Tasker said, “Daniel, you remember me?”
He just nodded.
“This is Agent Parks with the ATF. ” Tasker waited, then after no response, he went on. “We’re here ’cause you said you wanted to talk.”
“You got the wrong man.”
Camy cut in. “How do you figure?”
“I don’t know nothin’ about any Stinger missile. As far as I know, Bernie Dashett is an exterminator.”
“How do you explain an FBI agent seeing you give Dashett the Stinger just before he tried to sell it to us?” asked Camy.
“All I did was fix his possum trap.”
“His what?”
“Possum trap. For his business.” He looked at Tasker. “Look, mister, you seem pretty reasonable. You guys have made a mistake. That’s all. I did not have anything to do with that missile.”
Camy looked at Tasker and said, “You’d think these mopes would come up with a better story after surveillance saw the whole thing.”
Wells cut in. “That’s the problem. They didn’t see it because it didn’t happen. Listen, I got a friend, an associate, who could clear this up if you called him.”
Camy cut him off. “You need to call a lawyer, Wells. If you don’t want to help us, you’re gonna need to hire one.”
“But if you just call this friend of mine at-”
The ATF agent held up her hand. “We’ve wasted enough time.” She turned to Tasker. “Let’s go, Billy.”
To keep the unity up, Tasker walked out, but not before considering what Wells had said. Maybe he could check a few things out real quick before he got home to the girls.
seven
At the ATF impound lot, Bill Tasker looked over the old Chevy 1500 truck that Bernie Dashett used for his exterminator business and to deliver the Stinger missile. Camy had gone into her office and left him to look through the toolboxes that ran around the entire truck bed walls. The toolboxes had been unlocked, but nothing appeared missing from inside. Anything that had been loose in the truck bed had been thrown into the cab.
He opened the door and had to step back from the stench of tobacco and something else. He couldn’t be sure what caused the musky odor, but felt confident it had to do with Bernie Dashett’s occupation.
A metal cage with springs inside sat on the seat. Tasker lifted it and examined it closely. This had to be the cage Wells said he fixed. He set the large cage outside on the ground. The cab was still a mess. He couldn’t tell if it was always like this or was the result of the search by impounding agents. An empty duffel bag lay crumpled on the floor in front of where the cage had sat. He found a lone sheet of paper that wasn’t stained and wrinkled. An official receipt from Naranja Engineering, for forty dollars, for repairs and alterations on a possum trap. The receipt was dated two days earlier. The day of the arrest.
Inside the office, Tasker told Camy Parks and Jimmy Lail what he had found.
“So,” said Jimmy, “the banger just slid word in with his story.”
Tasker looked at him. “What?”
Camy interpreted. “He knew what happened and used it to fit his story.”
Tasker said, “Was the possum cage in the bed of the truck?”
“We weren’t sure what it was, so we left it in the cab but, yeah, I think it was in the back when we seized the truck.”
“Did you guys seize anything of evidentiary value?”
Camy looked at a sheet on her desk and said, “Nope, just a precaution.” She saw Tasker’s expression and said, “Billy, don’t worry, it’s airtight. With his past connection the FBI has documented, he’s all done.”
Jimmy added, “Yo, my brother, we got that dawg in pound. For true.”
Tasker stared at him, weighing the value in punching an FBI agent.
He made it home after five. The girls were ready to rumble, having been cooped up all day in his town house. His older neighbor, Mrs. Hernandez, who treated Tasker like a relative, always trying to feed him empanadas or some other outstanding Latin dish, watched the girls for him. She enjoyed the two girls and sometimes took them to her daughter’s house to play with her three granddaughters.
Now the girls wanted to roughhouse with him, but he couldn’t concentrate. He kept going back in his mind to see if Wells’ story could be true. The key factors were the FBI agent seeing the exchange and the FBI intel report on Wells. But Tasker knew firsthand how FBI allegations could spiral out of control. If he hadn’t jumped to his own defense, he’d be at MCC right now on charges the FBI had dreamed up based on worse info than this.
