Make Them Sorry

by Sam Hawken

  “Another time. Hold on.”

  She pressed the throttles to the stops. The men stumbled as the boat surged underneath them. Camaro waited for their complaints. They fled to the cabin instead.

  She saw the marina when the sun was almost down. She throttled back and hoped no one had thrown up in the cabin on the way in. She entered the maze of boats, careful on the controls. She spotted Ignacio waiting dockside. He waved as she drew close, but he didn’t smile.

  The charter party emerged from the cabin as she tied up the boat. They were green and unsteady. “Have a nice night,” Camaro told them.

  “Took it a little rough coming in, huh?” one of the men asked.

  Camaro started to answer. Ignacio interrupted. “How about you cut the lady a break and head on out of here?”

  “Who are you?”

  Ignacio showed his badge. “I’m the cop who’s going to bust somebody for DUI if they’re not careful leaving the parking lot. So say night-night to your captain and enjoy the rest of your evening. Okay?”

  The charter party left without further complaint. Camaro regarded Ignacio from the deck. “I could have handled it,” she said.

  “You don’t have to do everything alone. That’s what friends are for. You ready?”

  Camaro pulled the .45 from where she had it holstered under the edge of her shirt. She press-checked with her right hand before she put the weapon away. “I think so.”

  “You worried you’re gonna have to kill someone tonight?”

  “Aren’t you?”

  “It’s definitely been on my mind. Let’s get Ms. Glazer before it comes to that.”

  They left the boat behind. Ignacio paused at his car and seemed about to say something.

  “What?” Camaro asked.

  “You want me to drive?”

  “I’ll drive myself.”

  “You ever let anyone drive?”

  “Depends.”

  “I’ll follow you.”

  She led the way. The V8 Hemi under her truck’s hood rumbled like the Annabel. Camaro looked straight ahead and didn’t listen to the radio. She felt pressure at her back, propelling her forward. Occasionally she glanced in the mirror. Ignacio never fell far behind.

  When they turned onto Ocean Drive, they had to slow down while tourist traffic crept along the lit Art Deco faces against the sea. Camaro found a parking spot, and Ignacio slotted in at her rear bumper. They convened on the sidewalk across from the Avalon. “Nice spot,” Ignacio said. “I wouldn’t mind hiding out here.”

  People streamed in and out of the hotel. Camaro watched them. No one seemed to care if she and Ignacio were there. “We go in, we get her, we come right back out again,” Camaro said. “I put her in the truck. We’ll go wherever you want, but promise me it’ll be somewhere safe.”

  “I promise.”

  “Let’s do it.”

  They crossed the street against traffic and mounted the steps to the lobby. Cuban music livened the atmosphere. It was possible to look away from the signs of modernity and imagine everything was now as it had been then. Camaro and Ignacio went to the stairs and ascended.

  She stopped at Faith’s door and knocked. “Faith,” she said, “it’s Camaro.”

  Ignacio waited beside her. “I don’t hear anything.”

  Camaro knocked again. No one answered. She drew her gun.

  “Let me,” Ignacio said. He stepped in front of her and pounded on the door. “Ms. Glazer, this is Detective Montellano of the Miami Police Department! We talked before. Open up right now.”

  The chain rattled. The lock turned. The door opened. An old man with a towel wrapped around his waist looked out at them. His skin hung from a frail body. He spotted Camaro’s weapon and raised his hands. The towel fell to the floor. His hair everywhere was white. “I give up!”

  Camaro pushed past the old man. “Faith? Faith!?”

  “Where’s the lady who was here?” Ignacio asked the man.

  “Lady? I’m here with my wife. She’s downstairs.”

  Camaro cleared the room. Her pulse raced. “There’s no one else here. All her stuff is gone.”

  Chapter Sixty-Two

  CAMARO SAT IN a wicker chair next to a rubber plant in the lobby of the Avalon. The music washed over her. She had her elbows on her knees, and looked at the waxed lobby floor. Her mind was blank of everything except an image of Faith framed by the window in her room.

