The Last Witness

by W. E. B. Griffin

  Matt nodded. “Nick Antonov has a couple of boats promoting the casino. One is supposed to be out there with Chad and the others. But I think Chad said someone other than Nick is running it.”

  “And they’re doing this why?”

  “Some children’s charity. I forget which one. Entry fee is maybe fifty grand, a drop in the bucket considering the cost of feeding a go-fast. But the quiet big money, just like with college and pro ball, is bet in Vegas and on the side. There are guys at Lucky Stars right now watching these boats on the betting TVs in between pulls on the slots. Not to mention the mob bookies in South Philly are running the odds. Which reminds me: the guy who was head of the Philly mob and just got out of the slam after ten years, Tony the Fixer?”

  “What about him?”

  “He now lives in Palm Beach. Says he’s just working on his tan.”

  “I take it you don’t think so?”

  Matt shook his head. “A condition of his release is that he can’t associate with any wiseguys—which is all he knows in Philly. Otherwise he’s back to jail. But it’s all BS. Fact is he can run the mob from down here, from anywhere, just as he ran it from the slam. And there were plenty of mob hits while he was in there.”

  “Do you think he’s involved with this race?”

  Matt shook his head again. “Not directly. Only with those South Philly bookies taking bets. There’s no racing involved here. It’s a Poker Run. Basically, the boats make five stops, drawing new cards at each one. They started this morning from a marina in the Conch Republic—”

  “Key West?”

  He nodded. “The whole thing is filmed—that was what that helicopter was doing. At each stop, other cameras show the hands as they get played. Then the boat with the best hand wins something like a new Mustang that’s donated by the local Ford dealer. Meantime, the charity gets a fat check.”

  Amanda considered that for a moment, then said, “I think I’ll settle for just writing a check directly to the Shriners while sitting on this nice boat and watching the scenery drift by.”

  In Philadelphia, Amanda could see the Shriners children’s hospital across the street from her office at Temple University Hospital.

  Matt smiled.

  “That’s the woman I love,” he said, as his cell phone began ringing.

  Amanda saw that the caller ID read THE BLACK BUDDHA.

  “What do you think Jason wants?” she said, looking at Matt. “I thought you were off-duty.”

  Lieutenant Jason Washington was Matt’s immediate boss in the Homicide Unit. He was enormous—six-three, two-twenty-five—articulate, impeccably tailored, and had very dark skin. He also was one of the best homicide detectives on the East Coast, from Maine to Miami, and did not take any offense at all to being referred to as the Black Buddha.

  “No disputing the fact that I’m black,” he said, “and a Buddha by definition is a venerated and enlightened individual.”

  Amanda grabbed the phone, smiling at Matt as she put it to her ear.

  Matt shook his head, but he was grinning.

  “Well, hello, Jason!” she said. “I do hope this is a social call. How is Martha?”

  Amanda’s father, before being offered retirement while recovering from a bullet to the hip from the robber he’d ultimately shot dead, had worked with Washington in Northeast Detectives a decade earlier. Charley Law and Jason Washington had become close, and Martha Washington long had served as a sort of protective aunt toward Amanda.

  It was no secret to any of them that Amanda—who said she’d grown up worrying that every day she saw her father leave for work would be the last she’d see him alive, and then he did get shot—would be the polar opposite of upset if Matt were suddenly to find an occupation that did not involve hazardous duty.

  After a pause, Matt heard Washington’s sonorous voice. Then he saw Amanda’s eyebrows go up behind her big round dark sunglasses.

  “Thank you. Of course. Here he is,” she said, and handed the phone to Matt.

  “Hey, Jason,” he said, watching Amanda watch him. He smiled. “Is the department falling apart without me?”

  “Matthew, my apology for interrupting your romantic getaway,” Jason said, his deep tone sincere.

  “Always happy to hear from you. You know that. What’s up?”

  “This is delicate, but I need you to do something for me. Discretion is paramount.”

  “Anything.”

  “I’m going to mention a name, and I do not want you repeating it during our discussion right now.”

