The Ghost Shipment, page 10
Through a crack in the window, he spied vignettes of the daily grind. Drug deals. A fight. Group yoga session. Consensual and non-consensual sex. Prisoners stumbling past, drunk.
The siren sounded for lunch. Jay’s stomach rumbled in sympathy. The signal for the end of lunch was his cue to get into position behind the door, prepping the zip tie by looping the strap, inserting it loosely into the head.
Jay expected the opened padlock on the door to put the guard on alert, but it made little difference. The little guy’s breath smelled of arak and he was easily immobilized. Jay taped the guard’s mouth, squirted putty into his ears, pulled a bag over his head – all from behind so his face wouldn’t be seen.
He found a key to the second side room in the guard’s pocket. As suspected, it was where the finished jewelry was kept. Jay dragged the guard into the room, secured him to a wall bracket, then walked back through the workshop into the storeroom.
The inmates turned up soon after. Three accents. German, Balinese, American. Seth came into the storeroom. It took some effort, with a broken rib, for Jay to subdue and stop him calling for help. Bec hadn’t mentioned his size.
Jay felt the tension go out of the big American’s shoulders as soon as he mentioned he was a friend of the woman journalist who’d visited him.
Lompok was well known to the inmates of Kerobokan, though Seth had never met him. He was always entertained in the VIP section. Meaning private room, the latest smart TV, Wi-Fi, beer fridge, women on tap, come and go as you please.
‘But if you fuckers are looking for the source of NuNu, you’re wasting your time with Lompok. He’s perantara. A middleman. You need to check out a limo company called Eksek, near the airport.’
Jay persuaded Seth to get the other two inmates to leave the workshop for ten minutes, then told him about the guard tied up in the other room.
The American’s demeanor changed instantly, from macho to panic.
‘Calm down mate. He has no idea who jumped him, and you can be the white knight. I’ll make it look like someone broke in to steal some bling.’
‘But he would have heard...’
‘Nothing. He’s heard zilch Seth. Relax. I took care of it. But I will need your help with something. How long before they’ll notice the guard missing?’
‘He usually hangs around twenty minutes or so after opening up. Checking the lockup. Taking his cut.’
‘Ok. Give me ten, then discover the door to the lockup is open, find the guard, rescue him.
‘What are you going to... How the fuck did you even get in here?’
‘Probably better you didn’t know. I’m not planning on a long stay. Tell me, which gang controls cellblock Nusa Dua?’
‘The Iblis. Why?’
‘How do they get on with the Kaluraha?’
‘With knives.’
‘What color do the Iblis use?’
‘Red. What the...’
And if the Iblis wanted to insult the Kaluraha, what would they do, or say?’
Seth thought for a moment.
‘They’d call them putra pelacur. Sons of whores.’
Jay looked around the room. There was a red tablecloth on a workbench. He tore off a strip the size of a headscarf, grabbed an industrial Sharpie pen used on metal jewelry, handed them to Seth.
‘Write it on this. In Indonesian.’
‘You’re out of your fucking mind.’
‘Quite possibly.’
Jay stuffed the cloth in his pocket, picked up a bucket and mop, retraced his steps, this time diverting past the rear of cellblock Amed. He picked up a loose paving stone, wrapped it in the red cloth, tossed it through a window.
15. The stock certificate
The response from the auto industry was turbo-charged, high-octane and predictable. As well as reckless.
Ped and Carl were watching the attack ad on a TV in the backroom at the Westin Hotel in Kansas City. It had been hot-lapping screens throughout the day in Indiana and Kansas, after debuting nationally during Fox & Friends.
There were clips from the Noblesville visit about combustion engines being history, and pawn your TVs. But the crux of the ad attacked Ped’s line about dishonest politicians profiting from pushing partisan barrows.
A voice sounding suspiciously like a four-time Indy 500 champion then revealed Ped Straight Up Garland had invested in a company making electric vehicles, which had just got a federal grant for five million dollars to research robotic manufacturing. A stock certificate from the EV company in Georgia filled the screen, zooming in on the name Ped Garland, then the bottom line: is the owner of 100,000 fully paid shares.
