Quarterback Trap (A Carlos McCrary novel Book 3)

by Dallas Gorham

  Bob swallowed hard. “Yeah, I read about him in the newspaper. I think he’s some kinda mafia don in New Jersey.”

  “That’s right. He’s known as Teflon Vic. The DA has never convicted him of anything. He’s active in the big three mafia businesses: drugs, prostitution, and gambling. He’s implicated in several contract murders.”

  “What’s he doing in Port City?”

  “He owns a mansion on Mango Island. Gracie went to see Teflon Vic on Mango Island Saturday afternoon, right before she disappeared. She may have been carried off in a van that belongs to a corporation that owns Vidali’s casinos in New Jersey and Delaware. It’s all connected.”

  I dropped the bomb. “Right after Gracie disappeared, somebody in Vegas bet enough money on the Cowboys to move the betting line by nine points. Vidali’s casino has stopped taking bets on the Super Bowl game.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “Teflon Vic put fifty to a hundred million dollars of his own money on the Cowboys to beat the spread. He intends to fix the game.”

  “Nobody could fix a Super Bowl Game.”

  “Unless they got to the quarterback.” I said.

  Bob stopped chewing. “How the hell could he do that?”

  “Vidali has Graciela; you want him to return her safely. Do the math.”

  Bob’s face turned to stone. “Is that how Gracie fits into this? As a ransom demand?”

  “I don’t know…yet, but I have my suspicions. Look at this.” I showed him printouts of three articles on the Tawanda Grisham acid attack, along with before and after pictures of her ruined face. “Grisham’s career is in the toilet, of course. We don’t even want to think about what would happen to Graciela if Sharky threw acid on her.”

  “What’s Sharky got to do with Vidali?”

  I took a bite of eggs. They were perfect. “Maybe nothing. His being in the mix may be a coincidence. Maybe he’s only one of her creditors. Maybe he’s connected to Vidali somehow. Whatever he is, he’s bad news for Gracie. He might be the least of her troubles.”

  Bob studied the photos. “You gotta protect her, Chuck.”

  I’d had all I could take of this crap. I slammed the table with the flat of my hand. “Goddammit, Bob, I have to find her first! You’ve made that hard for me to do, amigo. It’s third and long right now, and we’re late in the fourth quarter. I need the resources of the cops and the FBI.”

  Bob stared into his cup and didn’t say anything.

  I dropped my fork and stalked across the room. I was steamed as I stared out the window at Seeti Bay. I counted to ten.

  Bob shook his head slowly. He looked far away. Tears rolled down his cheeks.

  He wasn’t confiding in me in English. Maybe he would if I asked him in Spanish. So I did. “What won’t you tell me, Roberto? What’s your big, dark secret that has you so spooked you won’t let me call the cops?”

  I sat across from my client, my friend, and waited. And waited. And waited.

  Chapter 26

  I parked my 1963Avanti in the Mango Island ferry parking lot.

  “We could at least have stopped at a drive-through on the way down, Chuck.”

  “You’re always hungry, Snoop.”

  “Like you’re not?”

  “Ordinarily, I’d say you’re right, but I had brunch with Bob so I’m not hungry. Plus, we’ve got a lead on Graciela and I want to move on it before they move her. I’ll make it up to you when we finish this part of the investigation.”

  “At least it’s my turn to be Good Cop this time,” said Snoop.

  “No can do, Snoop. You were Bad Cop last time with Alphonse. It would look strange if I were Bad Cop this time.” I rang the bell to the security office. The door buzzed and we entered.

  Terrence Button was on duty. His eyes widened. “I told you not to come back here. I don’t know nothing, and I don’t tell you nothing, mon.”

  Snoop leaned across the desk, grabbed the guard by the front of his turquoise and gold uniform and pulled him to his feet. “Listen, dirtbag. We now know that the woman we saw on your video surveillance over on Mango Island on Monday is definitely missing. You’re now an accessory to kidnapping. You got two choices: Cooperate with us, or we’ll let the FBI haul you down to their office for questioning.” He let Terrence’s jacket loose, and the guard plopped back in his desk chair. “What’s it going to be: us or the Feds?”

