by Tom Lowe
“Time’s up! I can’t even go home to pack my bags. I’m stuck hiding in fuckin’ Super—a super mess—a motel—and I can’t even go pack a damn bag. Show me the money—”
“Show some respect for this process. You just don’t pawn overnight what is now the most famous diamond in the world. I told you I have two buyers—both big players. Both very private in their negotiations. The auction is about over. You will be paid soon.”
Nelson said nothing for a few seconds. The man on the line could hear the sound of a low-flying jet arriving or taking off. Nelson said, “I’ll see you tonight. “I get paid now or I’m flying to India to hock it. From what I hear, they’d love to get this rock back, and they’ll pay through the teeth to get it. Meet me at the Hilton on Airline Road after dark. I’ll be in the bar, back table. Be there at nine o’clock or I’m flying and the rock’s coming with me.” Nelson disconnected. He set the phone on the kitchen table, held his hand out, fingers spread, trembling.
Nick sauntered down L dock, head pounding from pain, dark glasses on, trying to get to St. Michael without answering questions from marina neighbors. A brown-skin boat owner wearing swim trunks and a white bandana stood up from sanding the deck of a 47-foot Vagabond ketch. He squinted in the sun as Nick came down the dock, turned off the sander and yelled, “Hey, man. I heard they rushed you to the ER. You okay, Nick? Was it your heart, dude?”
“Bad case of food poisoning.”
“That sucks. Maybe you got ahold of some nasty fish. I heard you’ve eaten urchins underwater right out their spiny shells when you’re diving out there. How the hell you do that without getting a mouthful of seawater down your throat?”
“Same way a porpoise does it—the old Greek, open your gills a little wider.” Nick grinned and kept walking, not making eye contact with anyone else.
Max barked once as Nick came closer, her tail wiggling. “Hot dog, where you been when that witch nearly poisoned me? I need a guard dog like you to bite her ankles.”
Dave and O’Brien stepped from Jupiter’s salon onto the cockpit. Dave asked, “How you feeling?”
“Like I got the hangover from hell. I need to get some protein back in my blood.” He held up the grocery bag. “Bought a big damn steak. I’m thinkin’ about eatin’ it raw.”
O’Brien smiled. “That might put you back in sickbay.
“Kim said you caught that crazy woman, Sarvarna? Cops got her now?”
Dave nodded. “And her name’s not Sarvarna. Come down here. We’ll sit in the shade, and I’ll tell you more about the woman who gave you the headache from hell.”
As Dave explained who the woman was, where she was from, and why she was in the U.S., Nick swallowed three extra-strength aspirins with orange juice. He sat on the couch in Jupiter and propped his feet up on a shellacked cypress tree table, which had come with the boat when O’Brien bought it in a DEA drug-boat auction in Miami.
Dave finished by saying, “She said her employer will pick up the tab for your treatment in the ER.”
“That’s damn generous of her and her fuckin’ employer. Do I look like a spy? Hell no. James Bond couldn’t have seen that coming. Whatever it was that bitch put in my ouzo was a wide awake sexual nightmare. It was like I was asleep and awake at the very same second. My mind sort of left my body. I couldn’t feel a damn thing. She stroked my Johnson, hiked her dress above her waist, and wanted to ride the bull. I wanted to take her there. But man-o-man, I just lay there like a scarecrow with no stuffin’ in his pants. Even after eatin’ two dozen oysters earlier in the bar with her, my man was a limber timber. Not a damn pulse outta my boy. He couldn’t wink with his one eye if he wanted to. I never experienced anything like it. Her hot breath in my ear, straddling and slow rockin’ on me…it’s like I was goin’ into body hypnosis. I didn’t want to tell her where the keys to the boats were, but she had this strange drug-induced power over me. Like I had no will power left in my mind. My voice was the only thing that worked, and it didn’t sound like it was coming outta me. Did she use the key to get in your boat, Sean?”
“Yes. Dave saw her enter. He packed his Springfield and followed her. Caught her going through drawers in the master.”
“What the hell was the woman lookin’ for, the diamond? She think you hid it in your sock drawer?”
“Apparently.”
