by Matt Lincoln
“Painting I can handle. The sign might be a bit of a problem area for me.” He cleared his throat, and I knew what he meant with the use of only one arm.
“Oh, I plan to do that myself. No worries.” I started to head for the office. “What do you think a nice, attractive color would be for the outside? I don’t want flashy, just something to make it good-looking and approachable.” I turned to Lael, nodded after him. “I mean, you’ve been here for a while, you know the neighborhood… what’s the feel of it?”
He scratched his chin, reasoning it out. “I’ve never put much thought into something like that, but in this area, most buildings are white and brown, nothing too bright or exciting. People here know what they want, and they don’t care too much about the outside of a shop, you know?”
It wasn’t exactly what I was hoping to hear, but I had asked him, after all. “Maybe a stripe or colored trim, then? Nothing too out of the ordinary, a little mundane.” Oh well, it was just paint. If it didn’t work, we could always redo it. “It’s a pretty big job, the office, apartment, and the barn. Are you sure that you don’t want me to hire a contractor to do the work?” It wasn’t that I didn’t think he could handle the workload. I only didn’t want him to feel put upon with it all at once.
Lael shook his head and grinned. “Nah, I want to do it. Frankly, it’s been too slow around here for my liking. Until you get some customers, some boarders, then I get all of my work done by nine most days.”
I had no complaints there. The place was in great shape, overall.
“So, having something to occupy my day would be a welcomed change. Just tell me when and where.” Lael’s attitude was a good one to have around. I knew it right then and there.
“Then, if you don’t mind,” I replied, “I’m going to go grab some paint at a local store, get a little free advertising going on, and I’ll be back in a bit.” As I was heading off, I remembered that Xavier was due in today. I spun around and called out to Lael. “Oh, hey, I forgot something. My buddy’s coming in this afternoon with a yacht. His name’s Xavier in case he gets here before I get back. I don’t imagine that will happen, but you never know. He’ll be boarding here for an undetermined amount of time, so, just FYI.” I waved to him and headed off again.
On my way from one hardware store to another in the local area, I texted Verity and George and gave them the address to the marina. I invited them both to come over and have a look if they felt like it. I extended this to LaShawn and Cecily, too, once he was able to. I added that proviso only for him. Everyone else was welcome to show up whenever they liked.
By the time I got all the goods and products that I would need, it was well after noon. I stopped by, grabbed a bunch of food from a place not too far from me, and headed back to the marina. I started to unload the rollers, five-gallon buckets of paint, the tarps, and the mountain of other supplies that I’d bought. The office was going to be the catch-all place for this for now. I was going to need new furniture for it, but I wanted to get the painting inside done first. Then I’d see where I wanted to go with it.
Lael and I tore through the takeout and started the painting right after. Together, we got the entire office done. I’d settled on an eggshell color, nothing too bright, but not too stark either. I joked with him about putting up some decals of cute, little boats like a kid’s playroom, but he only shook his head at me. He wasn’t turning out to be a guy of many words or vocalized thoughts.
We had just finished painting the walls when I got a call from Xavier that saved me from any more awkward conversations with Lael, and I headed out to meet the yacht. Lael had picked the best spot the bay had and reserved it for my teammate. That was a nice touch. I waved Xavier on in, and by the time he set foot on the pier, I was barely able to contain my enthusiasm at seeing him.
His messy, curly brown hair had gotten a little more sun than it had the last time that I’d seen him. He may have lost some weight, but under the baggy, red tee shirt and the cargo shorts, it was hard to be sure. Overall, he was a sight I’d been longing to see.
“About damn time, Xavier.” I was smiling too broadly for him to think that I was anything other than pleased with his arrival.
“I’m taking that as ‘Hello’ in Header Floridian speak.” He was grinning very widely as he surveyed the area. Then he snuck in a “Good to see you again, too.”
