James Swain - Bad News Travels

“He’s lying.”

“Why would Sykes lie to us? What did he have to gain?”

“Sykes hates me. He fell in love with me, and wants to pay me back.”

“If you weren’t running the operation, then who was?”

“Katya.”

“Who?”

“He didn’t tell you about Katya?”

Daniels shook her head. She looked at Jon, and he also shook his head. This was Jon’s gambit — to pretend they didn’t know about Katya, and make Lissette believe that Sykes had implicated her in crimes she hadn’t committed. Lissette threw her napkin onto her plate and looked ready to explode.

“That fucking prick! He’s trying to destroy me!”

The waitstaff grew quiet, and stared at them. Daniels lowered her voice. “Why don’t you give us your side of things, then?”

“My pleasure,” Lissette said.

Daniels’s cell phone had a special app that let her record conversations. She hit the button and positioned the cell phone so the speaker was pointing at their suspect.

“Start from the beginning,” she said.

“I met Katya while I was in jail,” Lissette said. “The gang I ran with threw me away, and she recruited me.”

“What do you mean, they threw you away?”

“I joined the Latin Kings when I was fifteen. I became one of their girls, and worked as a prostitute. When I turned twenty-four, they cut me loose, along with two other girls. We went out on our own, and got busted. That’s when I met Katya.”

“What was she in jail for?”

“Weed.”

Lissette explained how she and her friends became strippers at the Booty Call, and how after a few months, Katya introduced them to the Sokolov brothers, who talked them into blackmailing a bunch of rich old geezers in Saint Augustine. Her story was identical to the one Sykes had told, leading Daniels to believe it was true.

“Katya ran the show,” Lissette said. “Me and my friends were just...”

“Pawns,” Jon said.

“Yeah — we were pawns. She used us. Story of my life.”

“Okay. So Katya recruited the older men that you and your friends had sex with,” Daniels said. “How did that work?”

“Katya introduced us to these old rich guys at different bars, and we’d take them back to the house, and screw their brains out. Katya was wired, which made it easy.”

“What do you mean, she was wired?”

“Katya had a lover named Martin. I think he was a doctor or something. Martin was a cool guy, and had a bunch of rich friends. Katya used him to get to the friends.”

“Tell us about Martin,” Jon said.

“He was a widower, had a lot of money. Katya said he was lonely.”

“Was Katya in love with him?”

“No. Katya used him. That was how she was. Hardest bitch I’ve ever known.”

The words gave Daniels pause. Her father had been played. It wasn’t a complete surprise; growing up, he’d empty his wallet to beggars with hard-luck stories, then hit up an ATM so he could pay for dinner. He was vulnerable to a fault, which she’d always found endearing, until now.

“Was Martin blackmailed as well?” Jon asked.

“Yes,” Lissette said. “He didn’t want to pay at first, and even went to the police. But eventually he caved and paid up. Katya boasted to us when she got her cut. Said she was going to buy a new car when she got home.”

“How much was her cut?” Jon asked.

“Fifty grand. That was the Sokolovs’ deal. We’d get twenty percent of the money when the geezers paid up.”

Daniels glanced at Jon. He was frowning. They were thinking the same thing. If $50,000 was 20 percent, then the total was $250,000. Yet $1.2 million was missing from her father’s bank account. Where had the rest of it gone?

“Did you know that Martin committed suicide last week as a result of being blackmailed by Katya and the Sokolovs?” Jon asked.

Lissette’s face crashed. It was the kind of emotion you couldn’t fake.

“I didn’t know,” she said.

“These are horrible crimes,” Jon said, boring down on her. “People’s lives are being ruined because you and your friends took advantage of them.”

“I was just a pawn.”

“Prove it.”

Lissette lifted her hands in a helpless gesture. “How am I going to do that?”

“We want Katya. Tell us how to find her, and we’ll cut you the sweetest deal you’ve ever seen. If not, you’ll go down for her crimes.”

“That’s not fair.”

Jon rubbed his two fingers together. “That’s the world’s smallest violin. Take it, or leave it.”

Lissette fell silent. As a member of the Latin Kings, she’d been indoctrinated in a code that prohibited her from snitching on another criminal, even if that criminal was her worst enemy. The police were the real enemy, and she wasn’t supposed to help them.

Except the Latin Kings had cut her loose. Had she aged out from being a prostitute? If that was the case, then she owed her former gang nothing. Daniels tried to read her face, but couldn’t tell what she was thinking. A gentle nudge was in order.

“The restaurant’s going to close soon,” Daniels said. “What do you want to do?”

Lissette sang like a canary. Katya and Bogdan were hiding out in a boat at the Bahia Mar Yachting Center, and they were planning to motor over to the Bahamas in a few days and stay there until the dust settled.

The irony was not lost on Lancaster. Beth had moved Melanie and her family to a suite at the Bahia Mar, thinking they would be safe. Instead, she’d brought Melanie that much closer to the person who wished to harm her daughter.

They took Lissette to the police station on Broward Boulevard and booked her, then drove to the Bahia Mar. During the drive, Beth called the chief of the FBI’s North Miami office, and requested a team. Hanging up, she called her sister.

“We need to move you again,” she said. “I’ll explain when we get there.”

The Bahia Mar was a landmark, known for housing spring breakers and being the fictional home of Fort Lauderdale’s most intrepid sleuth, Travis McGee. Lancaster waited in the car while Beth went inside and brought Melanie and her family downstairs.

From where he sat, he could see the yachting center. It was the size of a small city, and the chances of Bogdan venturing into the hotel and running across Melanie or her family were slim. But it still could happen, and they needed to take every precaution.

“The bad guy is staying in the yachting center?” Nicki said breathlessly. “Can we stay, and watch you arrest him? It would be way cool.”

Nicki was sandwiched between her parents in the back seat. Beth spun around, and gave her a freezing look. “You can’t be serious.”

“I’ve never seen a bust before. I could do a presentation at school, and explain how it went down,” Nicki said.

“Were you planning to take a video on your phone?”

“That’s a great idea. I could shoot it from the hotel balcony, and give a running commentary.”

“This man is armed and dangerous,” Beth said. “You will be nowhere near the yachting center when he’s arrested.”

“Do you think there will be a shootout?”

“That’s enough, young lady,” her mother scolded her.

Lancaster stayed in the car while Beth moved her sister’s family into the Courtyard by Marriott on A1A. He was a fan of Travis McGee, and had read all of the McGee novels with their color-laden titles. While he’d enjoyed them, the stories rarely resembled the real world, where lingering questions remained after a case was solved. Lisette had said that Martin had paid $250,000 to the Sokolov brothers, yet $1.2 million was missing from Martin’s bank accounts. Somehow, nearly $1 million had disappeared, and he had a feeling that they might never learn where it had gone.