Rolling Thunder

by Matt Lincoln

  Of course, that would depend on how our sort-of date went tonight.

  “I can’t wait to see what else you find in there,” Bonnie said as she practically bounced on her feet. “Real pirates, wow. This is so exciting. Are you excited?”

  I gave a wry smirk. “I’ll be more excited when I can close my live case, so I can focus more on this one. Thanks for the great work. Now, I have to go poke the bear and see if I can get him to bite.”

  I’d let Agay Benta cool his heels long enough. It was time for him to answer my questions, whether he wanted to or not.

  Chapter 18

  Holm and I stood in the observation room for a few minutes and watched Agay Benta on the other side of the one-way glass. He sat on the opposite side of the table in the room, facing what was a mirror on his side, arms folded with a mild scowl on his face. Occasionally he rearranged his hair, leaned back or forward slightly, or took a break from folding his arms to drum his fingers on the table.

  Altogether his attitude was one of annoyed impatience like he was waiting on a delayed flight rather than an interrogation that could put him in prison for the rest of his life. The reason for that was clear enough. He didn’t think he was going to prison.

  I looked forward to changing his mind.

  “Shouldn’t he be cuffed?” Holm asked eventually.

  “Nah, all the better if he takes a swing at me,” I said with a shrug. “Then we’ve got him for assaulting an officer on top of everything else.”

  “Yeah, well,” Holm sighed, “I’m not so sure he’s stewing in there. More like basting or possibly marinating. He still thinks he can rinse all this off.”

  “Yeah, I’m sure he does, but he’s wrong.” I flipped through the folder in my hand to make sure I had all the stage dressing I needed. “Make sure that camera stays rolling, okay? We need everything airtight on this one.”

  “You know I will. Just… be careful in there. He turns deadly real fast.”

  “That’s my middle name.”

  He grunted. “Since when is careful your middle name?”

  “Not careful. Deadly,” I said with a smirk. “We’re going to get him.”

  “I hope you’re right,” he called after me.

  I was already moving toward the interrogation room door. When I let myself in, Benta didn’t even glance in my direction.

  “You might as well bring me back to the cell because I’ll be out by tomorrow morning,” he said. “I’m not talking.”

  “Funny. Those sounded like words coming out of your mouth to me.” I moved casually to the chair across from him, sat down calmly, and placed the folder on the table in front of me. “I’ll give you a few minutes if you need to clear your throat or something.”

  I stared at him and waited. Then I waited some more, while his expression moved from sneering through irritation to disbelief, and beyond that, to anger.

  “What?” he finally snapped. “What do you want?”

  “For you to talk.” Still calm and unhurried, I opened the front of the folder, took out the photo that was on top, and put it on the table, turning it around so that it was facing Benta. It was a mugshot of the victim, taken when he was arrested in the Bahamas for public assault. “You know this guy?”

  Benta made a show of leaning forward and pretending the study the picture for a moment, then leaned back with an insolent smile. “Nope.”

  “Hmm.” I tapped my chin with a finger. “Maybe you only recognize him from the back, since that’s where you shot him.” I dropped the next photo from the folder on top of the first. It was a close-up picture from the crime scene of the bullet hole in Sweeting’s skull. “Oh, wait, you might need a wider shot to really identify him,” I said as I placed another photo next to it, this one a full-body picture from the crime scene.

  “Don’t know him.” This time Benta didn’t even try to look at the pictures.

  I sat a little straighter. “It might help,” I said dryly, “if you moved your eyeballs in the direction of the photos before you lie about recognizing them.”

  He widened his eyes and rolled them down slowly so he could take an exaggerated look at the pictures. “Sorry. Never seen him.”

  Though I already suspected this was the direction the interrogation would take, it still irritated me. I hated uncooperative suspects, especially when both of us in the room knew damned well what they’d done. Still, it wasn’t quite time to get persuasive yet.

