“Heard you been lookin’ for me,” he said.
He was sitting close, and I felt the barrel of a gun poking me in the ribs.
“Are you Jimmy Wilkerson?” I asked.
“That would be me, Mr. Royal.”
“You know who I am,” I said.
“Yessir, the man who won’t die.” He cackled, a high-pitched sound that reminded me of a great heron’s mating call. “I think we can fix that now, don’t you?”
“Are you the one trying to kill me?” I said.
“Sorta.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means I’m sorta involved. If I’d been in that bar on Longboat Key last week we wouldn’t be having this conversation. You’d be dead.”
“Why?”
“It don’t matter why.”
“Do you know?
“Nope. Ain’t none of my business. Let’s go,” he said, poking me harder with the gun barrel.
“I’m not going anywhere with you,” I said. “I don’t think you’ll shoot me here with all these witnesses.”
“Mr. Royal, every one of these people will swear you tried to kill me and I had to take you out in self defense. Now, let’s go.” He poked harder.
I’d seen Jock leave, and hoped he wasn’t just taking a bathroom break. I slid off the stool, and we walked toward the entrance, the pistol boring a hole in my back.
I pushed open the heavy oak door that led to the parking lot, the man close behind me. As I stepped down the one step to the concrete pad that served as a porch, I saw a flash of gray to my right. Instantly, Jock had his gun poking my would-be killer in his right ear.
“Don’t move, Tonto, or you’re dead,” I heard Jock say in a low rumble. “Drop the piece.”
“Whoa, there,” said Jimmy, dropping his weapon. “Careful now.”
I turned, grabbed Jimmy by the shirt front and pushed him against the wall. “You son of a bitch, why are you trying to kill me?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” said the thin man.
“Look, Jimmy,” I said, “You’re in deep...”
“I ain’t Jimmy,” he broke in.
“Right,” I said.
“No, look in my pocket. I got ID.”
“Let’s go, Jimmy,” I said, taking him by the arm and heading for Jock’s car.
“No shit, man, I ain’t Jimmy.”
Jock waved the pistol in the man’s direction. “Then, who are you?” he asked.
“I’m Byron Hewett. I just followed you when I heard you were looking for Jimmy. Check my ID.”
I reached into the hip pocket of his dirty jeans and retrieved his wallet. There was about twenty dollars in small bills, two small notes that meant nothing to me, folded to fit into the wallet, and a Florida drivers’ license that identified the man as Byron J. Hewett of Myakka City.
I looked at Jock. “His name’s Byron Hewett, according to this license.”
Jock said, “Things are sure screwy around here.”
I grabbed the man by the shirt again. “Why are you after me And how did you know my name?”
“Jimmy and me was in Taggarts when you came in. He told me who you were and to come get you and bring you to him. I wasn’t going to kill you.”
“Where are you supposed to take me?” I asked.
“Man, he’ll kill me if I tell you.”
I gave him my coldest stare. “I’ll kill you if you don’t,” I said.
“Okay, okay. We was supposed to meet at a closed-down mine over near Mulberry.”
Jock motioned with his pistol. “Let’s go, shithead.” “Where we goin’?” asked Byron.
“To meet Jimmy,” Jock said.
37
Murder Key
TWENTY-TWO
We drove through the heat, the sun’s glare bouncing off the white detritus of man’s need to feed himself. I was driving Byron’s king cab pickup with Byron sitting next to me, his hands bound behind his back. Jock was in the back seat, a gun pointed at Byron’s neck.
Hewett directed us to a dirt road running eastward off the narrow blacktop we were following. We had seen only a couple of cars since we left the Vagabond.
We came to a gate anchored into an eight-foot tall chain link fence.
“It ain’t locked,” said Byron. “Just pull the chain out from around the posts.”
I got out of the truck, nervous, exposed to anyone who might be watching for us. I unwrapped the chain that held the gate closed and swung it open. I got back into the truck, and we drove through, not bothering to close the gate behind us. We might need to make a quick exit.
