“Copy that,” Deek replied.
“Awesome, we can sleep in,” Q said.
“Deek, send Mack a message on the secure sat link and ask him to call me,” I added.
“Working on it,” he confirmed.
“V, might as well join us at the houseboat,” I suggested.
“Will do,” she confirmed.
“It’s a party now,” I quipped as we merged on to the I-95 South entrance off Okeechobee and settled in for the trip to Miami. My phone rang a minute later.
“Mackey! Is my nephew driving you crazy yet?” While our secure comm traffic could be monitored, our cell phone traffic was definitely being recorded. Encrypting your cell phone traffic was another way to attract unwanted attention so we just went old school.
“Nah, he’s having a ball,” Mackey confirmed. “Him and his little sister are going out swimming and snorkeling every day, paddle boarding, fishing and just having a great time.” The signal faded in and out a little as Mack was likely relaying through a shore station. “We’ve had to run in to stock up on beer already.”
“Good to hear it,” I chuckled, imaging Don Meadows and Jennifer draining case after case of beer. Jennifer could hold her own drinking with any man and swam like a fish. I’m sure the good Sgt. was having a time trying to keep up.
“His mom kind of misses him,” I injected. “Days might seem to go on for weeks but his folks are expecting him back in two weeks to help out at his cousin’s wedding.”
“Won’t be a problem,” Mack acknowledged. “I think he’s missing his family a little.”
“Gotcha. Tell him I’ll meet him when you guys get back.”
“Will do,” Mack confirmed. “See you in a couple weeks.” I hit the End button and contemplated the view out the car window.
“Days seem like weeks,” Q observed. “You’re bringing him home in two days.”
“Right,” I confirmed.
“Right in line with Mrs. M’s deadline,” Q noted.
“She should be pretty anxious to see him by then, don’t you think?”
6
THE HOUSEBOAT WAS really more of a barge with an engine. It was a 40 foot double-deck houseboat that could putter around the Intracoastal on a pair of 150 HP Mercury Marine outboards. We called her the Gilded Lily and she was like your high school girlfriend in Wisconsin; fat and slow but comfortable and stable. Going out on the ocean was out of the question unless it was our intent to create a new artificial reef. The Lily was most at home tied up at the dock, which was a little marina near North Bay Village just off the JFK Causeway in North Miami.
“It sorta bothers me that all the streets have numbers and directions,” Q volunteered. “Pick one or the other.”
“It would be okay if the directions made sense.”
Miami was a city that underwent explosive growth in the 70s and 80s, fueled by a toxic mix of drug money and rich people. As the city grew the directions tended to become somewhat relative. You could be in an area where all the major streets started with SW, but be so far west you’d be running into the Everglades National Park. If you went too far north the NW series in Miami ran into the SW streets in Hollywood. It was one big confusing tangle of humanity, just exactly the kind of place we liked to hide. We could blend in and disappear.
We had bought several homes in the area as safe houses and formed a property management company to take care of them. It wasn’t long before the company became wildly successful and most of the houses and townhouses we bought for our use ended up being rented out to tourists from up north. Eventually the company started buying its own units and rehabbing townhouses. The business grew to the point it took off on its own. Even when the housing market went to shit in southern Florida in 2007 our property management company stayed cash flow positive. That was one of several businesses we started to serve our own needs and eventually became successful apart from us.
I hadn’t added it all up recently but it stacked up to a metric crapload of money and that didn’t even count the hard cash we stashed in shell companies all over the globe. We weren’t just rich, we were an enterprise. Over the years we had collected a small army of lawyers, accountants and financial specialists to make it all run with smooth, corporate efficiency. We got so good at running companies we formed a consulting group and that took off, too. We had started most of these companies to hide the money we already yet it all turned into a giant machine printing cash. As an enterprise we owned ships, planes, hotels, office buildings, fleets of cars and trucks, at least three marinas, a yacht charter company, the deep sea salvage company that Fred ran, a hospital, two pharmacies, a trucking hub and a dozen more I probably forgot about and another dozen I didn’t know about yet. While individual liberty has been largely crushed, we had the kind of power that counted in the world today; corporate power. We had enough money to influence elections, kill legislation, and had political clout at the local, state and federal level. I could call Washington and within 15 minutes have a U.S. Senator on their way to meet me and it was all tax deductible.
“We should buy the airport,” I said, thinking out loud.
“We already own an airport,” Q reminded me. “That air freight hub in Vancouver.”
“I meant the one here.”
“You want to buy Miami International?”
“Wouldn’t that be awesome? We could build executive apartments there and lay in bed watching the planes take off and land.”
“I’m not sure the government would part with it,” Q chuckled, “but that would definitely be cool.”
“I think it would be neat living at an airport. Not some podunk little regional hub, a real airport. Watching the planes come and go, all the people...it’s like a city. The best part is you don’t have to spend time getting to know any of them because they’re either home or leaving.”
“I never looked at it like that.”
“You’re right, they’re probably not going to sell.”
“I like that you think big.”
“Most people have pretty limited ambition,” I observed, “so it’s not hard to look big in comparison.”
