Those to be Forgiven

Published: 15 Feb 2018

So it was Ms. Wrona who started you thinking about the Wolf Turtle?

I hadn’t given the ring any thought at all beyond that it had perhaps meant something to Christiansands. Although initially I thought it little more than some fancy of his.

To be honest, you wouldn’t have been expected to.

And Johnny Ives ramblings about lions and wolves… That I put down to whatever psychosis he was suffering.

A reasonable assumption. Although if you quoted him correctly, you realise that he was referencing Aesop’s fables?

Not something that I thought to look up. Like I said: at the time it was little more than a mad man ranting, after I spoke to Ms. Wrona it was something else. You about to tell me that Aesop was Wolf Turtle?

Lion Turtle actually. Based out of the library at Croesus… Ms. Wrona’s an interesting woman.

You’ve dealt with her in the past?

We trade information and books. I like to think of her as an honorary member of our organization.

I shouldn’t be surprised.

To be honest I’m not entirely sure why she didn’t direct you to us in the first place but it’s of no matter… Your findings relating to Stephen Crops and Stephen Sisk… did you believe that they required following further?

I knew that I was going to have to find Crops villa at Manasota Key. With what Ives had told me and the confirmation that police didn’t investigate after his murder I had hoped that I would find something there when I eventually made it down. Shit… Ives practically promised me.

How about their murders?

What about them?

You said that you didn’t believe that Sisk was responsible for the death of his business partner.

No. The way I figure it, Crops was the… ‘creative mind’ of the business. And Sisk the financial brains. If you look at the films Sisk was making on his own in San Francisco before they met, then you can see that he didn’t really have an eye for film making. Also there was the fact that the films with Donny were still being made even after those two scumbags were out of the picture and I had a hunch that whoever murdered them was in on the production of the film loops. I was also operating on the assumption that this third man was the one responsible for the abduction of Donny Baldwin and the two boys from the night of the black out… and god knows how many more. It makes sense right?

It does. Why do you think that the police hadn’t investigated Crops Villa after his murder?

The house was in his name but he sold it to Sisk as part of the deal when they started ‘Genesis Films’. Sisk then sold the property to an unnamed buyer only six months after taking the deeds… At least unnamed in the reports that I could find online. I’ve the address for the villa so expected to find it pretty easily when I made it down.

But despite the two sales it went through, Crops and a number of boys were still residing there?

Part of the deal on the property I assume.

Considering what information was in front of you it seems like a reasonable assumption to make.

That was almost a compliment.

You said that you had received a text from Marko Kena…

Arranging a meeting yeah.

Did you believe, at the time, that he was aware of the Wolf Turtle and the implications of being linked, however tenuously, to such an organisation?

I was hoping to find that out when I met with him.

What about the marijuana seeds that this Dutchman… Daan Dieprink was chasing after?

What about them?

You had jumped to the conclusion that they were somehow linked to the Donny Baldwin case.

No. I didn’t say that. I said that they may have been connected indirectly. Key word there: Indirectly. If Alka Wrona was right and the Wolf Turtle actually meant something… If Christiansands was actually a Wolf Turtle or The Wolf Turtle or whatever it was and hadn’t just lifted the ring off of someone that he’d popped… two ifs too many for me to be jumping to conclusions. But what she had said about the use of oils and lotions pressed from the seeds of rare plants in these cultist rituals… Mike telling me that they covered the naked bodies of the boys in ‘funny smelling oil’ in North Carolina… Christian saying that he wasn’t interested in the weed itself; only the seeds – and that despite his efforts he can’t grow female plants to get more seeds… No. I hadn’t made my mind up or leapt to any conclusions about what Christian Christiansands was or what his intentions were for the seeds. What was it he had said about that Island where they came from? “I’m not welcome there. My men aren’t welcome there. If it’s not fat old hippies bearing ancient grudges on one side it’s pseudo-religious fish cults on the other…”

Did you look up the island that he claimed that the seeds came from?

I did a little later. Even though he wasn’t exactly specific.

And?

