The Sponsor

Detective Rico

He got a file from Europe delivered to him by a trusted agent who he partnered with whenever projects crossed borders. The person of interest had resigned from the hospital shortly after Mzee Ajabus death and he now lived on the coast of Corsica in Italy. He had abandoned his aging wife and four kids and he now lived a lavish life with his super model girlfriend.

With a helicopter on a helipad outside his beach house and a yacht in the water. He looked at the file and shook his head, then looked at his watch. The clock struck noon. He had a burglary to do.

He found himself in the doctor's house in Karen Hardy a little after midday. His wife had left for work and kids for school. He combed the place for evidence and came up with nothing except the aura of a family without its father. Warm but lacking strength. 'Maybe the family did not need strength, especially when that strength was coming from a person who could take life so easily if it meant having a yacht and a helicopter,' he thought.

He needed more information and maybe a short vacation. He found himself boarding a plane to Rome and linking up with his agent who debriefed him. The agent had gone through the trouble of tapping the doctor's phone and installing surveillance cameras in his beach house.

Money was running short for the doctor. Fred and his consort had drowned into a drunken and lavish stupor that they had forgotten they had payments to make to their accomplice. The doctor had anticipated such an incident and he had kept the surveillance tape to blackmail the CEO. "I will expose you to the press," he kept yelling at a phone that kept going to voicemail. 

It was then that Rico Loco came up with a plan he would make an offer to the good doctor for the tape, "Thirty million dollars," that has got to get his bells going off in excitement.  After a few anonymous conversations a meet was arranged.

They met at a Trattoria a few blocks from the coliseum. The doctor was yellow of skin. He looked to Rico like the kind of chap who had never struggled for a day in his life and it was true. He had looked him up. He was born into a well off family though not well off enough to afford him his lifestyle but well off to afford him an Ivy League education and contacts that ensured he got a foot into medicine even with his average grades.

He showed up in khakis, silver lofs, an unbuttoned white shirt so that you saw his chest hair and ray ban glasses which sat on his dollars twenty haircut. He looked every bit like a douche-bag.

"I need to know exactly what I'm buying, thirty million dollars is a lot of money." He had a big bag beside him.

"I don't know what you're talking about, I don't even know you."

Rico knew the doctor was playing safe, which was clever because they had recordings of him on phone which meant nothing. If they were to wrap the case they needed a confession from the doctor or the tape he had.

"I understand your fears, I'm not a cop, or a detective. I am just a supplier that Ajabu digital screwed over. They owe me one hundred million dollars, so you see thirty million is a small price to pay if it means I get my money back."

The doctor sat down, "How do I know I can trust you?"

"You don't."

"Then we have nothing to talk about." The doctor made to get up.

"I know you need the money, Jacob. That supermodel girlfriend you have won't pay for herself. I think it's time we stopped playing games. Don't you?"

The doctor sat back down, "how do you know all that?"

"It's called google, you should try it."

"Okay, okay. I have the tape but I need the sum of cash wired to my account before we can have any conversation."

Rico removed his laptop from his bag, and started tapping keys.

"How is Fred, is he really running his father's company to the ground?" The doctor chimes.

"Fred has gone mad," Rico said nonchalantly.

"You know I should have never been a part of this but life is what it is, isn't it?" The doc said absentminded, guilt striking him like lightning.

Rico clicked enter on his keyboard. "You should have gotten a message on your off shore account."

The doctor looked at his phone and his eyes gleamed. He did not know that, that was a shell transaction that wouldn't last thirty seconds. He reached in his pocket and came out with the tape.

"In that tape you'll find some guy called Josh. working in cohorts with Fred."

"How did you get a hold of the tape?"

"I was Mzee Ajabus doctor and I was on duty that day.

"So you turned a blind eye?"

"You could say that, it's not my proudest moment. But a man got to do what a man got to do, right?"

One minute Rico was seated behind his laptop, the next he was prancing at Dr. Jacob. " You're under arrest for the obstruction of justice and as an accessory to the murder of Mzee Ajabu, anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law."