The Blue Tango Salvage: Book 2 in the Recovery and Marine Salvage, Inc. Series

by Chris Poindexter

  Dugger had done well. There’s no better way in the front door than with an invitation. I handed them to Bobby.

  “Feel like getting a drink later?” he asked Dugger.

  “Think I might,” he grinned.

  Amber sent us the address of our local office which was, perhaps ironically, near where the two bag men originated. Their phones showed up on the display when got close.

  “That’s convenient,” Bobby pointed out.

  It was tempting to just take the show over to check out the secondary target, but we got in trouble being that carefree the first time. Instead of risking the coincidental sighting of the phone truck, I opted to study what we had first.

  “You guys didn’t lose my drone, did you?” Deek asked over the comm link.

  “Hey, welcome back,” I said. “The drone is safe and secure and Amber did a great job.”

  “I know, I’m looking at the buffer,” he agreed. “Gimme a couple hours and we’ll be into their surveillance cams,” he said.

  “Okay, I’m clear here,” Amber announced. “I’m going to do some shopping on the way down.”

  Several minutes later we turned into the new warehouse which was a tall one-story model but it had the same high security fence with razor wire. Deek opened the gate for us.

  “You should hear this,” Deek said, clicking over to a feed of Amber blazing down the highway in her Jeep with the top down singing along with Boom! Bap! Bow! Suit at the top of her lungs. It was, in a word, dreadful.

  Everyone in the van with an earpiece groaned in pain.

  “Knock it off, Deek,” I said, but I was laughing when I said it. It was so bad it had a certain charm to it.

  “I just texted her,” V said to spoil the party.

  “Shit!” Amber swore a moment later, fumbling with her earpiece. “ASSHOLES!” she yelled into the device before cutting it off.

  I tried not to laugh but I might as well have been trying to stop the wind.

  Chapter 23

  I liked the layout of the new warehouse better. It had an actual loading dock and Deek could send the video from the external cameras to the van and our phones. We wouldn’t be showing up blind inside and, best of all, it was defensible. A large parking lot and truck turnaround meant there was a lot of distance between the building and fence. One person with one of our silenced Russian assault rifles could hold off a small army. If Sergei wanted to run at us this time, he’d have to come at a fortified position. Our days of walking into convenient ambushes were over.

  Inside we discovered Deek had set this location up for operations. Instead of a big TV there was a bank of monitors, computers and communications gear.

  “Just like the old days,” Q pointed out.

  “Nice,” Bobby agreed. “You guys sure know how to set a table.”

  The food wasn’t quite as fancy. On one side of the big storage area was a refrigerator with various pre-packaged meals and a microwave. There were three 40 gallon coolers stocked with beer and one with soft drinks.

  “How much do they think we drink?” Jesse asked, looking over the selection of beer.

  “Running out of beer is the only thing they really get in trouble for,” I told him. “So they err on the side of caution. Might as well hand me one...while you’re there.”

  “Me too,” Q chimed in. What the hell it was after noon somewhere.

  Jesse shook his head and handed over the bottles, then figured what the hell and had one himself.

  “Don’t they drink beer with lunch in Europe?” Bobby asked.

  “They do in Sweden,” I confirmed.

  “What the heck, I like chocolate,” he said, grabbing a beer himself.

  “I think that’s the Swiss,” Q pointed out.

  “They all look alike to me,” Bobby shrugged, twisting the cap off his beer.

  V never drank before a mission and, considering her job, that was a good thing. My phone rang.

  “Nick caught the early flight for Miami,” Anita said by way of greeting.

  “Wow, I could never even get a dog to come running like that.”

  “What can I say?”

  Probably a lot more than she was telling me, which would be a very interesting conversation for another day.

  “When and where?”

  The restaurant was a Cuban place out by the airport, one of her favorites, Anita informed me.

  “He grabs the first plane out of town and takes you to your favorite restaurant. You know my curiosity is piqued.”

  “Is that the only thing piqued?” she panned.

  “That’s the only thing my girlfriend wouldn’t cut off,” I added. “I’ll meet you at the restaurant. When you see me just excuse yourself.”

  I didn’t want to take the van or make the motor pool send another car so I decided to try that ride sharing app Q showed me a few days earlier. I called Deek.

  “I can send a car,” he reminded me.

  “Yeah, but you just type in the address of where you’re going and some car just shows up to get you.”

  “Ye-e-eah,” Deek agreed, wondering if I was messing with him.

  “Is that not the shit?”

  “Okay, sure,” Deek agreed. It did make more sense than sending a car. No one was shooting at us yet -that was a good sign. “We should buy that company,” I insisted.