And the only one that seemed to really match his description was a fair sized and unnamed Island about a hundred and fifty miles south west of San Francisco. It’s got two towns on it. One with a good sized fishing community and a thriving tourism industry called Halpin Hope on the north side and a smaller older one on the south called Hammerhead Cove.

The island is not unknown to us Mr Quaid. Depending on who you would choose to believe that island may very well be the key to a question our organisation has been asking for several centuries…

That was the first time I’d heard of it. Aside from the two towns and a couple of agricultural outfits it’s got an observatory with one of, if not the, most high tech telescopes in the world… and it’s got a weed farm with the turnover of a small nation’s GDP. Baxter Brothers is the name of the company that owns it. Started as a small Mom and Pop style outfit but grew to something quite impressive by all accounts… Christiansands had named the strain of weed as ‘Rackham’s Purple Kush’ but it wasn’t one that the weed farm lists on its website as for sale or as even in production. As a side note; on the name of the weed and the history of the island by the way, purely because I’m interested in that sort of stuff, is that it’s named after a Wood. Rackham Wood, unsurprisingly. And Rackham Wood is named after an eighteenth Century pirate: John Rackham. More famously known as Calico Jack. Legend is that he hid treasure in that wood a few weeks before his capture and eventual execution.

As interesting as this is I’m not entirely sure what the islands history has to do with the case.

It doesn’t really. It just narrows down where Christian’s weed probably grows… he had said: “It grows wild in one small square on one small island. Nowhere else.” A reasonable assumption is that it managed to grow in that wood.

So despite Ms. Wrona leading you to believe that Christiansands was linked to the Wolf Turtle and that Wolves and Lions were part of a group that fought cults like the one that had taken Donny Baldwin, did you believe his desire to obtain more seeds was somehow nefarious?

Like I said… I didn’t know what to believe.

How about Roland Burgess? You had intended to go see him too correct?

I left Alka Wrona’s store a little after eight with the things she had told me weighing down on my shoulders like a rock filled sack. But I needed to focus on what was coming up: of the the things that I still had to do for the night, approaching Roland was next on the list.

I was still smarting from the thought that Burgess may have used me to take out Johnny Ives and lay his hands on some of the films that he couldn’t otherwise source; I had a bone to pick with the smut peddler. And I had a plan… something that I had already started to put in motion. It’s final execution, however, depended on how badly Roland wanted those loops.

It took me an hour to make it to his office; after I had rushed back to mine, made a quick call and lift one of the DVD’s from the safe before throwing it into my briefcase.

I hung around on the street, under the cloud filled night sky and the weight of my own expectations; my eyes on the door that led to the stairs that trailed up towards his office. I had hoped that he wouldn’t be with a client or a buyer or whatever he called those perverts who paid him for his wares… I needed him alone and comfortable enough on home ground.

I’d only been standing there twenty minutes when someone came down the stairs and I ran to make for the door so that I wouldn’t need to be buzzed into the building.

“Mr Quaid. I’d rather that you would have made an appointment.” His voice crackling on the intercom outside of his office door.

“And I’d rather that you hadn’t sent me down to North Carolina to run your errands.”

Silence for a moment before the intercom buzzed and his office door clicked, giving me the sign to push in.

“I really don’t know what you’re getting at,” he said standing from his desk. “It’s not like you were forced into a situation Mr Quaid. You’re a grown man who can make his own decisions.”

“You sent me an email: Asking me to bring back ‘any old films I could lay my hands on.’ And you know damn fine well what kind of man Johnny Ives is.” I figured that he didn’t need to know that Ives was no longer breathing. In fact I needed him to think that Ives was as alive and as dangerous as ever.

“To be fair Mr Quaid I did warn you… I also told you that no one is going to miss him… If you found yourself in a situation that required a firmer hand.”

“The world will not weep for Johnny Ives.” I quoted back to him. “But I’m not a hitman for hire or your personal executioner…”

“Did he…” He waved an extended finger at my face and the cast around my left hand.

I just stared at him, letting him think whatever he needed to, to get me what I wanted.

