Rising Moon: A Jesse McDermitt Novel (Caribbean Adventure Series Book 19)

by Wayne Stinnett

  “Figured I’d show you the whole picture,” I replied, as we neared Island Hopper. “We’ll follow the Keys up to Biscayne Bay, then cut across the Everglades to Cape Sable, and fly out to Fort Jefferson before coming back here—about four hundred miles.”

  I looked at my watch. It was almost 0900. “We should be back shortly after noon, unless we stop for lunch somewhere.”

  While I removed the tiedowns and inspected the plane, Tank was busy on his phone.

  “Those places you mentioned?” he said, as I opened the engine cowling. “We’ll be flying over part of Miami, huh?”

  I wiped the dipstick and put it back in. “Yeah. The Upper East side.”

  “Once a Devil Dog, always a Devil Dog,” he said with a chuckle, from under the starboard wing. “You got your teeth in something and can’t let it go. How precise is Chyrel’s computer at locating a cell phone?”

  I grinned over at him. “She can tell our two phones apart this close together.”

  “Is that right?” he asked, as I closed the cowling.

  “Now comes the hard part,” I said.

  “Hard part?”

  I wiped my hands with a rag and pointed with my chin toward the boats docked along both sides of the canal. “Waking up the whole neighborhood. Climb in.”

  “Ya know something,” Tank began, as he stepped up onto the float and opened the door, “I’ve flown in all kinds of military aircraft and dozens of commercial aircraft, but this is my first time in a civilian plane. Just how old is this thing?”

  I climbed into the pilot’s seat. “Not as old as you,” I replied. “But close. She first reached for the sky in 1953.”

  After strapping in, I turned on the battery and went through my preflight check list. Finally, I yelled out the window, “Clear prop!”

  With the magnetos off, I hit the starter and counted revolutions. Radial engines will get a bit of oil settled in the combustion chamber of the lower cylinders and you have to “walk the prop” to clear it. In the old days, before electric starters, it was literally that—someone on the ground walking the prop through four revolutions.

  When I turned the mags on, the big Pratt & Whitney caught, stumbled, belched blue-gray smoke, coughed a couple of times, and then settled into the familiar, smooth rumble that only a radial engine can produce. I put on my headphones and pointed to another pair by Tank’s knee.

  After a minute to let her warm up and, having seen more than one head pop out of a hatch, I advanced the throttle slightly to get her rolling, then stepped on the right rudder pedal to turn her toward the boat ramp.

  I pulled the throttle back to idle as Island Hopper bounced, rocked, and rolled down the ramp and into the water. On land, she was about as ungainly as an albatross. Floating was a little better, but not much. In the air, however, it was a whole different story.

  I raised the wheels and made the requisite radio calls to alert air traffic in the area, then turned into the southeast wind and advanced the throttle to full.

  The engine roared in defiance as Island Hopper gathered speed and the floats climbed up on top of the water. In the distance of a football field, we were airborne.

  Tank’s voice came over my headset. “What got you into this kind of work?”

  Glancing over at him, I replied, “It’s not really what I do. I mostly just take people out fishing or diving.”

  I leveled off just below two thousand feet. We’d fly low and slow, following the highway toward the mainland, while staying about half a mile out over the water.

  “And that’s how you ended up working for Homeland Security? Taking people fishing?”

  “I never really worked for them either,” I said. “Deuce Livingston did—he headed a team of counterterrorist operatives, tasked with protecting South Florida. I sometimes provided covert travel for him and his men. The only reason my name’s on the sign at his office is because I helped fund the startup.”

  “And yet, here we are. Flying to Miami in a seventy-year-old plane, to take a look at a drug smuggler’s house.”

  I shrugged. “Would you rather have gone shopping with Savannah and Florence?”

  “Ha-ha, no,” he replied. “That’s another thing I’ve been meaning to ask you. Why do you call your daughter Florence, while everyone else calls her Flo?”

