Follow the Footsteps

Follow the Footsteps

D. A. Ratliff

My quarry sat across the open dining area, holding court with his main henchman, a couple of beauties, and a few locals. I have to say—if I were going to flee from authorities, an island in the South Pacific would be the place to go. Add in a country with no extradition agreement with the United States, and it’s just about perfect.

I’d been on the island for forty-eight hours, and Marco Carboni hadn’t noticed me. Possibly, the gaudy Hawaiian shirt, cargo shorts, and sandals, not to mention the straw hat and shades, threw him off. He usually saw me in a dark suit and wingtips, flashing my badge.

Carboni and I had run into each other often over the years. He always greeted me with the same sarcastic comment, “If it isn’t the FBI’s best, Special Agent Eric Jamison, I’m so scared.” I am the Special Agent in Charge of an organized crime unit out of FBI headquarters in New York City. Carboni had been arrested numerous times over the last fifteen years, but only one minor state charge stuck, and he did two years in Rikers. He continued to run his operation from prison, and we couldn’t stop him.

Eighteen months ago, we almost did. A long-time member of his organization turned state’s evidence on Carboni, providing credible information about Carboni’s involvement in human trafficking. We asked for a warrant to search his home and the office at his restaurant. Someone inside the FBI or the court tipped off Carboni before we executed the warrant, and he fled New York City. After that, he became number eight on the FBI’s Most Wanted list.

It was five o’clock in the afternoon as the sun lazily fell toward the horizon. Not technically on duty, I nursed a ginger mojito while I kept an eye on Carboni. I wouldn’t be here if a tourist photo hadn’t caught him in the background of an image posted on social media. The FBI’s constant face-recognition surveillance captured the image. I was temporarily assigned to FBI International and traveled to Samoa to make certain Carboni knew he could run from the FBI but could not get away. He would make a mistake at some point, and I wanted to be there when he did.

After an afternoon of drinking, Carboni and his friends had gotten loud and boisterous. Carboni stood.

“A toast to everyone in the bar.” His eyes swept across the room, lingering for a breath on me before he continued. “Anyone who wants to come to Bistro Laki at eight this evening, dinner is on me.” He raised his nearly empty glass. “Salud!”

Amid cheers from the bar patrons, Carboni leaned over to whisper to Virgil House, a capo known to be his bodyguard, who fled with him. A glance my way from Virgil told me Carboni had finally recognized me. Let the games begin.

~~~

Not one to turn down a free meal—but I would—I arrived at the Bistro a bit before eight finding the dining room nearly full. I ordered a drink and waited. Carboni and a large entourage arrived, including Dominic Verento, his underboss. We had no idea that Verento had traveled to Samoa. Further proof that Carboni was running the family business from his self-imposed exile as we expected. While we couldn’t extradite him from Samoa, his crime family remained active in the states, and we could put that organization out of business if we got lucky.

Dinner was a two-hour affair, but I paid and left the restaurant as I saw Virgil call for the tab. Sitting in my rental car, I heard the crowd erupt in applause, no doubt, at the announcement that the generous American had paid for their dinner.

The party of ten noisily spilled into the parking lot, piled into waiting SUVs, and drove off. I followed. I needed to get an idea of Carboni’s schedule. His morning routine was predictable, as he walked alone on the beach at sunrise each day. His afternoon schedule varied.

The hotel from earlier this afternoon was their destination. When I arrived in Samoa, I checked local records and discovered that Carboni had purchased the small hotel after he arrived. The property consisted of several bungalows stretched along the beach. Carboni had taken four for personal use. Once they seemed settled in for the night, I headed to my hotel, just down the road.

I should have been more aware of what was happening around me, but I was tired from the long flight and the time difference. As I walked toward the hotel, my appointment with the Samoan police commissioner the following morning was on my mind. The first punch took me by surprise.

I fell against the front bumper of a car, the grill digging into my ribs. Someone grabbed my shoulder and jerked me upright while another guy slammed his fist into my abdomen, pushing the air out of my lungs. With two big bruisers coming after me, I had to even the odds a bit.

The goon behind me kept me upright by my upper arms as the other pulled his fist back to hit me again. I had one chance. I swung my arm behind me and aimed for my target. Grabbing him by the testicles, I squeezed hard and twisted. He screamed like a little girl, let go of my arms, and dropped onto the pavement writhing in pain. One down.

I spun away from the incoming fist, which caught me in the left kidney. I stumbled but steadied myself on the car to remain upright. Turning to face him, he slugged me with a fist across the left cheek. I let momentum spin me around and caught him unaware with an uppercut. He teetered on his heels for a moment and then landed on his backside on the pavement, out cold. The other thug uncurled from a fetal position and struggled to his feet.

“Tell your boss, whatever message you were here to deliver, I don’t want to hear it.” I gestured to his unconscious partner. “Get him out of here before I call the police.”

The man, barely able to walk, grabbed his buddy and dragged him toward a vehicle. I waited until they pulled away and then headed into the hotel, thankful the lobby was empty. All I wanted to do was rinse the metallic taste of blood from a cut inside my cheek out of my mouth and call my partner in NYC.

Daniel Moore was none too happy. “Eric, it’s good that you’re the senior partner, or I’d have you transferred to the vast wastelands. It’s three seventeen in the morning. What time is it there?”

“It’s eleven-seventeen at night. I’m twenty hours ahead of you. Let me catch you up.” I told Dan as much as I knew and then told him about the ambush.

He laughed. “Pretty primitive way you took down that guy.”

“Let’s just say it gave the game Twister new meaning.”

“That it did. What’s your next step?”

“Try to sleep for one. I’m meeting with the commissioner at nine a.m. and comparing notes.”

“Do you think the Samoans would consider extradition?”

“This country has little crime except for human trafficking that’s moving in. If we are right about Carboni, and he’s directing his mob’s trafficking from here, then they might listen.”