“My! You have been mixing in with some rough company since last we met.” He opened the drawer of his desk and I braced myself but he instead planted two empty glass tumblers and a bottle of single malt by the mousepad. I shook my head when he offered me a drink. There’s a first for everything. And besides, I’d decided that I was done breaking bread and taking drinks with shitheels and perverts. Even handsome Clark Kent motherfuckers like Roland Burgess.

“So, I trust the reason that you’re in my office without an appointment is that you found something for me?”

“I have the complete collection of Cine Boys film loops.”

Roland arched an eyebrow as he sipped at his whisky. I would swear that his body gave a little shiver with the thrill: “The complete collection? All sixty-seven films?”

I nodded.

“If you’re telling me the truth Mr Quaid then there are films in your possession that won’t have been seen since they were produced…” He was excited. I could see dollar signs in his eyes. “The quality?”

“They’re on DVD but it looks like they were transferred from the original negatives.”

“Oh my… Oh myohmyohmy…” He sat straight and placed his hands on his lap. “You have them with you?”

I dropped my briefcase on his desk, watching his face and the excitement that danced there, as I dialed the code on the rotary lock and popped the catches. Handing him the DVD in its black jewel case I kept my eyes on him while he inserted it into the disc drive of his computer.

Once it had started up he’d hit play and began shifting in his seat: “Oh yes… this is… this is truly excellent… truly excellent indeed Mr Quaid. The quality is far superior to anything currently on the market… to any version of these I’ve seen before in fact… I’ll be able to resell these higher quality copies to clients who have already paid me for previous versions of these films.” Roland skipped forward through the film loop and clicked open the second. “This is a new one. In context I mean. Number thirty-three hasn’t been seen since the original sales. You, Johnny Ives and I… well we maybe the only three people to have seen this one in the last forty years Mr Quaid. I can think of at least forty men who would pay very handsomely for these films. You would of course be entitled to a finders fee. How does fifty thousand sound?”

That was a lot of money. More than I had expected. But I had a plan and I needed to stick with it. “I want a percentage.”

“A what?” He looked up from the screen of his computer for the first time since inserting the DVD.

“I want a percentage of your sales of the films.”

“That’s ridiculous.” He stopped the film playing in front of him.

“Seventy cents on the dollar.”

“No!” He shook his head. “I’m not even going to entertain such an idea.”

“Then you’re not going to get the films.”

“Mr Quaid you need to be reasonable here.”

“You don’t seem to understand Mr Burgess… I’m not your bag boy or your runner or your hired gun. What you do for a living disgusts me. The men you sell to disgust me. A good part of me wants to burn these films. A good part of me that might still win out when all is said and done… A good part of me that will only be discouraged from doing such a thing for seventy percent of every sale you make on those films. Thirty percent for you is still thirty percent of something that you didn’t have twenty minutes ago.”

That handsome face of his looked as ugly as his soul the way he scowled at me: “Sixty forty. In my favour.”

“Not going to happen.”

“Mr Quaid, without me you have no way of selling the films.”

“I have Pickman. I’m sure his list of perverts is near equal to yours.” I watched as he narrowed his eyes before offering him a thoughtful smile: “I wonder, if I made a venn diagram, how much crossover there would be.”

He curled his lip. “Fifty-Fifty.”

I made a brief show of considering it before I countered: “Sixty-forty in my favour and the fifty thousand finders fee you offered at the top of the negotiation. Tonight. Before I leave your office.”

“Now you are being ridiculous. Even if I were to agree to that, the idea that I keep that sort of money on me…”

“You conduct business in your office here don’t you Mr Burgess? I can’t imagine that you deal in cheques.”

“This is the twenty-first century… Most of my transactions are in cryptocurrency…”

I sighed as if bored by the whole semantics of trying to deal with him: “The finder’s fee, in cash, Which has now gone up to seventy-five thousand. The percentage we can can split after you’ve made each sale.”

Through gritted teeth Roland stood from his chair with his hands gripping the side of his desk. I imagined him a poor poker player: “Fifty-fifty and the money I offered you. After I’ve seen the films.”

“Seventy-five thousand now or I knock you cold, walk out of here with the DVD I gave you and start looking through Pickman’s pocket book.”

