by Tom Corcoran
Crew Cut stripped my watch, snapped the second cuff. “What’s your name, boy?”
“You don’t know?” I said, from the side of my mouth.
“Believe me,” he said, “you want to cooperate.”
“I’m Jack Shit. Tell your friends you know me.”
He pulled my arms upward, wrenched my shoulders and elbows. Pain shot down to my toes. “Cute, dickweed,” he barked at the back of my head. “We just changed it to Deep Shit.”
26
THE GUNNER WITH SHORT white hair tongue-fired thin saliva squirts through his teeth. Expelling hatred or the childhood demons that led him to his line of work. He stood back while the driver, a five-five mouth-breather, did his macho act. The bastard flipped and gut-poked me, tore open my pockets, and hoisted me like a sugar sack. No witnesses came to my rescue. A kid gassing his tricked-out pickup watched it go down like street theater.
I peered into the market. The good Samaritans were grabbing their asses back by the milk and yogurt. To a passerby, I was a drunk being helped by friends. No one on the road had time or the guts to butt in.
Where’s a cop when you need one?
Macho heaved me into the backseat. He secured my feet to manacles on the floor, then latched my cuffs to a clip behind me. You don’t see that many sedans customized for abduction. Before he slammed the door, he hooked my shoulder strap. Only the best kidnappers are safety-conscious. Macho smelled like baby powder. I didn’t mention it.
The third man, a sullen, pock-faced tough with massive shoulders, drove east in Liska’s Lexus. Macho turned his sled into a Dodge Teflon, boogied out of the C-store lot, then west on Griffin. He oozed through traffic, lane hopping, a contender in the urban derby. I’ve never suffered motion sickness, even at sea, but my snacks wanted freedom. My shoulders ached, and my pits reminded me that I hadn’t showered. Odor was the least of my worries. I wasn’t being judged on hygiene. Goodnight Irene had set me up. I had called for a cab, but I was getting a different ride. My brain, for once aligned with common sense, told me to stay in high gear.
I could bank on only one fact. I wasn’t dead yet. I might, some day, drink beer with Monty Aghajanian. On second thought, he had told me to back off. I had done the opposite. Monty would be unsociable the next time I saw him.
Crew Cut, up front, huffing for breath, kept dialing, canceling, redialing. I sensed a frantic soul under his scalding veneer. They had grabbed me like pros, but had lost their way. Why didn’t he call Irene Jones? Driving a hack, she had to be an ace with directions. I absorbed like a son of a bitch. Crew Cut wore a wedding band, my first good sign. I had to think that married men make poor hit men.
Fit the ugly pieces. How had I wound up shackled to a floorpan? She had quit the morgue, drove a cab, but Irene was moonlighting the dark side. She was working with Odin and my hosts in the Dodge. Sam had stumbled into the web and I, like a lemming, had followed him in. Our bad luck, because the machine would grind us up and keep chugging. Where would these boys throw me my private party? First guess: an empty industrial park.
We barreled through light traffic. A vision of mile-long beach in Grand Cayman flashed through my head. Lounges, umbrella drinks, no dead people. Then I clicked to an image of Naomi, laughing at Louie’s. Next came the real world. I peered out at gunpowder sky, ashen clouds, thrashing palms, bus stop benches, angry people with wet hair.
West of Flamingo, my prediction hit home. Macho eased the Dodge over a curb, into a shut-down construction site. We rode the washboard, stopped between chain-link and a concrete block shed. My stomach was everywhere. Why stifle it? I should mess up their car before they whacked me. Barf acid would corrode the D-rings, give the next guy a fighting chance.
Crew Cut got out, spit a few times, kicked a couple clods of dirt. He kept dialing. Macho hummed an eight-bar melody. “All we are is dust in the wind.” My mind flipped around, refused to focus. Was the song part of his execution ritual? How could I postpone the inevitable? Beg them to let me die in the Keys?
Macho checked his side mirror. A Broward cruiser passed, going west. I beamed a psychic message, asked the deputy why a clean car was parked in a mud field. Ninety seconds later a black and gold FHP unit rolled the other direction. We didn’t rate a head twitch. The boys were clocking out. Their minds were on beer-thirty and lounge chairs, worried less about suspicious activity than asteroid collisions.
