Murder Key

by H. Terrell Griffin

  Emilio walked through the door. “That got a little dicey,” he said, to no one in particular.

  “Good shot,” said Jock.

  “We’ve got the see about the SUV,” Harris said. “The police will be looking for it by now, and they don’t like American cops in their bailiwick.”

  “I’ll go with you,” said Emilio. “I need to check in with my agency and let them know what happened. I’ll leave the VW for you and Jock, Matt.”

  They left us in the quiet room with Diaz. “Now,” said Jock, “tell me why you’re trying to kill my friend.”

  “Fuck you,” said Diaz.

  Jock pulled his pistol from the holster, reached into the satchel for a silencer and screwed it onto the barrel of the weapon. He pointed it at Diaz. “Try again, muchacho.”

  “Fuck you again, gringo.” A barely suppressed smile teased his lips.

  Jock shot him in the foot, the sound suppressed into something that sounded like “pfft.” Diaz screamed in agony, cursed, and tried to wrench his leg from the chair to which it was bound. I stepped back in shock. I had never seen anything so calculating, and I was suddenly mute. I opened my mouth, tried to speak. Nothing came out. My throat was as dry as a desiccated skeleton.

  There was a buzz in my ears from the scream and the shouted expletives from Diaz.

  “The next one goes in your knee,” said Jock, his voice low, controlled.

  “I don’t know anything,” the wounded man said, a tremor in his voice. “I was just ordered to shoot the man.”

  Jock hit him across the face with the pistol. “You can do better than that.”

  Blood spattered from the broken nose. Diaz spit out two fractured teeth. Tears of pain welled in his eyes. Sweat had broken out on his face, and his voice, when he spoke, was strained.

  I stood there, dumbfounded. I couldn’t square the casual brutality of my friend with the image I’d always had of him. This was not my junior high school buddy. This was some apparition clothed in the body of my life-long friend.

  “Tell me about it,” Jock said to Diaz.

  “El Jefe called me on Friday in Sarasota and told me to go to the bar on Longboat Key and kill Royal. He told me where he would be. That’s all I know.”

  Diaz’ voice was strident, angry. He was afraid of more pain, but he wanted us to know that he was still dangerous. I could see agony etched on his facial features, but I could also see malice. He hated us, wanted us dead, was demeaned by our having the upper hand. He could be a dangerous man someday, lurking in a dark place waiting to wreak his vengeance on us.

  “What were you doing in Sarasota?”

  “I had come in the night before with a shipment.”

  “Shipment? What shipment?”

  “The illegals.”

  “Do you ship drugs with the illegals?”

  Diaz hesitated. Jock raised his pistol in a backhanded motion, as if to strike him again.

  “Yes, yes, there are drugs,” said Diaz, his voice rising in fear.

  “Talk to me,” said Jock.

  “I don’t know much. Cocaine comes overland to Veracruz and we load it onto a trawler and take it to Sarasota.”

  Diaz sounded resigned now to giving us what we wanted. He didn’t want to endure more pain, perhaps was afraid that it would make him lose all semblance of his ignoble dignity.

  I was coming back to reality. “Why carry the illegals?” I asked. “The money you make must be peanuts compared to what the drugs bring.”

  “The illegals are cover,” said Diaz.

  “I don’t get the cover part,” I said, although it was starting to come clear.

  Diaz spit out more blood. “The cocaine is put into weighted bundles and stored in a compartment between the boat’s hull and the floorboards. There’s a door in the hull, and the captain can open it from the bridge. If the coast Guard stops us, we throw a few of the illegals overboard and then drop the coke to the bottom of the Gulf. The Coast Guard is so busy picking the illegals out of the water that they don’t see the coke.”

  Diaz laughed as he said it, a look of scorn creasing his pock-marked face, his fear being overcome by his innate machismo.

  “If we’re arrested it’s only for the importation of illegals, not drugs,” he said. “Nobody ever goes to jail for that. We’re sent back to Mexico, and a judge on our payroll sets us free.”

  “How do you get the drugs into the country?” Jock asked.