Mainstream media reaction to the Noblesville encounter had been mixed.
The big hitters in Indianapolis and Fort Wayne were unanimous the naïve greenhorn was going Straight Down, as were most Republican cheerleaders in the national media. Columnists and analysts from the left used terms like method in his madness, but still expected Garland to get smoked in Indiana.
‘How much you figure they dropped on those ads Carl?’
‘Them polished productions don’t come easy on the wallet.’
‘Even though they got that tip off about the stock certificate for free?’
Carl chuckled. ‘You think I oughta send ‘em an invoice?’
‘I reckon they’ll be beggin’ for a refund once Jin and the Ciph get through with ‘em.’
High-resolution images of the stock certificate had been emailed anonymously to the chief executive of the Auto Alliance and to Hunter’s new attack dog soon after Ped, shielded by a dozen beefcakes from out of town, had been extricated from the angry mob at Noblesville.
Social media postings and press releases featuring Pedzi Garland, an indignant African American environmentalist from Savannah, proud owner of a BMW electric car – and no relation to the candidate – were in the can ready to start going out from midnight.
*****
The sirens catapulted Bec from the uncomfortable but manageable realm of yellow into deep orange, cascading down the crumbling tiles of the main prison building, bulls-eyeing from the orange of the Alfamart sign to the fluoro carrot of a kite tangled in a power line like a fly trapped in a spider’s web.
She’d spent the last hour with Mike in a cafe over the road from the main entrance to Kerobokan, reading with increasing anxiety stories about a recent gang clash sparking a riot inside the prison, two inmates being killed, and the mayhem spilling onto the streets of Denpasar.
Bec flinched as the sirens were tailgated by whistles and breaking glass, the shouts of angry men, agitated Indonesian words over PA speakers. Then the thud-thud-thud of dozens, hundreds of saucepans being beaten against bars drifted across the road, loaded with anger, foreboding. And accusation.
This was her fault. Jay wouldn’t be on a suicide mission if she got the information from Seth Crichton when she had the chance. Every shout amplified the guilt gnawing at her chest.
‘Don’t be so hard on yourself,’ said Mike, reading her thoughts.
‘Aristotle’s winding you up, Bec. Spinning you lines that almost certainly aren’t true. He knows nothing about Jay and what he’s capable of. Slow down. Breathe in, hold, breathe out.’
Before she got to exhale, the sounds of sirens from the east grew louder, morphing into flashing red lights of police cars, ambulances. Black armored vehicles – Aristotle at every wheel – swept into the parking lot in front of the main building, riveting Bec’s eyes to the stark red walls, the blood red of the Indonesian flags herding the freaks in their unearthly body armor, helmets, shields, batons, teargas grenade launchers.
As the riot police streamed through the entrance, Aristotle stretched Bec’s eyes back to the east, through the red of the Circle K logo, a Bintang beer flag, a suckling pig sign, before homing in on the flashing warning beacons of motorbikes piloting a beast of a vehicle with menacing red wheel rims and front bumpers. It roared towards the gray side door of the prison, smothering Jay’s escape route.
*****
Riot police the world over dress to intimidate. The black contour-molded suits, black thermo-composite helmets, black neoprene forearm, elbow and knee protectors, shatter-resistant poly-carbonate shields, stiff jaws, the way they march in lockstep, are all designed to scare the bejesus out of rioters, unruly mobs, peaceful protesters sitting down in the middle of a road holding flowers.
But from the waist down, a squad of riot police appeared a lot less frightening – almost comical. From Jay’s vantage point in the lockbox, peering into the smartphone connected to the camera under the Hummer, the groin protectors on the cops spilling from the Komodo armored personnel carrier looked like incontinence diapers.
A riot police callout wasn’t quite the distraction Jay intended when he lobbed the brick into Kaluraha basecamp, but a guy had to work with the cards he was dealt.