I checked Crew Cut. He’d connected, looked relieved, hearing what he wanted to hear. He glanced back at me as he talked, listened, talked again. He nodded vehemently, said about four words, and clicked off. He had been told where to dump my body. I waited for him to high-five himself.
He got in. “Seventy-five, south. They want us at the Ops Box.”
Macho had it in gear. He weaved through a dozen fifty-five-gallon drums and bounced us to the curbing. He looked left and said, “Fuck.”
Blue lights flashed.
He said, “Sit tight.”
I had no choice but to take his advice.
The Highway Patrol trooper aimed his black push bumpers at Macho’s door. The cop’s eyes went frantic. He was seeing ten things at once. I counted love-bug splats on his grille. Everything froze except Crew Cut’s right arm, below the trooper’s line of sight.
I couldn’t duck in a firelight. I was high target in a shooting gallery. Blame my stupid psychic message. I began to shake my head, bob it around, trying to warn the officer. I could have spun it like in The Exorcist and still gotten no attention. Crew Cut put his cell phone to his right ear, hidden from the trooper’s view. At least it wasn’t his weapon. But Macho moved his right arm, too, below window level. Each movement lit a fuse. I waited to see which bomb blew first. Why had I thought that married men can’t be hit men? They can’t go home like everyone else, bitch to the wife about workload?
The blue lights intensified, mixed with reds and whites. I looked right. The Broward deputy angled his Crown Vic, stopped six inches from the Dodge’s headlight. The deputy yanked his riot gun from its dash mount, slid low in his seat.
Under his breath, Macho said, “We got a nervous one. Don’t lock eyes with him.” It was the first time I’d heard his gravel voice.
Everyone waited for the other guy to move. The tension inside the Dodge smelled of nervous sweat and baby powder. The two up front were a psychic act, not speaking, but coordinated, in tune. I had chided myself for being along for the ride. My pattern was holding, descending.
Crew Cut spoke into his phone. “Dick Tracy, eight one eight, eight two three, state and county. Hard nose.” Then, monotone: “Right you are. We’re from the bank.”
The lights were tough on my eyes, reflected wet surfaces, but I saw the trooper speak into his radio mike. He tossed his eyes, deputy to Dodge. I looked back to the deputy. He keyed an epaulette-mounted mike, did the eye dance, too. His mirrors, the trooper, the Dodge’s front seat. Why hadn’t one cop or the other taken command? Were they waiting for backup? Was I caught in a silent standoff, a test of first move and forced move?
Someone burst the balloon. Both units cut their flashers. The deputy secured his riot gun, sat higher, began typing on a console keyboard. The trooper whipped a circus turn in reverse, spent a few taxpayer dollars on tire rubber. He was out of sight in thirty seconds. By that time the deputy had moved back to make room. Macho had never taken the Dodge out of gear. He lifted his brake pedal, crept slowly over the curb, then gunned it westward. Crew Cut kept his eyes forward. Neither looked at the deputy.
The lightbulb clicked in my head. I deciphered Crew Cut’s code numbers. We were on State Route 818. Flamingo Road probably was 823. He had given our location, and his office had told the trooper and deputy, via their bosses, to keep their distance. I was riding with the big bad boys, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, the heavies who made the rules. I was chained into a car doing seventy-five on rain-wet I-75 in northwest Miami-Dade during rush hour on a Friday.
Stupid me had asked, Where’s a cop when y
ou need one? Stupid me had found renegades, probably in cahoots with Marlow. All it would take is one jalopy with a blown-out tire, or one dickhead to drop his cell phone, spill his beer when he grabbed for the phone, slide into the next lane for a crushing instant of metal-to-metal. I would survive the collision but not the fire.
Worse, I might live to wish I was dead.
* * *
Why I chilled in knowing that Macho and Crew Cut were FDLE agents is beyond me. My knowing who wrote their paychecks didn’t lift the chance that they could be underbelly fuzz, like Marlow, who intended to add me to their victim list. Still, that single piece of knowledge gave me a toehold outside of confusion, a sense of order, and allowed me to think on other questions.
