Jimmy Lail kicked his little supercharged Honda in the ass and shot north on the turnpike extension toward Pembroke Pines. A quick, surprise booty call on Camy might be just the trick to straighten out her attitude. He decided not to mention Tasker’s prank. He got the feeling that Tasker didn’t do shit like that to brag, just for his own entertainment. He’d find out on Monday.
He cranked up the bass on his DMX CD and eased back into the seat. He hit the fifth speed dial on his cell phone, barely able to hear the numbers beep over the thump of the bass.
“Hello.” The male voice was short and to the point.
“Hey, it’s working like you said.”
“What?”
He raised his voice. “I said, it’s working.”
“Jimmy, cut that rap bullshit off if you want to talk to me.”
Jimmy hit the mute button on his stereo, shocked by the sudden silence. He spoke back into the phone. “I said, it’s working.”
“Told you. Sorry you have to do it but we need the time.”
“No sizzle off my shinizzle.”
The phone went dead as the man hung up.
Jimmy shrugged and hit the number-one speed dial.
“Hello,” a female voice said.
“Hey, my lady. Just finished my five-O duty and thought we might share some lunch.” He laughed, then said, “And then eat.”
“Who’s this?”
Jimmy sat up straighter. “Whatchu mean? Camy, it’s me, Jimmy.”
Her giggle carried over the phone. “Really. How was I supposed to know that?”
Jimmy relaxed. “Everyone’s in a funny mood today.”
“Anything happen on surveillance?” she asked.
“Wells didn’t show yet, but it’s only a matter of time. Tasker is on it the rest of the day and night.”
“That was nice of him to take two weekend shifts.”
“Why not? Whole thing’s his fault.”
“That’s not true and you know it.”
“Check it out, awright. I arrested Wells and he sprang him.”
“You didn’t arrest him for the bombing. We arrested him for something he didn’t do.”
Jimmy sighed. “That’s just work, baby. What about it? I’ll be to your crib in thirty minutes.”
“Sorry, Jimmy. I can’t see you today. Got too much going on.”
“More important than me?”
“ ’Fraid so. Sorry.” The line went dead.
Something was up with that girl, and he didn’t like to think what it could be.
…
Tasker settled into his surveillance like most any cop looking at a sixteen-hour stint: slowly. He pulled his Cherokee back a few feet to catch the shade of the empty building’s overhang as the sun slid west across the sky. Even though he knew he could leave the area for food or a bathroom break, he was prepared and had packed two sandwiches, though more out of economic need than dedication to duty. His little cooler held four canned Cokes, and his empty Gatorade bottle was on the seat next to him. The big bottle, or as the drug guys call them, the “portable John,” eliminated the need for repeated runs to the nearest gas station, which in this case was ten minutes away. Tasker asked his neighbor to save the bottle since he wouldn’t buy Gatorade. Being a Florida State alumnus, he had an aversion to anything developed at the University of Florida. He had bought Powerade for years before the commercial showing the origins of Gatorade began airing. Keith Jackson aside, he had no reason to be reminded of anything worthwhile coming out of Gainesville.
The day was uneventful, with several more cars than usual visiting the house. From his current position, with the help of binoculars, Tasker could clearly make out faces coming and going at the old, run-down house. None of the drivers coming up or down Krome even seemed to notice him. No pedestrians walked past. That was the only way to tell his Cherokee was running. He had his fanny pack with a Beretta model 92-the.40 caliber-and two extra magazines in his belly bag. To be on the safe side, he had pulled his Heckler & Koch MP5 nine-millimeter machine gun and put the short black weapon on the front seat with an extra thirty-round magazine next to it. It seemed like overkill. He wasn’t what some cops called a “gun queer.” He just thought that if something happened way out here in the middle of nowhere he should be prepared. He had just been issued the.40-caliber Beretta to replace his old nine-millimeter. Between the two guns he had almost a hundred rounds in case of trouble.
The hours passed, until the sun finally set over the Everglades and he stepped out of the car to stretch. He turned off the engine and leaned against the warm hood, twisting one way, then the other. In a matter of seconds, he felt first tiny gnats, sometimes called “no-see-ums,” then the bigger, louder mosquitoes started to land and attack his ears, neck and exposed arms. He tried to brush them off a few times, but they landed in greater force each time. Finally he retreated back into the Cherokee and slammed the door, cursing the tiny bloodsuckers. He cranked the engine and then spent ten minutes killing all the mosquitoes that had followed him into the vehicle. The small incident turned his mood sour and focused the frustration of the case. In fact, he felt frustration at this surveillance. There had to be a better use of his time. How had he gotten talked into it? As he tried to recall the chain of events that had him sitting next to a swamp watching an old man’s house with seventy-five mosquitoes at eight o’clock on a Saturday night, an old Chevy Caprice rumbled into the lot and parked near the rear edge, about a hundred feet from Tasker. His lights were off, but the engine was running. He kept an eye on the vehicle as five young men poured out of the lime-green, beat-up car. They huddled around the hood talking for a few minutes, then, almost in a single-file line, started slowly strolling toward Tasker’s car.
