Sandusky Burning, page 22
She was black and blue around the neck, on her breasts, on her legs. She had a beautiful body, so young it was almost a child’s. Small breasts, small hips, a small bit of brown pubic hair.
She was popular with the clients. I had made many dates for her in the time she was there. I had taken dates for myself too.
I covered her. I looked around the room, looking for her stuff. There was nothing else in the room. I looked in the closet, nothing, except for pillows and blankets. I opened the bedroom door, and Jack was standing in the hallway, leaning against the wall.
“Where are her clothes?” I asked.
“She brought a bag. I put her clothes in the bag and put it in the front closet,” he said nervously.
“Wait here,” I said and walked out of the room. I went to the closet and took out her bag. I put it by the front door and went outside.
Sullivan was sitting in the van and staring at the house. Our eyes met, and I waved for him to get out. I took the empty tote out from the back of the van. I slammed the van door shut and walked toward the porch.
“I want you to go in and sit on the couch until I tell you to move,” I said. Sullivan gave me an angry look but did not say anything. We went inside.
I pointed toward the couch. Jack and the other man looked up from the baseball game. I waved them to come toward me. They stood up. Sullivan sat down. We went to the bedroom and closed the door.
Brady 16
3:15 p.m.
Exiting the Islander, I started to feel claustrophobic. I rarely felt any sort of anxiety that manifested itself physically. I was having trouble breathing in that van; the interior seemed to be closing in around me.
During some of the more heated arguments with Marcy, I would walk away with my heart hammering in my chest. A glance at my fitness tracker would tell me my heart rate was elevated. Non-activity-based heart rate increases were never good.
I looked at my watch. My heart rate was eighty-one. That wasn’t alarmingly high by any means, but for a guy just being driven around, it was twenty beats per minute higher than it should have been.
I didn’t know what happened in the bedroom with Viktor and the two golfer guys. I just sat on the couch like a moron while the three of them loaded up the large tote. Then the four of us carried it out and slid it in the back of the van. I guessed it was around one hundred pounds. Was I helping to transport drugs?
“Is this tote getting delivered on the island, or are we taking it back to Sandusky?” I asked. Viktor didn’t acknowledge the question for a few moments.
“Sandusky,” he finally said.
“What are we transporting?” I asked. He ignored the question and pretended to pay close attention to the road. At a stoplight, he lit another cigarette. “Maybe I should take a look.”
“Take a look, I don’t care,” he said, turning to me and smiling. Those crooked yellow teeth, most likely never troubled by a visit to the dentist. Didn’t Gravity Junction offer dental insurance?
As difficult as it was, I resisted looking at my cell phone throughout this excursion. It was silenced in my pocket. I figured if Viktor knew I had it, he would take it.
He drove to a hotel a few miles west of the Islander. He stood up and walked into the back, taking off his jumpsuit.
“Remove your uniform and hat,” he ordered casually. He left his hat on. I was going to bring it to his attention but decided not to. It wasn’t my job to cover his ass.
I took off the jumpsuit and hat and walked over to him. He took it and stuffed it in his duffel bag.
I took another look at the tote. The top fastened with a gray plastic clasp that could be popped open by pulling up on it. We owned an identical one at home that contained the pieces of our artificial Christmas tree.
I stared at it for another moment. Then I returned to my seat. Viktor climbed back into his seat, taking off his hat and setting it beside him.
Viktor 5
4:05 p.m.
I needed a good camera shot. But I didn’t need to deal with a crazy person after. If he knew what was in the box, would he play the ball for the ride back to Sandusky? No way.
A video of Sullivan carrying a tote out of the Islander meant almost nothing without more. But my main mission was to get the tote off the island without getting arrested.
The drive to the ferry and the ride back across the lake went easy. I did not smoke on the ferry, and Sullivan did not get out of the auto. He did not talk or look at me. I know it was on his mind, thinking about the tote. But he had no guts to look.
After the ferry, I drove back south across the causeway. No one was leaving the park on a sunny day, so no traffic. Only one lane was open to go out.
At the end of the causeway, I took a left going east. I passed the road that went to the campground and kept going.
“Jesus, we aren’t done?” Sullivan asked in anger, folding his arms.
“Not quite. We drop off the box, and I will drop you off. Then you are done. For today,” I said.
Eight kilometers past the campground there was a warehouse area with six large buildings. The train tracks were near to move shipments to and from the warehouses. Randy owned Building 4. I was sure it was not in his name. I heard nothing was in his name. And yet all the money found its way to his pockets.
I pulled up to a garage door at the east end of Building 4. Putting on the hat, I got out and opened the door. I pulled the van in and closed the garage.
The warehouse was dirty, maybe two hundred square meters, with rows of racks and boxes everywhere. There was a small office on the south side and a forklift parked in front of it. I drove the van to a middle row and parked. Lighting a cigarette, I got out and waved for Sullivan to get out.
I went back behind the van. We lifted the box and put it in on the ground. I stopped for a minute, taking off my hat and wiping sweat from my head. I looked down to the hat to be sure the camera was on and put it back on my head.