~~~

The view from the terrace where I ate breakfast was breathtaking. The harbor with its curved shore was tranquil, the water crystal blue and dotted with a few boats in the early morning. Beyond the wide harbor entrance lay the vast sparkling Pacific Ocean. I mentally calculated how to retire and live here but quickly put that away as a foolish notion. Regardless of the reason, I was thankful for the opportunity to visit a beautiful South Pacific island.

Shaking off my daydream, I finished breakfast and left for police headquarters, which turned out to be a rather non-descript gray two-story building. I parked and entered the building to meet with Police Commissioner Afu Tanielu.

He greeted me warmly and escorted me to his office. “Agent Jameson, I am truly sorry I was unavailable to you when you arrived, but I was at a conference in Auckland. “

“Not a problem, Commissioner. I kept myself busy.”

“Please, call me Afu. We are not formal around here.” He chuckled. “No doubt keeping an eye on our mutual concern. However, you appear to have injured yourself. Fall into a doorframe, perhaps?”

The mischievous grin on his face told me he was teasing but suspected what had happened. “No. A rather large fist attached to one of Carboni’s goons.” I added, ‘Call me Eric.”

“Do you wish to report the assault?”

“No, they got the message. They were a bit worse for wear.” I flexed my right hand, sore from the blow I landed against jawbone. “What I want to do is bring Carboni to justice.”

“My hands are tied with respect to helping the United States. Carboni traveled here under his real name, but after you contacted me, I checked our immigration records. We have surveillance of him going through customs but no record that he did. I had the customs agent brought in, and after my officers questioned him, he admitted one of Carboni’s associates approached him a few days before and offered him ten-thousand dollars to remove all traces of Carboni entering the country. That is a lot of money in this country, Eric. Hard for him to turn down. We have detained the agent and kept this quiet until we spoke with you.”

“We wondered how he entered the country without a flag being raised. We assumed he was using a fake passport, but that would have complicated things for him here. He applied for a permanent resident visa soon after arriving and was approved. We are currently investigating the visa department.” Afu scoffed. “I believe the term that applies here is greased palms, which is not unusual in our country.”

“Nor in mine.” I slumped against the chair. “He knew if he entered as Carboni with only a travel visa and we knew he was here, it was a matter of time until you deported him, and we had him.”

“Now, although he remains a US citizen, he knows he is more protected with the resident visa, and we will not extradite him. Our only ace is that he entered the country illegally.”

“An ace I think we should hold on to for now.” I handed him the report compiled for his review. “I brought information about his criminal activity and what we have learned recently about his involvement in human trafficking.”

“Eric, we have little crime in Samoa. With a population of 218,000 spread across the islands, we also have isolated areas with much shoreline. Increasingly, we are seeing human trafficking come through as we become a conduit between Australia, New Zealand, and the Asian Islands. We want to stop the flow. When you sent me your meeting request and the points you wished to discuss, I contacted Stephen Callaway of the Transnational Crime Unit. The unit is part of the Pacific Transnational Crime Network, a multi-agency supported by Australia and New Zealand. The Network works to combat crime in the Pacific. The Crime Unit targets human trafficking, which is becoming more prevalent. Stephen is flying in late this afternoon. He feels that Carboni’s presence here is an issue. I told him we would meet him at the airport and take him to his hotel. Dinner sounds like a suitable time to discuss our problem.”

“Good. I hoped we could work with them.”

“Indeed. Let’s review the information you brought.”

We broke for lunch after one p.m. Before we picked Callaway up, the commissioner took me on a city tour and a few miles inland to view the lush tropical forests covering low hills. We waited at the small airport until the plane from Sydney landed, then to the hotel and the patio outside the bar to talk.

