Nobody Rides For Free Page 2
“Garcia’s at the hospital,” Roly said. “It’s going to take a while to test his blood, hair, and urine to confirm what he took, but all the indications point to flakka. They’ve put him in a medically induced coma to minimize the danger of a stroke or heart attack and preserve his kidneys, so no one can talk to him for a while.”
I was pleased that I’d been able to figure out that Garcia had taken flakka myself. “There’s a message on the laptop from the guy who supplied the drugs to him.”
“Forward that to me,” Hendricks said. “This isn’t the first case where someone either took too much of the stuff and moved into overdose territory, or took something purer than expected, or ingested a bad mix of flakka and something else. I’m working an investigation into local manufacturing and distribution and I’m seeing more and more cases like this.”
“You find out where he got the stuff that quickly?” Roly asked me.
“I searched through his e-mails.” I explained my rationale, that his server might be deleting messages regularly and that therefore there was an expedient need for me to look into them. Roly looked doubtful but he let me continue.
“Looks like he got the flakka from someone who says he’s a fifteen-year-old who does online porn for a gay sex site.”
“That’s a new twist to me,” Colin said. “But it’s so damn easy to get flakka if you have access to the dark web. You click a couple of buttons, find a supplier in China, and then wait by the mailbox.”
I’d heard the terms “dark web” and “deep web” used interchangeably. An analogy I read compared the Internet to an iceberg. Only about 10 percent of all networked material was accessible through search engines and web crawlers. Techies called that the surface web. The rest included password-protected sites for illicit activity, as well as things like your bank account information—anything that wouldn’t easily show up in a search engine.
“It’s pretty easy to get into the dark web, isn’t it?” I asked. “Just get the Tor Browser, right?”
Using the Tor Hidden Service Protocol, your surfing requests stay within the Tor network so you maintain anonymity. You don’t know where the server you’re accessing is, and it doesn’t know where you are. It’s perfect for political activists in repressive regimes, and for people who want to share and/or sell illegal materials—like drugs or kiddie porn.
“Too easy. You know how to find this kid?”
“Not yet. But he mentions that he mailed the flakka to Brian Garcia from a post office in Fort Lauderdale. There are a lot of personal details in the e-mail chain, and I believe that if I follow them I can find him, and then whoever is dealing drugs from the house where he’s living.”
“Any dealer we can put out of business is progress. If you guys take point on the gay porn angle, I’ll go through my usual sources, and we can connect in a day or two.”
Roly agreed, and Colin walked away. “Be careful what you assume, Angus,” Roly said, as we drove. “You know as well as I do that strippers and porn performers and sex workers lie as easily as they breathe. This ‘kid,’ as you called him, could be in his twenties, stringing Brian Garcia along for money.”
“I don’t think so. They really bonded. They’re both Cuban-American, they went to the same middle school in Hialeah, though Brian is ten years older, and both of them were molested by family friends when they were young.” I took a deep breath. “This kid sounds like he’s in real trouble—and if I can find him, maybe I can help him out, and we can track down a flakka supplier.”
“This is the most fired-up I’ve seen you since you got back from being shot,” Roly said. “I’ll request you back on my team and I’ll give you some leeway to do your research. But you’ve got to come up with real, verifiable data quickly. I know you want to save this kid, but don’t get sidetracked. Focus on the drug distribution. That’s where we have jurisdiction.”
“I’ll work my ass off,” I said.
On our way back to the office we discussed approaches I could take. “I’m glad to see you back in the saddle,” Roly said, as we walked into the building. “I’m sure it was tough getting shot the way you did. But remember that it’s a rare occurrence for an agent to be wounded in the line of duty.”
“Uh, Roly?” I pointed to the electronic display in the lobby as we passed it—a computer program that showed all the agents who had died while working for the Bureau.