We shook hands, continued with the greeting things, and then he took a couple of minutes to admire the scope and location of the marina. He nodded, which was a very Xavier way of showing his approval of something. “This is an advantageous position to keep our endeavors on a low-key watch. This is good, Header.” He was busy tying down and securing his floating home.
“Glad that I have your approval, at least.” My paint-stained clothes made my earlier work noticeable, but I thought it best to explain, anyway. “Lael and I just finished the inside of the office, if you’d like to get your land legs back.” I motioned over to the obvious building where I’d come from.
“Yeah, sounds good.” As we walked up the pier, I noticed a sleek, little hybrid coupe pull into the marina parking lot. We both stopped to watch as a black-haired young woman climbed out of the driver’s seat. I smiled as I recognized her. Xavier saw my reaction and nodded. “A new friend of yours?”
“She certainly is. Come on. I’ll introduce you.” I led Xavier up to Verity, who was already grinning at me. She gave me a quick kiss and grasped my hand in hers. I turned to my team member and made presentations. “Xavier, this is Verity Yout, George’s daughter. She just got a job here in Miami at an art restoration business. And Verity, this is a long-time friend of mine, and the tech master of my team, Xavier.”
“Pleased to meet you.” Xavier offered his hand to Lael and nodded his head gently.
Lael’s response of, “Likewise.” was tossed around under the Florida sun before I demanded that we all go inside the office and get into the air-conditioned room.
Lael was putting up the gallon buckets and folding up the drop cloths. When he saw us, he nodded and quickened his pace. “I’ll be out of your way in just a minute. Sorry for the mess.”
Maybe he thought that Verity was a possible client or customer and was trying to be polite. But I didn’t want him to be uncomfortable in any way. “Lael, this is my friend Xavier, the one with the yacht. And this is Verity, another friend of mine.” I had my arm around her waist and pulled her a little tighter when I said that.
Lael only nodded and hurriedly left the office with the used-up supplies. Once he was out of earshot, I tried to clarify his behavior. “I don’t think Lael is much for company and strangers. Don’t take it personally.”
I spent the next half hour showing Xavier and Verity around the docks. They both had a few ideas and a lot of questions that I attempted to answer for them. A lot of comments prompted new questions, and I knew that I should have written them all down. I’d never be able to remember everything just off-hand.
But too soon, Verity admitted that she had to go back to work. Xavier walked off and let her and I have a brief, private goodbye. She started walking back to the parking lot after she gave me a sweet kiss and a hug.
“I’ll call you when I get the chance,” she promised. “Oh, and this place is great, Jake! It's going to look so wonderful when you’re all done with it. Bye!”
We parted with a quick hug. “I’ll be seeing you soon, I promise. Bye.” I watched her drive away as I heard Xavier walking up to stand beside me. “She’s George’s daughter, eh? But no relation to Kippy.” I nodded in response. He shook his head and sighed. “Be careful, Header.” He turned to head back to his yacht, but I knew that there was something more going on, so I pursued him.
I called out, “Careful of what? She’s fine, Xavier. There’s nothing there with her to be careful of.” I followed him back, thinking that he must just be kidding about Verity. But to be on the safe side, I probed into the topic a little more. “Do you know something about her that I haven’t
found out yet?”
“Not at all.” Xavier looked back at me, but he continued to walk along the wooden dock. “I only mean… about her being George’s daughter and Kippy’s stepdaughter. That’s a spectacle of a family if I’ve ever seen one.” He certainly had a point about that.
“They do have some issues. I’ll give you that.” But it wasn’t any of my business anyhow, or his. Time for a change in topic, I decided. “Do you have plans for tonight? Any big ideas on how to spend your first night back in Miami?” I had a few for him if he lacked any.
“Lots of research.” Xavier stopped and turned to me before he got back on his boat. “Oh, unless you had something in mind. I don’t really have any plans, per se. Just work things.” He seemed to be more interested in that than in anything as was about to offer him.
I could tell that he wasn’t up for any kind of nightlife or guys’ night either in or out, so I let him get on with whatever he needed or wanted to do.