His shoulders slumped: “But you’ll agree to an even split.”

“Agreed.” The thing is I knew that if I were being straight with him, and that I was actually interested in the percentage, that he’d maybe play straight with me on the first sale… but he’d make copies of the films and re-sell to others after the fact. “Also we hand over on Staten Island.”

“What?”

“Not that I don’t trust you but I’d feel a hell of a lot safer on home soil Mr Burgess.”

He grumbled under his breath and reached out a hand for me to shake.

“I’ll take the cash in a mix of bills.”

He stood and reluctantly moved toward a wooden door that led off from his office, then stopped: “How do I know you actually have the rest of the films? How do I know that I’m not just giving you fifty thousand dollars and I’ll never see you again.”

“You’ll have to take it on faith Mr Burgess. Faith and a couple of broken bones.” I lifted up my left hand. “You can keep the one I gave you there. Think of it as a sample. With any luck it will help you raise interest in a quick sale.”

I was glad that the gamble had worked. If I were Roland I doubt that I would have handed over that cash. But then I guess the prospect of laying his hands on the rest of those films was too much for him. Too much to even consider the prospect that I didn’t actually have them.

And so with seventy-five thousand dollars in my briefcase I walked out of Roland Burgess office and made my way to Pickman’s.

What?

You can’t wait?

I guess it doesn’t matter. The resolution had no bearing on the rest of the case or anything else that I have to tell you…

Four days later I call Burgess and arrange a meeting at Devere Park in Shaolin to hand over the DVD’s. I made sure that I was on my way down to Florida only a couple of hours after the handover so as to be out of the way. The cops knew I was involved, of course, but they marked me down as CI and kept me out of it after that.

What I hadn’t mentioned was that the day I visited Burgess, that quick phone call I said that I had made when I picked up the DVD, was to Freddie Bianchi:

“I need your help Freddie.”

“If it’s to do with missing kid…”

“Not directly. But it is a by product of the case.”

He sighed heavy down the phone. His voice crackling when he eventually spoke. “What do you need Ramsay?”

“I need you to speak to any contacts that you have in the force on Shaolin. Good ones. Honest and clean ones. Ones who want to see a little justice served for a change.”

“Ramsay?”

“There’s gonna be a deal going down with a kiddy porn trafficker. Real high profile. Has federal protection. I want your friends to pick him up once he’s in possession of a haul of rare films.”

“If he’s got protection…”

“It’ll be fine. I’m gonna make sure a reporter friend of mine is on hand with a photographer when your guys make the bust. His face will be online at the New York Times by the time the Feds think to do anything.”

“You know there’s a high chance that he’ll get off right?”

“Probably. But by then everyone in the city will know his name and face. He’ll be no good to the feds and they’ll ditch him soon after. I’ve a back-up plan if that’s how it pans out.”

He sat silent for a moment. I could hear him clicking his tongue against the back of his front teeth in quick bursts while he mulled it over. “This guy that bad?

“Come on Freddie. He’s a scumbag. He trades in the continual abuse of children.”

Freddie finally agreed and I called him back shortly after I’d arranged the meeting with Burgess.

On the morning of the bust I made Burgess keep his distance from me in the park. Close enough that he could see me as I dropped a red shoulder bag filled with the films to the side of a bench beneath an oak, whose trunk was being choked by the tentacle like branches of a wisteria.

When Roland picked up the bag I followed him, at a discreet distance, to where the Greenbelt Blue Trail let out at the corner of Todt Hill Road and Ocean Terrace. It was there that I heard the sirens and the shouts of officers telling him to drop to his knees. I could see my reporter friend Marlene Trainor hollering questions over the raised voices of the cops: first of Roland, then more sedately of the officers as her photographer snapped shot after shot after shot…

Roland didn’t see me as they bundled him into the back of the van.

In the end Roland Burgess Federal protection wasn’t worth shit. He was of no use to them once his face was well known and I’d wager that they had thoughts that his client base would dry up as a result. In any case, before the news could reach his handlers, officers from the seventeenth precinct had secured a warrant and raided his office. They cleared out all of his computers and his files… The shockwaves were felt for months afterwards as a series of arrests of his former clients were made worldwide.

