Sir Marston sighed. It was all going to be—he searched for his favorite adjective—more tiresome than he had expected.
“I see,” he said. “And what does your petition require?”
“We want a referendum, just like the British people had over the Common Market. We demand a referendum. We do not want to be forced into independence. We want to go on as we are, as we have always been. We do not want to be ruled by Mr. Johnson or Mr. Livingstone. We appeal to London.”
Down at the airstrip, a taxi arrived, and Mr. Barney Klinger stepped out. He was a short, rotund man who lived in a substantial Spanish-style property in Coral Gables, next to Miami. The chorus girl who accompanied him was neither short nor rotund; she was stunning, and young enough to be his daughter. Mr. Klinger kept a cottage on the slopes of Spyglass Hill, which he used occasionally for discreet vacations away from Mrs. Klinger.
He intended to fly to Key West, put his girlfriend on a scheduled flight to Miami, then proceed home in his own plane, clearly alone, a tired businessman returning from a commercial visit to discuss a boring old contract. Mrs. Klinger would meet him at Miami Airport and note that he was alone. One could not be too careful. Mrs. Klinger knew some very fine lawyers.
Julio Gomez heaved himself to his feet and approached.
“Mr. Klinger, sir?”
Klinger’s heart jumped. A private detective? “Who wants to know?”
“Look, I have a problem, sir. I was vacationing down here, and I just got a call from my wife. Our kid’s had an accident back home. I have to get back, I really do. There are no flights today. None. Not even for charter. I was wondering, could you give me a lift to Key West? I’d be forever in your debt.”
Klinger hesitated. The man could still be a private eye hired by Mrs. Klinger. He handed his grip to a baggage porter, who began to load it and the rest of his valises into the hold of the Navajo.
“Well,” said Klinger, “I don’t know.”
There were six people grouped around: the passport officer, the baggage porter, Gomez, Klinger, his girlfriend, and another man who was helping with the luggage. The porter assumed this man was from the Klinger party, and the Klinger party assumed he belonged to the airstrip. The pilot was out of earshot inside his cabin, and the taxi driver was relieving himself in the vegetation twenty yards away.
“Gee, honey, that’s dreadful. We’ve got to help him,” said the chorus girl.
“Okay,” said Klinger. “So long as we take off on time.”
The passport officer quickly stamped the three passports, the baggage locker was closed, the three passengers boarded, the pilot revved up both engines, and three minutes later the Navajo lifted off Sunshine with a filed flight plan for Key West, seventy minutes’ cruising time away.
“My dear friends, and I do hope I may call you friends,” said Sir Marston Moberley. “Please try to understand the position of Her Majesty’s government. At this juncture a referendum would be quite inappropriate. It would be administratively complex to an impossible degree.”
He had not become a senior diplomat with a series of Commonwealth postings behind him without learning to patronize.
“Please explain,” rumbled Reverend Drake, “why a referendum is more complex than a general election. We want the right to decide whether to have an election at all.”
The explanation was simple enough, but it was not to be mentioned here. The British government would have to pay for a referendum; but in the election, the candidates were paying for their own campaigns though exactly how, Sir Marston had not inquired. He changed the subject.
“Tell me, if you feel this way, why not stand for the post of Prime Minister yourself? According to your view, you would have to win.”
Seven of the delegation looked baffled. But the Reverend Drake stabbed a sausagelike finger in his direction. “You know why, Governor. These candidates are using printing presses, public address systems, even campaign managers brought in from outside. And they’re offering a lot of cash around among the people.”
“I have no evidence of that—none at all,” interrupted the Governor, now a shade of pink.
“Because you won’t go outside and see what’s going on!” roared the Baptist minister. “But we know. It happens on every streetcorner. And intimidation of those who oppose them.”
“When I receive a report from Chief Inspector Jones to that effect, I will take action,” snapped Sir Marston.
“Surely we need not quarrel,” pleaded the Anglican vicar. “The point is, will you send our petition to London, Sir Marston?”
