by A. C. Fuller
“He did come to Miami. I know he did.”
Warren offered a weak nod, but didn’t seem as convinced as she was. “The other thread is the next victim,” he went on, “and that’s where you come in. You know research better than me. I’ve known that since that first afternoon in my apartment.”
“You think I can magically figure out who the next victim will be?”
“I’m guessing Google isn’t the extent of your research abilities.”
Cole thought for a moment. Truth was, there were a hundred possible connections between Ambani, Meyers, and various bigwigs in Miami. Through a combination of online research and checking with sources, she could narrow it down. Her guess was there would be dozens of possible victims. “What time do we arrive?”
“Half an hour. Ten a.m. local time.”
For the first time since she’d woken up, she looked directly at him. The flesh under his dark eyes was puffy and a small swelling rose from his cheek. “You’ve got a lump from the fight, and you look exhausted. Didn’t sleep?”
“Nah.”
“So we check into a hotel, you sleep for a couple hours, I research.”
“Don’t you need to sleep more?”
The thought brought her back to the dream. She closed her eyes.
“Cole?”
She shook her head. “Don’t want to sleep.”
“What is it?”
“Nothing…bad dream. I’m fine, really. You watched over me while I slept. Once we get to a hotel, I’ll make a list of potential victims while you get a few hours. Then we go from there.”
3
A palm frond tickled the glass of the second-story window. Cole looked up from her phone. Outside, the light blue sky was visible through a crack in the turquoise curtains. Over the bed, an elegant watercolor of a silver-blue marlin decorated the pale yellow wall.
Warren had fallen into a deep sleep moments after shutting the door of their hotel room in Little Havana. His prosthetic leg stuck out from under his pillow. He was barely breathing. Dead to the world.
She’d made good progress in her search. Using news databases, online searches, and a series of text exchanges with former colleagues, she’d compiled a list of six prominent Miamians with ties to both businessman Raj Ambani and former Vice President Alvin Meyers. They were political donors, business people, bankers, and others who pulled the strings of power in South Florida. They all had connections to Ambani and Meyers, and they all had threads connecting them to other powerful people around the world.
She’d organized her list using nothing more than instinct. Trying to put herself in the shoes of anti-globalist ultranationalists, she’d asked herself, “Who in Miami would I want to kill next?”
She’d written her list on a clean sheet of Hotel Marlin stationery:
1) Alejandro Hernandez, former mayor of Miami.
2) Frank Johnston, CEO of South Beach Investments, LLC.
3) Maria Brown, owner of Coastal Exporters.
4) Ana Diaz, financier, Bank of South Florida.
5) Bernard Erickson, Chairman of the Board, Gulf Labs, Inc.
6) Benjamin Patrick Riley, III, Owner and CEO, Tropical Cruises, Intl., and primary shareholder in three local sports franchises.
* * *
At noon she woke Warren with a gentle shake of his shoulder. He sat up quickly and put on his leg. Like Matt and other military men she’d met, he was used to springing into action after too little sleep.
She handed him a Cuban coffee and a pastelito, which she’d ordered from room service. “I asked for the coffee without sugar and they treated me like a crazy person. The pastry is guava and cheese.”
Warren took a small sip of the coffee. His eyes shot open like he’d been hit by an electrical current. “Whoa!”
“I know, right? I’ve had two and I think they should be classified as schedule two narcotics. It’s like my heart is hugging my brain.”
Warren set the flaky pastry on the nightstand. “What’d you find?”
“Some potential targets,” she said, taking the opportunity to grab the pastelito, “but nothing I feel solid about. There’s—”
“Wait.” He downed the rest of the coffee in one swig. “There’s something else we need to talk about first. Mazzalano. The map.”
Warren had a moral compass, a black-and-white sense of right and wrong. He’d exercised restraint by letting it go this long. She offered a noncommittal shrug and munched on the pastry.
“You been online yet?” he asked.
“Nothing yet about the map, about the storage unit.”
