Field of Fire

by James O. Born

  The man said, “Berto, he, he…”

  “He what?”

  “He eats breakfast at a café every morning. Eight o’clock sharp. Never misses.”

  “Where’s the café?”

  “Belvedere, just east of 95.”

  “Which one?”

  “The Sunrise Cafe.”

  Duarte absently released his fingers

  “Good.” He looked at the other men as they started to stir. Caren looked like a kid who had just watched the movie The Ring. “All right. Now get your friends together. Have that nose looked at, and don’t be a bully. Understand?” He gave him a smile to make it seem like this was no big deal.

  The man nodded as Duarte helped him to his feet. Duarte helped the others into comfortable sitting positions on the sidewalk of the plaza and then calmly drove off with Caren in the passenger’s seat.

  She said, “That is way outside the guidelines of the Department of Justice.”

  “Did DoJ teach you to kick guys in the nuts?”

  “I was defending myself; you were interrogating.”

  “Will anyone ever hear about it?”

  She hesitated, and said, “No.”

  She may be a decent partner after all.

  8

  DUARTE WAS DRESSED AND AT HIS MOTHER’S BREAKFAST table before seven o’clock. He had a busy day and wanted to make sure she knew he’d be gone for a few days. His bags were in the trunk of his Taurus, and he had managed all this without seeing his brother, Frank.

  His father read the Palm Beach Post local section and sipped his coffee, just like he had when Duarte was five years old.

  “This a big case?” asked Cesar Duarte.

  “Could be.”

  “You fix the problem you told me about?”

  “Working on it. It’s related to this case.”

  “Good.” The older Duarte went back to his paper, reading local, sports and Accent every day, in that order. He never read the front page. That was what the NBC Nightly News at six-thirty every night was for.

  Duarte noticed his father looking closely at the cuts on his knuckles from his scuffle in Belle Glade the night before. Those were the only marks on him.

  His father looked at his knuckles, then up at Duarte, but didn’t say a word. The last time his father had actually asked him about marks on his knuckles was when he was seventeen. He and Frank worked as bag boys at the Publix on Southern Boulevard. Frank had apparently told another bag boy he was going to “sue him” for some derogatory comment.

  When Duarte wandered onto the loading dock and found his older brother cornered by the potential defendant and a friend, Duarte took action. He didn’t care if Frank had it coming. He didn’t care about the odds. Frank was his brother. Duarte put his six years of karate classes to use and then accepted being fired because it was better than having to tell his father that evening. The elder Duarte simply asked his youngest son, “Is that how you earn respect?”

  This morning Duarte ate fast, throwing down the ham and eggs and a big glass of orange juice. He had called Chuck Stoddard at his house at six-fifteen and told him he needed help. Duarte had smiled at the thought of Chuck, looking like a big lump in bed, rolling to answer the phone, then having to deal with his irate wife. To his credit, Chuck had agreed to help without complaint.

  Duarte stood up and cleared his place. His mother turned.

  “Be careful, sweetheart.”

  Duarte returned her hug. “Yes, Ma.”

  She squeezed his long, thin body for a full five seconds.

  “Ma, it’s only a few days. I’ve been away a lot longer in the army.”

  “A mother has to worry.”

  Duarte kissed her on the head, nodded to his pop and headed out the door, relieved as he backed down the driveway that Frank had decided to sleep in a little today.

  Forty minutes later, Duarte was briefing Chuck on today’s mission. He had to be at the airport by four, so he figured they had some time to let things develop. If they didn’t see any sign of Salez by ten, then Duarte planned to go into the café and ask a few questions. And he intended to get some answers. By chance, the Cuban café the mope had told Duarte about the night before was right near the airport in West Palm Beach. Belvedere Road between I-95 and U.S. 1 had about ten little Cuban restaurants of all types: bakeries, cafés and full-service sit-down restaurants. Duarte knew the one the mope had mentioned. The Sunrise Cafe. It catered to an early crowd, with pastries and coffee, and then a light lunch menu. Many of the shadier locals congregated there in the morning. Duarte had followed a couple of gun dealers there over the years and had heard that virtually all forms of gambling, from bets on sports to bolita, went on there.