“I’m not denying the job can be dangerous. But you’re an accountant by training—run the numbers. Consider how many agents have been with the Bureau since it was founded in 1908. Then see what percentage of them are on that screen.”
“I know. And I worked through all that stuff with the shrink.”
He stopped as we reached my office. “You’ve got to tread lightly with this investigation, Angus,” he said. “Be aware that you might get a reputation as only being able to work cases in the gay community.”
I was the only openly gay Special Agent in the office. Though there were other LGBT employees in supporting roles, I’d been able to leverage my knowledge during the last investigation I’d worked with Roly, where I was able to get information and make intuitive leaps that a straight agent might not have been able to.
I was glad to crack that case, even though it had left me with those bullet wounds. “Would that be so bad?” I asked. “I want to be the best agent I can be, attack every case I’m given with all the skills I have. But there’s something to be said for protecting my community. If no one else is going to step up and do it, then I will, and I won’t give a damn what anybody thinks.”
He laughed. “You remind me of myself. You know my background, right? I’m a first generation Cuban-American. When I graduated from Quantico I was assigned to New York and my first assignment was to go undercover and investigate a protection operation being run by Cuban émigrés. One of the guys in charge reminded me of my own abuelo. It freaked me out.”
He leaned against the doorjamb. “I wondered how come they’d put me in this position. I was reporting on my own people. It was like they were exploiting my background. But I recognized that they put me there not just because I could speak the language, but because I fit in. That my job was to uphold the law and protect the people—some of them Cuban-American, some not—who were being victimized.”
That was how I felt, too.
“You may be forced to investigate, or arrest, other gay men. You have to be able to make that separation between your personal life and your career.”
“I can do that,” I said, though even then I recognized my arrogance. How would I know until I was faced with a situation?
“Good. Then you’ll succeed no matter what kind of case you’re assigned to.”
I appreciated Roly’s faith in me—but it was time to demonstrate his faith was warranted. This case was my ticket off the academic team and back to being a real FBI agent. But more importantly, it was the chance for me to be the big brother to a boy who might not have someone to look out for him.
One of my high school classmates, Tommy Carlton, was an overweight effeminate boy, and other kids made fun of his mannerisms and called him every kind of nasty name. They beat him up after school, gave him chocolates that were actually laxatives, and generally made his life miserable.
I was afraid to stand up for him because I didn’t want anyone to know I was gay, and I didn’t want to make waves that could upset my new stepfather. So I did nothing, and during our senior year Tommy committed suicide by shooting himself with his father’s rifle.
Our high school staged a memorial service, and I could see that the kids who’d bullied Tommy felt bad. But I was gutted because I worried that if I’d done something to help him, I might have prevented his suicide.
Now maybe I had the chance to make up for it.
I dropped the cup I’d brought from Garcia’s office at the lab and asked to have it checked for flakka. Then I took Garcia’s laptop to the evidence locker and checked it in. The guy in charge raised an eyebrow
at my explanation of how it came into my possession, but I filled out the paperwork, then carried it back to my office.
Before I went back to the laptop, I wrote up an FD302, the field report used to summarize interviews with subjects. I began with the people I’d spoken with at the Department of Labor office and followed the standard conventions, putting the first and last name of each person I spoke with in all capital letters. When I came to the bottom of the page, I inserted the date and the location of the investigation, the file number and the date created. It always gave me a thrill to type SA Angus Green on the last line.
When I’d finished that, I set up Brian Garcia’s laptop and went back to the e-mail chain from Ohpee. The easiest and quickest thing to do was to send an e-mail to Ohpee from Brian’s account. “Took the flakka this morning,” I wrote. “Really messed me up. Don’t take any of that shit yourself.”
I hit “send,” and almost immediately I got a response back from the Gmail mailer-daemon that the account had been closed.
I could put together a subpoena to Gmail to get whatever details they had for the account, but it was pretty easy to set up one of those accounts, and if Ohpee was into porn and drugs he had probably used false information. So I went back to the e-mail chain. There had to be a clue that would lead me to the site where Brian had first encountered him. And from there, I could get Ohpee’s face, maybe his name.