“You said he’d make a thing out of it right away.”
“I thought he would.” One thing about Mazzalano was that he was hungry for the limelight, and for promotions. If he’d had them followed to Wragg’s storage unit in Jersey, he’d found the map, just as she had. He’d also had the time to go through the rest of the unit. She’d been sure he’d announce the find publicly to bask in the glory.
Warren narrowed his eyes. “You know what I think we should do, right?”
“Release the map?”
“And everything else we have, yeah. It doesn’t mean we need to stop our pursuit, but it’s not right to hold onto it.”
“Gimme one more day,” Cole said.
“Look, the map could—”
“Could. We don’t know what releasing the map will do. What if Mazzalano did the right thing and passed the map and the rest of Wragg’s storage unit to the FBI? Maybe they’re not releasing it because they don’t want to let the killers know they’re on their trail? If we release the map, we could be blowing up their spot.”
“You’re grasping for straws because you’re greedy about information.”
He was right. Information was currency, and all journalists jealously guarded their scoops. But there was something else. Something she couldn’t quite figure out.
“What?” Warren asked. “I see your mind working.”
She closed her eyes. “In D.C., the two guys who followed us. You were sure they weren’t Mazzalano’s guys because they were amateurs. Mazzalano would have sent crooked cops or whatever. Trained pros.”
“Yeah.”
“I’m not buying that. There’s no one else who knew we were in D.C. No one with a reason to have us followed.” Warren tried to interrupt, but she held up the half-eaten pastelito to ward him off. “Lemme finish.” He leaned away from the flaky carbs like they were poison. “And it goes with Mazzalano not releasing the map. He’s in on it. Somehow. He tailed us to the storage unit, destroyed the evidence, then had us followed all the way to D.C.”
Warren’s head was shaking in disagreement before she finished. “If that’s true, he would want us dead. And he wouldn’t have sent those jokers. He would have sent someone to end us.”
“Agree to disagree. In either case, give it one more day. Please. We take until tomorrow to find The Truffle Pig, or the next target. If we fail, we release the map. But if we succeed, this is over.”
“And you get the credit?” His tone was slightly mocking.
“We get the credit. You think the NYPD might look twice at your resumé with this on it?”
Warren walked a lap around the room, shaking his leg like he was trying to get his stump to settle comfortably in the prosthetic. “Okay. First thing tomorrow we release the map.”
She smiled, then stared at the list in her lap, ready to move on. She felt his eyes on her.
“Jane.”
She looked up.
“Why are you doing this? I mean, I get you want the story, but—”
“I need the story.”
“Okay, I get that. I do. But there’s something else.”
“Michael Wragg, back in New York. He knew something about my husband.”
“That’s not it either.”
Her skin tingled uncomfortably. Her eyes dropped to the pastel green carpet. “What are you getting at?”
“I don’t know. Something about Matt.�
� He frowned. “I never really knew myself until I lost Sarah. That kind of pain takes us places we didn’t know we had in us, forces us to grow. I can’t imagine if I’d lost her like…like you lost Matt.”
She quickly wiped away the tears forming in her eyes. She loved remembering Matt, but on her own terms. Not in dreams and not in conversations like this. “I don’t know.” She said it firmly, trying to end the conversation.
“You’re willing to do things—immoral things—to get this story. I want to know why and I think there’s a reason you’re not telling me, maybe a reason you don’t even know yourself.”
Steeling herself, she looked up. “I need to get to work finding these people.”
Warren raised an eyebrow, then shrugged, letting it drop.
“Call your CI,” she continued, waving her list at him. “I’ll pull these threads, you pull any threads you can. Maybe we’ll meet in the middle.”
“It’s weird. Never been to Miami, don’t know much about it other than that Will Smith song. SG—that’s what I called my CI—he moved down here when he sobered up. Sometimes in my dreams I’d be down here, asking him for information on a case.” He smiled. “Weird, right?”
