I slept a couple of hours there at the warehouse in Brooklyn rather than going home to our place in Manhattan. I wasn’t ready to pull myself away from the action just yet, even though I wasn’t directly involved in any of the current proceedings.
When I woke up I found Mia and Grant busy at a big whiteboard and a large folding table that had all the captured phones laid out on labeled pieces of paper, Polaroid photos of their ex-owners next to each one.
“Only eleven of the hostiles actually even had phones,” Mia explained when I gave her a questioning look. “Nine of them were cheap, pre-paid pieces of shit that weren’t even locked,” she said, indicating the bulk of the phones on the table. “The Boss guy from Chicago had this old Android, and the dude in charge here had this iPhone 3,” she explained, pointing at the two smartphones. “Both of those are locked, but we’ll crack ‘em, no problem. We haven’t bothered yet because we’re still seeing how they fit in the network.” With that, she pointed at the whiteboard, which had the numbers laid out in a line, with looping lines connecting them in various way.
“Look at his,” Grant said, pointing to one number apart from the rest that all the others had lines to. “This our head honcho here. He had calls back and forth to every one of the other phone numbers, right? You’d expect that, naturally. This number over here? That’s our Chicago guy. None of the burner phones ever had any calls- well, within those phones’ recently called lists, anyway- to Mr Chicago. This gives credence to the idea that he really was an outsider. We’re assuming that when we break his phone, or the local jefe’s, that we’ll see calls back and forth.”
“Makes sense,” I said.
“So, what we’re looking for right now is calls outside the circle. Mia and me have been going through the list and identifying outside numbers that have been called by more than one member. We’ve also been filtering out commercial numbers when we can- calls to pizza places, what have you,” he said, indicating the open search engine on the laptop Mia was sitting in front of.
“Find anything interesting?” I asked.
“Well, maybe. This guy,” he said, pointing at a phone that had a piece of blue masking tape stuck to it, “Had a number of calls to Philly-area phones. The simplest inference is that he’s a recent member of this group, moved here from Philadelphia. Calling his old friends or whatever. Until we see anything that says otherwise, that’s our assumption. Occam’s Razor and all that. None of the rest have any calls outside the New York City area.”
“There was nothing to indicate that Philly Guy was in any sort of leadership position, was there?” I asked.
“I talked to the two that took him down. They said that he seemed to be just as low-level as everybody else but those two,” he said, indicating the two smartphones. “So probably not.”
“Alright. It seems like you two have things under control here. Where are Jody and the two Marines?”
“Driving around,” Grant said. “Picking up and dropping off our field teams.”
“Well, it’s past nine in the morning. That means all the Night Children out there have already gone into hiding for the day. We’re not going to catch them out in the wild.”
“Yeah…” Grant said. “The guys have already gotten three in their hidey-holes. Two other known locations were raided but empty. The guys are waiting for those two to come home, and when they do…”
Glancing down at his own pocket, Grant pulled out his phone.
“Yeah? Really? That wasn’t in the parameters. Well, O.K.,” he said. “Bring her in and we’ll see what we’re gonna do.”
Putting his phone away, he said, “One of the locals surrendered to our guys the moment she saw ‘em. Didn’t try to run or anything, so they’re bringing her in.”
“Keeping prisoners was never on our to-do list,” I said. “But we’ll see what she has to say.”
It didn’t take long before a white Ford Explorer pulled into the warehouse, the guys having opened the roll-up door for it, then shutting it immediately after the vehicle entered.
Travis got out and opened the passenger-side rear door, letting a woman who looked to be in her late thirties get out. Jonnie stepped out of the other passenger door. Once they were clear and the doors shut, Ron the ex-Marine drove the car back out into the city for whatever his next pickup was going to be.
Jonnie and Travis indicated to the woman that she should approach me, which she did with some hesitation, dropping to her knees when she got close.
“She says her name is Simone,” Travis said.
“Tell me what happened,” I commanded.
“We spotted her in the area we knew to look for her in Astoria,” Travis explained. “She saw us at just about the same time. She could tell who we were. She didn’t run or anything. She just stood there as we walked up. She said that she surrenders- she’d wanted nothing to do with Big Joe’s plan and knew this was gonna happen.”
“She knew you were there to kill her?” I asked.
“She knew. You could see it in her eyes,” Jonnie confirmed. "She knew that there was no escaping. She said she wanted to ask you for mercy.”
“Was she armed?” I asked.
Wordlessly, Jonnie produced a small, cheap folding knife.
“Simone,” I said. “You say you wanted no part of Big Joe’s plan. What plan are you talking about?”
“Killing you and Queen Emmy’s babies,” Simone said, her voice devoid of much life at all. “When that guy came and talked to Big Joe about it, I said it was a really bad idea. Killing babies is never O.K. and the stories people been telling about you… I just knew we was gonna pay.”