  Chuck drove and Duarte watched as they pulled into a convenience store across busy Belvedere Road. Before he had his binoculars out, Chuck said, “Isn’t that bald guy…”

  Duarte scanned the small crowd. “Yeah, it’s my cousin Tony.”

  “The guy who owns the pawnshop, right?”

  Duarte nodded.

  “What’s he doing here?”

  “Same thing he was accused of last time, setting up gun deals.”

  “You don’t say much about him.”

  “What should I do, brag? He’s closer to my pop’s age. He came over from Paraguay when he was twenty. About the time I was born.”

  “I thought pawnshops did well.”

  “They do, especially if you can sell high-end guns. We’ll get him one day.”

  “You’d arrest your own cousin?”

  “If he sold guns, yeah.”

  They sat in silence as Duarte picked up the binoculars and scanned the crowd. “I don’t see Salez.”

  “You sure of your info? Salez may be on the run.”

  “Guys like Salez don’t run far. He’ll look for friends.” Duarte thought about his interrogation of Salez’s friends. “The guy swore to me he was here every day at eight sharp.”

  Chuck looked at him.

  “What?”

  “You saying this is all based on the supposition that you were able to root out the truth from those thugs?”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “Just that, with all your skills, reading people is not top of the list.”

  “I went to the Reid school of interviewing.”

  “There’s still an instinct to it.”

  Duarte shrugged. Chuck was right. That was his weakness. But guys that had been beaten that badly didn’t usually make up stories. Not this detailed. Threatening someone with physical violence is rarely mentioned at schools like Reid.

  Chuck said, “What’d ya think? Wait or go in?”

  Duarte considered it. They could be on a wild-goose chase. He looked up at Chuck’s round face.

  “I can slip in and talk to my cousin. No one’ll know.”

  Chuck grunted. “Yeah, he’s so stand-up he’d never say anything.”

  Duarte ignored him as he opened the door. He crossed at the light then came up the sidewalk to the dozen or so tables in front of the small café. The umbrellas weren’t opened because the sun hadn’t cleared the office building across the street yet.

  Duarte nodded to the older Latin men at the first few tables. He didn’t recognize anyone. These generally wouldn’t be his father’s friends. His father avoided anyone with a hint of a shady background. He even avoided his cousin Tony, but more because Tony’s loud manner annoyed him.

  Duarte came up to the table where Tony sat reading the sports page of the Palm Beach Post. He sat down before Tony realized he was there.

  “Hey, cousin.”

  A smile crossed the muscular man’s face. His gleaming bald head creased with lines as he smiled and said, “Well, well, well, Mr. Straight Arrow, what’re you doin’ here?”

  “Saw you and thought I’d say hello.”

  “This is the first conversation in English this place has seen since the city health inspector came by.”

  Duarte stared at him.

  �
��I see you haven’t changed. Just like your old man. You should live a little like your brother.”

  “Tony, I’d love to catch up but I’m looking for someone.”

  “A crook?”

  Duarte nodded.

  “And you thought you’d treat me like a snitch, eh?”

  “I thought you’d tell me the truth if you knew him.”

  Tony gave him a long stare, then sighed. “Okay. First of all, who’re ya lookin’ for?”

  “A guy named Alberto Salez.”

  “Berto? No shit? What’d he do?”

  Duarte tried to will his cousin to keep his voice down, then said, “Mainly, he escaped from me the other day. But he’s got a beef from Texas on him for guns. No big deal, if I get him soon.”

  “Why sooner rather than later?”

  “There may be someone else looking for him.”

  “Like a guy with short, neat dark hair.”

  Duarte eyed his cousin. “Why do you ask that?”

