Fallen King: A Jesse McDermitt Novel (Caribbean Adventure Series Book 6) (10 page)

“Hi, Anthony,” I said, taking the hand he offered. “Good to see you again. How’s Anne?”

“Mean as a cottonmouth and twice as deadly,” he said, glancing at Bender and Norton.

“These are a couple of friends, Paul and David. Guys, meet Anthony Schultz, the best boat cabinetmaker in all of Miami.”

They shook hands all around and Anthony invited us back to the shop. Walking through a heavy door, the dim sound of work being performed that could barely be heard in the lobby now grew louder.

We passed through another door at the end of the hall into the workshop, where Anthony’s crew of four young men were busy cutting, milling, and sanding, the sound of power tools filling my ears. The noise and smell of the wood dust reminded me of my childhood, helping Pap build boats.

“Yours are over here,” Anthony said, leading us to a corner where two narrow cabinets stood on end, each having a full-length door, which was coated in white fiberglass, like a boat’s hull. I touched the spot where I knew a hidden latch in the back would release the door. It opened smoothly, with the quiet hiss of hydraulically dampened spring-loaded hinges. The interior revealed a cloth-lined recess that would fit the titanium stand now stored in the rafters of one of the bunkhouses. I inspected it closely, using a micrometer and yardstick that Anthony handed me. It was perfect.

I opened the other one in the same manner and caught Norton’s eyes widening just a fraction of an inch. Bender didn’t seem to notice anything unusual. That, or he was very good at hiding it. I inspected the clearances on this one even closer and found it to be as flawless as the first.

“Great work, man,” I said as I closed the second cabinet’s door.

“Easy when I get such detailed drawings,” Anthony replied. “If you ever get tired of fishing, you could make a decent wage in the design field.”

I looked out over the work area. His workers were all young men, one black, two Hispanic, and one white. All were busy performing various tasks, learning the basics from a master carpenter. It was a good trade to learn. A skill that might get them out of the neighborhood. One day, one of them might be Anthony’s competition, but he never let that stop him from sharing his talents and secrets.

“Nobody touched these but me,” Anthony said, drawing my attention away from the workshop.

“Thanks, I appreciate that.” I handed him a small roll of hundred-dollar bills, which disappeared into the front pocket of his coveralls without being counted.

The four of us each took an end of the two cabinets and carried them out to the waiting Escalade. Loading them and closing the doors, I turned to Anthony. “Y’all come down sometime. Rusty has a cook that performs magic with some Jamaican spices and herbs.”

“I heard about him,” Anthony said, bobbing his head on a long skinny neck. “Even up here in the big city. We’ll have to do that.”

“It’s all true, brother,” I said, shaking his hand. “Thanks again.”

We climbed in the car and Norton immediately turned in his seat and looked at me. “I recognized what that’s for, you know.”

“Well, now I’ll just have to kill you,” I said with a grin.

“What?” Bender asked.

“Need to know,” I told him. “And right now, you don’t.”

“Where to?” Norton said, through his big toothy grin.

I glanced at my watch and said, “The Epic. How about you join me for lunch, Norton. Bender here has to go see someone down in Homestead.”

Ten minutes after unloading the cabinets onto the boat, the driver dropped me and Norton at the luxurious Epic Hotel on the corner of Biscayne and Brickell, then pulled back out onto US-1 with Bender in the front seat, headed south.

“Who are we meeting?” Norton asked.

“An FDLE agent by the name of Linda Rosales. Know her?”

“Heard about her,” he replied, as we walked across the expansive patio area to the front doors. “Good cop. You always meet cops in such high-priced places?”

“Only when I’m in Miami,” I replied. In the lobby, we boarded the elevator and I pressed the button for the sixteenth floor. We rode up in silence with two couples.

We got out at the terrace bar of Area 31 Restaurant and I looked around and found Linda sitting at a table off to the side. Not the best view of the waterfront, but a commanding view of the rest of the terrace. She had her hair pulled back in a loose ponytail and was wearing a light grey skirt and jacket, with a pale red, almost pink blouse beneath it.
And a Glock
, I thought.

I introduced Norton to her as we sat down. A waiter was ready to take our drink orders, leaving a menu for each of us. I set mine aside as Linda leaned over and gave me a kiss.

