I glanced at Snoop; he shrugged.
Bigs’ deep voice rumbled, “That’s the way it is, Chuck.”
I said to Kelly, “If you and Bigs promise not to take any notes on this, I’ll tell you what I’m doing. Hypothetically.”
They agreed and I told them. They drank their coffee while I talked, occasionally interrupting with a question. I laid everything out except Michelle’s identity. “And hypothetically, I uncovered evidence that the train bridge bomb and the arson at the Hillside Pines Apartments were planned by Steven Wallace. He has two drawers full of files I didn’t even look at. They could be about other eco-terrorism they’ve done. Or stuff they’re planning to do. I don’t have the resources to investigate all the other files.”
Kelly leaned back in her chair, holding her cup in two hands. “Okay, Chuck. We’re in. How can we help?”
“Where did the three stooges get the black Suburban? I stole their driver’s licenses and their wallets with their credit cards.”
“You did that on March 31,” Kelly said. “They had plenty of time to get replacements. Their black Suburban was a rental. The address on the driver’s license was the same phony address they used before and they used the same dead-end credit card.”
“But you checked the addresses on their driver’s licenses that I confiscated. They were real. They must carry another license just to rent cars. It must have been in the Ford’s glove compartment instead of the driver’s wallet. That’s why I didn’t get it. Any luck on the highjacked car’s GPS?”
“They abandoned it in a parking lot of a hotel on the Beach. Must have grabbed a cab from there.”
“Did you and Bigs drive an unmarked car here?”
“Yeah.”
“Good. I need you to drive a woman to the Mango Island Lodge. I won’t tell you her name, and don’t ask her either.”
“And how do we find this unidentified woman?”
“She’s in Diane Toklas’s office.”
Kelly smiled. “That’s simple enough. Anything else?”
“Pursue the three carjackers as if it were a random drive-by shooting at Snoop, and a carjacking of the old man. See if you can take them off the street without involving my client.”
“We’re doing that anyway,” Kelly said. “I’ll have the police lab haul Snoop’s car to the crime lab for evidence. Where is it, Snoop?”
“Garage downstairs.” He handed her a slip of paper. “Here’s my parking ticket. I wrote the floor and parking spot number on the back.”
Kelly looked straight at me. Bigs sat to her right. She winked her left eye, the one Bigs couldn’t see. “You owe me big time for this.”
Chapter 46
Redwood snapped the flip phone shut and slipped it into his pocket. Mango Island? What on Earth is that silly girl doing on Mango Island? Wait a minute. That idiot Ponder said she was rich. Could she be Mango Island rich? Even I would be hard pressed to afford a place on Mango Island. He pulled over a keyboard and opened a web browser.
Father is John Babcock. Nothing special about him. Corporate executive. Redwood searched the Atlantic County property tax records. His home is in a gated community, but the idiot Ponder told me that. And it’s not on Mango Island. No other property listed. Maybe it’s in his wife’s name. I can’t remember if Florida is a community property state.
He tapped the keyboard again. Mother is Penelope Faith Hickham Babcock. Maiden name is Hickham. Something familiar there. He Googled “Penelope Faith Babcock,” then “Penny Babcock,” and finally “Penny Hickham.” Good Lord. Hank Hickham. That’s where the money is, and it’s a boat-load too.
Redwood searched the Atlantic County tax records again. Nothing under Hickham. That’s funny. He has to own his own home, probably a mansion. Could it be under a corporate name or a trust?
He turned his desk chair around and flipped through an old-fashioned Rolodex on his credenza. P… Q… R. He found the business card stapled to a slotted card in the Rolodex. He punched in a number.
“Edward Taylor here… Yes, I specialize in real estate… You heard me speak at a bar convention, huh?… Thank you for saying that, you’re very kind… How can I help you?… He probably owns it in a Florida Land Trust. That keeps the actual ownership confidential… No, even I can’t find out who the real owners are… Why do you need the information?… That’s all? If you only want to serve him notice, you don’t need to know where Hank Hickham lives to do that, my friend. Just drop by his restaurant. Everybody in Port City knows that he’s down there almost every afternoon… Don’t mention it. Consider it a professional courtesy to a fellow lawyer who enjoyed my presentation. Good day, Mr…?”