“Before I move this, can you open it and make sure the cargo has not been damaged?” I asked. He was standing by the pallet, staring at the box.
“Damaged?” he asked, looking at me. I nodded. He didn’t move. I stood there a minute, waiting to see what he did.
At last, he walked over to the box and pulled the handles up. I walked around to get a good view for the camera. He bent over and opened the box.
Data 5
6:45 p.m.
For once, I didn’t mind being at the campground. Keeping busy with the manual work served to distract me from thinking about the videos I downloaded from Viktor’s hat-cam.
I did not sign up for that type of activity. That was way beyond the scope of what I expected. I was okay with some white-collar stuff, the low-level blackmail and extortion. Murder was way, way, way out of scope. Being wound up in that was exponentially worse than the hacking I was convicted for.
Viktor met me at Trailer Alpha earlier. He knocked at the door, and when I opened it, he just stood there staring at me with that horrible, crooked smile. Then he handed me the baseball hat and stepped inside.
“Load this and put it on screen. I want you to pull some stills,” he said, drinking something out of a red plastic cup.
I hated that he was in Trailer Alpha with me at all; it felt like a violation. He smelled especially bad, all sweat, cigarette smoke, and vodka. His clothes were grimy and stained.
I fast-forwarded through the video, which was so jumpy at times I almost felt nauseated. The camera jerked back and forth every time he tilted his head, which was often. Viktor sat down next to me, kicking his dirty shoes up on the nearby console.
“Do you mind?” I asked. He laughed and didn’t move his feet.
“How do you like my camera work? Do you think I will get the Oscar?” he asked. I ignored him and kept scrolling forward.
Viktor and Sullivan were wearing jumpsuits and posing as exterminators. The video showed them getting in a van, driving by the lake, and passing several golf carts. They pulled into the resort complex, going in and out with a large tote, and rode the ferry back. There wasn’t anything unusual going on.
They approached the warehouse, went inside, and unloaded the tote.
“Slow down here. Slowly. Do screen captură in a minute. Do you have anything to drink here?” he asked. I shook my head. Viktor sighed heavily with disappointment.
“For future reference, stop chain-smoking if you want clear camera stills. Some of these shots look like a fog machine was nearby,” I said.
“Fog machine?” he asked.
“Yes, fog, condensed water vapor that occurs close to the ground,” I said. He gave me an angry look.
“I know what fog is, genius. I do not know what a fog machine is. Romanians don’t have time for stupid American toys like one that makes a fog,” he said angrily.
So, there were no fog machines in Romanian discos? Maybe Viktor didn’t get out much in Bucharest.
On the monitor, Sullivan leaned over the tote. He popped it open and gazed down. Viktor moved in with his hat-cam to get the close-up. At first, I thought it was some sort of mannequin or maybe a sex doll. A pale, naked woman with dark hair.
“Pause,” Viktor said loudly. I did and looked closely at the image. Then I recognized her as Anka. My jaw dropped. I felt Viktor’s eyes on me, but I couldn’t look at him. I was sure he was smiling.
“I need some shots of this. It needs to look as if Sullivan is ... how do you say ... pozare ... pose, pose him. Position him. So he looks natural. Not in shock. Get him right before he starts the freaking out,” he said, crumpling his cup. He let it drop to the floor.
So, I did. I made several copies and put them on jump drives. Viktor left without taking anything. Randy made it clear that he was not to have any of the material in his possession. When I told him that, he appeared ready to argue but then left without another word.
After he left, I sat in the trailer for a long time, feeling stomach pains and trying not to have a panic attack. I went to the toilet and vomited.
Sam 5
7:55 p.m.
“So, you never tried alcohol?” Randy asked, looking across at Data. He shook his head.
“Sure. I had a few drinks in college, but I never liked the taste. Can I get a Coke or something?” he asked. Randy nodded and pointed to the fridge. He got up and got one. I took a drink of my Pabst.
“But they have good-tasting drinks. Ever tried a margarita?” Randy asked.
“Yes, they are fine. A lot of drinks taste good, whether they contain alcohol or not. I don’t drink because I don’t see the point of it. It looks like a big waste of time and money. Half the world is limping around hungover every Saturday and Sunday morning,” he said.
“Drinking takes the edge off. I don’t see how you function in the same mental state every waking hour. Sometimes you have to let your mind go a little numb to get past the boredom and stress of it all. Hangovers are part of the process. I would argue that your vice is more dangerous than drinking,” Randy said.
“My vice?” he asked. Data had a puzzled look on his face.
“Yeah, your tech addiction. You know, the shit that got you put in prison. The reason why you are here in Sandusky hacking trivial data from campers instead of running shit in Silicon Valley,” Randy said, taking a drink from a plastic cup.
Data stared down at his Coke and didn’t say anything.
“So, what did we get?”
Randy leaned back in the chair, so far that I thought he might take a spill backward for a second. Maybe he had been drinking more than usual. Data sat up straight and looked like he was putting his thoughts together.