  Terrence seemed to shrink. “What you want, mon?”

  I stepped in as Good Cop. “We want to see the videos of everybody who got on or off the ferry between 4:00 p.m. and 6:00 p.m. yesterday afternoon.”

  He caved.

  ###

  Snoop set his burger down. “Well, that was two hours of our lives we’ll never get back.”

  We were at a table at the Fat Tummy Restaurant. I was eating a Sweep-the-Floor vegetarian pizza. It was the only thing I could find on the menu that wouldn’t turn my arteries into cholesterol sludge. Snoop was eating his usual Heart-Stopper Hamburger. He’d been eating them for years, and he was still alive. Go figure.

  I took a swallow of iced tea. “The time was not wasted, Snoop. At least we know neither Gracie nor Crooked Nose nor Teflon Vic left the island during that two-hour window. That means Gracie could still be on the island.”

  “If the text is legit.”

  “It’s legit.”

  “What do we do about that? This isn’t a movie. We can’t bust the door down, guns blazing.”

  “I’ve got an idea. Hank Hickham is a member at Mango Island. Hank owes me a favor.”

  Chapter 27

  The Gator Raider Too glided between the flashing beacons at the entrance to the Mango Island Club marina. I glanced at my watch: 11:30 p.m. I killed the running lights and pulled the throttles back to neutral. The boat sidled to the guest dock and nudged the bumpers.

  Snoop stepped onto the dock, bow line in hand, and wrapped it several times around the nearest cleat.

  I tossed him a stern line, and he wrapped it around another cleat. I jumped off with two more lines.

  “What’re you doing, Chuck?”

  “I need to attach spring lines.” I moved the bow line to a different cleat and ran a spring line toward the stern. I loosened the first line that Snoop had fastened.

  “What? I didn’t tie the boat good enough?”

  “You tied it too good, Snoop. To moor a boat you take the line once around here…over here… and then flip this over…the end is held down by this here…like that.”

  “Humph. Just because I’m not a sailor…”

  “Don’t get your panties in a knot, Snoop. Any marina employee who passed would notice if the lines were snubbed wrong. He’d wonder why someone who didn’t know how to moor a boat the right way was on the island. I don’t want anyone to remember us.” I re-snubbed the stern lines too.

  A powerful flashlight played across us as an electric cart rolled up the asphalt path. The driver was another security guard in a turquoise and gold jacket, a pith helmet, and white pants. “Can I help you gentlemen?” he asked.

  I waved at him. “I have reservations at the Mango Island Lodge.”

  “May I have your name, sir?”

  “Hank Hickham.”

  The guard got out of the cart. “You the guy who owns Hank’s Bar & Grill & Bodacious Ribs? I love them ribs.”

  “Yeah, I love ’em too. That’s my uncle. I’m named after him. He made the reservation for us. You can check, if you like.”

  “Oh, I have to check. It’s not that I don’t believe you, Mr. Hickham. Rules are rules, you know.” He spoke into his walkie-talkie, then turned to us. “They been expecting you.”

  “Sorry we’re late. We left Key Largo this morning, and it took us longer to make the run than we planned. But once you get going…” I shrugged. “You might as well keep going, right?”

  “I’ll give you gentlemen and your luggage a ride to the Lodge.”

  “Do you meet all the arriving guests?” I asked.

>   “Most guests arrive by car on the ferry. I was making my regular rounds when you arrived.”

  “We’ve got a few things to tend to on the boat. I wouldn’t want to keep you from your rounds. It’s a nice night, and we don’t have but one small bag each. We’ll be happy to walk.”

  “I don’t mind waiting. It’s part of our five-star service.”

  I glanced at Snoop. He shrugged. “Okay, thanks. We’ll be a minute.” I stepped aboard to fasten the hatches and kill the twin engines while Snoop retrieved our bags from the salon.

  The guard took the bags and set them in the back of the electric cart. He sat behind the wheel, next to me. “Is this your first time on Mango Island, Mr. Hickham?”

  “Yeah. Uncle Hank talks about it all the time. He told me y’all have twenty-four hour security.” Sneaky interrogation.

