“Yeah. Sal was probably just waiting for a convenient time to take Carmen out and dump her at sea.”
“I don’t understand Sal’s connection.”
Morelli hammered the lid back on. “Me either, but I feel pretty confident Ramirez can be pursuaded to explain it to us.”
He wiped his hands on his pants and left smudges of white.
“What’s with all this white stuff?” I asked. “Sal got a thing with baby powder or cleanser or something?”
Morelli looked down at his hands and his pants. “I hadn’t noticed.”
“There was powder on the floor of the boat. And now you picked some up from the drum and wiped it on your pants.”
“Jesus,” Morelli said, staring at his hand. “Holy shit.” He flipped the lid off the drum and ran his finger around the inside rim. He put the finger to his mouth and tasted it. “This is dope.”
“Sal doesn’t strike me as a crackhead.”
“It’s not crack. It’s heroin.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’ve seen a lot of it.”
I could see him smiling in the dark.
“Sweet Pea, I think we’ve just found ourselves a drop boat,” he said. “All along I’ve been thinking this was about protecting Ramirez, but now I’m not so sure. I think this might be about drugs.”
“What’s a drop boat?”
“It’s a small boat that goes out to sea to rendezvous with a larger ship engaged in drug smuggling.
“Most of the world’s heroin comes from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Burma. It’s usually routed through northern Africa, then up to Amsterdam or some other European city. In the past, the favored method of entry for the northeast has been to body-pack it through Kennedy. For a year now, we’ve been getting tips that the stuff is traveling big time on ships coming into Port Newark. The DEA and Customs have been working overtime and coming up empty.” He held his finger in the air for inspection. “I think this could be the reason. By the time the ship sails into Newark, the heroin’s already been off loaded.”
“Onto a drop boat,” I said.
“Yeah. The drop boat snags the dope from the mother ship and brings it back to a small marina like this where there are no customs inspectors.
“My guess is they load the stuff into these barrels after it’s handed down, and one of the bags broke last time out.”
“Hard to believe someone would be that sloppy about leaving incriminating evidence.”
Morelli grunted. “You work with drugs all the time and they become commonplace. You wouldn’t believe what people leave in full view in apartments and garages. Besides, the boat belongs to Sal, and chances are Sal wasn’t along for the ride. That way if the boat gets busted, Sal says he loaned it to a friend. He didn’t know it was being used for illegal activities.”
“You think this is why there’s so much heroin in Trenton?”
“Could be. When you have a drop boat like this you can bring in large quantities and eliminate the couriers, so you have good availability at low overhead. The cost on the street goes down and the purity goes up.”
“And addicts start dying.”
“Yeah.”
“Why do you think Ramirez shot Sal and Louis?”
“Maybe Ramirez had to burn some bridges.”
Morelli played his light over the back corners of the truck. I could barely see him in the dark, but I could hear the scrape of his feet as he moved.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“I’m looking for a gun. In case you haven’t noticed I’m shit out of luck. My witness is dead. If I can’t find Ziggy’s missing gun with an intact latent, I’m as good as dead, too.”
“There’s always Ramirez.”
“Who may or may not be feeling talkative.”
“I think you’re overreacting. I can place Ramirez at the scene of two execution-type killings, and we’ve uncovered a major drug operation.”
“Possibly this casts some doubt about Ziggy’s character, but it doesn’t alter the fact that I appeared to have shot an unarmed man.”
“Ranger says you’ve got to trust in the system.”
“Ranger
I didn’t want to see Morelli in jail for a crime he didn’t commit, but I also didn’t want him living the life of a fugitive. He was actually a pretty good guy, and as much as I hated to admit it, I’d become fond of him. When the manhunt was over I’d miss the teasing and the latenight companionship. It was true that Morelli still touched a nerve every now and then, but there was a new feeling of partnership that transcended most of my earlier anger. I found it hard to believe he would be sent to jail in light of all the new evidence. Possibly he would lose his job on