“You think he might know something?”
“Probably not, but it’s worth a shot.”
4
The midday sun warmed Cole’s face as she took in the sights and smells of Little Havana. A brightly-colored rooster sculpture welcomed her to Calle Ocho, the wide central road lined with palm trees. Yellow and orange awnings shaded windows of cozy restaurants and bars that were lively despite the lunchtime hour. Yesterday she’d stood in the snowy gray of Washington, D.C., surrounded by stately marble and granite columns.
She had to admit, Miami made it harder to fall into brooding.
She bought a Cuban coffee, sat at an old metal table on the sidewalk, and took out her list. The rich smell of tobacco drifted from a cigar shop, making her wish she smoked. She’d tried a cigar in college, and, after throwing up for an hour, had vowed never to do so again.
When she was trying to read someone, she let everything drop away, tried to allow even herself to fade into the background. The goal was to experience her subject as objectively as possible. She tried doing that with the list. Staring at the names, she let her eyes go soft, hoping for some direction, some inspiration. Nothing came except a vague sense that #1 on her list, former Miami mayor Alejandro Hernandez, wasn’t a good place to start. Frank Johnston was #2. CEO of South Beach Investments, LLC, Johnston was connected to Ambani through an online payment system in which they’d both invested. He was connected to Meyers through a Board of Directors they’d served on in the early 2000s.
She called the listed number for South Beach Investments, where she was told Mr. Johnston was unavailable. After she pressed, his secretary revealed he’d left that day for Japan. She wondered whether he’d left the country after getting wind that someone was after him.
Using Google Translate to search the Japanese internet led her to an article from two weeks earlier, announcing Johnston’s attendance at a conference of Japanese investors in the American tech sector. Clearly, it was an event that had been planned for months. She’d missed the announcement in her initial search, but had to believe the killers they were chasing would have known about it. She’d put her list together in under an hour, whereas the killers had been planning this for months, maybe years.
She crossed Frank Johnston off the list and took a satisfied sip of coffee. Thick, strong, and sweet, it was even better than the ones in the hotel. Twice as strong as any espresso she’d ever had and sweeter than the vanilla lattes she drank at home. She could get used to this.
Maria Brown was next on her list. According to the records she’d found online, Brown was the sole owner of Coastal Exporters, a company that served as the middleman between many of the state’s citrus growers and Canada, which purchased $100-million worth of Florida citrus per year. A profile of Brown had reported, “If you’ve eaten an orange in Canada, you have Maria Brown to thank.”
The connections to Ambani and Meyers were numerous. Brown was one of the most influential Democratic donors in the state, and a search of political campaign contributors showed she spread her money far and wide. When Meyers had campaigned for Vice President, Brown hosted a fundraiser for the Democratic ticket. Meyers attended, praised Brown, and, most importantly, championed a loosening of agricultural review standards that benefited Brown’s exporting business. The New York Times had run an article, questioning the obvious quid pro quo, but nothing came of it. Typical political corruption, Cole thought, but a possible motive.
Unable to find any personal contact information for Brown, she called the Coastal Exporters main number.
“Who’s calling?” a pleasant male voice asked when she requested to speak with Brown.
Cole considered various lies that might bring Brown to the phone, but went with the truth. “This is Jane Cole. Until last week, I was a reporter for the New York Sun.”
“And what is this call in reference to?”
She didn’t want to say too much, but she needed this gatekeeper to feel the urgency. “Ms. Brown was close with former Vice President Alvin Meyers who, I’m sure you know, was shot a few days ago. I have reason to believe Ms. Brown could be in danger as well and—”
“I’m sorry, Ms…Joel, was it?”
“Cole. Jane Cole. I really need to speak with Ms. Brown.”
“I’ll level with you, Ms. Cole. Since Vice President Meyers was murdered, we’ve been called for comment by every journalist in Miami, and most outside Miami as well. To use a made up threat against Ms. Brown as a way to get an interview is shameful. You’re one notch above the reporter who followed her into the women’s bathroom at her gym and shoved a recorder in her face. But only a small notch. Goodbye.”