“Speaking of ambition…”
“The horse park,” I finished for him, “that’s just money laundering. Boring.”
“Lot of money,” he reminded me.
“A crapload,” I agreed, “and our Mr. Meadows stepped right in it.”
“So that was for the horse thing?”
“Probably just a loan,” I guessed. “A loan that never gets paid back and filters back to the original sender through the horse park, all nice and legal money. The cartels actually had an operation in the states like that a few years ago, except they were stupid and the Feds picked up on it.”
“Someone rat?”
“Didn’t need to,” I laughed. “They were naming the horses after family members.”
“Convenient!” Q grinned.
“Yeah, well, they’re smarter now. Running it out in BF Nowhere, Brazil. Shuffling the funding through foreign banks and they have the senior partner in a prestigious law firm heading up the stateside end of things.”
“And then along comes our guy.”
“Yup. It was supposed to look like a robbery. His partner would get wounded, our guy would get dead and the bonds would just disappear.”
“Except it didn’t work out that way.”
“It did not,” I agreed, “but it should have. Can you imagine a point blank shootout in a crowded room?”
“That took some major stones,” Q admitted with a trace of admiration. “Hey, that means--”
“The wife was in on it,” I finished for him. “That’s why they picked that warehouse. Of all the places they could have gone, they go to that one. The only one they could be certain of the time and place of delivery.”
“She knew he was going to get killed. She set him up!”
“Almost certainly.”
“That’s stone cold,” Q observed with a shake of his head.
&
nbsp; “No one would ever suspect a widow wrapped in the flag,” I added. “It reminds me of one day I was visiting a horse park in Kentucky and they were bringing this two year old stallion out for pictures. They had him in this dinky show halter and led him out by a pasture of mares so he’d perk his ears up.”
“They put an adolescent male horse next to a field of mares,” Q caught on. “What could go wrong?”
“Exactly. So, anyway, he rears up and snaps that cheap ass show halter like it’s thread and he hauls ass down the fence line, letting all the girls know he’s there.”
“What happened?”
“The mares comes thundering up the field and junior kicks off the top slat off the fence, jumps over and he’s going downtown and that whole herd of mares falls in behind him. It’s like something out of an old west novel. Took them all day to separate them and get him back in the barn.”
“Sounds exciting.”
“Their entire operation went to shit for a whole day because of one rogue horse,” I pointed out. “When our guy went over the fence it put this bunch in a bind.”
“Hey, why didn’t they just transfer the money through a bank?” Q asked suddenly.
“They would after the initial phase was funded and they had cash flow on the books,” I observed. “They needed a chunk of cash to get the operation up and running and it’s not like you can just write a check these days. They’d convert a few bonds as they needed the money to fund construction.”
“So what’s the wife getting out of it?” Q asked. “She can’t be a major player in this, she doesn’t have the money.”
“A very insightful question and not entirely clear at this point,” I admitted. “I’m not sure we know who all the players are at this stage but that doesn’t really matter, we’re out of time.”
“What’s our move then?”
“We have Don Meadows call his wife,” I said.
“Knowing the whole world is listening.”
“Yup.”
Q mulled over the possibilities. “That’s going to be interesting.”
“It’s a situation we’re not going to be entirely able to control and many of the players are amateurs,” I grumbled.
“You hate amateurs,” he reminded me.
“Twitchy and unpredictable...like horses.”
He chuckled at the irony. “Appropriate in this instance.”
“I’d much rather deal with professionals,” I complained. “Cold, calculating and entirely predictable. For them it’s just business. But this bunch...fuck, no telling what they’re going to do.”
“You have a plan?” Q asked.
“Most of one,” I admitted, “but there’s a lot of slack.”
“There’s always slack,” Q pointed out.
“Not like this,” I said seriously. “Too many unknowns.”
“And you hate unknowns,” Q finished for me. “Unknowns and amateurs.”
“Amateurs are unknowns,” I clarified.
“We’ve gotten through a hell of a lot worse.”
“True, but the more times you’re not in control of the situation, the odds catch up with you eventually,”
“You saying we should retire?” Q asked with a sideways smile.
“That’s the problem,” I countered, “we are retired. We quit our old line of work and this is what we do when we don’t have anything else to do.”
I could see Q mulling that one over as the streets lights rolled by. A stoplight brought our progress to a halt.
“I like what we do,” he finally concluded.
Q checked traffic both directions before pulling out when the light changed. That’s one thing I really liked about Q, he didn’t trust his life to light bulbs.
“So do I, but I can’t do this forever,” I said glumly. “This is a young man’s game.”
“You’re still pretty fly,” Q grinned, “for an old white guy.”
We both got a laugh out of that. I put my earbud back in.
“Deek, why don’t you put things on autopilot and join us on the barge,” I suggested.
“Really?”
“Yeah, come on down,” I confirmed. “Nothing is going to happen tonight that you can’t keep up with things on that tablet thingy.” It was a bonus that the Lily was the only boat in our fleet that was handicap accessible.
“Sure, I guess,” he agreed somewhat reluctantly. Deek was not a social person, except at a strip club.