“In no particular order. First, Viktor’s hat-cam captured a lot of usable footage. As usual, the raw video itself would not be useful. However, I was able to pull some decent stills. You can piece together him carrying the tote, putting it in the van, unloading it, and opening it. Most of the stills of him seeing the girl show him with a look of horror on his face, but there is a brief moment where he is staring at her and not reacting. He sort of froze up before he started freaking out,” he said.
“Okay. Anything there that would implicate Viktor?” Randy asked.
“I’m not sure. I wasn’t looking at it from that angle,” he said.
“Don’t worry about that now. I was just curious. And don’t print anything yet. Maybe tomorrow I’ll have you put together the package,” Randy said, taking a drink.
“Beyond that, trying to directly hack his work laptop has been a dead end. I could probably do it eventually, but it would take a significant amount of time, and there are illegal software programs that I would need to obtain to get the data. Each of Sullivan’s programs has its own security protocol. The best bet would be to get his cooperation and for us to sit together,” Data said, taking a drink from the can.
I was surprised how easily he accepted orders that were more and more disturbing. It had taken almost no effort to get him to do the hacking stuff shortly after we met him, even though it could put him back in prison.
It was easy for him to justify. While he was some tech guy who made bad decisions and got wrapped up with the likes of me, he only did tech things. His crimes were through a keyboard; he didn’t physically hurt nobody. But his tech skills made a lot of hands-on crimes possible.
I wondered if he lacked a soul. It didn’t bother him that he was in the middle of a blackmail setup involving the dumping of a dead hooker. Although in his defense, we didn’t share that the hooker was the cargo during the Put-In-Bay mission.
On top of the other crimes, he was going to quarterback stealing data that could compromise the US military. He was sleepwalking through this, never stopping to ask questions about the events he was triggering with his hacking. Maybe he told himself he was playing Grand Theft Auto or something, like he was in some virtual world where none of this was real.
Data learned a lot about our business in a short amount of time. One slip-up and he could take us all down. I didn’t see how it was possible to keep him around long. When the campground closed for the season, he would have to go.
Gravity Junction shut down in late October. The foreigners and the out-of-state college student workforce went home in early September. The rest of the season, the park depended on local high school and college kids. Most of the tourism ended, except at the indoor waterparks. If the prostitution operation was going to happen again next summer, Randy would need a new data guy or go lower tech. No more blackmail shit. But that was just my opinion.
The problem would be destroying the evidence he had been collecting. Nobody knew exactly how he was storing it. Nobody knew how he was doing most of the shit he did.
Brady 17
9:45 p.m.
We pulled out of the campground in Mike’s S-10, heading toward downtown Sandusky. We needed to have a conversation away from the campground, so we chose the Mexican place again.
The restaurant was busy and had the same constant background drone of conversations. We were seated in the bar area at a table one over from where we were the night before. Could it really only have been a night ago?
We ordered the same drinks; Mike had a tall Modelo draught, and I had a jumbo frozen margarita. Jumbo was barely going to be adequate for the numbness I needed. I would have preferred if they just brought my chair over to the margarita machine and let me tap it directly from the spout.
I was somewhat embarrassed to be drinking the big, green frozen drink again, but I needed the quick tequila numbing effect and couldn’t have cared less about my alpha-male creds at that moment. I considered asking for a double but decided against it. When the drinks arrived with the chips and salsa, I took a long pull off mine through the straw, triggering a minor brain freeze and not caring.
Mike took a big drink of his beer, wiping off the thin foam mustache. He dipped a chip and popped it into his mouth. He looked up at a nearby TV. The Rays were beating the Indians.
Mike undoubtedly had a lot of questions but was patient and didn’t push me to talk until I was ready. I took another drink and stared down into the large glass, doubting if I would ever be ready. The events of the past few days swirled around in my head. I needed to figure a way out of whatever was happening, but I had the exact same thoughts the last time I was there. And now I was in deeper. Much, much deeper.
I sat back and scanned the room for familiar faces. I knew no one. The room noise was at a high level, so I felt we could talk with a reasonable degree of privacy. I started telling him about my day.
Sam 6
10:10 p.m.
I was pulling away from the Taj when I saw Clemmons’s truck pulling up to the security booth. Sullivan was in the passenger seat. I hung back a little and started following them.
After almost losing them a few times, I tracked them down at the Loco Cactus. I called Randy, and we put a plan together. He pulled Data over to Trailer Alpha, and he printed some pictures. I swung by, and Data was standing out on the curb in front of the trailer with an envelope.
Having Data working near Trailer Alpha was really handy. I had to give that to Randy.
I pulled into the Mexican place about a half-hour after I first tracked them. Clemmons’s S-10 was still parked by the side of the building. I fought the urge to smash a window after I parked a few spots down.
I never understood why people liked those cantina places. The food sucked, the music sucked, and the waiters were all little beaners who couldn’t understand you. They probably fucked with the food in the back because they were sick of dealing with the gringo customers every day. The water was probably dirty.
The lobby was full, so I figured they had either just been seated or were on a waiting list. I looked to the right toward the bar area and saw them sitting at a table. Sullivan was leaning across and having a heart-to-heart with Clemmons.