“Certainly I will,” said the Governor. “It is the least I can do for you. But it is also, I fear, the only thing I can do. My hands, alas, are tied. And now, if you will excuse me.”
They trooped out, having done what they came for. As they left the building, the doctor, who happened to be the uncle of the police chief, asked, “Do you think he really will?”
“Oh, certainly,” said the vicar. “He has said he will.”
“Yes, by surface mail,” growled the Reverend Drake. “It should arrive in London around mid-January. We have to get rid of that Governor and get ourselves a new one.”
“No chance, I’m afraid,” said the vicar. “Sir Marston will not resign.”
In its continuing war against the narcotics invasion of its own southern coast, the American government has resorted to using some expensive and ingenious surveillance techniques. Among these is a series of covert balloons, tethered in out-of-the-way places, owned, bought, or leased by Washington.
Suspended in the gondolas beneath these balloons are an array of extra-high-technology radar scanners and radio monitors. They cover the entire Caribbean basin, from Yucatan in the west to Anegada in the east, from Florida in the north to the Venezuelan coast. Every airplane, however big or small, that takes off within this bowl is spotted at once. Its course, height, and speed are monitored and reported back. Every yacht, cruiser, freighter, or liner that leaves port is picked up and tailed by unseen eyes and ears high in the sky and far away. The technology in these gondolas is mainly made by Westinghouse.
When it lifted from Sunshine Island, the Piper Navajo Chief was picked up by Westinghouse 404. It was routinely tracked across the ocean toward Key West on its course of 310 degrees, which, with the wind drift from the south, would have brought it right over Key West’s approach beacon. Fifty miles short of Key West, it disintegrated in midair and disappeared from the screens. A U.S. Coast Guard vessel was sent to the spot, but it found no wreckage.
On Monday, Julio Gomez, a detective on the force of the Metro-Dade Police Department, did not show up for work. His partner, Detective Eddie Favaro, was extremely annoyed. They were due in court together that morning, and now Favaro had to go alone. The judge was scathing, and it was Favaro who had to bear her sarcasm. In the late morning he got back to the MDPD headquarters building at 1320 Northwest Fourteenth Street (the force was then on the threshold of moving to its new complex in the Doral District) and checked with his superior officer, Lieutenant Broderick.
“What’s with Julio?” asked Favaro. “He never showed up at court.”
“You’re asking me? He’s your partner,” replied Broderick.
“He didn’t check in?”
“Not to me,” said Broderick. “Can’t you get by without him?”
“No way. We’re handling two cases, and neither defendant speaks anything but Spanish.”
Mirroring its own local population, the Metro-Dade Police Department, which covers most of what people know as Greater Miami, employs a wide racial mix. Half the population of Metro-Dade is of Hispanic origin, some with a very halting command of English. Julio Gomez had been of Puerto Rican parentage and raised in New York, where he had joined the police. A decade ago, he had re-migrated south to join Metro-Dade. Here nobody referred to him as a “spick.” In this area, that was not wise. His fluent Spanish was invaluable.
His partner of nine years, Eddie Favaro, was an It
alian-American, his grandparents having emigrated from Catania as young newly weds seeking a better life. Lieutenant Clay Broderick was black. Now he shrugged. He was overworked and understaffed, with a backlog of cases he could have done without.
“Find him,” he said. “You know the rules.”
Favaro did indeed. In Metro-Bade, if you are three days late back from a vacation without adequate good reason and without checking in, you are deemed to have dismissed yourself.
Favaro checked his partner’s apartment, but there was no sign that anyone had returned from vacation. He knew where Gomez had gone—he always went to Sunshine—so he checked the passenger lists on the previous evening’s flights from Nassau. The airline computer revealed the flight reservation and prepaid ticket, but it also showed the ticket had not been taken up. Favaro went back to Broderick.
“He could have had an accident,” he urged. “Game fishing can be dangerous.”
“There are phones,” said Broderick. “He has our number.”
