Bird Dogs: A John Crane Novella Read online

  After a busy afternoon, Tamarind returned to the hotel. He had dinner at its main restaurant, in a pavilion behind the main building that offered a spectacular view of the hotel’s terraced gardens and the original mansion. He had the short rib agnolotti. Crane ordered it himself. It was excellent.

  Afterwards, Tamarind went back to his room. Crane ducked into his own room long enough to change into a different outfit, and then went back to the lobby to see if Tamarind left. When Tamarind came down, it was a little after 9:00 p.m. Crane was surprised to see him wearing jeans and a t-shirt with a hoodie over it. Crane followed him outside into the night and saw Tamarind catching a taxi. Crane caught the next one and followed him.

  Tamarind’s cab dropped him near the Plaza San Martin in the Retiro district. Crane got out as well and looked around. What had brought Tamarind here? Around him was a hotel, the Retiro train station, and a darkened office building where the only open business was a Starbucks.

  Tamarind crossed the Avenida del Liberatador, as if he was going to the train station, but instead he continued past the station and took a left. Crane pulled up a map on his phone and realized, to his surprise, that Tamarind was leading him into Villa 31. It was one of the city’s villas miserias, a shantytown of improvised dwellings and unlit alleys wedged up against the far side of the railroad yard and crammed in beneath the elevated Arturo Ilia Highway.

  The place was a long warren of ramshackle brick hovels with roofs of scrap metal. They were piled two or even three high in places, with uneven wooden balconies, ladders leading up to the upper stories, and clotheslines strung across the alleys. The smells of open cooking fires wafted through the area, and music from tinny radio speakers competed with the rumble of traffic on the elevated highway off to Crane’s right. There were no streetlights, and the narrow spaces between buildings were dark. Crane saw figures lurking in the shadows and others using flashlights to navigate. The unpaved, twisting streets were streets only by default. You walked where no one had put up a shack. It was a very dangerous place for an outsider, and Crane was very aware of how much he stood out there.

  But Tamarind didn’t seem concerned at all. He made his way through the maze without a light and without hesitation. He knew exactly where he was going. Crane followed. He could feel eyes on him from the windows, from rotting upper balconies, from narrow gaps between the haphazard construction that were more tunnels than alleys. Crane knew he looked exactly like a tourist who had taken a bad turn and wandered into the wrong part of town. He looked like prey. He could handle himself if someone decided to take him, but he didn’t want to alert Tamarind. He moved with purpose and tried to look as if he belonged there.

  Deep in the shantytown, Tamarind stopped and knocked at a door. Crane stopped and edged into the shadow of an overhanging balcony. The door opened and a wash of pale yellow light spilled out. Tamarind was welcomed in, and the door closed behind him.

  Crane realized he wasn’t alone in his dark space. An old woman sat in a battered kitchen chair. The chair’s back was against a wall made from a rusting metal sign. She looked at Crane with an unreadable expression.

  “Buenas noches,” said Crane.

  The old woman said nothing.

  Crane nodded toward the building Tamarind had entered. “Who lives there?” he asked in Spanish.

  “El puntero,” said the woman. The “point man.” An unofficial leader of the neighborhood in a place where the official institutions of the state simply didn’t exist. He would have gained his position by demonstrating the ability to get things done and solve the residents’ day-to-day problems.

  “Do you know the man visiting him?” Crane asked.

  In the dark, he saw the woman shake her head.

  Crane thanked her, and they sat there together in the dark, listening to the sounds of the slum at night—distant traffic, arguing, a couple having sex somewhere. Three young men walked by, laughing and joking. They glanced at Crane and fell briefly silent, but made no move toward him. They walked on, and soon he heard them laughing again.

  After perhaps five minutes, the door opened. Crane shrank farther back into the shadows as Tamarind emerged and walked quickly back the way he’d come. A bald man in a white undershirt leaned out and called after him, “Tomorrow. He’ll be here tomorrow night. I’ll make sure of it.” Then he disappeared back through the door and closed it behind himself.