The line was dead.
Chapter 47
Hank Hickham answered his phone on the second ring. “Hey, Chuck. Any news?”
“We had a little hiccup with the Michelle situation.” I paced Diane’s conference room, nervous energy needing an outlet. I was forming a plan in the back of my mind; action was coming soon.
“What happened?”
“Three thugs followed her and Snoop when they left the ferry today. They tried to gun them down. Michelle’s okay. Snoop out-maneuvered the bad guys and got her safely to Diane Toklas’s office. The bad news is that the bad guys have learned that Michelle’s staying somewhere on Mango Island. It’s possible they could learn that she’s your granddaughter. If so, they could find out which condo is yours.”
“Actually, they couldn’t, Chuck. I own all my stuff in one of them land trusts that my lawyer whipped up to keep my stuff private-like.” Hank laughed. “Chuck, you know we have great security on Mango Island. We’re safe here.”
I stared out the window at a cruise ship leaving the Port City Cruise Terminal. “Have you forgotten Vicente Vidali? He thought the Mango Island security was great too.”
“But the newspaper said his own men killed him, didn’t they?”
The cruise ship glided down the ship channel toward the Atlantic. Beside the channel, rush hour traffic on the Beachline Causeway headed toward home from their downtown jobs.
“Hank, don’t believe everything you read in the papers. Humor me and move Michelle to the Mango Island Lodge. It’s for her own safety. Check her in under the name Dolores Calderone.” I spelled both names.
Snoop smiled when he heard my abuelita’s name.
“Okay, Chuck. I’ll get over there as soon as we hang up. In fact, I forget that I’m on a cellphone. I’m walking that way right now.”
“Good. Then call Michelle’s cellphone and tell her the name to use. The people she’s riding with will let her off at the Lodge.”
Flashing red and blue lights from a Port City Marine Patrol boat caught my eye as it sped across the channel behind the cruise ship and headed toward the Beachline Causeway shore. Two black-and-whites pulled onto the causeway shoulder, lights flashing. A crime scene truck pulled in between them. Behind them, traffic began to back up with gapers’ block.
Snoop sat at the table, sipping his third cup of coffee. I touched his shoulder to get his attention and pointed to the scene on the causeway. He stood and walked to the window.
Hank asked, “You mean she’s not with you?”
“Two of my cop friends are giving her a lift. You can’t be any safer than that.”
I said goodbye and indicated the crime scene on the causeway. “Whaddya make of that, Snoop?”
He squinted. “Too far to make out without binoculars.”
Diane opened the door. “You guys still here? Hey, it’s after five. Time to go home.”
I pointed my thumb over my shoulder. “Look out the window.”
She did. “Yeah, so?”
“What do you think that is?”
She leaned toward the window. “Last time I saw something like that, a body had washed up on the rip-rap.”
“That’s what I was thinking. Too bad we don’t have binoculars.”
“We keep binoculars in the drawer for clients to look out the window.” She stepped to the walnut
credenza and opened a drawer. “Here.”
I adjusted the optics. “I see it on the rip-rap. It’s a body like you said.”
“I’ve seen that a couple of times in the three years that we’ve officed here.”
I handed the binoculars to Snoop. He waved them away. “Nah. You get to be my age, Chuck, you’ll have seen too many bodies too.”
Diane returned the binoculars to the drawer. “Do you fellows need anything else before you leave? Hint, hint.” She softened the message with a smile.
Snoop asked, “You got any to-go cups?”
“Sure. I’ll get you one from the kitchen on our way out.”
Snoop grabbed the carafe and followed Diane out the door. I brought up the rear.
I waited until the elevator doors closed. “The Port City cops are looking for the three stooges. I have another car full of hoods following me in a white Ford.”
“What d’you have in mind?”
“The gloves came off when they pulled out the guns, Snoop. No more Mr. Nice Guy.”
