“Lead?”
I explained low alpha lead and had no doubt she’d be an expert on it by the time we next spoke.
“We’re thinking he didn’t know what it was either, at least at first.”
“So who would he ask?”
“We were hoping you could tell us,” I said, guessing she was already mentally running through the possibilities.
“I talked to all his usual friends,” she mulled, “they would have remembered. It would have to be someone at the market.”
“Bayside Market?”
“Yeah, that’s where he sold his catch. I didn’t have much time to spend down there. How far are you?”
I craned my neck around and looked out the back window. “I can’t quite see it from here,” I confessed, “there are a couple buildings in the way.”
“Oh, that close. Okay, I’ll call down to the fish store and tell them you’re coming.”
“One more question...do you know anyone who goes by the name Sergei?”
The line went silent for a moment. “Sergei Mendenov?” she asked.
“Don’t know,” I said honestly. “Maybe runs with some ex-Spetsnaz types?”
“That’s him,” she confirmed. “He’s been on our radar a long time. He runs a very tight organization. Always Russian nationals and people he knows. It’s been nearly impossible to crack his organization. You think he’s involved?”
“Maybe,” I confessed.
“Well, Sergei’s certainly capable of doing harm, but salvage would really be out of his wheelhouse. Drugs, girls from eastern European countries that he rotates in and out, some off-track betting, but he’s very careful and very tight. He’s not the type to go freelancing into an area he doesn’t know.”
“Is he Russian mafia?”
“Formerly,” she confirmed. The Russian mafia wasn’t like their western counterparts. Membership wasn’t lifetime and organization membership shifted like sand. The treatment of veterans in Russia was so bad that the Russian mob was the post-service vocation for a lot of the knuckle dragger types. As long as he wasn’t competing against his old bosses, they would likely let him work his operation in Miami without much interference.
“I really don’t see Rafe going to him for advice,” she concluded after a minute.
“Can you send Deek his jacket?” I asked.
“Risky,” she answered honestly. “There are open investigations with his name on them going on in at least two different agencies, but I’ll get you what I can.”
“I’d appreciate it.”
“Hey,” she said turning serious, “you should watch it if Sergei’s involved. He doesn’t mess around and his guys are pretty good. They’re all combat vets and deadly sharp.”
“We’re not bad, either,” I reminded her. “But we’re one down on our team.”
“Trouble?”
“Nah, comm issue. She lives out in the middle of BF nowhere.”
“You want some time?”
An insightful question. Another week and we’d have V back and our comm issues ironed out. That was also another week for Sergei to get wise there was someone nosing around his business in his territory. The key to living a long life in our business was not barging in and urinating all over someone’s turf. Understand first, then act with precision, knowledge and, if necessary, with overwhelming force. Then don’t hang around long enough for people to start asking questions. Do your job and get the hell out.
“I think we’ll be okay,” I said, mostly believing it. “We’re just asking questions.”
“I’m having a hard time visualizing that,” she said skeptically. “On your last case four people disappeared.”
It was actually five though, technically, only four were incinerated. It didn’t pay to burden a client, who was also a federal agent, with unnecessary details.
“We’ll be careful,” I promised truthfully.
Miami was not our turf and, like New York City, kind of a law enforcement world unto itself. The city had gone through a time when drug gangs ruled the streets and Miami had, over the years, developed a rather aggressive posture toward gangs and violence on its streets. The tide on street violence had turned to the point today that such events were rare and the perpetrators quickly hunted down and snuffed out. If we were going to start shit with a well-organized gang of crazy Russian Special Forces troops, this would not be the place we’d pick. I was also keenly aware that if we perpetrated an incident it would almost certainly blow back on our client; not a great way to make friends in our line of work.
“I’ll be in touch,” she said evasively and we ended the call.
“Think she trusts us?” Q asked.
“Not any farther than I can pee into a hurricane,” Deek joked.
“Deek’s right,” I agreed. “I think she was debating whether to call us off.”
“Should we back out?” Q asked.
“Fuck no,” I said emphatically. “I liked Rafe. He was a good neighbor and good friend. We were like family.”
“You never actually met him,” Q reminded me.
“So?”
“Okay,” Q said after a moment, realizing there was no way to win an argument against a ghost. “To the market then?”
“To the market!” I agreed.
It took longer to decide to go to the Bayside Market than actually get there. It was, literally, at the end of the road going out to the industrial port. The hard part was parking in the garage and walking to the market like peasants. I missed our motor pool and valet.
“If we’re going to work down here we need to extend our infrastructure,” I grumbled as we made our way out of the garage. “I feel like some peasant driving our goat herd to market.”
