James Swain - The King Tides

He was into his second beer when Vargas came in. She was breathing hard and had worked up a real sweat. She refused to sit down. He settled his tab and picked up his beer. They walked to the back of the dining room and took a booth.

“Where’s your ugly partner?” he asked.

“Booking a suspect,” Vargas said. “I was at my desk typing up an arrest report when your call came in. I didn’t like the sound of it, so I dropped what I was doing and came over. What the fuck are you talking about?”

Vargas was playing dumb, wanting to see how much he actually knew. A waitress pretty enough to model materialized at their table.

“You want a drink?” he asked.

“Can’t, I’m working,” she said.

“You’re going to want a drink after you hear what I have to say.”

Vargas waved the waitress away. “Spit it out, Jon. The less time I have to spend in your company, the better.”

There was no love lost between them, and he decided to let her have both barrels.

“The FBI is onto you,” he said.

The corner of her mouth twitched.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said.

“Let me refresh your memory. The FBI knows that a police dog trainer is stealing blow out of the stockade in his cowboy boots, and that he’s passing it on to detectives with the department who are moving it for him. The FBI also knows that you and your partner are strong-arming strippers into moving it for you. Is this ringing any bells?”

Vargas looked like she might puke. She got the waitress’s attention.

“A shot of Jameson and a beer chaser,” she said.

They shared a long, uncomfortable silence. Her drink came. Vargas belted the whiskey back and chased it down. It brought the color back to her face and helped her regain her composure.

“How did you find out?” she asked.

“That’s none of your god damn business,” he said. “What’s important is that I know, and I can help you.”

“You can make this go away?”

“I didn’t say that. There’s going to be a bust, and it will be ugly. What I can do is protect you and your partner. You won’t go down with the rest of them.”

“But the others will take the fall.”

“That’s right.”

“They might think we ratted them out.”

“Who cares? They’ll be in prison, and you won’t.”

Vargas was having a hard time dealing with the reality of what he was saying. Most criminals accepted that they might get caught and face prison. Vargas hadn’t considered this, and it was turning her inside out. She flagged the waitress and ordered another whiskey.

“What do you want in return?” she asked.

“There’s a guy named Zack Kenny I want you to bust. He has a library of kiddie porn stored on his iPad in the study of his condo. I’ll give you the address.”

“That’s it?”

“He needs to go down hard. You can’t screw it up.”

“We won’t screw it up. But we’ll need a good reason to get a warrant to search his condo. Otherwise, whatever we find will get tossed out of court.”

“Kenny kept a teenage girl in his condo for a few months,” he said. “The condo association found out about it, and there was a big ruckus. Everyone in the building knows, including the guard at the front gate.”

“Did Kenny screw her?”

“I’m sure he did.”

“Then it was statutory rape. Is the girl still there?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Then how does that help us get into his place?”

“It establishes that Kenny has a history of dealings with underage girls. You need to coerce another teenage girl to say that Kenny lured her to his condo. Get her to say that she saw kiddie porn on his iPad. Then go to a judge for your search warrant.”

“That’s a tall order. If the girl trips up, I’m screwed.”

“Would you rather get arrested for dealing coke? The feds will take everything you have. When you get out of the joint, you’ll be broke. Pick your poison.”

Vargas was twisting on the end of an invisible rope. The waitress brought her a fresh shot. She belted it back, and would have probably licked the glass if he hadn’t been looking. She wiped her mouth with her sleeve and took a deep breath.

“Give me this asshole’s address,” she said.

They ended up killing him.

It happened the next day. Lancaster was stuck in traffic on I-95 when he heard the news. He’d just left the FBI’s North Miami office and was heading home. He’d spent three hours explaining to a roomful of agents how he and Daniels had discovered that Mates and Holloway were the Hanover killers, and his throat was raw from the retelling. His cell phone buzzed, and he picked it up off the passenger seat and stared at the screen. He subscribed to the online version of the Sun-Sentinel and received breaking news stories over his phone. A pair of Fort Lauderdale detectives had attempted to arrest a suspect in a parking lot and had ended up shooting him dead. The story was developing with more details to follow. Neither the suspect’s nor the detectives’ names were given, but his gut told him that the deceased was Zack Kenny.

He made it home and got on his computer to see if there were any updates on the shooting. There was nothing. He considered calling one of his friends with the sheriff’s office to get more details but decided not to. If Zack Kenny was dead, he didn’t want his name associated with it, even in a casual way.

Four different TV stations served the Fort Lauderdale market. Each had a six o’clock news program devoted to that day’s events. At the stroke of six, he parked himself in front of the TV with a cold beer and surfed between them. The ABC affiliate, Local 10 News, opened with the story, so he picked them.

A deeply tanned newscaster read off a prompter. A pair of Broward detectives had attempted to execute a search warrant to a suspected sexual predator in the parking lot of an upscale apartment complex in Coral Ridge when the suspect suddenly attacked one of the detectives, who was female. The detective’s partner had drawn his weapon and shot the suspect multiple times, killing him instantly. The sheriff’s office had released the dead man’s name. It was Zackary Lawrence Kenny.

He raised his beer to the screen. The world was a safer place with Zack gone. He tried to imagine how Karissa would react to the news. She would be relieved but maybe saddened. She’d been in love with Zack, and those feelings were hard to erase. He was about to call her when he got a call from Vargas.

“I just saw the news on TV,” he said. “Did he hurt you?”

“Bastard broke my nose,” Vargas said.

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“No, you’re not.”

He sipped his beer and smiled. “How did you get the search warrant so quickly?”

“I decided that your idea of fabricating a story was a bad one,” she said, “so I went to the brokerage house where Zack worked and spoke to the head of human resources. Guys like him usually can’t keep their hands off women they work with. Sure enough, I was right. An intern had filed a complaint saying Zack had tried to molest her in the copy room. I got a copy of the complaint, then went to his apartment and spoke to the head of the homeowner’s association. She confirmed that Zack had shacked up with an underage runaway. Her statement and the complaint were enough to sway the judge to issue a warrant.”

“Sounds like you did everything by the book.”

“Damn straight. Assholes like that know their rights. Last thing we wanted was to have it thrown out of court on a technicality.”

“What happens now?”

“There’ll be two investigations. One internal, the second criminal, to make sure we didn’t break any laws. A surveillance camera on the apartment building videoed the whole thing, so we should be fine. I’m going to take time off to let my face heal.”