Baggett was on his feet. He spit onto the ground. Jock kicked him in the back of his knee, throwing the biker onto the ground again, face first, no way to stop his momentum with his hands cuffed behind him. Jock kicked him in the ribs, twice. “Don’t be spitting on my buddy’s dirt.”
Baggett got up slowly, his face contorted in pain and defiance and rage. He stared at Jock, a long hard stare that had certainly put fear into lesser men. Jock slapped him with his open hand. “Don’t even think about it, asshole,” he said. “You’ve got a long night ahead of you.” He slapped him again. “Get into the house.”
I thought I saw a momentary change in the face of the biker leader, the rage giving way to a hint of fear, maybe for the first time beginning to understand that there were people in the world who were as savage as he. He’d always been the bad guy, spreading fear, causing pain and death. It had no meaning to him. But now, he was the victim, the one upon whom the pain and fear were inflicted. He didn’t like it, but here he was.
I’d seen Jock work before. He was a man of refinement who found joy in simple things like friendship or golf or the bonhomie of a favorite bar. But when necessary he could play the brute, a malicious and inhuman savage who gave no quarter. It always diminished him, depressed him, worried him that the streak of brutality was a part of him. Afterward, he would withdraw from everybody and drink too much, trying to chase the demons back into the night. He said he needed that ritual to help recover his soul. He never talked about it, except to me. I knew how much a night like this cost him, and I knew the only reason he would ever uncage the beast was to protect his country, or his best friend.
Once inside, Jock tied Baggett to a chair, pulled a small digital tape recorder from the bag he’d brought from the car, and set it on the table next to the biker. He pulled out a twenty-four-inch pair of bolt clippers “Know what this is, asshole?”
Baggett nodded, his face paling a bit. No bravado now. A man who had met his match and then some, a man now scared for his life.
Jock grinned, malevolence shooting from his eyes. “I’m only going to ask you a question once. If you don’t answer it, or you lie, I’m going to cut off one of your fingers. When I finish with your fingers, I’ll take off your dick. Do we understand each other?”
Baggett nodded. Jock’s rough treatment had softened him, made him aware that this man holding the bolt clippers was capable of cutting him up in little pieces, one digit at a time.
“I’m going to switch on this recorder. If I have to cut off a body part, I’ll turn it off so that nobody has to hear you scream and whimper like a little girl. You got it?”
Baggett nodded.
“Why are you trying to kill my buddies, Royal and Hamilton?”
“I don’t know. I’m being paid to do it. I don’t ask why.”
That had the ring of truth. Jock accepted it.
“Who’s paying you?”
“I don’t know that either. He wires the money into my bank account.”
“Where’s your bank account?”
“Cayman Islands.”
“What’s the number on the account?”
Baggett gave it to him.
“If I want to get into the account, what do I have to do?”
“I’ve been saving money in that account for years. If you take it out, I’m broke.”
“If you don’t explain it to me, you’re going to start losing fingers.”
Baggett told us how to access the account.
“How does your boss contact you?”
“He calls me on my cell phone.”
“Where’s the phone?”
“In my pocket.”
“When’s the last time you talked to him?”
“Today.”
“About what?”
“He wasn’t happy about the two guys I sent on the boat to get Royal.”
“They weren’t your men.” A statement.
“No. I hired them for that one job. None of my guys knows shit about boats.”
“Did you also send the ones to the house in the kayak?”
“Yes.”
“Who were they?”
“I don’t know their names. A guy named Morton brought them to me.”
“Who’s Morton.”
“An associate.”
“Is he in the drug business?”
“Yes.”
“Are you in the drug business?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“Mostly distribution.”
“You’re doing well, James. Would you like some water?”
“Please.”
Jock pulled a bottle of water out of his bag, opened it, and put it to Baggett’s mouth. He took several swallows, seemed refreshed.
“Where can I find Morton?” Jock asked.
“I don’t know. He finds me at the Snake Dance when he needs to see me.”
“I’m told he owns forty-nine percent of the place.”
“He does.”
“What’s his first name?”
“I don’t know. I think he just goes by one name. You know, like those people in Afghanistan.”
“Are you telling me you have a business partner whom you know nothing about?”
“I wish I did know more about him. I’ve tried, but he’s a ghost.”
The grilling continued. Baggett had come to an epiphany of sorts. He’d understood that his only way out of this situation alive was to give up everything he knew. So he talked and talked, the trusty little recorder taking everything in.
Logan, J.D., and I had retired to the couch against the wall in the small trailer. The only decoration was a framed photograph hanging on the opposite wall. It showed five men, Logan, K-Dawg, me, and two friends now dead. I remembered the day it had been taken, thirteen years before. We’d been fishing on Art Cavanaugh’s boat, caught a few, released them, and came in for lunch and a beer at Rotten Ralph’s at the north end of Anna Maria Island. It had been an idyllic day, a day that sticks in the memory and always brings a little flash of joy when I pull it out and live in it for a moment. I had the same photograph on the bookcase in my house, and I knew that Logan kept his on a wall in his condo. Each was talisman of sorts, a good luck piece, a reminder of good times and an island way of life. It seemed a long time ago and far away from this dismal little trailer where a man was bargaining for his life. And I missed the guys in the picture who were no longer of this world.
CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO
An hour passed. Two. Then Jock was finished. He’d wrung all there was out of the once arrogant Baggett. Jock looked at me. “You got anything else?”
I stood. “Let’s go outside for a minute.”
The four of us trooped out the door, leaving Baggett exhausted, hanging against the straps that bound him to the chair.
“Jock,” I said, “there’s more. J.D. needs to tell you about it.”
And she did. She painted the same lurid picture, leaving out no detail. I wondered if she was just being thorough or if she wanted to incite Jock, to give him the resolve to go back into that mean dwelling and pull the truth from this monster from another dimension of humanity. Maybe it worked. Or maybe Jock was picturing that poor dying woman and the dedicated husband who had to watch a horror beyond understanding. He turned on his heel and marched back into the trailer, the three of us following in his wake.
“Baggett, you piece of shit,” Jock said, his voice low, menacing. He was holding the bolt clippers. “I’m not even going to ask you any more questions. Matt, put his hand on the table.”
“What?” Alarm shook Baggett’s body, his face contorting in fear. “I’ve told you everything.”
“We didn’t talk about Jube Smith.”
I pulled a knife out of the block of knives sitting on the small countertop next to the stove and walked to the back of the Baggett’s chair. “Which one do you want, Jock?” I asked.
“Is he right handed or a southpaw?”
“Right, I think.”
/> “Then I’ll take the right one.”
“No,” screamed Baggett. “What do you want to know?”
“Did you kill Jube Smith?” Jock asked.
Baggett stared, silent, lips pressed together. Jock nodded. I put the knife across the flex cuffs, holding his right arm.
“No,” Baggett said again. “Yes. I killed him.”
“His wife?” asked Jock.
Baggett dropped his head. “Yes,” he said softly.
“Why?”
“I had to make an example. I couldn’t let the guy take our money and not bring Royal to us.”
J.D. spoke up. The first words she’d said since we walked into the trailer over two hours before. “Why did you do that to his wife?”
“It was part of the example,” Baggett said.
I looked at J.D. She was standing stiffly, her chest heaving with the effort it took to calm herself. She wanted to kill him. Her body telegraphed a hatred beyond rage, beyond anything she’d ever felt before. She breathed in deeply, let the breath out, did it again, shrugged, and turned to leave.
“J.D.,” I said, “what do you want us to do with him?”
“We’ve got his confession on tape. Let the law handle the rest of it.” She walked out the door.
Jock turned to me. “Are we through?”
“I think you’ve covered it all. You okay?”
“Yeah. Let’s get this piece of crap out of here.”
Baggett was slumped in the chair to which he was tied, a look of utter defeat on his face. He’d met a man as devoid of compassion as he was and he’d done what so many others had done in the face of his own anger. He’d folded. He wasn’t proud of that, but he was alive. His body language told it all, a person completely defeated, demoralized, awaiting his fate.
Jock untied the man from the chair and walked him to Logan’s car, his hands still held behind him by the flex cuffs. Baggett shuffled, a man so tired he could hardly stand. The interrogation had been debilitating, both physically and mentally. He was not the same man who’d driven up with us a couple of hours before.
“Where’re we going?” the biker asked.
“We’re not sure, but you won’t die tonight. Get in the car.”
Baggett did as he was told. The three of us walked away from the car, stood under an old oak tree beside the river where J.D. was sitting on the ground, her head in her hands. She was crying softly, the sound vying with the soft murmur of rushing water. A counterpoint to the ugliness we had seen that night.
“What’re we going to do with him?” asked Logan.
“I need to get him to the DEA people,” Jock said. “With the tape we made, he’s going away for a long time. And DEA will be able to bring down the whole shooting match. Lots of bikers will be guests of the feds for years to come. The state will probably want him for the murders.”
“Can you get them to take him off our hands tonight?” I asked.
“I doubt it. Can Lester help?”
“I’m sure of it. I’ll give him a call.”
“Tell him what we’ve found out and that you just need him held until tomorrow morning. DEA will come get him then.”
“Do you need Lester to check out the incoming phone numbers on Baggett’s cell?”
“No. I’ll send that on to D.C. Maybe we can turn up the guy pulling the strings.”
“What about Morton?”
“I think we got enough from Baggett that DEA can roll up Morton and his operation, but I get the impression that Morton’s pretty much small potatoes in this thing with you and Logan. It looks as if Baggett went to him for some help in taking you out, but Morton was just a subcontractor.”
“Let’s see what the phone numbers get us,” I said. “I think we’ve done enough for one night. Let’s get rid of Baggett and go get a beer.”
“Jock,” Logan said, “if Baggett hadn’t talked, would you really have cut off his fingers?”
Jock was quiet for a moment, his head bowed, staring at the dirt. Then he raised his eyes and looked squarely at Logan, his face a mask of self-loathing. He nodded. Once. Then the two of them walked to the car.
I sat down beside J.D. She had gotten hold of herself. The tears had stopped. “Are you ready to get out of here?” I asked.