  “You know, some people really hate having their picture taken,” I said conversationally as I poked at the remaining papers in the folder, spreading them around a bit. “Are you one of those people, Benta? I have to be honest, you don’t look all that photogenic.”

  An unhealthy smile lifted his lips. “Take all the pictures you want, jefe.”

  “Oh, I’m not your boss, but I do want a word with him. That’ll have to wait, though, because I’m talking to you.” I returned the smile. “Besides, I don’t need to take a picture of you. I’ve already got one.”

  With that, I extracted the blow-up of Benta’s face and put it on the table, on top of the other photos. “Pretty good likeness, isn’t it?” I asked. “That’s you looking over the cliff, right where we found your underling’s body. I can show you the full-sized one with the cave in the shot if you’re interested.”

  Benta shifted instantly from mocking sneer to rage. “That bitch with the camera wasn’t even there until long after I—”

  He cut himself off as he realized what he’d said, but it was too late.

  “Ah,” I said softly. “Now we’re getting somewhere. Tell me about the bitch with the camera.”

  A sullen glare was his only response.

  “She’s the one you tried to kill at the hotel last night, isn’t she? After you missed her outside Chez Rockport.” I shook my head in mock sympathy. “How did you manage to miss that shot, by the way? I thought your nickname was Sniper.”

  The silence from him swelled to a whole lot of aggressive nothing.

  “What I really don’t get is why you took out the private security guy first,” I went on. “I mean, your jefe is gonna be seriously pissed off when he finds out you missed your target. What’s the deal here, Benta?”

  “I want a lawyer,” he said stiffly.

  I shot to my feet and slammed a hand on the table. “You don’t get a lawyer!” I shouted. “Not this time, asshole.”

  His sneer faltered slightly. “I know my rights.”

  “Bullshit you do. First of all, you’re not a U.S. citizen.” I snatched the rest of the folder up and circled the table slowly toward him. “Second, you don’t get a lawyer when you’re under arrest and being charged with murder until after you’ve been formally processed… and you haven’t been yet.”

  For the first time, Benta looked uncertain. “You didn’t arrest me.”

  “The hell I didn’t. Remember last night, when I said ‘you’re under arrest’?”

  “You have no evidence—”

  I slapped the folder down in front of him to interrupt his weak protest. “A witness saw you and photographed you at the crime scene. We’ve got a ballistics match between the gun we took off you last night and the bullet that killed the victim, your prints are all over the place, and your DNA is under the victim’s fingernails.” That last one was a bit of a stretch since I didn’t have the test results from the organic matter under the vic’s nails yet, but I was going with it anyway. “So that’s at least one murder we’ve got you for, and we’ll have a second to pin on you once Metro processes the evidence from the restaurant shooting. Oh, and then there’s attempted murder against an officer of the law, and we can probably tack on stalking with intent, too.”

  I wasn’t actually sure if “stalking with intent” was a real charge, but what the hell? It sounded good.

  Benta shivered slightly and stared straight ahead. “I want a lawyer.”

  “You keep saying that. It’s not going to get you one any faster,” I said. “You’ll have a lawye
r when I’m damned good and ready to give you one.”

  He tensed as if he was going to spring at me.

  “Oh, so you want to add assaulting an officer to your list of charges?” I said as I pointed at the glowing red light in the corner of the room that marked the camera’s location. “Go ahead. Jump me.”

  “I want a lawyer,” he murmured again.

  “You can’t have one.”

  “I want a lawyer.”

  “Two counts of murder. Attempted murder. Stalking,” I said, ticking items off on my fingers. “That’s about a hundred and fifty years in prison if you’re lucky. How about we toss interfering with a federal investigation onto the pile, while we’re at it?”

  “I want—”

  I grabbed his shirt and hauled him halfway out of the chair. “Go on. Say lawyer,” I snarled in his face. “You are not getting off this hook.”

  Benta gave a weak laugh. “You forgot about your own camera.”

  “What camera?”