  “They’re pretty big,” Deek reminded me. “I’ll use your phone to keep an eye on you.”

  The app told me someone would be along in eight minutes but it was less than five when someone named Terry showed up in a black four door Prius. The app showed me a little icon of the car on a map, so I knew exactly where he was. I let myself in the backseat. Terry was a recent arrival from Jamaica and altogether pleasant.

  Anita’s favorite lunch spot was called El Palacio De Los Jugos, The Palace of Juices, on West Flagler near the airport. It was a bright, noisy and busy place serving authentic Cuban food and where English was definitely a second language. I could immediately see why Anita liked this place. It was a barrage of color and life, spiced with heavenly bakery scents of sweet Cuban bread and fried plantains. It was a good choice for a meeting place; part restaurant, part outdoor market with covered seating. It was still early for lunch and I saw Anita and Nick right away. When she saw me she made her excuses and went for the lady’s room. I joined Nick at the table.

  “Hi Nick,” I said happily. “We never were properly introduced; you can call me the Fat Man.”

  His smile flipped over to a frown and he stopped in mid-chew of his chicharrones looking around for Anita and then being hit with the certain knowledge that, whatever this was, she was part of it. It was a lot to process after a long flight.

  “You!” he said with his mouth still half full.

  “Relax, Nick,” I scolded, “I come in peace.”

  “I should arrest you!” he said, finally choking his food down enough to talk.

  “For what, Nick?”

  “I don’t know,” he said in frustration. “Something.”

  “Yeah, I heard what happened and I’m real sorry, but Anita and I did warn you.”

  He went from angry to whipped. I had just confirmed the woman he loved was in league with the devil. “What do you want?” he asked, suddenly losing his appetite.

  Since he wasn’t eating I helped myself to one of his chicharrones, which really were the best in Miami. He watched me take his food; just another petty indignity on top of all he’d already suffered.

  “How would you like to get back in the game and get a real slimeball off the streets?”

  “You going to turn yourself in?” he asked warily.

  “You should leave the comedy to me, Nick, you don’t have the timing for it. What do you know about Sergei Mendenov?”

  Now I had his attention. “I’ve heard the name,” he said evenly.

  “What if I told you I could deliver him and his entire Miami operation and drop it all right in your lap?”

  “I’d be skeptical of why you
would do that,” he said, finally lightening up a little. I kept looking for a spark because if Anita was hooking up with him there had to be something there.

  “Let’s say I owe Anita a favor,” I said, giving him as much as I could. “There was an incident...it might have blown back on her.”

  “Why me? You could have gone to anyone in the local field office. They would have jumped at a chance like that.”

  “I told you, Nick, I felt bad about what happened to you.”

  “You were serious?”

  “Rule number one, Nick, the Fat Man never lies.”

  He went back to his food and chewed through the possibilities “What’s your idea then?”

  I outlined the plan for him.

  “That might work,” he agreed. “I don’t like the first part.”

  “They took a shot at my people on our turf,” I explained. “There have to be consequences, but we’ll minimize the casualties.”

  “What makes you so sure I won’t double cross you?” he said with a touch of menace.

  “Through this whole ordeal, Anita was the one person always in your court,” I explained. “She believes in you and I believe in her.”

  Funny how honesty lands like a laser guided bomb. It always amazes me how effective the truth can be in a world of deception.

  “This is your chance to get back in the game, Nick,” I soothed. “To show those stuffed shirts in D.C.”

  Anita joined us and I slid over so she could retake her seat. She passed an order of chicharrones over in front of me.

  “Oh, you are so thoughtful,” I smiled. The goddamn women were going to end up running us but, when you had the right ones, it wasn’t so bad.

  “Sorry, but you don’t have long to think about it,” I said, taking a bite of my own food, which was heavenly.

  I turned to Anita. “I need to know by tonight,” I reminded her.

  “Do you need a lift somewhere?” she asked.

  “Nah, I got this thing on my phone that’s totally awesome.”

  “It’s called ride sharing,” she informed me.

  “You’ve heard of it?”

  “Everyone has heard of it,” Nick added. “It’s everywhere.”

  “Damn,” I complained. “So everyone already knows about it?”

  They both nodded.

  “Crap. I suppose buying them’s out of the question.”

  Nick shook his head.

  “Well, shit. Guess I’ll have to settle for shaking Sergei down. Oh, my ride’s here,” I said, looking at my phone. “Time to go.”

  I had a different driver on the way back, Deek texted me an update.

