“And?”
“Whatever.”
“It’s a little girl, man. I understand the statewide was threatened and that whatever she was doing to take down Pedro Vasquez has got a big Do Not Enter sign on it. I get all that. But at some point, fuck jurisdiction. I just want to go in and have a look around.”
“Why?” Jarvis breathed heavily into the phone, a rattling sound. “This Vasquez family — this ain’t exactly lifestyles of the rich and famous, you know? Their dope running nets about a hundred grand annually. They make more off the fucking crab claws.”
“Yeah but they have boats. They have property. Ways to hide a kid — get somebody the fuck out of Dodge.”
“Yeah, well . . .” It was in Jarvis’s voice: he was another one that didn’t think the girl had made it.
“Let me ask you something,” Tom said. “If I was looking for someone who might be into Pedro Vasquez for some money, or maybe being blackmailed by him, where should I start?”
“Get out the phone book.”
“Really? Come on . . .”
“You know, I spoke with Lauren Blythe not long ago. She says you’re a good cop, but you’re too individually wrapped. Got what happened to your brother on the brain. And maybe you have an axe to grind with vice narcotics. Maybe you liken everything to what happened to your brother — he owed something, got muscled into running dope. But Vasquez doesn’t run numbers. And no dogs, no poker, no sports betting — all that’s Mario Palumbo territory.”
“Lauren Blythe told you all that?”
“Pedro Vasquez thinks everybody owes him. He’s a piece-of-shit dope dealer who wants to get bigger but can’t because he’s a fuck up. I don’t know what else there is to say.”
“The theory is that the stone-crabbing and dope-running don’t earn enough for Pedro to bond out, so he needs to rob the attorney that put him there.”
“And get what? I heard the burglars got some loose cash and T-bonds. One necklace or something — not worth more than a grand or two.”
“Exactly. They didn’t exactly strike it rich.”
More breathing. “So? You got some theory you’re cooking. I can smell it over the phone.”
Tom didn’t answer. His suspicion that the burglars had stolen something else — paperwork, maybe, something Vasquez thought might help his case or hurt Balfour — was just that: a suspicion. “I’d like to ask you . . . You know your CI was headed up to Tampa to burn down a rim shop?”
“No.”
“I had a few beers with him last night. He says Pedro was friendly with a correctional officer at Jerome.”
“Sorry, but half those COs up there have got something going with the inmates. It’s just the reality. It helps to remember that the COs are in jail, too.”
“You know the CO who liked to talk to Pedro?”
“Maybe a little bit.”
“Could you put something together on him, send it to me?”
“I’ll think about it.”
“So listen — I know a little bit about the Vasquez operation, but not nearly as much as you. If I’m going get everything I can about an ongoing threat, the burglary — if I’m going to recover this little girl — I need your help, Jarvis.”
Jarvis let out a sigh. “All right. I’m gonna tell you this, but if my name ever comes up, if any of this comes back to me, I’ll deny everything. And then I’ll find you and put my foot in your ass.”
“You can try. It’s a little tight in there, though. Hey, look — I’m not going to use anything directly.”
“You think you’re bad-ass enough to handle Valentina Vasquez and her crew?”
“I just want to talk to her. I mean, I have a pretty decent vocabulary.”
“Valentina Vasquez is as slick as they come. The way this thing works is, the Vasquez crew takes one of the crabbing boats way out, and then they meet a Mexican cartel out over the water. We don’t know who for sure — could be Gulf Cartel, could be Sinaloa — you also got guys who organize for multiple cartels. They offload the dope and the Vasquez family gives them the cash. We don’t see it — we don’t have the marine patrol to cover water that big, and if they saw us, the deal would fall apart anyway. They’d see us coming and dump everything in the drink before we got there. You can’t surprise anyone out on miles of open water.”
“Okay.”