He smirked. “As if you were ever Mr. Nice Guy with evildoers.”
Chapter 48
The hotel where Janine had bought Michelle’s clothes had a car rental office on site that was open until six o’clock. The rental agent had her keys out and was about to lock the door. She looked ticked off when Snoop and I walked in five minutes before closing. Maybe she had a date and wanted to sneak out a little early. I made sure she had the right kind of car available for Snoop before I left. My parting words to Snoop: “Take the insurance; you never know.”
I took the parking elevator to the fourth floor. The garage echoed with emptiness when I pushed open the steel door. I figured the hoods wouldn’t try to kill me in the garage because of potential witnesses, but I held the Glock by my right leg as I walked to the Avanti, alert for any movement. When I’d come in at noon, they couldn’t know that I’d be this late. I figured they would wait in their car near an exit ramp on a lower floor to follow me when I left. There was one down ramp and one up ramp. On the first floor, the down ramp branched to two exits, one for the Fourth Street and one for Bayshore Boulevard. The bad guys couldn’t know which exit I’d take, so they would wait on the second floor for me to pass. At least, that’s how I had it figured.
Sure enough, that’s where they were.
I’d used binoculars from my condo balcony the previous day to read their license plate in the visitors’ parking lot. Today I spotted their car on the last ramp on the second floor. There were no heads visible through the rear window; they had to be bent over in the seats—however many “they” were. I watched their car out of sight and it never moved, so they weren’t afraid of losing me. They must have put a tracking device on my car. That’s what I would do if our positions were reversed.
We had one hour before sunset. The time would be a little tight.
I was two blocks along Bayshore Boulevard before they exited the parking garage. I led them up the entrance ramp to I-795 headed toward the Everglades. I lowered the visor against the setting sun and sped up to sixty miles per hour. Sixteen minutes later the freeway ended at Florida Highway 888, a four-lane divided road. I slowed to fifty. South Florida is flat and the roads are straight. I saw the white Ford a mile behind me in the sparse traffic. I passed a new housing development where the highway became Atlantic County Road 888a, dropping to two lanes with a wide shoulder. I slowed to forty. The Ford began to close the gap. Two miles later the shoulder disappeared where the sugar cane fields nudged almost to the edge of the pavement, green stalks towering ten and twelve feet high. We left the homes and apartments behind us. I slowed to thirty. The sedan closed to two hundred yards.
I pulled the breathing mask from the passenger seat and slipped in on, adjusting the straps with one hand. The goggles restricted my peripheral vision, but I wouldn’t need that. I only had to see straight ahead. The sun had dropped to an awkward angle to the left. I put on a baseball hat to shade my eyes.
I hit the brakes so the men following would see the flash of the brake lights, then I sped up to seventy-five on the flat deserted road. I hoped to mimic a panic-stricken man who had just noticed that someone was following him. Green walls of sugar cane blurred on either side. The white Ford knew that I knew they were following me. They sped up.
Ahead lay the Everglades, a desolate place for them to kill me with no witnesses.
Or vice versa.
The privately-owned sugar cane fields ended where the Everglades began at a drainage canal and earthen berm that stretched to the horizon on either side. I hit the brakes where the road ramped up over the berm. The white Ford closed the distance. I bumped down the berm and the pavement ended. I floored the accelerator and shot down the sandy road, heading for the three giant white sand hills ahead. Abandoned retention ponds of milky green water lined both sides of the sandy road for a quarter of a mile.
Dust billowed behind me, hiding the Ford from sight. That works both ways; they couldn’t see me either. They had to follow the dust cloud. I knew the road; they didn’t. They couldn’t see the road, only the dust cloud. They had to slow down.
I gunned it to make the maximum dust cloud. I passed the first sand hill and slammed on the brakes, drifting into the left turn and kicking up more dust. I pulled between the two hills on the left and turned behind the second hill, parking out of sight. I patted my left pocket by habit, feeling the two extra magazines inside. I got out, rolling my shoulders to release tension. I jogged around the sand hill to the northwestern side, glad that I was wearing the breathing mask in the dust cloud.