Dave said, “Nick, don’t beat yourself up over the incident.”
“Incident? Dave, this was a life-altering train wreck.”
“You had no idea you were being set up by an agent working for the Indian counterintelligence branch called IB. Her sole purpose for being here is to try to locate and secure the diamond. If it is the Koh-i-Noor, its return to India will be a major coup, an unprecedented achievement for that nation. If the diamond was, and this is a big if—if it was illegally taken out of India by the British East India Company, its return would be celebrated by one-point-three billion people in India, and Indians living all over the world. It’d be as if India won the World Cup—a big celebration.”
“And the chick who slipped me a tricky mickey would be a hero.”
Dave shook his head. “No, outside of those she directly reports to, no one would ever know she had anything to do with its return.”
Nick grinned. “No wonder she has sexually repressed issues. Turn a man to stone, well sort of, and come on to him all because she wanted to search Sean’s boat.” He grinned. “My man, Sean, is popular. Recently, a tourist, least I freakin’ think he was a tourist, he was asking me about chartering Sean’s boat. That’s no big deal, but when he bought a round of drinks, and started asking me stuff like had I been following the news about the diamond and the Civil War paper? When he asked, ‘was Sean helping the widow of the dead guy find the stolen stuff ?’…I said yassas in Greek, which means I’m outta here.”
“What’d the guy look like?” Dave asked.
“About Sean’s height. Probably six-two. Blond fella. Green eyes. Maybe early fifties. He looked in good shape for his age.”
“Did he have an accent?”
Nick nodded. “English or maybe Australian. The witch that slipped me her witches’ brew asked me if he had an accent.”
O’Brien said, “That’s because she knows the UK has someone over here trying to beat her to the punch, to find the diamond and the contract before she does.”
Dave blew out a long breath. “That’s true, but the fly in the ointment here is the description Nick just gave us.”
“What do you mean?” Nick asked.
“A British agent showed up here at the marina. The agent was assigned to this case from my former colleague in the UK. Sean and I spoke with him. We debriefed the agent. He’s doing his own investigation. The man we spoke with doesn’t match your description at all.”
“So, what the hell does that mean?”
O’Brien said, “It mean’s someone else is looking for the goods. And I’m betting the guy who bought you a drink was the same person who killed Professor Ike Kirby and the hotel clerk.”
Nick tossed another two aspirins into his mouth, chewed without blinking, cracked a beer and took a long pull. He cut his red eyes to Dave and said, “If I’d only known, Dave. I know you and the professor were tight. Had I known that was the guy who killed him, I woulda knocked the dude off the barstool.”
Dave shrugged and looked over the tops of his bifocals. “No sweat, Nick. Sean is making an assumption. He may be correct, but we don’t know that.”
O’Brien asked, “Is there anything else you can remember about the guy, Nick?””
Nick sipped his beer and started to answer when O’Brien’s phone buzzed in his pocket. The man on the line said, “Hey, Sean this is Larry Tiller at the jail.”
“Thanks for calling. What do you have?”
“That guy, Silas Jackson, his release papers are being processed right now. He ought to be hitting the streets soon. I saw the guy when he first arrived and got into his county-issued orange jumpsuit, you couldn’t h
elp but notice the tat across the guy’s entire chest. It’s a tattoo of a human skull wearing a Confederate flag as a bandana. Below the skull is a red rose next to a hangman’s noose and letters that spell out, Southern Justice.”
O’Brien parked his Jeep on the road beyond the razor-wire fence, just outside the Volusia County Jail Complex. He watched a parade of the exploited enter the jail. The users, losers, abusers—the trampled women with litters of dirty children in tow. Girlfriends with bruises as apparent as their tattoos—most visiting wife beaters and callous boyfriends conditionally remorseful because their rage was now trapped in a cage with them. When their freedom was entombed in a six-by-eight cell, sobriety was their first visitor. Guilt was a transient shadow.
Some were being held for violating parole, domestic abuse, selling or using drugs, theft and fraud—most riding the roller coaster track of the habitual offender in the macabre theme park of the criminal mind. Others were locked up and scheduled for jury trials on capital charges ranging from rape to murder.