  Crane looked over at the old woman. She simply shrugged.

  Crane slipped her a one hundred peso bill. “Perhaps I’ll see you tomorrow night.”

  “If God wills it,” she answered.

  Crane nodded and made his way back to the edge of the slum. He saw Tamarind getting into a cab outside the train station. He took another cab back to the hotel.

  Back in his room, Crane got a beer from the minibar and sat out on the balcony, looking out over Recoleta. Whoever Tamarind was, he’d clearly been to Villa 31 before. He knew his way around, and apparently knew the local puntero. But how that came to be, Crane could only guess. He knew nothing of Tamarind’s past before his arrival in the U.S. as Rafael Bruno Campos. For all he knew, Tamarind could have grown up here.

  At any rate, he’d gone there tonight to meet someone who hadn’t shown up. But according to the puntero, he’d be there tomorrow night, and so Tamarind would be back.

  Tomorrow night, Crane would be better prepared.

  CHAPTER 4

  The next day, Tamarind again left the hotel and headed out into the city on foot, and again Crane trailed him around Buenos Aires. The more time he spent following him, the more patterns and behaviors he noticed. His first conclusion was that he instinctively charmed women who passed into his sphere. Whether she was a very expensively dressed shopper in Recoleta’s Gino Bogani store, or a coffee shop barista, he seemed to automatically focus on them and give off an almost tangible charisma. The man had a gift.

  Crane’s other conclusion was that Tamarind spent much of his life on his phone. He used the apps to navigate around the city or convert currencies. He called to make appointments—with an exclusive spa, a barber, a personal shopper at Cardón—or to make restaurant reservations. But he was making more calls than it took to organize a social life, even one as complex as his. He had to be talking to friends or contacts, quite possibly the sort of people they were hoping he’d lead them to. Crane decided he very much wanted to download the data in that phone.

  At lunch, however, Tamarind’s day began to take a noticeable turn for the worse. Crane sat in the back of a busy cafe, enjoying his own excellent meal as waiters in black pants and white shirts swept past with trays. Tamarind sat at a small table near the front windows, looking out over the street. Something went wrong with Tamarind’s order. Crane didn’t catch the details, but by the time he noticed the problem, Tamarind was on his feet, shouting at the waiter, leaning in to challenge his personal space.

  The manager rushed forward to try and restore order as other diners looked up in distaste. The manager’s efforts failed as totally as the waiter’s had. Tamarind would not be soothed. Eventually, he threw his napkin down on his chair and stormed out. The waiter and manager traded a look, then set about clearing the table. The other patrons gradually returned their attention to their plates, with a few comments and shaking heads.

  The experience seemed to throw Tamarind off his game and set the tone for the rest of the day. Crane watched him get into another shouting match at a dry cleaners over a missing shirt. He watched him argue with a nail salon over a manicure appointment that had apparently been canceled somehow. Tamarind nearly came to blows with a cab driver for a reason Crane never did figure out. His air of easy charm had shattered, and now Tamarind stalked around Recoleta on a knife edge of irritation and stress. The magnetism that had once seemed to draw people irresistibly into his orbit seemed to have flipped its polarity. People now seemed to instinctively retreat from the angry, irritable energy he gave off. They moved to the edge of the sidewalk as he passed them on the st
reet. As he browsed in the shops, women withdrew as he entered their aisle.

  Crane noticed one in particular in a shoe store called Mishka—a striking young brunette who moved around a display to keep it between herself and Tamarind. Then he realized it was because he’d seen her before. She’d been at the cafe where Tamarind had made his scene, a few tables over from Crane’s own. He recalled that she’d seemed more amused by his outburst than annoyed. In fact, she’d been recording it on her phone.

