New Growth (Spook Hills Trilogy Book 2) (4 page)

Cristo was his rock.
 
Only dire circumstances or death would keep Cristo from making his
birthday call.
 
Cruze went back to
worrying.

Brian and Moll called Steve to ask about holding a
business meeting at Spook Hills with him, Mathew and Ivy.
 
All three of them served as board members, lending
their qualifications to the credibility of the startup company, dubbed Noble
Fir Forensics.
 
At first
the business had been slow to start.
 
As banks realized the value of their software
and their consultation for detecting potential money laundering transactions,
the demand for their services took off.
 

With their young supervisor, Fred, and Lenny handling the
day’s tasks on the vineyard, Steve made Ivy and Mathew aware that Brian and
Moll would arrive in a few minutes.
 
Brian Tovey stood about six feet.
 
Slender and often called model-handsome, he had dark brown hair going to
silver at the temples and concerned eyes the color of rich chocolate.
 
Brian balanced an outgoing and
likable
nature with his abilities to perform
meticulous analysis and documentation.
 
Those traits led to his success as an outstanding FBI agent and now as
an entrepreneur.
 

Equally tall yet intriguing in an off-beat way, Moll
O’Leary’s curly ash-brown hair went with his laid-back personality and creative
intellect.
 
His laissez-faire demeanor
hid a driven man who scrabbled away from his mother’s
flower-child
world of easy morality and hallucinogens.
 
Using whatever financial resources he could
patch together, he had pursued a first-rate education leading him to the Bureau
and from there to their business enterprise.
 
Moll’s resourcefulness and perceptivity made him an indispensable
contributor to their venture, in the same
way
he had added value
to
their FBI teams.

Mathew had made friends with the two men in law school and
worked with them on cases whenever possible during their fifteen years with the
Bureau, including work with Steve for the last few years.
 
They shared strong bonds between themselves,
with Steve and now with Ivy.
 
Amongst
them, help was never further than a phone call away.
 

The cases they handled at the Bureau, particularly once they
served on Steve’s teams, concentrated some of the largest, most complex
international cases that FBI investigated.
 
Most of the
cases
involved
extensive data analysis as they strove to link financial transactions to
illicit activities, from drug movement between Colombia,
Mexico
and the United States, to human
trafficking between Bulgaria and locations in Western Europe and the United
States to international jewel theft and resale and beyond.
 

Steve’s track record for bringing the worst perpetrators to
justice was legendary at the Bureau.
 
Mathew, along with Brian and Moll, had been honored to serve as his
three lead senior agents.
 
Steve had only
one level between him and the Director of the FBI and he had the Director’s
ear.
 
Working for Steve was hard.
 
He was exacting.
 
He demanded commitment and long
hours.
 
A
nd
he expected the best from his team members every day.

Late that morning they gathered around the dining table
where Brian explained their dilemma in his methodical way.
 
"While we need to respond to this
significant
prospect, work for our current
customers is maxing us out.
 
We can’t
even find time to make this sales pitch.
 
Since this is a major financial institution and contracts can take time,
we hate to decline."

Steve could see that the long hours and the level of
responsibility were taking a toll on the two entrepreneurs.
 
Even though they were used to working long
hours for him as FBI agents, he believed they must be over-extending themselves
with their new business.

“Sounds like your reputation is getting out in the banking
world,” Ivy said with an approving smile.

“Getting out there?” Moll said.
 
“It’s like going viral.”

“We contacted this bank several times last
year.
 
N
o
one would return a call.
 
We sent our
bona fides and followed up early this year.
 
Again, never called us back,” Brian said.
 
“Now with only a day’s notice, we are
expected to be at their site tomorrow.
 
These initial meetings work best with two of us.
 
To pitch this new bank, we need a couple of
clones.
 
Will you help us out?”

“How about a quick refresher class for the three of
us?”
 
Mathew asked.
 
“From using the software
during
the Fuentes case last year, we
understand the basics.
 
