Broken Stern: An Ellie O'Conner Novel (Pine Island Coast Florida Suspense Series) Book 1

by Jack Hardin

  Mark Palfrey, Ellie’s new partner, was positioned next to Jet’s empty chair. Standing, he came in at five feet nine inches, and his short brown hair was thinning on top, giving him advance notice that he would be bald in the next four years. He was slender, had wide shoulders, sharp eyes. He smiled at Ellie and pointed at her with his pen. “First day on the job. I guess that makes you the newbie.”

  “Newbie!” Jet chimed in from across the room. “That says hazing to me.”

  Ellie’s eyebrows shot up. “Try it, gentlemen, and see if you’re not sorry for a very long time.”

  “I don’t know, Jet...I hear she’s like an ex-Navy SEAL or something.”

  “I heard she was Mossad and was single-handedly responsible for bringing down the KGB.”

  “You’re both right,” she said, grinning. Garrett had given the men, as well as a couple others in the office, a thirty-thousand foot view of Ellie’s past career. It was a hazy outline at best, with all details withheld. The secrecy only added to the enigma, and, over the last three weeks, the office had been taking guesses at what had occupied her past professional life. All things considered, her new co-workers had not the faintest clue about her previous employment.

  Garrett walked in with a stack of folders under one arm and mug of coffee in the other. He shut the door with his foot and took a seat next to Ellie. “Morning, everyone.”

  “Morning,” they chimed.

  Jet returned from the coffee maker, took a seat. Garrett set the files down and pushed them out in front. “Everyone take one, please.” He smiled. “This is a big morning. I want to formally welcome Ellie to our team. Mark and Jet, you know how passionate I’ve been about finding the cat instead of chasing the tail. I want to take a few minutes and make sure we all get started on the right foot and that we’re clear on how things are moving forward from here. You all know that when I was given this office late last year, I did so with the promise that I would be given a team that would dig further down. A few weeks into my time here, my direct report in Miami was replaced, and I was never given that team.” He leaned in, set his elbows on the table, and tossed his hands out. “This is where I grew up.” He nodded at Ellie. “It’s where Ellie grew up. Jet’s called it home for a couple decades, and his grandkids live here. I want to clean up the rats that are invading the shadows. That’s why I’m here, and that’s why she’s here. I’m not asking either one of you or anyone on your teams to stop what they’re doing now. If anything, I’m asking you to add to it, so thank you for your willingness. Now, here’s how we’re going to do this.” He opened up a folder, looked into it, and the three others followed suit.

  “The three of you already know the two men we’re trying to target, so I won’t go into that now. It’s in your folders, and you’ll be getting an email today with further details. Mark, I want you to see what you can turn up with old leads. Suppliers, runners, dealers, you name it. Everyone knows someone, and that someone knows someone. If we can understand the network, the associations, we can start making progress. Ellie, if you need anything from another agency that would be helpful, I can get you in touch with the right person.” Garrett’s connections and associations with the other agencies ran deep. He was on a first-name basis with white collars in the Department of Homeland, Department of Justice, Coast Guard, Sheriff's Office, even some brass in the Navy. Every organization but the FBI. He had made some connections with the FBI soon after his arrival, but those didn’t go very far. The FBI was exceptional at what they did, but interfacing and working smoothly with the DEA was not one of those things. The FBI was responsible for enforcing over two hundred categories of federal law. The DEA was a single-mission organization tasked solely with enforcing drug laws. When the two jurisdictions overlapped, some rooster was bound to spread his wings and show everyone that his agency was in charge. “Mark, you’ll be Ellie’s liaison with the agency. You’re the only person in this building given a specific block of hours to help her. She needs more than that, you have to clear it with me first.”

  “Got it,” Mark said.

  Garrett looked at Ellie. “Wish I could give you more, but I’m already going to get questions I don’t want for cutting his field hours in half.”

  “No worries,” she said. “We’ll make it work.”

