Chapter 13 - The Ghost in the Bilge
"Step away from the flame, Navarro."
Gabriel’s voice didn't rise above a conversational baritone, yet it cut through the hiss of the blowtorch like a straight razor.
Navarro jumped, dropping the torch onto the wet concrete. The flame sputtered and died as he scrambled toward his waistband.
*Click.*
Gabriel didn't raise his voice, but the barrel of his Kimber was already leveled dead center between Navarro’s eyes.
"Hands," Gabriel commanded. "Unless you want to make your fake funeral permanent."
Navarro’s hands shot into the air. He was breathing heavily, his chest heaving under the rubberized bib of his overalls. When his eyes darted from Gabriel to me, his pupils dilated in genuine, raw panic.
"Maya..." he rasped. His voice sounded like gravel grinding in a cement mixer. "My God. Look at you. You look just like your mother."
"Don't speak her name," I said, my voice shaking with a rage that had been dormant for five agonizing years. "You were at Julian's memorial. You drank my father's whiskey in our kitchen while we waited for the coroner to release his body."
"I had to, Maya!" Navarro shouted, his voice cracking against the cavernous metal walls. "You don't understand what Sterling was doing! If I hadn't verified the body, they were going to come to the house for you and your dad!"
"Liar," Gabriel said coldly, taking two deliberate steps down the iron ladder into the drained slip. "Sterling was a money launderer. He didn't have the stomach for blood until he hired the Vane syndicate to enforce his margins. Sterling didn't order Julian into the water. Julian found something, didn't he?"
Navarro looked between the gun and the submerged container behind him. The welded hatch was halfway open, a jagged fissure of blackened steel weeping brackish water.
"Julian wasn't just checking manifests," Navarro whispered, his knees buckling until he slumped against the damp timber block. "Arthur thought he was running standard dry goods. But Julian took a chemistry degree at Northwestern, didn't he? He knew what methylamine smelled like. He realized the drums coming in from Montreal weren't industrial cleaning solvent."
"Sterling’s illicit narcotics corridor," Gabriel noted, his eyes narrowing. "The feds think they seized all of it."
"They didn't seize this," Navarro said, pointing a trembling, grease-stained finger at the barnacle-covered box. "Julian figured out the shipment numbers. When he realized what was happening, he didn't run to the police—he knew the port police were on Sterling's payroll. He locked the master manifests and the physical chain of custody logs inside this emergency storm-ballast tank. Then he welded it shut and dumped it into Slip Nine."
My throat felt bone-dry. "Julian hid the evidence under fifty feet of lake water."
"And that's why they killed him," Navarro choked out, tears carving clean trails through the grime on his cheeks. "Sterling dragged Julian down here to make him give up the release sequence. Julian wouldn't talk. Not even when..." Navarro closed his eyes, shuddering. "Not even when Sterling brought the torch."
A red haze flashed across my vision. I wanted to scream. I wanted to tear the torch from the floor and turn it on the man standing before me.
"And why are you here tonight, Navarro?" Gabriel asked, his voice deadly calm. "Sterling is behind bars. Who sent you to dig this up?"
Navarro opened his eyes. The look on his face wasn't shame anymore. It was pure, unadulterated dread.
May you like
"Sterling isn't the one who bought the chemicals, Gabriel," Navarro whispered. "Sterling was the freight forwarder. The buyer is sitting on the federal bench downtown. And if this container opens before tomorrow morning, Judge Kathryn Reyes's personal courier will ensure your mother never leaves Il Canto alive."
***
