Deep Blue Trouble

by Steph Broadribb

  Monroe laughed. It sounded stilted, false. ‘No, I’m pairing the two of you up. You know Fletcher. McGregor knows Mexico. Working together will expedite the process of finding him.’

  I didn’t let my relief show in my voice. Stayed cool and professional. ‘And assuming we get him, then what?’

  ‘When you get him. Our deal stands: you tell me, and I’ll give you a location to rendezvous. You, me and Fletcher spend some time talking. Then he goes back to jail.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘All that’s different is you’ll be part of a team now. Dez has a lot of people in his employ. More eyes and ears should speed the process along.’

  Not always true. The more people you work with, the more potential there is for things to get screwed up. It was one of the reasons JT worked alone. I’d learned everything from him; used his methods and preferred not to have to rely on others.

  ‘I’m not sure that’s going to work for me,’ I said.

  ‘Well, you’re going to have to make it. McGregor is expecting you first thing this morning. I’ll message you his details.’

  ‘So I have no say?’

  ‘Consider it a management order.’ Monroe’s tone was firm.

  ‘Fine. But don’t think you ordering me about is going to make this job work out any better.’

  ‘Let’s agree to disagree on that.’

  ‘For sure,’ I said, and ended the call.

  I flung the handset down onto the bed. Pulled on my jeans and a black T-shirt, all the while seething with frustration. Anger. I knew the way Monroe had handled the situation with JT getting stabbed was still influencing my view of him, and it hadn’t made the conversation between us flow any easier.

  The burner beeped – a new message from Monroe with the address of McGregor’s office. As I was reading it a second message appeared from Monroe: Hurry, hurry. Clock’s ticking.

  Cussing, I chucked the burner and my own smartphone into my purse, slid my feet into my cowboy boots and headed out into the corridor. I was hungry. Dez McGregor could damn well wait.

  *

  The smell of eggs and baked goods wafted its way from the breakfast room, making my stomach growl as I drew closer. Inside only a few tables were occupied; a family of four was talking loudly about their plans for the day at their spot over near the window, and a solo woman was eating cereal while reading a mystery novel at a table in the middle. None of them looked up as I entered.

  Breakfast was a self-serve buffet with filter coffee warming on a hot plate at one end of the line. I poured myself a mug of coffee, heaped my plate with eggs over-easy, pancakes, bacon and maple syrup, and headed to the table in the back corner – the one with a clear view of the whole room.

  There wasn’t much going on. I glanced at the television on the wall showing CNN news. The sound was muted, but the subtitles were switched on. As I ate, I read about the latest politician in the middle of a sex-scandal shitstorm. I’d had four mouthfuls before my smartphone buzzed.

  I pulled it from my purse. Checked the caller ID, then answered. ‘Red, hey.’

  ‘Saw I had a missed call from you, Miss Lori. You doing okay?’

  I nodded, even though I knew Red couldn’t see me. Forced a smile too. ‘Sure, I’m good. Just run into a snag is all.’

  ‘What kind of snag we talking?’

  I glanced at the woman at the middle table; she seemed lost in her book. The family on the far side of the room was still talking real loud. Even so, I lowered my voice when I said, ‘Could be a Mexico-type snag.’

  Red let out a long whistle. ‘Yup. That’s a problem for sure. You got a plan?’

  ‘I’m working on it. Monroe’s wanting me to work with a local guy here – specialist in extraction.’

  ‘Not a bad idea.’

  ‘He works teams.’

  For a moment Red stayed quiet. Then he said, ‘Ah, one of them.’

  I nodded again, knowing precisely what he meant. If you ran teams of bounty hunters you didn’t operate like us; you weren’t traditional, old school, like the way JT had trained me, and the way Red worked. ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Still, if you’re going into Mexico, could be best to have someone with you who knows the place.’

  That Red thought it could be a wise move made me feel a little more positive. I hated the way Monroe had ordered me about and teamed me up with a local bounty hunter that I had no knowledge of and no trust in; but it was true that his experience of extraction across the border could be helpful. Perhaps I needed to give this a chance.

  ‘I guess,’ I said. ‘Anyways, cheer me up, what have you got for me?’

