Cut and Run

by Ridley Pearson

  They passed a sign indicating they’d entered Manatee County. Larson upped the rental’s speed, desperate now to reach their destination.

  “You’re not coming to Useppa with me,” Larson said, having delayed it as long as he could.

  “Of course I am.”

  “I’ve arranged something. A buddy of mine will look after you.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “At the end of this it would be nice if Penny had a mother.”

  She bit her tongue and said no more.

  Larson had left Dr. Miller both his own and Hope’s original cell phone number-the number now call-forwarded to the Siemens he’d given her, and therefore it was impossible to triangulate. Miller and Hope spoke the same language; she would be the one called with anything technical.

  “Tell me she’s okay, Lars,” she said at last.

  “She’s okay,” he said.

  “Tell me again.”

  “They have not hurt her. Guys like this, it’s all about profit and loss. There’s no profit in that.”

  She unstrapped her seat belt and moved over the gap between the seats so that she could lean against him.

  Larson drove on in silence, holding his breath. With each mile, he pressed the rental a little faster, and she leaned more heavily against him. He could have just kept driving.

  Ninety minutes later, now on the island of Gasparilla, a hotel bellhop, clad in khakis and a green golf shirt, awaited them with a brass luggage dolly and a look of impertinence. Larson’s rental blocked the hotel’s semicircular drive, other arrivals now idling behind him.

  The night air rang behind a chorus of cicadas and tree frogs. The Gasparilla Inn’s white antebellum facade loomed large before them. Hotel guests came and went, climbing into golf carts used on the island in lieu of cars, a parade of salmon and lime green Bermuda shorts, Tevas and leather deck shoes, spray-on tans eager for the real thing, diamonds and silicone.

  “Tommy’ll take care of you,” Larson said.

  “I don’t want Tommy to take care of me.” She turned intentionally childish.

  Larson had bunked with Tommy Tomelson during a two-week in-service training at the FBI Academy a couple years earlier. He’d stayed in touch enough to know that the man had lost his wife to cancer and had subsequently taken a year’s leave from the ATF, then a short nosedive into a rum bottle, and finally sobered up enough to live the grief-stricken existence of a charter-boat captain. He was currently operating a tarpon charter out of Miller’s Marina, which served Larson’s needs well.

  Tommy was up there on the veranda, smoking a Marlboro and drinking something dark, watching the tight buns and the halter tops pass by while waiting for Larson to sort things out. He was a big guy, with a fisherman’s tan and a quarterback’s shoulders, his sun-leathered face covered now by a pervasive veil of discontent and loneliness.

  “When and if I find her, you’ll be the first to know. All right?”

  She held on to his arm.

  “Listen to Tommy and do as he asks.”

  “At least take him with you, if not me. Please don’t go alone.” She squeezed his arm.

  “This is not heroics. It’s simple numbers. Tommy stays with you.” He’d gone over this a dozen times in his head. The smarter call was to wait for Hampton or Stubblefield to fly down here. Maybe both-to take on the house on Useppa Island with as strong a force as he could currently muster. But Markowitz logged onto the grid at night-and with the meeting of known crime families called for the following night, the list had to be close to being fully decrypted. Larson didn’t have twenty-four hours to wait.

  “You call me the minute you know anything.”

  “Same there,” he returned. “If Miller should call-”

  “You’ll hear about it,” she said. She leaned away from him, then changed her mind and craned across to kiss him. Larson turned to meet her lips. There was nothing particularly romantic about it, but he felt it long after.

  “Don’t do anything stupid.”

  “As if I have a choice,” he fired back. “This is me we’re talking about.”

  The first hint of a smile began, but then she hid it well.

  She paused, the car door now open a crack. “If you find her-when you find her-she won’t trust you. We talked about getting a dog, she and I. We were going to name it Cairo. Like Egypt. Use it. It may help.”

  “ Cairo.”

  “Yeah. Ever since she saw a picture of the pyramids she’s wanted to go there.” Her eyes grew distant as if watching a film run inside her head.

  Larson walked her up the hotel’s front steps and introduced her to Tommy Tomelson.

