Джон Сэндфорд - Ocean Prey [calibre]

Morris looked out the window, as though he was thinking about jumping through it. “C’mon, man, you’re gonna get me hurt.”

“Axel . . . you’ve gone this far,” Bob said.

Morris hunched forward on the table. “I’m willing to take a chance pissin’ on those Mafia motherfuckers, ’cause they don’t know who I am or where I am. But my boys here . . . they do know, and they’ll know you picked me up with that fuckin’ Weeks. You give me a choice between life in prison and them, well, at least I’m alive in prison. If I give you a name of one of my boys, and if they know it came from me, they’ll kill my ass. They’re as mean as any Mafia dude. Meaner, even.”

Lucas asked, “Does Weeks know the name you’re gonna give us?”

Morris narrowed his eyes, thinking, then said, “Probably heard of him. Some of the narcs know him. Or they’ve heard of him.”

“Then we’ll blame it on the narcs. We’ll blame it on Weeks,” Bob said. “You can even call up your man and warn him off. Tell him that we wanted the names of the Mafias and you said you didn’t know them and we turned you loose, but that Weeks might be bringing us around. Tell him that Weeks gave us a list, and he’s on it, and you know that because we asked if you knew the names on it.”

It took a while, but eventually, Morris caved: “There’s a guy named Magnus Elliot, he lives over on 27th Avenue. He’s on papers, five years of probation after eight in Raiford. He must be three or four years out, now, so there’s a probation officer who’ll know exactly where he lives. If I’m like five steps down from the top, he’s like two. If there’s a deal with the goombahs, he might know some exact names.”

Lucas nodded. “Okay. That’s two things. The Angelus Hotel, which isn’t much; and Magnus Elliot, which isn’t anything, yet. We need a third thing, a bigger thing, or the cuffs go back on.”

Morris sighed and stuck a French fry in his mouth and snapped it off. “Rumor is, these guys, whoever they are, dropped a ton of smack in the water off the coast and they got almost none of it out before the shooting. They’re going back for it, sooner or later. Maybe there’ll be more than one bunch of assholes out there. We got any number of redneck diver guys who’d like some of that action. They got guns, too. Could turn into a free-for-all. Mafia, the diver guys, maybe some Mexicans, the Coast Guard . . . and you.”

“When you say a ton, you mean a lot,” Lucas said.

Morris pointed another French fry at Lucas. “No. The rumor isn’t a lot, the rumor is a ton. You know? Like two thousand pounds. Except they use the metric system, so a ton is actually more than two thousand pounds. Supposedly sealed up in pipes, dropped off a freighter. That’s what the rumor is.”

Lucas did some numbers in his head: “Thirty million, wholesale.”

“I don’t do wholesale,” Morris said. “If somebody got it to me, it’d be a whole lot more than thirty million dollars, stepped on five times and street prices. Of course, I couldn’t move that much, but somebody could. You’d need a big organization.”

“Okay, I’m not going for this rumor-has-it bullshit, I need to know something real,” Lucas said. “You got anything? Or . . . ?”

Morris said, “Okay, one more thing. Not a rumor. There’s this old guy who lives down in Coconut Grove.” He looked from Lucas to Bob, and added, “That’s down in Miami.”

“Okay.”

“Back in the day, he was a big-time smuggler, bringing in weed from the Bahamas,” Morris said. “He got caught, got out of it, somehow, and retired. I bumped into him, I don’t know, last summer, a hotel down in Miami Beach. We got to talking about the shooting, which was still a big deal down here. And he told me the diver was a woman.”

Bob: “A woman? That’s something. What’s this guy’s name?”

“John.”

Lucas and Bob looked at each other, and Lucas said, “ John ? That’s what you got?”

Morris shrugged. “I don’t know him that well, but I do know that way back when he was busted, he was part of what the newspapers called the Blue Tuna Gang. There were five or six of them and he was the only one named John. You should be able to look him up.”

Lucas nodded, and asked, “You got anything else we should know, now that we’re best friends?”

“Nope.” Morris said, “But you lucked out talking to Weeks. As far as I know, he’s straight. There are a lot of crooked cops involved in the dope action down here, so if you go asking around about Magnus, he’ll know you’re coming. I wouldn’t even ask the probo. If I were you, I’d try to look at his files online, without him knowing.”

Lucas said, “Huh. You really think things are that shaky down here? Cop-wise?”

“Look. A cop busts Magnus, and he says, ‘I’ll give you a million bucks to go away. In cash. In an hour.’ The average cop salary down here is making maybe 70k, before taxes. I mean . . .”

“All right,” Lucas said.

“I can’t say it’s been a pleasure talking to you,” Bob said, “Weeks told us you’re dealing heroin and meth. Is that right?”

“Gotta make a living. I don’t recommend that people use the stuff. I’m a sales guy, a middleman,” Morris said. “They’re gonna get it one way or another.”

Bob: “Heroin and meth. You’re really a low-life piece of scum, Axel.”

Morris said, “Hey, I thought we were best friends now.” He flashed his charming smile back at Bob and ate another French fry. “You guys gonna give me a ride back to Bandit’s? I don’t do Uber. What? C’mon, don’t be little federal bitches about it.”

CHAPTER

SIX

At the hotel the next morning, Lucas and Bob were walking down a hallway toward the conference room, past a woman in a do-rag running a floor polisher. They were a few minutes early, and saw Weaver step out of an elevator alone, carrying a briefcase. Bob called out to him, and when they caught up, asked, “Are you doing the reward?”

Weaver nodded: “Yeah. They added up all the possibilities in Washington and figured they couldn’t lose. If we get nothing, they pay nothing, no change. If they do have to put up the fifty thousand, we’ve got a bucket of heroin to show for it and probably even more buckets. It pays for itself in PR.”

“That’s important,” Bob said, with an eye-roll.

“Maybe not for you, but it is for me,” Weaver said. “If I don’t get something, I’ll be wearing a ‘Fucked it up’ sign around my neck. I’d rather not retire for another ten years or so.” He checked them out—they were wearing jeans, knit shirts, and sport coats—and asked, “What happened to the Hawaiian shirts and shorts?”

Bob shrugged. “Got cold overnight. We’re gonna be on the street, some.”

Lucas: “Let me embarrass myself with a question. You’re sure of the guys on this task force? We won’t get any leaks?”

Weaver didn’t answer directly. Instead, he asked, “You get anything last night?”

“A couple things,” Lucas said. “If somebody leaks for any reason . . . even something bureaucratic, like trying to one-up the Marshals Service, we could have a tragedy. We’re talking about people who shot down three Coast Guardsmen in cold blood. A guy we talked to said the whole Miami narc community leaks like a sieve.”

“I’ll say a few words before we start,” Weaver said. “I’m very confident of these people, but I’ll say a few words.”

He led the way down the hall, and when he stepped into the conference room, Lucas hooked Bob’s arm and muttered, “We never heard of anyone called Magnus Elliot. Or John.”

Bob nodded: “Gotcha.”

When all the agents and the Coast Guard cop had settled into the conference room, joined by the Lauderdale cop who’d been missing the day before, Weaver looked around and said, “The marshals here have been scuffing around, talking to people. We’ll hear from them in a minute, but I want to warn everybody: if anyone talks about what is said in this room, and I find out, I’ll run you out of the FBI, I’ll run you out of the law enforcement profession, and, if I can, I’ll put you in jail. I don’t want you talking to anybody, including spouses, girlfriends, dead uncles. Nothing gets out. Is that clear?”