited for Gloria to arrive, stopping at the whiskey section
and gazing lovingly into a bottle of Jack Daniel’s Black Label whiskey, the golden-brown
liquid the same color as Nick’s eyes. Brett’s were the same color as green apple schnapps.
I pondered this for a moment, realizing that while the schnapps was fun and could
provide a nice buzz, whiskey was a hard-core drink for those who took their alcohol
seriously. The whiskey was also far more addictive and dangerous.

“Miss Holloway?” Israel called, raising a hand to wave me over when I looked up. “Gloria
is here now.”

I made a beeline for the checkout counter, where Israel introduced me to Gloria, a
woman with mannish features and short, layered hair dyed a bright copper.

“I didn’t handle any of the transfers to Honduras,” she said after I inquired about
the wire transactions. “That was Jesús.”

I thanked her for her time and left the store, knowing now, without a doubt, that
I needed to speak with Jesús Benavides.

*   *   *

The rest of the week was pure hell, no two ways about it.

American Express provided all of its documentation relating to the travel agency and
it jibed with the agency’s records. Nothing was up at Up, Up, and Away. I reluctantly
scratched the agency off my list, knowing that the possibility of catching the person
who had helped the terrorists move their funds grew smaller each time that the list
of remaining MSBs grew shorter.

Brett was busy in Atlanta, repairing both the country club’s golf course and his relationship
with the club’s management. I was stuck in limbo, waiting for Brett to return, agonizing
over Nick.

Damn those Japanese beetles!

I spent the next four days visiting money transmitter offices and driving through
trailer parks. I even paid a visit to Madam Magnolia, but she claimed her vision was
blocked. I asked if a hundred dollars might clear her vision and she’d been insulted
by the insinuation. Hey, I just figured the woman needed to make a living. Despite
my profuse apologies, she’d asked me to leave.

I’d returned to Zippy’s Liquor on Tuesday, only to learn that Jesús Benavides had
phoned earlier in the day and quit his job. I pulled up his driver’s license information
online and swung by the address listed. The new tenants in the duplex informed me
they’d moved in several months ago. They didn’t know Jesús, though they recognized
his name from a few items of mail that had been delivered to the duplex after he’d
moved out.

I tried everything else I could think of to track him down. I contacted his former
landlord but was told Jesús had provided no forwarding address. I checked telephone
listings and utility company accounts with no luck. Oddly, his previous year’s tax
return showed an address in Houston and listed his occupation as
History Teacher.
Why would a history teacher leave his job to work at a liquor store? Had he encountered
some trouble on the job?

Jesús had failed to update his address with the DMV. That alone could get him in some
trouble. I put in a call to the DMV, asking them to flag his license. Now I just had
to hope he’d be pulled over for a traffic violation and detained until I could speak
with him.

Utterly frustrated, I revisited the quiet spot on the lake, taking a thermos of sangria
with me and having my own private
un
happy hour.

Nothing was panning out. Nothing, nothing, nothing! All I got for my efforts was a
glimpse of an aged hippy’s bare, saggy ass as he hung his dripping tie-dyed T-shirts
from a makeshift clothesline strung between two trees at his campsite. Frustration
gnawed at my insides, threatening to consume me alive like some type of flesh-eating
bacteria. It wasn’t just my investigations that were going nowhere; it was my personal
life, too. I was stuck in love limbo, with two relationships essentially on hold.
I’d been too busy with work to wash my towering pile of laundry and forced to wear
mismatched socks today. How much more could a girl endure?

If I couldn’t relieve some of this frustration soon, I feared I’d explode. Maybe I
should consider the battery-operated boyfriend Christina had sent me. A round or two
with the jackhammer would probably rid me of some of this tension. But, alas, I wasn’t
that type of girl. It was the real thing or nothing. I hoped B.O.B. would understand.

On Friday morning, Lu called me and Eddie into her office for an update on the terrorist
case. On her desk sat a huge bouquet of pinkish-orange mums, the exact color of Lu’s
hair. The card stapled to the ribbon read:
To my gorgeous gal. XO, Carl.

Looked like things were going well for the Lobo and Comb-over Carl. I was glad things
were going good for someone. They sure as hell weren’t going well for me.

The flowers’ sweet, cloying smell made me think of Brett, of the rosebushes he’d planted
in front of my town house. I felt a twinge in my already-aching heart. Maybe I should
just forget about Nick and stay with Brett. It would sure as hell make things easier.
But I knew that was impossible. Nick wasn’t the kind of guy a woman could easily put
behind her.

Lu held a Slim Jim aloft between two fingers as if it were a cigarette. Old habits
die hard, I suppose.