  She heard Ignacio approach. “Okay, I have units patrolling all over, looking for any sign of her, plus cops talking to every hotel in the district. If she switched rooms at the last minute, we’ll find out fast. In the meantime, I don’t think there’s anything else we can do here.”

  Her watch said it was a little past eleven. The night on Ocean Drive was only now getting started. “She said she’d wait for me,” Camaro said without looking up.

  “Maybe something spooked her. Maybe she wasn’t totally honest. You said she took money from Kaur and she took money from the Colombians. She was a busy girl. I wouldn’t put much trust in her.”

  Camaro straightened up. She looked at the smiling, oblivious people. She looked at Ignacio. “You don’t get it.”

  “No, I get it. Sometimes you want to believe in somebody so much, you don’t think about what they do wrong.”

  “I can find her,” Camaro said.

  “I think it’s time for you to go home and get some sleep. I already kept the ME waiting for hours. I have to get back. And any minute now Mansfield and Pope are going to be on me about what’s happening here. I have to work out my story.”

  “Tell them the truth.”

  “Oh, I think we’re past that now.”

  She stood. “Okay, I’m going.”

  “You need anything, call me.”

  “I won’t.”

  Camaro walked out of the lobby and crossed the street and went to her truck. She popped the locks, stood with her hand resting against the metal frame of the truck. All trace of the day’s fire had fled from it. The night was a sweaty layer on her skin. She glanced back. Ignacio was nowhere to be seen. She got in and started the engine and pulled away.

  She headed for the marina, but stopped along the way to buy tacos and a fifth of Jack Daniel’s. Both came back to the truck with her in brown paper. They rode in the passenger seat. The scent of tacos permeated the cab.

  The marina was still at midnight. A light was on in the office, which meant the marina manager was in. She parked and walked down the wooden dock, boots hollow on the planks. The Annabel was dark.

  She stopped, the fifth of whiskey in one hand and the sack of tacos in the other. Something seemed to brush against her shoulders—the light touch of a feather, or a breath of wind. She turned in place, looking back toward the road. The parking lot was empty except for her truck and the marina manager’s ancient blue Caddy. Camaro watched until a minute turned into two minutes.

  She dismissed the sensation with a shake of her head. She passed along the dock to the Annabel.

  The blast leveled the Annabel at the waterline, the entire structure of the boat transformed into an expanding hail of shredded plastic, resin, glass, and chrome. A pressure wave lifted Camaro off the dock, propelling her over the water in night turned to fiery day. Her lungs compressed, and all the oxygen burst out of her. She was suspended in midair for less than a heartbeat before she crashed hard. The warm water of the marina smashed into her like a solid object before it sucked her beneath the surface.

  Salt and wet covered her. Reflexively she inhaled, her lungs empty. Water rushed in and she choked. The darkness illuminated from above; flickering oranges and reds played over the surface as the remaining chunk of the Annabel’s hull rolled in place and began to sink. Floating debris slopped heavily in the backsplash from the detonation.

  Camaro clawed at the water, chest convulsing. Her eyes burned and her skin stung from a hundred angry cuts. The surface receded the more she strove for it. She kicked, trying to free her feet from her boots.
Her brain struggled for focus. She allowed herself to sink as she loosened her heavy boots. They slipped from her and she was lighter. She tried for the surface again. One hand broke into air. Her head and shoulders followed.

  She vomited seawater before she took a real breath. She was in the middle of the marina’s open straightaway, ten yards from the Annabel. What remained of the Annabel above the water was ablaze. Parts of the dock were alight.

  She struck out for a retaining wall lined with old radial tires. She clambered up, using the tires as handholds, until she made it to the top and flopped onto her back. She coughed violently, bringing up more fluid. Someone yelled, but she didn’t understand what they said. Consciousness flickered. One moment she was aware, the next was blackness, only to return to heat and pain and light.

