Джон Сэндфорд - Ocean Prey [calibre]

He threw a wooden peg out, then said, “There’s a hook behind it . . . Okay. It oughta move.”

The team leader and another cop got on opposite sides of the bookcase and pulled it loose. There was a six-inch deep space behind it, with a half dozen shelves. Three of the shelves were empty; the two top shelves held a half dozen plastic bags filled with a pale brownish heroin, and two bags of cocaine. The third one down held bundles of cash.

“You’re right, he’s dead,” the lead cop said. “He sure as shit wouldn’t leave all that cash behind, not to speak of all the dope.”

“Dead, or spending the night with his girlfriend,” another cop said. “Or running for his life.”

Lucas nodded: “We need to put out an urgent bulletin on him. If he’s not dead yet, he’s going to be. Though I think he’s probably dead. Goddamnit, I need that guy.”

Lucas sat in the truck, phoned Weaver and told him what they’d found. “There must be two kilos of heroin in there, maybe a half kilo of coke. That could mean he was working with our Coast Guard killers the whole time. Bob and I talked to a guy who said Elliot was close to the top distribution level here, that he’s got quite a few dealers working for him who are selling on a semi-wholesale level. Or maybe this was Elliot’s inventory and it all comes from the Mexican side, like he said it did.”

“Okay. Well, we’ll get that bulletin out on him, make it a big deal. We’ll find him if he’s still walking around South Florida.”

The situation at Romano’s shop was slowly being cleaned up and Romano and Bianchi had been shipped to the Miami federal lockup on gun charges. Bob’s body was at the medical examiner’s and the wounded federal agent was still in surgery at Jackson Memorial Hospital.

“Why don’t you head back to Lauderdale? We’ll bring your car and stuff from the motel . . . we got car keys from Bob,” Weaver said. “The shooting team still wants to talk with you about what you saw.”

Parker came back to the truck, got in the driver’s seat and said, “Headed for Lauderdale. Think I ought to use the lights and siren?”

“Lights, no siren,” Lucas said. “Goddamn thing is too loud.”

They drove out to I-95, in silence, reflections from the lightbar ticking off the hood. After they turned up the expressway, Parker said, “I have a comment, but I don’t want to annoy you after . . . what happened.”

“Go ahead.”

“I’ve never been on a raid like that one at Elliot’s. Finding all that heroin. That was cool. I liked it.”

“You’ve got the stress gene,” Lucas said. “Are you out of Washington, or local?”

“Washington.”

“Get some ride-alongs with the Washington cops. Your guys can fix it. Get armored up and go with them. It’ll pay you back forever.”

“I’m gonna do that,” Parker said.

After another stretch of silence, Parker asked, “How did Elliot know to set you up?”

“Ah, Bob and I were going around town . . .” Lucas began, but then he trailed away.

“What?” Parker asked.

“Shut up for a minute,” Lucas said. He looked out the window, not seeing the concrete landscape sliding by. He and Bob had only touched Elliot once. Somebody must have gotten to him between the time they talked and Elliot went to the Miami attorney’s office. Had Elliot already known a name, and called that guy? Or had Lucas and Bob been tracked into Elliot’s place?

Lucas tapped his knuckles against the car’s window for a moment, then muttered: “They must have been tracking us. Me and Bob. We never saw them.”

“What?”

“They were . . .”

“How would they even know who you were?” Parker asked. “They could pick you up at the hotel, but how did they know what you looked like? I mean, they could look you up on the internet, I guess, but how’d they even know what your names were ? It’s not like we posted them . . .”

“We talked to quite a few dealers down here, but . . .” He rubbed his forehead with his fingertips.

“What?”

“Most of them, we didn’t really introduce ourselves,” Lucas said. “There was an old guy we talked to down in Miami, in Coconut Grove, but he’s not connected to the Mafia guys in any way that we know about and he’s retired. Elliot never saw us again.”

Thinking about it some more, then, “Oh. Shit. Parker, we gotta get west. We gotta get to a place called Sunrise. A city. You know where that is?”

“My telephone would know . . .”

A half hour later, Lucas and Parker took the elevator to Alicia Snow’s floor at her Sunrise condo, looking out over the Everglades. Snow had taken a card from Lucas and in chatting with her, Bob had mentioned where they were staying. At her apartment, they knocked, but got no answer. Lucas went through his phone book, found the number for her cell phone and got nothing but dead air.

“Meredith what’s-her-name, Duffy,” Lucas said to Parker. “She’s here, down the way . . .”

They walked down to Duffy’s apartment, pounded on the door. A light came on, and then Duffy’s voice, from behind the door: “Who is it?”

“Davenport, the U.S. Marshal you spoke to at your shop.”

The door opened a crack, and Duffy, dressed in a black tank top and leggings, looked out at them, the chain still on the door. When she recognized Lucas, she said, “Let me get the chain,” and closed the door and took it off and opened the door and asked, “What happened?”

“Do you know where Alicia is?”

She put a hand to her throat. “Oh, God. Is she gone? Did somebody hurt her?”

“She’s not in her apartment,” Lucas said.

“She didn’t go to work yesterday,” Duffy said. “She called in sick, she told Maria that she had the flu and needed to take some time off . . .”

“Who’s Maria?” Lucas asked.

“She runs the salon. I went by last night after work to see if Alicia wanted to go out for a drink, but Maria said she called yesterday morning and canceled her appointments and said she’d be back when she got better. She never said anything to me. I knocked on her door last night but nobody answered . . .”

“When we talked to you the first time, you said you didn’t know who might have dated the guys on that fishing boat,” Lucas said. “I don’t think you were telling the truth, that you were trying to protect Alicia. Was I right? Was she dating somebody on the boat?”

Duffy hesitated, then said, “Yes. I think she was. I’m not sure. She told me she was seeing a guy, but he was married and she didn’t want to talk about it. And she didn’t. I don’t even know why I think it might have been one of the guys from the boat, but, the night of that class party, on the party boat, I know she went down to a Miami Beach hotel with some of the other girls and I think they were meeting those guys. I think she hooked up with somebody that night, because she didn’t come home.”

“You don’t know the name of the guy she hooked up with?”

“No, she didn’t talk about it.” She paused, and then said, “You know what I think? I think the guy had money, whoever he is, and she hoped something might happen with him. But I think the guy was just getting laid.”

Lucas pushed her, and she started to cry, but insisted she didn’t know anything else.

Lucas asked Duffy to sit on her couch, and he took Parker outside, out of earshot, and said, “Call Weaver. We need a search warrant for Snow’s apartment. Quick as he can get it. Tell them it’s a life endangerment situation, she could be hurt or injured in the apartment, but we also need to cover everything else. We want to go through everything in the apartment.”

“You think . . .”

“She’s gone. They’re cleaning up. Everybody who might know something, that we touched: they’re cleaning up.”