  “Because that guy was by two days ago right after Berto had left.”

  “What’d the guy say?”

  “That he needed to find Berto because he owed him some money. We acted like a bunch of ignorant foreigners, and he left without anything he could use.”

  “What’d he look like?”

  “Average, you know. Thirty-five, buzz cut, trim. Caucasian, but dark complexion. Sorta like you, only with shorter hair.”

  “I’m as Latin as you are.”

  “You should act it sometime.”

  Duarte looked at his cousin and decided he didn’t have time for this old argument. “What about Salez? You know where he is?”

  Tony shook his head. “He’s always here by eight. Stays an hour and then goes about his business.”

  Duarte looked at his watch. “It’s eight-forty. My guess is that he’s not coming today.”

  Tony nodded. “They teach you that in ATF school?”

  Duarte ignored him. “Any ideas?”

  Tony shifted in his seat. “You’re putting me in a bad spot.”

  Duarte just stared at his cousin.

  “Okay, okay. I know he stays out in the Glades some nights at a labor camp. He thinks he can tag some teacher out there.”

  “Where else?” Duarte didn’t think he needed to share what he did and didn’t know.

  “He’s got an apartment off Parker and Southern. Says it’s a great location to roam the city or race out to the Glades.”

  “Can you be more exact?”

  “It’s on the second floor and he can see the Publix shopping center. Just south of Southern on the west side of Parker. I gave him a ride once. That’s all I can think of.”

  Duarte nodded and started to stand. He knew the building, not far from his parents’ house.

  Tony said, “Keep this real quiet, cuz.”

  “Do I speak out of turn?”

  “Not that I ever saw.”

  Duarte was back on Salez’s trail.

  Mike Garretti first noticed the blue Ford Taurus sitting across the street from the café on Belvedere. He was sitting in a Mc-Donald’s, sipping a coffee, and reading a USA Today because he didn’t give a damn about what was going on in Palm Beach County other than the investigation into the migrant camp bombing, which the local paper had only one story about and that was more about the grieving teacher whose kid had been killed. He really didn’t want to read about that. He felt bad enough—then to see that she had voluntarily moved out there to give the little migrant kids a better life and that she was a friend to everyone and that her son was a good student and good kid only made things worse. He had studied the photo and realized she was also a damned fine-looking woman. He snorted, wondering what would happen if he hooked up with her and years later she found out he had set the bomb that killed her son. She’d be all kinds of pissed-off.

  Now it was the Ford that held his attention. Occupied by a couple of men he knew had to be the cops. The chances were good that they were looking for the extremely lucky Alberto Salez too. That would make things more complicated. Unless they found him—then it might make things easier. He watched as a tall, lean man about thirty opened the passenger’s door and crossed the street. He had a confident gait and appeared to know exactly where he was going. His haircut and manner almost suggested a military background, but he decided a cop might have the same characteristics.

  The young man sat down with a bald guy he had seen before when he was looking for Salez. After a few minutes of conversation, the man—who had to be a cop—made strides back to his partner even faster than he had crossing the street initially.

  He decided to follow the Ford just in case these cops had stumbled onto something. It only took a few minutes to realize that they had stumbled onto Salez’s apartment. They parked on the street right in front of the place. He watched from his car next door as the cops assessed the building and then looked at the community mailboxes.

  He realized this could be a worse disaster than the migrant camp bomb. The last thing he needed was heat from a couple of cops getting blown to bits from one of his bombs. He wasn’t sure if they’d enter the apartment, but by the way that cop walked and carried himself he doubted a locked door would be much of an impediment to his investigation. He had to do something. Cops were relentless when one of their own was killed. He’d have bet that there was still infighting going on about who was stuck with the migrant bombing investigation, but this would be a different story.

  He felt his blood pressure rise as the cops started up the stairs. He had to do something and it had to be fast. He had the pistol, and even thought about sending a shot near them but realized they might return fire or chase him. He took a step toward the apartment complex and considered his limited options. This could be bad.

