Chapter 5: Lists

Chapter Five is the point where the story branches. Six takes up the action again.

John wakened from his nap in increments. First he became aware of the television. It was tuned to a news program. The sound of a car passing by on the street out front caught his attention next. He heard faint voices from upstairs. He felt more awake and alert than he had in months.

The sounds made by the three young people upstairs were clear enough he could understand snatches and phrases of their conversations. "Man, I feel like I'm about to come alive again."

He remembered the corruption he had passed from his body. "I must have some kind of infection." He decided whatever it was, he was glad to be on the road to recovery.

Tony interrupted john's thoughts when he came downstairs. "Dad, I started to do background checks on the cops who messed you over. That new search engine I developed works great. Have you ever heard of some outfit called Grupo Sedra?"

John thought a moment before he answered. "If I remember right, they are Mexican power vendors. They furnish blocks of electrical power to California residents. Their stuff is dirty. They never filter their power before they introduce it to the American grid. Their spikes have burned out microwaves and computers that are not surge protected."

Tony frowned and shook his head, "That doesn't sound right. This Grupo Sedra pays anywhere from a thousand to five thousand dollars a month into the pockets of a whole lot of cops. The money is paid from dollar accounts in Banco Mexico, Tecate, Mexico."

"Are the accounts in the cops' own names?"

"Sort of. There is a master account in the name of Grupo Sedra. Then there are sub accounts that permit the cops to draw money out at so much per person. They can take out from a thousand to ten thousand dollars on the second of each month, according to whom it is.

"Tony, how do you do it?" John shook his head in amazement. "What else did you find?"

"They have been looking for two lists of something. They hired two Chula Vista cops to find the lists. The guy who had the lists hid them somewhere. He died when they tried to torture the locations out of him."

"You have any idea how to find out the name of the guy the tortured to death?"

"They call him Ralph in the messages I could access. I don't know if that is a first name, a last name or an alias, like an Internet handle."

"Oh fuck!" John felt a squirmy feeling in the pit of his stomach.

"Not that son of a bitch," he whispered, almost like a prayer.

"What is it, Dad?" Tony looked at John in alarm.

"I knew a punk named Ralph. He is the one who did all that stuff to Kathy. He was my brother in law. He killed my wife Betty and was arrested for it. According to the cops, he died in jail."

"Give me his last name and I'll see what I can find." Tony reminded John of a hunting dog with a fresh spoor to follow.

John told him, "Martin, Ralph Martin."

Tony didn't answer. He returned to his computer upstairs. Ten minutes later, he called down, "Dad, entertain these two females. I need to concentrate."

"What got into him?" Christine asked when they found themselves back downstairs. "You'd think he discovered the secret of the Pharaohs or something."

"Kathy, we have a problem. Ralph may be back in our lives again." John hated the look of horror on her face.

"No! Dad! John no." Her voice dropped to a whisper. "He's dead, you promised." She began to sob, "You promised me he was dead." She came over to John and crawled up in his lap.

"Sweetheart, so far as I know, he is dead. Tony found a reference to him on the Internet. He may have been mixed up with some real bad people. Those people think we have something they want." He saw the misery on his daughter's face. John fought hard not to cry.

"What do they want? Maybe if we gave it to them they would just ... just leave us alone." She tried to somehow disappear into his arms.

"Kathy, snap out of it." His sharp voice caused her to jerk back from him. "The only reason we are still alive is because they haven't found those damned lists yet."

"Daddy, I'm, I'm afraid." Kathy became a scared young girl in a matter of seconds.

Christine came over to John and Kathy. She touched John's face. "Yeah, I'm scared too. Mother told Senator Prigg he had better be careful around those Mexicans he got money from. She said they would dump him in a heartbeat if he became a liability."

John became still. He hardly dared to breath. "Ah, what Mexicans?"

"I don't know, just Mexicans. They were rich; I remember that."

John looked up at her. "Chris, do you remember the name of their company, or whom they worked for?"

"I think Mother called it Grope Sending. She said those Mexicans could grope a woman clear across the room. She did not like them."

"Grupo Sendra, was that the name?" John held his breath while he waited for her answer.

"No, she didn't, but the Senator did. I remember now. He said the Grupo Sendra people were most generous."

John let his breath out in a whoosh. "Oh hell." He sat and thought. "Kathy, did you ever see Ralph hide anything, anywhere at all?"

She became still, as she tried to remember. "Oh man, I forgot all about it. I'm sorry, Dad. Ralph hid two discs inside my laptop. I asked him what he was doing and he hit me and told me to mind my own business. You want me to go get them?"

The front door opened. "You don't need to go get anything." The speaker was a medium sized Hispanic in an expensive suit. He came all the way into the room and closed the door behind him.

"Who the hell are you?" John demanded.

"Juan Carlos Espinosa at your service," He pulled a gun out of his suit coat pocket. "Bring me the computer."

"I can't," Kathy told him.

"Get it or I will shoot someone."

Christine told him, "You sound like a sissy bad guy in a cheap movie."

When the intruder turned his head to look at Christine, Tony ran across the room. He stiff armed the man in the back. Christine grabbed the gun hand. Kathy half fell off of John's lap and ran toward the kitchen. She came back to the struggle with a knife in her hand and stabbed once.

Juan Carlos stiffened and fell to the floor. His eyes stared at Infinity. John was positive the intruder was dead. "Daddy," Kathy whimpered.

John struggled to his feet. He felt more strength flow into his body as he exerted himself. "Everybody out," he ordered. Get into the motor home. Lock the place up. Let's go."

Kathy stood back and stared at the dead man lying on the floor. She seemed in a trance, as she walked over to the corpse and pulled the knife out of his back. "No," she whispered. "No, I didn't mean to. Please, no."

"Chris, help Kathy into the motor home." John tried to concentrate on the other tasks at hand.

Christine nodded. She spied the revolver the Mexican had dropped when Kathy stabbed him.

John cleared his throat and continued, "Tony, get your computer and bring it out to the motor home. We have to get away from here. God knows who will show up next." Tony nodded and ran up the stairs. He grabbed the pulled the peripheral hookups loose and carried the rebuilt Dell downstairs.

In the meantime, John made his way to the steps of the motor home and called to Christine, "Help me get up the steps, please." With Christine's help, he was able to make it to the driver's seat.

Tony followed John inside and closed the door behind him. He gave John a worried look. "Are you sure you can drive this thing? Dad, maybe you better let me do the driving."

John shook his head no. "I'll have to gut it out. If you drive and are stopped, we could end up in more trouble than we can handle. I want to drive us a block away and park. Then you and I can come back and get rid of that body."

"I got his gun, "Christine told them.

"Everybody sit down," John told them. He started the engine and let it fast idle until it warmed up to operating temperature.

Tony sat down in the passenger's seat. "Dad, why are we just going such a short ways?" He cocked his head to one side and waited for an answer.

"Son, we left the apartment unlocked and there is a body in the middle of the living room floor."