by Matt Lincoln
It was more the way she kept catching him sneaking glances at her, and how he looked away fast when he saw her staring. He seemed like he was watching her. Still, he didn’t move when she climbed into the taxi, and he didn’t look up once as it drove away, even though she watched through the back window until she couldn’t see him anymore.
Clearly, it wasn’t the man she’d seen on the cliff. The possible killer had been black, and this man was white. Unfortunately, there was still something about the guy with the newspaper that made her nervous, edgy.
She was just being paranoid. Maybe. Probably. Agent Marston, Ethan, didn’t seem concerned that someone would come after her, but she couldn’t manage to shake the feeling of trouble that had invaded her since she found the body in that cave. Despite the uneasy feeling, she didn’t want to hide in her hotel. She’d never been to Florida before, and she might as well get a taste of it while she was on Donald’s dime.
“I’m sorry, I’ve changed my mind,” she said to the cab driver a few minutes after she’d given him the address of the hotel to drop her off. “I think I’d like to get some dinner. Can you recommend any good restaurants in the area?”
The driver, a short and balding man with a laid-back demeanor, glanced at her in the rearview mirror. “What kind of food you looking for, and how much you looking to spend on it?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Anything that’s really good, whatever it costs,” she said with a half-excited smile. “It’s not my money, anyway. My boss is paying, so I might as well make it count.”
The driver let out a laugh. “Best kind of dinner’s the free kind,” he said. “In that case, I’d say you want Chez Rockport, up on the harbor front. Pretty place, great food, terribly overpriced.”
“That sounds great,” she said with a conspiratorial grin. “Can you take me there?”
“Will do.”
It didn’t take long to reach Chez Rockport, and it was a pretty place. A long, two-story white building with a teal blue roof and trim, set on a private dock on a street lined with restaurants, bars, and shops. Tessa smiled, her happiness with the recommendation plain as she paid the driver, including a healthy tip.
The place looked busy but not completely packed. She didn’t go inside right away. It was a gorgeous night, the sun just beginning to set over the sparkling expanse of water, and she walked to a nearby railing to stand and look out across the harbor as she breathed in the tang of the ocean that saturated the air.
When Tessa finally turned to head for the restaurant, movement across the street caught her eye. She wasn’t sure exactly why until she realized that a different cab had stopped on the opposite side of the road from Chez Rockport, and the man who might have been watching her at the agency building climbed from the back.
At least, for one brief, heart-stopping moment, she thought it was him. The hair looked the same, but he wasn’t wearing sunglasses and he was dressed in a tan button-down shirt and dark slacks instead of a suit. He also didn’t glance in her direction, as far as she could tell.
It couldn’t be the same man. Even though there was a strong resemblance, she convinced herself that it wasn’t him.
Still, her heart pounded too quickly until she entered the restaurant and got out of his sight.
A hostess greeted her at the door and brought her to a table toward the back of the crowded dining room right away. She asked for the house wine, looked over the menu, and when a server came to her table not long after she was seated, she ordered sliced filet mignon with wild mushrooms and fig sauce, pomme frites on the side, and a chef salad with house dressing… because why not? Again, Donald was paying for it.
While she waited for her meal, she thought about Special Agent Ethan Marston.
He knew more than he was telling her, of course. She couldn’t imagine that a federal agent would confide in her about an investigation she was barely involved with outside of finding the body and possibly being followed, although she wasn’t going to think about that.
That wasn’t the reason he was on her mind, though. She’d been impressed with him from the moment she saw him, his intelligence and take-charge attitude appealed to her. Of course, it didn’t hurt that he was damned good-looking. Those direct blue eyes of his didn’t seem to miss anything.
She wouldn’t mind at all if he was here across the table from her right now, actually. Maybe she could convince him to have dinner with her tomorrow night. There were plenty of restaurants in Miami to try, and she could expense both meals to her account with the magazine.
Plus, he was coming to her hotel tonight. That might be even better than dinner.