  Caren Larson sat off to the side of the large throng of mourners. Although she had had to deal with the death of her father while she was in law school at Cornell, she realized the loss of a child had to be much more traumatic. Even Caren’s mother had started dating within a year after the cancer had finally taken her father. That was almost as traumatic as his death.

  She could see Maria Tannza’s delicate form in the midst of a group of supportive mourners. The size of the crowd and their manner told Caren that Maria was well loved. Caren had thought, at one point in her life, she would do something that made people love her. The DoJ job had meaning and was satisfying but she still felt alone in Washington much of the time. She dated occasionally and enjoyed flirting like she did with Alex Duarte, but she wondered who would stand by her if something bad happened. Her insecurity about her job had made her make it the most important thing in her life when she knew that it shouldn’t be that way. Here she was at thirty-two with no significant other and no prospects. Back in college, she thought she’d be a mother by now.

  She admired Maria Tannza not only for working with the migrant children out of conviction but the strength she was showing right now as the funeral for her son came to an end. Caren looked up into the bright blue Florida sky, with the sun blazing, knowing that back in Washington it was a cloudy fifty degrees. This somehow didn’t seem like funeral weather. Regardless, she was in a small cemetery in the middle of West Palm Beach feeling more than a little guilty about the boy’s death and the fact that he was just an innocent bystander. Innocent being the operative word.

  She wondered what Alex Duarte was doing at that moment. She hadn’t told him she was coming to the funeral. He never would’ve understood why. She was fairly certain he was spending his last few hours before their flight to Reagan National looking for Alberto Salez. She hoped that didn’t put him in too bad of a mood for the flight. Although he wasn’t particularly talkative, she definitely found him interesting. It was refreshing to meet a federal agent who wasn’t constantly trying to impress you or talk you out of your pants. Maybe that was more an FBI thing. She hadn’t worked much with the other Justice Department law enforcers like ATF or the DEA. But if Duarte was any indication of t
he other agents with the ATF, she intended to start working with them a lot more. When she was told they had found the perfect agent to work the bombing case, it never occurred to her that it might be someone outside the FBI. Now she was thankful for the change.

  The crowd started to disperse and Caren walked back to her rental car. She turned her head once and seemed to lock eyes with Maria Tannza. It was enough to make Caren start to cry.

  9

  ALEX DUARTE PLACED A HAND ON THE FIRST THREE DOORS on the second floor of the old building. The walls had a thick coat of bland, tan paint, covering years of wear and other coats of cheap paint. Chuck Stoddard mashed his ear to the other door. For the effort, neither learned anything about the occupancy of the apartments. No TV vibration, not even a reliable throb of an air conditioner. The mailboxes and information from his cousin led Duarte to believe the apartment closest to the road was Salez’s. It was good that no one else was home because he intended to enter the apartment whether someone answered or not.

  He looked at Chuck, who shook his head, then brushed back his loose outer shirt that covered the SIG-Sauer 9mm on his hip. Duarte did the same for his Glock, which he almost never took from the holster. He knew it made the other guys feel better to think he’d use his gun if he had to.

  They stood on either side of the door to what they hoped was Salez’s apartment. Duarte rapped hard with his knuckles. They waited, with no response.

  “What’d you think?” asked Chuck.

  “I think we need to see if there is anything in there that might point us in the right direction.”

  “I think we need a warrant for that.”

  “Based on what, probable cause? We’re not even sure this is his place.”

  “So we should burglarize it?”

  Duarte shrugged, as if by not saying it out loud he wasn’t committing a felony. He bumped the window next to the door and then jiggled the jalousie window slats. They were loose, and a quick tug opened them. He pushed the bottom one and it slipped backward in its bracket.

  Duarte looked up at Chuck and said, “We may not need to break the door.” Without waiting for an answer from his partner, he tried pushing the glass harder.