The setting sun was behind me until the clouds blocked it.
The old phosphate mine had closed long before I came to Port City. A friend with a swamp buggy had shown it to me the year before. Abandoned machinery looked like monsters from a horror movie looming as the vines stretching from the surrounding sand reclaimed their territory on the rusted steel. The sandy ground was covered in spots with wild grasses and vines that flew in on the wind or were carried on the feet of birds as Mother Nature reclaimed her own.
I selected a spot behind the shoulder of the sand hill and assumed a prone firing position. I breathed deeply and felt my heart rate slow down.
Any second now.
Chapter 49
As I waited, the clouds moved over the sun and dusk deepened to twilight. I heard the Ford’s engine long before I saw it. The slight breeze eased the dust cloud to the south. The white sedan crawled into view, emerging from the billowing gloom into the dusky evening.
The Ford coasted to a stop in the middle of the three sand hills, dimly visible in the dusty air. I heard the gears lock into park. The engine died. The croak of a distant sandhill crane carried through the gathering dusk. All four windows hummed down. Nothing moved for a minute. The dome light came on as the doors opened and two men got out on each side, all four crouching to make smaller targets. The two from the rear seat carried Kalashnikov AK-47s. Oh, well, I thought, that’s why I carry extra magazines.
I took a deep breath. “You’re surrounded. Drop your weapons and keep your hands where we can see them.”
All four jerked their heads toward the sound of my voice. The two on my side swung their guns toward me.
I put two bullets into the chest of the man aiming the AK-47. The other three scattered away from the car like rats from a burning house. Snoop dropped the one who had been seated on the right front, opposite the driver. The other two returned fire in my direction. The br-a-a-ap of the remaining Kalashnikov sprayed gritty geysers into the air on the right, pelting my goggles with sand, grass, and vine leaves. I rolled behind the hill and ran counter-clockwise around the mound. I rounded the other side of the hill behind the other two gunmen. They stood back to back, trying to look in all directions. I put two bullets in the center mass of the nearest one. His Kalashnikov sprayed another br-a-a-ap in the air before it thumped to the sand. The last man turned toward the sound of my gun and leapt behind the open rear pas
senger door. Snoop couldn’t see him from his angle either.
I saw his legs below the open door, but nothing through the window. He had to be bent almost double.
“Don’t shoot! I surrender. Do you hear me? Don’t shoot.”
“I hear you,” I answered. “You’re surrounded. Toss your gun out.”
He did. Dust puffed up where his pistol hit the sand.
“Now the other one.”
“That’s all. I swear.”
If he hadn’t sworn, I might have believed him. “I can shoot right through the door, you know. And I’m going to do that on the count of three. One… Two…”
“Okay, okay, you win.” A smaller handgun followed the first one, scooting across the sand.
Snoop emerged from behind the sand hill on the other side of the car, his gun held in a Weaver stance while he surveyed the scene.
“Hands on your head, fingers interlaced.” I waited for the shooter to comply. The sun was a bright spot in the cloud bank to the left.
He stood and followed my instructions.
Snoop walked around the car’s front, pistol pointed at the shooter’s head. “Take three giant steps away from the car and get on your knees. Keep your hands on your head.”
The man jumped at the sound of Snoop’s voice. He tried to turn his head to look, but the hands on his head made that difficult.
“You heard me, dog breath,” Snoop repeated. “Three steps.” He gestured with his Glock.
The man took three giant steps like he was playing Simon Says. He dropped to his knees in the dust. I moved to within six feet, Glock aimed at his head. “Pretend you’re a statue and you can survive tonight.”
Snoop holstered his weapon and frisked the prisoner. He handed me the shooter’s wallet, two sets of keys, and two cellphones, a smartphone and a flip phone. I remembered the three stooges surrendering their flip phones. We already knew those were burner phones. They must have had personal phones with them too, but I hadn’t thought to look for them. Rookie mistake. Note to self: If they give you a flip phone, always look for the smartphone.
Dangerous Friends (A Carlos McCrary novel Book 4) Page 19