The Mike Black Saga; Payback
Page 20
"Stop it!" Diego shouted. "Why do you always find a way to embarrass me?"
"See what did I tell you? Very excitable. You must learn to calm down and relax."
"I am calm, Papa. Just tell me what is going on?"
"I was never kidnapped, Diego," Gomez said and put his arm around his son. "I was never a hostage on board my own yacht. That would be embarrassing. Black came to see me. He came with respect, Diego. Respect, Diego, something else you must learn."
"I must learn?" Diego jerked away from Gomez.
"When Black told me of the things you’ve done, I was ashamed to be called your father."
"So you went along with this kidnapping idea?"
"No, Diego. The kidnapping was my idea," Gomez told him. "Why do you treat this man with disrespect? We have no quarrel with this man. His business is not our business and he has not interfered with our business. You must make me understand why you chose to do this, Diego."
"Papa, you are taking his side over mine, again."
"Not his side, Diego, the right side. The honorable side. I blame myself for this. It was I who allowed his mother to spoil him as a boy. She breast feed him well past his second birthday."
Everybody on deck laughed at Diego, who by this time was fed up. "Shut up! Shut up I said!"
"Diego," Gomez said calmly. "Did you bring the money?"
"The money!" Diego yelled.
"Yes, Diego, the ransom money, did you bring it?"
"Yes, I have it."
"Give it to me," Gomez said
"You put me through this for nothing! Then you bring me out here and embarrass me in front of this dead man—and I am going to kill you Black."
"Whatever Diego." Mike said and smiled at him.
"Now you want the money. Well here is my answer!" Diego reached in the briefcase and pulled out a gun. He began walking toward Mike and Gomez and shooting wildly. Mike grabbed Gomez and they hit the deck. The man and woman both fired at Diego. He hit Diego in the back, but he didn’t go down. She hit him in the arm and he dropped his gun. The man grabbed Diego around the neck. "I’ll kill you!" he yelled and struggled to get free. The man hit Diego in the back of the head with his gun, and Diego slumped to the ground.
Mike helped Gomez get up from the deck. "Take Diego below," Gomez said. "Have my doctor to give him something to make him sleep for a while."
"What have I done, Black? I never meant for it to come to this."
"I’m sorry, Gomez," Mike said and put his hand on his gun just in case.
"Don’t be, it was not your fault."
"I never thought that Diego would try to kill me. You should go now, Black. My people will take you back to shore."
"What about Diego?" Mike asked.
"I’ll take him back to Peru. You have nothing to fear from Diego."
Mike bowed slightly in a gesture of respect to Gomez and turned to walk away.
"Aren’t you forgetting something?" Gomez asked.
"What’s that?" Mike said and turned slowly with his hand still on his gun. He expected to see Gomez standing with a gun pointed at him, but was surprised to see him holding out Diego’s briefcase.
"The money, take it."
"I can’t do that, Gomez. It wouldn’t be right. Diego took no money from me. I can’t take his money," Mike lied, knowing that he had already taken some of Diego’s money.
"I insist Black," Gomez said.
"Of course, Gomez," Mike said and took the briefcase.
Gomez’s people took Mike ashore where Bobby was waiting. On the way, Mike thought about how things had turned out. Earlier that day he had Jackie and Vonda pay a visit to Frontier Pharmaceutical. Dressed in short dresses and showing plenty of cleavage, most of the men and quite a few of the women in the building were so distracted that nobody noticed Jackie when she attached a keystroke emulator to the computer in the main conference room where hours later Diego would complete his transaction. At that point it was easy for Travis, with Monika’s help to hack into their network and get the password to Diego’s account. Once the money was transferred in, Travis transferred it out to another account. Mike got off the boat and walked toward Bobby’s car thinking that there was one other person he needed to see.
Chapter Forty-six
Mike was tired when Bobby dropped him off at his house. He got in bed with Shy, but he didn’t sleep long. A few hours later Mike was up and reaching for the phone. He paused a moment and looked at Shy. Maybe he shouldn’t do this. Maybe he should wake Shy up, get her dressed, head straight for the airport, and take her back to their quiet life on the island. Mike knew that if he didn’t take care of this now, then it would only come up over and over and he would have to deal with it sooner or later.
He started to get up and leave the room so Shy could sleep, but since it was about her anyway she might as well wake up. Mike ran his finger through Shy’s hair. "Baby," Mike said and touched her face. "Wake up."
"Morning, baby. Is everything all right?"
"I gotta make a call." Mike dialed a number.
"Okay, and you woke me up because?"
"You’ll see," Mike said as the phone rang.
"This is Kirk."
"Good morning, Kirk, this Mike Black."
"Morning, Black. I knew sooner or later you’d be calling."
"I’d like to talk to you, detective. Is there someplace I could meet you?"
"Castle Hill diner, say in an hour? You can buy me lunch," Kirk said.
"See you there."
A little over an hour later, Mike and Shy walked hand in hand into the Castle Hill diner. Kirk was already there when they got there. He rose to his feet when he saw them coming toward him.
"How’s it goin’, Kirk," Mike said and extended his hand.
"Doin’ good," Kirk replied and shook Mike’s hand.
"Kirk, this is my wife Cassandra."
Shy held out her hand. "Please call me Shy."