  As he left, he felt horribly alone.

  Tommy Tomelson had used some of the life insurance from his wife’s passing to buy the twin-engine inboard-outboard four-hundred-and-forty-horsepower Christine, judging by both the name and all the bells and whistles he’d added. GPS satellite navigation. Sonar. Weather radar. SailMail e-mail. Larson read his own e-mail off the BlackBerry as he navigated the channel cut into the shallow bay between Gasparilla and Useppa. Fishing craft, cigarette boats, and pleasure cruisers stayed to the dredged channel, crowding it. Larson opened it up once he’d cleared the speed-controlled areas. Dusk was an hour off, the sun burning harshly to the west, the air holding that twinge of change that came with approaching twilight.

  Larson hoped to make the return crossing before darkness fully descended. He wasn’t keen to test his maritime skills on a friend’s six-figure investment.

  Tying up at Useppa, a private spit of old island luxury less than a mile long, required permission. Tommy, who often chartered for the island’s guests, had called ahead for Larson. With no bridges connecting it to the mainland, and only the marina for access, Useppa was as remote a place as could be found. It made great sense as a retreat for Markowitz.

  Walking off the immaculate dock and onto the island proper, Larson stepped back a century, entering an enclave like nothing he’d ever seen. No cars here-only golf carts used for everything from maintenance to transportation. Larson climbed a sidewalk set amid a lush botanical garden of wild orchid, mangrove, tropical fruit trees, and flowers in garish colors. Tiny lizards scurried through the underbrush, sounding to Larson like rats. Single-story shell-white houses carried names instead of street numbers, black shutters, and screened-in porches. BEGONIA HOUSE. THE BOUGAINVILLEA. THE ROSE COTTAGE. Larson ducked beneath a heavy overhanging branch that ran tentacles back to the ground like a shredded curtain. Lights already glowed yellow behind a few windows. The air smelled of perfume. Small waves lapped on a crescent-shaped man-made beach below and to his left. A few sailboats were tied up to moorings there. The encroaching dusk foreshortened distance and softened edges, giving everything a look that for Larson usually followed two or three cocktails.

  He stepped off the path, making room for a middle-aged tennis couple with a perky teenage daughter in tow who offered Larson a smile full of braces. The sidewalk terminated in front of a hundred-year-old inn, from which emanated the sounds of a busy bar and dining room. The lush life. Tony Bennett crooned about lost love.

  Bit by bit, byte by byte, it was to here, Useppa Island, that Dr. Miller’s information quest had led them. The technology had been explained to Larson-using Internet service providers to trace Markowitz’s digital identity to a Direct PC high-speed Internet account.

  The address was The Sand Dollar, Useppa Island. Larson had been expecting a hotel, not a private residence.

  Larson found the look of the place intriguing, its isolation and privacy perfect for hiding, an ideal location from which to decrypt Laena.

  Near the end of the path he reached and entered the Useppa Inn. Paddle fans and linen tablecloths. A wood bar with a dozen varieties of bottled rum hanging inverted in a metal rack. Larson slid up onto a stool and ordered an Appleton Estate rum and tonic with a lime wedge. Two women sat at a window table nursing what looked like iced teas while a pair of elderly fellows shared bee
rs by an overhead television with the sound off showing a prerecorded golf match. One of the women wore a witch’s hat and green nose. The other wore Harry Potter glasses and had a wand sitting on the table. Halloween with the elderly.

  Ten minutes passed and Larson ordered another rum. Knowing he shouldn’t drink on an empty stomach, he added a basket of french fries to the mix and called it dinner, capping it off with a double espresso. An octogenarian entered, sat alone, and ordered a vodka up.

  Larson daydreamed of the St. Louis Rowing Club on Creve Coeur Lake, missing the spiritual exercise as much as the physical. He felt bone-tired, though the french fries had helped to wake him.