Bayside Market is more like a giant strip mall, with some parts outside and some covered. It was collocated with a busy little marina along the water’s edge. The fish store was actually part of a restaurant that specialized in seafood and supplied most of the restaurants in the area. The long display case was full of hand-cut fillets and pieces of fish resting on a bed of ice. That ice bed had to be recreated every morning and one of the store’s employees showed up at 5 am to make sure it was ready. Most of the fish was right off the boat, but there was a freezer case for the more exotic types of seafood that arrived frozen. We asked to see the manager and waited.
“All of these fish were in the ocean a couple days ago,” I pointed out to Q, “just going about their little fish lives; eating other fish and shitting them out.”
“Yeah?”
“And the fish they were eating were eating other little creatures and shitting them out. And today someone is going to eat that fish,” I pointed at the display, “and shit that out tomorrow.”
“O-kay.”
“It just dawned on me that all this eating and shitting, eating and shitting, what we call the Great Circle of Life, is really just a giant wheel of shit. That’s our life, the big wheel of shit.”
Q got a laugh out of that. “Are you high?”
“Depressingly straight,” I informed him. “Just not sure why I never put that together before.”
My epiphany on life was interrupted by the manager who, like everything else about the store, was immaculately clean and tasteful. He was in his early 50s, trim, with salt and pepper hair, dressed in a crisp polo shirt and khaki slacks.
“I just got off the phone with the U.S. Marshal’s office,” he informed us. “You would be the gentlemen they said to expect?”
“We are,” I confirmed. “Did you know Raphael Valle?”
“Rafe,” he corrected. “No one called him Raphael and I hope you’re not here to tell me something bad happened to him.”
“We’re just assisting the Marshal's office with a routine inquiry,” I said, which, at this point, was mostly true. “Does anyone on your team here have a background in salvage?”
“In this city?” he scoffed, “half my staff either worked in salvage or treasure hunts on the weekend.”
&n
bsp; “Anyone Rafe might have talked to regularly?”
“That would be Keith,” he said automatically. “He sets up our display case every morning and meets the boats when they come in. Hang on, I’ll see if he’s still here.”
The manager disappeared through a large swinging door a minute later a large older man, sporting fairly substantial beer belly under a faded blue polo shirt came through the door, still wiping his hands with a paper towel. His nametag confirmed his name was Keith.
“I’d shake hands…” he said by way of greeting.
“We understand,” I assured him, gesturing at the display case. “What’s your last name, Keith?”
“Turner.”
“Keith, did Rafe ever talk to you about something he might have snagged out fishing one day?”
He thought it over for a moment. “Where is Rafe anyway?” he asked in return. “I haven’t seen him in a few weeks.”
“That’s what we’re trying to figure out.”
“Well, hell, he talked about stuff he brought in on the boat all the time,” he explained. “All the fishermen do that. The fish they catch and crap they pull up out of the water. You wouldn’t believe some of the stuff--”
“Did Rafe ever mention anything strange?”
“Well, he might have mentioned he snagged something out trying to hook up grouper a while back.” Grouper were predator fish that were found near reefs and underwater obstructions and bottom fishing was the most common way to catch them.
“Did he say what it was?”
“Don’t recon he did,” he evaded.
“You were in the salvage business weren’t you, Mr. Turner?”
“That I was.”
“Who did you work for?”
“I spent a couple years with Pierson Brothers, then tried it out on my own for a while.”
“Did Rafe show you what he found or ask about Pierson Brothers?” I pressed.
“Hey, are you fellas cops?”
“No, we’re not,” I replied honestly.
“Then I don’t have to answer your questions, right? Cause I’m kinda tired and this is when I usually go home.”
For the second time that day I found my knife burning a hole in my pocket, but it was too public to press the issue here.
“You don’t want to help your friend, Keith?”
“Sure, but I’m kinda tired and maybe you can come back tomorrow.”
Q and I exchanged a look. We were really trying to find a way to invite our buddy Keith in a more familiar way to unfuck his attitude but couldn’t risk it. Only the fact that it would blow back on Anita Guerrero kept me from dragging this sack of shit into the back and sticking his head in a bucket of fish guts until he was ready to talk.
“If that’s the way you want to play it, Mr. Turner,’ I said evenly. “But I’m kinda getting the feeling you’re not being completely candid with us.”
“Well, I’m leaving now, so you all can see yourselves out.” With that he turned to go. It took an exercise of near superhuman self-restraint to not push his fat head through the glass display case.
“No cover here,” Q reminded me.
“That fat fuck knows something,” I seethed.