  Garrett addressed Jet and Mark. “You need to know that I appreciate your commitment to this agency and what we stand for. You’re some of the best at what you do. I don’t want you stepping into something that detracts from your primary directive as given to us from Miami. If you can’t do your daily job well and help me a little on the side, then don’t. Track your bottom feeders, make your arrests, go on your raids, push your paperwork. That’s what the top brass wants, that’s what we’re going to give them. If you can’t continue doing that with excellence alongside what I’m asking of you in addition, then tell me, and I’ll take you off. No harm done. We good with that?”

  Two heads bobbed.

  “Mark, I’ll expect you to you to ensure Ellie has what she needs and that any requests get completed quickly. “

  “So,” Jet spoke up, smiling. “You mean Mark’s getting a promotion to a glorified secretary?”

  Everyone laughed, and Garrett said, “Find time this week to bring Ellie up on what you know. Logistically and organizationally, you know more than anyone here. Ellie, for the time being direct your questions to Jet. He’ll have answers I won’t have.”

  “Got it.”

  “I don’t have anyone else in here this morning because we’re just getting started. If we start to see progress on your end, we’ll loop in more to assist where needed. For now, there is a ton of paperwork to comb through and organize. You should be able to find something in there that launches you off.”

  When Garrett first joined the Fort Myers office just almost nine months ago, he’d discovered a storage room filled with stacks of file boxes rising so high some of them had pushed up the ceiling tiles. The agents that had worked those cases had, in the course of their careers, moved to other offices, some retiring. The thin film of dust over the room was a testimony to poor management and mishandled information. Garrett was intent at finding out what was in there. His experience had taught him that, in the drug world, where blood flowed easily and money was spent quickly, old cases and personal files were never irrelevant. Networks spread and moved dynamically, hardly the same today as they were six months ago. The low-level guys changed all the time. They got arrested, killed, deported. But it was rare that leadership changed. They were the feared ones, the leadership that everyone was too scared to touch. In Garrett's world, if you had even waved at anyone known to be connected with moving or dealing drugs, you were marked and noted. It was a good philosophy, even if it made his administrative staff try hard not to hate him. Connections, connections, connections. That was his motto. Everyone, he said, is connected. You sniff blow, you got it from someone. They got it from someone, and they got it from someone. You don’t shoot up, but you know someone who does, you’re connected.

  Garrett continued, “Ellie is here to help us find the invisible hands. She’ll have the flexibility to do things we may not be able to. Please do not ask her to do something directly. Run it through me first. You’re to act as her support team where you can. She needs something, you give it to her. Good?”

  Two heads bobbed again.

  “If she finds some success, I’ll have a better chance of convincing my own bosses to allocate more resources to what’s she doing and hopefully build out a full team for that.”

  “We’re looking forward to working with you, Ellie,” Jet said.

  “Yeah, we are.” Mark agreed.

  They spent the next fifteen minutes reviewing the documents in front of them and discussing strategies for moving forward. When they were done, Garrett grabbed his binder and stood. “All right, everyone have a bang-up day. Ellie, why don’t you follow me to my office?”

  Ellie grabbed her things and followed her old friend and n
ew boss into his office. “Shut the door, will you?” The wall behind his desk was painted with whiteboard paint. He grabbed a large picture the size of a sheet of legal paper off his desk. He snagged a piece of tape from the tape roll, attached it to the picture, and stuck it on the wall.

  Mateo Nunez.

  Garrett grabbed another picture and repeated his movements.

  Sebastián Zamaco.

  “Okay…” he said. “There we are.” He grabbed a red dry erase marker that was peeking out from a stack of paperwork and drew a short line down from Nunez’s picture and then traced a square. He wrote an address in the box and then repeated the action a second time with a new address in the next box. “These are the locations we raided last year. You have access to everything we’ve got on this and all the arrests involved. After that prison killing last year, I’m willing to bet that you’ll have a hard time getting anything out of anyone remotely connected with Nunez. Everyone will probably be as quiet as a turkey on Thanksgiving Eve.”

