by Michael Kerr
“Did he register?”
“Er, no, not with it being cash in hand.”
“Did you ask him for his name?
“No.”
“What room was he in?”
“Number three.”
“Let’s check it out, just in case he left anything behind.”
There was nothing in the room. Nelson told Larry that he had seen the guy walk off east in the direction of Jake’s Roadhouse earlier in the evening.
Lenny drove towards Jake’s, as Larry made a call to Nick Cady.
Nick was out on the deck at the rear of Casa Cady, his waterfront home on N Key Drive in Fort Myers. He was admiring his new acquisition; a luxury motor yacht that was moored up to his private pier. He took a sip of thirty-year-old single malt Jura Scotch from a cut glass tumbler, and sighed.
Life was sweet. He had everything that money could buy, and thought of himself as an entrepreneur, not a gangster. He enjoyed the good life, and was totally unconcerned that his wealth had been amassed through the misery that his operations caused to others. To his way of thinking, everything ‒ including people ‒ was no more than product to be used to maximum advantage.
Nick was forty-six years old, clean-shaven, stood a little over six feet tall, and with his well-groomed graying hair, manicured fingernails, gold-rimmed spectacles and suits ‒ custom-made by Caraceni in Milan ‒ he gave the impression of being an extremely wealthy mogul, not a psychopath with a compelling need for power and money, who did not possess a grain of empathy in his dark soul for anyone on earth but his wife, Gina, and his twenty-three year old daughter, Karen, who was currently running a legit business: Sunrise Vacation Properties on Periwinkle Way, over the causeway on Sanibel Island. Karen lived in a beachfront condo on West Gulf Drive with her partner, Denton Platts, who was a fishing guide and the owner of a bait and tackle shop in a small precinct at the end of the island, not far from the lighthouse.
Nick kept his private and business life completely separate. His wife knew what he did, but his daughter hadn’t the slightest idea of his illegal activities. For the most part it was his employees that carried out directives that where given to them through a third party; the less people knowing his identity the better. His right-hand man, so to speak, was Vince Palmer, a London-born criminal with a proven track record for making bad things happen. Vince was ex-SAS, highly intelligent and extremely competent. Above all, he had demonstrated loyalty and a willingness to do absolutely anything to protect Nick and his interests.
The cell phone on the coffee table rang. Nick walked back in from the deck and picked up. The caller ID was that of Larry Kramer, so he accepted it.
“Slight hitch, boss,” Larry said.
“Explain slight hitch,” Nick said, then sipped more of the malt.
“Two packages were collected this evening. We—”
“Are you on a burner phone?”
“Yeah.”
“My line is secure, so talk straight, not in riddles.”
“A woman and kid were lifted by a crew and taken to the motel for us to collect as usual. Someone interfered. Jade got away with the kid, but Jimmy and Diego didn’t make it.”
“What do you mean, didn’t make it?”
“Jimmy had been beaten up and shot in the leg. And by all accounts Diego tried to get away and got killed by a gator.”
“Any good news?”
“No. The guy that shoved his nose in gave me a call on Jimmy’s phone. Told me that if the kid wasn’t dropped off with the police in an hour, then he was going to come after you.”
“How did he know my name?”
“Jimmy spilled his guts, so I decided that he was a liability and took appropriate action.”
“Good. What else do you know?”
“Nothing. We just left a roadhouse that the stranger had visited, but he’d paid cash and didn’t talk to anyone. Just ordered a meal, ate it and left.”
“Where are you now?”
“Heading back to Punta Gorda. He’s due to call me again in a few minutes, and we’ve heard nothing from Jade. What do you want me to say to him?”
“The truth. That Jade hasn’t contacted you yet, but that when she does we can follow his instructions.”
“On the level?”
“Yes. He knows who I am. We can cut our losses and let the kid go. Then we find out who he is, locate him and kill him, the girl and her mother.”
Nick ended the call, drained the glass and went over to the bar in the living room and poured another shot. He was seething. No one threatened him and got away with it. He picked up his cell again and called Vince. Explained what was going down and told him to take care of it.
“No prob’, boss,” Vince said with only a trace of his East End cockney accent. “I’ll give Larry a bell and sort it.”
“Keep me up to speed, Vince. Whoever this guy is, he’s a threat to us. Find him, hurt him, and then waste him.”
“My pleasure, boss. Consider it done.”
CHAPTER SIX
LOGAN watched and waited. It wasn’t long before the Dodge appeared, made a left and sped off.
“Why aren’t you following them?” Debbie said.
“Because I know where they’re going.”
“Where?”
“To the roadhouse that I ate at. The manager told me where it was when I checked in, and he’ll have seen me leave to go there. They’ll hope that I used plastic to pay with, or that I got into conversation and gave my name or any other personal details to someone.”
“Did you?”
“No.”
“So what will you do?”
“They’ll come back this way, and we’ll follow them. While we’re waiting, tell me exactly what happened.”
“I was just about to put a meal on the table when a man and a woman came in the kitchen door. They just broke it down, like you did at the motel. My mother must have heard the commotion. She appeared with my late father’s gun and pointed it at the man, and…and he shot her…”
Logan listened to her tear-filled voice as she told him everything. He wondered if they had known that she was divorced. It had been a planned operation.