As I read, I realized that Ohpee also performed in videos—Brian mentioned one that he’d seen with Ohpee and another guy. “Were u really in locker room @ Hialeah racetrack?” Brian had asked. “That was so hawt.”
Ohpee had responded that the producer had shot the exteriors at the racetrack, but the locker room where they’d filmed the scene was at a gym near the house after hours.
I opened up a browser and searched for “gay porn Hialeah racetrack,” and got 21,600 results—most of them missing one or more of my search terms. I slogged through two pages of links before I hit pay dirt, a free preview of a porn movie that began with a sweeping shot of flamingos taking flight from a pond in front of a grandstand at a racetrack.
Quickly the scene shifted to a jockey in purple and white racing silks walking into a locker room. He was a short, skinny guy, with a rounded face and no facial hair. He tossed his cap onto a bench in front of a locker, then pulled off his jersey, revealing a hairless chest. I leaned forward, trying to get a view of his face, but he sat down on the bench and the camera focused on him removing his knee-high boots.
He stood again, this time dropping his white breeches, revealing a purple jockstrap the same color as his jersey. He began to peel off the strap—and then the preview ended with a pop-up window that offered me the chance to see the whole movie if I signed up for a membership with the website.
It had to be Ohpee, right? What were the chances that there were two gay sex flicks with the same setup? I’d seen my fair share of porn, with all the common tropes—student/teacher, coach/athlete, job applicant/interviewer, and so on. But I’d never seen one with a jockey before, and certainly the addition of the Hialeah track made it unique.
But I couldn’t see the guy’s face or establish his name. And the website that wanted me to sign up was a well-known one that didn’t produce videos, but instead collected them from many sites.
The movie had been produced locally—I was sure of that from Ohpee’s e-mail. I didn’t know anyone who acted in or produced porn locally, but I knew who to ask, starting at Lazy Dick’s, the gay bar where I’d hung out a lot with my roommate Jonas before I got shot.
He had tried to drag me out to Lazy Dick’s nearly every weekend once I was off the pain meds and could drink again, but I resisted. It seemed frivolous to go out partying when I’d had a near-death experience. But now, it was different. I had a mission.
3.
Green Hornet
The FBI office in Miami is in Miramar, in the southwest corner of Broward County. It was a long hike from there to Wilton Manors, the neighborhood of Fort Lauderdale where I live. I often wondered, as I sat in bumper-to-bumper traffic, if I’d be better off moving closer to work. But that would mean giving up the gay-centric community where I had begun to feel at home.
The long drive usually gave me a chance to shift gears from Special Agent Angus Green to off duty mode, but that afternoon I kept thinking about my case and wondering what I could find out at Lazy Dick’s. I doubted anyone would admit to watching underage porn, but a lot of good-looking guys hung out there, and I could see one of them might have been approached to act in something, especially if the production facility was local. Or it was possible someone might know about the existence of this house through a friend or a casual trick.
I was finally able to exit the highway at Sunrise Boulevard, driving past a wasteland of used car lots and fast-food operations. The sun was glaring off the rear of the car ahead of me, and rap music blasted from a low-rider with heavy-duty speakers.
It was a relief to turn onto Wilton Drive, where the trees made a canopy over the street. I knew I was home when I started to see bars advertising drag nights, rainbow flags on nearly every business, and a cluster of brand new buildings, full of businesses ready to exploit the pink dollar.
Lazy Dick’s was a landmark, a gay bar by night and the go-to restaurant for Saturday and Sunday brunch. The sprawling low-rise building was surrounded by shaded patios. Jonas and I had spent a lot of time hanging out there, drinking and chatting and looking in an idle way for Mr. Right—or perhaps Mr. Right Now.