Four of the men stopped next to the building as the one in the lead came to within a few feet of the Cherokee. Tasker looked at his passenger seat, where the Miami Herald sports page was covering his MP5. He looked through his tinted window, knowing the twenty-year-old white kid couldn’t tell who was inside. He heard the guy in jeans and a plain white T-shirt say, “Yo,” then, after no response, get louder and say “Yo” again. Two of his friends came up to join him. One moved to the passenger side of the car. Tasker smiled thinking of a Discovery Channel show he’d watched with his girls about the pack behavior of wild dogs hunting antelope in Africa. The big difference was that the antelope didn’t have automatic weapons.
The leader took a step forward and tapped on the window. “Yo, mister.”
Tasker knew that they had a problem with gangs out here. Some preyed on migrant workers, some sold crack. Tasker hoped these might be the bullies who bothered the poor migrants. Rolling down the window, he could’ve made these losers a mile away for redneck dropouts from some high school south of Kendall.
The leader said, “Man, why didn’t you answer me?”
Tasker kept his voice low and calm, “Didn’t know I had to.”
The kid looked at him sideways and said, “Yo, whatchu doing out here? You lost?”
“I’m fine, thanks.” He started to roll up the window.
“Wait, wait, wait.”
Tasker stopped the window. “What?”
“This here is private property.”
“Is it yours?”
“Naw.”
“Then don’t worry about it,” said Tasker, rolling the window the rest of the way up.
The kid stepped closer and rapped on the window with his knuckles.
Tasker appreciated these young men breaking his boredom, but he had to put an end to it. As the window came down again, he said, “What’d ya want, son?”
“Naw, man, what do you want?”
“I don’t want a thing from you.”
“Then you must got something. ’Cause out here you either keep driving, you need something or you got something. So what do you got?”
Tasker shrugged, sliding his hand under the unfolded Miami Herald. “I don’t know. All I got is this submachine gun.” He pulled the MP5 up from under the newspaper. “You want some of it?”
The young man stumbled back, saying, “No sir, I’m sorry to bother you.” By the time he was on his feet, his friends were in the car, throwing it into drive.
Tasker chuckled as they burned rubber out of the lot. His temporary good mood faded quickly as he felt the frustration rising in his mind again.
Derrick Sutter had never been obsessed with anything or anybody, except maybe himself. He acknowledged this character trait and attributed it to his mother, who used to tell him, “No one will ever love you like your mom or yourself.” He’d found it to be true. Both his mom and he tended to focus on one subject: his happiness.
Now he had to admit that he was very nearly obsessed with this crazy case, or at least with Alicia Wells. Not ’cause she was a knockout, which she definitely was, but because she was the only person who had ever successfully escaped from him in the city. It was bad enough he had trouble finding her, but to have his hands on her then have to cry like a little girl for the second time in two days. He had to find her. Luckily, hanging out at topless bars wasn’t the worst form of police work.
He didn’t mind working on a Saturday night late when he thought about poor, obsessed Bill Tasker. That boy was gonna work himself into an early grave. When Sutter had called him, about an hour ago, the FDLE agent was still on post, watching the damn KKK house. He was a better man than most. Even Sutter admitted to himself that if he was out there alone on a Saturday night, he’d risk missing Wells and head out to have some fun. Tasker took things too seriously to have much fun.
Sutter leaned back in his tall chair at the Harem Club and surveyed the line of stages as he took a swig of his Bombay and tonic. A blond on the last stage might be Alicia. He couldn’t tell, and he damn sure wasn’t going to get too close this time.
It was near dawn, and Alicia Wells had broken her rule of not drinking while working, but the young lawyer who had helped Daniel had showed up and was so nice. A public defender for the federal court. Whatever that was. He was nice, cute and had some cash. The next thing Alicia knew she was a little drunk, giving him a lap dance in the back room. One lap dance turned into another and another, until they were just making out in the small room with two couches. No one even checked on her. She lost interest when he ran out of money, and nice and cute just didn’t cut it. Besides, she was a married woman, though that seemed less and less real every day. In fact, the longer she was away from Daniel’s hellion boys, the better she liked it. She did miss little Lettye. She was just a sweet little Barbie doll. But the boys never stopped, and Daniel encouraged them all the time. He talked about how he liked to “disturb the natural flow of the universe.” Whatever that meant, she just wished the boys weren’t one of the ways to do it. Daniel would watch the news about the riots or some explosion like it was one of her soaps. Like General Hospital without a plot. She knew he had some weird ties to different people and believed he might have helped them do some crazy things from time to time but never let on. He thought she was a little stupid because he had three years of college, but she wasn’t. She had her GED, and a month and a half of beauty school besides. She may not have known the capital of Florida for sure, she figured it had to be Orlando ’cause of where it was built, but she was smart in other ways. Like he didn’t have ten dollars to his name. He’d work and work and charge people for only the hours he put in. She made four hundred, sometimes six hundred, a night after expenses, and untaxed. Unlike the other girls, she didn’t use drugs or drive fancy cars. She had almost nine thousand dollars stashed away. That made her smart as far as she was concerned.