“I’ll catch up to you tomorrow, huh?” I offered. “See you later on.”
“Sounds fine to me. Talk to you later, Header.” Xavier waved to me as he left for and returned to his yacht.
I stopped in to let Lael know that I was heading home for the rest of the day. I wanted a hot shower, and I needed to make some calls. I thanked him for everything that he was doing and had done. After that, I was homeward bound.
15
Jake
That evening, I received a knock at my condo door and a visitor that I wasn’t expecting in the slightest. Detective Musik stood in the hallway with her red-framed glasses and wearing a pair of jeans and a brown slouch shirt. She was holding a plain notebook and a pen in her hand and looking a little nervous about being there.
“Detective Musik? How are you tonight?” I had a momentary wave of fear pass over me that something had happened to LaShawn, but the look on her face didn’t match that standard. No, this was something else entirely.
“I’ve been better.” She motioned inside my place. “Mind if we don’t do this in the hall, Header?” She sighed, giving off this prickly and aloof vibe. But, as she was a new friend to my old friend, and with the MPD, I didn’t want to irritate her unduly.
“Please, come in.” I backed up, allowing her full access to what my place had to offer. She came in and looked around and down the hall first. I closed the front door behind her and asked if she was thirsty or wanted anything from the kitchen.
“I can make some coffee, but I always have bottled water in the fridge. There’s probably a soda somewhere in there, as well.” I figured that this wasn’t the right time to offer her a beer.
“No, this isn’t a social call, Header.” She walked into the living area and checked out the panorama of the beach from the windows. “That is a great view.” It seemed that impressed her, even if she hadn’t meant for it to.
I wasn’t sure what her motivation was for being here, but I had time to figure it all out, so I let her do her thing.
“It is, thanks.” I really wanted to know what had brought her here, though, so I skipped the usual pleasantries I had for my guests. “So, Detective, how is LaShawn doing?” I wondered if that would throw her off-guard. It wasn’t exactly intentional, but it would help me to judge just what she was doing here, maybe, as I didn’t have a good read on her motivations.
“He’s getting released tomorrow morning,” she informed me. “You’re smart not to go see him. What with that big, old target on your back, Mr. Header.” She was staring me down, and her face gave off no readable emotions. I think she had wanted a reaction to this, but I gave her none. Still, she continued, unfazed. “I appreciate that you’re keeping your distance and staying low. That’s a very good tactic.”
Now I had to ask because there was no way that she could know about the Judge making me a marked man. “You’re going to have to rewind a bit there, Detective. I don’t have any clue what you’re talking about.” My mind raced, and I could think of a few people that might be trying to take me out. Kippy’s warning from when I was back in Puerto Rico came up fresh into my thoughts. But I wanted to play dumb, to see what the MPD had.
“Yeah, I thought that you’d say that. May I sit?” She motioned to the sofa, and I nodded at her. “So, here’s the thing… LaShawn told me why he got shot yesterday morning, and so, being a detective, I started to dig up some information.” She had plopped down and was now sitting with the notebook in her lap, and it was still unopened. “I have an obligation to the people of this city and to my fellow officers and to the law. I want you to understand that, Mr. Header.” She was fighting herself internally. I could see that. Something was bothering her, and for some unknown reason, she’d come to me about it.
I sat opposite her, on the couch across from the sofa and with the coffee table between us. I bided my time, letting her speak for as long as she wanted to about whatever this was going to be about.
She sighed. “However, I was just informed about two hours ago that the man who shot LaShawn had been released into the custody of the DEA. Their story was that Mr. Caris is an asset of theirs. He has higher priority than a confidential informant, even.” Her jaw clenched as she told me this. It was upsetting to her, I could see.
I could believe it, and it would have pissed me off, too. This meant that Judge Fu’s connections within the DEA were still strong, viable, and flexing their abilities even with Agent Nace dead and gone. But what this had to do with me ‘having a target on my back’ left me puzzled.