  The house detective, an older, florid-cheeked man named Harold Montgomery, whom Tomelson had phoned ahead of time, doubled as the dinnertime maitre d’. Smelling of lime cologne with an afterglow of gin and tonic, he offered Larson a damp, soft-fleshed right hand and the two men greeted one another by sharing a few stories about Tomelson. Montgomery wore dark trousers, a white shirt, a navy blue tie with anchor insignias, and a sheen of perspiration across his brow. His sport coat was a mean-spirited, shocking green better reserved for highway work crews. He had a piece of food stuck in his top teeth. He’d missed a few spots shaving. His white hair was front-combed in a failed attempt to hide his baldness. Montgomery raised his right index finger to signal the bartender and was quickly delivered a gin and tonic.

  “To absent friends,” Montgomery said in a tight voice, clinking glasses with Larson.

  “Let’s talk about the layout of The Sand Dollar,” Larson began.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  True to his training, Tommy Tomelson guarded Hope’s second-story room from the hallway, occupying one half of an old-fashioned love seat located beneath a set of windows that conveniently overlooked the hotel’s semicircular driveway. He’d checked her in under the aliases Stephan and Elizabeth Storey, so as not to identify her as a single woman and to keep the wolves off the scent. The room’s windows, long since sealed shut for the air-conditioning, were behind closed blackout shades. If a killer wanted in there he’d have to go through the glass, and Tomelson would be on top of the intruder before the guy hit the floor.

  Soon after she entered her hotel room, Hope’s cell phone rang. She scrambled to answer, praying it was Penny, only to hear the voice of Dr. Miller.

  “I can’t talk long,” Hope said. “I need this line free for a call I’m expecting.”

  “He’s online,” Miller said. “And I’ve IDed his port.”

  “Right now?” She checked her watch.

  Miller confirmed.

  “He’s early.”

  “Maybe not,” Miller said. “More likely I was a little sloppy, a little hasty in my analysis. I was working fairly quickly this morning. By coming online early evening he picks up another five or six hours of processing.”

  “But if he’s online right now,” she repeated, “and you’ve identified the port he’s using, are you saying I can communicate with him?”

  “He has no firewall in place. No protection. You realize what that means? I know Leo. That’s no accident. If he didn’t want to be found, I wouldn’t have found him.”

  “But… then why not contact us directly?”

  “Technically speaking? For one, they could have a key-tracker in place that would tell them anything he typed-they’d know what he was working on. Or they might have certain applications blocked. Or they might be watching his screen. It’s hard to say. Why don’t you ask him?”

  “Me?” she gasped, thinking immediately of Larson.

  “Certainly not me,” Miller said. “You apparently know what this is about. I do not. If you people… if the federal government is interested… the way the world is right now… then that’s enough for me. Do you have an Internet connection? I can give you a URL and a password, and that’s about all there is to it. It’s all handled on this end-on the grid.”

  Her heart quickening, Hope glanced around the room, found the hotel directory, and tore it open, the receiver cradled between her shoulder and ear. Flipping through some notebook dividers, she saw that the inn had a business center, but it closed at 5 P.M.

  “I’m fifteen minutes late,” she mumbled into the phone. “I could call the manager, plead my case.”

  “Any laptop would do.”

  She thought of Tomelson, just outside her door. A guy like that would have some way to connect to the Internet. “I’m going to need a minute.”

  Then, as she turned toward the door, she noticed the folded advertiser that stood up on its own alongside the withered rose that was trying its best to look fresh. NINTENDO! ON-DEMAND MOVIES! WEB ACCESS FROM YOUR TV!

  She practically tore the doors off the armoire. A wireless keyboard sat atop the television, two elaborate joysticks on the shelf to the right, their wires tangled. A duplicate advertiser sat atop the TV.

  She switched on the TV. It took too long to warm up. Finally a menu appeared, and, sure enough, INTERNET ACCESS was there on the menu.

  “I’m on…” she said less than a minute later. “What’s the URL and password?”

  “You understand,” Miller said with great reserve, “that once we do this, a window is going to appear on his screen. We can’t predict how he’ll react.”

  “No firewall,” she said, handing him his own earlier argument. “That has to be significant.”

  “Of course it is,” he agreed, each building the other’s confidence.