  “Okay . . .” Matt said, reaching down to adjust the autopilot as an excuse to turn his face away from Amanda.

  “As soon as absolutely possible—and without it triggering further questions—I need you to figure out a way to work Margaret McCain into a conversation with Amanda, asking if she has heard from her lately. And, if you can manage it without her becoming suspicious, also ask if any of her other friends or associates have.”

  Maggie McCain? Matt thought, fighting the automatic urge to glance at Amanda.

  What the hell is that about?

  “You got it, Jason. Can I ask why?”

  “No, you cannot. I’m sorry. Call me when you have an answer, Matthew.”

  [FIVE]

  Latitude 25 Degrees 44 Minutes 71 Seconds North

  Longitude 81 Degrees 58 Minutes 58 Seconds West

  The Straits of Florida, Southeast of Key West

  Sunday, November 16, 4:15 P.M.

  “Lucky One, Lucky One. Tin Can, over,” Jorge Perez’s handheld Motorola radio crackled with the voice of Miguel Treto as he maneuvered the sleek fifty-foot Cigarette Marauder at the back of a pack of ten other high-performance boats.

  A wiry, tall thirty-four-year-old, Perez had been born in Miami of Cuban parents six months after they fled the Communist island-nation. He was deeply tanned and had short black hair and a goatee. His intense brown eyes were shielded by dark polarized sunglasses. He wore khaki shorts, a dark blue linen shirt with a white tropical flower motif, and tan leather deck shoes.

  The open cockpit had seven high-back deeply padded leather seats. Perez was at the helm. The other six seats were filled with stunning blondes and brunettes with bronze tans, the girls all in their twenties, all more or less clad in the tiniest of bikinis. Two were sunning themselves topless.

  On both sides of the white Marauder’s long hull and on its foredeck were images of a giant pair of rolling red dice and the wording:

  MORE WINNERS, MORE MONEY!

  LUCKY STARS CASINO & ENTERTAINMENT

  PHILADELPHIA, ATLANTIC CITY, NEW ORLEANS, BILOXI

  The boats in the pack were of a variety of sizes and styles—but all designed for speed. A few had simple solid-color hulls. Most, though, like the Marauder, featured wild graphics covering their enormous decks and hulls—everything from stylized U.S. flags to skull-and-crossbones to racing motifs with black-and-white checkered flags and circled numbers. The boat running directly ahead of Perez’s resembled a giant can of the energy beverage NRG!

  As the pack of go-fasts—most of which also had attractive young women aboard—followed the island chain northward, Perez had the Marauder running not even at half throttle. The speed readout in the corner of the Global Positioning Satellite screen indicated forty-six miles an hour.

  With three 1,075-horsepower Mercury Racing engines, the Marauder could hit a cruise speed of seventy-five miles an hour and a top speed of 124. In addition to the cockpit seats, the area below deck had room for another eight passengers. The nicely furnished cabin, heavily insulated and air-conditioned, resembled what one would expect to find aboard a private jet aircraft, complete with plush leather couches, a high-end entertainment system, and a flat-screen television.

  In the cabin were two sunburned, balding, olive-skinned, middle-aged men, both wearing khaki shorts and ba
ggy Cuban guayabera shirts that didn’t conceal their paunches. Each sat with an attractive twenty-something bikinied blonde in his lap. They all were watching the Poker Run on the TV as a bikinied redhead poured them more frozen piña coladas from a blender.

  —

  Perez grabbed the handheld and keyed the mic.

  “Go, Tin Can.”

  “Just saw your first wave of boats pass. Over.”

  “Roger that. I’m running near the middle of it. And L-Five is about ten minutes back in the second wave. Over.”

  “Got it. I’m tracking your positions on GPS. We just started the first off-loading. Should be complete in twenty. What about the Red Stripe? Over.”

  Perez sighed, then keyed the mic again.

  “Stand by, Tin Can.”

  Jorge Perez then said impatiently into his Motorola radio: “Lucky Five, Lucky Five. Lucky One. Did you copy Tin Can? Over.”