“He could be in a coma. Maybe in a hospital. Maybe he asked someone else to phone in, and they didn’t bother. They’re pretty laid back in those islands. We could at least check it out.”
Broderick sighed. Missing detectives he could also do without.
“Okay,” he said. “Get me the number of the police department for this island—what do you call it? Sunshine? Jeez, what a name. Get me the local police chief, and I’ll make the call.”
Favaro had it for him in half an hour. It was so obscure, it was not even listed in International Directory Inquiries. He got it from the British Consulate, who rang Government House on Sunshine, and they passed it on. It took another thirty minutes for Lieutenant Broderick to get his connection.
He was lucky—he found Chief Inspector Jones in his office. It was midday.
“Chief Inspector Jones, this is Lieutenant of Detectives Clay Broderick, speaking from Miami. Hallo? Can you hear me? ... Look, as a colleague, I wonder if you could do me a favor. One of my men was on vacation on Sunshine, and he hasn’t showed up here. We hope there hasn’t been an accident. ... Yes, an American. Name, Julio Gomez. No, I don’t know where he was staying. He was down there for the game fishing.”
Chief Inspector Jones took this call seriously. His was a tiny force, and Metro-Dade’s was enormous. But he would show the Americans that Chief Inspector Jones was not half-asleep. He decided to handle the case himself and summoned a constable and a Land-Rover.
Quite rightly, he started with the Quarter Deck Hotel, but there he drew a blank. He went on to the fishing quay and found Jimmy Dobbs working on his boat, having no charter that day. Dobbs related that Gomez had not shown up for their Friday charter, which was odd, and that he had been staying with Mrs. Macdonald.
The landlady reported that Julio Gomez had left in a hurry on Friday morning for the airport. Jones went there and spoke to the airport manager. He summoned the passport officer, who confirmed that Mr. Gomez had taken a lift with Mr. Klinger to Key West on Friday morning. He gave Inspector Jones the aircraft registration. Jones telephoned Broderick back at four P.M.
Lieutenant Broderick took time out to phone the Key West police, who checked with their own airport. The lieutenant summoned Eddie Favaro just after six. His face was grave.
“Eddie, I’m sorry. Julio made a sudden decision to come home Friday morning. There was no scheduled flight back, so he hitched a lift on a private plane for Key West. It never made it. The plane went down from fifteen thousand feet into the sea, fifty miles short of Key West. The Coast Guard says there were no survivors.”
Favaro sat down. He shook his head. “I don’t believe it.”
“I hardly can myself. Look, I’m terribly sorry, Eddie. I know you were close.”
“Nine years,” whispered Favaro. “Nine years he watched my back. What happens now?”
“The machine takes over,” said Broderick. “I’ll tell the Director myself. You know the procedure. If we can’t have a funeral service, we’ll have a memorial. Full departmental honors. I promise.”
* * *
The suspicions came later that night and the next morning.
On Sunday, a charter skipper named Joe Fanelli had taken two small English boys fishing out of Bud ‘n’ Mary’s Marina on Islamorada, a resort in the Florida Keys well north of Key West. Six miles out beyond Alligator Reef, heading for the Hump and trolling as they went, one of the boys took a big bite on his line. Between them the brothers, Stuart and Shane, hauled in what they hoped was a big kingfish or wahoo or tuna. When the catch came up in the wake, Joe Fanelli leaned down and hauled it aboard. It turned out to be the remnants of a life-jacket, still bearing the stenciled number of the airplane to which it had once belonged, and some scorch marks.
The local police sent it up to Miami, where the forensic laboratory established that it had come from Barney Klinger’s Navajo Chief, and that the scorch marks bore traces not of gasoline but of plastic explosive. It became a Homicide investigation.
The first thing Homicide did was check on the business affairs of Mr. Klinger. What they discovered caused them to think the case was a dead end. They had, after all, no mandate on the British territory of Sunshine, and little confidence that the local force would get to the bottom of what had to be a professional hit.