"Mrs. Black, it is a pleasure to finally meet you. I was told that you were the most beautiful woman on the face of the earth. I see now that I was not deceived," Kirk said graciously. "Please, have a seat."
Once they were seated the waitress brought out Kirk’s food. "I hope you don’t mind, I went ahead and ordered."
"Not at all detective," Mike said. "Go ahead and enjoy your meal."
"So, Black, what did you want to see me about?"
"I wanted to talk to you about the DEA investigating me for drug trafficking. Kirk, you know I don’t do that kind of business."
"I know. She does, or at least she used to."
Shy fought off the urge to defend herself and remained quiet. She would have her chance later.
"You don’t have to worry about the DEA, at least for now, Black."
Mike glanced at Shy. "Why is that detective?"
"The operation’s been terminated," Kirk said as he ate. "After I talked to Simmons, and his story didn’t jive with the official version the DEA was puttin’ out, I did some checkin’ on my own."
"What was the official version?" Mike asked.
"That the lovely Mrs. Black here was involved in a meeting with known drug dealers."
"I was?" Shy said, no longer able to hold her tongue. "Was that before or after they kidnapped me?"
Mike touched her hand. "Go on, detective."
"We checked with the Bahamian police and they confirmed Simmons story."
"We? Who is we?"
"The New York City Police Department."
"Why is the NYPD helping me?"
Kirk put down his folk. "Understand this Black. We weren’t helping you. The DEA came to us to help them get you. Their shit was incorrect. Excuse my French, Mrs. Black. Black, you’re a lot of things, you’re a gambler, you’re a pimp, you’re a thief, and a killer, but the one thing that you aren’t is a drug dealer. Everybody knows that. So we started looking at agent DeFrancisco and his finances. Nice house in Annapolis, Maryland. More house than he could afford on his salary. He also had a beach
front house in Nags Head, North Carolina and a boat. Thirty footer."
"Sounds like somebody’s on the take."
"You think?"
Mike and Shy laughed. "We took what we found to the DEA and they found that the intelligence DeFrancisco used to get authorization for the operation was fake. Now were trying to find out what’s Martin Marshall’s got to do with any of this."
"Marshall? What does he have to do with this?" Mike asked.
"When DeFrancisco came to us for help, Marshall came with him."
"It’s funny that you should mention Senator Marshall," Mike said.
"Why’s that, Black?"
"How would you like to not only link Marshall to DeFrancisco, but tag him for murder?"
"I’m listening."
Shy reached in her purse and put a cd on the table in front of Kirk.
"What’s that?"
"It’s a recording of the Senator discussing his involvement in a murder of a woman with the killer." Shy told him.
"Where did you get that," Kirk asked.
"Does it matter?"
"No it doesn’t cause nothing on that disk would be admissible in court."
"But you would know all the right questions to ask cause you already know the answers," Shy said. "You interested?"
"I’m interested." Kirk reached for the disk.
Shy put her hand on it. "In exchange for," she paused. "In exchange for your assistance in getting those false charge against me dropped."
Kirk took his hand off the disk, and ate another piece of his steak. The detective sat back in the booth and put down his knife and fork. He looked at Shy and thought about her offer and then to Black who had remained silent. Kirk reached in his pocket and took out his cell phone. He dialed a number. "Detective Sanchez."
"Gene, this is Kirk. Listen, you speak to the ADA about dropping the charges against Cassandra Sims yet?"
"Not yet, Kirk, why?"
"Go ahead and call her. We got bigger fish fry."
"Done," Sanchez said. "Who’s the fish?"
"I’ll tell you when I see you," Kirk promised and hung up his phone.
"Just like that?" Shy asked, letting go of the disk. "One word from you and the charges are dropped?"
"Did I mention what a good job your lawyer, Wanda Moore was doing?" Kirk got up and threw a couple of dollars on the table for a tip. "Yeah, just the other day detective Sanchez said that he was going to have to drop the charges against you. He was gettin’ a lot of pressure from the ADA, who was gettin’ pressure from your lawyer. He was gonna drop the charges against you anyway." Kirk held up the disk. "But thanks for this, I never liked Marshall anyway."
Mike and Shy watched Kirk walk out. "I’m free, baby," she said and kissed him. "Now I can stay in New York."
"We can go anywhere you want," Mike said and got up from the table. "Just one more thing left to do," he said and paid the check.
Epilogue
One year later on an island off the west coast of Mexico
Diego Estabon sat alone in his bungalow waiting for his new partners to arrive with his share of their last job, and they were late, very late.
It had been a good year for Diego and he planned for next year to be even better. The phone rang. "It’s about time you called. Where are you?"
"I’m right outside Diego," Mike said into the phone.
Diego rushed to the window and could see Mike standing off in the distance.
"What do you want Black?" Diego said and quickly armed himself.
"As soon as Sal told you that he had kidnapped my wife, you should have told Sal to let her out the car and have him apologize for taking her," Mike said and hung up the phone.
Diego watched as Mike turned to walk away and wondered what that was all about. Then he thought it would probably be a good idea if he got outta there. But before Diego could make it to the door, the bungalow blew up.
As he walked away, Mike felt the heat of the explosion on the back of his neck. Now it’s over.
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The Mike Black Saga; No More Tears In The End
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