Offside Trap

by A. J. Stewart

  In the end it was worth every penny. The bed was soft but no more so than a hammock, and the noise from the next room died down after one fiery bout of orgasmic screaming. I splashed some water on my face and headed into the predawn morning. I stopped at a gas station to fill the car and grab some coffee and breakfast sandwiches, and then I cruised to Jo Jo’s street. I parked three houses down on the opposite side. The Trans Am was already home. Maybe a slow night, or maybe Joseph had a test today. I drank my coffee and ate a soggy bacon and egg sandwich and watched the street wake. Some people worked for a living, and headed out in their sedans and SUVs. A few small groups appeared, casually dressed, satchels and backpacks and books. The more conscientious students heading off to early lectures. Jo Jo’s house didn’t stir until after ten. First one car, then another, until only the Trans Am was left. Around eleven thirty Joseph appeared in a white polo and Nantucket red trousers. He got in the Trans Am, revved it so the folks in Miami could hear, and then pulled out toward campus, covering a five-minute walk in under a minute.

  I waited for half an hour to make sure no one returned, and then I wandered over to the house and did the tour. I circled the house once. No movement, no pets, no surprises. Three good ways in: pick the front door, break a side window, put a patio chair through the back sliding door. None were necessary. The back patio was a concrete pad under a bug screen canopy. Beer bottles and swimwear littered the plastic patio furniture. A college room share. Which meant kids who thought they were invincible. Which meant kids who thought their house was invincible. I slipped on a pair of latex gloves and stepped inside through the unlocked sliding door.

  The house smelled of cheese corn chips, but the kitchen looked spotless. Not even an errant beer can. Whoever did KP wasn’t tasked with the patio. I paced through the house to check it was clear. Then I returned to the first bedroom. A mattress on the floor, or what I assumed to be a floor since it was covered in at least one layer of discarded clothing. The second room was the exact opposite. Even the bed was made. I slid open the wardrobe to reveal a selection of pressed polos that would have made Macy’s proud. I checked the bottom of the wardrobe and drew a blank. Then I thought about what Angel had said about Jake’s drug stash. I lay on the floor and looked under the bed. A suitcase. I pulled it out. It was a brown leather job that may have once been used by Bing Crosby. It had gold latches that I could pull open with my fingers. I opened the case to reveal an apothecary store. Pills of every color, a brick of white and a selection of bags of green. Then there were the three large bags of Maxx tablets. Enough to supply an entire outdoor music festival, or get a guy sent down for distribution. I snatched the Maxx bags out and pushed the suitcase back under the bed. Then I stood. I looked at the space under the bed, and then I got back on my knees and pulled the case open again.

  I dashed back to the kitchen. Such a clean kitchen had cleaning products. I pulled open the sink cupboard and smiled at the options. I could have started a cleaning business. At the back was a large bottle of bleach. I grabbed it, and a paring knife from the drawer, and strode back to the bedroom. There I slashed at every bag like I was in a horror film, and then when I was done, I poured the bleach over all the drugs until the bottom of the case was a bleachy, druggy swamp. I snapped the suitcase closed and pushed it back under the bed, then I returned the empty bleach bottle and the knife to where I’d found them. I pulled a used plastic grocery bag from the collection under the sink, dropped the three bags of Maxx in it and retraced my steps out of the house through the rear patio, and back to the minivan. The street was still. Fewer people home now than any other time of day. I started the car and punched in a call on my phone.

  “I’m good,” I said.

  “We’re expecting you.”

  I clicked off without further word, and I pushed the selector into gear and pulled out toward the freeway with an obnoxious New York voice ringing in my head. I want to go to Miami!

  Chapter Forty-Five

  IT WAS JAMES Bond time again. I stopped in a service plaza on the turnpike and changed into my tuxedo. I had Lenny Cox’s mantra on my mind: there isn’t a room in Palm Beach you can’t get into wearing a tux. I hoped the same was true in Miami. More to the point, it was about hiding in plain sight. People see a uniform, and nothing more. I pulled out some latex gloves and took out my satchel. The tequila glass I had taken from The Breakers was in its freezer bag. I took a fingerprint dusting kit we kept in the office and some tape. I dusted the glass and found some nice fat prints belonging to Alexander Montgomery. I transferred the prints onto the bags holding the Maxx tablets I had taken from Jo Jo’s room.

