We loaded the gunman into the backseat. Jock joined him, a pistol in his hand. Logan started the car and drove straight out of town.
“I got around the corner just as the cops were pulling up on the other side of the square. A county fire truck came in right behind them. Where are we going?”
“I don’t have any idea,” I said. “Keep going straight. This road will connect us to the Tamiami Trail. We’ll figure it out from there.”
We traveled a couple of miles on an asphalt road that ran straight as an arrow. The dark was infinite and the sweep of our headlights revealed the flora of the Everglades pressing close. The only sound was the hiss of our tires on the pavement.
“Uh-oh,” Logan said. “Blue lights behind us. A cop’s coming up fast.”
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
The Hacker sat in the quiet of his old house, sipping a beer. His recliner was torn and poorly patched. It had been part of the furniture that came with the house when he bought it, and he couldn’t think of any good reason to get a new one. He had the windows open, and could hear the hum of the insects who shared the night. The single bulb hanging from the wire over his computer was the only light in the house. He balanced an ashtray on his lap, flicking ashes into it from his cigarette.
His thoughts had turned dark with suspicion. The old man had only provided him with half his fee and a promise to pay the rest when the job was complete. Now there was some question as to whether he could finish the task.
His biker cronies had not come through like they had in the past. They were a mean bunch, men given to violence, giving it and receiving it. How in the world had a lawyer and a retired financial guy taken the best of them out? Was there more to this than he knew?
And who were these other people who’d gone after Royal? Two days in a row. The go-fast boat was a good idea, but the execution was lousy. What about the home invasion? Another fuckup, but who were these guys? The Hacker knew that the bikers sometimes contracted out their wet work, but he didn’t know who they used.
The Hacker had been roaming the Longboat Key police computers. The dead men had not been identified, but the biker leader Baggett had assured him they weren’t his men. Was Baggett lying? If not, then who were they?
His searches ranged far, tapping into databases of all the local law, probing the drug lords’ servers. Yes, they all used computers these days, bad guys, too. They needed their information at hand in order to conduct business, make decisions, keep the drugs flowing.
The Hacker thought that the men from the boat and the break-in might have been part of one of the drug cartels. But if they were, there was nothing in the computers. That he could understand, but the cops would have any ID plugged into their database, and by now, they would have figured out who the people were and where they were from. Fingerprinting was a science and the computers that did the matches were lightning fast. How was it that the cops hadn’t identified them?
He’d called the old man the night before, but the woman who worked there told him the old man had already gone to bed. The Hacker looked at his watch. Not quite nine. He got up from the chair, walked over to the computer, and pulled up the old man’s Web site. There was one page with a seven-digit number on it. He picked up one of his throwaway cell phones and punched in the numbers.
The woman answered. He asked to speak to the old man. She was gone for a minute or two and came back on the line. “He doesn’t wish to speak to you,” she said. “He says you haven’t held up your end of the bargain.”
“Listen, you bitch. You tell that old fuck that I’m not finished and when I am he’ll owe me the rest of the money. Tell him that if he’s hired somebody else to horn in on my job, I’ll take them out, too. And if he hasn’t hired somebody else, he should know that there are people out there trying to kill the same guys I am. And tell him I’ll find his fucking document.”
He slammed the phone shut, muttering to himself. He sat back in the chair facing the computer monitor. He pulled out the neck of his T-shirt, put his nose into it, sniffed. Didn’t have to shower just yet. He wasn’t going anywhere anyway. He had some planning to do. He still had a rabbit or two he could pull out of his hat.
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
“I don’t think we can outrun him,” Logan said.
“Pull over,” I said. “Let me talk to him.”
Logan flipped on his blinker and lightly touched the brakes, slowing the car. When enough speed had bled off, he eased onto the shoulder of the road and came to a stop. The cop pulled in right behind us.
A spotlight lit us up and the loudspeaker mounted in the cruiser’s grille came to life. “Get out of the car. Keep your hands where I can see them.”
“Do it,” I said to Logan. “Jock, you stay put.” He was lying on the backseat across the gunman, out of sight of the windows.
Logan and I opened our doors and got out, standing on either side of the car, hands in the air.
“Was I speeding?” Logan asked innocently.
The cop was standing beside his car, his open door giving him some protection. He had his service pistol trained on us. “Sir, somebody saw you leaving town just after a car was blown up. Called it in. I came after you.”
“Deputy,” I said, “my name’s Matt Royal. Call Lieutenant Charlie Foreman. He’ll vouch for me.”
“I’ll do that, Mr. Royal. Were you leaving town just now?”
“Yes,” I said. “I heard the explosion and saw the fire when I came out of the Swamp Rat. I didn’t see any reason to stick around.”
The deputy leaned into his shoulder, speaking softly into the radio microphone that was clipped to the epaulet of his shirt. He listened, then spoke into it again. He looked up at us, still behind his door, still at least twenty feet away from us. “Mr. Royal, do you have some ID?”
“I’ve got a driver’s license and a card identifying me as a member of the Florida Bar.”
