Sink, Swim, Die

by Jay Giles

  Matt had Grand Theft Auto 5 out of his backpack, and in the Xbox. Both grabbed remotes and disappeared into the game as a muscular male character repelled down the side of a building while another macho guy gave him covering fire with a sniper rifle. The sound was cranked so loud the floor vibrated. Pico could have arrived with a marching band leading the way and neither of them would have known it.

  As if remembering I was there, Kenny said over his shoulder, “Dude, make yourself comfortable. About seven, Super Mario’s bringing dinner.”

  “Who’s Super Mario?” I yelled over the noise.

  “Big-shot in the department for years,” Matt yelled back, wincing as a getaway helicopter carried the enemy shooter to safety. “Consultant to the department, now. Wants to talk to you.”

  The realization had me shaking my head. This wasn’t about protection. Oh, no, this was strictly so Super Mario could grill me off the record. Who was this guy that they’d arrange all this for him?

  Chapter 18

  He came up the steps from the lower level two at a time carrying five large pizza boxes and a 24-can carton of Bud Lite. The guy behind him took the steps normally.

  “You Taggert?” He asked handing three of the pizza boxes to Kenny who was already salivating.

  I nodded.

  He shifted the pizzas to his left hand, extended his right. “Mario Genoa,” he said as we shook. With a shake of his head, he indicated the guy behind him, “This is Danny White. Danny, pull a couple of beers out for us, give the rest to the guys.” His gaze settled on Matt then Kenny. “Get lost for a while. I’ll let you when we’re finished.”

  Kenny and Matt took the pizza and beer and slunk away.

  Genoa was a presence. I pegged him in his late 50s, but despite his age, he was all muscle. His overdeveloped upper body was just short of freakish. He had a cap of gray curls, penetrating black eyes, a long nose that zigged left then right, and a chin that seemed to jut out at every opportunity. He was dressed in black jeans and a skin-tight white tee-shirt with the Adidas symbol on the front.

  The guy with him, Danny White, reminded me of Charlie Sheen. Black hair oiled and brushed back, pointed nose, pointed chin, perpetual smirk. He wore a white dress shirt, open at the collar, and an expensive black suit.

  “They tell you who I am?” Genoa wanted to know as we carried pizza and plates to the dining room table.

  “Not really.”

  The two of them took seats facing me, pizzas on the table between us. Genoa grabbed a beer, popped the top, and took a pull. “I retired from the Dade County Police as chief of detectives after thirty-one years service. I handled all the high-profile cases. Murder. Racketeering. Extortion. Drugs. Robbery. I thrived on that stuff. No scumbag got away with anything on my watch.” He grinned. “They wanted to make a movie about me, had Stallone lined-up. Perfect casting.” The grin faded. ”Didn’t happen ‘cause there were a lot of cop movies in development at the time. Too bad, it would’ve been the best cop movie since Serpico. Anyhow, now that I’m retired, I do consulting for the department, some liaising with companies like Danny’s. He’s with DeBeers. They came to me to get their diamonds back.”

  Interesting as his spiel had been, the smell of pizza was calling. I hadn’t had anything to eat since my mid-morning muffin. I eased the first slice of sausage and pepperoni out of the pie and took a big bite.

  “Here’s the thing,” Genoa said and took a hit on his beer. “You’re the only guy who has seen these diamonds and I think you know more than you’re telling.”

  “Good pizza,” I said. “You ought to have some before it gets cold.”

  Genoa’s face hardened. Guess I wasn’t giving him my complete and undivided attention. He drained the rest of his beer, smacked the empty can on the table so that it crumpled to half its height, and leaned forward menacingly. “Maybe, you didn’t hear what I was saying?”

  “I heard,” I said around a bite of pizza.

  “Well, start talking,” he growled. “Sooner you tell me what you know, the sooner I can recover the diamonds.”

  I stuffed the last bite of crust in my mouth. “For a guy who thinks he’s movie material, you get a lot wrong.”

  That got his chin jutting.