“Daddy, can we eat at Chili’s?” asked Kelly, the oldest.
“Anything you angels want,” he agreed without thinking.
On the drive over there, he ducked the usual questions about girls and boys and if he was dating. His girls had a good outlook on just about everything, and that included reconciliation with his wife. He’d held that hope for a while. Now he was less confident. He could trace where things had gone wrong. He was in Miami in the first place, instead of the West Palm Beach office where he’d started, because of a shooting incident up there involving a corrupt West Palm cop who had been his friend. For a while, some people had thought he was corrupt, too, maybe even killed the cop to hide his role in it, but that was crazy, and eventually everyone realized it. The case had garnered a good deal of publicity, though, and he had started to drink. More important, he’d changed. He changed from good-natured to gloomy, his marriage had broken up, he’d been transferred to Miami. It had only been the last year that he realized it had been all his fault.
Ironically, it was the recent ordeal with the FBI that had brought him and Donna back together. He now figured that if they were meant to be together, things would work out. Maybe he was going back to good-natured, but he wasn’t sure.
After dinner, instead of heading back north toward his town house, Tasker headed east to US 1, then turned south.
“Where are we going, Daddy?” asked Emily, her bright eyes happy to take in whatever new landscape they passed.
“Just thought we’d drive around a little. You don’t get to see much of this area. That’s all gonna change. I don’t intend to work as much as I have, so we can spend plenty of time together.”
He cut through Pinecrest so the girls could see the nice houses.
“Why don’t you live there, Daddy?” asked Emily.
“Costs way, way, way, way too much.”
Kelly said, “Sarah Colgan at school says you’re rich.”
“How does she figure that?”
“She says no one ever found the money they said you took, and her dad says you still have it.”
Tasker chuckled at that. “You can tell Sarah Colgan she is full of beans.”
As they passed the mall at Cutler Ridge, Kelly asked, “Is that where you got the bad guy?”
He smiled. “Sure is. How’d you know?”
“Mom showed us the news story and said they got the FBI confused with FDLE, but that you were the one who stopped that bad man. She said we should be proud.”
“Did she?” He smiled all the way down to Southwest 264th Street, where he turned right.
“Where are we?” asked Emily.
“They call it Naranja.”
“You know someone here?”
“Sort of,” said Tasker, as he drove past Daniel Wells’ house. The lights were on in the living room and he thought about the kids whose dad wasn’t there.
eight
Early Monday morning, after a good weekend with the girls and a pleasant conversation with his ex-wife when he dropped them off, Tasker found himself again in Naranja. He had already been by Wells’ house twice. Once at six-thirty, then again at seven. Finally he saw movement about seven-fifteen. It was early, but he didn’t have much time. He parked on the street and walked up to the front door over the long, narrow driveway.
A wiry boy about six with a buzz cut showing just a haze of blond hair answered the door. Tasker flashed back to his childhood summers of sunbur
nt heads from Mom’s buzz cuts the day after school let out.
“I bet they call you Buzz,” said Tasker, leaning over with a smile.
The kid slammed the door. Tasker heard him yell. “Mama, there’s some weird guy at the door.”
After a minute’s wait and some peeking from behind the curtains, a surprisingly beautiful woman answered the door. She seemed different from the other day somehow, more striking. Her blue eyes and light complexion made her look Scandinavian, but her accent marked her as a southerner. Not Florida. Alabama maybe.
“Can I help you?”
Tasker showed his badge and identification. “I’m Bill Tasker.”
“I remember you.” Her tone wasn’t harsh, just cautious.
“Mrs. Wells, I was wondering if I could talk to you for a minute.”
“Daniel says he tried to explain at the jail, but you wouldn’t listen. You don’t understand. My Daniel is a good man. A smart man. He has three years of college. He only left the University of Florida to help his daddy when he got sick. He’d never do nothin’ like you said.”
“That’s what I’m trying to find out.” Even in a night-gown with the boy hanging on her leg, this girl exuded grace. The words “southern belle” came to mind. There was something else. Something that didn’t fit with his image of a southern belle.