  Red laughed. ‘I’ve found some more about our friend Marco Searle that puts an interesting twist on things.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘Those rumours of violence? Well, they’re more than just rumours. He’s been taken into custody more times than I can list, but no charges have ever stuck.’

  I thought of Mia’s black eye. ‘Against his wife?’

  ‘Some of them, yes, but not exclusively. There’s a whole bunch of folks, and a big range of injuries – broken arm, broken jaw, broken ribs. But every case ends the same: charges are never brought.’

  ‘You find out why?’

  ‘With his wife they’re always dropped. She refuses to give evidence and the cases crumble. The others are more complicated. There’s always a reason why he never gets charged – oftentimes lack of evidence – but according to my cop friend the paper trails are as holey as the slowest draw in a gunfight.’

  I’d seen this a few times before. In my experience, if it happened more than once there was a simple explanation. ‘So someone’s protecting him.’

  ‘Yeah. And I’ve done a bit of digging and found out who. Seems your boy Searle has connections with the Cabressa family in Chicago.’

  ‘The Chicago Mob?’

  ‘Yup. Goes back twenty years at least. And that’s not all; he’s also done business with the Miami Mob – with Lucano Bonchese to be specific – the Old Man’s grandson. I’m told that they’re friends of sorts.’

  Damn. It seemed everything I came into contact with these days had a connection to the Miami Mob. ‘So the Mob are fixing his problems, paying off cops and putting pressure on good folks to turn a blind eye?’

  ‘I’d say so. You need to tread careful, Miss Lori. Searle isn’t the forgiving kind.’

  ‘At the moment his wife is my only source of information on Gibson.’

  ‘Like I say, be careful. If Searle clocks you sniffing around he’ll take evasive action. Don’t matter what you’re doing, if he thinks you’re a threat he’ll warn you off and it’s not likely to be gentle.’

  ‘Thanks for the heads-up.’

  ‘You’re welcome. Just make sure you watch your back.’

  I nodded. I’d spent the last ten years watching my back, and Dakota’s. Putting a roof over our heads, feeding us, keeping us safe. I wasn’t about to stop now. ‘I always do.’

  ‘Good girl. You had any more problems with a tail?’

  Somehow, from Red, being called a girl didn’t seem patronising. ‘No, nothing since the day I arrived. Guess I shook them.’

  ‘Guess you did.’ Red didn’t sound real convinced.

  I changed topic. ‘You had any luck with Gibson’s ex-wife?’

  ‘Not much, but I’m on it.’

  ‘Did you find her yet?’

  ‘I’ve got an address, some place out in Lake County. She’s remarried, changed her name and all. I’ve gone over to visit a couple of times, but there’s never anyone home. I’m thinking they’ve gone out of town for a while.’

  ‘You think it’s connected to Gibson escaping?’

  ‘Could be. I doubt they parted on good terms, seeing as he was jailed at the time of the divorce and she would only communicate with him through her legal representation. The ex-Mrs Fletcher and her new man most likely aren’t wanting to risk it, given Fletcher’s conviction for double homicide.’

&nbs
p; A good point, I thought. ‘Unless he already got to them.’ ‘True.’ Red was quiet a moment, like he was thinking on the probability of Gibson murdering his ex. ‘No doubt she’ll turn up soon either way. When she does I’ll let you know.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said. Mia didn’t think Gibson was the murdering kind, she trusted him. But if his ex-wife had done a runner it was possible she didn’t think the same way. Interesting. Wife and mistress: two women who’d known Gibson most his adult life – two different takes on the same man. One trusted him, one not so much. Sometimes trusting the wrong person could be the difference being staying alive and getting dead. I hoped to hell that the bad feeling I’d had about the safety of Gibson’s ex-wife was wrong.

  It made me consider my own actions, though, and the people I was trusting. I thought back to my training. Never trust no one. JT had always been real clear about that, and I’d stayed true to his rule on it for the past ten years.