  I glanced quickly at White. Saw a bemused smile. “First, I wasn’t the only guy who saw the diamonds. I turned them over to the Sarasota police. So people there saw them. Second, how do I know White, here, is with DeBeers? Yeah, he’s wearing an expensive suit, but I haven’t seen any identification. Third, everything I know is in the police report. There isn’t a—”

  I was reaching for another slice of pizza when his arm viciously swept the box away from under my hand. It slid off the table, landed on the floor with a soft thump. Angrily, he reached across the table, grabbed my shirtfront and yanked me closer to him, his other hand balled into a fist. “God dammit, don’t you dare hold-out on me. I’ll beat it out of you if I have to. Now, where are the diamonds?”

  All those muscles. The guy had to be on steroids, and whatever ‘roids he was taking were making him crazy dangerous. “I’m an attorney. Hit me and I’ll sue you for everything you own. When I’m finished with you, you won’t have a jockstrap to your name. Got that? So put your hands back in your pockets.”

  He was seething and would have beaten me to a pulp if White hadn’t started laughing. It was a horsey, hea, hea, hea laugh. “Mario, let him be.”

  Genoa’s grip on my shirt didn’t loosen.

  “Mario, enough.”

  Genoa gave him a look that said: Don’t be a goodie two shoes, let me beat it out of him.

  “You heard me.”

  Genoa’s grip loosened a little. I used my arm to pull my shirt free and sat back down.

  To me, White said coolly, “You say you know nothing.” His voice had an odd accent. South African? Maybe he was with DeBeers. “Yet you’re here in Miami because you know something that has to do with my diamonds.”

  Genoa’s chin was jutting again; he was breathing in snorts. Undoubtedly, still thinking he was going to beat it out of me. Felt like an extreme game of good cop/bad cop. I stayed with good cop.

  “I think Ban Sloane’s wife Heather is here in Miami altering her appearance. I thought she might be getting ready to disappear with the diamonds.”

  “And?” White coaxed.

  “And nothing. The shooting happened. I’m sure Heather Sloane is long gone.”

  White frowned. It made him look even more like Charlie Sheen. “Tell me, what was it that made you suspect her?”

  “A hunch mostly. I thought it suspicious she didn’t attend her husband’s funeral.”

  “Why was that suspicious? Weren’t they divorcing?”

  I was surprised he knew about the divorce. “Yeah, they were,” I said thinking back to the gathering at the Clovernook Country Club after Ban’s funeral. “It’s just that other ex-wives were there and that made Heather’s absence all the more noticeable. Had she been there, I wouldn’t have given her a second thought. But when she wasn’t, it made me suspicious.”

  White nodded as if that made sense to him. “Where do you think she’ll go now?”

  “That’s the question. Heather liked expensive things. My guess is she’ll go to Paris or London.” I thought about their trips to Italy to research San Marco Square. “Maybe, Venice or Rome.” While White seemed to be pondering that, I asked, “You really with DeBeer’s?”

  He reached into his inside jacket pocket, took out a silver card case, extracted a business card, and smoothly handed it to me. His nails looked like he’d just gotten a manicure and clear coat nail polish. A South African metrosexual. How about that? “You can call the company if you like. They’ll verify who I am. My assignment is recovering the diamonds, I’ve brought Mario on-board to lead the investigation.”

  Mario gave me a smug look.

  “If you have any information you can pass along,” White continued. “I can always be reached at that number.” He nodded at the card
that now had my tomato sauce fingerprints on it.

  I tucked it in my wallet.

  Genoa was giving me the evil eye. “We better not find out you held out on us, Taggert.”

  I reached for a slice of the remaining pizza on the table—green pepper and onion. “You don’t have to worry about me. After what happened today, I’m done trying to find those diamonds.”

  White gave me his horsey, hea, hea, hea laugh again. “Don’t be so sure about that. DeBeer’s has put-up a million dollar reward for their recovery.” His amused gaze darted from me to Mario and back. “Who knows, maybe you could give Mario a run for the money.”

  Mario’s expression said Try it and I’ll kill you.

  I left Miami three days later, happy to be putting that city in the rearview mirror, sad that I had Su’s cremains riding in the passenger seat. There was no one else to claim her body and if I hadn’t, I’d forever have had nightmares about what happened to it.