  Lucky Five was Perez’s cousin Carlos, a diminutive thirty-year-old who Perez occasionally taunted by accusing him of having a Napoleon complex. He was at the helm of a forty-eight-foot Fountain Express Cruiser, one of the Poker Run boats without any graphic design. Its low-profile deep blue hull practically blended in with the sea.

  Riding with Carlos was just one twenty-something, an amazingly attractive brunette whom Perez said he was sending along “so you won’t look like a fucking maricón—despite your pingita.”

  Carlos had wondered if the girl spoke, or at least somehow understood, Cuban—she had smirked at Perez’s accusation that he might resemble a homosexual with a tiny prick—and that was only compounded as she wordlessly spent the day sunning and sipping the French champagne she found in the galley of the luxurious cabin.

  Being ignored really pissed him off.

  “L-One, L-Five,” Carlos replied, sounding annoyed. “I heard it. No problem hooking up with Tin Can in twenty.”

  “But will you be alone?” Perez said pointedly, letting his Latin temper slip. “What the hell is up with Red Stripe? Over . . .”

  Red Stripe, the beer brewed on the Caribbean island of Jamaica, was one of Perez’s favorites. He had a case of it iced down, along with a variety of other imported cervezas, in the aft cooler. But “Red Stripe” also was the code name that Perez had picked to mean any United States law enforcement asset, in this case particularly that of the U.S. Coast Guard, which emblazoned its boats, helicopters, and airplanes with its crossed-anchor logo within a crimson-colored forward-slanting stripe.

  Fifteen minutes earlier, Lucky Five had radioed—somewhat hysterically—that just as his pack of ten go-fasts droned past an idling Coast Guard SPC-LE—a thirty-three-foot-long aluminum-hulled “Special Purpose Craft—Law Enforcement”—the boat had immediately throttled up and begun chasing the pack.

  And chasing him. Or so Carlos had feared.

  Lucky Five was running at the back of the pack, which was some fifteen minutes ahead of the third group of ten that brought up the rear of the entire line of thirty-one Poker Run boats.

  Perez really had had no choice but to order that Carlos keep the Fountain at the back, because there it would attract the least attention. But it also made Lucky Five the easiest to cull from the herd if, for example, the Coast Guard wanted to perform what Perez derided as a “courtesy inspection.”

  Enforcing maritime law on the high seas—from looking for drug smugglers to counting life jackets—was a mission of the Coast Guard. Captains whose vessels were stopped and found to be in compliance would suffer only a short delay, generally from a courteous but professional boarding crew.

  Perez more or less sneered at the thought of the Coast Guard SPC giving chase. Powered by three 300-horsepower outboards, the lightweight SPC would have to run hard to catch the fast Fountain. And the Marauder, with triple 1,075-horsepower engines, would easily leave the SPC in its wake.

  But not for long.

  Perez was acutely aware that all that the Coast Guard had to do was call in for support—including scrambling aircraft, if necessary—and there would be nowhere for anyone to run.

  Perez had made sure that, like his Marauder, Carlos’s Fountain was completely in compliance with all laws.

  If only for the moment, he thought.

  It was common knowledge that if the cops really wanted to stop him—or, for that matter, any vessel operating in U.S. waters—they only had to declare that the vessel was operating in an unsafe manner.

  The Coasties could easily board his boat with any excuse. They could say they saw the shitter discharging overboard, then tell him, “Guess it’s okay after all. Better safe than sorry. Have a nice day.”

  But if they pick up on his nervousness, and keep an eye on him, we’re totally screwed.

  “L-One, L-Five,” came Carlos’s reply after a moment, his tone sounding relieved. “All clear. Red Stripe turned toward shore. Looks like he’s headed for Looe Key.” He added, “Maybe some tourist got a snorkel full of water on the reef. Over.”

  Perez grunted. He shook his head as his eyes scanned the speedboats in his pack, then the waters beyond the pack where the coral reef was. He did not see the Red Stripe.

  Looe Key? You better hope not.