“So what brings the Old Man of the Sea to the big city?”

Norton grinned at the public display.

I just smiled and said, “A boat.”

She laughed at my joke. A hearty laugh. “Good one,” she said.

The waiter arrived and we placed our orders. Linda ordered crudo, a local Cuban dish of grouper ceviche. Norton went for a hamburger and I got my usual blackened mahi sandwich.

After the waiter left, I said, “I thought you two ought to meet. David here is a private contractor and has a close ear to the ground, I think.” Linda looked at me, then at Norton.

“Actually, Agent Rosales, I do mostly security work.”

“Just Linda,” she said with a disarming smile. “What kind of security?”

“Some alarm and surveillance work and the occasional private tactical training, but mostly my team is contracted to provide protection for high-value clients. Usually privately, but sometimes the city offers up a contract.”

“Tell me what you’ve learned about Zoe Pound,” I said.

“I have to use the restroom,” she said, standing up. “Give me just a minute.”

As Norton and I sat back down, we both watched her walk across the terrace. “She’ll have my complete background on her Blackberry in two minutes, won’t she?” Norton said.

“Anything you want kept secret?” I asked. My offering up Norton to Linda as an informant in the way I did got the desired results. She’d let me know anything she learned about the man.

He grinned and replied, “I’m an open book, Gunny.”

“You served together?” Linda asked after we’d finished lunch and come down to the parking lot, where she’d left her gray Ford sedan. “That’s how you know each other?”

“Yes and no,” I replied. “We’d known each other briefly in the Corps a dozen years ago. He knows Bender from when they were both Chicago cops. Bender’s the new guy I told you about on Deuce’s team. Former Secret Service.”

“Well, Norton checked out clean,” she said, glancing at him waiting for me by the idling Escalade. “Real clean, in fact. His company was hired by the State several times and he worked alongside one of my counterparts a few years ago.” Then she leaned in close enough that I could smell the scent of her hair.
Frangipani
, I thought, while she whispered seductively, “Do you have to go back today?”

Do I?
The invitation was more than a little tempting.

“Yeah,” I finally stammered. “Kim’s alone on the island.”

She smiled and said, “This weekend, then?”

This weekend
, I thought.
Shit, Eve’s bringing her husband and my grandson.

“My other daughter and her family are coming down,” I blurted out. Then recovering and not wanting her to think I didn’t want her to come, I added, “We’ll be a bit crowded on the island.”

“They can have the house and we’ll sleep in that luxurious stateroom of yours.”

We both wanted it, that I was sure of. I gazed into her smoky, dark eyes and said, “Yeah, I think that’s a good idea.”

It must have surprised her a bit. “Really?”

“Why not?” I said. “But we promise each other that no matter what happens, we stay friends.”

Getting in the back seat of the Escalade with Bender, he started to fill me in on what he’d learned from Deuce. Like a hound on a scent trail, he began baying in short sentences before we even backed out of the parking spot. “A go-fast boat was used. They took Beech to Haiti. Deuce doesn’t think there’s any connection. Not to Zoe Pound, anyway.”

“There might not be,” I said thoughtfully, trying to slow his roll just a little. “All we have is conjecture and even that’s pretty thin. The only connection is if your hunch is right, and I’m not convinced they’re trying to draw me out.”

“Then why did you choose to come here in Beech’s Cigarette?”

Norton suddenly turned around in his seat. “You have Beech’s boat?”

I glared at Bender and then glanced to Norton. “It’s not his anymore.” Turning back to Bender, I added, “Fishing, remember?”

I shrugged it off after that. No sense in bucking the wind. Norton was good, I felt comfortable in trusting him, more based on my gut instinct than Linda’s summary in the parking lot. It was obvious that Bender did. I just don’t like a lot of people knowing about my private life.

“What’d you learn from Rosales?” Bender asked.

“FDLE has a lead on one of the guys that killed the Tolivers,” I said after a moment.

“How come we don’t have that lead?”

“This is sounding more and more interesting,” Norton said from the front seat, climbing higher on the seat back. “Where to now?”

“Back to Trans Global,” I replied. I reached into my pocket and got a card from a little metal case I always carry and handed it to Norton. “You hear anything at all about Beech, or Zoe Pound, call me, okay?”