O’Brien watched a heavyset bail bondsmen in a banana-yellow shirt stop on the sidewalk to light a cigarette. The bondsman waited as a man in a wrinkled gray suit joined him. The man had dark, hooded eyes, feral face and a small mouth. O’Brien recognized him as an attorney, a late-night infomercial king—an ambulance chaser: ‘In a legal jam? Call Sam - One eight-hundred dial Sam’s law.’
He thought about Silas Jackson, picturing the image of Jackson that the casting director, Shelia, had shared with him on her computer screen. He visualized Jackson in his Confederate uniform, eyes black, narrow and hard as marbles, 1950’s sideburns, and a scruffy handlebar moustache. Jackson’s attitude was captured in the photo as well. Go to hell.
When O’Brien glanced back at the entrance to the county jail, Silas Jackson was coming outside, squinting in the late-afternoon Florida sun like a hibernating animal rousted from its den of thieves.
It took less than five minutes. Silas Jackson stood on the corner a half block north of the Volusia County Jail Complex, smoked part of a thin cigar and in less than five minutes a black pickup truck pulled over to the side of the curb. Jackson dropped the cigar on the sidewalk, used the toe of his boot to crush it, and walked to the passenger door side of the truck.
From the opposite side of the street, O’Brien sat in his parked Jeep, watching Jackson and counting heads of those in the pickup truck. Three men, including Jackson. O’Brien could see the driver through the truck’s open window. Big guy. Baseball cap backwards on his head. Black T-shirt with the sleeves cut off, the driver’s left arm resting out the window against the door. The muscular arm was filled with ink under the fur.
They pulled away from the curb and O’Brien started the Jeep’s engine. He waited for the truck to get a block away before following the men. The driver in the pickup truck drove another two blocks before making a left turn onto Jefferson Street.
O’Brien stayed as far behind the truck as he could, calculating the movement of traffic and the time it would take to clear stop signs and traffic lights. He knew Jackson’ pickup truck was back at the movie lot where Jackson had been taken in for questioning. He assumed the men were driving him to the set for his truck.
What he didn’t anticipate was that Jackson would be followed.
O’Brien spotted the BMW with tinted windows when the car first pulled out of a side street. It happened less than ten seconds after the truck with Jackson passed the first intersection away from the jail complex. The car’s windows were too dark for O’Brien to make out the driver’s face. He could tell that the man wore what appeared to be a traditional Scottish golf cap and sunglasses.
Maybe he was a detective, someone working with Dan Grant. Maybe they suspected Jackson of more than what Grant had said. O’Brien didn’t buy it. Something was wrong. Very wrong. What? Think.
It was something that Laura Jordan had said after Cory Nelson pulled the knife before bolting through the gate leading from Laura’s backyard. ‘He has a key to the front door, and he knows the alarm code. I have to change the locks.’
But before Ike Kirby was murdered, after Laura had been awakened when a man was standing in her bedroom in the dark and holding Paula sleeping in his arms, Laura said he’d whispered something. ‘It took me less than twenty-nine seconds to disarm your house alarm. How does it feel now knowing that you and little Paula are so unsafe, so unprotected.’
Cory Nelson knew the alarm code. And he had a key to the front door.
Someone other than Nelson broke into Laura’s home that night. Maybe someone other than Nelson killed Ike Kirby and the hotel clerk. Was it Silas Jackson? The guy in the BMW? O’Brien’s pulse rose as he stayed two cars behind the BMW, watching for a glimpse of the driver and keeping an eye on the truck with Silas Jackson sitting in the passenger seat.
O’Brien followed, trying to get close enough to the read the license plate, careful to keep from being spotted by whoever was driving the car. After four more blocks, the pickup truck made a right turn. The driver in the BMW looked two times into the rearview mirror and once into the side-view mirror. He abruptly turned into an alley. For a moment, O’Brien thought about ending his tail of Silas Jackson to follow the BMW instead.
