John Grisham - The Whistler

Hank agreed that Zeke Foreman would make a suitable stooge. Hank arranged the delivery of the stolen truck; Clyde had no knowledge of those arrangements. This was typical of the gang: keep information limited so leaks can be controlled. Hank provided the fake Florida tags for the truck driven by Clyde. The operation went smoothly, with Hank on the ground and on the phones directing traffic. Clyde did not know the identity of the man who pretended to be an informant and lured Lacy and Hugo to the reservation. Seconds after the collision, Clyde parked behind the Dodge Ram and told Zeke to get away from the Prius, to get in his truck. By then Zeke’s nose was bleeding. Clyde checked the air bag in the Dodge and found no blood. Hugo was a mess, stuck in the shattered windshield, groaning and kicking about and bleeding like hell. His cell phone was in the right rear pocket of his jeans. Clyde noticed his seat belt had not been fastened but could not tell if the passenger’s air bag deployed.

No, he had no knowledge of anyone tampering with the seat belt and air bag. No, he did not touch Hugo in any manner except to remove his cell phone. He wore rubber gloves and was horrified to be so close to a man who was struggling and bleeding profusely. Westbay admitted to feeling terrible about being there. But he had orders. Lacy’s cell phone and iPad were on the left rear floorboard, but the rear door had been crimped shut by the collision. He managed to open the door behind Hugo and remove both of them. She was bleeding and mumbling and trying to move about.

Clyde got through this part of his narrative with no emotion. If he felt remorse, he refused to show it. He did, though, need a break for the bathroom. It was almost 6:00 p.m.

–

He and Zeke left on a dirt trail, one he and Hank had found the day before. No he did not remember Zeke tossing anything out of the window. Pacheco showed him a sample of the bloody paper towel. He could not explain why he parked in front of Frog’s store. His only excuse was that he wasn’t sure it was even open. Plus the place was such a dump-could it really have surveillance cameras? Pretty stupid, in retrospect. He and Zeke drank a beer as they left Brunswick County. They stopped at a rest area on Interstate 10 and waited for Hank. Clyde gave him a shopping bag containing the two cell phones and iPad. From there they returned to Fort Walton Beach and to the Blue Chateau, where the kid went to a room and spent the night. The next day Clyde took him to the doctor and an X-ray revealed no broken bones. He gave Zeke $5,000 in cash and thought the matter was behind them. Clyde watched the news all morning and was stunned when he heard that Hugo Hatch had died. A week or so later, Hank stopped by the office, furious and fuming about the video. He said Vonn was furious and scrambling to contain the damage. They ran Zeke out of town with instructions to stay far away until further notice.

No, he, Clyde, had not spoken to Vonn since long before the accident, and now he really didn’t want to. Though Clyde had been looking over his shoulder and sleeping fitfully, things seemed to have settled down, until today anyway. Now the world was upside down.

Hahn ordered more sandwiches and fruit, and when they were delivered Westbay, and Bullington, stepped into the bedroom. It was almost 8:00 p.m., and Westbay said his wife might be getting worried. He called her and said he was taking care of some unexpected business.

As they ate, Allie Pacheco and Rebecca Webb tag teamed through another round of interrogation. When they finally finished, at almost 10:00 p.m., Clyde Westbay had been on video for over six hours and had given more than enough information to launch the assault against Dubose and his Cousins. Back in Tallahassee, another team of agents had watched and listened to it all, and were already weaving their web.

Clyde left the Surfbreaker a free man, free in the sense that he wore no handcuffs nor ankle chains. But he had left his soul up there in the Dolphin Suite, all duly recorded on film and filed away to torment him later. He would have a few days, maybe weeks of freedom before being snatched in a high-profile raid. Panic from his wife and kids; photos on the front page; frantic calls from family and friends. Clyde, as a member of a criminal syndicate, indicted for capital murder.

As he drove aimlessly around Destin, he gave a passing thought to his ex-girlfriend Tammy. What a slut! Sleeping with half the town, including that worm Walter. Perhaps his wife would never know. And how much should he tell her now? Should he get it all over with or wait for the raid, for the horror of being led away in chains?

How the hell was he supposed to know what to do? His life was over.

The more he drove the more he liked the idea of a bullet to the brain, of checking out on his terms, as opposed to some nasty hit ordered by Dubose. Or perhaps a long dive off a tall bridge, or a bottle of pills. The FBI had him on tape.

Vonn’s dirtiest work was handled by a longtime gun thug known as Delgado. Whether this was an actual name or just another fiction in Vonn’s world was not clear.

For his day job, Delgado ran a bar, one of the company’s many cash cows and laundry sites, but his real value to the organization was his moonlighting. He possessed astonishing technical skills with weapons, mechanics, and electronics. Delgado had taken Son Razko to the Mace home and calmly shot him and Eileen in the bedroom, then disappeared without a trace. An hour later, he bumped into Junior in a bar and bought him a drink.

After Junior’s trial, Delgado took the first snitch, Digger Robles, for a midnight boat ride and dropped him in the Gulf with chains around his ankles. The second snitch, Todd Short, came within five seconds of getting his head blown off by a deer rifle Delgado was aiming. The bullet would have hit his left ear before either ear could have heard the shot, but another head moved into view and Todd lived another day. He wisely fled the area. Delgado almost caught him in Oklahoma.

The ultimate mistake of Vonn’s career was choosing Clyde Westbay to take out Hugo, rather than Delgado. He picked an amateur and not a pro. His rationale had been solid: no one would ever suspect Clyde; guns were not involved; it was a simple operation, in relative terms; and Vonn wanted Clyde to advance in the organization. He saw talent there, and he needed deeper loyalty. Involve Clyde in a more sinister crime, and Vonn would own him for life. The deciding factor, though, which surfaced only at the last minute, had been Delgado’s sudden flare-up of kidney stones, a bout so severe he was hospitalized for three days. The debilitating pain hit just hours after he had broken into Lacy’s car and tampered with the passenger’s side air bag and seat belt. With Delgado temporarily disabled, and with the situation urgent, Vonn instructed Hank to visit Clyde and lay out the plan.

Delgado lived in a world of surveillance cameras and would never have gotten himself filmed at Frog’s.

At any rate, his kidneys were now free and clear and he was back in business. He parked his little red “Blann’s Pest Control” truck in the driveway of a small home on a golf course five miles north of the Gulf. The entire development was a gated community, but then Delgado knew the gate code. A company from the Bahamas built the place. A company from Nevis owned the company from the Bahamas. Somewhere far up the chain of title sat Vonn Dubose. The owner of this particular home was in court, where she spent her working hours. She recorded important matters for Judge McDover, who’d made the original suggestion to buy the place.

Delgado wore a cute uniform, red shirt and matching cap, and he carried a bulky spray can as if he just might annihilate every insect along the Florida Panhandle. He rang the doorbell but knew no one was home. He deftly slipped a thin screwdriver between bolt and latch and turned the knob. With the proper key, he could not have opened the door any faster. He closed it behind him and listened for a warning from the alarm. After a few seconds it began beeping. In thirty seconds all hell would break loose. He stepped to the panel behind the door and calmly punched in the five-number pass code, which he had hacked from the security company. Delgado took a deep breath and appreciated the complete silence. If the code had not worked, he would have simply left and driven away.