It took the best part of an hour for the sirens to stop, the riot police to clear out and the prison to return to its addled state of normal. Soon after, footsteps on the concrete signaled the driver returning to the Hummer. As he switched on the engine to crank up the air-conditioning, Jay glanced at his watch and smiled. 6.38. The governor, after discovering all his prisoners and guards were accounted for, wasn’t going to let a little riot interfere with his clockwork.
As the Hummer left the prison and turned onto the road towards Denpasar, Jay rotated the dial on the smartphone app to swivel the camera to face backwards. He recognized the license plate on Komang’s car on the inside lane as the Hummer pulled up to traffic signals.
He released the tailgate, slid silently to the ground, and rolled to the curb just before the traffic moved off. He waited for Komang to draw level, then climbed into the back seat.
Bec was staring straight ahead, red-eyed, breathing deeply, straight-jacket arms. The silent treatment. Jay let it ride until Komang turned to follow the canal north towards the bypass.
‘I’m fine, thanks for asking.’
Bec laid into him.
‘You’re out of your fricken mind... You mightn’t give a damn about your own sorry ass, but you could have put our whole project at risk, not to mention the likelihood of implicating Mike and me. And Komang...’
Jay caught Komang’s eyes in the rear-view. He looked more uncomfortable at Bec’s language and being drawn into the conversation than a run-in with the riot police. Balinese hate confrontations.
‘... all the people who’ve backed the project, put their money where their mouth is, are bankrolling this investigation...’
‘Well I...’
‘What imbecile pulls such a hair-brained low-percentage stunt? What the fricken hell did you hope you could possibly achieve? Are we any closer to Lompok?’
‘Not exactly...’
‘Did you see Seth?’
‘You keep out of this Bullard, you complicit fricken a-hole.’
Jay could see Mike was smiling. Bec wiped her eyes, her jaw tightening for another verbal onslaught. Jay got in first.
‘Yes Mike, I did see Seth.’
‘And?’
‘He said Lompok’s living it up in the VIP quarters in the staff section, comes and goes as he pleases.’
‘So we wait till he comes out?’
‘No. According to Seth, Lompok’s just a wholesaler. If we’re serious about getting closer to the source of NuNu, we need to look into a limo company in Kuta.’
Bec turned to face Jay, eyes spitting.
‘That’s it?’ she hissed. ‘That’s all you’ve got to show for risking everything? Surely Seth knew more.’
‘Probably. He was getting a bit agitated about the guard locked up in the next room. I had to come up with a distraction to calm him down.’
‘Don’t tell me the riot police was your doing?’
‘Possibly. Might have overplayed my hand a touch.’
‘Lighten up Bec’, said Mike, leaning his head back and grinning at her. ‘We agreed we’d use unorthodox methods. Even said so on the Aristotle website.’
Bec’s eyebrows hiked north.
‘I’m surrounded by morons.’
*****
Locating Eksek Limousine Services wasn’t easy. Mike eventually tracked it down to a dead-end lane in the Segara district on the northern fringe of the airport.
The video camera glasses seemed a good idea back at the guesthouse, but Mike was having second, third, fourth thoughts the further he got into the lane.
Everydayness – women bent over sewing machines, old men sitting on the ground shooting the breeze as they whittled away at hunks of wood, the fresh smell of a backyard laundry – had succumbed to imposing walls of concrete-block, graffiti, and the oily recesses of an auto repair business. No statues or offerings, no birds, trees, flowers, or anything to embrace the Balinese image of being at peace with itself and nature. A call to prayer sounded from a nearby mosque but was drowned by the rumble of a departing jet.
Mike touched the button on the arm of the glasses to begin recording. An HD video camera was built into the frame of the glasses, with the lens in the bridge. He was crossing more than one line here. Recording people without their consent breached the code of ethics of every media organization he’d worked for. Right now, Mike was more worried about the physical consequences of being caught.
Teardrop-shaped banners with black and yellow motifs arched like fake pengor poles on each side of high steel gates. Through the bars Mike saw a two-story compound, colorless like an abandoned hotel, clothes drooping over the upper railing. Faded t-shirts with the same black and yellow motif. Dozens of motorbikes lined up facing a wall, beside piles of garbage overflowing from black plastic bags.