  Once I was happy with my work, I packed up and headed into Miami. The restaurant was a pub cum grill, specializing in English food and beer, which in my experience meant sausages and tepid ale. It was a smallish place with faux brickwork and gas lanterns, and neon in the window promoting Worthington’s. A skinny kid with bad skin sat on a collapsible chair in an alcove at the entrance. A small cabinet was fixed to the wall behind him, where I assumed he kept the keys to cars he valeted. I sat in a lot further down, where the cheapskates who didn’t want to tip a valet would park and I watched the kid at work. I noted three things. One, he worked alone. Two, he parked the valeted cars in a two-tiered parking structure behind the restaurant. Three, when he got busy, he flipped the key box shut but didn’t lock it.

  I pulled the Caravan around to the rear parking structure and waited. My contacts in the Miami-Dade PD had surveillance on Montgomery’s office and had reported that someone had made a reservation for dinner at this restaurant, the lazily named Peasant’s Rest. I figured Montgomery, being a Brit, was homesick for some offal and onions or some such delicacy. I sat back in the minivan to wait. Time would tell if my assumption was right. It did, and I was. Another win for first-class investigation masquerading as following a hunch. The pock-faced valet pulled the green Jaguar registered to Montgomery’s company into the structure and parked halfway down a row from where I watched. He hit the security button and spun the keys around his finger like a gunslinger, and then dashed away to his post. I smiled at the Jag, then stepped out of the Caravan and strode away.

  The evening was mild but it felt sticky in the parking garage. I marched around the back of the restaurant, past cigarette butts and the smell of old cooking oil, so I came at the front of the restaurant from the side where I could see the alcove and front door best. I waited for a car, another Mercedes, to pull up out front. Perhaps I had underestimated the clientele of the pub. That or there were a ton of Brits walking among us who were making out like bandits. The valet pulled the Merc forward, and I strode out from my hiding spot. I made a point of walking with purpose, like I had a reason for being where I was, important and unstoppable. It was easy. Wearing a tux has that effect on me. I walk tall and stand straight. The valet pulled away and I got to the alcove as the couple from the Merc stepped in the stain glass-windowed door. I held the door for them and got a smile in return. I wasn’t worried about being recognized later. No one would remember anything but the tux, unless it was worn by George Clooney. But holding the door gave me a second to scope the room and see if Montgomery or his bodyguard driver Nigel were near the window. They were not, so I patted my breast pocket like I’d forgotten something, and then let the door go. As I turned I flicked open the key box with my other hand. I glanced at the keys and was glad Montgomery didn’t drive a Merc or a Bimmer. The Jag tag stuck out like a hunting green beacon. I snatched it out and pushed the door closed, and headed around the restaurant’s other side, back to the parking garage.

  I strode along the exterior wall so as to avoid the valet dashing back to his post, and came in from the side beyond the Dodge Caravan. I stopped and grabbed my latex gloves and the Maxx tablets. Then I took a deep breath. I knew I was about to cross a line. The concept of rule of law was one I truly believed in. It was, of course, also central to Danielle’s value system. But in the end we all have our own moral code. Most of us
agree on the central principles—that’s what made the whole thing work. It was the fringes where the fabric frayed. I didn’t believe in capital punishment, but I had taken a human life. I thought diplomacy was always preferable to violence, but I had beaten an errant husband who wouldn’t stop using his wife for a punching bag. No system was perfect. And for those times, I was prepared to step outside the system. My gut churned at the thought of what I was doing, but I used the sleep test. How many people would lose sleep over Montgomery’s going to jail, whatever the means? None that counted was the answer, and that was enough.