Five topics, for starters. I needed Ernest Bramblett’s location and story. I wanted to learn about Naomi Douglas’s use of Oxycodone. Why had Odin Marlow penciled a circle around the BBDC mention in the Herald? What had Marcantonio learned from watching the Broward Medical Examiner facility? Who dumped my black-and-white art photos in Naomi’s garbage can?
Four more, to keep my energy flowing. How did Randolph’s money scams tie in to two murders? Who called the city to report Naomi’s death? Why had Monty Aghajanian been so curious about Bobbi Lewis? Who was the tipster who had undercut Marnie’s prize investigative piece?
Three bonus shots: Did Teresa know in advance that Randolph was coming to Key West? Did she have any part in drawing him there? What was her state of mind when she agreed to move into my home?
Screw that last one. I’d visit ego questions only if they helped me answer the first eleven.
“How long you been with FDLE?” I said, directing my voice toward Crew Cut.
He said, “An hour too long.”
“A ditchdigger might say the same thing,” I said. “You must like it, the badge, the power, a car with air.”
“The power, you got that right,” he said.
Oh, Mister Tough Guy.
“You come up through a county job, or straight from the military?”
Crew Cut turned, went eye to eye with me. “My partner sees things. A lot of times dogs run in front of the car. Or ghosts of dogs. His reaction time would make you jump out of your seat, even with those bracelets on your wrists. Funny how a stray mutt can jerk your arms out of their sockets.”
“In other words, you want me to shut up?”
“Nine words ago.”
“You boys are good,” I said. “You should’ve been in intelligence.”
Macho tapped the brakes, and the Dodge went squirrely on the damp road. We drifted sideways, returned to our lane, and never lost pace. Macho wanted to make a point, but I missed his exact message.
I went back to my nine questions. One fact begged for attention. Broward Detective Odin Marlow, former Key West cop, was a double link. Lauderdale and Key West. Liska had said, “Marlow’s a born crook. We fired him twenty years ago. He should’ve gone to Raiford instead of out the door.”
Two other questions came to mind, but they hadn’t come from me. Whit Randolph had said, “They could have died twelve or fifteen hours apart, right?” When I had agreed, he said, “You’re suggesting the deaths are linked?”
He’d had a good point. Maybe I’d been chugging down the wrong track for the past forty-eight hours.
We took I-75 to the Palmetto. Thirty minutes later we were on LeJeune at the airport entrance. In five hours I had come full circle, but we weren’t catching a flight. Macho passed MIA and turned right on Northwest 25th. We entered a chuck-holed maze pocked by corroded metal buildings and enclosures full of semis and heavy equipment. Someone had made a killing in mansard overhangs. I suspected that all of the structures had been built after Hurricane Andrew in the early Nineties. Their owners were waiting for the next open door to insurance money. Aside from simplistic black-paint gang markings, the ubiquitous graffiti, with its flowing letters and tropical colors, improved the district. Two writers—Raven and Oiler—had signed their work.
The “Ops Box” was a long, narrow building fifty yards west of the Miami River. Except for one small mirrored rectangle, no doubt bulletproof glass, every window was bricked shut. The concertina wire that lined its flat roof barely disguised a cluster of antennas and dishes. I saw no company name or address numbers on the building. One piece of graffiti, the stylized initials “FA,” adorned its front wall.
I wanted to assume it stood for Federal Assholes.
Macho keyed a remote transmitter. A garage door lifted on the building’s east end. It had barely cleared five feet when he drove under the still-rising door and parked next to Sheriff Liska’s burgundy Lexus. Before he put it in park, he zapped the remote again. The last thing I saw outside, reflected in an outside rearview mirror, was the orange sun breaking through a hole in late-day clouds. The Intrepid’s headlights illuminated the garage. Another Dodge and two black Ford SportTracs lined the far wall.
Crew Cut opened my door. He began to unhook my manacles and belts. “Sorry about this hardware, bubba. It was for your own safety.”
“My kidnapping was a safety move, too?”
“We kept you from certain death.” He elbowed my gut, where Macho had nailed me at the C-store. The Fritos and Coke rose. He jerked me out, and almost got to wear Technicolor chunks.
“That was for your ‘intelligence’ remark.”
Don’t say it, I told myself. Don’t say, “Duh.”
