“Said you called them,” said the black guy.
“Coming,” said the voice, and a moment later Merc Maitland waddled into the foyer. He looked just like he did the night before, and he was wearing the same clothes.
“What’s this about a cable problem?” he asked.
Jock and I pulled our pistols from under our shirts. “Back into the house,” I said.
“What the hell!” roared the black man.
Jock grabbed him by the front of his shirt and stuck the nine millimeter up under his nose. “Just be quiet. Anybody else in the house?”
“No. Just us,” said Maitland, his voice quivering. “You’re not the cable guys?”
“Duh,” said Jock, grinning.
Jock produced two pairs of handcuffs and placed them around the men’s wrists, hands behind them. Jock was always prepared. We moved them into the family room and told them to sit on the sofa. Jock went to search the house, while I held my gun on the men. He came back in a few minutes to tell me that we were alone.
“Jock,” I said, “I’d rather not shoot these people if we can help it.”
“Okay. Did you bring the cattle prod?”
“Cattle prod?” asked Maitland, alarm sounding in his voice. “What do you need a cattle prod for?”
“It’s electric,” said Jock. “It’ll help you think.”
“I don’t need any help,” said Maitland, his voice rising in panic. “Just tell me what you want.”
I pointed my gun at the black man. “How about dufus here?” I said,
“Jeep don’t know a damn thing,” said Maitland. “You can shoot him if you want.”
“Merc!” yelped the black man. “Don’t be talking like that.”
“Well, it’s true,” said Merc. “You don’t know shit.”
“See?” said Jeep, looking at Jock. “Ain’t no need to be shootin’ me. I don’t know shit.”
“I’ll get the cattle prod,” I said.
“No! Wait,” said Merc. “You don’t need that. What do you want to know?”
“Where do your drugs come from?” I asked.
“Drugs? What are you talking about?” said Merc, a slight tremor audible in his voice.
I turned toward the door. “I’m going for the prod,” I said.
“No, wait,” said Merc. “Who are you guys?
Jock grinned, mirthlessly. “We’re your new competition.”
“What do you mean?” asked Merc.
“Our boss in Miami is getting a little pissed about you squeezing him out of Orlando,” said Jock.
“I’m not squeezing anybody,” said Merc. “I’m just helping out some friends.”
“Which friends?” I asked.
“I can’t tell you that,” Merc said reasonably. “They’ll kill me.”
I pointed the automatic at him. “I think you’ve got a choice to make. If you don’t tell your friends about our little discussion, you’ll be all right. But if you don’t tell us what we want to know, you’ll be dead in a few minutes.”
“What about him?” Merc said, pointing to the black guy named Jeep.
“We’ll kill him, too,” I said.
“No, I mean, if I tell you anything, he’ll know and rat me out.”
Jock grinned again. “Then you’ll both be dead You guys are tied together, and if the senator decides to kill one of you, he’ll kill both of you.”
Merc blanched at the mention of the senator. “Oh, shit,” he said, “I don’t know who they are. People bring me the stuff and I give them cash and they go away again.”
“How does it work?” asked Jock.
“They bring me a bunch of the stuff and I pay them for the last bunch they brought. It’s kind of a consignment thing. I make a few bucks profit on each deal.”
“What happens if you don’t pay for the last shipment?”
“I don’t want to know,” said Merc. “One day this dude comes by the house carrying a big garbage bag. He tells me that a guy I know in Melbourne didn’t come up with the cash like he was supposed to. I said, ‘What’s that to me?’ He opens the friggin’ sack and the Melbourne guy’s head’s in it. I ain’t gonna miss no payments.”
“Who’s the senator?” I asked.
“I don’t know, I tell you,” mumbled Merc. “I’ve just heard about the senator, but not a name. All these guys live in Sarasota.”
“How did you get involved with these people?” I asked.
“Well, you see, I did a little time in prison.”
“How little?” Jock said.
“Thirty years.”
“That’s more than a little,” I said. “Were you selling drugs?”