“Then they pack it in with the stone crab claws. It goes up the Gulf Coast into Fort Myers and into Tampa. That’s as far as we’ve tracked it. Like I said, we’re not talking about the biggest dope operation, but Valentina is looking to take it to the next level. With Vasquez family rival Mario Palumbo awaiting trial, she’s seizing the day and making moves. And maybe she’s looking for payback for her brother Edgar’s death because that, as you know, hooks into Mario Palumbo. Palumbo was basically trying to absorb the Vasquez business — like a takeover.”
“Right.”
“Okay, so we’re talking about a woman motivated by revenge, motivated to get her father out of prison, motivated by the opportunity to become the premier dope runner in southwest Florida. You think she’s going to let some couple of hired guns and a little Mexican girl get in the way of that? And not cover her tracks? You know what she would’ve done? These guys come down to Evvy’s with the money and the bonds and whatever else and the little girl in the back of their vehicle — she’s going to ice all three of them. She’s gonna take what they’ve got and she’s going to kill them, sink them in the ocean. Little girl takes a lungful of seawater and that’s that.”
“She could’ve been crippled by the hurricane — not able to handle business that way.”
“Nothing cripples this woman. And you’re full of could-haves. Listen to me . . . I’m telling you stories outside of school, sticking my neck out, and you’re not listening. You want to go down there, Lange, and do your poking around, you do it with my blessing. I’ll make the popcorn and watch. But you’re not going to accomplish a fucking thing except get a target on your back. Right now, you’re nobody. You go sticking your nose in and you’re going to be somebody with a problem.”
Jarvis hung up. In addition to being chatty, he had a flair for the dramatic. Tom scratched his head. His dark hair was getting long, starting to curl around his ears and neck. Time for a cut. It was too damn hot.
CHAPTER EIGHT: A HUNK OF BREAD IN A KOI POND
At Carnestown, he took a road that ran the edge of Plantation Island with unbroken blue sky above and white mangrove to either side of him. The road curved for a long time and then there was Evvy’s at its end. Tom counted three boats up on scaffolding, two stone crab boats and one skiff. They all looked battered, with chipped paint and dents; the entire wheelhouse of one had been smashed flat. A large warehouse gaped with two open bays — dark inside. A smaller, single-story building was down to the board and batten, its exterior siding sheared away by the storm.
Tom parked on the outer edge of the dirt parking lot and got out into the sudden quiet. There was no one around that he could see, just two pickup trucks, a nice-looking sedan and a Gator cart sitting beside a metal shed that looked ready to collapse in the heat. A patch of dark dirt nearby looked like it might have been stained by oil or blood. A couple of holes in the corrugated metal could’ve been from bullets.
He walked toward the docks, a bay for mooring boats encircled by mangrove, gnarly vegetation that seemed to just sit atop the water. A generator turned over somewhere out of sight and Tom halted. A guy came out from behind the open warehouse, cleaning his hands off on a rag. He moved toward Tom with a squinty expression. There was a bruise under one of his eyes.
“Help you?”
Mick Lupton: Pedro’s friend from Jerome Correctional, according to Wilbur Beck; just a guy who worked on the boats, according to Skokie.
Tom showed his badge and Lupton stopped walking. “Domestic Security. How you doing today?”
“Fine.”
“Pretty messed up around here. Looks like you guys got hit pretty bad.
Man, what a thing, huh?”
“What do you want?”
“Well, I guess . . . Is the owner here?”
Lupton’s gaze traveled to the big warehouse. Tom caught the scent of rotten fish, wafting out from the open bays.
“Maybe she’s here,” Lupton said. “I don’t know.” He moved like a con, from the tension in his shoulders to the way he set his feet — like he was ready for Tom to come at him with a shank.
Tom was about to say something in reply when the door of the smaller building opened and a woman emerged and started over. He had seen no pictures of Valentina Vasquez, but this woman was striking to look at, with high cheekbones, wide dark eyes and pitch-black hair. She looked only at Tom.
“Hi. Something we can help you with?”
“Are you Valentina Vasquez?”
“I am.”
He showed her the badge and moved his sunglasses up onto his head so she could see his eyes. “My name is Tom Lange, ma’am. I was hoping we could talk a little bit.”
