Dangerous Friends (A Carlos McCrary novel Book 4)

by Dallas Gorham

  “Got it. I say, ‘My wife and I will be happy to talk to you with our attorney present.’ We say that no matter what they ask.” He took a deep breath. It was getting hard to breathe.

  “Look, John, I know this is freaking you out a little bit, but you’re going to be okay. You haven’t broken any laws and, if you do what we practiced, you’ll be okay. I know you can do this. Keep saying ‘My wife and I will be happy to talk to you with our attorney present.’ Keep saying that until they give up and leave. Are you going to be okay?”

  John’s stomach began to churn again. “Where are you, Chuck? How long will it take for you to get here?”

  “I’m in Georgia. I’m driving back after Snoop and I finish breakfast, but I won’t be back until late this afternoon. Remember: If they ask to look around, tell them you have to ask your attorney. If they don’t have a warrant, the only way they can look around is if you give them permission. And you won’t do that. You and I both know you have nothing to hide—nothing to be afraid of. Don’t answer any other questions. Call Abe and stonewall them until they leave.”

  John’s throat tightened up. He forced the words out. “What are you doing in Georgia?”

  “What you’re paying me to do—investigate for Michelle. That’s all I can tell you.”

  John thought about Chuck being hundreds of miles away. And Penny wasn’t here. He was alone, facing two FBI agents. His body began to shake. “Gotta go, Chuck.”

  He dropped to his knees at the toilet, retching. The whole world was coming up his throat. Not only his breakfast, but maybe even last night’s dinner. He vomited until he had the dry heaves. He hauled himself to his feet and washed his face. Cupping his hands under the water, he rinsed his mouth. He assessed his reflection in the mirror and smoothed his hair down with his wet hands. He grabbed a paper cup from the dispenser. This time he drank the water to put something in his stomach.

  You can do this, he thought. What would Penny do? He surveyed the half-bath, cleaned the toilet rim with a wad of toilet paper, and lowered the lid. He straightened the contour mat around the base of the toilet, fluffed up the hand towel, and took a deep breath. Into the valley of the shadow of death. Do it for Mickie.

  Chapter 37

  Special Agent Emily Fuller set down her coffee cup in the center of the saucer. “We’d like to speak to Michelle Babcock. Is she here?”

  John sipped his own coffee before answering. What is keeping Penny? “No, she’s gone away for the weekend.”

  “Where is she?”

  “Before we go any further, I think I’d better call my attorney.”

  “Didn’t you just call him while we waited on the porch?”

  “This is a different person I need to call.” He scrolled through the contacts on his cellphone. He picked up a landline and punched in a number. “Abe Weisman, please… John Babcock… Okay, I’ll speak to her… Hello, Diane… Diane, there are two FBI agents here… Are you sure?… Okay.” He punched a button on the handset and placed it on the coffee table.

  A too-loud voice came from the phone. “This is Diane Toklas, with the law offices of Abe Weisman. Our firm represents the Babcock family. To whom am I speaking?”

  Agent Fuller sat up straighter and adjusted her jacket unconsciously. “FBI Special Agents Emily Fuller and Hector Marsalis.”

  “Agents, would you please tell me the nature of this unannounced visit?”

  “We’d like to interview Michelle Babcock.”

  “In connection with what?”

  “We’re not at liberty to say.”

  “Do you have any type of warrant?”

  “No, ma’am. We only want to interview Ms. Babcock.”

  “Fine. I will make Ms. Babcock available to meet with you in our office Monday afternoon at one o’clock.”

  Agent Marsalis lifted a notepad. “Please spell your name, Ms. Toklas.”

  She spelled both names. “Would you like the address of my office?”

  Agent Fuller said, “Yes, please.”

  Diane gave her the address, and Agent Marsalis wrote it down.

  “And now, agents, I am instructing my client to say nothing else. John, are you there?”

  John picked up the handset. “Yes, Diane. I took it off speaker… Are you sure? Okay.” He put the handset back on speaker and set it on the table.