“May I see it?” He motioned me toward him.
I stood still, one hand raised, and used the other to lift my wallet out of my hip pocket. I held it up and walked toward him. I gave him the license and bar card, and he held them up so that the light from his spot was on them. He gave them back to me.
“Thanks, Mr. Royal. The lieutenant said he knew why you were here and to let you go on about your business. I take it that’s Mr. Hamilton, the owner of the car.” He pointed to Logan still standing by his car.
“It is. Do you want to see his ID?”
“No, sir. Sorry to bother you. Y’all have a nice evening.”
He shut down the spotlight, turned off the blue lights, and drove off into the dark.
“That was close,” said Logan. “If he’d looked into the car, I don’t know how we’d have explained Jock and shithead back there.”
“That might have been a problem.”
Logan and I got back into the car. “What now?” he asked.
“The Tamiami Trail’s just about a mile ahead,” I said. “Turn right when you get there. I remember a pullover between here and Naples. We can stop there. There won’t be much traffic.”
We pulled off the highway onto a berm that ran for about a hundred feet along the road. It was grass covered and stretched several hundred feet into the swamp. A wide drainage ditch ran along the far side, parallel to the road. The black water of the ditch was broken by little red dots when the headlights shined on it. Alligators. They lived there.
Logan brought the car to a stop well off the road, near the ditch. The gunman was still unconscious. We pulled him out of the car and laid him face up on the grass. Jock found an old tin can, refuse dropped by someone with no regard for his pristine surroundings. He bent down and filled it with dirty water from the ditch and threw it into the gunman’s face. He came to, sputtering, making a production of it. I thought he’d been faking it, had probably been awake for a while. I shined a flashlight into his face.
“Time to wake up,” I said.
“Where are we?”
�
��Who are you?” I asked.
“They call me Turk.”
“Okay, Turk. I’ve just got a couple of questions. You up to answering them?”
“Go to hell.”
“Ah, tough guy, huh. I eat tough guys like you for breakfast. You really don’t want to fuck with me.”
“Untie me and I’ll show you tough.”
I chuckled dryly. “Turk, I’m not going to untie you. I’m simply going to roll you into the ditch over there and give the gators a snack.”
He paled in the glow of the flashlight. One does not live in the Glades without nurturing a healthy fear of alligators. “What do you want?”
“Who sent you after me?”
“What if I tell you? What then?”
“You’ll walk out of here.”
“Where are we?”
“On the Trail. About five miles from Belleville. You can walk home.”
“I don’t know who sent me, but I know why.”
“Talk to me.”
“Jason Blakemoore told me about a black dude who said he was a Seminole. Said he had some papers that would make him rich. Said he’d own the phosphate.”
“What phosphate?”
“All of it. All over the state.”
“What’s this got to do with me?” I asked.
“I called my brother about the black guy. He works for the ConFla people up near Lakeland, where I used to work until I got disabled. I thought maybe we could make a few bucks out of it. If he told his bosses, the guys what owns all that phosphate, maybe we could get a reward or something.”
“Did you?”
“A little. A guy come to see me. Gave me five hundred bucks. Told me the people he represented appreciated my help and would call on me again if I kept my mouth shut. Gave me a way to contact them if I got any more information.”
“Who was it that came to see you?”
“I don’t know. Never saw him before or since.”
“How’re you supposed to make contact?”
“I get to a computer, put in a Web address and get a number from that. It changes every day. I get the number every morning, so if I need it, I got it. Never used it until tonight when I heard you talking to old B.J. I remembered Jason talking about you helping out the black dude.
“I called the number and I talked to some woman. She said they’d pay me ten thousand dollars to kill you, and another twenty thousand to kill your friends.”
“How did you know where my friends were?”
“I seen ’em drive up and park. When I went outside to call the number, the car was still there. I figured that was how you got here.”
“Who threw the grenade?”
“That’d be my cousin.”
“What’s his name?”
“Rocky Mallot. He lives in Belleville.”
“Who was driving the Mercedes?”
“I don’t know. I was told that some guy in a Mercedes would be there. Rocky was supposed to wait until he saw the car to toss that grenade.”
“Did you kill Jason?”
“No, sir. He was my friend.”
“But you didn’t think anything about selling his confidential information to somebody you didn’t know?”
“Jason didn’t need the money, and I knew my brother. It wasn’t like I told just anybody.”
“What’s the Web address you check out every day?”
“I don’t know. It’s a different one each day.”
“How do you find out what it is?”
“It shows up on my e-mail.”
I was surprised. “You’ve got e-mail?”
“Sorta. They set me up with an AOL e-mail address. I go to the library every day and look at the e-mail. Lots of stuff comes in, you know, stuff to make my johnson bigger, stuff like that. But I always get an e-mail with a Web address on it. I check it out, write down the phone number, and I’m done.”
“What’s the number for today?” I asked.
“It’s on a piece of paper in my shirt pocket.”
I reached down and retrieved the paper. “What’s your e-mail address?”
He gave it to me.
“Password?”
“Turk.”
“That’s original.”