Her pleasant expression turned sad. “I heard about that little girl.”
“Yeah. Pretty awful thing.”
Pedro’s eldest daughter looked away for a moment and then back at Tom. The way she shielded her eyes from the sun, tilted her head and squinted, the way she looked so “aw-gee” innocent in that moment, Tom felt something squeeze around his stomach. He’d met people like Valentina, come to think of it. People who smiled when they hurt you.
“That’s what you’re here for? You’re looking for her?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Come on into my office.” She glanced at Lupton. “Mick? How we coming with the first unit?”
“I replaced the coils,” Lupton said, watching Tom out of the corner of his eye. “I think we’re good.”
“All right. Let’s keep going with the boats.”
“You got it.”
Lupton gave Tom another look and then walked away, a big man lumbering in the heat.
There were no lights on inside Valentina’s office, but it was plenty bright enough. An air-conditioning unit sat beneath an open window. The air was still and humid, worse than outdoors.
“No A/C. Nothing is working. Sorry about that.” Valentina took a seat at a desk and Tom sat across from her. “What a disaster.”
“Naples is still out of power, too. And my truck, would you believe it? My truck’s air conditioning died.”
“Did it get damaged in the storm?”
“It’s just a piece of crap.”
She grinned, raw and distant, then furrowed her brow and looked off into the space beside her. “My friend is in East Naples. Still flooding going on there.” She shook her head then focused on him. “So, you’re here because of my father.”
“Ma’am?”
“Call me Evvy. You say ‘ma’am’ and I think my mother’s here.”
“That’s you? You’re Evvy?”
“My initials are V. V. When we were kids my father called me Evvy.”
“How long have you been here?”
“Oh, we’ve been here thirty-five years. We’re a family of fishermen. I took it over eight years ago. Renamed it.” She leaned back and looked at him, swinging back and forth in her chair, and he got that same uneasy feeling again. She had this childlike way about her. “You’re here because Lemon Madras went missing from Gulf Shore Road,” she said.
“That’s not public information. Not yet.”
“It’s not? I guess that depends on what you consider public. All of my friends and family are aware that she was the daughter of a landscaper who works for the Hollister family. And that she was stranded at the Hollister house during the hurricane, and that the Hollisters left the airport they were supposed to be flying from and went back for her. They’ve both been found dead and yet Lemon has disappeared. It’s also public knowledge, in my sphere of the public, that statewide prosecutor, Stephanie Balfour, has a second home on Gulf Shore with her husband, David. And I know, like you know, that Balfour was the prosecutor who oversaw my father’s incarceration. So, you’re here because of my father.” He had a feeling she was just getting warmed up.
“Yes,” he said. “Threats made by your father have led us to believe he could have been involved in the burglary of her home.”
Her smile widened, splitting her lips to reveal teeth gapped in the middle. “See? That was easy. Too many cops think holding their cards is this big thing that’s going to crack the case. It’s so much better to just lay everything on the table. Now, how can I help you?”
He caught movement out of the window beside them and saw Lupton over by the boats. There were more people here, too. Somewhere. He got that feeling. “How many boats do you have?”
“Six crabbers, four skiffs. We rolled them all out before the hurricane. But we’ve taken a lot of damage. You see that wheelhouse? For the crabbing boats, the wheelhouse is raised up, sits up in front of the deck so you can spot the trap buoys. That one was completely flipped over during the storm.”
“It’s incredible — the damage.”
“Mother nature lets you know who’s in charge.”
“What do you guys do for backup power? I heard a genny start up . . .”
“Mick just got it going. We’re just running equipment off that. Right now, refrigeration, sump pumps and paint sprayers. We haven’t run anything into the office, but I’m about to go crazy without my computer and internet. And the air. Can’t run a business like this.”
“Did you lose a lot of inventory?”
“A hundred pounds of stone crab claws. It’s been awful. Before the storm — you should have seen it . . . I’ve never seen anything like that — all the water was gone. You could see the seabed. It just went on and on, like the storm was sucking up the entire ocean, drawing it in and then throwing it back up.”
