"There is always the chance of a slip-up. At any rate. I want to have the D.E.A. man tortured, so that we can learn everything we possibly can about his agency's information on drug smuggling and the operations in the Miami area in particular. The Colombians would pay generously for this information, but we will give it to them freely when they agree to wholesale to us instead of those damn Cuban fucks. And they will agree to such a thing if they believe
Feliz
has double crossed them."
Torture
, Charlie thought.
Just goes to show how far behind the times the old man has fallen. Nobody tortures anybody anymore. Chemicals work so much better, and quieter
.
"I still don't like it," Charlie said. "I've got this thing planned perfect. I'm paying off some spic boys of my own to make the hit. The
Colombians'll
think they've been burned by
Feliz
, and we're back in the drug business in Miami instead of the Cubans, the way it used to be. But this thing with the D.E.A. guy, turning him over to the Colombians . . . and the thing at the strip joint . . . Pop, believe me, it'll screw up everything."
The don said, "Who knows I own that club?"
"Nobody," Charlie assured him. "We're so clean on that, nobody could connect us."
"Good. And is the D.E.A. man still safe?"
"Yes. Still safe." Charlie was keeping the D.E.A. man at his own house, which galled him. He thought it was an unnecessary risk and a real danger. But his father had insisted.
"You have more men, more security. We can't keep him at my place," the don had reasoned.
Charlie had agreed, but only for one reason. He was hoping to feed
Wofford
to his pet alligators after his usefulness was finished.
T
he rendezvous was set for an area south of Miami some miles off U.S. 1, an area that could be reached by traveling first on an asphalt road and then on gravel. It hadn't been developed yet, but sooner or later it would be, like all the rest of the land in Florida.
For now, however, it was a perfect spot for a drug deal. Dark, mosquito infested, thick with trees and grasses and weeds.
Crazy Charlie's Cuban gunmen were spread out and well hidden. Charlie himself, and a few of his closest associates, were located a safe distance away, awaiting results.
The Colombians got there first, driving in pickup trucks with armed guards in the back. There were three trucks, about six men to a truck.
The Cubans were close behind, in cars. Four cars, four men to a car. Charlie could not see well from where he was hiding, but he assumed that the men were as well armed as the Colombians.
It wasn't that anyone expected trouble. This was a routine meet, of a kind that had gone down often before, but no one was completely relaxed. No one in the drug world ever allowed himself to get completely relaxed, or if he did he didn't last long enough to tell about it.
The doors opened and closed on the pickups as men got out of the cabs. No lights came on in the interiors.
More doors slammed, and men got out of the cars. The guards in the pickups tensed.
Charlie's men waited until both groups had gotten as close as they ever would. Then they stood up and began firing.
The sounds of the Uzis shattered the stillness and quiet of the night, and the screams of the men followed.
The Colombians began to return the fire from the pickup beds, and the Cubans got out of their cars. It was Charlie's idea to let as many of the Cubans escape alive as possible, thus solidifying the idea that this was indeed a Cuban double-cross. He also wanted at least one Colombian left to tell the story.
It was hard to get that idea across to his Cuban troops, however. They were firing and being fired on, and in the heat of the battle they didn't much care whom they killed.
Bodies flipped out of pickup beds as projectiles tore into them. Cubans slammed into the sides of their cars and slipped slowly to the ground. Bullets punched holes in the sheet metal of the cars' bodies.
Charlie knew that some of his own men would be killed as well, but they were Cubans and would be reported as such in the newspapers. The Colombians would be convinced. He was sure of it.
A stray bullet slapped into the palm tree beside which Charlie was hiding. "
Shit!
" he exclaimed, sinking lower. It wasn't his idea to die out there himself. That was not part of the plan.
He saw no more of the fighting, though to tell the truth, he hadn't been able to see much to begin with. The night was too dark, and most of the action he had viewed had been illuminated by the flame bursting from firing Uzis.
Soon he heard a door slam and a car start. He raised up to see one of
Feliz's
cars leaving the scene, backing as fast as it could down the gravel road.
Another slam, and a Colombian pickup spun off the road and into the ditch to get around all the other vehicles.
Charlie strained his eyes for five minutes, but there was no other movement. It was time to move out. Even this far from town, the gunfire would have been heard and the cops would be on the way.
He and his men cut across the open field to where their own car was hidden, not far off another gravel road.
His Cuban troops could find their own way out.
If they were still alive.
Charlie didn't give a damn one way or the other.
S
tone was angry.
His two leads were dead,
Wofford
was still missing, and there seemed to be no more clues as to his whereabouts.
"Let's go over it again," Carol said. They were in the safe house, surrounded by the computers and monitors. Hog and Loughlin were in their rooms, resting, but Stone was unable to sleep.
Stone took it from the top, telling Carol everything that had happened from the time they entered the Black Pussy Cat until the fistfight had ended.