  INTO CAMERAS

  Excellent news. Now all we needed was a way in the back door. My plans were quickly discarded when I saw Amber, who was back from West Palm. She was wearing heels and gray hose under a short gray skirt with a matching short jacket topped off with a black wig and big glasses. Under the jacket was a lighter gray sheer top. The overall effect was really quite striking but everyone else was watching the monitors.

  “What do we got?” I asked, deciding to put Amber’s distracting choice of clothing aside for the moment. She shot me a look that was something between perplexed and indignant.

  “It’s payday,” Bobby informed me, “for the club and employees. People stopping by to get their checks all day and two more cars delivered bank bags.”

  Tonight was definitely the right night to strike, I surmised. Probably the only time one of Sergei’s icy Special Forces lieutenants wouldn’t be around to supervise the transfer of cash.

  Deek popped up on one of the other monitors. “I’ve been replaying the phone data and using it to map out a rough outline of the interior spaces.”

  “Two guys at the front door, one at the back door, three guys in the money room, a bartender here and a hallway here,” the screen highlighted different areas as he spoke, “which looks like bathrooms and it connects to the back door, the dressing room for the ladies and I’m going to guess the office is down there, too.”

  “Nobody at the hallway to the bathrooms?”

  “Not that has a phone,” Deek pointed out, though it would be just like Sergei to circulate someone inside without a phone or pretending to be a customer. I made a mental note to brief the inside team on that point.

  “Isn’t anyone going to ask why I’m dressed this way?” Amber asked, not being able to take it anymore.

  “Can I see you for a minute?” I asked her, gesturing toward the office.

  She followed me into the office and crossed her arms to shield against what she must have thought was a dressing down.

  “It’s a plan for getting in the back door!” she said, clearly miffed at the lack of acknowledgment.

  “I get it,” I assured her, “and it’s a great plan.”

  “Then what? Why is everyone so...clueless!” she said in exasperation.

  “They’re afraid to say anything,” I pointed out.

  That took her by surprise. “Why?” she asked, some of the defiance turning to confusion.

  “Let’s review,” I said easily. “First, everyone knows we’re kind of a thing, right?”

  “Okay, but I never let that--”

  “This isn’t about you,” I interrupted. “Less than 24 hours ago you were about to bleed Dugger out in a parking lot and Q had to talk you down off that ledge.”

  “So you’re saying they’re afraid of me.”

  “They’re unclear what we are together. Who’s supposed to be leading this posse?”

  “You are--” Then it dawned on her. “Okay, I get it,” she said, visibly relaxing.

  “Walking in here dressed that way was kind of brash,” I pointed out. I didn’t tell her that mindset is exactly what almost got Q and I killed and resulted in one of my people being wounded, not to mention Ziggy. I didn’t want to crush Amber’s spirit or enthusiasm, just channel it in a more productive direction.

  “I could have walked in with it in a bag and--”

  “And trotted it out when we got to that phase of the planning,” I finished for her. “One way you’re a team player--”

  “And the other way I’m boss’s bitch throwing my weight around,” she finished.

  “That’s a little harsh.” But it’s also true, I thought.

  “Hold on a second.” She walked over to the door and called Dugger and Bobby in.

  They joined us and Dugger had roughly the same look a man gets before facing the firing squad.

  “Look,” Amber began, “I wanted to say this in front of my boss and yours,” she said, gesturing at Bobby and I, “so there’s no mistake about what was said. I want to apologize for my behavior in the parking lot the other day. What you did was wrong, but it didn’t justify that level of response. I want you to know that there were better ways I could have handled it and I’m sorry.”

  Short and right to the point. What she was doing wasn’t entirely necessary in Dugger’s case but I was proud of her anyway. For maybe the first time in her life Amber was standing her ground and dealing with shit instead of running off and fucking someone for money.

  Dugger looked surprised and relieved all at once. “I’m sorry,” he said, finding his voice. “I didn’t mean nothing by it.”

  “We all know that, Dugger,” I assured him.

  “This isn’t going to get all mushy, is it?” Bobby asked.

  Even though it was kind of a corny gesture Amber and Dugger shook hands.

  “Not any more mushy than that,” she said, with the ironic juxtaposition of that comment coming from a woman in a wig, dressed in a strip club cocktail server’s uniform.

  “That settles it then,” I said with a touch of relief.

  “You can go,” Bobby told Dugger. He left with the quick step of a man who still had his balls.

  “If you gentlemen will excuse me, I’m going to go change,” Amber said heading off to find some more appropriate clothes.

  “She catches on quick,” Bobby said admir
ably. “I wish I could say that about all my guys.”

  “She surprises me a lot.”

  “I can see why you like her,” Bobby acknowledged. “Not bad looking as a brunette, either.”

  “Let’s go get a beer and figure out what we’re doing.”