O’Brien parked his Jeep under the deep shadows of an oak tree across from the entrance to the Wind ‘n Willows plantation. He’d followed the pickup truck until it turned off the road en route to the film set. And now O’Brien waited. He thought about calling Detective Dan Grant to let him know that Cory Nelson may not have killed Ike Kirby and the clerk. Maybe Grant could come to that conclusion when he interrogated Nelson. Maybe not.
But right now it was time to meet Silas Jackson.
The same pickup truck that delivered Jackson to the Wind ‘n Willows came down the long drive, stopped at the road and then turned east. A few seconds later it was trailed by a second pickup. Jackson was driving. He didn’t bother coming to a complete stop, pulling quickly onto the road and heading west. The first thing O’Brien noticed about the truck was its over-sized, off-road tires. Lots of knobby, dirt-grabbing tread design. He waited thirty seconds before following Silas Jackson.
Keeping his distance, O’Brien tailed the truck across County Road 76 for miles before turning onto a secondary road and then another as Jackson weaved deeper into the Ocala National Forest. O’Brien tried to hang back without losing sight of Jackson. As the truck snaked through the curvy road, he saw one brake light flash on and then go off. He slowed, trying to keep some distance between his Jeep and the truck. O’Brien could see Jackson using his phone. He assumed he’s been spotted and Jackson was calling his pals.
The road was a series of sharp S turns, oak trees on both sides, the sun partially blocked by the dense limbs. A white-tailed deer and her fawn jumped from behind a clump of trees, bolting in front of O’Brien’s Jeep. He slammed the brake pedal. The fawn stood paralyzed from fear, stopping in the center of the road. Staring. Eyes wide. Head held high. The doe jumped across a ditch into the trees and foliage. O’Brien waited, the little fawn pulled in its gangly legs, blinked once, and trotted across the pavement to join its mother in the woods.
O’Brien drove off, knowing that he may have lost the truck. He accelerated, scanning the entrances to dirt roads that led farther into the forest. He drove almost a mile before catching something out of the corner of an eye. He slowed the Jeep, stopped and backed up, turning onto the dirt road, still wet after last night’s rain. O’Brien got out of his Jeep and walked up to the deep, fresh tire tracks. He knelt down, touching the mud with the tips of his fingers, lifting his eyes up to the cypress and oak trees in the distance, the muddy path snaking into the obscurity of the forest.
The trail vanished into the heart of a dark place where O’Brien knew he would find Silas Jackson.
The deep tracks in the mud led O’Brien more than three miles into a forest so thick that the canopies of old oaks kept the midday sunlight from piercing. He drove slowly, windows down, listening,
watching. A boisterous throttle of cicadas reverberated all around the Jeep, limbs and brush slapping both side doors, the smell of moss and jasmine on the warm wind. Bald cypress trees with trunks, stretching more than ten feet in thickness, grew in water the color of black ice.
O’Brien started to drive through a wide, shallow creek that flowed slowly across the road, but he stopped. He looked to the far side of the creek. No tire tracks. He turned off the engine, reaching beneath his seat for his Glock. He opened the door, slid the pistol under his belt in the small of his back and stepped up to the edge of the creek. O’Brien studied the flow of the shallow water. Bottom visible. Maybe a foot deep at most.
He followed the current with his eyes, walking downstream. Through the clear water he could see moss scrapped off rocks that had been disheveled by something heavy—something like a truck. O’Brien looked to his right, to the far reaches of the creek. In the speckled light squeezing through the trees, he saw something shiny in the distance—the reflection of sunlight from the chrome door handle on the pickup truck. It was parked in the creek, maybe one hundred yards from where O’Brien stood.
“You lookin’ for somebody?”
O’Brien turned around to see Silas Jackson standing twenty feet away. His blue jeans soaked from the knees down, water trickling from his boots. Jackson wore a Confederate jacket, hanging to his thighs, open at the waist. O’Brien assumed a pistol was under the coat.
Jackson said, “I asked you a question. You lookin’ for me?”
“I’m just curious why a man would park his truck in the middle of a creek.”
“That’s none of your fuckin’ business. You some kind of private investigator or just a crazy man?”
“A little of both.”
“Let’s end the bullshit now, make-believe cop. I saw you tail me from downtown.”