  Diane’s too-loud voice said, “John, the agents will be leaving now. You have my permission to tell them goodbye. Say nothing else.”

  Chapter 38

  We stopped the van in the Port City suburbs and I hid in the rear while Snoop drove us back to my condo garage. “Yeah, the three stooges are on duty in your guest parking lot. They must want Michelle pretty bad to go to this much trouble. Or maybe they want you.” I felt the van stop while the garage gate rose.

  “Nah. They only sent three men.”

  Snoop drove up the ramp. “You joke, but how do you know they don’t intend to hit you? Maybe this has nothing to do with Michelle.”

  I sat up in the rear seat. “If they wanted to hit me, they’d use a sniper from another high-rise with a view of my balcony. It wouldn’t be a difficult shot, only a hundred yards.”

  “Chuck, they know you live in these condos by following you. But this is a big building, and they don’t know which apartment is yours since you own it in a Florida Land Trust. No one can find out who owns it.”

  “Sure they can. The utilities are in my name, and the security on the utility company can’t be that great. A little bribe to someone in the water department office and they get the address.”

  Snoop scoffed and pulled the van into a parking spot next to his car. “Okay, smart guy. The stooges are from Chicago. Wally the Weasel who defended Whiskers is from Chicago. He’s a criminal lawyer, probably has lots of mob contacts, even if he’s not a mob lawyer. I’ll bet you that Walter Eliazar is involved in this somewhere.”

  I slid open the passenger door and stood between my van and Snoop’s car. “Maybe you’re right, Snoop. But I think they’re after Michelle, and I’m their only lead because I told her parents to stay put in their house for a few days. And they may not figure out that Michelle’s grandparents are Hank and Lorene Hickham.”

  Snoop exited the van. “God help us if they do find out. Or rather, God help Hank and Lorene.”

  I said, “I’ll warn them tonight to stay in their Mango Island condo until I clean up this mess.”

  “They’ll be safe there. No way could the stooges get to her on Mango Island. Island security is too good.”

  “You forget Vicente Vidali? Nobody could get to him on Mango Island either—supposedly. I don’t want the three stooges to know that there’s anybody on Mango Island. They’re sure to follow the Avanti when I leave. You park your car near the north entrance to the Port City Outlet Mall. I’ll park at the east entrance and lose them in the mall. I’ll meet you at the north entrance and drive your car to Mango Island.”

  “You want me to drive the Avanti back to my place?”

  “Nah. Leave it there. Call Uber for a ride home.”

  The white Ford did follow me when I left in the Avanti. They might not know that I owned the van since I bought it in the name of an LLC and registered it at a blind post office box. I wanted to keep it that way. They trailed me to the outlet mall and two of them followed me inside, where I lost them. I wondered if they would hang around watching my car until the mall closed.

  Michelle looked back and forth between Hank and Lorene Hickham. Then she turned to me. She looked scared. “How did the FBI find me?”

  The four of us sat at a quiet table eating dinner in the posh Mango Island Caribbean Club restaurant—although adding posh to anything about Mango Island was redundant. The last time I’d been in the Caribbean Club was at a Super Bowl party before I’d taken on Vicente Vidali on his home turf. Even on a crowded Saturday night, the rich upholstery and drapes swallowed the sounds. The private island for megamillionaires, movie stars, and mobsters was the plushest place in Fl
orida. Hank Hickham fit the megamillionaire category. His penthouse condo on Mango Island wasn’t his main house. He used it for fun and the occasional guest. Right now, he was hiding Michelle there.

  “Michelle, you and I have a confidential relationship. That means I can’t discuss this with anyone but you.” I glanced at her grandparents. “Hank, you and Lorene understand.”

  They both nodded. “Sure thing, Chuck,” Hank answered. “Why don’t you and Michelle stroll outside while me and Lorene pour us another glass of wine. We’ll wait here ’til you get back.” He reached for the wine bottle and laughed. “But don’t expect any wine to be left.”

