The Book of Lies - Brad Meltzer [20]
“Think he knows what he’s hauling in back?” Timothy asked.
“I don’t really care,” Cal replied from the passenger seat, never taking his eyes off his father’s truck. “But we’re about to find out.”
12
Guns or drugs—gotta be,” Timothy says as my dad’s eighteen-wheeler makes a slow, sharp left toward the entrance for I-95. We’re at least three football fields behind him, with our lights still off. But at four-thirty in the morning, with only a few cars between us, he’s impossible to miss.
“Maybe your dad’s container—”
“Maybe it’s not my dad’s. For all I know, he’s just another feeb doing a pickup.”
“But if you thought that, would you really have shown up at three in the morning? Or would he have shown up at four, fresh from his new bullet wound? I know you can’t bring yourself to say it—and I know it was just a random hold—but you should be worried about him,” Timothy says. “Don’t apologize, Cal. I got twin teenage girls—and no matter how much they hate me, only monsters would let their father take a beating. In fact, it’s not that different from Deirdre—”
“Can we just focus on what’s in the shipment? Please.”
To his credit, Timothy lets it go. And I try my best to ignore my crooked pinkies.
According to the bill of lading, GATH 601174-7 is a refrigerated container that’s (supposedly) carrying 3,850 pounds of frozen shrimp coming (supposedly) from Panama. My dad definitely gets credit for that. In the world of smuggling—drugs or anything else—you never know when you’ll be inspected. But if you want to improve your odds, pick a quiet, seafood-producing country (like Panama), fill the container with one of its top exports (like shrimp), and make sure it’s refrigerated (because once it’s listed as “perishable,” it’ll move twice as fast through inspection).
This isn’t just about some really good shrimp.
“Turn for the worse,” Timothy says, motioning to the truck.
The shipment was scheduled to be delivered to a warehouse in Coral Gables. That’s south of here. Which is why I’m surprised to see him heading for the on-ramp of I-95 North.
“Maybe he’s smuggling people,” Timothy says.
“It’s not people,” I tell him, surprised by my own defensiveness. “You said the shipment checked out fine. No buzzers ringing; no dogs barking. If he were smuggling people, audio would’ve picked up the heartbeats.”
“Then what? Plastic nuclear triggers? F-14 parts? Stolen Picassos? What can you possibly hide amidst four thousand pounds of frozen shrimp?”
I don’t bother answering. During our first year as agents, Timothy and I ripped open a suspicious crate and found two hundred snakes with their anuses sewed shut, their stomachs filled with diamonds they’d been forced to swallow. There’s no end to what people will try to hide.
Next to us on the highway, an orange taxi blows by us, then races past my dad and disappears in the horizon of night. “So you never looked him up?” Timothy asks.
“Pardon?”
“Your dad. All those years at ICE—you had access to computers that could find the addresses, phone numbers, and birthmarks of every known felon in the country. You never took a glance to see where your missing dad was living or what he was up to?”
I stare at the outline of my father’s truck in the distance and can’t help but picture our client Alberto whispering to his father’s ashes in that rusted old RC Cola can. “No,” I say. “Never did.”
Timothy turns my way and studies me as I fidget with the stray wires that run down from the blue lights on his dash. There’s no end to what people will try to hide.
Twenty minutes later, the sky’s still black, my dad’s still ahead, and the highway—as we blow past the exits of Fort Lauderdale—is dotted with the first batch of early risers.
“You think he sees us?” Timothy asks as my dad veers toward the exit that sends us west on I-595.