By the time her food arrived, she realized she was practically starving and dove right in. The cab driver had been right about this place being good. The salad was crisp and sweet, the pomme frites cooked precisely to the perfect texture, and the steak just about melted in her mouth. Chez Rockport easily rivaled some of the best restaurants she’d been to in Manhattan.
After dinner, she got a second glass of wine and decided to indulge in the gelato trio they had on offer. It was just as scrumptious as the food had been, though she didn’t manage to finish the entire dessert. Still, it was definitely worth ordering.
By the time she asked for the check, the population in the restaurant had thinned out a bit. She suspected this was just a temporary lull between the early and late dinner crowds since it was Saturday night at the beginning of tourist season. When the server returned with her receipt after running her card, she added a thirty percent tip and a smiley face above her signature, silently daring Donald to comment on her tipping habits when she got back to New York. She knew he never would, though. He’d just roll his eyes and mutter something about how he could never find service as great as she apparently did wherever she went.
She always tipped thirty percent, regardless of whether it was a server, a valet, a barista, or hotel housekeeping. Donald could afford it, and anyone who worked a job that involved tipping deserved it.
With a quick stop in the restroom, Tessa threaded her way through the chattering business of the dining room toward the bar at the front of the restaurant. She’d seen a service phone near the entrance that she assumed could be used to call a taxi. There was a sign on the wall above the phone to that effect, so she picked it up and followed the instructions, reaching a dispatch service that informed her a cab would arrive in ten minutes.
She hung up the phone, turned away, and from the corner of her eye spotted a man at the bar who’d apparently been looking at her and was just turning back to the drink in front of him. Brown hair, tan shirt, dark slacks.
It was the man who’d gotten out of the taxi across the street outside. The one she’d thought might have followed her from the agency. That theory suddenly seemed a lot more plausible.
Tessa’s heart jumped into her throat and stayed there, hammering a rapid beat as she pushed through the small crowd gathered near the entrance, murmuring an occasional breathy “excuse me.” She stole glances over her shoulder at the man. He made no move to look around or leave his seat, but he could see her. She had no doubt he was watching her in the mirrored wall that ran the length of the bar.
Once she got outside, she gulped air and looked around almost frantically, as if the taxi she was told would arrive in ten minutes was somehow already waiting for her. Of course, it wasn’t. She forced herself to move casually as she walked off a little way down the sidewalk, toward the other restaurants and bars on this busy strip of road.
There were so many people around. Surely, if this man was associated with the killer and looking for her, he wouldn’t try anything with so many witnesses, would he?
Tessa remembered Agent Marston’s little joke about CSI and Law and Order and realized that maybe she didn’t know anything about any of this. Maybe having witnesses wouldn’t matter to whoever he was if he was really following her.
He couldn’t be, though. That kind of thing only happened in movies and TV shows. She had to
stop being ridiculous and relax, enjoy herself in Miami. The taxi would be here soon, and she would head back to the hotel, maybe watch one of those movies in which a woman was being followed by a shady, suspicious figure, and wait for Ethan to get there.
Just when she managed to catch a breath, she saw him come out of the restaurant. Tan-shirt, dark-slacks man, formerly sunglasses-and-newspapers man. She was sure of it now. He glanced in her direction and for just a moment he looked startled as if he hadn’t expected to see her, and then he turned quickly and walked a few steps in the other direction. He didn’t go very far.
Screw this, Tessa thought with a vehemence that surprised her. She wasn’t going to spend the rest of her time in Florida looking over her shoulder, wondering if every stranger she happened to spot more than once was following her. Instead of running off, she spun and headed toward the man. There were plenty of people around out here. If he meant her harm, surely someone would stop him or call the police.
He noticed her approach, and panic flickered briefly in his eyes. He looked left and right as if searching for someone who could save him from the impending confrontation, and then he appeared to decide on a neutral expression, as if he had no idea she was coming to speak with him.