  She asked Miller to give her another minute and called Larson using the hotel phone, but the call went straight to voice mail. He either had the phone shut off-doubtful-or he’d moved out of cellular service range. Her maternal fears decided it for her.

  “Okay, let’s do it,” she said.

  Sounding excited himself, Miller dictated the specifics and she wrote them down. She worked the keyboard and, a moment later, a small window appeared in the center of her browser.

  “I’ve got it.”

  “Again, there’s no gentle way to do this,” Miller warned. “Once I patch you in, you’re just going to show up on his screen, uninvited. What he does with you at that point is anybody’s guess. Likely he’ll kill that window and log off the grid, and that’s the last we’ll see of him.”

  “He’ll talk to me.” She sensed her child’s fate at the end of her fingertips. She felt torn about doing this before contacting Larson. If she succeeded, they both would celebrate. If she failed, he would never forgive her, and she would never forgive herself.

  “Are you ready?”

  “Ready.”

  “If he’s using sniffers-spyware-he already knows I’ve accessed his port. But he hasn’t broken the connection. He may already have both of our IP addresses. Let’s start now and get this done quickly.”

  She took one more furtive glance toward the door. “Go ahead,” she said. “Put me on his screen.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  Larson slipped a photograph of Markowitz onto the hotel bar and left it there briefly. Larson returned the photo to his pocket and said, “The Sand Dollar then?”

  “The only two I’ve seen from The Sand Dollar,” Montgomery said without missing a beat, “are city types that don’t belong here. They come and go this time of night or later. You don’t see them outside during the day. They order lunch and dinner delivered.”

  “From here?”

  “We’re the only game in town.”

  “Two of them?”

  “Yeah, but the meals are for three, so maybe it’s that guy,” he said, pointing to Larson’s jacket.

  “Kid food or adult food?”

  “Adult, far as I know.”

  “Do you happen to cover the residences as well?”

  “I’m all there is for island security, if that’s what you’re asking. So, yeah, when residents vacate a premise, they slip me a little something, and I keep an eye on it. That’s all. Vacationing teens are the biggest concern. The closest thing we get to a crime here is what we call
a DWI-drunk while intoxicated.” He lifted his glass and sucked down a fair amount. “We go about ninety percent occupancy Christmas to Easter. We’re what you might call inbred. I see the occasional pissed-off spouse armed with a golf club or tennis racquet out for revenge. High crime. In my five years we’ve had a couple broken noses, unlimited in flagrante delicto, and maybe a dozen shattered egos, and that’s about it.”

  “Sounds nice… for you.”

  “It pays. It’s steady. They got good health care and a pension, though I won’t stay long enough to qualify. Over half the year we go down to a maintenance level of about twenty percent occupancy. It’s a ghost island with an open bar, and that’s fine with me.” He hoisted the gin again and worked to below the quickly melting ice cubes. “To absent friends,” he repeated.

  “Is there a dinner order placed for tonight?”

  Montgomery blinked his rheumy eyes a couple of times. Larson pushed what remained of the rum away for the bartender to clear. Despite the beauty of the place, this was exactly where he did not want to end up twenty years down the road.

  “Standing order. Every lunch, every dinner. They call in to check the specials.”

  “Can you check for me?”

  Montgomery didn’t look pleased. But he climbed off the bar stool and disappeared through a door to the kitchen. Emerging a few minutes later, he saddled back up. “If you’re fucking around with me,” Montgomery said, “I’d prefer you didn’t.”

  “I’m not.”

  “The order for three dinners was cut back to two, not ten minutes ago. But I suppose you already knew that. What’s going on here, Deputy?”

  Larson had not known anything of the sort but did nothing to correct the man’s opinion. “How exactly do I get to The Sand Dollar?”

  “South end of the island.” He pointed. “Eye-talian family owns it, name of Valenti. But mostly it’s their guests that use it. There are a couple homes down there, all of ’em pretty much off by themselves. You didn’t answer my question,” Montgomery said, “about what he’s done. Why a U.S. marshal’s interested?”