I pulled into the parking lot, took off my suit jacket and laid it carefully on the front seat, then removed my Penn State tie and folded it. I undid the first two buttons of my white oxford-cloth shirt, pulled tail out of my white shirt to cover the thumb holster at my waist, checked my hair in the mirror, and I was ready to go.
The patio bar was hopping that evening, with lots of guys in the same kind of work drag I was wearing, along with a mix of older, retired men in Hawaiian shirts and jeans. Kelly Clarkson’s “Heartbeat Song” was playing on the speakers and I felt the rhythm moving in me.
After working my way through Penn State at an Italian restaurant with an active bar, I knew that the best place to start when looking for information was with the bartender. A good one knows his clientele—not only what they like to drink, but whether they want to talk, and if they do, what they’re interested in. And despite the noise and activity, the bartender often overhears more than the patrons assume.
But there was a line at the bar, guys eager to get cheap drinks before happy hour expired, so instead I started a circuit of the room. I recognized a lot of the regulars and I jumped into conversations with a bit of banter.
A few months before, I had investigated the death of one of the busboys at Lazy Dick’s. I’d come out as a Federal Agent to the denizens of the bar and though there had been an initial buzz and some predictable jokes, eventually my job had ceased to matter to anyone. I was no different from the Lauderdale cop with the ripped physique and lots of body art—or the travel agent or the marketing exec.
I asked everyone I knew about companies that might be filming porn in the area, but got nothing more than vague memories. “I saw a call for guys a few months ago,” one of the men said. He was a beefy man in his forties with a pelt of dark hair that peeked above his shirt. “But I’m not exactly porn material so I didn’t pay attention.”
“Hey, there are lots of sites that would take you,” his friend said. “Just hunt for fat guys fucking.”
“If I wanted to see guys like you, I could search for tiny dicks fucking,” the bear said.
I left them to their squabbling and moved on. Finally, the crowd around the bar cleared and I could get in. The bartender on duty that evening was a rail-thin Trinidadian with cocoa-colored skin, a smooth island accent, and the habitual runny nose of a coke addict. He was in his early twenties, and wore a skin-tight tank top with the Lazy Dick logo. “Hey, Raj, what’s going on,” I said as I slid onto a bar stool.
Raj had a nickname for everyone, usually a riff on the person’s real name. When he learned my last name was Green, he’d come up with that reference to the super hero. At least he didn’t call me Angus Cattle.
“I’ll take a Rum Runner.” Because it came out of a machine it was watered down enough that one wouldn’t even begin to get me drunk.
“Coming up. Long time you been away. You better now?”
From what Raj said, I realized that the gay grapevine had been working during the time I was gone, spreading the news of my shooting. It was probably Jonas’ fault—talking about me gave him something to say, a reason for better-looking guys to talk to him.
“Yeah, back to work. Say, you know any companies making porn locally, Raj?”
“Why you ask, mon? Uncle Sam not paying you enough?”
I could have told Raj about the flakka, but questions about drugs often cause guys to shut down. I thought I’d get more information by focusing on Ohpee. “I got a tip that there might be an underage guy performing for one of those sites, based here in Lauderdale. Trying to track him down and make sure he’s not being victimized.”
“I haven’t heard of nobody filming locally. If they do it, they on the down low. And for sure nobody using kids.” Raj sniffed and wiped his nose. “Still tough being a gay kid these days,” he said. “You see all this stuff in the paper, kids coming out early, joining queer clubs and all. But still a lot of trouble for so many of them.” He shook his head, then went on to the next customer.
I did another circuit with no result, and I was draining the last of my Rum Runner when I spotted Jonas. “I’m surprised to see you here,” he said. “I thought you’d given up on the bar scene.”
I explained about the case, but he didn’t know anything about flakka, or about anyone making porn in the area. “That’s creepy, taking advantage of a kid like that,” Jonas said. “I ever tell you about the guy who approached me at the beach?”