“You got it, Gunny. And thanks for the intro to Agent Rosales.”

When we crossed over the little bridge just before Trans Global’s parking lot, I glanced down to where the boat was tied up. There was a black woman standing beside it, as if waiting.

We got out of the SUV and said our goodbyes, promising to stay in touch. I still hadn’t learned the driver’s name. When they pulled out of the lot, Bender and I walked around the side of the building to the gate and took the path down to the dock.

The woman still stood there as we walked out onto the dock. She was wearing a blue skirt that hung loosely to her ankles and a flower print blouse in hues of bright orange, yellow, and blue, with a long beige coat hanging open.

Smiling at us as we approached, I saw that she was an older woman, probably in her sixties, with a broad, flat nose and high cheekbones. Her skin was the color of ebony and only slightly lined, and her hair was a wild mane of long braids. Not dreads like some island men wear, but each braid carefully crafted and hanging below her shoulders. She was probably very beautiful in her youth. It was her eyes that got my attention, though. She had clear, pale blue eyes that darted around. When she fixed those eyes on me, a charge of electricity seemed to course through my body.

“Dis is yer boat,” she said, in that singsong accent of the people of the Caribbean. But it wasn’t a question.

I nodded and she continued, “I am Margaret, from Trinidad.”

She said it as though it was meant to explain something more, but I’m sure I’d never met her before. Her smile never wavered.

“I feel a sense of honor and order in yer presence,” she said. “It comforts me.” Then, her smile fading somewhat, she continued, “I know dat dis boat has come in search of someone. But, you are both di seeker and di sought?”

I looked at Bender, who’d already untied the stern line and come to stand beside me, holding the boat against the dock with the line.

“I’m Jesse, from Marathon.”

Her eyes sparkled at the reply and her smile widened again. Her eyes never left mine and in them I saw a quiet honesty, a life spent helping others. Visions seemed to dance into and out of my consciousness, like memories.

“Di mon you seek is not here, but will be soon. Di woman you seek is here now.”

An island mystic
, I thought. Most would dismiss these people as frauds and con artists, but I’d been around the islands some and had seen a lot that couldn’t be explained rationally.

“I’m not looking for a woman,” I responded.

“Ya are, ya just don know it yet, mon. Move with caution, Jesse from Marathon. Der is danger here for you. Di woman is a dark one. Not on di outside like me, but dark on di inside. She di one dat will control di mon you seek.”

“A dark woman?”

“Light on di outside, but a dark heart on di inside. Ya turned yer back on her once and her heart is darker for you now because a dat. Do not make dat mistake again.” Then she turned and started toward the back of the warehouse. “Have a good day, Mistah Jesse and Mistah Po-lease-mon.” The cackling laughter followed her around the corner of the building.

I dropped into the cockpit and started the engines as Bender untied the bow line and shoved the boat away from the dock before stepping aboard.

“What the hell was that all about?” Bender asked as we turned out of the canal into the river. An island freighter about a hundred feet long was just ahead of us, its big diesel chugging and belching gray smoke. “And what made her think I’m a cop?”

“No idea about the first,” I replied. “A fortune-teller of some kind, I’d guess. As to her knowing you’re a cop? You are a cop. You look like a cop, you act like a cop, and you talk like a cop. Nothing mystical about that deduction.”

“Don’t tell me you believe in that shit.”

I turned and looked at him. “I’ve seen a lot more unbelievable things than that, Bender.”

It took twenty minutes to reach Biscayne Bay, due to the small freighter’s very slow speed. I had to shift to neutral and drift, then idle forward for a minute before doing it again, as we slowly followed the freighter downstream. While we drifted along, Bender asked questions about living in the Keys and daily life on the island.

Since he probably knew anyway, I told him about the inheritance I’d received from Pap after he died. He’d worked hard all his life, building his own architectural firm. On weekends, he worked equally hard, building boats and selling them. Being his only heir, I inherited everything.

Mam passed away in her sleep a few years before I retired from the Corps and Pap had her cremated. I was overseas at the time, and he waited until I could get home to spread her ashes on the Peace River. He died not long after that and I added his ashes to hers.