We appreciate the
issues around banking transactions.
 
Once
you train us, we can back you up on sales,
startups
and investigations.”

“We should
divvy up
the tasks,” Ivy said.
 
“Steve and I will
stay here with Moll to analyze the data and document our findings for your
current projects.
  
Mathew and Brian can
head to the new bank.”

“Good for the immediate issue.
 
Longer term you must develop a staffing
strategy,” Steve said.
 
“By the looks of
you two, you need to start taking better care of yourselves.
 
Remember even
with
the demands of our
complex
FBI cases, we
had a rotating schedule for exercise, time off and sleep.
 
Plus I always made sure you ate well.”

“No matter how hard we work, we just can’t seem to find
enough time.
 
Any advice you can give us
would be great,” Brian replied.
 
“On
staffing, we want to expand at a deliberate pace and be selective about our
hires.
 
Anyone
you would recommend, Ivy?”

“I need to be careful about raiding my old employer, but you
remember Terry?
 

Everyone except Mathew nodded.
 

“When we requisitioned client data records from the company
Ivy headed up before she retired, Terry found a thread in
certain
bank data that led to the destruction
of that insidious human trafficking ring,” Steve said.

“Oh yeah, he’s the data-guru guy, right?” Mathew asked.

“Yes,” Ivy said.
 
“I
understand he's not happy with the executive who replaced me.
 
Too much procedure, regular hours, etc. --
all the mundane constraints Terry can’t handle.
 
If one of you called him, he might jump ship.”

“Terry’s mind works so much like mine, he could be my
brain-twinner!” Moll said.
 
He jumped up,
taking his cell phone out and searching his directory for Terry’s number.
 
He wandered out to the kitchen.
 

“Terry will be perfect,” Brian said with a sincere
smile.
 
“Should any problems lurk in an
institution’s records, he will find them.
 
Any others?”

“Terry is the best by far, but I will make a list of
contractors and former employees who might be worth interviewing.
 
Over time, I can open more doors, even though
I do have to be ethical about looting too much talent from any one firm.”

Brian nodded.
 
“Thanks, whatever you can do for us will give us a jump on finding good
employees!”

Moll skidded back into the room with a face-splitting
smile.
 
“
Fuckin’
A!
 
Terry kissed your old place goodbye
last Friday.
 
We are home-free on
recruiting him, Ivy.
 
He’s grabbing his
wheels to drive down.”

“Like old times at the Bureau,” Steve said, unable to stop
himself from displaying his big toothy grin at the prospect of analysis and
working with his
former
squad.
 
He could see that Brian and Moll already
seemed re-energized as talented reinforcements started lining up behind them.
While Steve handled all the aspects of cases at the Bureau, he enjoyed the data
analysis the most, along with putting the facts together to bring the
perpetrators to justice.

Later in the day Ivy and Steve worked down in their
shared office.
 
They were going through a
database from one
client
while Terry and
Moll examined files for a different client up in Portland.
 
Brian and Mathew were flying out to Omaha for
a presentation to the new prospect the next day.
 
When Steve’s phone rang, he responded
absent-mindedly
since he found the information
dissection and pattern matching so absorbing.

“Whoa!
 
Repeat what
you said, Moll.”
 
Steve laid his phone
down, punched the speaker button and signaled
to
Ivy
to listen in.

“Another bank gave us a jingle.
 
Down in San Francisco.
 
Like they want us at their place
tomorrow.
 
They are tight with our first
client and heard we are the go-to guys for detecting unauthorized access to
vast
amounts of personal information.
 
They unearthed a gnarly problem and
need
us to bail them out.”
 
Moll’s
typically
unhurried drawl accelerated to a panicked pace.
 
“Total overload.
 
This is
epic.”

Steve exchanged a glance with Ivy before saying to Moll,
“Terry and I will keep working on the existing information.
 
Tell him to come down here and plan to stay
over downstairs.
 
