Джон Сэндфорд - Ocean Prey [calibre]

Didn’t work. Pruitt continued to say “lawyer” for a while, then put his head down and went to sleep. The door to his cell was opened every ten minutes or so during the night, then slammed shut, waking him, but he still refused to say a word.

“He’s asked for a lawyer by name,” Orish told Lucas. “A drug lawyer, well known for his connections. About two minutes after he leaves Pruitt in the lockup, Sansone’s going to get a phone call.”

“You can still hold him for another couple of days,” Devlin said.

“Yes, but that’s the limit. Then we’ll have to call his lawyer. Bottom line is, we’ve got today and tomorrow to turn somebody and arrest Sansone. If you’ve got any ideas . . .”

Lucas said, “I’ve been running through the notes, diving into backgrounds. I’m thinking we go after Paul Curry. He’s been inside four times; another conviction and he’s done. He gets life. One other interesting thing—he apparently has had problems with the Aryan Brotherhood, but the Brotherhood wasn’t strong where he spent his time and he had enough Mafia buddies to protect him.”

“What got the Brotherhood on him?”

“He apparently talked to the prison guards about a Brotherhood member who shanked another convict, a friend of his. A couple of Brotherhood guys went off to Southport.”

“The New York supermax.”

“Yeah. Curry has more than one reason to stay outside. And he’s got the wife and kids . . .”

Kerry, Orish’s second, said, “We gotta do something, quick, and he sounds as good as any of them. You want to take a shot at picking him up in daylight hours?”

“I’d rather not . . . he’ll be harder to tail without him spotting us,” Lucas said. “He makes a phone call, we’re screwed. Most of his dealers will be working at night, in the clubs, he’ll be making the most stops then.”

“Be a long day, not doing anything,” Orish said.

Lucas looked at his watch: “Seven hours. Okay. Let’s think about doing something in daylight. Let’s put a full crew on him now. That dope he picked up, that must be at his house, right?”

“As far as we know . . .”

Orish got that started, and Lucas called Virgil: “You’re either going to have to make one more dive, or figure out a reason not to, something that won’t make Behan and Cattaneo suspicious.”

He explained what had happened—that Pruitt refused to deal—and Virgil said, “Listen, these guys are loosening up around Rae. They’re talking to her more while I’m in the water. We ought to go out, see if there’s anything more we can get from them before it all comes down.”

“Don’t interrogate them,” Lucas said. “You gotta be super-careful. We’re right there at the climax of this whole thing. We’ll have people waiting for you when you get back to the dock. I’ll call Weaver.”

“We’re okay. I gotta go get some air right now, fill my tanks. I’ll talk to Rae. If anything changes, for Christ sake, call us. Don’t let the feds hang us up.”

“I’m all over them,” Lucas said.

Hollywood:

Virgil and Rae were driving north to a shop in Deerfield Beach to get the scuba tanks refilled. As they loaded the car, he and Rae talked over the call from Lucas, and Virgil asked, “What do you think?”

“I don’t know. We’ve got one guy in a cell who isn’t talking, so they’re going to go after another guy. Will they be missed? That’s the question,” Rae said. “These guys aren’t stupid. I mean, Regio isn’t the brightest bulb on the porch, but we have to be careful around Lange and Cattaneo. Cattaneo especially—he talks softly, but I have a feeling that he might be the meanest of the bunch.”

“What about Behan?” Virgil asked.

“Another smart guy,” Rae said. “There’s some stress between him and Cattaneo. I don’t know where that’s coming from, but it’s there. It comes out every once in a while, when he’s talking to Lange and Regio.”

“Maybe Cattaneo is looking for a promotion and Behan’s in the way?”

“Could be. I don’t know.”

“We could bail on tonight’s dive,” Virgil said. He slammed the back hatch on the car.

“You worried about it?” Rae asked.

“Not about the dive. I’m worried about something leaking out of New York. Or, if they spot somebody following us down here.”

“Everybody’s backed off . . .” Rae said.

“So they tell us. But you know the FBI. The office competition to be the hero.”

“Your call,” Rae said. “With all the gear you carry, you could probably slip a revolver inside your wet suit without them spotting it.”

“Nah. If we think I might need a pistol, we’d be better off bailing.”

“Your call,” she said again.

“Let’s go get the air,” Virgil said, walking around to the passenger side. “We’ve still got some time to decide.”

On the way north, Virgil said, “Something I need to talk to you about.”

“Talk.”

“About Bob.”

“Oh, jeez, Virgil, I’m not . . .”

Virgil interrupted: “Your pal Lucas is a killer. He’s also a good friend of mine, but we don’t do things the same way. I don’t like it when people get hurt, even assholes. I know you were tight with Bob and now we’re beginning to see the guys who got him killed. Who hired the killers. Cattaneo, probably, or Behan.”

“You don’t want me killing them.”

“That’s right. You marshals . . . I mean, some of you guys . . .”

“I’ve shot three people,” Rae said. “Only when I thought they were going to shoot me or another marshal. I’m not looking for personal revenge. I’m happy to get them into court.”

Virgil nodded: “That’s what I do. Get them into court. Lucas doesn’t always do that. He does it most of the time, but if the guy is bad enough, or the woman, for that matter, he’ll flat-out kill them.”

“I know that. That’s not me, so don’t sweat it.”

“Good. I don’t want to climb on the boat and find myself standing in a pool of blood.” After a moment, he added, “Especially if it’s your blood. If you gotta pull a trigger, do it.”

A few more miles and Rae said, “Last night you were talking about Trimix. I don’t have a tight hold on how that works.”

“Regular air has two main gases, oxygen and nitrogen. When you dive deep, nitrogen can cause some problems . . .”

“You get high.”

“Yeah, that’s one thing. And the deeper you go, the worse the nitrogen narcosis gets. I start feeling it at about a hundred and thirty, and I’m definitely there at one-fifty, if I stay long enough. At two hundred, I’ll be narced. It’s like smoking weed and then trying to walk down a curb, like that. Not gonna kill me, but I’ll be high. I can handle it, I’ve been there a dozen times. Trimix replaces some of the nitrogen with helium, but filling the tanks with Trimix takes more time than we’ve got right now. Most places, it’ll take a few hours. There’s a heat problem . . . never mind. So, if I gotta do it, I’ll do it on straight air. If the line of cans takes me too deep tonight, I’ll say fuck it and come back up. I won’t go deeper than one-ninety.”

“This bothers me.”

“I’m more bothered about you up on top, looking at three to one. About the assholes down here being tipped by the Jersey assholes after the FBI assholes screw it up.”

“I’m thinking about that,” Rae said.

Regio and Lange watched them leave the apartment.

They were sitting a block down Hollywood Boulevard and followed the battered Subaru, two blocks back, until Willy and Ally turned up I-95, headed north. Regio did a U-turn and they drove back to the apartment.

Lange had started to annoy the others with his suspicions about Willy, and Behan and Cattaneo had told them to take a closer look. Regio had spent time as a thief before he became organized, and he slipped the crappy apartment’s crappy lock with a pocketknife.