She looked at him. “What do you need?”
“I’d like to look at his workshop.”
She shook her head, tentatively. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
Tasker nodded. “I understand your reticence.”
She gave him a quizzical look.
“I understand your reluctance,” Tasker said. “But I need to check some information.”
She thought about it. “I don’t know,” she started slowly. “I don’t wanna get him in worse trouble somehow. You ain’t got a warrant, do you?”
“No, nothing like that. I want to see if I can back up Daniel’s story at all.”
She looked up at his face, almost studying it. “That other fella just tried to trick me into saying stuff the other day.”
“What other fella?”
“The FBI agent, Mr. Cobb. He told me all kinds of things, but he didn’t want to help Daniel. If Daniel can’t work, we’ll lose this place. I don’t think I should make it worse for him.”
“Mrs. Wells, I am not with the FBI. I swear to God, all I want is the truth. The truth might be that Daniel tried to make some extra money and didn’t tell you a thing about it. But if the truth is that he wasn’t involved, then that’s what I want to find out.”
She assessed him carefully. Looking up into his eyes and taking a step closer, she asked, “You swear that’s what you’re doing?”
Tasker looked into her beautiful face and felt himself hesitate as he lost concentration. This girl had to know she had this kind of effect on men. She was better than a polygraph. She knew no mortal man could look into her eyes and lie.
Tasker said, “I swear to you I just want the truth.”
She took a long moment, squeezed the boy at her side and then sent him into the house with a playful swat on the butt. She looked at Tasker again. “Okay, I’ll open it up. I don’t know why, but you look sincere. I don’t think you’re trying to hurt Daniel.”
“I do just want the truth. We have enough to hold him now, anyway. But if I find anything, then I’ll know we were right. And if I find something that helps him significantly, I’ll let the prosecutor know before his bond hearing this afternoon. That’s why I’m bothering you so early.”
She nodded slowly, obviously still coming to grips with the bizarre fate of her husband. She led him through the carport to the detached one-car garage. An oversized van with faded signs that said NARANJA ENGINEERING was parked at the end of the driveway.
She stood on her toes in her bare feet to reach the keypad that opened the door. “Go ahead. I got to get my other two fed.” She hurried past him toward the house without another word.
He nodded and proceeded to scan the top of the workbench. Nothing more than tools and some instructions for a welding torch. The garage as a whole was very neat and orderly. He knew the type. A place for everything and everything in its place. His father had run the dry cleaners in Boca like that.
He looked in a few containers, one with rusty roofing nails and one with a noxious smelling, gooey liquid. Then on a small, neat desk he found something that immediately caught his attention. A personal check. Bernie Dashett had written a check to Naranja Engineering for forty dollars. Giving an alibi was one thing. But this kind of detail was unheard-of. Tasker snatched up the check and headed back through the carport. As he neared the front door, Mrs. Wells stepped outside. Now in a sundress, she looked like the girl next door, if you lived next door to the set of Baywatch.
“Find anything?”
Tasker almost stuttered. “Maybe. We’ll know by the hearing. What if we talk then?”
“You help Daniel and we’ll talk any time you like.” She smiled and Tasker knew it was time to get to the office.
He walked through the front doors of the new FDLE building off 107th Avenue and Twelfth Street at exactly nine o’clock. Before he could make the inner doors, the receptionist called to him from behind thick, clear Plexar.
“This was in the mail shoot for you when we opened.” She held up an envelope a little larger than a sheet of paper. The word “Urgent” was written in red marker across the front with his name in the corner. The receptionist slid it under the glass.