  But with this job I’d slipped. Sure, I’d pulled Red into my confidence to a point, but I was kind of comfortable with that; we’d worked together previously, and he’d proved he was as honourable as I could reasonably expect a man to be. Monroe was different. Our deal was built on necessity, on a final Hail Mary for JT. He was FBI, sure, but he had something else going on where Gibson Fletcher was concerned, that was real obvious. And that meant I couldn’t trust him. Yet most of my facts had come from him. So now I was wondering whether I could believe the things he’d told me about Gibson. What was really true here?

  I thought back to Mia. Even if Gibson’s ex-wife hadn’t trusted her husband, Mia had seemed sure Gibson wasn’t capable of murder, and she’d known him a long time – longer than his wife. Maybe I should pay a bit more attention to her disbelief.

  ‘Red, would you do me another favour?’

  He chuckled. ‘Sure thing, Miss Lori.’

  ‘Find out all you can about Special Agent Alex Monroe.’

  19

  Dez McGregor rubbed my fur the wrong way from the get-go.

  His base was a bail bond shop downtown next to a Subway sandwich place – a simple white storefront with a big sign above the door that said ‘BONDS’. I parked the Jeep on the kerb outside and crossed the sidewalk. The door was propped open with a fire extinguisher. Good for getting the air circulating, sure, but useless as a first line of defence warning. It’d be real simple for someone to sneak into the shop unnoticed. Not good if they had mischief on their mind, and, in my experience, bail bondsmen and bounty hunters attracted plenty of trouble.

  I stepped inside. First thing I saw was the mess. Paper, stacks of it, cluttering up most of the four workstations in the room. There was no reception desk, no waiting area. Only the workstation in the far corner was occupied – a muscular guy in a Miami Dolphins ball cap was tapping away at a computer. He didn’t look round.

  I cleared my throat. ‘I’m looking for Dez McGregor.’

  The guy in the ball cap looked over his shoulder. He seemed surprised to see me, like he’d not heard me come in. ‘And you are?’

  I stood up a little taller. ‘Lori Anderson.’

  The guy nodded. ‘You come here from Florida?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Cool. Grab a seat.’ He picked up a cell from the desk and tapped something into it. I heard a whoosh as the message was sent.

  I raised an eyebrow. ‘And?’

  He looked back at me. ‘And what?’

  ‘Is Dez about?’

  The guy grinned. He glanced up at the ceiling. ‘Kinda. Give him five, yeah?’

  As if on cue there was noise above us, creaking, like someone walking about on the floor above. ‘His office is upstairs?’

  The guy shook his head. ‘He lives there. Just give him a few minutes to get his shit together and he’ll be down.’

  I checked the time. Almost ten. It seemed Dez McGregor was a late riser. Monroe had told me Dez was expecting me early – I’d figured I was already kind of late. Ten wasn’t early. Hell, nine wasn’t early. Him still being in his bed made me question just what kind of an operation McGregor ran here.

  As if reading my mind, the guy in the Dolphins cap said, ‘Late pick-up last night, you know how it goes.’

  I nodded. ‘Sure.’

  ‘You want a coffee or something?’

  ‘That’d be good, thanks. Black with nothing.’

  The Dolphins guy smiled. ‘Good job you like it black. We don’t got any cream. None of us drinks it here.’

  ‘How many of you are there?’

  ‘Nine all told, though we don’t work here every day.’ He got up from his desk and walked through the archway at the end of the room. ‘Dez has a bunch of other bond shops around the state. We swap in and out of jobs depending on the skills needed.’

  I followed him through the archway and stopped. Rather than another room, the space beyond the arch was little more than a closetsized alcove, just big enough for a sink, coffee-maker and an icebox. I reversed out and perched on the nearest desk, taking care not to disturb the papers heaped all over it. Watched the guy grab a chipped white mug from the drainer and fill it with coffee from a pot warming on a hotplate.

  ‘You specialise?’ I asked.

  ‘Some of us, not me though; I do whatever comes in. Some guys focus on search, some on retrieval. Jorge and Monty only do over-the-border stuff.’

  He walked across to me and handed over the mug of coffee. As I took it the door at the back of the office opened and a man in cargo pants and a black T-shirt came in. He was in his fifties and obviously in good shape – lean and muscular; not an ounce of extra weight on him. His grey hair was cropped short and his beard tightly clipped.

  His dark eyes were staring right at me. ‘I see you’ve met Four-Fingers here,’ he said.