Merc shook his head. “No, nothing like that.”
“What were you in for?” I asked.
“Murder.”
“Murder? Who did you kill?” I asked.
“My wife.”
“Why?” I asked.
“She was doing drugs and I wanted to put her out of her misery.”
“Never mind,” I said. “How did you get involved in this deal?”
“I met a guy named Charlie Peters at Raiford, and when we got out he helped set me up. He knew the Sarasota guys from somewhere.”
“Where can we find Peters?” I asked.
“I don’t know. The last time I saw him, all I saw was his head in a garbage bag.”
“The guy from Melbourne,” I said.
“Yeah.” Merc said.
“Go get the prod,” said Jock.
“Why? I’m cooperating,” said Merc, his voice rising again.
“You’re holding back,” said Jock. “I need a name.”
I put the barrel of the gun under the black guy’s nose. “If you don’t give me a name now,” I said, looking at Merc, “I’m going to shoot your friend, and then I’m going to shoot you.”
“Don’t,” said Jeep. “I know a name.”
“You don’t know shit,” said Merc.
“Merc works for me,” said Jeep. “He just don’t know it. Thinks he runs things around here.”
“Shiiit,” said Merc. “Go ahead and shoot him.”
“What’s the name?” I asked.
“Jimmy Wilkerson,” said Jeep.
“Who is he, and where can we find him?” asked Jock.
“He’s some cracker lives over near Duette in Manatee County,” said Jeep. “I think if you ask around some of the bars out east of Bradenton you’ll find him.” His English had suddenly improved substantially.
“Who else?” I asked.
“Nobody else. Jimmy is my connection. I don’t know who he reports to, or where he gets his merchandise.”
I removed the gun from under Jeep’s nose. “What does Jimmy look like?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never met the gentleman. My only dealing with him was on the phone.”
“How do you know where he lives, then?” I asked.
“For some reason, he mentioned it in the one phone call I had with him.”
I said, “He’s your connection, but you only talked to him that one time?”
“Yes. Some other dude, a real bad-ass, brings the stuff in. He was the one who brought Peters’ head by.”
Jock pointed to Merc. “What in the world are you doing with this idiot?” he asked.
Jeep laughed. “He’s so stupid he can’t find his dick in the dark. If he ever gets caught by the feds he’s not going to be able to tell them anything. You probably noticed it doesn’t take long to figure out he’s dumber than a Georgia pine stump.”
Merc sat quietly, chewing on what he had heard. “You mean I’m not in charge?” he asked.
“I don’t think so,” said Jock. “What do we do with these two geniuses?”
“Let’s leave them,” I said. “Unhook them and let them go about their business.”
I looked at the handcuffed men and said, “If I find out you’ve alerted Jimmy Wilkerson or anybody else that we’re looking for them, I’ll come back and shoot your dumb asses dead.
Understood?”
They both nodded, and we took off the handcuffs. Jock pulled a roll of duct tape out of his tool box and we bound their hands in front. By the time they got out of the tape, we’d be out of the gate and gone. If anyone found them in the house tied up, it’d raise too many questions. We were flying under the radar and wanted to keep it that way. It was time for the hunters to become the hunted.
37
Murder Key
TWENTY
We were in the rental, heading west on I-4, chasing the setting sun. Jock had dropped me off at the mall where we’d left the rental, and I followed him back to the cable company’s parking lot. He wiped down the van, destroying any fingerprints, and crawled in beside me.
“They’ll probably never know it was missing,” he said.
The sun hovered above the road ahead, a giant orange ball starting its daily disappearing act. I pulled down the visor and put on my sunglasses. We were still wearing the gray uniforms.
“I want to get home to my own bed tonight,” I said. “This has been one hell of a week.”
“That it has, my friend, that it has. Let’s go straight to your condo. I think we’ll be safe for the night. Park the car in a visitor’s spot, and nobody will know you’re home.”
I nodded. “If they come, they’ll have to come through the front door. I think we’ve got enough firepower to cover ourselves.”