On Tuesday morning Sam McCready eased himself onto his poolside lounger at the Sonesta Beach Hotel on Key Biscayne, settled his second after-breakfast coffee on the table by his side, and opened the Miami Herald.
Without any particular interest, he scanned the paper for international news—there was precious little—and settled for local affairs. The second lead concerned fresh revelations in the disappearance of a light airplane over the sea southeast of Key West the previous Friday morning.
The news sleuths of the Herald had discovered not only that the plane might well have been destroyed by a bomb inside it, but that Mr. Barney Klinger was known as the uncrowned king of the illicit trade, theft, and laundering of spare aviation parts in South Florida.
After narcotics, this abstruse area of illegal behavior is probably the most lucrative. Florida bristles with airplanes—airliners, cargo freighters, and private aircraft. It also contains some of the world’s major legitimate companies in the provision of constantly needed new or reconditioned spare parts. AVIOL and the Instrument Locator Service supply replacement parts on a worldwide scale.
The illegitimate industry, on the other hand, specializes either in commissioning the theft of such parts for no-questions-asked sales to other (usually Third World) operators, or in the even more dangerous purveying of parts whose operational life is almost expended, selling them as reconditioned parts with most of their operational life still left. For the latter scam, the paperwork is forged. Since some of these parts sell for a quarter of a million dollars each, the profits for a ruthless operator can be huge.
Speculation was running high that someone had wanted to remove Mr. Klinger from the scene.
“In the midst of life,” murmured McCready, and turned to the weather forecast. It was sunny.
Lieutenant Broderick summoned Eddie Favaro on that same Tuesday morning. He was even more grave than he had been the day before.
“Eddie, before we proceed with the memorial service with full honors for Julio, we have to consider a troubling new factor. What the hell was Julio doing sharing a plane with a sleazeball like Klinger?”
“He was trying to get back home,” said Favaro.
“Was he? What was he doing down there?”
“Fishing.”
“Was he? How come he was sharing the same week on Sunshine with Klinger? Did they have business to discuss?”
“Clay, listen to me. No way—no way in this world—was Julio Gomez corrupt. I won’t believe it. He was trying to get home. He saw a plane, he asked for a ride, is all.”
“I hope you’re right,” Broderick said soberly. “Why was he trying to get home two days ahead of schedule?
“That�
��s what puzzles me,” admitted Favaro. “He loved his fishing, looked forward to it all year. He would never have cut short two days of fishing without a reason. I want to go over there and find out why.”
“You have three reasons for not going,” said the lieutenant. “This department is overworked, you are needed here, and any bomb—if bomb there was—was certainly aimed at Klinger. The girl and Julio were accidents. Sorry, Internal Affairs will have to check out Julio’s financial situation. It can’t be avoided. If he never met Klinger before Friday, it was just a tragic accident.”
“I’ve got some leave time due me,” said Favaro. “I want it, Clay. I want it now.”
“Yes, you’ve got some leave time. And I can’t deny it to you. But you go there and you’re on your own, Eddie. That’s British territory—we have no authority there. And I want your gun.”
Favaro handed over his police automatic, left, and headed for the bank. At three that afternoon, he landed on Sunshine’s airstrip, paid off his chartered four-seater, and watched it leave for Miami. Then he hitched a lift with one of the airstrip staff into Port Plaisance. Not knowing where else to go, he checked into the Quarter Deck.
Sir Marston Moberley sat in a comfortable chair in his walled garden and sipped a whiskey and soda. It was his favorite ritual of the day. The garden behind Government House was not large, but it was very private. A well-tended lawn covered most of the space, and bougainvillaea and jacaranda festooned the walls with their brilliant colors. The walls, which surrounded the garden on three sides—the fourth side was the house itself—were eight feet high and topped with shards of glass. In one wall was an old steel door, seven feet tall, but it was long out of use. Beyond it was a small lane that led into the heart of Port Plaisance. The steel door had been sealed years before, and on its outer side two semicircular steel hasps were secured by a padlock the size of a small dinner plate. All were long fused by rust.
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