  “We stop well off-shore, and small boats come out and take the drugs and the people ashore.”

  “Where do the small boats go?”

  “I don’t know. I only came in that way once, and I was dropped off at a house on a canal.”

  “Where?”

  “I don’t know. Some gringa came in a van and got the illegals and the drugs.”

  “A woman?” I asked.

  “Yes, a pretty blonde woman.”

  “Did you get a name, any markings on the van?”

  “No. Nothing. Do not shoot me again. I’ve told you everything I know.”

  I said, “Describe where you were brought in on the boat.”

  Diaz sneered, knowing we were about finished, some of his arrogance beginning to resurface. “To a house, mi amigo, a big house on a canal. I don’t know where it was.”

  “Did you leave with the illegals?” Jock asked.

  “Yes. The woman let me out in downtown Sarasota, and I got a hotel room.”

  “Describe the trip. How many bridges did you cross?” I asked.

  “We crossed two bridges. One was very tall and long. I could see the buildings of Sarasota from there. The first bridge was smaller, what you call a draw bridge. I could see many boats stacked on racks near the water.”

  I turned to Jock. “That sounds like Longboat Key,” I said. “The first bridge would be over New Pass. You can see the Marine Max boat storage yard from there. Then they would’ve crossed over the Ringling Causeway Bridge to the mainland.”

  Jock nodded. “Anything else?”

  I looked at Diaz. “Why were you there?” I said.

  “El jefe sends one of his men on a trip sometimes. I think it is to make sure the captain stays trustworthy. I was supposed to catch a plane out of Tampa the next day and fly back to Veracruz.”

  “When was this?” I asked.

  “I got there last Thursday night. On Friday morning el jefe called me on my cell phone and told me to kill Matt Royal.”

  “Did you kill the men from Tlapa?” I asked.

  “No, senor. I knew nothing about that, as God is my witness.” The smarmy smile came again.

  “Who was the motorcyclist you were with at the bar on Longboat Key?” I asked.

  “I do not know. He was just some Mexican kid. I paid him one hundred dollars to take me there and back.”

  “How did you get back here?” Jock asked.

  “The guy on the motorcycle took me to a Mexican doctor who put the cast on my arm. I called el jefe to tell him that Matt Royal still lived, and then I spent the night with a Mexican family that owed el jefe a favor. I took a taxi to the Tampa airport on Saturday morning and came home.”

  “Who gets the drugs in Sarasota?” asked Jock.

  “I do not know,” said Diaz.

  Jock raised his pistol and pointed it at Diaz’ knee.

  Diaz’ voice rose an octave. “Honestly, sir, I do not know,” he whimpered, the machismo giving way to fear. “I have heard some people talk about a senator, but that is all I know.”

  “Does the trawler have a name?” I asked.

  “Princess Sarah,” said Diaz.

  Jock looked at me and I nodded my head. We were through.

  Diaz was slumped in the chair, held upright by his bindings. We had gotten everything out of him that was coming. Jock and I stood in front of him, staring down at the arrogant bastard who had tried to kill me. Jock was holding his gun at his side, the silencer reaching past his knee.

  Diaz raised his head, a look of sheer malevolence shooti
ng like darts from his eyes. He knew that the questioning was over, and he had survived. His machismo, like an inflated balloon in the water, was again rising to the surface. He just couldn’t help himself.

  “You will pay for this, gringo,” he muttered, spitting blood and saliva on the floor. “I will kill you the next time I see you. I will piss on your grave.”

  Jock raised the pistol and shot Diaz through his left eye.

  “Good God almighty, Jock!” I shouted. “What the hell did you do?”

  “Anybody stupid enough to threaten me while he’s tied to a chair and I’ve got a gun is too stupid to breathe our air.”

  “That’s cold, Jock.”

  “The bastard had it coming. No telling how many kids he’s killed with the drugs he’s imported.”

  “That’s why we have courts, Jock. He gets arrested, charged, tried and sentenced.”

  “Yeah, if you catch him, and some smart attorney doesn’t get him off. You lawyers have too many rules.”