  Michelle and I walked through the French doors onto the patio. We wove our way through the outdoor tables and down the coral steps. A few paces and we were in the landscaped garden, dimly lit by the lights from the patio. I led us across the garden and turned three hundred sixty degrees. We were alone. “Over there.”

  I led Michelle to a marble bench near the beach. Frogs croaked in the quiet night. Soft waves lapped the beach every few seconds. A few puffy clouds were visible from the reflected lights of Port City. A good place to deliver bad news.

  Michelle pressed her knees close together. She looked down at her hands clasped in her lap. “So how’d they find me?” she said in a small voice.

  “Agent Lopez must have traced my cellphone’s location and calls back to when the bridge exploded. They would have found out that I received a phone call from you in the middle of the night and that I was in the Day and Night Diner early the next morning. They would know your phone was there too. They traced your phone back and discovered you were in the same house with Whiskers. And they know I was at Whiskers’ house too. I’d bet that they Googled Whiskers, saw his beard like the guy in the video, and made the connection. You’re their lead to Whiskers.”

  “Why don’t they go to James’s house?”

  “I’m sure they did. But Whiskers is no fool; he may be hiding out. He’s a person of interest in two murders.”

  Michelle looked up with a deer-in-the-headlights expression. “What am I supposed to do now?”

  “You stay in hiding until Monday afternoon. Snoop will come take you to Diane Toklas’s office. I’ll be there too. When you meet with the FBI in her office, you let her do the talking. She’ll handle everything.”

  She took a shuddering breath and her lower lip quivered. “Why don’t you come pick me up?”

  “Because I’m being followed.”

  “Followed? I don’t understand.”

  “Three armed men have followed me for the last few days. That’s why I’m sending Snoop.” I let that sink in.

  The deer-in-the-headlights look came back. “Can’t you call the cops? Make them stop?”

  “It doesn’t work that way,” I answered. “The cops would want to know who these people are and why they’re following me. I can’t tell them that. That’s why it’s important for you to stay hidden.”

  Michelle bit her lower lip. “Who are they? What do they want?”

  “They work for an organized crime family in Chicago. As for what they want, I believe they think I’ll lead them to you.”

  “Why do they want me? Omigod, do they want to kill me?”

  “Don’t worry; I won’t let them.”

  “Don’t worry,” she repeated. “You’re only one man, Chuck. You said they have three men.”

  “That’s why I asked Hank and Lorene to hide you over here. You’ll be fine.”

  “I’ll be fine. I’ll be fine,” she mocked. She jumped to her feet. “For the rest of my freaking life? I can’t live like that.” She took a few steps back and forth, wringing her hands.

  I remained seated. “I promise you it won’t be forever. We’re making real progress. This will be over soon.”

  She stopped pacing and turned toward me. “What kind of progress? How soon?”

  “I can prove that Katherine bought the materials to make the bomb. I can prove that James has the knowledge to help make the bomb and that he stole the boat. I’m working on proving that Steven Wallace was the ringleader. As soon as I have that, I’ll deliver the evidence against three of them to the FBI without involving you. Then you can go home.” I stood up and laid a hand on her forearm. “Just give me a few more days.”

  She looked up at me. “I guess I can do that.”

  I put my arm around her shoulder. “I know this is scary because I’ve been there.”

  “You’ve been where?”

  “Didn’t Hank or Lorene tell you I was arrested for murder once? Two of my own cop friends arrested me and put me in jail. It can get pretty scary.” I gave her a hug. “You won’t be arrested, and you won’t go to jail—not even for a little while. That’s why I had you hire Abe Weisman’s firm. They’re the same ones who helped me. There’s nobody better anywhere. You’ll see.” I released her shoulder. “There’s one other thing you need to know.”

  “What?”

  “More bad news, I’m afraid.

  I sat and patted the bench beside me. “You’d better sit down.”

  Her shoulders slumped. “What’s worse than someone trying to kill me?” She sat on the bench.

  “If these three gangsters find out who your grandparents are, they might use them to get to you.”

  “Omigod. Did you tell Grandpa and Grandma?”