“Do you know what happened earlier tonight?” I asked.
“I’m gonna guess we paid,” she said, looking down.
“Yeah. Twenty-three people have lost their lives tonight, thanks to Big Joe’s decision to send killers to Atlanta. That number is going to go up. We aren’t going to stop until we’ve found every one of you. Then we’re going to go after that guy who came and promised Big Joe all that money. And we’re going to make him pay, too.”
“Good luck with that,” she said humorlessly. “He’s from somewhere in Europe. He had a strange accent I could barely understand.”
“We know where he’s from,” I said. “And we know where we’ll find him, and his boss. We are very thorough, and very patient. You said you’ve heard stories about me?” I asked, changing the subject.
“Everybody has,” she said with a listless shrug.
“Do those stories say I’m merciful?” I asked.
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“No,” she admitted, staring at the ground.
“So what made you think that surrendering to my men would be a good idea?”
“I’m dead anyhow,” she said. “Your guys found me way out in Astoria. They knew my face. I don’t know how you did it, but there wasn’t no point in running. You was gonna find me again, no matter where I went.”
“That’s true,” I said. “There was no point in running. We would have found you. Surrendering was the right idea.”
“So you’re not gonna kill me?” she asked, a spark of surprise and hope in her voice.
“Tell me why I shouldn’t. I’ll listen to whatever you have to say.”
“Like I said, I was against Big Joe’s plan to send our tough guys to get you. I told him that it was evil, and we shouldn’t be doing nobody else’s dirty work for them. I also told him that it wasn’t gonna work. Like I said, we’ve all heard the stories about you, and when I saw it on the news I knew we done fucked up big-time. I knew the stories were all true right then, and you was gonna come and kill us all. I been waiting for today ever since,” Simone said, her voice becoming more animated. “All ‘cause Big Joe wanted that money. He said he was gonna spread it around, give everybody a cut, and it was gonna be enough to really help out. No amount of money was gonna be worth our lives, I told him, but he wouldn’t listen.” She paused a moment, getting herself back under control. “And killing babies- that ain’t ever right. They was just innocent victims in all this.”
“So was Angela, the mother of one of our babies. She had nothing to do with any Night Children business. She was completely innocent, too,” I said.
Simone just shook her head sadly. “Some of the others were against the idea, too, but Big Joe just saw dollar signs. Him and the others- they did this to all of us.”
“Simone,” I said, getting her to look up at me for the first time since she got out of the car. “Should I spare your life?”
“I swear to God that I won’t do anything ever against you in any way,” she said, hope creeping into her voice again.
“If I’m going to let you live, you’re going to have to do more than that.”
“What do you mean?” she asked, fearful again.
“If I’m going to let you walk out of here still breathing, you’re going to need to work for me. I’ll put you to work with my other people, and they can keep an eye on you. If I’m satisfied you really do regret what Big Joe and the rest did, and you do whatever I demand and do it well, then we’ll forget you were ever with this group,” I said, indicating the row of body bags off to one side of the warehouse. Simone looked over at where I was pointing, and after a moment when she finally recognized what they must be, she clapped her hands to her face in dismay.
“They didn’t get a second chance, Simone. You do. So this is what it comes down to: Do what I say when I say to do it, or join the others over there.”
“What- what do I need to do?” she asked, unable to tear her eyes away from the neat row of black zippered bags.
“First, I need more information. You’re going to tell me everything about your old group. Leave nothing out. I want names, locations, all of it. That’s the start.”
“I can’t betray them,” she protested.
“Why were you with Big Joe?” I asked rhetorically. “For protection, right? Isn’t that the most basic promise? He betrayed the entire group when he agreed to kill my babies. He promised you all safety, but instead he did the equivalent of pushing you in front of a train. We are going to find and kill the rest of the group, Simone. Your help might make it happen a little faster, but the end result is the same. Big Joe is ultimately the one responsible for their deaths. I might be the train speeding down the tracks, but he’s the one who gave everybody a shove.”
Simone sighed, her shoulders drooping. “What do you want to know?” she asked, making her decision clear. She wanted to live.
Only three of the known members of Big Joe’s group still remained at large by the time dawn rolled around the next day. Simone had told us that she knew one of them had connections back in Boston, so he was probably already there. We were going to find him eventually, but it might take a while. In the meantime he would probably spread stories of what happened when the New York group tried to go against us, which worked to our benefit. The other two… well, we’d keep looking.
Big Joe’s group had never really called themselves anything in particular, which surprised my day walker people, but I’d come to understand it to be pretty typical. Rahsett’s group in Vancouver, The Boss’s group in Chicago… neither of them had ever labeled themselves anything other than just ‘us’. It just didn’t seem to be a thing among Night Children to self-name their groups or associations. Just another one of those cultural differences, I guess.