  She wore a black blazer over a yellow top and tight jeans tucked into knee-high boots. There was nothing remarkable about that. There seemed to be a uniform style for women in Buenos Aires, and the brunette was well within its bounds. But she wore it well, and Crane liked what her smile did to her face. Since Tamarind wasn’t doing anything of any real interest to him, Crane let part of his mind consider whether it was simple coincidence that she’d shown up twice now, or something more meaningful. What had Ian Fleming said about it? Once was happenstance, twice was coincidence, three times was enemy action. So far, then, the evidence pointed toward coincidence. Crane kept an eye out for the brunette as Tamarind stalked Recoleta for the rest of the afternoon, but didn’t see her again.

  That evening, he watched Tamarind leave the hotel again, wearing the same outfit he’d worn the previous night. Crane had picked up some new clothes himself during the afternoon: a pair of jeans, sneakers and a black polo shirt. They were still expensive—this was Recoleta, after all—but he’d be less obviously out of place when they returned. He was also carrying a day pack he’d picked up in a vintage shop. It looked like something he might have salvaged from a trash heap somewhere, even though he’d paid the equivalent of some three hundred dollars for it. Looking shabby didn’t come cheap in Recoleta; nothing did.

  Crane stepped out of the hotel and watched Tamarind’s cab pull away. He waited a minute, then flagged down the next cab in the line. There was no rush this time; he knew where he was going.

  The cab dropped him at the Retiro station, and again Crane walked off into the darkness beneath the Arturo Ilia Highway. He picked up Tamarind walking a hundred yards ahead, following the same path into the shantytown of Villa 31 he’d taken last night. He knocked at the same door, and was let in.

  Crane slipped into the same dark niche. The old woman wasn’t there tonight. Instead, there were two men waiting. One was maybe forty, with a gap-toothed grin and a t-shirt with dark sleeves and what looked like an American high school mascot on it. The letters above it said “Panthers.” The other was younger, with a more intent, focused look. He hefted a baseball bat as the older one drew a knife.

  Crane sighed. “I’m perfectly happy to pay you to be quiet,” he said softly in Spanish. The older one just grinned and moved forward, leading with the knife.

  It had been worth a try, Crane thought. Then he caught the man’s knife arm and locked the elbow. Crane pulled the man off balance as the other one realized with a start that his partner was in trouble. Only then did he start to raise the bat, and by the time he swung, Crane had thrown the man with the knife into the bat’s path. It slammed into his side, and the man took in a sharp breath to cry out. Crane released his arm and punched him twice in the face. The knife fell to the ground, and the man holding it wasn’t far behind it.

  The younger one with the bat didn’t seem to know what to do. He obviously wanted to run, but he had the bat, and Crane was unarmed. In the moment’s hesitation, Crane grabbed the bat out of his grasp, reversed it, and slammed the end into his diaphragm. He doubled over, gasping for breath, and Crane punched him hard in the temple. He fell on top of his partner and didn’t move.

  Crane shook his head and dropped the bat on top of them, then knelt and quickly opened his pack. He hoped he hadn’t missed anything important. He pulled a parabolic mic from the bag, unfolded the dish, and put on the earpieces. He pointed the mic at the window of the puntero’s home and adjusted it until he got faint voices.

  “—after all this time,” someone was saying. “But we’re very glad to see you again.”

  “It couldn’t be helped,” said another voice, the Spanish faintly accented, the way he’d heard Tamarind speak. “I understand this is inconvenient for you. You expected to be paid long ago. I’ve doubled what I promised you.”

  “We knew you would understand, Señor, and we’ve kept it for you.”

  There was a long pause, then Crane heard a metal shriek. It sounded like a box being opened on rusting hinges.

  “Does it still work?” the other voice—the puntero?—asked. “No one has disturbed it since you left here.”

  “It’s made to last,” said Tamarind. “Here, see?”

  “Ah, very good then,” said the other voice. “So you are satisfied. Very good.”

  Crane heard movement, chairs on the floor, footsteps. He quickly folded the parabolic dish and stuffed the mic back into his backpack. A moment later, the door opened and Tamarind stepped out into the street. He exchanged some words of farewell with the puntero, then once more headed back down the narrow street. Crane watched.