  That’s close to where we’re headed, you fucking idiot!

  “Stay focused!” Perez snapped. “L-One standing by.”

  Perez dropped the handheld into its holder beside where the in-dash VHF radio was mounted. Wedged in the lip of the VHF faceplate were four playing cards, a pair of diamonds and a pair of kings. The readout screen on the faceplate cycled, showing the radio was monitoring channel 16—the international frequency for distress and general calls—and channel 79.

  The display then locked on 79, and the loudspeaker came to life with an excited young female voice.

  “Attention all Poker Run captains,” she announced, her tone over-the-top chipper. “Headquarters station calling. Wave one is about to arrive at our fifth stop, Lost Key Resort, where boats get their last playing cards. Wave two is approximately ten minutes behind, and wave three, the last wave, left Key West fifteen minutes ago. So far only one boat’s dropped out, due to a mechanical problem. Keep safe out there! HQ headed for Lost Key and we’re standing by on channel 79. . . .”

  Perez sighed, then reached to the helm and turned down the volume on the VHF. He looked back and watched the lumbering cargo ship fading into the distance.

  —

  Ten minutes later, Carlos picked up the handheld radio and said: “Visual made. Coming up on my two o’clock. Should overtake in five—repeat five—minutes. Over.”

  “L-Five, Tin Can. I see you on-screen. Understand five minutes.”

  Carlos glanced at the gorgeous brunette as he reached for the Fountain’s throttles. She was napping, her empty champagne cup tipped over in her lap.

  He retarded the three big diesels slightly. The speed indicator on the dash and on the readout on the screen of the Global Positioning Satellite receiver both dropped from fifty to thirty-five mph.

  The pack quickly pulled away from the Fountain. When he was about a hundred yards back, Carlos looked over his right shoulder, saw no other boats, and turned the wheel to the right. Then, lining up the cargo ship with the tip of his bow, he bumped the throttles up until the speed indicators read sixty-five.

  He glanced back to his left. The high-performance boats cut across the water, their frothy white V-shaped wakes scoring the deep blue surface.

  No one seemed to notice that their pack now numbered nine.

  —

  Six minutes later, Miguel Treto’s voice crackled over the radio: “L-Five, Tin Can. Approach at the stern, starboard side. No lines. My crew will hold you alongside.”

  “Got it.”

  Carlos saw a white thirty-foot-long center console fishing boat come out from the far side of the Nuevo Día, crossing in front of her bow. There looked
to be maybe ten aboard—young men and women—plus a burly, shirtless captain with dreadlocks.

  The passengers were quickly moving under a cover at the front of the boat as it picked up speed and headed toward land.

  —

  Carlos deftly maneuvered the Fountain into the shadow of the Nuevo Día, nudging up against four rubber bumpers hanging on either side of the boarding ladder. A pair of long aluminum poles with hooks reached down and held the boat secure against the bumpers.

  Carlos glanced at the brunette, who now craned her neck looking up to the top of the ladder. He did, too, and saw that an attractive young blonde in a sundress had already started down the rungs.

  He crossed the cockpit, preparing to help her step from the ladder onto the Fountain. He looked up again and grinned. He had a perfect angle right up her dress—and saw she wore no panties.

  —

  The brunette led the last of the girls into the cabin as the long aluminum pole next to Carlos started being pulled upward. About a minute later, it reappeared with the handles of an enormous black duffel bag looped around its hook. The pole lowered the stuffed duffel to the deck of the Fountain, then pulled back up and lowered a second one.

  Carlos dragged them to the transom, opened a hatch there in the deck, and dropped the bags into the dry-storage hold below.

  —

  As the Fountain began drifting away from the cargo ship, Carlos spun the wheel and gave the port engine about twice the throttle of the others, causing the Fountain to turn clockwise almost in its own length. He then started to straighten up the wheel as he added more throttle to the other two engines, balancing out the rpm’s. Then he pushed all three throttles at once. The Fountain practically leapt forward, and in almost no time was hitting sixty-five mph.