  I clicked the button and pulled open the rear door. The interior smelled of soft leather. I lay across the back and felt under the passenger’s seat. It was a tangle of wires. Electric positioning, seat warmers, maybe some audio. Not a lot of room, but enough. I shoved two bags of Maxx under the driver’s seat and one bag under the passenger’s seat. Then I leaned back to evaluate how easy they were to see. Not very, I decided. I was about to slip out when I heard a car pull into the garage. I leaped back in and pulled the door shut with my foot. The interior light stayed on. I held my breath and listened to the tires screech on the polished concrete as the car turned into a slot. I heard the door open. If the valet saw the light on in the Jag he would surely investigate, and my plan would be a bust. Or worse.

  The door on the other car slammed closed, a deep, expensive thud. I still held my breath. It felt like the thing to do. Then the interior light in the Jag gave up, assumed it was alone and faded to black. I heard the beep-beep of a security system being set, and the soft pad, pad, pad of cheap shoes running back toward the restaurant. I let out a long slow breath, waited fifteen seconds, then flipped the door open and slid out. I pushed the door closed and stood tall, brushing my lapels like I was 007 himself and had every reason in the world to have been lying on the backseat of a stranger’s car. I slipped my hand inside my jacket and pulled out a jewelers hammer. A quick look around the vacant garage and a swift tap, and I cracked the taillight. My second taillight inside of a week. It was becoming a thing. I gave the light a second crack to make the hole in the red plastic a good size then I flipped the hammer around and used the pointy side of the head to crack the bulb. The damage was noticeable enough, but on the opposite side from where the valet would appear, so with some luck he wouldn’t notice.

  I slipped the hammer back inside my jacket pocket, hit the key fob to engage the security system and walked out of the parking garage and back around the rear of the restaurant. I waited until the valet had driven the next car away toward the garage, and then strode over to the alcove. An elderly couple was standing half in, half out of the alcove, right in front of the key box. I marched up, stepped in behind them, flicked the box open, dropped the key on a hook, and then tapped the door shut. The couple didn’t move, but they didn’t protest either. I gave them a smile and a good evening.

  “Good evening,” they replied in unison. Perhaps they thought I was a valet too. The sharpest dressed valet in all Miami-Dade. I walked away, to where I had come from, but instead of looping back behind the restaurant, I kept walking, across a ribbon of grass and into the strip mall next door, to put my future into the hands of two guys I had never met in my life.

  Chapter Forty-Six

  THE COPS’ NAMES were Dorsey and Stoat. After five minutes of sitting in the back of a patrol car, I forgot which was which. The car was an older Crown Vic that had done more miles than a New York taxicab, and smelled of stale coffee and dander. After introductions, and having given my tuxedo a good look and a perfunctory smirk, we fell into an easy silence. Our only common ground was Lenny, and he was dead. But I knew they had all served in the Gulf together, and somehow the two detectives came out owing Lenny Cox a debt of gratitude. A lot of people owed that kind of debt to Lenny Cox. But the debt bound us and there was very little work involved in talking them into helping me. It was a good ninety minutes before we saw the valet dash off and return with Montgomery’s Jaguar. I hoped he got a good tip, because he must have run a half marathon over the course of the night, and he wasn’t going to be popular once Montgomery figured out what had happened.

  We followed the Jaguar along surface streets, keeping one or two cars between us as cover. It wasn’t Dorsey or Stoat’s first day on the job. We reached up onto I-95 and hit a sixty-five zone and the Jag pulled away. We were doing seventy-five when we neared downtown and the zone dropped to fifty-five. The Jag didn’t slow. Neither did anyone else. We pulled to within one car and Dorsey or Stoat flashed the headlights. The car in front touched his brakes, and then pulled out of the fast lane. Then we pulled in close to the Jag. Whichever of Dorsey or Stoat was driving flipped on the flashing blues, while the other logged the speed, all official like. The Jag wasn’t keen to pull over. We sounded our siren, a deep roop sound, and finally Montgomery’s driver got the hint.

  I watched the whole thing go down from the back seat of the patrol car. Dorsey or Stoat punched the button and a video monitor on the console came to life, along with audio. Both officers approached the Jaguar from opposite sides. The one on the driver’s side spoke to Montgomery’s bodyguard about speeding in a fifty-five zone, and his busted taillight. He asked for license and registration. The bodyguard protested innocence and ignorance of all wrongdoing. Then the cop snapped to attention, flicked open the safety latch on his holster and put his hand on his gun. He didn’t immediately pull it.