  “Savannah’s last name is Richmond,” I said. “Her parents were Jackson and Madison Richmond, and Savannah had a sister named Charlotte, but she died a few years back.”

  “Ah, now I get it. All southern city names.”

  I thought about it a moment. Savannah’s college friend in Belize called her Savvy. Hell, even my name was shortened from the name I was given at birth—Jesiah. Was I too formal with my own family?

  We continued to follow the Keys as they arced toward the mainland. I pointed out a few things of interest along the way and Tank asked a lot of questions about my plane and the areas we flew over. As we neared Biscayne Bay, I dropped our altitude to just a thousand feet and stayed well out over the Atlantic. That low and that far east, we weren’t a danger to flights out of Homestead Air Reserve Base.

  I put my phone in its cradle, secured to the dash. It was easy to see from both seats. I entered the GPS coordinates for the location the burner phone in Miami had been when Sampson called it.

  Before leaving the island, I’d texted Chyrel to see if it was still there and she’d replied that it was, and she’d let me know if the phone moved. So far, she hadn’t, so I assumed whoever Sampson had called was still in the same place.

  “What exactly are we going to be looking for?” Tank asked, comparing the moving map image on the phone’s screen to what he was seeing through the windshield.

  “I have no idea,” I replied. “I just want to get a look at where this guy lives.”

  “This has to cost quite a bit in gas,” Tank said. “Just to look at where someone lives who may or may not be involved in the girl’s disappearance.”

  “Need is a relative thing these days,” I said with a grin. “It borders on desire. When my grandfather died, he left me enough that I wouldn’t have to worry too much. Friends and I uncovered some treasure over the years, and a portion of that went into the kitty. These days, if I feel like doing something, I just do it.”

  “Is that right? So, why are you still busting your ass to take people fishing and hunting down crooks?”

  “I like being on the water,” I replied. “As for why I hunt down crooks, probably for the real reason you stayed in the Corps until they had to kick you out, yelling and screaming.”

  “You think you know my real reasons now?”

  “Oh, the reason you gave Florence was true,” I said. “But the underlying rationale behind your staying was because you were damned good at what you did—motivating Marines.”

  He looked over at me for a moment. “You do this just because you’re good at it?”

  There was more to it than that and he wasn’t going to let me off the hook. “I don’t like bullies,” I said. “Never did. I don’t like people who hurt others for financial gain.”

  “Like that warlord who was shielding himself with the boy.”

  He said it as a statement, not a question. And he was right. But it went back a lot further than that fateful day outside Mogadishu. It went back to my childhood, growing up in Fort Myers.

  I was an only child being raised by my grandparents. I met another kid shortly after I went to live with Mam and Pap, a Calusa Indian who was also an only child. It was the late sixties, and he was kind of smallish then. Other kids picked on him because of his skin color and I didn’t like that. I guess since Billy Rainwater and I didn’t have any siblings, it was natural that we became friends, allies, blood brothers, and later, fellow Marines. I was bigger than most kids my age and nobody picked on Billy when I was around.

  But on that one day in the Mog, I’d pulled the trigger to end a man’s life, knowing full well that I’d most likely scuttled my career in doing so.

&nbs
p; I’d been a Marine for fourteen years, three weeks, and two days, and just over three years as a gunnery sergeant, with the goal of reaching sergeant major one day. Over the next six years, I was passed over for promotion to first sergeant twice, because of what happened in the Mog.

  The writing was on the wall. The times were changing, and the battlefield had become a political chessboard.

  So, I quietly retired.

  Benito’s phone woke him again after a long night of business and pleasure. It was only eleven o’clock, but when he saw the number on the screen, he forgot about being tired or pissed.

  The blonde next to him mumbled something as he rolled out of bed and answered the phone.

  “I wasn’t expecting to hear from you until later,” Benito said.

  “Change of plans,” the voice on the other end growled over the sound of the wind. It sounded like he was driving with the windows down. “I’ll be at the club in an hour. You ready to do business?”

  “I’ll be there,” Benito said.