Stephen Callaway was exactly what I expected an Aussie to be, blond, tan, with rugged good looks, but he was all business. I liked that.

“Mate, I’ll tell you. Not long before Carboni disappeared, his name came up on a wiretap we had on a known trafficker, a vague reference to him. Someone was planning to talk to him. Then he fled the States, but we had no idea until you contacted Afu that he was in Samoa.”

Afu nodded. “Neither did we.”

I shook my head. “The man is cunning, and bribing a customs agent is a minor detail to him.”

“You were lucky your facial recognition software caught that image of him. A bit unnerving that he has turned up in our backyard.”

Over dinner and into the evening, we discussed several ways to continue this investigation, but I knew I had to do one thing. I needed to talk to Marco Carboni.

~~~

Carboni was predictable, at least in the morning hours. I followed him for the first two days I was on the island and knew that he took a long walk alone on the beach each morning at sunrise, then stopped at a local food hut on the bay for breakfast. I stopped in after he left and found out he comes in every day for panikeke, the Samoan version of a pancake.

I walked the beach to a spot halfway between the hotel and the restaurant, sat on the sand, and waited. The sun’s golden orb was peeking over the horizon, bathing the water and the sky in gold and tangerine. The urge to chuck everything and move here overwhelmed me once again, but I spotted Carboni walking toward me and snapped back to reality.

He had changed over the years, but then again, I guess I had as well. Carboni was of average height, his jet-black hair now peppered with gray, and his physique no longer trim but widened at the middle from too many cannoli. I was one to talk. I’d eaten a few too many of those myself. He slowed as he realized who was waiting for him, then stopped a few feet away.

“If it isn’t the FBI’s best, Special Agent Eric Jameson, I’m so scared.”

I laughed. “After all these years, Marco, you can’t come up with something original?”

Carboni took another step, then sat down, legs stretched out, hands behind him, staring at the sea. “Don’t need a new greeting, Jameson—you always scare me.”

“I can tell.”

“How’d you find me?”

I laughed. “Tourist photo, published on a website, you were sitting at a table behind some happy tourists. Facial recognition works every time.”

“Technology. Never liked it, but it does come in handy. I can sit here in paradise and keep my hands in everything I want to play with. “

“I hear you are playing with a lot.”

“You shouldn’t believe what you hear.” He sat up, wrapping his arms around his knees, and looked toward me. “Quite the bruise there.”

“Not as bad as how I left your boys.”

He laughed heartily. “I’ll give you that. Brought my best guys with me, but poor Frank is still singing soprano. Impressive for a man of your age.”

“See, you were right to be afraid of me.”

His tone changed as he gripped his knees so hard his knuckles turned white. He was afraid for real or angry, or both.

“What are you doing here, Jameson? You can’t get me here. You’re just wasting your time, or did you want to milk the government out of a fancy vacation on a tropical isle?”

“Trust me, Marco, if I was going to spend a vacation on a tropical island, it’s unlikely I would choose you to vacation with.”

“You didn’t answer me. Why are you here?”

“Thought the local gendarmes should know what we know about you.”

“You don’t know anything about me.”

“How’s that human trafficking network coming along.”

I got the reaction I hoped for as his body flinched, his aquiline nose even sharper as the skin on his face tightened. I struck a nerve.

When he spoke, it was in a voice I recognized. He adopted a professorial tone when he was lying, lecturing to the ignorant. “I might have dabbled in a few illegitimate activities, but human trafficking, that’s absurd.”

“Is it?”

He turned toward me again. “What do you think you know?”

I stood up and brushed the sand off my shorts and legs. “I know. And while the FBI can charge you, we can’t bring you home. That doesn’t mean someone else can’t.”

He jumped to his feet. “You bastard, what are you going to do? Follow me around for the rest of time?”

I took a step toward him. “I will follow your footsteps for however long it takes. Enjoy your walk and your panikekes.”

He stood in stunned silence. I guess surprised I knew his favorite breakfast but worried that I knew a whole lot more. As I walked past him in the direction he came, I could sense the daggers he wished to plunge into my back. I don’t think I breathed again until I found a walkway from the beach to the road. In fact, I didn’t breathe until my plane took off that afternoon.

~~~

The ding of an incoming text surprised me as I worked on a case file in my New York City office. When I saw who it was from and realized it was the middle of the night there, a hot flush of adrenaline flooded my body. The message was from Stephen Callaway—short and to the point.

We got him on trafficking. Being charged and extradited to Sydney. Emailed files for involved perps on your end. You can have him once we finish with him.

I could feel the widest grin on my face. I looked up, and Danny was staring at me.

“Good news, Eric?”

“We got Carboni.” I rose and grabbed my jacket. “We’re going to need warrants, and you need sunscreen. There’s a trip in our future.”

A trip I was happy to take.