Christopher Buckley - Wet Work

"What's going on in Miami?" Miss Farrell asked.

"Office been swept this month?" They'd found a listening device in the sofa a few years ago after a visit by a man representing Futaki DSM Corporation. Charley left it there so he could feed it disinformation about Becker Industries' progress with SmartPlastics, until Futaki was convinced BI was a year behind schedule.

"Yes," said Miss Farrell.

Charley whispered, "Eastern Airlines."

Miss Farrell arched her eyebrows in appreciation, though on reflection she wondered why on earth Charley would want to acquire such a headache at this, well, stage in his life. "Do you want me down there with you?"

"I would very much," he sighed, "but Lorenzo is just paranoid about leaks. What's left of it, it's his company, so I have to play by his rules."

"Who's going?"

"Me and Felix. Plus some people from M and A." Mergers and Acquisitions.

She could feel his eyes following her as she walked out. He said, "Jeannie?"

"Yes, Charley?"

"Are you seeing anyone? I don't mean to pry. I just-"

"No."

"Well," he said, pleased, "perhaps when I get back you'd care to come out to the farm. As a guest, I mean."

She sent the clothes to be cleaned. The jacket she took home and soaked in lighter fluid and burned.

Felix, Rostow, McNamara and Bundy were waiting for him on the tarmac at Opa-Locka when the G-4 whined to a full stop Charley stepped out into the warm Miami night and reflected that Miami was one of few places where there was nothing unusual about a private jet being met by four large men with armpit bulges. He rode in front with Felix, another habit that drove Margaret nuts.

"How's it look?"

"It looks like it's not going to be easy," said Felix.

"Well, we're working our way up the food chain," said Charley. "The fish are getting bigger. What about the hotel?"

"It's nice. Which's good, because I have a feeling we're going to be here for a long time."

The Biltmore was a grand affair, built in the twenties at the height of the Florida land boom and subsequently vexed by the worst hurricane in the state's history and the stock market crash. Since then it had served a variety of inglorious functions, such as military housing, until finally the city of Coral Gables bought it-rather than watch it slide further into desuetude-pouring fifty million into it to restore it to its quondam Jazz Age splendor. Architecturally it was a tad difficult to pin down, and right away McNamara and Bundy fell to arguing over what was Mediterranean versus Moorish, Spanish Revival or Beaux Arts or Gothic Renaissance. Listening to them while he checked in, Charley was certain of one thing, anyway: no one would mistake them for a couple of hired killers.

He had sandwiches and coffee sent up to the Everglades Suite. "All right," he said, "what's the plan?" No one spoke up. "What's the matter?" said Charley. The sandwiches were on a platter. Mac reached for an olive and held it up to his eye and peered through the hole.

"Don't," said Bundy. "Don't do that."

Chin's beeper had gone off during the interrogation and right away it was clear he was more terrified by the prospect of not returning his boss's phone call than by these men who had plucked him somewhat roughly off the street, and in a way the reason had to do with olives.

The late Antonio Chin's boss was Jesus Celaya Barazo, the purpose of their stay in Coral Gables. For years he had been importing a thousand kilos of cocaine-one metric ton-each week from the Reynaldo Cabrera family of Medellin. Then, suddenly, Barazo announced he had found a new supplier and would no longer accept shipments from Cabrera. Since the loss to Cabrera's organization amounted to about $15 million a week-as well as his invaluable contacts in the Bahamian Defense Force-he sent three of his people to Miami to persuade Barazo to continue to buy his product. Two days later Cabrera received a parcel delivered by Federal Express, packed in dry ice-for a small additional charge. The box contained six eyeballs, each run through with one of those miniature plastic swords used to enliven canapés. Cabrera was himself no stranger to these kinds of interoffice memoranda; his own business protocol included slicing a man's throat open to his sternum and pulling his tongue out through it, the so-called "Colombian necktie," throwing men alive into pits full of tusked wild pigs and sundry other entertaining ways of inculcating in employees a sense of company loyalty. Nonetheless, Cabrera elected to cut his losses and seek alternate wholesale arrangements in the Sunshine State.

Barazo lived inside a walled compound in South Miami, at the corner of Southwest Sixty-fourth Street and Seventy-fifth Avenue. Not for him the glamour of a Key Biscayne or Coral Gables address, and just as well, since there were two federal warrants on him outstanding, which together could put him back in Danbury. Charley was somewhat surprised, if grateful, that a man with such legal difficulties should be living here under everyone's nose, but as they say, capital goes where it's well treated. Chin said the ground behind the wall was mined and beyond that were a half dozen Rottweiler dogs Barazo kept half starved so they'd stay mean. He fed them the remains of whatever animals he sacrificed to his Santen'a deities. And they say ours is a faithless age.

"I borrowed a gas company uniform and showed up at his gate," said Rostow. "This golf cart comes humming up with two guys with MACs. They pointed them at me. They said they didn't want the meter read."

"He's spooked," said Felix. "Ramirez, Uguarte, Sandoval, Chin. His people are disappearing. He probably thinks it's Cabrera finally getting some payback. He's not going to come out and play."

"Then we'll just have to go in there and get him," said Charley.

"In what, a tank?"

"We could blow him to DEA," said Rostow. "Apparently even Miami-Dade doesn't know he's here. The house is in someone else's name."

"What the hell good would that do us?"

"He might make bail. We could make our move while he's on his way back to the house."

"What if he doesn't make bail?"

"Then he's out of circulation. Having him whacked on the inside, hell, that's easy. And cheap."

"Then what? The trail goes cold. Come on now, boys, we can do better. I know it's tough, but you've been doing a fine job and I know we can do this."

Bundy said, "There's a tree line across the street from him, casuarinas, some are pretty tall."

"Go on."

"He has a pool. Chin said that's where he gets his exercise. I could get up there with a.308 and shoot him in the nuts while he was doing the backstroke, then we could get him in the hospital while he was having them sewn back on."

Charley thought about it. He nodded. "That's a possibility. But what if you missed? You might hit an artery or something. He might bleed to death."

Bundy looked at Charley. "Sir," he said quietly, "I do not 'miss.'"

"I'm sure you wouldn't, son, but it's, I don't know, it's messy."

Rostow spoke up. "Why don't we let him chill out for a while. Six months, whatever, let him get his confidence back. We could make it look like Chin just ran off on him, so he wouldn't think it was Cabrera."

"Six months?" Charley snorted. "That's not how I do business."

"I know. We Arc Light him," said McNamara.

"We what?"

"B-52s. That stuff you were telling us about they use on the space shuttle? HMQ?"

"X, HMX."

"Why don't we chopper over him at night and drop some on him."

"I'm not sure we're quite there yet, Mac," said Charley. "Boys, I think we're losing sight of something here. Barazo isn't the end of the chain. We got a whole other continent to deal with after we get done with him. Let's keep that in mind, all right?"

Felix said, "There's something we might as well look at now."