  “That’s right. We have forty-seven security guards. People like me patrol the island 24/7/365.”

  “You mean you’re not the only guard making rounds?” I mentally patted myself on the back for being so smooth.

  “We have 432 acres to patrol. One guard can’t do it. There are four of us on the night shift. And we have a twenty-four-hour marine patrol. You can feel absolutely safe when you’re a lodge guest.”

  “That’s good to know. So you didn’t come to the marina because you were expecting us?” This guy was an open book.

  The guard smiled. “Not quite. Our marine patrol saw your yacht when it was still off shore.”

  “The Gator Raider Too isn’t a yacht; it’s a cabin cruiser.”

  The guard smiled. “As far as we’re concerned, all guest boats are yachts.”

  I had to laugh. “Very diplomatic.”

  The guard grinned. “When your yacht entered the marina, it sent a signal to the lodge and the security office. The security officer radioed me to meet you.”

  “That’s quite a sophisticated setup. How does that work? Or is it a secret?”

  “No secret. The residents know about it.” The guard gestured over his shoulder. “A light beam shines across the entrance between the two beacons and above the high water mark. Entering yachts cut the beam. That sends the signal.”

  “Like the photo-electric eye on a garage door opener?”

  “That’s right.” He turned into a circular drive and set the parking brake. “Here we are.”

  Chapter 28

  In twenty minutes, we were in an oceanfront room on the fourth floor, overlooking the beach. I turned out the room lights, and we sat on the balcony lit by the half-moon. The only other light filtered up from the ornate street lamps that lined the path by the beach. I watched the path through binoculars. “According to Google Earth, that cart path circles the entire island except for the Coast Guard station on the north. Let’s time the guard on his rounds.”

  We watched for an hour.

  “This is not good,” said Snoop. “The first round took the guard thirteen minutes, the second took twenty-two minutes, and the third took seven. It’s totally unpredictable.”

  “It’s not the same guard, Snoop. The patrol carts had three different numbers on them. The guards take a semi-random route. They cover every street on the island in a reasonable frequency, but each guard takes a different route each time. Sometimes, a guard circles the golf course; the next time he cruises past the condos; then he drives past the detached houses—like the one we’re after.”

  “What’re we gonna do about that?”

  I stood. “We do what we came for; we rescue Graciela. It’s just harder to avoid the security guards than we thought. Let’s catch a nap while we can. Pick a bed.”

  “I’ll take the one next to the balcony.”

  We lay down for a short nap.

  At 2:30 a.m. the alarm woke us. I tossed our sports bags onto the beds. “Let’s gear up.”

  We changed into our sneaking-around-in-the-dark outfits—black denim pants and long-sleeved, black tee-shirts. We rolled our sleeves above the elbow and unzipped the pants legs to make them into black shorts. We stuffed the pant legs into the sports bags. We each slung a bag across our shoulders. “Remember, Snoop, don’t attract any attention.”

  We remained silent while we rode the elevator to the huge, open-air lobby. The three-tiered fountain in the courtyard was still running as we walked across the brick patio to the entrance. We stood against one wall while a security guard cruised past the entrance in an electric cart. When he had gone, we walked down the driveway to Mango Lodge Boulevard.

  Glancing both ways, we walked across the boulevard and crossed a few yards of Saint Augustine grass. We passed through the bushes that marked the rough of the golf course. When we were fifty yards from the Lodge, I stopped to pull a watch cap from my bag. The irrigation pipes hissed and gurgled. “Oh, crap. The sprinklers are coming on. Let’s move out.”

  We jogged across the fairway to the next hole.

  I grabbed my watch cap.

  “You don’t need that, Chuck. Your hair is dark enough. But I gotta cover my gray.”

  I pulled the watch cap on anyway. “We want to cover as much white skin as we can. We’ll be less visible after we cross the golf course. There are street lamps on the other side. And there’s a half moon tonight.”

  I glanced at the GPS directions on my smartphone, then turned off the screen. “It’s about a quarter mile farther. Vidali’s house overlooks the third fairway.” We rolled our shirtsleeves down and zipped the pants legs onto our shorts. We slipped on black gloves. We were as stealthy as we could get without camo face paint. But I wasn’t Special Forces anymore and had no way to remove face paint before returning to the lodge. “The security cameras are high definition. We want to blend into the foliage when we exit the golf course.”