We continued on the dirt road for a couple of miles and came to a small building, a shed of corrugated steel that looked like a World War II Quonset hut, hidden among mounds of phosphate waste.
There were no trees, no grass, no birds or other wildlife. Just the piles of waste and the hut. Byron told us to pull over.
“I don’t see his car,” said Byron.
Jock asked, “You’re sure this is where you were supposed to meet Jimmy?”
“Yeessir,” said Byron.
I said, “We’ll wait.”
We sat for fifteen minutes, the truck idling to keep the air conditioner blowing cool air. Hewett was visibly sweating, the cold air not making a dent in his fear. The time dragged by. We sat quietly watching for the dust cloud that would signal the approach of a vehicle.
“He ain’t comin’,” said Byron. “He must’ve seen you take me at the Vagabond. He’s smart like that, you know.”
“Where does he live?” I asked.
“Don’t know,” said Byron. “He calls my cell when he needs me, and I meet him at a bar somewheres.”
Even the crackers had embraced technology.
Jock asked, “What do you do for him?”
“Sometimes he needs help with the Mexicans,” said Byron.
“What kind of help?” asked Jock.
Byron shrugged. “You know, kinda slap ‘em around some to keep ‘em in line. Sometimes they get to thinking they can do better working somewhere else and we got to change their minds.”
“Who does Jimmy work for?” I said.
“I don’t know, and that’s the gods’ honest truth,” said Byron.
Jock asked, “Is Jimmy in the drug business?”
Byron shook his head. “If he is, I don’t know nothing ‘bout it. I just work with the Mexicans.”
“Which Mexicans would those be?” I asked.
“The ones what lives in the labor camps Jimmy runs.”
“Who do the Mexicans work for?” Jock asked.
“I don’t know. Jimmy hires them out to farmers around here when there’s pickin’ needed to be done. He runs a lot of them south for the season down there, and then upcountry when he needs to.”
“Is Jimmy Wilkerson his real name?” I asked.
“Guess so. It’s the only one I ever knowed him by.”
“How long have you known him?” I asked.
“‘Bout three years. Met him at the Vagabond. I was gettin’ damn tired of working the phosphate.”
I didn’t think Byron had any more to give us. I glanced at Jock, who nodded.
Jock waived his pistol at Hewett and pointed toward the car door. “Get out of the truck,” he said.
“Now wait a minute. What you fixin’ to do?” asked Byron, fear making his high pitched voice climb several notes. “I told you everything I know.”
Jock placed the barrel of his pistol against the back of the agitated man’s head. “Get out, now, or so help me your brains are going to be all over this truck.”
Byron opened his door and climbed down from the cab. Jock walked him about fifty feet away and told him to stop.
“Oh, shit, man, don’t shoot me. I wasn’t going to shoot your buddy. I ain’t never killed nobody in my life. All I ever did was rough up a few Mexicans, and that don’t count for nothin’.”
“Shut up,” said Jock, as he untied Byron’s hands. “We’ll park y
our truck at the Vagabond.”
“You’re not leaving me way the hell out here, are you?” Byron asked, a whine taking over his voice.
“Either that or I can shoot you,” said Jock.
“Okay, mister, okay. I don’t mind the walk.”
“You can probably catch a ride when you get to the hardtop,” said Jock. “If I ever see you again, I’m going to shoot your sorry ass. Understand?”
“Yessir. Don’t worry. You won’t see me again.”
We drove off, leaving Byron standing alone in a landscape as desolate as any I’d ever seen.
37
Murder Key
TWENTY-THREE
We left the truck at the Vagabond and drove our cars back to Longboat Key. Logan lived in the gated community of Bay Isles in a large condo over-looking Sarasota Bay. The guard came out of the gatehouse as I pulled up. He recognized me from my regular visits and said, “Good evening, Mr. Royal. Go on through. I’ll let Mr. Hamilton know you’re on your way.”