“That’s not a good sign,” I responded to her comments. I didn’t want to say too much just yet, just enough to keep her talking to me about it. I didn’t think that her dropping the suspect’s name was an accident, either.
She continued. “When I asked my superiors about it, they didn’t even know the whole story and couldn’t give me a good enough reason why we’d let an attempted murderer out. All they could tell me was that a certain Federal Judge approved it and that Mr. Caris was released into the care of an Agent Keim.” She was watching me now, and I could feel that she knew more about me than she was letting on.
With the mention of the name ‘Agent Keim,’ my memories raced back to the seizure at the harbor a few days ago. The male DEA Agent, the overly cocky one, was wearing a badge with ‘Keim’ on it. This couldn’t be a coincidence.
Whatever it was that had been confiscated from the boat was now getting closer to being tied to more, like to the trio using Miami’s forgotten and overlooked population as guinea pigs for their designer drugs. It was coming together in a very nasty way.
It wasn’t much of a leap to think that another corrupt DEA agent was linked to Judge Fu and her Drug Task Force here in Miami. But now, if the trio of murderers that were forcibly injecting people was directly connected to the DEA, that could mean that the Judge’s dealing with the Yabut weren’t over yet, either.
“Agent Keim, huh?” I asked, trying to look interested but ignorant of the person and situation. “You’ll have to forgive me, but does the DEA normally come in and release suspected criminals from your city’s custody?”
“They do not,” she informed me. “As a matter of fact, with an actual Judge giving the okay, it’s become rather dubious to me, and a few others. When I informed LaShawn of this, because of his involvement with this Mr. Caris, he asked me to come and talk to you.” Musik was now evaluating me through her narrowed eyes, behind her glasses. “So, do you have something to tell me, Mr. Header? Completely off the record, of course.”
I wasn’t going to pass up this opportunity for anything. I pressed her on her earlier comments. “First off, what makes you think that I have a target on my back? Was that just an opening line to grab my attention?” It could have been, but I highly doubted it.
She sighed again, maybe becoming exasperated with me. It was hard to tell. “You’re one of those types, huh? You have all the answers but don’t want to share them with those of us trying to help? Okay, fine.” She looked a little perturbed at me, but I
couldn’t really blame her. “You have an international mark on you, Mr. Header. That is, some very bad people have been offered a lot of money to kill you, but I’m guessing that’s kind of run-of-the-mill stuff for you, from what LaShawn told me.”
I really wanted to know exactly what he’d been telling her. I certainly needed to ask him about that the next time I saw him. I was sure he wasn’t saying anything incriminating, but still. We barely knew this woman as it was.
“I’m not going to confirm or deny that, Detective.” I felt that this was the safest answer for now.
“Asked and answered,” she smiled. “We’ve caught a couple of… not nice people trying to get into the city through less than honorable means, and after we had run them, they all came up as trouble.” Her eyes shifted away from me for a second, then back again, all the time processing me and my reactions. “One made a deal to escape extradition and your name came up.”
So, the crap Kippy had told me was true. At least, a little of it was. That meant that the guys in the alley that had tried to kill me really were sent by the Judge to settle up with me over her son’s case.
“Dare I ask who hired that particular person, or is that still under investigation?” There wasn’t a chance she was going to tell me. I got that feeling before the words were out of my mouth.
“I’m not at liberty to say, as yes, it’s under investigation.” She was quick to continue. “But you’re not under any known threat as we speak.” Then her brow wrinkled, and she revised that statement. “At least, I don’t think that you are. But I also have it on good authority that you are more than capable of handling said threats should they appear.” She was testing me, which made a lot of sense from her stance.
“Is that a vote of confidence I hear, Detective?” I smiled to let her know that I was flattered and aware of what she was trying to say. “I’m not worried about myself, but I am concerned about those who… share my sphere from time to time.” I was, of course, referring to my team and my friends. “I do my best to keep them safe, and I will continue to do that, I can promise you. And as for the… threats against me, I know. And I know who placed them there.”