All this ran through her head as she stumbled down the long path that led to the small apartment she rented from the nice Cuban family in North Miami. The bungalow-type building sat way off the road and no one ever bothered her.
As she stuck the key in the lock and started to turn it, she heard a man’s voice say, “Found you finally.”
Tasker was a little drowsy at the wheel of the Cherokee on the way home and then fell into a deep sleep on his couch ten minutes after turning on the TV to unwind. He caught a little of Saturday Night Live-the “Weekend Update” bit with the really hot babe in glasses-before he was off dreaming of water skiing with the girls in the Keys while Donna drove the boat. The phone snapped him awake at eight in the morning.
He reached for the portable handset, unable to focus on where it could be. Finally he grabbed it and mashed the talk button. “Hello.”
“Billy, it’s Jerry. Did I wake you?”
“Yeah, I was on the damn Klan house until almost midnight.”
“Sorry, Billy, I thought you had it this morning and the only number I had handy was home. I was trying to get you before you left.”
“No problem, Jerry. Camy has some ATF guys covering the surveillance for us today. What’s up?”
“Hey, I didn’t want to say anything in front of the Feds, but there is something weird about one number in Wells’ phone book. I was in the office yesterday, cleaning up some stuff, and noticed a subpoena to Bell South had come back.”
“Yeah, go ahead.”
“There’s a North Miami number that according to Bell South is an un-assigned number. The problem with it is that it rings. Unassigned numbers have a phone-company recording. This unassigned number rings, but no one answers when I call.”
“You think it’s a police UC line?”
“Not even a UC line. When I call another number close to it with the same exchange, guess who answers?”
“No idea.”
“The FBI.”
Tasker was silent while he thought about what that might mean.
It took Alicia Wells five minutes to calm down after being surprised at her front door. She sat on her couch, looking at the source of her surprise next to her.
“How’d you find me?”
Daniel Wells smiled. “Your mama told me where you were. Why would you hide from me?”
“I knew you didn’t like me dancing, and I needed a break from the boys.”
“They doin’ okay?”
“If starting fires all over your uncle’s neighborhood and blowing up a little bridge across the canal is okay, then they’re fine.”
“I miss those boys. But I had to see you to let you know what was gonna happen.”
“What?”
“You need to go collect the kids and wait at Uncle Tom’s for me to call. End of the week I’ll ride over to Tampa and we’re all heading for Louisiana.”
“New Orleans?” she asked hopefully.
“No, way further west. West of Baton Rouge. Little compound there run by some mighty serious boys. Boys that hate the government and need my help.”
“I don’t want to live in Louisiana.”
“That’s fine. We’ll be moving on to Montana after a couple of weeks.”
She put her hand on Daniel’s arm. “No, Daniel, you don’t understand. I want to stay.”
“Can’t stay.”
“Why not?”
“You’ll see. You won’t wanna stay after Thursday.”
“What happens Thursday?” She was getting frustrated. She hated it when he treated her like she was an idiot.
“Gonna stir some things up. Nothing you should worry your beautiful little mind about. Just gonna cause a little pandemonium.”
She looked at his handsome face with a sideways glance. “You ain’t gonna hurt anyone, are you?”
“That’s not the point. It may happen, but it’s not intentional.” He put his arm around her. “You’re the only person in the world I’ve said anything to about this. I just need you to pack up and go get the kids. Then we’ll go back to bein’ a family.”
Alicia pulled away and stood up. “You know the cops are looking for you.”
“Yeah, I know. How do you know that?”
“That black cop, the one that came with Bill Tasker, tried to question me.”
Now Wells stood. “What’d you tell him?”
“Nothing. I used the pepper spray you gave me. And ran.”
He hugged her, laughing. “That’s my girl.” He held her at arm’s length and said, “Don’t look so worried, baby. I got an ace up my sleeve with the cops. They won’t touch me.”
She smiled at him but felt a wave of uneasiness. He’d changed since she’d last seen him. He had a wild look in his eyes. She didn’t know what he had planned, but she didn’t want to see anyone hurt, and definitely didn’t want to ever see Montana, let alone live there.