“Thanks, Bill. The guy behind me is with me.”
“No problem, Mr. R.”
We drove through the gate and down a street lined with shrubs, most still blooming in the fall. In about a half-mile we came to Logan’s condo, parked and took the elevator to the fifth floor. The door was open.
“Come on in, guys. You look like hell. Where’ve you been all day?”
We sat and sipped bourbon on the rocks, telling Logan about our day. “It was pretty much a bust,” I said. “We didn’t find Jimmy Wilkerson, but we did let the bad guys know I’m back.”
Jock rattled the cubes in his tumbler. “That might not be such a bad development,” he said. “Now that they know we’re closing in, somebody’s going to get itchy. They’ll come looking for us, and we’ll be ready.”
“I’ve canceled my week,” said Logan. “I might be able to help you guys.”
I took a slug of my drink. “I’m pretty much out of ideas. Jimmy knows we’re looking, but I’ve got no clue as to how to find him. That name’s probably an alias anyway.”
“If we stay holed up on the key he’ll have to come here,” said Jock. “Just think of yourself as bait.”
I laughed. “That’s comforting. I’d rather be moving, taking the initiative. I just can’t figure out how.”
Logan poured himself another drink. “Let’s look at what we’ve got,” he said. “We know the drugs and the illegals are connected. We know they’re both coming in by trawler from Veracruz, and from what Diaz told you, we can pretty much count on Longboat Key being the drop site.
“We don’t know who the Mexicans on the beach were,” Logan continued, “and we don’t know why they were killed. There’s got to be a connection, but we can’t see it yet.”
Jock shifted on the sofa. “I think the lawyer, Conley, must have been using one of the Mexicans Matt found on the beach as a mole in the smuggling operation,” he said. “Probably the legal one. Somebody caught on and took them both out.”
“But why kill the other two illegals?” I asked.
“Maybe it was nothing more than an attempt to cover up Pepe’s murder,” Logan said.
“Then why try to kill me?”
“Somebody thinks you knew more than you do,” said Logan. “The loose ends are Jimmy Wilkerson and the senator. Jimmy is working the illegals, and maybe he has some connection to drugs. If he’s in the distribution end of it, there has to be some central location where the drugs are shipped from. And where do the illegals go once they hit the ground?”
I thought about that for a minute. “Jeep, in Orlando, said Wilkerson was their guy,” I said. “That means he’s into the drug business. Byron said Jimmy hired him to keep the Mexicans in line. So, Jimmy is the one person we know at the intersection of the drugs and the illegals.”
Jock nodded. “Don’t forget the senator.”
“He’s probably the guy pulling all the strings,” I said.
“We’ve got to find Jimmy,” Logan said. “But we knew that yesterday. We haven’t accomplished much.”
I said, “I called Bill Lester from the car and gave him the tag number on Byron’s truck. He checked it out, and it is registered to Byron, with an address in Myakka City. The chief’s going to see what else he can dig up on Hewett. Maybe that’ll give us a shot at Wilkerson.”
Jock said, “Yeah, but Wilkerson’s only a gofer. If Emilio can get aboard that trawler, and we can track it, we might be able to find the head of this monster.”
Jock leaned forward on the sofa. “If the boat’s headed here, it’ll take her six days,” he said. “That’ll give us some time to stir the pot. Maybe we’ll shake something loose.”
Logan said, “If we can find where either the illegals or the drugs go when they come ashore, we’ll be ready when our ship comes in.”
Jock and I both groaned at the bad pun.
I said, “I think our best bet is to follow the drugs and the immigrants after the boat gets here.”
They both nodded in agreement.
Logan grilled steaks on his balcony overlooking the moonlit bay, and we enjoyed a quiet evening as we ate. The moon was up, casting a soft glow on the still water. Occasionally, we’d hear a sea bird grumble from the rookeries where they slept at the edge of the bay. We discussed our options, and none of us could come up with anything to get us closer to the senator before the arrival of the Princess Sarah.