  He actually paled a few shades as he sputtered something incomprehensible.

  “I think you’re misreading the situation here, Benta.” I lowered him slowly back to the chair and let go of him. “See, you’re used to dealing with police officers. Miami Metro, the RBPF. If they can’t be bribed, you can break their systems and wiggle through the cracks.” A cold smile spread on my face as I moved around the table and took my seat again. “The thing is, I’m a federal agent. Our rules are different.”

  The bravado resurfaced briefly. “FBI, CIA, Coast Guard,” he recited with derision. “All of you are still Americans, and you have American rules.”

  “Sure, they do,” I told him. “Not us, though. I’m sure a smart guy like you is familiar with the word ‘jurisdiction,’ aren’t you?”

  “Yes. That word means you have to bring me to the Bahamas.”

  “You see, that’s exactly where you’re misreading things.” My smile stayed in place. “What we have at MBLIS is international jurisdiction. Want to guess what that means?”

  His expression froze.

  “It means no embassies, no forced cooperation, and we get to ignore that pesky extradition problem that other agencies have.” I almost laughed at the way his face fell. “Now, you’re right that I can’t assault you. On the other hand, I can use reasonable force on an uncooperative suspect as determined by my own judgment.” I leaned toward him and grinned. “You’re being uncooperative, Mr. Benta. Would you like to find out what I consider reasonable?”

  He stared at me for a long moment, and finally muttered, “Fine.”

  “Fine, what?”

  “I know him. Chad Sweeting.” He nodded at the scrambled photos on the table, and the ghost of a smile formed on his mouth. “Arrest me for his murder, if you want to.”

  “Maybe you missed the part where I said I already have arrested you.”

  “What do you want, then?”

  “I want the why.” I shoved the blown-up image of Benta aside and tapped on the crime scene photo of the victim. “You tried to make this look like a gang hit, like the Congo Kings took him out. So, I want to know why you murdered one of your own guys, and then farmed out the scene to spread the blame elsewhere.”

  Benta’s lips pressed together hard.

  “You guys are badasses, right?” I asked. “Powerful and untouchable. Never serve time for shit. Why not take the credit for this one? If you were pissed at the kid, you could’ve used him as a lesson to the rest of your little minions not to cross you.”

  No response from the peanut gallery.

  “Were you trying to buy time, force the inevitable investigation to look elsewhere?” I was spitballing now, talking more to myself then Benta. “If that’s the case, why didn’t you hide the body better? Or… did you just think no one would find him there?”

  A telltale tightening around Benta’s eyes suggested I was on the right track.

  “That’s it, isn’t it?” I mused aloud. “Those shores are deserted for miles. The Navy owns the land, but the terrain is unusable. You figured the body wouldn’t be found for a long time, if ever, but then the photographer came along and spoiled your plans.”

  Benta strained in his seat, and a vein throbbed at his temple.

  “You’re holding something back,” I said. “Did I miss something, or do you just really need to take a dump?”

  He managed to relax and sent me a cool stare. “I’m done talking to you.”

  “Fine. How about I talk to your boss, then?”

  He didn’t respond, but something dark flickered in his gaze.

  “I guess that settles it.” I rose and started gathering the documents from the table, stuffing them back into the folder. “For your sake, I hope Cobra Jon is a more forgiving man than his name suggests because I hear he has a pretty long reach. You might not live long enough to be sentenced.”

  Benta failed to react to that. He sat there staring dully into the mirror as I left the room, locked him in, and went back to observation.

  “Well, we’re halfway there,” Holm said when I joined him behind the one-way. “He confessed to the murder, more or less. How are we going to find out what they’re up to?”

  I turned to stare at the motionless Benta for a minute. “He’ll crack. He just needs a little more alone time, now that he knows the score. He stays in interrogation. Have somebody go in there and put him in chains until we get back.”

  Holm’s jaw clenched in dismay. “Back from where, exactly?”