We drove through the slowly descending darkness, not talking, listening to a smooth jazz station on the radio. I wasn’t sure what to expect when we reached Longboat Key. I knew the people trying to kill me hadn’t given up. The chief had told me there were no leads on either the Mexicans’ deaths or Conley’s.
I hoped that we could find Jimmy Wilkerson and begin to unravel the thread that would lead us to the senator, whoever he was. The eastern parts of Manatee and Sarasota counties were full of crackers, and that was how Jeep had described Wilkerson.
More than two thirds of Floridians live in the coastal counties, most of them crowded near the beaches. The vast interior of Florida south of Orlando has relatively few people. A little more than a hundred years ago most of the interior was controlled by the cow-catchers, a rough breed of pioneering men and women who pulled wild cattle out of swamps and drove them to Punta Rassa near present day Ft. Myers for shipment to Cuba. The Spanish-American war at the end of the nineteenth century and the advent of fenced land gutted that industry.
There are over ten million acres of working farmland in Florida, producing seven billion dollars a year in revenue. Florida leads the nation in the production of snap beans, bell peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers and squash. Florida ranks twelfth nationally in the production of beef products, supplying almost a million head of cattle annually to Midwest feed lots.
The great prairies of inland Florida have been chopped up by strip miners digging out the phosphate discovered in the late nineteenth century. There’s still a lot of land given over to cattle, however, with ranches running into the thousands of acres.
This is a Florida most tourists never see. The people of the vegetable and cattle growing regions still consider themselves Southerners, and their accents confirm it. Many are the descendants of the pioneering cow-catchers and farmers and have lived on their land for five generations or more.
The cow-catchers were rough men whose exploits rivaled those of the Old West as told in the movies. Most carried long rawhide whips for driving cattle and, on occasion, fighting each other. The loud cracks made by the whips gave a name to a whole culture; the crackers.
Some of their descendants had retained their rough ways and their accents. It was probably from this group that Jimmy Wilkerson had sprung. I’d start looking for him the next day.
The cracker bars of East County would be running at full blast on a Sunday afternoon, the men letting loose after sitting in church for two hours at their women’s insistence. There was only so much fire and brimstone a cracker-man could take before he heard the siren call of Jack Daniels or Jim Beam. They knew in their guts that real men didn’t drink scotch.
At Tampa, we turned south on I-75 and headed for Longboat Key. The sun was gone, and I switched on the headlights. An hour later we crossed the Intracoastal on the Cortez Bridge, and I opened the windows to enjoy the subtle scent of the sea. I was home and glad of it.
A gibbous moon was hanging over the Gulf as I came to the dead-end of Cortez Road, the beach in front of me. A luminescent swath seemed to grow out of the moon, spreading ever more widely on the surface of the water as it closed in on the shore, ending abruptly at the parking lot of the Beach House Restaurant.
Groups of satisfied diners were ambling out of the restaurant, heading to the parking lot or across the main road that ran along the beach. I turned left onto Gulf Drive and drove south, enjoying the sea air and the full moon.
I crossed Longboat Pass Bridge and a couple of miles further turned into my condo on the bay. We parked in the visitors’ lot and took the elevator to the second floor.
We drew our guns as I keyed the lock. Jock went in first, staying low. I stood at the side of the door covering him. He disappeared into a bedroom, called “clear” and went into the other bedroom.
He came out, his gun tucked into his belt. I engaged the safety on my nine and relaxed. “Well, at least nobody was waiting for us,” I said.
“Got anything to eat?” asked Jock.
“No, but we can order a pizza from A Moveable Feast.” “Do it. No anchovies. Put it in my name, so if anybody’s paying attention they won’t know you’re home.”
I called the restaurant and ordered the pizza. Twenty minutes later Jock went to get it.