  “Those rules are the only thing separating us from anarchy.” I was in shock I think, and I couldn’t shut up. I didn’t need to give Jock a primer on the law. I was rambling, talking so I wouldn’t throw up. I wasn’t making a lot of sense even to myself.

  “Okay, look at it this way,” Jock said. “If he had been coming at me with a gun, threatening to kill me, and I shot him, it’d be self- defense, right?”

  “Yeah, but that’s not what happened here.”

  “Sure it is. It’s what I call a pre-emptive strike. Someday, when he came for me with a gun, or a bomb, or God knows what else, I might not be armed. I’d be dead.”

  “Then he could be charged with murder. You can’t just go around shooting people.”

  “Or he might have come back to Tiny’s and shot your sorry ass.”

  Put in that perspective, Jock’s actions made a lot of sense. “Yeah, I guess you’ve got a point. Let’s get a beer.”

  And that’s what we did. Right after I chucked my lunch.

  37

  Murder Key

  SIXTEEN

  Emilio Sanchez and Rufus Harris were waiting for us in the bar near our hotel. We told them what had happened. Rufus left to make a phone call.

  I was still weak around the edges. I wondered if Jock had killed Diaz to protect me or himself, or maybe just in a fit of anger. I couldn’t get the look on Jock’s face when he pulled the trigger out of my mind. There really was no look. Jock’s face had been expressionless, nothing showing, no feelings what-soever reflected. The face of a killer.

  Emilio broke into my train of thought. “Jock,” he said,” that was pretty nasty back there. How’re you holding up?”

  Jock reached over and patted me on the shoulder. “I did what I had to do,” he said. “The man tried to kill my best friend, and he would’ve come back. There was no way Diaz would take that kind of humiliation and not want revenge. He’d come after Matt someday, and he’d kill him.”

  I gave it a beat. “Thanks, Jock,” I said.

  I couldn’t say what I wanted to, that I would have taken the chance that I could live with Diaz’ threat, but I wasn’t sure how I’d live with his murder. That letting him live would have been a better choice than shooting him in cold blood. On the other hand I couldn’t deny the sense of relief I felt at the knowledge that Diaz would never again pop up in my life with a pistol pointed at my face.

  Jock had become a hard man during his service to a nation that didn’t know people like him existed. I had to understand that facet of my friend, live with the consequences, and hope never to have to be in need of that part of Jock again.

  When Harris returned, he told us that the safe house would be cleaned up. He also said that the head of the DEA office in Veracruz wanted to meet with us. He’d be along shortly.

  In a few minutes, a tall man, perhaps six-feet-four, with close-cropped hair and a thin mustache came through the door. He was in his forties, and looked as if he worked out regularly. Rufus introduced us to Slade Thomas as the agent in charge of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency in Eastern Mexico.

  Thomas ordered a rum and coke and joined us at the table. “I’m told that you guys are trying to find this end of a smuggling trail,” he said. “We might be able to help each other.”

  I took a sip of beer. “What do you have in mind?”

  “I need a man on one of the shipments. If we can follow this to the States, we can bust up that end of it. I’m not sure we’ll ever get to the main men on this end. The corruption is so pervasive we’d have to take down the government to do it.”

  “How can we help?” I asked.

  “I understand you’ve identified the trawler, and you know where the immigration smuggling operation starts. If I can get a bug on the boat and an agent in with the immigrants, we’ll be able to unravel both the drug and the people smuggling at the other end.”

  Emilio leaned back in his chair. “It sounds like I’m going to become an immigrant.”

  “Are you willing to try it?” asked Thomas.

  Emilio nodded. “If my agency says okay, I can probably get back to Tlapa and get on the bus from there. I’ll have to make sure that Senor Arguilles doesn’t give me away. If he’ll play ball, he can send me as just another client.”

  Thomas said, “I think we know where the Princess Sarah is docked. We’ll try to get a tracking device aboard tonight. We’ll hook it into the boat’s power system, and it’ll send a signal by satellite to the Customs Service office in Miami. We’ll know exactly where you are Emilio.”