Ivy will fly out with
you as soon as you can schedule a flight.
 
She’ll be better at the spiel than I will be.
 
You can present my creds for auditing the
results.”

“Are you willing to fly later today, Ivy?”

“Running to pack.
 
Brief me on the plane.
 
Ask for
upgrades and seats together on United or Alaska so we can discuss our plans on
the way down.”

“Cool.
 
Meeting
at
nine
tomorrow morning.
 
You can buzz back here
in the afternoon while I get the bank’s
programmers
crushing the data extracts.
 
Later.”

After ending the call with Moll, Steve said, “This is as
much fun as FBI
work!
 
E
ven better, no one is shooting at
us.” His face lit up with his big grin.

Ivy smiled and hastened to get her luggage.
 
Steve turned back to his laptop screen.
 
Ever since a shooter had taken them down the previous
summer here at Spook Hills, he and Ivy had lived together and were married last
December.
 
While not looking forward to
sleeping alone that night, assisting Brian and Moll was essential.
 
They supported him when he needed them.
 
When the two men were back from traveling, he
would help them set up a better
schedule
so they stayed at peak performance.
 

Even though Steve functioned as a senior executive with
responsibility for
critical
cases at the
Bureau, he liked this new team-player role working for Brian and Moll.
 
Technology and data titillated his sometimes
over-active brain.
 
Right
when the worry about filling the
remaining long summer days began to haunt him, bingo-
bango
-
bongo
, he received an
abundance of challenging work right on his laptop.
 

Cruze arrived in Zurich, bought a phone card, searched
for a payphone in the airport and called Cristo.
 
The call sounded odd, perhaps switched to
somewhere else.
 
When he reached Cristo’s
voicemail, he hung up without leaving a message.
 
He dialed
Eduardo.
 
Th
e same thing happened.
 
Last he tried the emergency service they had
established to leave messages for each other if anything went wrong.
 
When he found it empty, fear for his brothers
gripped his heart.
 
They always answered
their phones.
 
He called Eduardo’s
phone again and as before
it went to voice
mail.
 
He walked away from the phone and
ran to the connecting railroad station.
 

On the short train ride to Bern, Cruze chose a seat by
himself, settling in and gazing out
the window
as the train pulled away from the station.
 
Too uptight with worry to doze, he leaned his head back against the seat
and let his mind drift back to the year when he turned sixteen.

That had been the summer of 1985.
 
He and Cristo had been dealing drugs in a
small way for two years.
 
First
Cristo went out with just him having
kid-type escapades until Eduardo grew big enough to tag along.
 
While younger by five years, Eduardo soon
became the ringleader.
 
With his superior
intelligence and imagination, he made up games or things to do, even on stormy
afternoons.
 
In the evenings Eduardo
stayed glued to the television, absorbed in life through a made-up window.
 

The
afternoon
that he
was arrested, Cruze and Cristo had been out peddling drugs to kids in a
little
side street near a school two
neighborhoods away.
 
They walked by a
circuitous route towards home, laughing and joking the way they did.
 
Halfway there, Cruze heard a car turn onto
the
block,
and he glanced back over his
shoulder.
 
A police black and white
cruised to a stop behind
them.
 
T
wo cops jumped out.
 
Instant fear that they would be caught with
money and drugs in their pockets made his cojones shrink in his jeans.
 

“Run,” Cristo yelled, grabbing his arm.
 

With Cristo in the lead, they raced down the block,
zigzagged behind some buildings and down an alley they sometimes used.
 
A rusted chain link and wood fence blocked
their way.
 
Breathing hard, they slid to
a stop just as the cops rounded the turn into the long, narrow alley.
 
Cruze leaned down to make a step with his
hands.

“Go!
 
I’m right behind
you,” Cruze said.

Cristo stepped into his hands as he grabbed the chain link
up high.
 
Cruze boosted him up.
 
