The Ghost Syndicate Read online

  Books by K.R. Hill

  The Templar Map, New Breed Detectives, book 1

  My Cleanest Dirty Shorts, FREE BOOK

  Copyright © 2019 by Kevin R. Hill. All Rights Reserved.

  Amazon Edition

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

  Cover designed by Landofawes, and Kevin R. Hill

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Kevin R. Hill

  Visit my website at www.authorkevinrhill.com

  Printed in the United States of America

  First Printing: December 10, 2019

  Amazon

  To Rosemary, whose gentle spirit has taught me

  So much.

  To Katherine, whose touch, laughter and smile, mean the world…

  CONTENTS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  CHAPTER 30

  Chapter 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  Chapter 1

  Signal Hill, California

  Dirt pushed under Connor’s nails as he raked his fingers through the soil. When the hole looked deep enough, he dropped keys and money in, opened his wallet and touched the photo of a redhead. “Get me through this, babe,” he whispered, dropping the wallet in the hole.

  With his shoe he pushed dirt over the items, and stomped the loose soil level with the ground around it. Now, he knew, with his information buried, if he got captured there would be no easy trail to his loved ones.

  Half an hour later, Connor lay in a field. The oil well pump behind him moaned as it rocked up and down like an amusement park ride. Wisps of fog floated by as he lifted his cheek from the oil-stained dirt. He belly-crawled over dry, stiff weeds, until he reached a broken concrete wall. Twisted rebar stuck out here and there. His face against the warm concrete, he peeked at two rusty warehouses in the distance.

  Car headlights shone around the buildings. Connor gasped and dropped flat, pressed his face to the dirt. When the vehicle disappeared over the hill, he tapped the phone in his ear.

  After half a ring, a man asked: “Is it done?”

  Connor whispered: “No. I’m about to film the Russians. I’ll send the video and the case will be finished.”

  “Don’t get caught or they’ll chop you up for shark bait.”

  Connor nodded. “Make payment.”

  “Your money will be there the second I get me a trail to the Ghrazenko syndicate.”

  “Teddy Ghrazenko is making this purchase.”

  “In person? Holy shit. You just got a bonus. Send the film and I’ll send payment. Are you going to take the rest of the case?”

  “I don’t know.” Connor turned off the phone and stretched his legs. Forty minutes passed, and he was about to give up on the meeting, when he heard a diesel engine. A moment later, headlights flashed over the warehouses.

  “This is it,” he told himself.

  Two men carrying hand guns marched around the warehouses and shown flashlights over the field. The lights jumped around the broken wall where he was hidden, then stayed put, illuminating the wall like the sun on a burning hot day.

  Connor wanted to run. He might be able to reach the trees at the far end of the field, but then what? The men would chase him. He belly-crawled backward, panting, and wiped sweat from his face.

  A moment later the flashlight beams vanished as the men chatted in Russian.

  Connor removed a camera from a small black pouch, and crouched low to the ground as he silently walked to the warehouse.

  The Russians walked to the truck and pounded on the cargo door. The door rolled up and a man inside set down a shotgun and pointed at a crate. The men set the crate at their feet, pried it open with a crowbar, and took out a bronze statue.

  One of the men shone a flashlight on the statue as the other guy brushed off packing strips. Before they had finished cleaning, a black limousine turned off the street and stopped between the warehouses.

  Connor pointed the camera at the limo, and recorded the license plate that read: ZENKO. The chauffeur climbed out and opened the rear door. Shiny black shoes swung out of the limousine and touched the dirt. A trim young man in a $6,000 suit, stood up and brushed his shiny black hair with his fingers, gave each cuff a quick tug, touched a red silk tie, walked to the statue and dropped a leather satchel to the dirt.

  Connor filmed as the Russians opened the satchel, carried the statute to the limousine, and set it inside.

  Suddenly there was movement in his peripheral vision. Connor looked away from the camera. Coming toward him along the base of the wall was a critter that he couldn’t mistake. White stripes on black fur meant that if he stayed, he was going to get sprayed. If that happened it wouldn’t matter where he hid, because his odor would give him away. The Russians would hunt him down and gut him like a fish.

  He turned off the camera and backed around the corner of the warehouse, and was laying in the dirt, face pressed against the same broken wall, when the limo turned onto the road and drove toward Long Beach.

  Chapter 2

  Long Beach, California

  Connor lay on the old brass bed with fluffy pillows surrounding him and the comforter twisted up around his feet. During the night he had tugged on the comforter several times to straighten it, but having it disheveled made him smile and remember the night of great sex that had messed up the bed, and that memory pleased him more than having his bed in order.

  The bed creaked as he turned onto his side, and judging by the lack of street noise drifting in through the sliding glass door, he knew it was that rare, silent time in the city after the bars had emptied and even the homeless had grown weary of the struggle to stay awake. Connor stuffed his pillow under his head, breathed in the faint scent of Ashley’s perfume, and drifted into the dream that haunted him.