“The bastard that shot my mom said that I would be sold for body parts, and that Kelly would probably be sold to a childless couple,” Debbie continued. “You saved my life Mr. Logan, but I need to get Kelly back. If I don’t, then I’ll have nothing left to live for.”
“I’ll do everything I can to get her back. And drop the mister, I’m just Logan.”
After several minutes a vehicle’s lights appeared and grew closer, and the Dodge swept by at speed, heading back the way it had come. Logan gave it a few seconds and then followed with the pickup’s lights off. He needed an edge, and got one when the cell phone rang again.
“Yeah,” Logan said.
“We have a slight problem,” Larry said.
“I’m listening.”
“We don’t know where the fuck Jade and the kid are. You probably took her cell, so she can’t contact us.”
“But you’ll know where she would go.”
“She’ll probably head for home. We’re on our way there now. We need more time.”
Logan didn’t think that he was being stalled. It was probably true. He had the woman’s cell, so she was out of touch to everybody. There had been no ID in her bag, so his best course of action was to keep following them to wherever she lived, and then work out the best way to deal with the situation without Kelly becoming a casualty.
“Where does she live?” Logan asked.
“Fort Myers,” Larry said. “But I’m not about to give you her address.”
“I’m already through Punta Gorda, so I’ll be in Fort Myers before you” Logan lied. “Call me back when you get there and I’ll tell you where to take the child.”
“I’ll do that,” Larry said as the line went dead.
Twenty seconds later Larry’s cell rang.
“Where are you?” Vince said.
“Back to where?”
“We’re heading to Jade’s place. She’ll phone us when she gets there. Her bag was at the motel. The guy that’s making this his business must have lifted her cell, as well as Jimmy’s.”
“Okay, Larry, I’ll meet you there. When she gets in touch, tell her to stay put. Got it?”
“Yeah, I got it, Vince.”
“And if the dickhead that dealt with Jimmy and Wolf is worth his salt, he’ll have been watching for you arriving at the motel, so expect him to be ahead of or behind you all the way. He’s an unknown quantity, and he can obviously look after himself.”
“He said that—”
“Doesn’t matter what the fuck he said, Larry, it’s what he does that we have to worry about. First rule, never underestimate the opposition.”
Jade had passed the Dodge that Larry and Lenny were in. The other car’s high beams had momentarily blinded her. She didn’t get to see the make of car or the occupants. It was a few minutes later that she pulled on to the forecourt of a twenty-four-hour gas station, got out and walked up to the door. It was locked. A few feet along was a window with a drawer beneath it for transactions. Behind the glass was a swarthy young guy with pitted boxcar scars on his face, which were a permanent complication of serious acne he’d suffered as a youth. He had the look of a much younger Edward James Olmos, the Mexican movie actor.
“I need to use your phone,” Jade said through the voice transmission system fitted into the bullet resistant window above the deal tray. “It’s an emergency.”
“There’s a pay phone on the wall to your right,” José Alvarez said.
“I was mugged. I don’t have any money.”
“You don’t need any to call 911.”
“I want to call my husband, not the police.”
“So call the police and get them to contact your husband.”
“You’re not being very helpful,” Jade said, wishing that she could grab the young man by his throat and strangle him.
“I get paid to take money for gas, is all,” José said. “I don’t get extra to be helpful.”
“What would it take to get you to open the door and let me make a call; a blowjob?”
“Nice offer, but it isn’t goin’ to happen,” José said as he turned his back on her.
“Rot in hell, you dumb wetback,” Jade shouted, turning on her heel and going back to the SUV.
She drove fast. Turned south on 41 and headed for Fort Myers and her apartment, which was on the east side of the city off Daniels Parkway, behind the Starbucks on Sauer Drive.
Making a right fifty yards up from the coffee shop, Jade then drove down the alley that was parallel to Sauer Drive and parked in the small lot. She had to press the bell of the caretaker’s apartment to get inside. Fortunately he was in and talked to her by way of the speaker set above the resident’s bells.
“Hey, Tony,” she said. “I left my bag across town at a friend’s. I need letting in.”
“Gimme a second, honey,” Tony said. He was an ex-boxer who’d lost more bouts than he’d won and had suffered a little brain damage along the way, due to having been knocked out at least twenty times. He now moved as slow as he thought, and his speech was a little indistinct.
The buzzer sounded and the door opened. Jade entered as Tony came into view. He led the way up the stairs to the second-floor apartment with Jade behind him, once more carrying the little girl. She felt safe. No one knew where she was. Tony let her into her apartment, and she thanked him and said goodnight. She then put the now sleeping child on the sofa, tossed the car keys on to the coffee table and went behind the kitchen counter to get a pack of cigarettes from a unit drawer and fire one up, to smoke half of it before stubbing it out in a glass ashtray. She used the wall-mounted phone in the kitchen to call Jimmy’s number, hoping that he and Wolf had got the better of the guy that had broken into the motel room.