Once over the top, Cristo found his footholds
low
on the other side of the fence and
reached back over.
 
Cruze grappled with
the
fence
, squirming up towards and
reaching for Cristo’s outstretched hand at the top.
 
Right
then the cops grabbed him, one on each leg.
 
Cruze
let
go of Cristo.

“Get out of here!” Cruze yelled.
 
Cristo slid down out of sight, “Run!”

As he fought for his freedom, Cruze heard Cristo hit the
ground and then his rapid footfalls as he ran away.
 
The cops
pried
Cruze’s hands from the fence, pulling him roughly to the ground.
 
Suddenly he was
in
a nightmare, roughly handcuffed and marched out of the
alley.
 
He still struggled to get
free.
 
He was shoved into a police car
and taken to the police station where he was grilled for hours about who his
partner was.
 
No matter how bad it
became, he would never squeal on Cristo.
 

His parents arrived, their faces hurt, angry and
anxious.
 
Without the money for a decent
attorney, he was assigned a public defender by the Court.
 
Following weeks in a jail cell, he pled
guilty after learning the prosecution had
testimony
and a positive identification of him by
face
from the kid who bought the drugs.
 
Since
Cristo had stood guard at the end of the street, standing with his back to
them, the kid never got a good look at him.
 
Cristo was brought in for questioning but admitted nothing.
 

The weeks passed while Cruze stayed in jail until his trial,
alone, scared and wary.
 
Cruze found he
was shaking when he heard his sentence.
 
As a minor with no prior record, the judge gave him a year in juvenile
detention.
 
He remembered his parents
crying as the court security officers led him away.

Within three days of starting his time in what they called
juvie
, a gang of thugs about his age cornered
him and beat him up.
 
They hit and kicked
him, avoiding his face and going for the muscular areas.
 
After getting him on his knees, they yanked
his head back by his hair, slapped him a few times and made dire threats of
sodomy and slow torture if he did not give each of them oral sex.
 
He hurt too much not to give in to their
demands.
 
Afterward
he crawled to the bathroom, retching over and over and refusing to look at
himself in the mirror.
 
He laid that
night in his narrow cot of a bed afraid to sleep for fear of waking up to
another attack.

By agreeing to become the gang leader’s bitch, he escaped
further beatings.
 
He had expected that
kids would be under constant surveillance and therefore protected.
 
This detention center he got stuck in was run-down
and compartmentalized, having been converted from an old hospital.
 
The longer term boys knew which guards were
inattentive and where the blind spots were in their dormitory.
 
They went after every new kid who came in.

After that ordeal, Cruze exercised as much as he could to
better defend himself from assaults by other bullies and any new gangs that
formed.
 
He hated himself for what he had
to do to
survive,
but he refused to risk
dying in that misery of a place.

That summer was the worst in his life both inside of juvie
and from the news that kept pouring in from his family.
 
Cristo wrote to
him,
but his parents were the only ones who visited.
 
They wanted to shelter Cristo and
Eduardo.
 
Cristo’s letters were his
lifeline.
 
Some of the letters were so
poignant that he memorized their contents thoroughly.
 
Even today he could remember them word for
word.
 

In August of 1985, Cristo had written:

“Cruze, life is weird
here without you, but I have already told you that.
 
Today Annetta moved in.
 
She’s in Eduardo’s room.
 
Eduardo is sleeping in your bed.
 
Not sure why she is here.
 
No one is talking.
 
Something bad happened at her house.
 
Pap
á
had a big argument with
Uncle Rodrigo tonight.
 
He threatened to
call the police if Uncle R. came over again.

“Lots of hush-hush
talk between Mama and Annetta.
 
Annetta
stayed in Eduardo’s room for three days.
 
When she came out, she was her usual flippant self.
 
She was different too.
 
More grown-up.
 
Something changed her.
 
She won’t say what.
 
You know Annetta, always acts like some
mystery is going on.

“I’m still confined to
my room.
 