  Back in Orlando, I buried myself in work to silence the multiple voices in my head telling me I was responsible for Su’s death, that Moreno’s people would come gunning for me, that somehow this whole thing wasn’t over until the diamonds were found.

  I was on the phone talking to anyone who might have an assignment for me. First came some collection work. Not my favorite thing to do. But it was billable hours. Then, two divorce representations, also not my favorite. Finally, for a small bank, a medium-sized workout—an appliance chain gone belly-up.

  “Thank goodness, we’re getting back to normal,” LeeAnn said as I sent her to the courthouse with filings. Besides going after new business, I’d also sued Inland Bank & Trust for what I was owed. This was one of those matters I doubted would ever come to trial. Fleagle would bluster and complain but ultimately he’d settle. I’d be able to recover some of my money, at least.

  “Don’t forget I’m getting my hair done,” LeeAnn called out when she was all but out the door and it was too late for me to say anything. Besides Anton’s more up-to-date look, I had the feeling LeeAnn was smitten with the guy. From comments she’d made, I gathered they’d been spending time together outside the salon.

  Me? I go to Great Clips. They don’t massage your head like they do at a salon, but its fast and cheap.

  When LeeAnn breezed in the door three hours and twenty minutes later, I was doing collection calls. She flounced around the outer office, bubbling about how she and Anton had had a glass of champagne and a good old-fashioned chitchat after her styling. She began to give me a word-for-word replay, which I immediately tuned out. From the outer office, she couldn’t see I had a guy, six truck payments late, on the phone, and was in the thick of working out a payment program with him. At least I was until I heard her say, “The Castle is on the market, sugar, and you’ll never ever guess the asking price.”

  I hung up. He could keep his money and his truck a little longer. A burst of adrenalin ricocheted around my system. I knew.

  Lee Ann appeared at my office door, hands on hips. “Well, since you don’t seem to want to guess. I’ll just have to tell you. Brace yourself. It’s a doozy.”

  I hardly heard her; I was still in the rapture of the moment. Every nerve in my body tingling. I knew. And this would confirm it.

  “She’s asking $50-million, Will,” she said with a half-laugh. “Fifty million, can you believe that? Nobody’s going to pay her that kind of money. What’s she thinking?”

  I knew exactly what she was thinking—that she’d created the perfect hiding place for the diamonds.

  Chapter 19

  Just that quick, I had the beginnings of a plan in mind. “Who’s her realtor? Mimi?”

  Mimi Tophover, aka Mimi Top Dollar, was the local celebrity realtor. Young. Beautiful. Rich. Wicked sense of humor. She had billboards all over town that turned her nickname into a business proposition. Gold type on a black background proclaimed: Top Dollar? Mimi!

  LeeAnn pulled a face. “She and Heather would be two peas in a pod. Want me to find out for sure?”

  I nodded. She went to make the call, came back almost immediately, grinning. “Yep, she has the listing and her assistant let me know—” She mimicked the assistant’s valley girl accent. “—that many of Mimi’s rich European clients are very interested. Some may be flying over as we speak.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “That’s her take on it, anyway.” LeeAnn plopped herself down in my visitor’s chair, fixed me with a look. “What’s going on in that devious mind of yours?”

  I spelled out the broad strokes.

  “I like it,” she proclaimed when I finished. “There’s only that one itsy bitsy problem. If it doesn’t go exactly perfectly right you could end up deader than dirt.”

  “There is that,” I conceded ruefully. “Mackay’s the key to keeping me alive.”

  “Whatcha waiting for? Call him,” she urged.

  I dug out his number, called, learned he was testifying in court and would have to call me back. I left my name and number and waited.

  By the time he called back the following morning, I’d refined the plan considerably, or so I thought. Mackay listened attentively, then shot it full of holes.

  “Do you realize the danger you’re putting yourself in, Mr. Taggert? Much as I would like to tell you we can keep you one hundred percent safe, we’re not Seal Team Six. There’s a good chance you’ll be hurt or killed.”