  “Not yet. That’s why I asked them to meet us here on the island. I’ll tell them now, and ask them to stay on the island with you for a few days. Let’s go back and talk to them.”

  Chapter 39

  Early Sunday morning is a good time for breaking and entering. When I left my condo before dawn, there was no sign of the three stooges. Maybe they figured I would sleep in on Sunday. If so, they weren’t hired for their brains.

  My target was the unit above Gino’s Pizza where Wallace went when I followed him. Gino’s was closed on Sunday and that part of Uptown was deserted at dawn.

  There was no point trying the front door. Electronic locks are tricky, plus it was on a public street. I parked the van a block away at a discount furniture store that would have a variety of cars coming and going when it opened later. Just one more anonymous white minivan, as noticeable as a pebble in a gravel pit. I wandered up the alley, another homeless person with my worldly goods in a ratty backpack, looking for treasure in the trash behind the stores. I poked around a few dumpsters and worked my way to the fire escape behind Gino’s Pizza.

  The fire escape ladder screeched from disuse as the pulley protested when I pulled it down. Inevitably, a homeless person or two would be sleeping somewhere in the alley, but they wouldn’t pay any attention to the racket or to me. I was merely one more unexplained phenomenon in a world they didn’t understand. I climbed to the steel platform. The corrosion on the pulley kept the ladder’s counterweight from pulling it back up. I left it in place; the odds were that no one would notice it was down.

  Two windows were served by the steel fire escape platform. An opaque curtain made it impossible to see in the first window with the dawn light behind me. I noted the burglar alarm sensors and went to the other window. It had the same alarm sensors but no curtain. I placed the Maglite against the window and lit up the room. It held a few empty cardboard boxes, an old-fashioned wooden office chair with a missing wheel, and a plastic chair mat.

  I opened my pack and pulled out two suction handles like the ones glaziers use to carry large sheets of plate glass. I fastened one onto the center of the window and the other near the left edge. Using the glass cutter, I etched a rectangle an inch from all four sides. With my left hand, I tapped the etched line with the ball peen end of the glass cutter. The glass snicked and came loose. I grabbed the left handle and maneuvered the cut glass out of the sash and placed it out of the way on the fire escape. I stashed the handles in the pack. I pulled an old beach towel from the pack and laid it across the bottom of the cut-out window.

  Grabbing the wall on either side for support, I backed up to the window
and stuck my right leg through, feeling for the floor with my foot. I hunched my back and slid it part way under the window’s edge, shifting my weight to the inside foot. I reached through the opening and brought in the backpack.

  There were two old-fashioned telephone boxes mounted on the baseboards, one on each side wall. Must have been an office for two people in years past. It had the scent and feel of being long empty.

  My first step on the thread-bare carpet made the floor creak loudly in the Sunday morning silence. I froze and listened. Nothing. I sidestepped along the wall where the floor was less likely to creak. Easing the door open, I shined the Maglite both ways down the hall.

  The peeling paint showed several colors that had been applied over the decades. There were four more doors. To the left the hall opened into a large room. I checked the three doors to the right.

  The room with the opaque curtain was furnished with castoff motel furniture. A neatly made-up queen-sized bed faced a chipped laminate dresser with an empty mounting bracket in the center used for a television in its former life in a two-star motel. A wardrobe closet stood against the wall beside the dresser. All it lacked was a bathroom. All the dresser drawers and the wardrobe were empty, and there was nothing but dust-bunnies under the bed.

  The door at the end of the hall led to a large service closet. An abandoned janitor’s cart had a canvas bag hanging from one end, an empty bucket and mop on the other. The third door opened onto a utility room with electrical panels, an air handler, and telephone switching equipment with an old AT&T logo I hadn’t seen since I was a boy.

  The door across opened to a room like the one I’d broken into. This room had two prehistoric oak desks fronted by two chair mats and a green four-drawer file cabinet. I rattled open the drawers one by one; they were empty. One desk had an office chair like the broken one in the first room. A 1993 calendar hung on the wall, turned to November.