She’d gotten to within ten feet of him when there was a sharp, echoing crack from somewhere in the distance. At the same time, the man in the tan shirt jerked back with an utterly shocked expression on his face, as if someone had just told him that his dear old mother had died having bondage sex with a stranger in a sleazy hotel room. He staggered sideways, turned his head and met her gaze directly. His mouth opened like he was going to speak.
Blood poured out of it instead. That was when she noticed the rapidly spreading stain on his shirt, just before he dropped to his knees and keeled over sideways, his limbs jerking and twitching.
Tessa gradually realized that people were screaming in horror. “Oh my God!” one shrill voice rang out above the sudden, discordant noise. “I think she just shot that man!”
She blinked several times. Was that woman talking about her? Blankly, she stared at her empty hands as if she expected to suddenly find a gun in one of them. As she looked down, another one of those sharp, rolling cracks split the air, and a small section of sidewalk exploded in front of her feet.
Tessa stopped thinking. She spun on a heel and ran.
Chapter 11
I couldn’t believe Holm had talked me into coming to a place called Mike’s Tropical Tango Hut.
My partner’s big find was in the middle of a strip of evening entertainment businesses along the harbor front, on the same block as Chez Rockport, one of the biggest draws in Miami. The place was clearly arranged to catch people leaving the fancy wharf restaurant who weren’t ready for their night on the town to end. Everything about this bar screamed tourist trap, from the cheesy bright colors of the furnishings to the bird-themed décor dripping with flamingoes and toucans. Not to mention there were enough fake palm trees in here to qualify it as a jungle.
Still, the drinks were good, the prices were fair, and the atmosphere was bright and positive. I’d vote it the bar least likely to devolve into an ugly brawl.
We’d found seats at the far end of the bar, where we could see the whole place. Holm was finishing up his second boilermaker while I was still working on the whiskey sour I’d ordered when we arrived half an hour ago, mindful of my later appointment with the photographer.
I still wasn’t sure exactly why I’d offered to check up on her personally, but it felt like the right thing to do.
“So, Cobra Jon,” Holm said out of the blue after we’d spent a few minutes drinking without conversation.
I waited for him to elaborate, but he didn’t. “What about him?” I asked.
“I don’t know. I guess it’s just… we’ve never worked a case with a direct connection to this guy before, right?”
“Don’t think so,” I said after a moment’s thought. “There was that body in the shipping container we investigated last year that was linked to the Black Mambas, but the DEA took point on that halfway through. Had somebody undercover on the U.S. end.”
Holm nodded. “Right, I remember that one. And the lifeboat thing around Thanksgiving, wasn’t that related too?”
“More or less.”
That had been a tough one. A lifeboat had washed ashore near a naval base containing the bodies of two women who’d been brutalized and stabbed multiple times. MBLIS had been called in because the women were Bahamian natives, and it turned out one was the girlfriend of a Black Mambas member, the other the wife of a Congo King. The murders hadn’t been gang-related, though. Their killer was American, a moderately wealthy and privileged bastard who’d figured he could just help himself to whatever he wanted in the Bahamas, including human beings.
We’d managed to track the son of a bitch down and arrest him before the gangs could extract their own justice, but sometimes I wondered whether I would have minded too much if they’d gotten to him first. What he’d done to those women was horrific. Still, justice had been served, and Leland Foster was never going to leave the federal prison cell where he currently rotted.
“Did you have a point about those cases?” I asked Holm, who’d fallen silent again.
“Yeah. Well, not really, but sort of,” he said. “The point was Cobra Jon.”
“Again… what about him?”
Holm downed a generous slug of his boilermaker, nearly emptying the glass. “With what we’ve got so far, it looks like he didn’t pull the trigger. Benta did. So, we can pin the murder on the lieutenant, but we’ll have nothing on the boss-man.”
“Our job is to solve the murder,” I said.
“Yeah, and whose job is it to stop Cobra Jon from hunting us down when we take out his right-hand man?”