The manager joined us again. “Did you get what you needed?”
“Did you know we all live in a giant wheel of shit?” I asked in return.
“Excuse me?”
“Thank you for your time,” Q said to the manager, grabbing my arm and steering me toward the door. Once outside I pulled my arm loose. Q would know that I was annoyed at the situation and not him.
“I’m going to drop a building on that fucker! I’m talking a serious, medieval, wrath of god level shit storm!”
Q chuckled and came up with a more practical idea. “We should get Deek on him.”
“Right,” I agreed, texting Deek the name, being sure to add the phrase “pig fucker” at the end so Deek knew I was really annoyed.
Then I dialed Fred. “Yeah,” he answered, from the noise in the background it was obvious there was a lot going on in the Star’s bridge.
“You ever heard of Pierson Brothers?” I asked him.
“Yeah,” he sighed. “Unfortunately.”
“What’s their story?”
“They’re hacks,” Fred concluded. “They were featured on one of those educational channel specials because they found the wreck of a Spanish galleon and tried to squirrel away some of the treasure. The Spanish government sued and won in federal court and Pierson Brothers had to hand over a couple tons of treasure. The Spanish government complained some of it went missing but could never prove it.”
“I remember that.”
“Yeah, it was all over the papers for a while, the trial was up in Tampa. As much as it pains me I actually sided with Pierson Brothers. That was bullshit. If it’s been in the water 500 years then whoever finds it should own it. Still, what Pierson Brothers did wasn’t right, either. We have to watch because we’ve had them out working wrecks we surveyed the day before.”
“You sound busy.”
“Just got The Fish in the water, I’ll have to hit you back later.”
“No problem. Keep me posted,” I said, ending that call and dialing Deek.
“Pig Fucker Locators,” he joked. “Can we help you find a pig fucker today?’
“You’re funny,” I panned. “Any word from V?”
“Come on, boss.”
“I know, it’s just annoying.”
“It’s going to take me a little while to piece together Mr. Turner’s life,” he informed me. “He’s kind of a low-tech guy.”
We need somewhere to slot up for the night; we’re blown for the rest of the day.”
I really wanted to go after Mr. Turner but we’d need someone outside. V was out of pocket and Amber was wrapped up on the Star, which could work night and day if needed and was going to be out for a while. We were operating on the hairy fringe as it was, kicking over cans without any outside cover or egress and this wasn’t our turf. It was not the time to let annoyance at some two-bit fish store flunky override basic operational protocols, especially when we were already out there flapping.
“We have a villa arranged,” he informed me.
“Alright, send the address to Amber and ask her to join us when the Star is back. Copy that to Fred.”
“Will do.”
“And we need to catch up on what Anita sends over about Mendenov and see what else we can learn. Seems like you already have a lot on your plate.”
“I’m doing alright,” he assured me. “Sending Q the address.”
I hung up and we made the long trudge back to the parking garage. Luckily the scenery was nice and the day was as nice as it gets in South Florida.
“So we’re not going to lean on the fish guy?” Q asked when he figured I had time to cool off.
“Oh, we’re going to lean on the fish guy,” I assured. “Fat fuck.”
“I thought it was Pig Fucker?” Q joked.
“Both,” I smiled. “We can’t keep working light, though. We’ve got no outside cover, no comm and no resources down here. If we step in it, the shit blows back on our client.”
“So, what’s the plan?”
“We take a step back,” I grumbled. “We use Amber to fill in for V until she’s back.”
“Fred’s not going to like that.” Q pointed out the obvious that to man our end of the operation we were leaving him short.
“We’ve all got our shit to deal with,” I said dismissively.
“Rude!”
“I get it, okay,” I said in a softer tone. “It’s just a day and if V isn’t back we 911 her.”
“Still a little rude,” Q maintained. In most things Q was flexible but when he thought he was right he would stand his ground. “I don’t like letting the fish guy go.”
“Me, either, but the truth is we could get by without him. We already know who the players are and the product. We just don’t know the sequence of how it came together
.”
“That sequence could be important,” Q pointed out.
“Oh, we’ll close the loop,” I assured. “Just trying to keep some perspective.”
We could have followed the fish guy but though he was fat, he wasn’t stupid. He would have been watching for that and knew the terrain better than we did. Better to let him think he won that round and hang back until we had the right opportunity. Besides that Deek needed time to see what he could find on Mendenov and Pierson Brothers. I hated being tantalizingly close to the prize and holding back to regroup but we didn’t have any option.
The Blue Tango Salvage: Book 2 in the Recovery and Marine Salvage, Inc. Series Page 8