He pleaded guilty to the possession and distribution of child pornography on a mass scale and was awarded a twenty-five year sentence in state…

Yeah. I felt pretty good about myself for that one.

The seventy-five thousand? No. That wasn’t for me:

After I had told him about Alka Wrona, I filled Pickman in on what was going down with Burgess. His eyes glossed over when I opened my briefcase to show him the cash.

“Shit man. Roland gave you that?”

I nodded and closed the case snapping it shut and flipping the rotary locks.

“Are you gonna give him the films?”

“I am.”

“So how much more do you reckon you’ll get when he sells them on?”

“Not a dime.”

“What?”

“He’s not going to get the chance.” I handed the briefcase to Pickman. “I need you to keep a hold of the money. In case anything happens to me.”

Pickman looked at me with a furrowed brow.

“I want Mike to have the money. I want him to use it to set himself up somewhere once I’m done with the case. Once I’m sure that whoever this Hurdy Gurdy Man is isn’t going to go looking for him.”

“You trust me with this much money?”

“Are you giving me a reason not to?”

Pickman shook his head.

“Do me a favour and keep it from the kid. Don’t tell him until we part ways.”

On cue the bathroom door opened and Mike walked out rubbing damp hands down the sides of his jeans.

“Hey Kid. You have a have a good day?”

Mike smiled when he saw me – and somehow with my plan in place to tackle Roland I felt like I had earned it.

“Been good Ramsay. We went for Burgers. Well I went for Burgers. Peter was whispering at a table across the room with some guy.”

“Seeds or Dutchman?” I asked turning to Pickman as I suddenly remembered that he had said that he had news.

“Nothing on the seeds. But our Dutch friend has been busy.” Pickman stood from the sofa and moved over to the fridge, taking out a beer for each of us and a soda for Mike. “The guy I was whispering with was another fixer. Pretty much works exclusively out of the Port of New York and New Jersey.”

“He’s Port Authority?”

“Day job. But he moonlights for extra cash.”

“And?”

“And he’s been assisting our Dutch friend move containers undetected.”

“Containers of what?”

“That he can’t tell me.”

“Can’t or won’t?”

“Can’t. He has no idea what’s in them. Until you told me what the old bookstore lady had said to you about the seeds I was still assuming that he was running guns. Now I’m not so sure.”

“And how do you know it’s The Dutchman?”

“My friend showed me the business card that he was given. Same as the one The Dutchman gave Barney. Same as the one he gave me.” Pickman took a sip of his beer and looked very pleased with himself as he sat back on the sofa. “So far they’ve loaded one cargo ship that set sail last week. There’s another one leaving in two days. He’s using vessels owned by a company called Morris International. They’re a private firm with offices all over the world. Lots of fingers in lots of pies.”

“Did he tell you when the ship is leaving and where from?”

Pickman smiled and nodded: “APM Terminal, day after tomorrow, at eleven at night.”

“Looks like we’ve got some good news for Keena tomorrow.”

“I can’t wait to see his face.”

“I’m going alone.”

Pickman narrowed his eyes.

“I’ve got questions for Keena that need answering.” I said rubbing the back of the ring Christian had given me with the tip of my thumb. “I don’t know if he’d be as open to answering them honestly if you’re around.”

“Are you forgetting that the last time we were there you got your hand broken. And the time before that your nose…”

I liked that Pickman was seemingly getting into the swing of things. It was less than a week ago that the thought of being pulled up in front of Keena had him running between safe houses.

“They’ll be no broken bones this time. He needs me.”

“What do you want me and the kid to do while you’re getting chummy with Keena?”

“Look into Morris International. Find out anything you can. If they’ve already moved one shipment for The Dutchman and they’re preparing to move another then they need to have manifests; departure and arrival times; locations where the shipment is getting dropped off. Anything and everything… You never know what might turn out to be important.”

“It’s always the little things.”

“Yeah… It’s always the little things.”

To Be Continued…

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