Macho shielded his hand, punched code into a keypad. A man in a polo shirt and dress trousers opened a metal door. Fluorescent light shone out, the yellow-green that fills a room with mouthwash mist, makes everyone look like a hangover. I was pushed up a single stair. The door was locked behind me. I smelled instant office, installed within the past week: portable walls, cheap carpet and chairs, metal desks, organizers. The air was cranked down to sixty. A veneer-topped table held a coffeemaker and radio gear set to low volume.
A young clerky-looking fellow at a metal desk said, “How ya doin’?” Two more the same flavor studied a corkboard that displayed a satellite photo of Miami-Dade and two city street maps. One map had sectors outlined in blue. Each man said, “How you doin’?”
I was walking through another beer ad.
Crew Cut led me to the building’s west end. At the last office, we went right. Sam Wheeler, in his own clothes rather than jailhouse duds, sat next to the far wall. His eyes flicked my way, then resumed their stare. Sam’s stoic face meant that he had legal problems, or knew that his sister was dead, or one crooked cop was just the start of our headaches. At least he wasn’t chained to a bed or locked away. He said nothing, kept his lips pressed together.
I took his cue.
27
THE FIFTEEN-BY-FIFTEEN OFFICE WALLS were bare but for a poster of the Miami skyline. No windows, no proof of the outside world.
Crew Cut pushed me into the room. “Prize for you, Red.”
Red, long ago, could have changed it to Whitey. “Leave him with me,” he said. “We called every air charter company in a fifty-mile radius. It’s been an hour, Marv. Expand it to a hundred and fifty, and e-mail each a photo.”
Marv?
I was just getting used to Crew Cut. He went from tough guy to champ buttkisser in a flash. He praised his boss’s idea, then strode out. I heard him delegate the task to a weasel out front.
Red stood behind a wood-grain desk that held file stacks and phones. He was a tall, broad-faced man, probably in his fifties, and wore a lavender shirt open at the collar and tan cotton slacks. A pager and a small empty holster were clipped to his belt. In another setting, minus the holster, he was a small business owner in a bad mood. In this room he could be anything he wanted, from dictator to chief puppeteer. He looked at me like I was snot on his wall, and pointed to an empty chair.
Circulation was returning to my feet and hands. The last thing I wanted was a seat. “I’d rather stand,” I said.
Red called out, “Yo, Marv?”
I heard his hard heels in the h
all. Call it self-destructive, but I wanted to see how far these idiots would go to force the seating arrangement. Bad mistake. Marv kicked the back of my right leg, slugged my right shoulder blade. I went sprawling.
Sam started out of his chair.
Red said, “Don’t even think…”
I looked. Red was fast. He pointed a small pistol at Sam’s chest. “We sprung your ass from the hoosegow hospital. This is your thanks?”
“Where with this one?” said Marv.
“Leave him there,” said Red. “He wants to play wise fuck so let him eat rug. Leave his head turned like it is. I can watch him sweat. I want to know why he went knocking on those two men’s doors.”
Marv dug his heel into my spine. He’d been trained to target vulnerable disks and nerves. “Maybe he can tell us why, as of an hour ago, one man was critical and one was a fugitive.”
“Ah, yes,” said Red. “We’re in the middle of doing you right, Mr. Wheeler, and your so-called pal here steps in shit. You probably think he was trying to help you. We think he was trying to squeeze the deal.”
Marv said, “But he ran good camouflage, driving that dweeb sheriff’s car. Chicken Lick Fresca, out of Monroe.”
“You people are fucked,” said Sam. “Take me back to jail.”
Red said, “Why waste your money? We can keep it in this room. We got an undercover operation down the tubes, you follow? You reimburse us for the cost of a four-month sting, as the media calls it, you can bargain all your problems down to a jaywalking ticket. Isn’t that cheaper than attorneys?”
“You’re forgetting I was a victim twice,” said Sam. “A death scam and my civil rights.”
Red was unimpressed. “Your point?”
“I’ll be rich when I get through with Broward. I’ll buy lawyers.”
“You forget you’re in Miami right now?” said Marv.
Sam’s voice went low. “I don’t forget anything.”
“Great,” said Red. “The world’s going to beat a path to your door so you can bitch about injustice. Obviously, you boys don’t think we can cornhole your civil rights. You could wind up sweeping a barber shop in Haiti and be happy for the opportunity.”