I have to come right home from
school.
 
It is driving me crazy.
 
Sometimes I still slip out at night for a
couple of hours just to get some freedom.
 
Why the hell did you have to get yourself caught by those cops?”

Cruze missed his family, especially his twin.
 
He wished he could at least see Cristo.
 
He even begged his parents, but they were
firm.
 
They seemed afraid he would
corrupt his brothers.
 
Cristo had been by
his side every day for their entire lives.
 
Part of him was missing without Cristo there.
 
Cruze contained his frustrations, wanting to
impress the prison staff.
 
He would do
anything for an early release from juvie.
 
He had to focus on it only being for one year.
 
While it would be one very long year, at
least at the end he would be free.

Three weeks later, another letter arrived from Cristo with
more
shocking news.
 
Usually he wrote twice a week, but
this time
he had skipped a week.

“Cruze, please don’t
hate me.
 
I messed up.
 
Really messed up.
 
You know I’m supposed to walk Eduardo home
from school every day like we used to together?
 
Last Wednesday I had to meet a couple of kids to sell them some
blow.
 
It’s only a few blocks Eduardo had
to walk, but some scumbags grabbed him.
 
He was missing for four days.
 

“The police got a
tip-off that
Eduardo
was in a house over
in Opa Locka.
 
Oh
Jesus, he was almost dead.
 
Beaten up, bones broken, starved and locked in a closet.
 
No one has
said,
but I think they buggered him too.
 
He’s
still in the hospital, bruised and broken.
 
The police said the guys who grabbed him were likely street pushers high
on their own stuff.

“He’s only eleven, for
chrissakes.
 
Our Eduardo.
 
I’m not sure he will ever again be the kid we
knew,
and it is all my fault.
 
Why didn’t the kid run for home?

I feel like shit.
 
Wish I had you here.”

Cristo poured his anguish into every sentence.
 
Cruze sat in his cell knowing too well what
Eduardo experienced.
 
The poor kid was so
young for chrissakes.
 
We all sheltered
and spoiled him.
 
He had been
innocent.
 
And now this.
 

Cruze lowered his head.
 
In juvie, Cruze learned to cry only on the inside.
 
The horror and heartfelt sadness for his
little brother channeled itself into
rage
.
 
The next time the teenage bully wanted oral
sex, it all boiled
up.
 
Cruze lashed out by beating the teen
almost senseless.
 

Cruze remembered being confined to a cell then moved out of
the dormitory, put in a more secure area and given a bored sort of
counseling.
 
Although more isolated, life
became better.
 
The word got out.
 
No one messed with him after that, but the
incident meant he had no hope of an early release from juvie.

A few weeks later, Cristo wrote a short letter.

“We are a gloomy lot
again.
 
Annetta left last Friday.
 
No one will say where she went.
 
She
took off in the night without saying goodbye.
 
She called the next night to tell Mama that she was safe.
 
Don’t know where she went.
 

“I miss her.
 
She has always been a part of our lives.
 
Now she is god knows where.

“Shit Cruze.
 
I lost you.
 
I let Eduardo get all fucked up.
 
Now Annetta has scarpered.
 
You
are lucky to be away from it all.
 
This
is the worst
time of my life.”

Cruze felt for his twin.
 
Cristo had expected life to favor him and had acted with the cocky
assurance of a youth unspoiled by any ugly events.
 
For the first time in his life,
he was facing real
tragedy,
and Cruze
knew Cristo was not prepared to handle it well.
 
All attention at home would be focused on Eduardo.
 
Cristo would be expected to always be at home
when not in school.
 

The last bit of bad news arrived a week later.

“Uncle Rodrigo got
snuffed out in a drive-by shooting.
 
The
pompous prick will swagger around no more.
 
Remember those rumors we heard about his ring of pushers?
 
My guess is a deal went
sour,
and he got killed.
 
No way did all his dough come from those dry
cleaners he ran.