A little more than a year later, I retired from the Corps after twenty years of service. With the inheritance and having saved a good bit during my years in the Corps, I could have pretty much done anything I wanted. With no family to speak of and no plans, I ended up in Marathon, where I wound up buying and living on a boat, then buying my island.

Though I’m sure he already knew these things, he nodded appropriately as I told him. Passing under the Metrorail Bridge, Bender said under his breath, “Don’t be obvious, but check the pier at two o’clock.”

I rose up in the seat slightly, looking over the port bow at the water, as if checking for obstacles, and then did the same to starboard with my head, but my eyes scoured the docks and piers on that side, shielded behind dark wraparound sunglasses.

Three dark-skinned young black men stood by the seawall in a mostly vacant parking lot. All three wore variations of the same gang-style clothes, sagging pants or shorts and caps turned crooked, and one had on a tee shirt emblazoned with the Zoe Pound logo in bright yellow, red, green, and blue. The parking lot they occupied was where the river widens slightly before curving to the left.

“Got ’em,” I said. “See any guns?”

“No, but they’re armed.”

“Don’t get jumpy,” I said. “Liberty City is their turf, several blocks north of here. They’re in Little Havana and won’t start anything if they know what’s good for them.”

I took the engines out of gear and drifted in the wake of the freighter as it slowed to make the last two turns before the river’s waters flowed into Biscayne Bay.

We both dropped any pretense of watching covertly and stood up, looking directly at the three young men. I engaged the engines and we slowly idled past the parking lot, looking straight at them all the way. They stared straight back at us as well. Only when we’d put the stern toward them did one of the thugs say something to his cohorts, and all three turned around and left the seawall.

We cleared the mouth of the river a few minutes later, with the freighter chugging due east in Fisherman’s Channel, toward Government Cut and the open Atlantic. I turned south and brought the boat up on plane, heading to the fuel dock at Rickenbacker Marina.

While I was fueling up, Bender paced the dock. Finally, he stopped and said, “Scouting us out, or making a statement?”

“I’m starting to lean a little more in favor of your hunch,” I said. “We got a bite while the boat sat there at the dock.”

“Maybe that voodoo lady tipped them?”

“I don’t think so,” I said, climbing up to the dock. I went over to the Dockmaster and handed him my bank card for the fuel.

Back at the boat, I started the engines as Bender untied the lines. Minutes later, we passed under the bridge at the north end of Key Biscayne into open water. I turned south and kept the speed down to sixty knots with the quartering sea.

“Let’s assume for a minute,” Bender began, “that what Zoe Pound is doing in the backcountry really is connected to Beech in some way other than drawing you out of hiding.”

“I’m not in hiding,” I said.
I just don’t like hanging around people I don’t know and have no need to impress
, I thought.

“Intentional or not, you’d be difficult to find on any given day, but let’s put that aside. What possible connection could there be between a group of Haitians springing Beech from Gitmo and a Haitian gang in Miami blowing up reefs?”

I thought about it as we bounced over the wave tops off Elliot Key, following the long, sweeping curve of islands, bays, and sandbars to the southwest.

Beech was a loan shark, primarily. He ran a few drugs on the sides, some gambling and prostitution, and he also owned a junkyard for some reason. Nothing Deuce had dug up about the man pointed to any environmental concern, and when it comes to the environment, that’s not real high on any kind of gang’s agenda.

“The lack of either having an environmental connection seems like the only connection.”

“Exactly,” Bender said. “So the activity can’t possibly be about a bunch of inner city gangbangers suddenly turning tree hugger.”

“I pretty much ruled that out from the start,” I chortled.

“The activity, but not the motivation. If there isn’t a connection to you, then how could the gang and Beech be connected?”

“I can’t think of any,” I said.

“Then that only leaves two things. It’s just a coincidence or they are, in fact, trying to lure you out.”

I’ve never subscribed to the idea of a series of coincidental random events being the causation of something. A butterfly flapping its wings on the Ivory Coast doesn’t create a hurricane that destroys a city in Texas. In my mind, coincidence is ruled out.
He’s right
, I thought.
Zoe Pound wants to find me. But why?

“An outside influence,” I finally said. “A wild card that we don’t know anything about.”

We glanced at each other and Bender said, “Now you’re starting to think like a cop. Somebody pulling strings to make both happen? How many enemies do you have?”