  Emilio laughed. “That’s comforting. I hope the device and I don’t both end up in a shark’s belly.”

  * * * * *

  It was time to get out of Mexico. Harris told us there was a seven A.M. flight the next day from Veracruz to Houston. We’d change planes there for a flight to Orlando. Rufus thought it prudent for him to leave with us. Emilio would fly directly to Acupulco, and then drive to Tlapa.

  Jock and I spent the night with Emilio in the hotel room Jock had secured for us. Harris left for his own accommodations and told us that he’d pick us up at 5:30 the next morning for the ride to the airport.

  Rufus arrived on time, and one of his agents dropped us at the airport’s departure gate. I was glad to be going home. I’d missed Anne more than I thought I would. I knew the romance was cooling, but there was still something there, and I didn’t want to give whatever it was a chance to wither.

  I was concerned about Jock. He had been quiet since the shooting, saying even less than usual. The flight to Houston gave me a chance to talk privately with him.

  “What’s the matter, old friend?” I asked.

  “I’m fine,” he said.

  “I don’t think so. Is it the killing?”

  “It’s strange, Matt. I’ve been doing this for a long time, and I’ve never been particularly bothered by it. I only killed people who were trying to harm me or my country. There’s a kind of rough justice to that, but lately it doesn’t feel right. I don’t know.”

  “Maybe you’ve reached your limit.”

  “Maybe. But it’s like there are two people inside me. I don’t mean like a multiple personality kind of thing, but just two sides of me. One part is fine with doing what I’ve been trained to do, but the other side seems softer. After an operation, I feel a sort of formless melancholy about what I did.”

  “Remorse?”

  “Not exactly. Diaz needed to be killed. He was an evil man, and he had no qualms about killing those poor immigrants or poisoning our children with drugs. Still, he was a human being, and I’m not God. And I wonder if I killed him because he was evil or because he threatened me.”

  I let him be. Sometimes a man needs to think it out and make his own decisions. At some point, we all come to that ancient fork in the road of life where we have to decide which path we’ll take. I couldn’t help him with this one.

  * * * * *

  We had no problems with customs and arrived in Orlando at mid-afternoon
. A taxi took the three of us to the Federal Building for a meeting with David Parrish and Paul Reich, the Border Patrol agent. Security had been alerted and a uniformed deputy marshal took us to the same conference room we’d been in only three days before. It seemed like a lifetime ago.

  I told Parrish and Reich everything that had happened and everything we had learned in Mexico, leaving out the part about Jock shooting Diaz.

  “Where is Diaz now?” asked Reich.

  “He tried to escape,” said Harris. “He came at me with a knife and I had to shoot him.”

  Nobody seemed bothered, or even displeased, about the demise of Diaz, and I figured Harris’ version would look better on the reports.

  I asked, “Where do we go from here?”

  Parrish shrugged. “I’ll have to go to the bosses at Justice about that. Maybe this is what Conley stumbled onto and it got him killed. I still don’t understand why they came after you, Matt.”

  “I don’t either,” I said, “but they’re probably still out there. They might be a little pissed that we took out their boss.”

  Harris said, “I don’t think anybody can tie that to you. I don’t think we left any tracks.”

  I said, “If they tie me to Diaz, they might put it all together.”

  “Nobody will ever find Diaz’ body,” Harris said with a cold formality.

  “What about this senator?” asked Reich. “Is he in the state senate or U.S.?”

  “Don’t know,” said Jock. “All Diaz said was that somebody had mentioned a senator. We don’t know who he is or what his role in this might be.”

  Harris rocked back in his chair. “If that stuff’s coming into Sarasota, some of it’s probably ending up in Central Florida,” he said. “I think you need to talk to Liz Birmingham. She’s one of our agents, and she has better contacts in the drug world than anybody in our division.”

  Parrish cleared his throat. “That’s a good idea, Rufus. I’ll talk to the Coast Guard in St. Pete. They’ll be interested in anything coming in by boat.”