  Snoop donned a similar watch cap and gloves.

  I nodded in satisfaction. “Let’s go.”

  Five minutes later, I signaled a stop on the edge of the third fairway. We stood in the blackness beneath a sea grape canopy. I pulled a heat sensing, thermal imaging camera from my bag. I waited for the viewer to warm up, then scanned the upstairs windows. “No heat source on the top floor.”

  I dodged through the gap in the bougainvillea privacy hedge and waited for Snoop to join me. “I’ll scan the swimming pool side…No one. Wait here. I’ve got to get behind those bougainvilleas to check the other side.”

  I returned in a moment. “Nothing. No heat sources inside.”

  Snoop whispered, “Maybe they’re all in the front of the house.”

  “I doubt it. The upstairs bedrooms have a golf course view. I think the house is empty.”

  We scurried back to the sea grapes. “Shh…” I held a finger to my lips and crouched in the shadows. Snoop followed suit.

  “Down,” I whispered. “Lay all the way down.”

  I heard the muted whine of an electric motor. A few seconds later an patrol cart halted a few feet away on the path. The parking brake clicked as the guard set it. A two-way radio squawked. A tinny voice broke the silence. “Base to Rover Two. A condo resident reported seeing something on the third fairway. Could be a raccoon or a loose dog, but you’d better check.”

  “Rover Two to Base, I’m there right now.” The springs squeaked as the guard exited the cart. A powerful flashlight turned on. The light beam arced its way across the bougainvilleas and Royal Palms edging the fairway.

  Snoop and I held our breath as we lay flat on a bed of sea grape leaves, wet from the dew.

  The beam flicked across the trunk of the sea grapes and passed over where we lay. In a few seconds, the beam passed back the other way. The radio squawked. “I didn’t see nothing, Base. Coulda been someone’s cat.” The patrol cart’s springs squeaked again.

  “Roger that,” the tinny voice replied.

  The parking brake clanked off and the patrol cart moved down the path with a whine of its motor.

  I waited until I no longer heard the cart or the radio. I grabbed my bag. “Your heart start beating again yet, Snoop?
”

  “Yeah, but I’m too old to hug wet leaves in the dark. I could do with a little less excitement.”

  “Let’s check the side of the house.” I moved off to the left and stopped again. “Is that a motion sensor?” I whispered.

  A decorative seven-foot wall separated Teflon Vic’s mansion from the neighbor to his north. A small box was mounted on top of the wall.

  Snoop said, “Can’t be. Whenever the wind blows, the swaying palms would set it off. Or a cat. It could be a security camera, though. It looks like it’s aimed along the top of the wall.”

  I crept close to the wall and studied the device on the thermal imager. “It’s a camera, all right.” I connected the thermal imager to a remote viewer with a USB cord and lifted the imager above the wall, behind the camera. Studying the remote viewer, I swung the imager back and forth. “Nothing on the ground floor…Nothing on the top. Shit.”

  “Well, as long as we’re here, we’ve got to check the other side and the front. Can’t leave the job half done.”

  A golf cart path separated Vidali’s mansion from the house to the south. “That’s the path to the second hole,” I whispered. I glanced both ways and put the imager to my eye. I walked down the cart path, scanning both floors. I reached the street and turned down the sidewalk, passing in front. “Hard to tell about the ground floor looking through these bougainvilleas, but the upstairs is empty.” I left the path and crawled behind the thorny plants. A few seconds later, I rejoined Snoop. “Nobody home.”

  An electric motor whirred in the distance. We moved closer to the thorny hedges that fronted Vidali’s house and glanced up the street. Another patrol cart turned the corner and headed toward us.

  I grabbed Snoop’s sleeve and pulled him toward the bougainvillea hedge.

  Snoop pulled his arm away. “You’re as agile as a monkey, but I’m not. I can’t hide there, Chuck. Those thorns will cut me to ribbons.” He ran back the way we had come and took a narrow opening between the hedges into Vidali’s gardens. It was a big risk.