  He was back in the Army, walking up a dark staircase, moaning as he reached for the doorknob. He fought to stop himself from opening the door. His head jerked about on the pillow.

  The guitar ringtone of his cell phone woke Connor at three-twenty-three in the morning. Before he realized that he was no longer in the dream, he grabbed the revolver beneath his pillow and jumped to his feet, jerked the pistol toward the swaying curtain that covered the sliding door, spun and aimed it at the front door.

  “Connor,” called Ashley, climbing out of bed. “Stop it. You’re scaring me.” She cried and dropped to the floor.

  Connor lowered the weapon and straightened up. “Oh no, I did it again, didn’t I?” He sat on the rug beside her, and wiped a tear from her cheek.

  Ashley touched his shoulder. “You’re covered w
ith sweat.”

  “I— I had that dream again,” he whispered, lowering his gaze to the floor.

  “That Army case?” she asked.

  He nodded, pressed his nose into her red hair, and smelled her perfume. “Come on, let’s get back in bed.” Connor helped her stand, and the bed creaked as they plopped down on it.

  “We’re going to get through this,” she said. “I thought those dreams were fading away, but that’s twice this week. Maybe you should go to that group again.”

  “Maybe so, babe.”

  “Forget about the Army, Connor. I need you with me. You’re safe here.” After a moment she sang with a gentle voice: “Row, row, row your boat.” While she sang, her fingers danced along his arm.

  “I’m sorry I scared you. This case I’m working on is stirring up the past.” Connor sighed and his head dropped forward. “I’ll go back to the group.”

  She smiled and rested her head on his shoulder. “Other soldiers have gotten past this. You will too.”

  When the ring tone sounded again, he looked at the phone on the bedside table and picked it up. “Marin Investigations, Connor Marin here. How can I help?”

  “Three-thirty in the morning, who would call at this hour?” Ashley climbed from bed and walked to the bathroom.

  With the phone to his ear, Connor watched her red hair bounce and touch the rose tattoo on her shoulder.

  A conversation was taking place at the other end of the line. “Yes,” an old woman was telling someone. “I know it’s late, but Connor has to find the money. I have to tell him.”

  The instant he heard the old woman he knew who he was speaking to. “Tia Alma,” said Connor. He repeated her name several times until he was almost shouting.

  “Connor? You have to find the money, three and a half million dollars. You are a Private Investigator, a detective like your father.” Her voice changed, and he imagined her cupping a hand over the phone and whispering into it, trying to muffle her voice. “I want to hire you to get it before I get too old and forget where it is. Please, Connor.”

  “Is that Tia Alma?” asked Ashley, pantomiming the words as she turned off the bathroom light. As she approached the bed, she picked up some bills from the dinner table and waved them about. “Ask her why you’re paying for her rest home?”

  Connor rushed to the sliding glass door, opened it, stepped onto the terrace and pushed the door closed behind him.

  “You always ask about your father when you visit, Connor. I know you are looking for answers. I can tell you his secret, but they say I have dementia. I must tell you about your father and the money before I forget.”

  Connor, wearing only a pair of boxers, covered the tattoo on his shoulder.

  The old woman laughed in a loving way. “You’re covering your Ranger tattoo, aren’t you?”

  He dropped his hand from his shoulder. “How did you know?”

  “Because I know my Connor. You don’t need to hide your time in the Army. You’re still my sensitive, loving boy. I know you did bad things in the Army, but it was kill or be killed.”

  “Tia Alma, can I wait until morning to visit you?”

  He pulled one of the plastic chairs from a table with a folded-up umbrella in it, wiped dew from the seat, and sat down. Through the phone he heard the old woman crying.

  “I am slipping away, Connor,” she said. “I am old, and that is okay. That is the way of things. But there is something you need to know. I hid stacks of money. I wrote in my notebook the story of that money, about what a hero your father was, and where to find the cash, but someone took the notebook. It’s gone.”

  “Tia Alma,” said Connor, his voice full of concern. “No one would take your property.”

  There was a long silence before she spoke again. “In my yellow notebook, the one you gave me, I wrote your father’s secret and how it’s all tied up with that money. The caregiver saw me writing. Ask him about it.”

  “Okay, Tia, let me put on some clothes. I’m on my way.” Connor set the phone on the table and thought about the old Mexican woman that he called Tia or Aunt Alma. He remembered being a boy of eight and being awoken by noises in the middle of the night, and standing at his bedroom door in pajamas, hiding his face in his big He-Man doll, because there was a woman in his living room with a bloody face. In her lap sat a black boy Connor’s age, his arms wrapped around the woman as though he’d never let her go. His father’s police buddies were running around the house with weapons drawn.