The call ended. Cole called right back, but it went straight to voicemail. Just in case, she left a polite message with her phone number.
She took in her surroundings, which appeared more colorful now that the coffee had hit her bloodstream. The palm trees were decorated with twinkling Christmas lights, and she couldn’t wait to see them at night. Locals and tourists came and went, many carrying bags of Christmas presents. A woman rode a bike wearing a Santa Claus-styled bikini, handlebars in one hand, vape pen in the other. Across the street, a young man tried to get the attention of every woman who passed. He wore long black shorts and a white t-shirt, which he strategically took off, displaying a shaved, muscular chest as each new woman walked by. Christmas in Miami made her smile.
Her next target was Ana Diaz, a prominent Miami financier. Her connections with Ambani and Meyers were more tangential than some of the others, but she rose up the list because of her vast wealth and her ethnicity—she was Cuban-American, something Cole assumed would piss off the men behind the killings.
Cole ran a series of searches for Diaz, looking for recent news, then read through the website of the Bank of South Florida. It was one of the last of the small Florida banks, independent and locally owned. A phone call got her an empty promise from a secretary: Ms. Diaz would get back to her when she was available. Another call, this one to the corporate offices, got her a shred of information. Ms. Diaz was appearing today at a small business entrepreneurship conference—an event encouraging young minorities to form local businesses, and, of course, to do their banking with the Bank of South Florida.
“May I attend?” Cole asked eagerly.
“Are you a Miami resident?”
“I’m a journalist. I’d like to write about the event.”
“I’m sorry, no press allowed at this event.”
“I have a cousin who’s a Miami resident who might be interested.” The lie came out before she knew what she was saying. “Can you give me the location?”
The woman paused, then gave her an address in Little Haiti, about fifteen minutes north of Little Havana. “Your cousin will need a valid Miami ID—driver’s license, hig
h school ID, or military ID—to get in.”
“I understand. Can she bring a guest?”
The woman sighed. “One guest per attendee.”
Cole hung up. She needed a Miami resident.
The man across the street was repeating his mating ritual. As a woman in a tight red dress walked by, he tore off his shirt and flexed his chest muscles. A gold “305” medallion around his neck glimmered in the sun. The woman passed without a glance.
305 was the area code of Miami. This guy was a local and proud of it. He was also full of himself and desperate for female attention.
Perfect.
5
Dressed in a pink, floral-print shirt, dark sunglasses, and a cheap sun hat, Marco De Santis walked down Ocean Drive. Carrying the black duffel, in which he’d stowed the rifle and the money, he looked like any other tourist. It was nearly eighty degrees, but the breeze off the ocean made it feel like seventy-five. The more he thought about it, the more he saw himself retiring here.
His shot on the Vice President had been the most difficult of his career. A mile away and across a river. Distance meant time: the bullet had been in the air over two seconds. And rivers meant wind. In addition to the two inch vertical sag he’d adjusted for, the wind had taken it half a foot left. The hotel room had been three stories above the roof of the Watergate Hotel, giving him a good angle, but still. It was a once-in-a-lifetime shot. He’d never get credit for it, but he took pride in the fact that it would be discussed in sniper circles for years.
But that shot was behind him and it no longer earned him money. This next, his last, would be relatively easy.
The estate was on the east side of the street, facing the ocean, but the perimeter didn’t look like the pictures he’d been sent when he accepted the job. The massive beachfront house was caged by a stone wall about six feet high. That much he’d expected. But another layer of fencing had been added awkwardly on top of the stone wall. In haste, he thought. And recently. Aluminum poles had been drilled into the rock every six feet, chain link strung between them and barbed wire angled toward the street. The wall now stood over ten feet high. All that was visible through the chain link fence was the roof, a few windows, a balcony, and the tops of a dozen palm trees.