  “Sir, do you have a weapon?” I heard him say through the audio.

  “What?”

  “Is that a gun under your jacket?”

  “I have a permit.”

  “Sir, step out of the car.”

  “I said, I have a permit.”

  “Put your hands on the steering wheel and slowly step out of the car.”

  The bodyguard did as he was told. I knew from our meeting at The Breakers that his permit was good.

  “Is there someone else in the car?” said the cop, glancing at the tinted rear window. His hand was still on the butt of his gun.

  “Yes, my boss.”

  The other cop, Dorsey or Stoat, opened the rear door on the other side and asked Montgomery to step out. As he did I heard the cop say, what is that, and then he pushed Montgomery against the car.

  “Spread ’em,” he said, as he patted Montgomery down. Montgomery’s face held an arrogant grin, like he didn’t just know something you didn’t know, he knew a thousand things you didn’t know.

  “Dorsey, you need to see this,” said the cop with his hand in the middle of Montgomery’s back. Dorsey kept the bodyguard in front and marched him around the car. Stoat pulled his firearm and kept it on Montgomery and his man. Dorsey looked, then leaned in the car and came up holding a bag of Maxx tablets.

  “What are these?” said Dorsey.

  Montgomery lost his arrogant face. Now he just looked angry.

  “Those are not mine,” he said.

  “They’re in your car.”

  “I have nothing to say. I wish to speak to my attorney.” He glanced at his bodyguard. “Say nothing.”

  Dorsey handcuffed the two men while Stoat stood guard, and then he came back to the patrol car. He got in and looked at me through the cage wire.

  “You wouldn’t believe it—I see the guy has a gun, under his right arm. He’s a lefty. If he were a righty, I’d never have seen it. Then the other guy, he’s getting out and he hooks his foot under the front seat and kicks out the drugs. It couldn’t have been easier.”

  “What now?”

  “Now I get back up. I figure you don’t want them sitting in the back there with you.”

  “Got that right.”

  The video recorded Stoat mirandizing Montgomery and his guy, and then a second patrol car arrived and took them away. Dorsey collected the three bags and brought them to his car, and then we waited for a truck to carry the Jag to the impound yard. The truck pulled out into freeway traffic, and Dorsey and Stoat ambled back to the patrol car.

  “Al
l done?” I said.

  “Yeah,” said Dorsey. “We’ll drop you back at your car, then we got a report to write.”

  “And those guys? The drugs?”

  “The drugs will go into evidence as soon as we get back. The case will go to Vice.”

  “Okay,” I said, and sat back for the ride to the parking garage. We got there with no further talk, until I got out of the Crown Vic.

  “Thanks for your help,” I said through the window.

  “He’s a feisty one,” said Stoat. “He’s just been caught red-handed with a good-sized stash, enough for jail time. And you know what he says as I’m stuffing him in the car? He says do I got a family?”

  I frowned. I wasn’t sure what Montgomery could do from jail. Maybe it was just talk.

  “Do you have a family?”

  Stoat smiled. “Yeah, that’s what I tell him. I gotta ex-wife. And he’s welcome to her. You know what he does? He smiles. Just smiles.”

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  A LITTLE RAY of sunshine entered my life when I got the call the following morning that my insurance company had okayed my claim and I could go and choose another car. With my bike in the shop and the Dodge Caravan making me feel like I’d descended into nineties suburban hell, I decided there was no time like the present. There was enough cloud to cast shadows, but the sun was bright and full, and I was having an easy time convincing myself that what I had done the previous evening was the right thing to do. Ron had deposited Cassandra at Palm Beach International en route to Vail, and was looking for something to take his mind off it, so he agreed to chauffeur me to a few car lots. I had liked the sweet smell and soft touch of the leather in the Jaguar that I had found myself facedown in the previous night. But Ron had convinced me that not only was a Jag not really my style, but it would probably stick out at least as much as the Mustang had, which we had previously agreed was not a good quality in a car commonly used for stakeouts, following suspects and other sneaky purposes.