  A figure stooped over her. She saw the face of Dallas, the marina manager. He shouted in her face, but his voice was unintelligible. Camaro thought she heard the word “ambulance.”

  Chapter Sixty-Three

  IGNACIO WATCHED BOMB techs work side by side with the crime-scene investigators. Divers were in the water. They had nothing yet. The night was alive with strobing lights, and the section of dock where the Annabel once berthed was brilliant with floods.

  He heard Mansfield before he saw him. Mansfield and Pope were together. They always seemed to be together. “I have a forensic team flying in from Virginia,” Mansfield said by way of greeting.

  “Not much to find. Camaro Espinoza’s boat’s in pieces, and the bomb guys haven’t found anything left of the device.”

  “That’s what our people are good at: finding things that are hard to come by.”

  “Like Lawrence Kaur?” Ignacio asked.

  Mansfield’s face clouded. “We’re working on it. Like I hear you’ve been working the Art Deco District for Faith Glazer. When were you going to clue us in about that?”

  Ignacio shrugged. “I didn’t think it was worth mentioning unless it panned out.”

  “Everything is worth mentioning,” Pope said.

  Mansfield put his arm around Ignacio’s shoulders. “Why don’t we take a walk, Detective? You and me.”

  They moved away together and drifted up the angle of the parking lot toward the road. Ignacio saw an unmarked federal SUV sitting where Camaro had told him she was watched. He glanced back. The teams still worked.

  “Nacho,” Mansfield said, “you like to be called Nacho, right?”

  “I think Detective Montellano is good for right now,” Ignacio answered.

  “Okay,” Mansfield said. “Detective Montellano. You are a good cop. People say excellent things about you, and you’ve never gotten yourself into any trouble too severe. These are great qualities to have in a working partnership, because solid cops are trustworthy. Reliable. They know what to do, and they listen when they’re told.”

  Ignacio didn’t reply. They kept walking until they reached the road.

  “We have a little bit of history, you and me, and that’s fine,” Mansfield continued. “I have no cause for complaint. But I feel like something different is happening here. Like your focus isn’t on the team goals. I’ve done some asking around, or rather, Special Agent Pope has, and we’ve discovered you and this Camaro Espinoza have something going on together.”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” Ignacio said.

  “Oh, come on, Detective. It’s common knowledge. Starting about a year ago you began keeping tabs on her. Where she goes, what she does. There’s even some talk you might have gotten her out of a couple of jams. Now, I’m not saying you’re sleeping with her—”

  “I’m not sleeping with her,” Ignacio interrupted. “It’s not like that.”

  “Okay, what is it like? Because when this business started, you stepped in as soon as you knew Espinoza was involved. And you were on the scene after she killed Bamanian and his man. Now you’re here. And if that’s not enough, there are people—and these are your colleagues, mind you—who saw the two of you together in the Art Deco District. So don’t kid a kidder. What’s really going on?”

  Mansfield didn’t rush him. “She’s a friend,” Ignacio said.

  “How serious of a friend?”

  “I already told you we’re not sleeping together.”

  “But you want to.”

  “No, I don’t want to! She’s good people, that’s all. And it happens she’s friends with Faith Glazer. That’s how she got caught up in all this. The same people who killed Roche and probably killed Kaur are after her, too. Don’t you see what’s happening? They’re cleaning up. Your accountants aren’t going to find anything because Roche and Kaur already closed the door. They were the last people you could talk to outside of Faith Glazer, and she’s gone, too.”

  “You know Espinoza is a killer.”

  “She was a soldier.”

  “No, I mean she’s killed people in the United States. Recently. It was all aboveboard as far as the legalities go, but the woman is dangerous. And given everything else going on, I’d like to know more about how she got involved with Glazer in the first place.”

  “You can’t be serious. You think Camaro is in with them? They blew up her boat! They tried to gun her down in her own house! If anything, she should ask you where you’ve been all this time. People are dying all over the place, and I don’t see a lot happening to fix the situation. What’s the next crime scene I have to visit? Who’s gonna be dead then?”