"It was a planned, organized hit," Stone said. "They didn't care who got killed as long as they got their targets. In fact, the random shooting will cover up their objective. I'd bet everyone in that club had a record. The police will never figure out exactly who was being hit."
"Not
everyone
had a record," Carol said, smiling.
"Not the same kind, at least," Stone agreed.
"And the hit team couldn't have known that you would be there. So that eliminates one target. If they had known they might not even have gone in."
"Probably not, considering the outcome."
"And what was it that Rodriguez said before he was killed?"
"He asked if we were from the don. He said something like, 'We delivered, didn't we?'"
"Delivered what?" Carol brushed her hair back with a hand.
"Dope? Guns? Money?"
"Or a hostage."
Stone thought about it. "You could be right. That could be our connection. They delivered Jack to the don. I don't know how they spotted him, but they could have done it."
Carol said, "Remember, they'd been bragging about being in solid with Don Vito earlier."
"Then the don didn't have them hit."
"Why not?" Carol wanted to know. "They were talking too much, letting the word get around about their 'good buddy,' the don. Loose talk like that can get you killed."
Stone nodded in agreement, but he still wasn't satisfied. "It's possible, but I don't see it that way. It's more likely that someone else was behind it. Maybe it was a punishment for talking too much, or maybe it was a punishment for being on the wrong side."
"The Cuban drug dealers?"
"Right. Castillo and Rodriguez talked too much and to the wrong people. How long do you think it would take that information to get back to their leader? What was his name again?"
"Enrique
Feliz
. Of course. If he found out that his own men had sold out to the don, he wouldn't hesitate to eliminate them."
"It doesn't really matter," Stone told her. "Not now, at any rate. It would just strengthen what we already believe. So our next visit should be to Don Vito
Lucci
. What have you got on him?"
Carol sat at a keyboard. "Miami Organized Crime should have plenty." Her fingers played over the keys.
In only seconds, letters began to appear on the monitor screen. "Here's the address," Carol said. "It's in Coral Gables, one of the 'old Miami' neighborhoods. I'll bet his neighbors have no idea who's living next door to them."
She punched more keys. A floor plan began to appear. "He lives in an old mansion that's been renovated. This plan hasn't been updated, and it doesn't say anything about the security systems, but you can see the arrangement of the house and grounds."
"Print that out," Stone said.
While they were waiting for the hard copy, another printer in the room began spewing dot-matrix letters onto paper. Carol got up to see what new
intel
was coming in.
"My God," she said after reading a few lines.
Stone looked over her shoulder. "Damn," he swore.
The printer was telling them about a shooting war in progress, or just ending, with drug dealers dying all over the place on the other side of the city.
"People dying by the truckload," Stone grunted. "First the shooting at the club, and now this. The police must be going nuts."
"Almost like a war," Carol said.
"There aren't any good guys or bad guys in this war, though," Stone told her. "Apparently a fight broke out at a drug deal, and both sides started firing. I don't much care if they kill each other off in a battle like that."
"Of course not," Carol said. "But this is really going to put the pressure on. The press, the politicians, everybody will be on the backs of the police, demanding that something be done."
"Which will restrict our freedom of movement even more," Stone said. "We've got to act now. Let me look at those plans."
He moved to the printout of the house plan. "Bedrooms don't move around much. They stay next to baths, so whatever changes have been made, probably the master bedroom is still in the same place."
He looked at the plan. "Second floor right. We can expect that the don will have pretty good security, but not as heavy as it might have been in the old days. I expect it's been years since he had an unwanted visitor. People do tend to grow careless after a while."
"Not you," Carol said.
"I'm still too much in the game. The don hasn't been a player for a long time now, not if what you told me about him is true. I don't mean that we can walk up to the front door and ring the bell, but we can get in.
"We aren't going to do anything that would attract the attention of the police. I don't want to kill anyone. I don't even want to hurt anyone. Not until I find out what I want to know. I just want to ask the don a few simple questions in the privacy of his own home."
"A soft probe?" Carol asked.
"Right. We go in, we come out. No one's the wiser, if the don is cooperative. If he's not . . . " He looked closer at the
floorplan
printouts on the screen. "I think I see our way in . . ."
"He may be old, and he may be out of touch," Carol objected, "but he'll still be heavily guarded. And the guards can't all be expected to be lazy and careless."
"Let's see if there's not more information in that computer," Stone said. "They might not know about the systems he uses, but they'll know about guards and animals."
Carol tapped the keys.
The information began to appear.
Stone smiled grimly. "We can handle that. Hog and Loughlin have had enough sleep. I'll go wake them up."
A
t
Williams's
insistence, Mike Bass had checked all the rental agencies for the hour after the arrival of Stone's flight.
Though Stone had used a false name to rent the Toyota, Benton and Ferguson had taken around a snapshot, which had been identified by the Avis clerk. They got the license number of the car, and a description of it.