He opened it as he took the elevator to the third floor. Walking down the hallway, he heard, but didn’t acknowledge, greetings from everyone he passed. He slid out an eight-by-ten photo with a note on the back. The comment read: “Nazi summit, Dell Linley et al., August 4, 2002.” There was an address and time marked on it as well. The “et al.” was something cops and prosecutors used to say “everyone else involved.” Sometimes it was to save time and sometimes it was just laziness. He turned over the photo and looked at two young men talking in the outside courtyard of a McDonald’s. The photo was taken from across the street with a telephoto lens. Who the hell would send him something like this? Tasker looked at the scene again and didn’t see the connection until he noticed the man inside the restaurant with two small children eating at a table. It was Daniel Wells.
All day he had wondered who had sent him the photo of the “Nazi summit.” The piece of the puzzle that had led to Daniel Wells’ immediate arrest. It hadn’t exactly been a summit, and more important, Wells had had nothing to do with it. So the question hit him again: Who had sent it to him? He toyed with the idea that it might have been the FBI agent who’d spotted the transfer of the Stinger, Jim Cobb. Maybe the guy realized he had screwed up and wanted to set things right. But it didn’t add up. Cobb certainly didn’t strike Tasker as the kind of cop that went back on a judgment, no matter how outlandish it was.
Now Tasker couldn’t worry about it anymore. He had other problems. He tried to talk to the assistant U.S. attorney just as the hearing started, but traffic was brutal, and trying to run down where the photo had come from and what it meant had taken time. It seemed clear to him that the FBI intelligence that had helped land Daniel Wells in jail was shitty, if it was based on this photo. Who has a summit of white racists with only two rednecks talking outside a McDonald’s? Wells wasn’t even with them. He was just having lunch with his kids. Tasker had just driven down past the McDonald’s in Goulds an hour ago and confirmed it was the closest one to the Wells house. They had the wrong fucking guy in jail.
The refurbished Magistrate’s Courtroom, or “ Mag Court ” for short, was in the Federal Courthouse on Miami Avenue in downtown Miami. A large deputy U.S. Marshal in a suit stood next to each door, since there was a prisoner involved in the hearing. The high ceiling and the space between the formal-looking magistrate and lawyers gave the courtroom the feel of a big meeting hall. The room wasn’t particularly crowded. A few old men from Miami Beach. They just liked
hearing cases now and then. A few reporters and the guy who sketched the hearing. Federal courts, unlike state courts, didn’t allow cameras of any sort in the courtroom.
Tasker fidgeted in the seat as the hearing got underway. He didn’t want to just stop it, so he waited for a recess. They were going to look at Bernie Dashett first, anyway.
Tasker nodded to Camy, who was sitting up front. It took him a second to recognize Jimmy Lail in a nice blue business suit sitting next to her. After a short opening statement, the portly assistant U.S. attorney called Jimmy to the stand to summarize what had happened the day of the arrests. Tasker thought this should be good for a laugh.
When asked to lay out the whole scenario, Jimmy began, “After identifying one subject, Bernard Harold Dashett of 21468 Hallow Road, an undercover sting operation was set up to interdict the Stinger missile Mr. Dashett had offered on the open market.” He had a southern, possibly Texas, drawl.
Tasker was stunned. The idiot could talk. A casual observer would view him as an intelligent, professional law enforcement official. If they only knew.
Finally, at a five-minute recess, Tasker stepped up to Camy and said, “We gotta talk.”
“What’s up?”
“We grabbed the wrong guy. Daniel Wells handed him a possum trap, not a missile.”
She smiled. “Stop fooling around.”
“I’m serious.” Tasker ran down all of his leads as Jimmy Lail walked over.
Jimmy jumped in. “No way, dawg. That gansta is righteous and going down.”
Tasker stopped and looked at him. “Talk to me like you were on the stand.”
Jimmy frowned, straightened his tie and said, “Mind your own fucking business, Tasker. Everyone knows you’d do whatever you could to tarnish the Bureau.”
Tasker decided he liked the urban mode better, but simply turned and explained the entire situation to the assistant U.S. attorney. Five minutes later, the heavy little prosecutor stood and said to the magistrate, “Your honor, at this time, the government would have no objection to Mr. Wells being released on his own recognizance until further investigation is complete.” There were murmurs throughout the small crowd.
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