“I didn’t want to forget it.”
“Let me have your cell phone,” I said.
“It’s in my pants pocket.”
“Which one?”
“Right one.”
His hands were still cuffed behind his back. I turned him onto his left side, reached into his right pants pocket and retrieved the phone. I went into its log and saw the last number he’d called. The area code was 941. The Sarasota Bay area.
I turned to Jock and Logan who’d been standing quietly a few feet from us. “Okay guys. Let’s dump this turd in the ditch.”
“No,” said Turk, his voice rising. “You said you’d let me go.”
“Yeah, but that was only if you told me everything. You’re holding back.”
“I’m not. Honest. I told you everything I know.”
I motioned to Jock and Logan. They came over and picked him up, Jock grabbing him under the arms and Logan taking his feet. They started walking toward the ditch, carrying Turk. He was squirming, trying to get out of the grip of those about to throw him to the gators. They got to the edge and stopped. I walked over. “You sure you got nothing else to say Turk? It might mean you won’t die tonight.”
He was sobbing, his breath coming in gasps, fear distorting his facial features. “I swear, Mr. Royal. I told you everything I know.”
“Put him down,” I said. I thought Turk was scared enough now that he’d tell me anything to save his skin. I thought we’d wrung him dry. “The gators won’t eat tonight, Turk.”
We left him on the bank of the ditch sucking in great gulps of air. We walked off a hundred feet or so. “What are we going to do with him?” Jock asked.
“Let’s untie him and let him go. By the time he gets to Bellville, we’ll be back in Longboat.”
Logan looked a bit perplexed. “We’re just going to let him try to kill us and get away with it?”
Jock said, “Let’s put him on ice for a few days. We don’t want him communicating with whoever is pulling his strings.”
“Should I call Charlie Forman?” I asked.
Jock shook his head. “Let me get a team out here from Miami. They can keep him for a few days where nobody will find him.”
“How do you do that, Jock?” asked Logan.
“I’ve got lots of seniority and the director trusts me.”
“What then?” asked Logan. “Anybody got any bright ideas?”
“Not really,” I said. “But we have to figure out who’s behind this. It could be somebody inside the police. Plus, we’ve still got to talk to Baggett. Thursday is his night.”
“We just going to waltz into that bar and ask Baggett to tell us what’s going on?” asked Logan.
“We’ll have to work a little smarter than that,” Jock said. “Maybe I can get us some help.” He walked toward the car, pulling his cell phone out of his pocket.
CHAPTER FIFTY
We were on Interstate 75 nearing Venice, when my cell phone rang. Charlie Forman.
“Mr. Royal. I need to talk to you.”
“I was going to call you, Lieutenant. I figured you were pretty busy with that car fire.”
“What do you know about that?”
“Nothing. Logan and I were just leaving when we saw it catch fire. What happened?”
“Fire Marshall says somebody blew it up.”
“Anybody hurt?”
“No. The car was empty.”
“Glad to hear it.”
“Where are you?”
“On the way home.”
“We had another incident here tonight,” Charlie said. “A gangbanger from Miami was shot to death. Do you know anything about that?”
“No. What happened?”
“Don’t really know. He was driving a Mercede
s and it looked like somebody shot him through the windshield.”
“You said he was a gangbanger?”
“Yeah. He had a driver’s license in his pocket. The minute we put him into the computer it lit up. He’s got a hell of a rap sheet.”
“Do you think it was connected to the car blowing up?”
“Don’t know. Yet. Did you find out anything in the Swamp Rat?”
“Not much. I talked to a guy named B. J. Cuthbert. He knows a little about it. I think he’d be glad to talk to you.”
“He’s been out of town. What did he say?”
I related what I’d heard in the bar. Then I said, “I didn’t think it was a good idea to meet you in Belleville. I don’t want anybody to know about my role in this thing. In case I have to come back.”
“Good thinking, Matt. I’ll let you know how my talk with B.J. goes. I’ve known him most of my life. I don’t think he’ll fool with me.”
I hung up. “I hate lying to a good man trying to do his job.”
Jock said, “Sometimes it’s necessary.”
We had waited beside the swamp for the better part of two hours when a dark-colored van pulled onto the berm. The headlights blinked twice and Jock walked over to the driver’s window. A low conversation ensued, one that I couldn’t hear. Jock came back with two men who picked up Turk and put him in the back of the van. There were no introductions, no conversation with the men from the van. They left and we began the drive north toward home.
“Do either of you have any bright ideas?” Logan asked.
“I’m not sure how bright they are, but I’ve got some ideas,” said Jock.
“Anybody got any ideas about food?” asked Logan. “I’m hungry.”
“What’re you thinking?” I asked.
“Pizza and beer or Chinese,” said Logan.
“I meant about our problem.”
Jock said, “Let me sleep on it. I may want to bring in some outside help from my agency. This thing seems to have lots of tentacles. It may be more than the three of us can handle.”
We were just taking the off ramp at Fruitville Road when my phone rang again. Blocked number on the caller ID screen. Probably Bill Lester. I answered.
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