Broken Hero

Chapter 3

Victor Calloway was a man of great personal discipline. It was the key to his longevity in the business of illegal drug sales.

He woke up precisely at 6 AM every morning, at which time he took a steaming hot shower with the finest imported designer soap available, shaved with a straight razor and imported shea butter-infused shaving soap, and dressed in nothing but Brooks Brothers for a look that was somewhere between old-school businessman and Ivy League college professor. He was out the door of his Beacon Hill townhouse by 6:45 AM to drive over to Thornton's on Huntington Avenue near the Prudential Center for a breakfast of their house version of eggs Benedict, washed down with green tea and V-8. After paying the check, he proceeded to the newsstand inside the Pru's shopping mall for the day's copy of the Boston Globe, which would remain folded and unread the front passenger seat of his Audi A4 Quattro for the drive over to his import/export front business' office at the Seaport World Trade Center in South Boston.

After parking in the underground garage, Calloway took the elevator up to his office on the ninth floor facing the harbor, the newspaper tucked under his arm. He unlocked the office door and entered the office, the motion sensors in the wall activating the lights. He looked at the phone on the desk as he sat down behind it, and saw that the voice mail light was glowing. He activated the speakerphone feature and accessed his voice mail while he laid the newspaper on the desk. There was only one voice mail message waiting for him, and it had been tagged urgent. "Mr. Calloway, it's Helder. Last night the plane crashed," the caller said.

Calloway's eyes widened upon hearing the message from one of his "middle managers" as he preferred to call them, for it referenced one of the Globe's front-page above-the-fold headlines. The story occupied the right-side column, as the incident had happened too late in the night to be able to get any photographs in before the printing deadline, and it left out most of the pertinent details due to the media blackout the NTSB was imposing until something concrete was found, but the general description of the plane involved matched one of the ones he used to transport both product and money around the country and in and out of Canada, which was his primary source of Schedule II and III pharmaceuticals. His concern then turned to displeasure after he realized that Helder had used the office's main phone line for the call.

He opened a desk drawer to retrieve a prepaid "burner" cellphone, one of many that he'd issued his subordinates to avoid the possibility of getting wiretapped by the authorities. The battery had been removed from it to prevent against the E-911 GPS chip being remotely activated if there was an available power source; he reinserted it into the phone and dialed the number for Helder's own burner. Helder picked it up after the third ring. "Hello?"

"Why did you call me on a land line?" Calloway demanded without preamble.

"It was an emergency, and I couldn't get through to you on one of the burners."

Calloway's anger lessened. "So what happened?"

"Don't know the full story yet. All I know is what the news is showing."

"What was on the plane?"

"The money we owed our supplier up north for product."

Calloway closed his eyes in exasperation. "Is there any way we can get that money back?"

"The wreckage of the plane is being guarded at all hours by the cops. They'll eventually find it."

"Can the plane be traced back to us in any way?"

"We altered its tail number almost immediately after we bought it. Assuming there's no hidden serial numbers anywhere on the fuselage, we should be okay."