  “There’s no need to be combative.”

  “You know what? I am going to be combative. I played nice cop with you from the beginning, and all that’s happened is whatever case you’re putting together is falling apart one body at a time. So from here on out, I think I’m going to look after my duty as a Miami police detective and deal with things the right way. You can follow my lead for a change.”

  “You don’t want to do that, Montellano.”

  “If you don’t like it, you can talk to my captain. I’m done.”

  He walked away. Mansfield called after him, “You still need us, Detective. Whatever you think, this is still a federal case. Anything you do to jeopardize our investigation can be used against you. We could have your badge.”

  Ignacio stopped at his car. “You want my badge? Come and take it.”

  He got behind the wheel. His headlights washed over Mansfield at the edge of the road. He drove away.

  Chapter Sixty-Four

  THE MACHINE NEXT to her bed made noise until Camaro silenced it. Now it monitored her quietly, counting heartbeats and checking her blood oxidation levels. Ten minutes past every hour, a nurse came in to take her blood pressure. They gave her something in an IV drip and she fell asleep several times. She did not want to sleep.

  Ignacio was there when she opened her eyes. He stood at the foot of her bed, hat in his hands. She didn’t say anything. He spoke first. “Hi.”

  “How do I look?” Camaro asked.

  “Not bad, actually. It’s like you got run over by a truck only one time, instead of twice.” He smiled at her, but his expression faltered.

  “They’ll try again.”

  “I know. Once they find out they missed, they’ll come around.”

  “Where’s my gun?”

  “It’s in evidence. You’re not gonna get it back for a while.”

  “I lost my knife.”

  “You’ll get another one.”

  Camaro lifted her hand. It trailed tubes, and clear liquid flowed into a vein. Whenever they changed the bag of saline, she felt a new, cool flush under her skin. “They’re going to get Faith,” she said. “Wherever she went, they’ll find her. She’s not the kind of person who can hide like she has to.”

  “Not like you,” Ignacio said. He pulled a chair away from the wall. He sat down with a whoosh of exhalation. “Boy, am I feeling rough right now. But this is what happens when you get to be my age and pull an all-nighter. I’m not built for it anymore.”

  Camaro turned her gaze to the ceiling. The panels above her head were
spotted with a thousand tiny holes, and little hints of shine flecked here and there, as if seashells were shattered into the mix. She studied the ceiling for a while and realized she was getting woozy again. She didn’t remember when they had given her the last dose.

  “They tell me you should be good to go in a little while. Maybe you can get out tonight. That’d be nice, huh?”

  “Sure.”

  “I guess, uh, I guess you had insurance on that boat, right? I mean, it was all paid up and everything?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So you can go back into business before you know it.”

  Camaro looked at Ignacio. Her lids were heavy. “I don’t know if that’s what I want anymore.”

  “Don’t go making any decisions right now. You’re not up to it.”

  “You don’t get it,” Camaro said. “I came here to be safe. That was the whole point. No one knew me, and I could…live. But that’s not how it worked out. It never works out. It’s time to go.”

  “Where?”

  “I don’t know. Somewhere. I don’t have anywhere to be.”

  “You have family in California, right?”

  Camaro nodded but said nothing.

  “You could move out that way. California’s a nice place, I hear. You still have beaches and there’s plenty of sunshine. You won’t miss Miami at all.”

  “Would you go?” Camaro asked him.

  “It’s different for me. I’ve been here a long time. I’ve got roots.”

  “Roots,” Camaro repeated.

  “Well, as good as that kind of thing gets, anyway. People know me. I know them. I could always put in for retirement, because I got my twenty already, but what’s the point? I’m no good at fishing and I don’t like to be alone.”

  Camaro smiled despite herself. “Being alone isn’t the worst thing in the world.”

  “For some people. But I think you need people more than you let on.”

  Camaro’s smile melted. “I don’t like being analyzed.”

  “Sorry. It’s part of my job.”

  “It’s okay. Don’t do it again.”