  Connor remembered crying until that woman with the bloody face saw him and walked over with the black boy held to her chest. Without a word she wrapped an arm around Connor. That was Tia Alma. She had enough love, he knew, for all of California, and that night was the first time he smelled her perfume, the first time he felt the embrace of a woman.

  After a moment, sitting there on the terrace, Connor’s thoughts returned to the present as he watched a squirrel running along a power line. Something major, he knew, had gone down that night so many years ago.

  For the first time as a PI searching for clues, he thought about the night that Tia Alma and a black boy came to live in his house. A woman and child showing up in the middle of the night was quite a mystery. But, he realized, there was more. Something bugged him about that memory. What was it? he wondered. He tried to replay that night several times, but could not pinpoint what it was that troubled him.

  Soon his thoughts drifted to his old He-Man doll, how it felt in his little boy grasp, and then the memory of Alma’s perfume drifted through his thoughts. The memory of that magic scent made every other memory of that night fade away. It somehow reached a deeper place in memory, in his heart. That scent had played a monumental role in his childhood. As Connor tried to experience that perfume once more, the answer came to him. What troubled him about that night so many years ago was there had been no police radio clicking on and off. Not one of his father’s cop buddies had a radio. Connor remembered them marching around the house, peeking out the blinds with their weapons drawn. Whatever had happened that night had been on the down-low, no squad cars, no uniforms, and no reports.

  “What’d you do that night, Dad?” he whispered, stood up and opened the door, stepped back into the loft.

  “Baby,” said Ashley. “Tell me Alma doesn’t have another project for you.” She stood before him and placed hands on hips.

  “This is family stuff.”

  She threw her hands over her head. “I knew it.”

  “It won’t take long.”

  Ashley smiled and tilted her head to the side. “I’m trying to help you. You said last night that you were swamped with work—three open cases.”

  “Listen,” said Connor, leading her to the bed. Once they were seated, he told her the story of the night he met Tia Alma, and the story she told him earlier on the phone.

  ***

  It was after four by the time Connor flipped up the collar of his blazer and pulled on a beanie. Past the shop windows of the Arts District, he walked and turned the corner and stepped over the cable that bordered the dirt parking lot. He put the key in the door of his ‘66 Mustang, slid into the driver’s seat, pressed the accelerator pedal to the floor, turned the key and the engine fired up. As the engine warmed up, he remembered the worry and pain in his aunt’s voice. Was there really money hidden somewhere, he wondered, or had dementia set in? There was only one way to find out.

  The house where Tia Alma lived was in the upscale neighborhood of El Dorado Park Estates. The Estates were one of the last tracts built in Long Beach, wedged between the park and the low-rent cities of Los Alamitos and Hawaiian Gardens. Connor smiled as he drove when he remembered the story his father liked to tell about El Dorado Park.

  Back in the seventies, so the story went, the city of Long Beach began fertilizing the grass with steer manure. Not only did the odor rile nearby residents, but soon hippies were seen wandering around the park like zombies in the early morning fog. Some college students had discovered t
hat blue bonnets, psilocybin mushrooms, liked to grow on manure, and they were growing abundantly in El Dorado Park. Monte always ended the story by saying: ‘That was taxpayer dollars in action.’

  With four bedrooms and two bathrooms, the care facility looked like any other house on the street. But this house was a business. An enterprising nurse had purchased the property and created an old folk’s home.

  A college student answered the door with a steaming mug of coffee in her hand. Connor thought she had probably been up all night, studying and doing her rounds. After he identified himself, she stepped aside and led the way to Alma’s room.

  The hum of an oxygen machine greeted him as he opened the door. The old woman raised her arms the instant he stepped inside. Connor sat on the bed and leaned forward and kissed her wrinkled cheek.

  Alma unhooked the oxygen tube from around her ears. “My boy, Connor, you’re a man now, but you’ll always be my boy. Remember how you used to protect Bartholomew on the playground?”

  Connor remembered the child in her arms that night so long ago.

  Alma touched his shoulder with a feeble hand. “He was the only black boy in your school, and the children used to gang up on him and tease and push him, but he was your brother.” She emphasized the word brother. “And you fought the bullies with Bartholomew right behind you, so they couldn’t get him. That was my Connor.” She patted his hand. “I argued with your father about taking you to boxing lessons when you were so young, but those lessons paid off.”

  “I had to fight. You always gave our lunch money to Bart.” Connor hunched his shoulders and smiled. “I was just being a dog guarding my food bowl. If those bullies got to Bart, they’d take his money and I’d go hungry.”

  Tia Alma shushed him and waved a hand through the air and laughed, but that made her cough. “No,” she said, pushing away the oxygen mask. “I don’t need that.”

  Connor brushed her long gray hair with his hand. “Tia? You said you wanted to tell me something about dad, about how you and Bartholomew came to live with us.”