  He went perhaps a hundred feet, waited for the puntero to go back inside. Then he stopped and took something out of his pocket. He tinkered with it for a moment, then took out his phone. The screen lit up his face as he punched something into the keypad. Then he put both objects back in his pockets and walked quickly away.

  Crane was left wondering what he had just witnessed. The overheard conversation had raised more questions than it answered. Apparently, Tamarind had left something here for safekeeping before he was arrested. But what was it? Why was it important to him? And why had he left it here, of all places? Crane shook his head and started back down the long path back to the train station. The more he followed Tamarind, the less he seemed to understand about him. Simply watching him wasn’t doing the trick. It was time for more direct action.

  CHAPTER 5

  The next morning, Tamarind swam laps in the hotel’s indoor pool. It was in the building’s lower levels, in a windowless space lit by panels in the ceiling. There was an expanse of sand-colored stone and a long, narrow pool of deep blue water that the hotel promised was treated with ozone to prevent eye and skin irritation. Lounge chairs lined the narrow deck along one side.

  Crane watched Tamarind choose a chair and put his room keycard and robe on a table beside it. He stretched on the deck for a minute, then lowered himself carefully into the water and began a smooth freestyle stroke down the length of the pool.

  Crane headed upstairs to his room and opened the toybox Josh had sent him. He chose two devices that appeared to have been hacked together by Josh’s people out of bare circuit boards and Arduino microcontrollers. One had a cable with what looked like the charging port from an old Nokia phone on the end. The other had a ribbon cable that connected to a plastic card the same size as the hotel’s keycards.

  Crane walked down the hall to Tamarind’s room. He looked around to make sure he was unobserved, then slid the card into the lock and pushed a green button marked “launch.” A moment later, the door flashed a green LED at him, and there was a soft thunk as it unlocked. Crane was impressed. He pocketed the device and let himself in.

  Tamarind’s things were scattered around the suite. Expensive clothes lay carefully folded over the backs of chairs. A suitcase on a folding stand at the foot of the bed. A hardcover novel on the nightstand. A sleeping mask beneath it. The room hadn’t been made up yet, and the sheets were a chaotic tangle at the foot of the bed. In the bathroom he found a shaving kit, skin lotion, hair gel, a wide range of creams. Expensive shoes lined up on the floor of the closet and suit jackets hanging above them.

  What he didn’t find was the iPhone, or anything that looked remotely like the smaller device he’d seen Tamarind use the night before. On to Plan B then.

  Crane opened the closet. The room safe was built into a little wooden cabinet inside the closet. It was locked. But Crane’s Hurricane Group training had taught him that the safes
were practically useless against someone who knew what they were doing. The safe’s locking mechanism was a simple embedded computer, not so different from the ones Josh had supplied. It couldn’t be plugged into the mains, so it was powered by a rechargeable battery. There had to be a port somewhere to recharge it. Crane felt around until he found it, and plugged in the cable from the second of Josh’s little toys. The port also gave access to the master site code for all the safes in the hotel. Crane activated the device; it read the code and played it back to the unit. The display flashed “OPEN” in red LEDs, and Crane opened it.

  Inside was a small metal box, perhaps half the size of a cigarette pack. That was all. Crane took it out. It was made of machined brass. The only features were a black button, set flush with the metal surface, and a blank LCD display. With a mental shrug, Crane pressed the button. The display flashed a six-digit number. It remained visible for several seconds, and then the display went blank. Crane pressed the button again, and the display flashed the same number. Crane waited several seconds and pressed the button again. This time the display presented a different six-digit number.

  After a couple minutes of experimentation, Crane had worked out the pattern and knew what it was. Pressing the button didn’t change the number; it simply displayed the current number, which changed on its own every 60 seconds. It was a hardware authentication token. The number was a single use password generated by running the time from the device’s internal clock through a complicated mathematical function. Another computer somewhere else would know the function for this device, and so it could use the current time to determine what password the device should produce at any given minute. In theory, no one else could guess the password, so if you could enter the right number, you must be in possession of the device. The U.S. Government used something similar to grant access to secure computer networks. Banks used them for online transactions.