  ‘Bobby Four-Fingers,’ the guy in the Dolphins cap added, giving me a wink. ‘I got a real name, too.’

  It was then I noticed the thumb of his left hand was missing.

  Bobby caught me looking. He laughed. ‘Pretty aren’t I? Ex-polis. Got injured in the line of duty. The guys reckoned Bobby Four-Fingers was a sweeter name than Bobby No-Thumb.’

  I smiled. ‘It’s pretty sweet.’

  ‘That’s enough of the love-in,’ the older guy said. ‘This is a place of work, and we’ve got jobs on the clock.’

  I looked back at him. ‘And you are?’

  ‘Dez McGregor, and you’re Lori, yes?’

  There was something in his tone that irritated the hell out of me – patronising, with a hard edge of know-it-all. A bad combination. ‘Lori Anderson,’ I said.

  He nodded. ‘Got it. You’re Alex’s associate. Here to give us a hand finding the escaped con.’

  That he called Monroe by his first name gave an indication of their relationship. That he viewed me as an extra pair of hands to help him rather than the other way around told me more about McGregor. ‘I think you’ve got that backwards. Monroe told me he was bringing you in to help me.’

  McGregor stared at me a long moment. I tightened my grip around the mug and stared right back. Had to stand my ground. This was my case, McGregor needed to understand who was the lead.

  Bobby Four-Fingers shifted his weight from one leg to the other. Cleared his throat. Looked real uncomfortable.

  Then McGregor laughed – a single ‘ha’. He pointed at me and said, ‘Okay then, Lori Anderson, what do you know about Gibson Fletcher?’

  I told him the bones of what I knew about Fletcher – his criminal history, and the time I’d tracked him before. I missed out about the lack of love between him and his folks, and what Monroe had told me about the chess pieces. Then I started telling him how I’d come to San Diego on Fletcher’s tail, and what I’d been looking into.

  McGregor held out his hand to stop me. ‘You went alone to question the mistress?’ It was impossible to miss the surprise in his voice.

  ‘Yeah.’

  Dez frowned. His expression implied criticism of my decision. Personally, I’d rather
folks just said what they felt.

  ‘You got a problem with that?’ I said.

  ‘Going in alone was a risk. You didn’t know if she’d be hostile; you could’ve got jumped or trapped.’

  ‘I’m a big girl and I’ve been doing this a while. I know how to assess the risks of a situation. It was—’

  ‘We don’t fly solo here. This is a team. To be effective every link in our chain needs to be strong, united. If you’re working with us you need to be on board with that.’

  I stared at him. He sounded more like some corporate bull-shitter than a bounty hunter. And he was wrong: Mia Searle wouldn’t have opened up to a ‘team’. If he only ever hunted in a pack then using his method I’d never have gotten anything from her. I shook my head. ‘I usually work alone.’

  ‘Not here you don’t. Not on my watch.’ He nodded towards the open door. ‘If that’s your attitude, best you leave now.’

  Seemed we had ourselves a stand-off. Bobby Four-fingers didn’t speak, but his sharp intake of breath told me he felt it, too.

  I shrugged. ‘Monroe says he wants us working together.’

  ‘He does. And on my pitch you play by my rules, or you don’t play at all.’

  I gritted my teeth. Monroe had been real clear on us needing McGregor’s expertise to extract Fletcher from Mexico. That meant I had to work with McGregor for JT’s sake, and for Dakota’s future. The way McGregor talked grated on me real bad, but I forced a nod – wasn’t much else I could do. For the time being anyways.

  ‘Guess I’ll have to accept that,’ I said.

  McGregor narrowed his eyes. Watched me a moment. Bobby Four-Fingers looked nervous. He glanced from McGregor to me and back to McGregor. The bond shop might be messy as hell, but from the way Bobby watched his boss it seemed McGregor was more ordered in how the chain of command worked.

  In my head it was real clear though. I might have to play by his rules on his pitch, but I was still the captain of my own team, even if it was a team of one.

  I broke the silence. ‘So are we good?’

  McGregor cracked a smile. ‘Alex is a friend. You respect the way we work here, things will be just fine.’