Beyond the gate, and behind the concrete wall topped with broken glass, Mike sensed a large body of men. The pungent smell of weed mingled with beer and sweat.
According to his research, the limousine base was the last building on the left. There was no signage, at least not in English. Just a rusted roller door padlocked to a bolt in the sidewalk beside a solid metal door with a round opaque window like you see between compartments on ships.
Mike knocked. No answer. He tried the door. It wasn’t locked, so he went in. It was an office of sorts. In the thick of oil filters, brake cables, wiper blades, cans of touch-up paint and chauffeur caps was a desk with a reasonably modern computer and cheap particle board shelving sagging under the weight of colored binders. Through an open side door Mike could see the rear ends of two white limos. He was looking around for a buzzer when a woman burst through the door, waving her arms in the air, yelling at him in Indonesian.
So much for customer service.
A Balinese guy appeared at the door, wearing overalls, wiping his hand on a greasy cloth. Mike noticed the tattoo inside his arm – the ringed circle with expanding dots Jay had mentioned.
‘You lost?’
‘I’m looking for Eksek Limos.’
‘Why?’
Mike wasn’t prepared for that question.
‘Ah, to book a limousine?’
‘We no booking. Limo only for airport, Nyalahutan guests. You stay at resort?’
‘No.’
The guy shepherded Mike towards the door.
‘Limo only hire you stay resort.’
*****
Bec put her face into the hole and tried to relax, focusing on the Egyptian blue of the bowl on the floor beneath her rather than the bumblebee caution in the marigold petals.
The petite Balinese woman knew her stuff, but Bec knew the science. Which always made it difficult to get pleasure from a massage. She’d met borderlines who swore by it, relied on it to get through the day. For Bec, understanding pressure from the woman’s fingers was supposed to trigger nerve cells in the skin to tell the brain to release endorphins, that the fragrance of the aromatherapy oils could boost serotonin or produce enkephalins, tended to defeat the purpose.
Instead of surrendering to the masseuse’s touch, she fought with Aristotle over who was in charge and whether her mind could or should be manipulated. Bumblebees and Egyptians. Couldn’t help herself.
She was stretched out on a lounge chair beside a pool at the Nyalahutan Ubud, wearing a one-piece swimsuit with sleeves to conceal her scars, and large, red-rimmed sunglasses and a floppy hat in case she was recognized from the previous visit.
They’d decided to stake out the chain’s three resorts, after Mike’s report on his visit to the limo base. Research into the yellow and black motif revealed Eksek Limousine Services was housed beside the headquarters of one of Bali’s most notorious gangs – Kaluraha.
Jay had wanted to Rambo his way into the place, but Bec persuaded him to at least try the stake-out option first.
The masseuse platform, the pool, and the restaurant where she’d spent most of the day, provided views of the entranceway and driveway. So far three limos had pulled up to take guests from Australia, Russia, and the States to the airport.
Two arrived with couples from the UK and Japan.
16. The rizz
News of the first exit poll from WIBC in Indianapolis reached Ped in the kitchen of a brick ranch home 285 miles away in suburban West Virginia.
It showed he had his nose in front in Indiana, as the Parkersburg housewife was showing him the contents of her refrigerator.
The Ciph had unearthed another target cohort ahead of next week’s contests in West Virginia and Nebraska: mothers. The Ciph’s numbers showed him level-pegging with the female Democratic frontrunner in support from moms, and streets ahead of the male Dem. There was also political capital to be made against Hunter, a woman whose support from her own gender was softening.
Different kinds of moms were likely to respond to Ped on different issues, so the day’s filming schedule had the candidate crisscrossing the city to meet with a professional mom, a welfare mom, a foster mom, a grandmom, and an eight-month pregnant mom-to-be. Each one identified by the Ciph as highly influential Garland supporters from their likes and language on social media, emails, texts.