  I stared at him. “Nassau. Didn’t you listen to the interview? We’re going to talk to Cobra Jon.”

  “I thought you were bluffing,” he groaned.

  “Do I bluff?”

  “Yeah, you do. At everything but poker.” A reluctant grin formed on Holm’s face. “Okay, sure, let’s go confront the violent cop-killing gang leader that no law enforcement agency has ever been able to pin anything on with our complete lack of evidence against him. Sounds like fun.”

  I smirked. “It does, doesn’t it?”

  “No,” he intoned, “but we’re going anyway.”

  “Damn straight.”

  I was actually looking forward to the challenge.

  Chapter 19

  This time we called ahead to the marine unit and reserved a squad car because the scooters were kind of a pain in the ass. No one minded since it was Sunday and the patrols weren’t exactly out on the island in force.

  Though we’d never dealt directly with Cobra Jon, I’d done my research. The best place to find him would be his house. He didn’t even try to hide where he lived, and he flaunted all the money he had from various illegal endeavors like a dare.

  With an address on the east end of the island, the neighborhood that Cobra Jon called home was a far cry from the rundown turf where Tomaz Sands ruled. The Congo Kings were the top of the heap when it came to street gangs, but the Black Mambas inhabited the next level of wannabe gentlemen criminals reminiscent of Prohibition-era gangsters. Here, the houses were high-end and set on larger tracts of land with plenty of greenery and palm trees and looked like the Bahamas that tourists usually envisioned.

  Cobra Jon figured he was entitled to the finer things in life, while Sands was old-school. Hence the rivalry between them.

  “So, that idea you had earlier,” Holm said from the passenger seat as I navigated the streets toward the address. “Ready to share it yet?”

  It took a minute for me to figure out which idea he meant. “Still not much there, honestly,” I said. “The thing is, I was thinking about shipwrecks.”

  “Right. Your pirate boat,” he said.

  “That, and our victim. Those wood splinters from the Twin Arrow.” I tapped the steering wheel in thought. “We can be almost positive that Sweeting wrecked a boat somewhere between the Bahamas and that beach, and then somehow got to shore. That means the boat couldn’t have gone down too deep.”

  Holm was already nodding. “So you were thinking not just shipwrecks, but recovery.”

>   “Exactly, and why do people recover shipwrecks?”

  He grinned. “For the treasure.”

  That was my working theory. Sweeting was transporting something valuable on that boat, and whatever it was, Cobra Jon wanted it back. It would explain why Benta left the body where he thought it wouldn’t be discovered, and why he attempted to misdirect a potential investigation by framing the Congo Kings. They didn’t want a police presence in the area to screw up their recovery operation.

  If we could catch Cobra Jon in the act of reclaiming whatever had been on that boat, he’d never be able to slip out of it. We could put him away for good.

  “That’s the place,” Holm commented, pointing through the windshield.

  Just ahead on the right was a large ocean-blue house bordering on mansion set far back on meticulously landscaped grounds that were surrounded by an eight-foot, wrought iron fence. Men in suits prowled the place, with one standing just inside the gate, one walking the fence perimeter, two circulating the grounds, and one at the front entrance of the house. No doubt they were all armed and able to instantly communicate with the boss.

  “You know what? I don’t think they’re going to let us in,” my partner said.

  I frowned as I slowed the car and pulled to the curb on the opposite side of the street. “I think you’re probably right, but it’s worth a shot.”

  “Is it really?” he asked sarcastically.

  “Guess we’ll find out.”

  We got out and crossed the street, prepping our badges to show the gate guard who watched our approach with an unfriendly expression. I kept scanning the area, alert for possible surprise movements, and picked up on faint sounds carried from the back of the house on a warm breeze. Water splashing, soft music playing, voices laughing and chattering. So there was definitely somebody home in there.

  “Hey there,” I called to the man as we neared. “Special Agent Marston, Special Agent Holm, MBLIS. We’re looking for Jon Calabar. He in there?”