“Yes. That was awful in there.”
“Yes.”
“I wanted to see that bastard terrified. I enjoyed it.”
“I know.”
“That’s not me, Matt.
“I know.”
“That is not me,” she said, spacing out the words.
“J.D., you’ve had a rotten day. But if not for you, I’d probably be dead.”
She looked at me. Was quiet for a moment. “I never really wanted to kill anybody. Not until today. Not until I saw what Baggett did to that poor woman. The savagery of it. And making her husband watch.”
“You’ve seen a lot of death in your job. It builds up over time. You become shell-shocked. Like a soldier who’s seen too much war.”
“I’ve always put it behind me. Sometimes, when we didn’t catch the perp, I’d feel useless, outfoxed by a killer. I’ve seen sadistic killings, Matt, but nothing like I saw today. I think it was Baggett’s making the husband watch that sent me over the edge.”
“Come on,” I said. “You’re going to have a sleepless night, but soon you’ll start feeling better. The memory will begin to fade.”
“I don’t know. I don’t know if I can ever get back to where I was.”
“You will. You’ll find your way back. It’ll take some work, but you’ll do it.”
“I hope you’re right,” she said, and stood up.
We walked to the car and left the clearing. I too, hoped that the worst of the memories would fade. For all our sakes.
Steve Carey was sitting in his patrol car as we pulled into the parking lot of the Twin Dolphins Marina next to the Highway 41 bridge over the Manatee River. It was almost midnight, and the last of the diners at Mattison’s Riverside were leaving, sated with good food and wine.
I’d called Bill Lester to ask for help in getting Baggett to jail. I told him that we’d gotten some interesting information from Dirtbag and what J.D.’s involvement had been.
“Steve Carey’s on duty,” the chief had said. “I’ll have him meet you at the Twin Dolphins Marina. He can take him to the Manatee County Central Jail over in Palmetto. He’ll have him booked as a suspected drug dealer awaiting pick up by the Drug Enforcement Agency in the morning.”
“Do you have some pretext for the jail?”
“Carey will tell them we picked up Baggett in a sting operation. If the prisoner says anything else, ignore him. He’s a congenital liar.”
“J.D.’s with us.”
“Remind her she starts a shift at eight in the morning. She’ll need to come in a little early to pick up her gun and badge.”
“What about the letter of resignation?”
“That thing got lost on my desk somewhere. It probably ended up in the shredder with the rest of the crap.”
“I’ll tell her,” I said.
We parked twenty yards from the patrol car, got Baggett out of the backseat, and walked to meet the young cop. J.D. stayed in Logan’s vehicle, out of sight. “You guys trying to take my job?” Steve asked as we walked up.
“Nah, Steve,” Logan said. “I got no idea how to get a cat out of a tree.”
Carey laughed. “Screw you, Logan. The fire department handles that.”
We made the transfer and drove west on Manatee Avenue, out toward the bridges that would take us to our little slice of paradise.
“J.D.,” I said, “where do you want to go?”
“Home.”
“Are you okay to be by yourself?”
She looked at me. “Don’t patronize me, Matt.”
“Sorry.”
Her face softened. She put her hand on my forearm. “I’ll be okay.”
We stopped at her condo, and I walked her to the door. I stood there
with her for a moment and related Bill Lester’s message about work tomorrow. She seemed a little surprised, but said, “I’ll be there.”
“Take a day off. Bill will understand.”
“I’ll be at work tomorrow, Matt. Bank on it.”
She went inside and I took the elevator to the ground floor. She was smart and tough and beautiful. She went to the Snake Dance to help out her friends. Or did she go just for retribution? To make sure that Baggett paid a price for what he did to Jube and his wife. It didn’t matter. In the end, she was sickened by Jock’s interrogation. In the end, she wanted the murdering bastard turned over to the law so that it could take its course. She was, after all, a cop.
I walked back to the car, got in, and we pulled out onto Dream Island Road.
“Think Sammy’s still open?” Jock asked.
Logan grunted. “He’ll be closing, but if we get there before the door’s locked he’ll have to stick around.”
“It’ll be good for him,” I said. “If we don’t keep him busy, he’ll just go to the Haye Loft and drink.”
“And if we keep him busy, he’ll drink with us,” said Jock.
“Exactly,” I said, and that’s the way it went.
CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE
The place was crawling with cops. Hillsborough County deputies were frisking people, leading them to the correction division buses, locking them down with handcuffs. Sheriff’s cruisers were parked haphazardly in the street, the whole block cordoned off with crime-scene tape. The lab people were trying to make sense out of the chaos that was the Snake Dance Inn, and making little progress. The scene had been trampled by people running for their bikes, leaving the bodies of a man shot through the head and another, his forearm broken and resting at an odd angle as he lay on the floor, a large hunting knife protruding from his back.
The radio reports from the deputies and crime-scene techs were confusing, disjointed, snatches of information flowing through the circuits, adding to the chaotic situation. The witnesses all saw something different, but they were unanimous in their conclusion that the whole thing was the result of a kidnapping of a biker leader named Dirtbag.
Bitter Legacy Page 24