“I will kill him,” V, a few miles behind us, reminded everyone.
“Can we please not do that?” I asked.
“He’s a pig,” V contested.
“It would be inconvenient,” I stressed.
“Inconvenient?” Deek protested. “That’s not exactly the backup I was hoping for.”
“No killing,” I said sternly. Sometimes you just have to put your foot down with children.
“Fine,” V reluctantly agreed.
“Whatever,” Deek concluded.
We pulled into the marina parking lot, which was mostly empty this time of year. The automatic gates read the barcode Q held up on a card. The Lilly was already lit up. Unlike our other boats the Lilly didn’t have a regular crew, just a caretaker who kept it clean and well stocked. Fred’s crew at the shipyard kept her fat bottom in top shape and she had the usual compliment of security systems, hidden weapons, cash, travel documents, and communications. Everything a good safe house should have. While the Lily couldn’t make a run to the open ocean, she could find a home at one of dozens of marinas hidden away in the miles and miles of waterways around Miami. Lilly was kind of a fat needle but it was a really, really big haystack.
The lights were on and the Lilly was all set up for our arrival. The table on the top deck had a clean table cloth and the warm lights filtering through the shades looked inviting. The whole scene spoke of comfortable furniture, cold beer and a refrigerator full of food. My stomach picked that moment to remind me we hadn’t eaten in a while.
“I’m hungry,” Q said, mirroring my thoughts in that freak way we’ve always been connected. It saved a lot of conversation.
The Lilly didn’t have keys; instead she had biometric keypads, which included the engine controls. I put my thumb on the pad and then entered my code. The lock clicked open and we stepped in to the comfortable living room. The Lilly was a wide body design and the living room was bigger than traditional landlocked homes. It had a square pit group around a mahogany center table, a small kitchen set off with a breakfast bar and a small table with four matching chairs. The big screen TV was decidedly out of place but the all-purpose monitor served more than one role on the Lilly. I picked up the remote off the bar and switched on the camera monitor.
“The 24 hour security channel,” Q joked.
The Lilly did have some impressive surveillance capabilities. The infrared cameras covered a full 360 degrees with automatic motion detection that would assign little boxes to moving targets and automatically zoom in on human size objects. Right now the only things moving were some boats out on the waterway.
“You want a beer?” Q asked, heading for the huge, double-door stainless fridge. He opened the doors to discover one half stacked with food and the other crowded with bottles of cold beer. “Oh, I love whoever takes care of this boat,” he said admiringly, inspecting the beer selection. He finally settled on a Jamaican beer that was an old Florida favorite.
“Sweet,” I said, gratefully accepting the ice-cold stubby brown bottle. A few minutes later the monitor tracked movement in the parking lot as a car rolled in.
“That would be V,” I said watching the motion tracker lock onto her tall, lanky frame and zoom in. She crossed the parking lot with long, purposeful steps, her hair bouncing in rhythm to her usual efficiency. A minute later she breezed through the door in jeans, a tank top and black leather jacket. She plunked down on one of the couches next to Q and punched him on the thigh.
“Hey,” she said in greeting.
“Hey, tough girl,” Q returned
with a smile.
Q and V had always had a relationship that was closer than coworkers and I always wondered if they ever did the deed. If they had neither of them talked about it. It seemed unlikely but there was a spark there all the same. Q was smart not to get involved with V; damaged goods in the relationship department.
“You want a beer?” I asked, forgetting just how attractive she really was.
“Got one,” she replied, snatching Q’s out of his hand and held it up in salute, knocking back half of it in one gulp.
“I could use one,” Q pointed out.
“You know where the fridge is,” I replied.
“You were going to get her one,” he said with a frown.
“She’s got a nicer ass,” I reminded him.
“Damn right,” V agreed, taking another pull of her beer.
“I’m going to start wearing heels,” Q complained, leveraging himself out of the comfortable couch with some effort.
“I’d pay to see that,” V chimed in with a laugh, a slight accent giving away that English was her second language but one she’d been speaking for years.
It was nice to see the team relax, these moments were all too rare these days.
I turned toward Q in the kitchen. “I could use another beer while you’re up.”
“I figured,” he said heavily, returning with two beers and handing me another bottle sweating with condensation.
“You two should get married,” V observed. “You’re like old married couple.”
“He takes me for granted,” Q said, feigning sadness and retaking his seat next to V.
“He never wants to have sex,” I countered.
V just shook her head and laughed. The security system beeped a new arrival as Deek’s pickup pulled into the parking lot. V frowned.
“Hey,” I chided. “He’s alright.”
She shook it off. “I know,” she admitted. “He’s just so…”
“Deek,” Q finished for her. “We get it.”
“He doesn’t treat you any different than any other female,” I reminded her.
“Not helping.”
“Besides, he likes you,” I pointed out. “You know the wiring --”
“I know what happened,” V sighed, “it’s just annoying.”
The Rogue Horse Recovery: Book One of the Recovery and Marine Salvage Inc Series (Recovery and Marine Salvage, Inc.) Page 8