  “Be sure to bring the girl.”

  The wind noise stopped, and Benito looked at the screen. The call had ended.

  “Get up,” he said to the blonde.

  She was a new dancer at one of the clubs he scouted talent for. She’d just moved down from Boston, and still needed a lot of work. She looked a lot better than she performed in the sack, and for a dancer, the looks were the important part. Anything else could be learned.

  “What’s going on?” she asked drowsily.

  “I have to go,” he said, heading to his closet. “I got business to attend to, and that means you have to go.”

  He dressed quickly in white linen pants and a blue guayabera shirt, and when he came back to the room, the blond girl had already left.

  He picked up his phone, found Vanessa’s number and hit the Call button. She picked up on the fourth ring.

  “Hola,” she whispered drowsily.

  “It’s Benito. The schedule has moved up. The client will be arriving in an hour and we are meeting him at Uno.”

  “In an hour?” she said, sounding slightly more energized.

  “Yeah. Dress for success, chica. And you probably should bring an overnight bag.”

  “Who is this guy, Benny?”

  “He’s my supplier, baby. So, you gotta treat him really good. There’s an extra thousand if he’s happy.”

  “I will,” Vanessa said eagerly. “Do you want me to meet you there? My roommate has the car.”

  “I’ll send an Uber,” Benito said, as he pulled up the app. “It should be there in fifteen minutes to bring you here. Be ready.”

  He ended the call and went back into the closet. Benito thought the blonde was better looking than Vanessa; taller, with a more robust body. But the little dark-haired puta was far more energetic off the dance floor. Jasmin would learn; she was still young, awkward, and shy. Maybe he would bring both of them home one night, so the pequeña cubana salvaje could show her how it was done.

  Benito knelt beside the floor safe. It had a biometric lock and opened simply by placing a hand on a hand-shaped outline on the top. He pulled a small overnight bag from a stack of them beside the safe and began removing bundles of hundred-dollar bills from inside.

  He counted out twenty-five bundles, placing them on the floor, then counted them again as he put them in the bag. When he stood and picked it up, it was heavy, but not conspicuously so, weighing less than ten pounds.

  Benito closed the safe and carried the bag to the living room, where he set it on the coffee table before going into the kitchen to make his usual cup of Cuban coffee. Just as the day before, and nearly every day before that, he tapped out a small line of coke on the dining room table and snorted it with his custom-engraved platinum coke tube. A snake wound its way around the side of the tube so that its head disappeared up his right nostril.

  As had happened the day before, the rush was instantaneous when he tilted his head back and pinched his nose. He sniffed hard through the nostril with the candy in it.

  “Mierda!” Benito cursed, stomping his feet, as he danced about the room. “Damn, that’s good!”

  While the coffeemaker surged and dripped, he decided to count the money a third time, so he opened the bag once more and placed each bundle on the table. Too bad Jasmin had already left. Benito liked to show off in front of his string of girls. They had to know that he was the gran hombre who could make them rich. But then, Vanessa was on her way.

  He went back to the kitchen and poured a cup, then looked out the window of his little two-bedroom bungalow.

  Homes in the Upper East Side started at half a million and Benito had bought the little house as a place to bring prospective dancers and models to “audition” for him. The second bedroom was a full photography studio, with lights and cameras, which impressed his new girls when they saw it.

  A car stopped at the curb and the passenger door opened. Vanessa stepped out, wearing a skin-tight, pale yellow dress that barely covered her hips. It left little to the imagination. The contrast of yellow against her brown skin and black hair made her look oh-so-exotic.

  She strode slowly and confidently toward the house, carrying a small overnight bag in her hand. The driver just sat in his car, watching. She saw Benito in the window and smiled.

  He opened the door and waved her in. “I’m just about ready,” he said, heading back toward the sofa in the living room. She followed and watched as he sat down and returned the money to the bag. He glanced at his watch. “We’ll be early if we leave now.”

  “How early?” she asked, sitting close to him on the couch and rubbing him through his pants.