37
Murder Key
TWENTY-FOUR
Monday morning dawned comfortably. High cumulus clouds were on fire with the reflected colors of the rising sun. The temperature was in the high-sixties and would climb into the mid-seventies by the afternoon. I was sitting on my balcony over-looking Sarasota Bay, reading the morning paper, a cup of black coffee in my hand. Jock was still asleep in the guest room. The phone rang.
It was Paul Reich, the Border Patrol agent from Orlando. “We picked up an interesting illegal yesterday down in your neck of the woods. He tells us that he escaped from what sounds like a slave labor camp.”
“Slave labor? What’s that all about?”
“Don’t know. The illegal’s name is Juan Anasco. He said he came in by boat from Veracruz and was taken to this camp and put to work on a truck farm. Says the laborers are all kept locked in the camp when they’re not working.”
“Do you know where the place is?”
“Not exactly. From the way Juan described things, we think it’s in Merrit County. We’ve got a confidential informant down there, but he’s playing it close to the vest. We don’t even know his name. We know there’s a camp, but we don’t know its location. We’re putting together a task force to look for it.”
“What about the sheriff’s office?” I asked “Those rural cops usually know what’s going on in their counties.”
“We’re not too sure about the sheriff’s department There are only three deputies, and one is a bad-ass named Casey Caldwell who likes to beat up on the Mexicans.”
“Did Anasco know where he worked?”
“No. All he could tell us was that it was on a farm.”
“Anything else?”
“He told us how he came into the country. It sounds like it was the same route you turned up in Mexico. Through Longboat Key. He said some young blonde woman drove them to the camp.”
“Thanks, Paul. Jock and I may do a little looking around. We’ll let you know if we turn up anything.”
“Be careful,” he said, and hung up.
Jock had come out onto the balcony with a cup of coffee as I talked to Reich. I related our conversation.
Jock sipped his coffee. “Where’s Merrit County?”
“Southeast of here. It’s a big ranching and farming area. More cows than people.”
* * * * *
We drove south on I-75 to Port Charlotte, and then followed a two-lane state road due east for twenty miles before crossing into Merrit County. In another ten miles we came to the county seat, a small town whose ancient one-story buildin
gs advertised its precarious existence. The highway ran through the town and kept going until it ended at Lake Okeechobee. We weren’t going that far.
I’d called Logan to brief him on what we were doing. I wanted somebody I trusted to know where we were. Logan wanted to go with us, but I reminded him that he was still recovering from the heart surgery he’d undergone in the summer, and he didn’t need to be involved in any rough stuff. He reluctantly agreed.
We pulled into a McDonald’s for coffee. It looked to be the only building constructed in the town in the past fifty years. Jock and I were wearing jeans and polo shirts, his white and mine forest green. We were shod in running shoes.
The teenage girl behind the counter appeared Hispanic. Jock said something to her in Spanish. She gave him a sullen look and a short reply in English.
We got our coffee and sat in a booth next to the windows looking onto the parking lot. Next door was a building that seemed to be the courthouse, dilapidated and uninspiring. There were few people on the street, and most of them were Mexicans.
Jock locked his hands around his Styrofoam cup. “I asked her if she knew where the farm workers lived around here. She told me she didn’t know.”
“I’m sure she does,” I said.
“Yeah, but if they’re part of a slave labor deal, there’s bound to be some muscle around to keep them all in line.”
“I guess so.”
Just then, an old school bus, painted blue, rumbled down the street in front of the restaurant. Jock looked up. “I bet that’s a labor bus.”
We took our coffee and hurried to Jock’s rental car in the parking lot. He swung out behind the bus, which was about three blocks in front of us. We followed it east, driving out of town, then north on a county road. Citrus groves crowded the highway on either side. Rows of trees ran perpendicular to the road, standing straight and even, like silent soldiers in formation.
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