37
Murder Key
TWENTY-ONE
The land was flat, sere, pocked by strip mines and mounds of phosphogypsum rising five hundred feet above the ground; small mountains of mineral waste that appeared in the distance as desert hillocks. Nothing moved in the still air. The mid-afternoon sun was hot, its rays reflecting off the moonscape left by the raping of the earth.
A huge crane sat in the middle of a dug-up field, idle on a Sunday afternoon, waiting for the next workday to begin wrenching phosphate out of the earth. White dust covered the equipment and the road, each particle a radioactive speck. Air sniffers sat at the end of the occasional driveway, guarding the modest homes against the minuscule threat of contamination. No tourist brochure ever carried a picture of this part of Florida.
Jock and I had come out-east, as the coastal inhabitants called this desolate place. It was near the point where Polk, Hardee and Manatee counties joined, a place where workers daily dug out the minerals that would be turned into fertilizer to sustain the crops of vegetables planted in fields all over the world.
We were in separate cars, Jock running a little ahead of me. We drove a two lane asphalt road running straight as an arrow between the pits from which the miners dug their daily bread. I came to a building surrounded by a gravel parking lot. The structure was old, built long ago, the wood weathered by time and heat, topped by a rusting tin roof. A painted sign advertised it as the Vagabond Bar.
The vehicles in the parking lot were mostly pick-ups with a few ancient cars scattered about, their rust-pitted hulks showing the signs of life in a harsh environment. I spotted Jock’s rental and pulled in next to it. We had come looking for Jimmy Wilkerson.
I’d borrowed Logan Hamilton’s car for our plunge into cracker country. The Vagabond Bar was our third stop of the day. We‘d driven north on I-75 and east on Highway 62 until we found a narrow two-lane paved road shooting north into the mines.
Jock and I had worked out a plan. He’d arrive at one of the local dives about thirty minutes before I did and take a seat at a table with a view of the bar. When I came in, I’d sit at the bar, order a beer, and ask the bartender if he knew Jimmy Wilkerson.
Jock was there for backup if I needed it. We weren’t sure how Jimmy would react if we found him, nor were we too sanguine about the possible react
ion of the rough men who frequented these bars.
This was certainly not a scientific approach, but we couldn’t come up with anything better. Bill Lester had gone to the office that morning and run a fruitless computer search through the National Crime Information Center for our friend Jimmy. Either he wasn’t in the system, or the man we were looking for was using an alias.
I walked into the Vagabond Bar and lost half a century. I was sure the place looked just like it did when it was first built, and a sign over the bar announced that it was celebrating its fiftieth anniversary. The rectangular room was large, with a bar of chipped and dented walnut running the length of one wall, a mirror taking up the entire space behind it. Four pool tables were clustered in one corner. Most of the rest of the space was filled by small tables with chairs arranged around them. The air conditioning unit cooled the place, and the fans hanging from the ceiling stirred the thick smoke drifting from lighted cigarettes sitting in half-full ashtrays. There were about thirty people in the bar, half of them hard-looking women.
I spotted Jock at a table near the center of the room. He was still wearing the gray uniform shirt and pants, washed the night before in my washing machine, and a baseball cap with a Caterpillar Tractor logo. I had on jeans, a white T-shirt and a Pittsburgh Pirates ball cap. I took a seat on a stool at the bar about twenty feet from Jock.
The bartender took my beer order. When he returned I asked if he knew Jimmy Wilkerson. He shook his head and walked off. I’d had no better luck in the previous places we’d visited. Maybe the only thing I was accomplishing was drinking a little beer. While that wasn’t bad, I’d rather do it on Longboat Key than in this wasteland.
A body slid onto the stool beside me. I studied him in the mirror, seeing a thin man with a three-day growth of beard and matted dirty brown hair tucked under a baseball cap. A scar ran from his right temple, across his eye and down to his cheek. Alarm bells were going off in my head.
I’d seen this man before, at Taggarts, the bar we visited just before the Vagabond. Was he following us or was this just a coincidence? I didn’t have time to answer my own question before I heard the nasal twang of the cracker in my ear.
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