“What’s your insurance situation here, if I may ask?”
“Fully covered through private insurance. Hurricane . . . everything. But you know how it is . . . you’ve got to wait on the insurance agent to come in and go over everything with you. Then it’s more time before they get around to cutting you a check. We’re really up against the clock, too. Season starts mid-October.”
“So, those boats out there . . . that’s what you’ve got, right? That’s your whole fleet, or whatever you call it?”
She just watched him, sort of like a cat, unseen tail swishing back and forth.
“There’s not maybe one good working boat unaccounted for? Got dragged out to sea in the storm — something like that?”
Her eyes stayed sharp on him. “No. We’re lucky we didn’t lose any of the boats like that.”
“And you haven’t sent any out? There’s nothing sailed over to Mexico or Cuba or anywhere?”
“No, they’re all in. And we don’t go to Mexico or Cuba.”
Tom nodded, looked around, then clucked his tongue and shook his head. “I gotta tell you . . . I really want to know what happened to that little girl.”
“I’d like to know, too. I hope she’s all right. I wonder . . . did you have any luck up in Gibsonton?”
He’d been waiting for something, but her smooth delivery still caught him off guard. He thought of Jarvis calling her slick. Tom repeated her word like he’d never heard it before. “Gibson-ton?”
She leaned back and crossed her arms. “Well, now, you gotta know that Maria Lucia is my father’s cousin. And so she called me up and told me that a cop came around last night asking about a little girl.”
“She did, huh?”
“Sure. Maria’s great. We like to talk. She also mentioned a guy named Wilbur Beck.” Valentina shook her head and cast her eyes down as if it was a mournful situation. “You know, we try to help people out, and then they just turn on us and inform to the police. You can’t trust anybody.”
“Of course, I don’t know this person, but what would they have to be informing about?”
Valentina laughed. “So, this — so you’re who they s
end, huh? I gotta tell you, Mr. Lange, you’re not exactly knocking my socks off. How old are you?”
“Thirty-three.”
“Thirty-three.” Her tone became wistful. “The age of Jesus. Buddha under the Bodhi tree.”
“But I feel eighteen.”
She tossed her head back with another laugh, clearly enjoying herself, and the sound of it sliced down to his bones.
“Oh, thirty-three is a good age,” she said. “Still young enough to have the kind of energy you have, but too young to know anything. I’ve been in a fishing family for a long time. I know all about fishing. But I hope . . .” she affected a concerned expression. “I hope Mr. Beck is somewhere safe. My cousin Maria doesn’t like people whose tongues wag at both ends.” She fell silent and watched him closely, evaluating. Tom wondered what Maria Lucia would think about her Uncle Pedro plotting to burn her house down.
After a few seconds, he stood up. “If you, ah, had a couple of guys go up to Naples, burgle Stephanie Balfour’s home, kill a couple of witnesses and then abduct a seven-year-old girl and bring her down here, you’d tell me about it, right?”
Her fresh laughter trickled away. “You’re a real charmer. I like you. Cute, too.”
“Mick seems like a nice guy. How did he get that bruise under his eye?”
“Why don’t you ask him?” She rose from the desk. “Anyway, Mr. Lange, Route 41 was flooded out all the way to Carnestown. It only just opened up. So, entertaining as your hypothesis may be, I’d say there was no way any such hires could’ve made their way down here to me.”
“You understand, though, right? I’ve got to check out every possibility, no matter how wild or crazy. And I guess there’s two ways to go about this particular possibility — involving you and maybe your handyman Mick Lupton out there with the big shiner on his face. One is that the informant who spent a few months with your father provides a disposition on record that gives us a warrant to come down here, shut this all down, drag the bay, dump out all your boxes — you know what I mean? People in white jumpsuits and all of that taking samples for prints, blood, DNA. The other way is for you to let me have a look at everything myself so I can cross it off my list.”
DEAD OR ALIVE a totally addictive thriller with a breathtaking twist Page 8