  He took the marker and drew an empty box next to Zamaco’s picture. I’m sure there’s a third we need to be looking at, probably a fourth and fifth. The problem right now is that we don’t know anything about them - or if they even exist.” He jutted his chin toward Zamaco’s likeness. “He’s a big question mark right now, so again, the boxes of files may help.

  “I’ve got time dedicated to going through all that,” Ellie said. “But I think our best leads will come from interviewing the right people.”

  “Agreed.” He tossed the marker on the desk and grabbed his keys. “Speaking of which. Come on. Let’s go pay someone a visit.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  FIVE MINUTES later Ellie and Garrett were in Garrett’s agency-issue Ford Expedition heading east into Cape Coral. He had the windows down and his cuffs rolled up. The radio was set to a low volume, the music welcoming someone to the Hotel California, which apparently was a lovely place and had plenty of room.

  “Did IT get your remote access set up yet?”

  “I haven’t checked yet,” she said.

  “If it’s not, it should be in the next couple days. That will give you access to certain files when you’re out of the office. Not all of them, but it should keep you from having to come in as much.”

  “So who it is we’re going to see?” she asked.

  “Jimmy Joe Claude,” He said slowly, like it was fun to say.

  “Jimmy Joe Claude?”

  “Yep. Three first names. He was destined for greatness, but his mother gave him three first names. He’s been out of the can for a couple weeks now. I want to see if we can get something fresh out of him.”

  “So who is he?”

  “Low level. I got him tossed in on minor possession charges right after I started here. The judge pinned seven months on him. Too stupid not to get caught doing something every couple years, but he’s got more connections than Kevin Bacon.”

  “Where’s he live?”

  “A couple clicks north of St. James City.”

  JIMMY JOE CLAUDE’S house was a small, one-story box house that looked sad and neglected. An old gray Buick sat in front of a rotting wood garage door, had a flat tire, and the upholstery on the inside canopy was drooping down. The lap siding on the house was sagging, and most of its old paint had dried, peeled, and chipped off, leaving behind an unhappy exterior that was struggling under excessive rot and sun damage.

  Ellie and Garrett stepped out of the car and walked up the cracked concrete steps and onto the porch. Garrett knocked on the aluminum screen door. The magnetic hum of a TV could be heard from the other side.

  “Who is it?” a hoarse voice yelled from inside.

  Garrett leaned in. “DEA, ma’am.”

  They heard nothing for half a minute. He raised his hand, about to knock again, when the lock clicked back on the door and it opened on a woman with shoulder-length, gray hair, curled tight like it had been over-permed. She wasn’t fat, but she wasn’t slim. Her breasts sagged into a ratty beige tank top that looked like it had been in the wash about the same time she had been in the shower. And that, apparently, had been quite some time ago.

  The lady rolled her eyes. “What’d he do now?” she asked.

  “Nothing, ma’am. We’re just trying to find some answers and want to see if Jimmy might be able to help us.”

  “That damn boy,” she said.

  “Are you his mother?” he asked.

  She sighed, shook her head, and started walking back into the house. “Come on,” she said.

  Ellie opened the screen door and stepped in first with Garrett following behind her. It was humid inside, like the air conditioner had rebelled, leaving it far warmer than even a pig’s comfort level, creating an atmosphere that amplified pungent smells of cat urine, sour milk, and old newspaper. Ellie’s throat cringed, and she took small, short breaths in an effort to delay the added smell of her stomach’s contents to the mix.

  The curtains were drawn, sunlight streamed through the light blue fabric, giving the room a soft, eerie glow. An overfilled litter box was stuffed in a corner, and the dark green carpet was threadbare in places and littered with piles of dirty clothes, unopened envelopes, and empty cans of Bud Light. She returned to an upholstered easy chair that faced an old wood-paneled TV, blaring a midday talk show where someone was screaming about DNA and sperm and daddies and child support. The woman lifted a half-empty pack of Camels from a TV tray that functioned as an end table. She pulled out a stick, stuck it between her receding lips. She lit up and put the lighter down along with the pack. Keeping her eyes on the television, she asked reluctantly, “So, what do you want?”