“Yeah?” A muffled voice.
“Is that you, Jimmy?” she said.
“No, he’s in no condition to speak on the phone, Jade,” Logan said.
Jade almost slammed the receiver down, but thought better of it. Knowledge was power. “Who are you?” she said.
“A good friend of the woman whose daughter you abducted. And I know who you are and where you live. Work with me on this to return the girl, or I give you my word that you’ll end up in a world of pain.”
“I don’t take any notice of idle threats,” Jade said. “You don’t know who you’re going up against.”
“You mean Nick Cady and his halfwit band of amateurs?”
A sliver of fear flashed down Jade’s spine.
“I’ve got names, phone numbers and addresses,” Logan said. “If the girl isn’t returned, and soon, then I’ll work through it at random. You’ll find that nowhere is safe. And if I have to go to all that trouble, you’ll wind up in a canal, or on some waste ground with your throat cut. Take a few seconds to think about it, and then throw the dice.”
Jade did think it over, and decided that she would stay on side with Nick. He had an organization and would be able to deal with one guy. She racked the phone, then picked it up again and tapped in the number of Vince Palmer’s cell. She would have rather spoken to Nick directly, but thought that his wife might answer and start a question and answer session that she didn’t have the time or inclination to get into. The hard-faced bitch was like a guard dog when it came to Nick.
“Talk,” Vince said when he accepted the call.
“Do you know what’s happened?” Jade said.
“Yeah. Where are you now?”
“At my apartment.”
“Do you have the kid with you?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Keep the door locked until we get there.”
“He knows where I am,” Jade said. “I just tried to call Jimmy, and he answered.”
“What did he say, and how did he sound?”
“He said he had a lot of details about Nick and others, including me. And he sounded chilled and confident. Said that if I didn’t hand over the kid he was going to work his way through the organization. He said he would kill me.”
“It’s bullshit, Jade, just empty words. He’s one guy. He’ll be history before daylight. Just sit tight.”
“Okay, but make it quick. He could already be outside my apartment.”
Larry was driving. He left 41 at Daniels Parkway and slowed to make the turn on to Sauer Drive. He and Lenny had been on the lookout for a tail all the way, but hadn’t spotted one. The guy could be anywhere. Maybe he was already targeting Nick. Worst case scenario was that the stranger would manage to take a hostage important enough to trade with. It could get problematical. Giving the kid back would be the sensible thing to do, but he knew that Nick was not the kind of guy to back down to anyone, ever. He had to win at everything whatever the cost, and at times that made him reckless. In the main he had no problem in using bribery or violence to achieve his goals. His weakness was that he had a god complex: an unshakable belief that was characterized by inflated feelings of personal ability, privilege and infallibility. He found it impossible to ‒ even when faced with intractable complex problems ‒ consider that his judgment was less than unquestionably correct. He did not possess the facility to acknowledge his own failings, of which he had many, and disregarded the laws and rules of society in general, that he did not believe applied to him, due to his inflated ego and the awareness from experience that many of the lawmakers’ themselves were corrupt.
Larry parked at the curb, sixty feet from the Starbucks. He and Lenny got out and walked along the sidewalk to the corner, turned it and stopped. They hadn’t spotted a tail, but were professional enough to accept that if someone was following them ‒ and was good enough ‒then they could have led him in to Jade’s. It didn’t hurt to be cautious.
&nbs
p; “Who do you reckon he is?” Lenny said as he lit a cigarette.
“Just a stranger that got involved. He must think he’s like some comic book hero. He saved a damsel in distress, and now he’s trying to get her kid back for her.”
“You reckon he’ll have phoned the police?”
“I don’t know, Lenny. He didn’t give me the impression that he would. I got the feeling he was one of those vigilante types; a go it alone guy that thinks he can deal with anything.”
They gave it five minutes. Kept looking back round the corner to see if there was any stranger hanging about and acting suspicious, before walking to the entrance of the wide alley and quickly making their way to the main door of the apartment building.
“Stay nearby and out of sight,” Larry said to Lenny. “I’ll go up and check on Jade and the kid. Palmer will be here soon and can decide what to do.”
Logan parked well back from the Dodge on the other side of the street between a delivery truck and a mid-size Kia. He switched off the engine and stayed in his seat. The two guys got out and looked both ways, but not with any real belief that they had been followed. They walked in the opposite direction and round a corner. Logan still didn’t move. Just waited, and was not surprised when the tallest of the men appeared and took another long look down the street, back to where he had parked his car.
“What’s happening?” Debbie said.
“They’re going to pick up the woman and your daughter,” Logan said as he checked the Glock he’d taken from Jimmy, ensuring that there was a round chambered. “I want you to stay in the pickup. I’ll go and see if I can get Kelly back. But if I can’t without putting her in harm’s way, then we’ll follow them to wherever they take her.”
“Thank you,” Debbie said in a small voice. “Kelly is all I have now. I’ll trade myself for her if that is what it takes.”
“Your daughter is worth a lot more to them than you are,” Logan said. “They need to realize that returning her will save them a great deal of grief.”
“You’re only one man,” Debbie said.