The laptop took a little while, but eventually it did crack The Boss’ Android phone, then later, Big Joe’s iPhone. As expected, most of the phone numbers in The Boss’ phone memory were Chicago area code, and we made a note of all of them. Although there had been no sign of any of that group since that night of the ambush in that old industrial building, it wouldn’t hurt to have my hitters there do a check on locals’ phone numbers to see if any that had come to our side still kept in contact with The Boss after he disappeared from the scene. The Boss had actually put names connected to the phone numbers, too, so rooting out his remaining loyalists might not be all that hard.
Grant saw the value in adding the task of cleaning up loose ends in Chicago to the hitters’ to-do list when I mentioned it, so that got added to our agenda.
Turning to Big Joe’s phone, a few of the same out-of-town numbers as seen on The Boss’ phone popped up. He hadn’t bothered with names, but we had those already.
The giant gold mine was the text messages. While The Boss hadn’t used text really at all, Big Joe texted and used WhatsApp extensively. This gave us a really clear picture of the interactions with the team in Atlanta, but more importantly, with his international contacts. Besides Ahmet Asker there was an Egyptian phone number (again, no names associated with any of the WhatsApp numbers) who seemed to be urging Big Joe to take action against the Devil Queens. I noted the numbers, both Ahmet’s Istanbul phone number and the one from Cairo. I’d have to ask about these from people who could maybe provide me some answers.
Simone had identified all the bodies by name, including eight of the nine that had died in Atlanta. The last one was somebody she didn’t know, leading us to speculate that they might have found an Atlanta-area local to help them out.
She’d been good about explaining their group’s connections to other regional groups, too, but she didn’t know any names of any contacts in other cities or anything like that- she wasn’t in Big Joe’s confidence enough to have that kind of information.
Still, she’d been cooperative and hadn’t complained, increasing her survival odds quite a bit.
Michael came to town the next day, and I handed Simone off to him. She was now his problem to deal with, since we’d gotten what we could out of her as far as intel was concerned.
“Put her to work in some other city, with all the usual benefits. Make sure it’s a position that we can keep an eye on her until we can be sure of her loyalties, but my instinct says she’ll be fine,” I told him, leaving the details up to him.
He’d brought the large outreach crew that had been canvassing Atlanta and they got right to work. We figured that there would be a certain window of opportunity to recruit local strays while the news of our completely demolishing Big Joe’s group filtered through whatever communication network might exist.
We wanted everyone to know that yes, we were capable of brutality towards our enemies, but also generous to those in our shadow.
Whatever use I might have been there in Brooklyn was over, so while the guys did what needed to be done I flew down to Cartagena.
“Papá!” I said, giving the man a hug when I got through customs.
“It is good to see you, Lee,” he said, returning my hug. “Your Emmy has been very lonely without you.”
“I’ve missed her, too,” I admitted as we walked towards the parking lot. “But I got done what needed to be done.”
“Is it done?” he asked, looking at me.
“Yes, and no,” I said. “I’ll tell you all about it tonight, after dinner. It’s as done as possible right now… the next phase will take quite a bit of preparation.”
“If I can be of any help at all…” Rafael said.
“You might,” I said. “I might ask you to help out with training my guys. Your urban operation experience might be really helpful.”
“I will be glad to do what I can,” he assured me, resting his hand on my shoulder. “For my Angela, and for Emmy, and for you.”
Of course there had never been any possibility that we would stay anywhere other than at the Castro house. Mamá and Papá wouldn’t have put up with that sort of nonsense, after all. Walking the block and a half from the garage to the Castro’s front door, I spotted two Night Children. One was a vendor I didn’t recognize selling tourist trinkets under a tree, and the other was Eddie, dressed casually, just hanging out on the corner, looking casual. Not like he was keeping an eye out, no, not at all. He gave me a nod as our eyes met, but then glanced away and back to whatever it was he was pretending to do.
“Your men have been watching our house for months now,” Rafael said, amused. “But now that Emmy is here, they don’t even try to hide it.”
“Deterrence is the best form of protection,” I said.
“My friends in the police tell me that street crime in San Diego has gone down in the last two months,” Rafael said. “It would be good if you had enough men to cover the city!”
“We might, eventually,” I said.
“Leah!” Emmy said, jumping up to give me a hug and a kiss the moment we walked into the kitchen. She looked good- better than when I’d seen her last. She’d put on a couple of pounds and the gaunt look was almost gone.
“Baby, I missed you,” I told her, holding her close.
“Can you stay here in Colombia long?” she asked. “Or do you need to go back?”
“I don’t need to go anywhere for a while,” I said.