Джон Сэндфорд - Ocean Prey [calibre]

“I want a lawyer,” Lange said.

Rae said, “You said you didn’t want to shoot me.”

Lange shrugged.

“You’re down for felony murder, ’cause Regio’s dead. And for me, you were gonna let it happen,” Rae said. “The only way you’re not going to spend the rest of your life in prison is you talk to us.”

Lange shrugged again, but he didn’t say no.

“Behan took off. He managed to avoid our surveillance people,” Virgil said. “If you have any idea where he might be, now is the time to say something. If you have something to say about that, and it pans out, you might actually walk around free, someday. If he’s gone . . . well, if he’s gone, you’re gone, too.”

Lange bowed his head, shuffled his feet on the concrete dock, then looked up and said, “You really sucked us in.”

Virgil: “You have something to say?”

“I want more witnesses to this deal. Not just you and Ally and this hat guy.”

The team leader called over a couple more of his men to listen and witness; Lange wanted all their names, written down.

When that was done, Virgil said, “So . . .”

“Behan’s a pilot. He’s got a plane . . .”

The team leader said, “God . . . bless me.”

“They were gonna use it to fly the shit up north, but every time you land a plane up there, I guess, coming out of Florida, they got a dog to sniff you . . . so, they didn’t do that, but they thought about it, because he’s a good pilot. His plane could fly to anywhere. It’s one of those two-engine jobs, six seats in the back.”

“Where does he keep it?” Virgil asked.

“Miami. I’ve never seen it, but I know it’s down there. He’s made a couple of trips when I was around. I know he’s been to Venezuela.”

The team leader said, “I’ll make a call.”

Virgil: “We need to get down there. We need to identify him, tie him down. If he gets off the coast in that plane, gets over the Bahamas, everything will get a lot tougher.”

“I’ll get a ride for you,” the team leader said. “Our own people will be way ahead of you, though.”

“We still oughta go,” Rae said to Virgil.

The team leader said to Rae, “You can’t. You gotta stay. You shot Regio, there’s official stuff you gotta do right now.”

“Man . . .”

“He’s right,” Virgil said. “I got this. Won’t be much for us to do, anyway.”

She nodded, reluctantly, and watched as Virgil rinsed off Regio’s gun again, with a freshwater dockside water hose, then rinsed off the magazine and slapped it back in the gun. “Think it’ll work?”

Rae shrugged and said, “What difference would it make? Lucas told me you couldn’t hit the side of a barn if you were standing inside it.”

“That’s an unwarranted exaggeration,” Virgil said.

Lange looked from Rae to Virgil and back to Rae, and said, “I argued against shooting you two, but Jack and Marc overruled me. Anyway, remember me.”

“Shut up,” Rae said.

CHAPTER

THIRTY

Kent Pruitt had been in the Manhattan federal lockup, in solitary confinement for just short of twenty-four hours when the cell door rattled, and he got to his feet and a large marshal with a don’t-fuck-with-me look stepped in and said, “Sit.”

Pruitt sat. The marshal was followed by an elegant, chilly-looking woman with a brown file envelope in her hand. She had short salt-and-pepper hair, narrow steel-rimmed glasses on her nose, a gray suit, and a gold Hermès scarf around her neck—all the better to strangle her with, Pruitt thought—though the presence of a second, even larger marshal behind her made the thought go away.

“I will not ask you any questions. I’m here to present you with a further development in your situation,” the woman said. She didn’t bother to introduce herself, but Pruitt knew the type—a killer. “We have two undercover marshals in imminent danger of being revealed and murdered by the Sansone organization, because, we have learned, you have alerted Sansone to our surveillance. If the marshals are murdered, we will seek the death penalty for your involvement in this conspiracy.”

“I want a lawyer,” Pruitt said.

“You will get one, in about forty-eight more hours,” the woman said. “The marshals may be killed in the next few minutes.” She turned as if to leave. “If you have no further comments or suggestions, I’ll be going.”

Pruitt noticed that the marshal standing behind her had clenched his fists so tightly his knuckles were white. With that, and with the words “death penalty” rattling around his brain, he held up a hand and said, “Wait, wait, wait . . . How could I . . . ?”

“We’ve been informed that you have an emergency alert system in which you call Sansone each night while you’re delivering drugs to your salespersons,” the woman said. “If you don’t call, the alert is automatic. So, you’ve alerted him . . .”

That was all true: the feds knew and he really couldn’t deny it. Or he could, but it wouldn’t do him any good if Sansone ordered hits against some marshals. Which Sansone would do, if he thought he could get away with it, and Pruitt suspected Sansone wouldn’t lose a single minute’s sleep if his old pal Kent Pruitt got the needle.

The woman continued: “. . . and that’s enough to get you the death penalty as a critical accomplice in the murders of the marshals.”

“What do I get if I . . . comment?” Pruitt asked.

“We won’t push the charges any further than those we are already planning to file, having to do with the delivery of drugs. Unless the marshals are already dead,” she said, adding elegantly, “in which case, you are, as the marshals would say, shit out of luck.”

Pruitt stared up at her and saw no mercy at all in the gray eyes behind the steel rims.

“I was supposed to call between three and four o’clock today,” he said. “When you picked me up yesterday, I’d already called for the day.”

“So it’s seven-thirty now. He’s already scrambling his organization?”

Pruitt shook his head and said, “It always takes time for them to get everything going—right now, a lawyer will be looking for me. Doug won’t be sure there’s a problem until the lawyer gets back to him. If the lawyer doesn’t come up with something in a couple of hours, three or four hours, maybe, depending . . . Sansone is gone. He might be gone already.”

The woman nodded, turned, and left the cell. The marshal backed toward the door, but before he was out, he muttered, “You better hope that none of our guys been killed, or you’re gonna be shit out of luck a lot sooner than the lady expects.”

As she walked down the hallway, the woman took out a cell phone and punched in a recall, which was answered on the first ring: “Davenport.”

“Lucas. Pruitt was supposed to call between three and four,” the woman said. “He says they’ll be looking for him, but that Sansone is probably already worried and maybe worse: he could be in the wind.”

“Goddamnit!”

Lucas was back at the task force, and he relayed the information to Orish. She said, “I think we go after them all—right now.”

“Where’s Sansone?”

“At his house,” she said. “We saw him go in, the lights are on . . . but we haven’t actually seen him since he went inside.”

“And you don’t have a hundred percent coverage, either.”

“Not in that neighborhood. It’s just not possible.”

“Okay. Listen, let’s not hit the car wash yet,” Lucas said. “Everything else, but let’s not go after the guys in the garage. They’ve had four dealers checking in with them this afternoon—that could be eighty or a hundred grand in cash. If Sansone’s in the wind, he might still try to get it. Could reel him in if he’s making a run for it.”