“That would be the RBPF,” I said slowly as I caught his point and drummed my fingers on the bar counter. The chances of the Royal Bahamas Police Force actually making a move against Cobra Jon hovered around zero. Those who weren’t accepting kickbacks from the gang leader were too terrified of him to attempt a confrontation. Some of them were both. “I guess it’s up to us, then.”
Holm frowned. “What is?”
“Taking down Cobra Jon.”
“Are you insane?” he blurted.
“Well, I’m no shrink, but I’d have to agree with your friend there,” a nearby male voice said.
I looked toward the voice and found a bartender in a tropical green apron standing on the other side of the counter, watching us with bemused interest. He was an older guy, average height and average build with a strong resemblance to Tom Selleck in Magnum P.I., right down to the wavy hair and Chevron mustache. He even dimpled when he smiled.
“Thought you could use a refill,” the bartender said with a nod at Holm’s close-to-empty glass. “Plus, I couldn’t help overhearing your mention of Cobra Jon. You clearly know who he is, so imagine my surprise when I heard you say you want to take him down.”
There was a reserved, cautious look in the bartender’s eyes beneath the friendly surface, and it didn’t take me long to figure out what that look meant. Without having heard the entire conversation, he thought we were headed for trouble of the stupid kind. Probably pegged us as either small-time criminals looking to make a name, or at best, gung-ho bounty hunters with no clue what we might be getting into. Either way, I read him as about half a step from calling the cops for our own safety.
Despite the fact that he’d misread the situation, I liked that about him.
“You can back off the panic button, buddy,” I said with a smirk as I pulled my badge out and showed it to the bartender. “I’m Special Agent Marston, and this is Special Agent Holm. Don’t worry, we’re off duty.”
There was relief in the bartender’s laugh as he leaned forward to read the ID. “MBLIS, huh?” he asked with a thoughtful look. “That’s… Military Border Liaison Investigative Services, right?”
“Wow, I’m impressed!” Holm
grinned. “Nobody knows what that stands for.”
The man shrugged. “I’m a bartender. We know everything,” he said as he offered a hand to Holm, and then me. “Mike Birch. Pleased to meet you.”
“Would that be Mike of Mike’s Tropical Tango Hut?” I asked.
He laughed again. “One and the same. Yes, I am the mostly proud owner of this fine establishment. So why, you may ask, am I serving drinks?” He leaned forward, propped an arm on the bar, and continued in a loud, conspiratorial whisper. “Because overhearing people’s conversations is a hell of a lot more interesting than lying on a beach all day.”
“I hear you. Beaches are overrated,” I said with a chuckle.
“Exactly, and this is the most interesting conversation I’ve heard all week in here.” Mike pointed to Holm’s glass. “Ready for another boilermaker?”
Holm flashed a sheepish smile. “Maybe just a draft this time. I should probably lay off the whiskey since some people are making me look like a dumb frat boy,” he said with a pointed glance at my half-full tumbler.
“Yeah, and some people don’t need any help looking like a frat boy,” I shot back with a smirk. “Hell, I’d be on my third or fourth by now if I didn’t have something else to do after this.”
Holm nudged me. “Something, or someone?”
“I’m guessing that means you’re good without a refill, Special Agent Marston,” Mike said with amusement as he grabbed Holm’s mug. “Let me get your draft.”
“Thanks. And we’re not working right now, even though it sounds like it, so you can drop the special agent bit,” Holm said. “He’s Ethan, and I’m Robbie.”
“Got it. Back soon.”
The owner-slash-bartender started making his way toward the taps at the front of the bar, and Holm sat back with a grin. “See? I told you this place was worth checking out.”
“I guess it’s not half-bad,” I admitted.
“I mean, it’s a little… colorful, but I like it.” He panned a gaze over the crowds at the bar, around the tables, and moving in and out of the secondary room where they presumably kept the dart boards and pool tables. “I’m digging the female-to-male ratio, too. I’d say it’s, what, three to one?”