  Not exactly what I wanted to hear about my grand plan, but at least he wasn’t screaming: No way. I moved on to the next domino that needed to fall. Danny White. I dug his tomato-sauce-stained card out of my wallet and dialed the number.

  “Ah, Mr. Taggert.” He sounded amused that I’d called. “I bet you have information for me.”

  “Well, maybe.” I said trying to lower expectations as I eased into my pitch. “There’s a chance—and that’s all it is at this point, a chance—that I might be able to recover the diamonds. It won’t be easy. There’s considerable risk involved and I’ve been told by the authorities there’s a good chance I’ll be hurt or killed. Here’s my dilemma: I’m willing to take the risk and get your diamonds back, but not for the one million in reward money. Considering what I’m going to have to go through, I think ten million is—”

  “Out of the question. Tell me what you know, we’ll take the risk, and if the diamonds are recovered, you’ll get the million. No risk to you.”

  “Nope, I’m the only one who can do this and my price is ten million—”

  “Not possible.”

  “I guess I shouldn’t have bothered you,” I said and clicked off. I knew he’d call back. I had all the cards. He had no choice but to meet my terms. The only question was how long he’d try to negotiate down the price.

  He called back and hour and a half later. “I talked with our people. They’ve authorized me to double the reward to two million which is—”

  “Not enough.”

  Twenty minutes later, I thought he was calling again. Instead it was John Orahood with the Metropolitan Bureau of Investigation (MBI), Orlando’s joint investigative task force that went after serious crime.

  “Mackay filled me in from his end,” he said after introductions were finished. “I want to hear you tell it.”

  Fair enough. When I finished, he said, “Pretty much what I got from Mackay. You and I need to meet and work on the warrant. It would be easier if you came to me.”

  The earliest he could fit me in was the next day. We agreed on a time, and he told me he’d make arrangements to get me in the MBI building.

  We were just finishing when White called back. “My people are adamant; they won’t go higher than two million.”

  “Try harder,” I told him, clicked off. Ten million wasn’t even sofa change to DeBeer’s.

  I had second thoughts about that when White didn’t call back that day.

  He still hadn’t called back at 9:30 when I left for my 10:00 with Orahood. We met in his small, windowed office on the third floor. It had the sta
ndard government-issue desk, credenza, and two visitor’s chairs. A computer desktop sat on the credenza. The monitor had an MBI logo annoyingly bouncing around like a perpetual motion ball.

  Orahood stood up when I was shown in and greeted me with a handshake. He was a big man, tall and wide, with dark hair, square face and a determined set to his jaw. He was wearing a white dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up and his tie loosened. His dark gray suit jacket was draped over the back of his chair. He invited me to make myself comfortable, took his seat, and moved some paperwork around on his desk with his big blocky fingers. Guy could palm a basketball. Easy.

  “This is kind of a strange one,” he said as an opener.

  I wasn’t about to argue.

  “I’ve run it by my boss and he wants to play it perfectly straight,” he told me and waited to see my reaction.

  Again, no argument from me. “That’s why I’m here. I’m trying to do this the right way.”

  “Good,” he said relieved. “Glad we agree on how this will be conducted. Mackay wants his people in the house, and after what happened in Sarasota—” He shook his head. “That was awful, just tragic. We’re good with MBI playing a support roll. So you know, one of MBI’s member organizations is the Office of the State Attorney of the Ninth Judicial Circuit, so I don’t expect any problems in getting a warrant approved. That said, this warrant needs to be detailed, factual, and able to stand the test of scrutiny.”

  My phone started ringing. I dug it out of my pocket, smiled when I saw it was White, and sent him to voicemail.

  For the next hour and a half, Orahood and I hashed out the wording on the warrant. The biggest issue was timing. He got Mackay on speakerphone. “When do you think your team will be ready?”

  Mackay wasn’t sitting around with his feet up. “We’re assembling gear now. We could be in Orlando tomorrow morning.”

  Otahood looked at me. “That’s fine. I’ve alerted Judge Sand about the warrant. He’s expecting us at two this afternoon.”