  He let his dark eyes wander over her body. “Not early enough for that, chica.” He then pulled his little bottle from his pocket. “But we have a few minutes.”

  He carefully tapped out two small lines on the table and offered her his tube. She greedily accepted it and bent over the table, pulling the hair behind her left ear. In a flash, one of the lines disappeared. Vanessa leaned back into the plush sofa, her hand going to her nose as she arched her back.

  Benito’s eyes locked on the gap between her thighs. As she leaned back, the dress rode up her hips, exposing matching yellow panties.

  She handed him the tube and he quickly snorted the other line, his second in ten minutes. Vanessa looked at him with smoldering dark eyes. He sensed she was eager and ready. He was, too. But there wasn’t enough time.

  “We better go,” he said, rising slowly while leering at her. “Or we will be muy tarde.”

  She rose and stood close to him. She wore stiletto heels, which elevated her tiny five-foot-one frame to make her appear much taller.

  “Tomorrow, then,” she said, a bright smile on her face. “After you watch me dance at Booby Trap?”

  When Benito had stopped by the club after midnight, Marvin had told him that he’d definitely like Vanessa back for the weekend. She’d probably screwed him after her show. Benito didn’t care. It was business.

  “I wouldn’t miss it for anything,” he said, picking up the bag and gesturing toward the door.

  The drive to Uno wasn’t long—five minutes when traffic was light, ten when it wasn’t. Benito guided his expensive black sportscar into the nearly empty lot next to one of Miami’s best men’s clubs. The place didn’t open for another two hours, so he drove deep into the lot and parked against the side of the building near the back.

  After he shut off the engine, he turned to Vanessa. “Now, when you meet this guy, be careful. He is un gran hombre feo.

  “How ugly?”

  “He is muy viejo, with long hair and beard,” Benito said, “and he is gigante. He will be driving an old truck, but he is a rich and powerful hombre, si? You will be safe, and he will take you home tomorrow.”

  The two got out of the car. The heat hit Benito instantly. He started toward the back of the car but stopped as a beat-up old truck with big tires turned into the lot.

  “Here he is,
” Benito said, looking at his watch. “And he is early. Remember, don’t let him see that you think him ugly.”

  Still south of Miami Beach, I switched from intercom to radio to contact Miami Approach. I would likely need clearance to transit their airspace.

  “Miami Approach. Beaver, November one-three-eight-five. VFR advisory.”

  The response was immediate. “Beaver three-eight-five, go ahead with your request.”

  I gave them our location, heading, and altitude, so they could spot us on their radar, then requested flight following and transit over Miami’s Upper East Side to look at property, then around the busy airport and across the state to Flamingo. The phone’s location was right on the fringe of the busy international airport’s airspace, but well out of the normal flight path of departing flights.

  Approach gave me a squawk code, which I entered into the transponder as I repeated it back.

  “Beaver three-eight-five, radar identified, fifteen hundred feet. Stay east of US-1 and maintain VFR.”

  I acknowledged and began our turn toward Miami Beach. Nine of the ten tallest buildings in the state were located in Miami. They were easy to spot. The tallest, Panorama Tower in Brickell, was almost half as tall as the altitude we were flying.

  I throttled back to just above stall speed, almost paralleling Julia Tuttle Causeway a little to the south. I noticed the vector Approach gave me would put us right at the southern part of the Upper East Side.

  As I neared the mainland, I started a slow turn to the north, making sure to stay slightly to the east of Biscayne Boulevard. The blue dot on my phone’s screen was just ahead, slightly to the east of the busy thoroughfare. Off to the west, about a mile away, I could see I-95, where many of the cars in the left lane were passing us.

  Tank looked at the phone’s screen, then down at the landscape crawling past below Island Hopper. “Less than a mile,” he said, craning his neck to find the location on the ground.

  Just then, my phone chirped an incoming call. I glanced down at the screen and saw Chyrel’s name, then clicked the Accept button. The phone’s cradle was also a wired connection to the intercom system.