Джон Сэндфорд - Ocean Prey [calibre]

“Fuck you, man,” Virgil said.

Lucas: “Easy.”

“Big flashy drug bust that everybody in New York knows about in one minute? And the guys down here know one minute later? Can’t do that,” Rae said. “Everybody has to go down at the same time, both here and New York. That can’t happen if me and Virgil are on a boat.”

Virgil asked, “You want us to poke Cattaneo or Regio or Lange, to see if we can find out who shot the Coast Guard guys?”

“Not unless you can do it with some care . . . get them bragging about it or something. Don’t risk anything to do that,” Weaver said.

One of the other agents said, “Listen, you guys: we’ve got Behan, Cattaneo, Regio, Lange, and a half dozen other associates in the bag, for the heroin operation. Those guys are toast, you don’t have to do anything more. An identification of the shooters would be a bonus, but, you know, it’ll be the difference between thirty years in prison, and life without parole. For guys in their forties, like these guys, not too large a difference. We don’t want you guys taking unwarranted risks and getting killed, trying to pay for the difference between thirty years and life.”

“Gotcha,” Virgil said. “That’s good.”

They talked for a few more minutes, Virgil describing the dive and process of recovering the dope. “When we hit them, we need to recover that wand thing that operates the LED lights,” Virgil said. “With that, we can get most of the rest of the heroin. Without it, it’ll stay on the bottom.”

“Not the worst place for it,” Weaver said.

“Except you’d probably have the Colombians up here looking for it, with new wands and machine guns, even if you take down Sansone,” Virgil said.

“There’s that,” Weaver conceded. “We’ll go after the wand.”

The meeting was over in half an hour and Virgil and Rae were back out the door and across the street. “That was unnecessary,” Virgil said. “The whole meeting was a waste of time, except for making sure that they pull us out before they hit anyone. Even that, we could have done on the phone.”

“I dunno,” Rae said. “Did you notice that one agent who didn’t say anything? The guy with the striped tie?”

“Yeah?”

“I think he might have been a shrink, the way he was watching you talk. Lucas was telling the truth, when he said they were worried about where your head’s at. They really don’t know anything about diving. They’re thinking about diving in movies, all those sharks and the enemy guys cutting air hoses.”

“A shrink? Really?”

“I think so.”

“Hmm. Like I told them, I’m more worried about coming up and finding somebody’s pointing a gun at my head,” Virgil said. “But then, I’ve got you to take care of me.”

“I will,” Rae said.

“I believe you,” Virgil said. “So—you got enough shoes?”

Rae snorted: “I’ll never have enough shoes. This is not an act, the shoe thing. I can’t afford a private jet, but with the right shoes, nobody’ll know that.”

“All right. I’ve got the energy for a couple more stores, but first, we gotta find a place to get a sandwich.”

They didn’t find a sandwich, but they did find a sushi shop, and as Virgil was dunking a chunk of raw tuna into a cup of wasabi, Rae said, “You sounded . . . smart . . . up there. In the meeting. Like a smart cop. With a hard nose. Giving shit to the feds.”

“Why not? I am smart,” Virgil said.

“You hide it well. Even when it’s just you and me.”

Virgil tried the shrimp: “Jesus, this stuff is good. Don’t much get good sushi in the rural Midwest.” He chewed for a moment and then said, “You know about the tall poppy syndrome?”

“Mmm, no. Does it have something to do with heroin poppies?”

“Any poppies, I guess. You hear about it mostly in Australia and Canada, but Minnesota’s almost Canada anyway—same people settled both places. Anyway, the tall poppy syndrome refers to the idea that the tall poppies in a field will get their tops cut off to make everything neat and equal. When it comes to a culture, it means that people who let their light shine will eventually get dragged down, and a lot of people will enjoy seeing that happen. If you’re in a tall poppy culture, it’s all right to be smart, but you can’t act smart. You can’t show it.”

“That sounds like girls in eighth grade: ‘You think you’re so smart?’ That kind of thing.”

“Exactly,” Virgil said. “If you grow up in Minnesota, you develop this cover. You know, you do well, but, ‘I’m an ordinary guy who got lucky, that’s all, I really like standing around on the street corner when it’s ten below zero having long conversations about the Vikings.’ Eventually, it becomes reflexive. You really sort of become that. The guy who likes to hang out on street corners, bullshitting. You don’t let the smart out.”

“Not exactly New York or LA,” Rae said. “In those places, they can’t wait to let you know how smart they are.”

“Different culture. That’s why we’re going to fuck Behan and his crew. They’re from New York. They look at us—we’re from Iowa, for Christ’s sake—and they can’t imagine that we’re anything but a lazy motherfucker and his ghetto girl. They’re too smart to make a mistake about it.”

“But they are.”

“And we’re gonna fuck ’em because of it,” Virgil said; a happy guy. He looked down at Rae’s plate. “Say, you want that octopus?”

CHAPTER

TWENTY-TWO

Behan, Cattaneo, Lange, and Regio gathered at Behan’s condo to celebrate: a hundred and ten kilos of heroin, worth something in the neighborhood of three and a half million dollars wholesale in New York, had come out of the ocean and were safely packed away in a high-security storage unit in Hallandale.

“We’re taking it north tomorrow,” Behan said.

The four of them were standing around with crystal whiskey glasses in their hands, all of them drinking scotch, except Behan, who had a bottle of water; all of them in sport coats and dress shirts and loafers. Behan’s low-rent designers had just installed ten of the world’s most famous black-and-white photographs down a long hallway, and they all pretended to be interested in them, though Behan couldn’t remember the photographers’ names. “Sandy and Steph are driving, they’re pulling the old lady out of the funeral home tonight.”

“That’s, what, a day and a half up 95?” Regio asked. He sniffed: the place smelled of lemon Pledge, and he was mildly allergic to it.

“Something like that,” Behan said. “I’ve never driven straight through myself. I’m told it’s eighteen or nineteen hours, going with the flow of the traffic. The storage place opens at six, they figure to be on the road before six-thirty, about the time it starts getting light. They wanna beat the rush out of town. They’ll drive until it gets dark, then do the rest of it the day after tomorrow.”

“I’ll be happy when New York gets it and we’re not responsible anymore,” Cattaneo said. “I’ll tell you, when Willy came up with eleven cans, I was so excited I almost shit myself.”

Behan turned his eyes on Lange: “What do you think, Matthew? You still worried about Willy’s credentials?”

“Less than I was, but . . .”

“But what?”

“We’re gonna get a test when the shit gets to New York. If Dougie’s standing there looking at all those bags and a hundred feds come crashing through the doors, well . . . it could be Willy.”

“Doug won’t get anywhere close to it,” Behan said. “It’ll go straight out to the A level, a kilo or two at a time and they’ll be the ones who have hands on.”