  Garrett’s badge hung from a chain around his neck. He grabbed it and, in a show of display, held it up. “I’m Agent Garrett Cage, and this is Ellie O’Conner. You’re Jimmy’s mother…Loribelle?”

  “Uh huh.”

  “Is Jimmy here?” Garrett asked.

  “No.”

  “Do you know where he is?”

  “Probably workin’. He don’t tell me.”

  “Where is he working?”

  “He don’t tell me.” She didn’t bring her eyes away from the television.

  Garrett released a curtailed sigh. “He hasn’t told you where he’s working?”

  “That’s what I said. He leaves ‘round mid-mornin’, comes home ‘bout supper time. Brings me my TV dinners and mangoes then goes back to his room. Don’t know why he brings me the mangoes. He knows I hate the damn things.”

  “Then why do you think he brings you mangoes?” Ellie jumped in.

  She shrugged. “Gets ‘em from work probably. Or steals ‘em. All of ‘em are half bruised. Don’t rightly care.”

  Garrett looked at Ellie and then back to Loribelle.

  Ellie’s lungs were screaming for an upgraded quality of air.

  “What kind of hours does he keep?” Garrett pressed.

  Loribelle sighed. “Don’t pay no attention. I hear him in the middle of the night sometimes, but I don’t know if it’s him leavin’ or just gettin’ up to use the head.”

  “Does he ever have any friends over or mention who he hangs out with?”

  The older lady huffed, or choked, or sneezed; Ellie wasn’t sure. “If he got friends that ain’t locked up or dead, I don’t know nothin’ about them.”

  Garrett looked at Ellie again and nodded slightly toward the door.

  “Thank you for your time,” Ellie said. She laid her card on the TV tray between the half-eaten bag of Ruffles and the overflowing ashtray. Here’s my number if you do come onto any answers. You might be hearing from me again if we need anything else.”

  Loribelle said nothing, immersed in her show.

  Ellie and Garrett made their way to the door and walked out into fresh, salty air.

  “Well, that was painful,” Ellie said after they got back in the car.

  “I think the agency needs to start issuing nose plugs. I’m pretty sure that’s where plagues start,” Garrett sai
d, and put his hands on the steering wheel. “So, where to? Mangoes and nothing. That’s all we got.”

  “We could try the Winn-Dixie or Mr. Jensen’s fruit stand. Or we could visit a couple of the growers. Maybe he’s working at one of them,” Ellie said.

  “Worth a shot. Let me try something first.” Garrett pulled out his phone, searched his contacts, and dialed a number.

  “Reece, hey, it’s Garrett. Listen, I need you to find the number to Claude’s parole officer and give him a call. Ask him if he has a job on file. It’s probably bogus, but it’s worth me checking out.” A pause and Garrett replied, “No, he’s not here. His angel of a mother doesn’t know anything.” Another pause. “No, I mean I really don’t think she knows anything. She’s...well, let’s just say that Jimmy may have a good alibi for why he turned out the way he did.” Ellie could hear more words coming through the earpiece but couldn’t make them out. “I know,” Garrett replied. “Just tell the parole officer we’re working a lead on some product. Make it clear we don’t currently suspect Jimmy. That’s important. If he still won’t give it to you, fill out a formal request and email it to his supervisor.”

  They hung up, and Garrett looked at Ellie. “I’ll wait for him to call me back, see if that saves us from driving all over the island looking for him.”

  “If we’re going to be tracking down mangoes, let’s start at The Groovy Grove,” Ellie said. “The Potters were over at The Salty Mangrove last week. They’re good people and would help if they know anything. If nothing else, they may have heard another grower mention Jimmy.”

  “Fair enough,” Garrett said.

  Ellie spent the next several minutes reviewing a couple files she had retrieved from her backpack. Finally, Garrett's contact called him back. When he hung up, he said, “No dice. Parole officer didn’t answer.” He pulled down on the gear shift and started driving away from the small house, and Ellie stared at it as they left. “Do me a favor, Garrett. Next time you want to take me into a place like that, at least have the courtesy to issue me a hazmat suit.”