The feds had been working the scam up and down the coast. The theft ring was the typical game. At the low end, they hired car thieves to do the heists. The boosters were given special lists of makes and models, actual orders to fill. Most of the cars were high- end SUVs, especially Toyota 4Runners. At the time, the loose pack of military thugs running Haiti had a liking for the all-terrain vehicles. The Toyota emblem on the front of the hood looked distinctly like a bull with horns, and to them the bull image carried an aura of masculine power. The SUVs brought top dollar.
The car thieves were told the less damage the more they would get paid, and they'd boost the cars and park them in a commuter lot at Philly International Airport to be sure they didn't have anti-theft locators. If the cops traced the electronic beacon, all they'd get was the car abandoned at the airport.
Once the cars cooled, the shippers would then move them inside a warehouse at the port where a guy could cut a key. When they were ready, a tractor-trailer would back up to the warehouse loading dock and the cars would be driven inside. The crew would then pack the rest of the trailer, floor to ceiling, with household goods, boxes of clothes, bags of rice. If an inspector decided to pop the back door, all he could see in the first ten feet were legitimate goods for shipping.
"What do you think? Five years ago?" Billy said from the other room, still clicking.
"No, more like seven."
Most of the task force work had been with informants, kids picked up on auto theft charges who were looking to deal information for a break. We'd put surveillance on a warehouse and it was primed. I was one of four detectives, a U.S. Customs agent and a handful of port police used to cut off any escape routes. We were in position. It was hot and dusty as we leaned into a corrugated wall around the corner.
"Summertime," I said to Billy.
"I think I've got it," he said.
We waited in the heat until the tractor-trailer was loaded and started to pull away on its route to the holding area, where the container would be loaded onto an outbound freighter to Haiti. When the trailer cleared the doors we jumped, guns drawn.
"U.S. Customs, hands in the air!" the agent yelled as three of us came through the front and two more took down a door to the back.
The element of surprise. Four men were eating lunch around a wire-spool table, another was in the glass-walled office, sleeping with his feet on the desktop. One was busy near the back of the warehouse, his head down and a pair of safety glasses on his face while he worked over a machine. He was my guy-the key man.
It would have gone down like clockwork but for the idiot in the john. The last one to see us had to be the cowboy.
Everyone in the warehouse had already let the air out of their lungs when the asshole came sprinting out of the cheap wooden door of the bathroom and started firing a second-rate.38, thinking he might get to the loading dock door. He made it twenty feet before he took four rounds and dropped. But one of his random shots also hit a port policeman.
"Harlan P. Moticker," Billy said from his room. "The locksmith."
"That's him," I said, walking into the study.
Harlan was the outsider in the group, hired to cut the keys for the stolen vehicles so they could go abroad in no-fuss driving condition. He was a southern boy down on his luck, trying to make a go of it up north and making extra cash on the wrong side.
All seven men were arrested and when the port cop died of his wound, the ante got raised. Because a person had died during the commission of a felony, they were all charged with murder.
"Can you check the Department of Corrections in Georgia to see if he's still in?"
Billy had already pushed his chair to the other screen.
Harlan P. was the only one of the group who wasn't connected to the offshore ring. As a result, he was the only one who had nothing to deal. He had no useful information for Customs, so no matter how much he wanted to cooperate he still ate the whole twenty-five to life. He'd been paid two hundred dollars for the job.
"Harlan P. Moticker, prisoner ID #3568649. The Haverford State Correctional Facility in Moultrie," Billy read.
I suppose I'd felt for the guy. When we were writing up the case the older guys in the squad kept forwarding the calls from his young wife to me. He pleaded guilty to avoid a trial and when his attorney asked to have him swapped to a Georgia prison near his family for a Philadelphia mob flunky who wanted to come home, I was the one who gave the department's blessing. Nobody else cared.
Now I suppose I felt lucky.
By noon the next day I was driving a rental down a secondary highway in south Georgia. Billy had found me an early flight out of West Palm Beach and he'd also made a call to his prosecutor friend in Atlanta. The lawyer balked at first, but because he owed Billy, he made the request for a visit.
The warden at Haverford said he could not figure why a private investigator from Florida would want to talk with Moticker. The inmate was one of the better behaved and more trustworthy of his 612 convicts. But in the spirit of cooperation, he didn't object.
Well out of the city, the road I was on split an open forest of scrub pines and occasional patches of hardwood, and there were leaves on the forest floor. Here it was true fall. Colors not natural to South Florida dripped and fluttered in orange and red in the trees. Both the temperature and the humidity were under sixty. I rolled the windows down and inhaled the odor of sun-dried clay and slow- rotting leaves. It was almost idyllic-until I saw the flat sign for the prison and turned off onto a slowly curving blacktop road.
There were no buildings visible from the highway. It was just a well-maintained country road until I hit the guard gate to the parking area. I gave the man my name and while he checked I watched the sun glitter off a high, razor-wired fence in the distance. I had been inside prisons before and never liked the feeling.
The guard handed me a pass and pointed the way to administration. I parked, and as I followed the sidewalk I could see down the fence line to a guard tower where the silhouette of a marksman showed in the open window. Inside the offices I stood in a waiting area with uncomfortable cushioned chairs and a portrait of the new governor.
The warden's name was Emanuel T. Bowe and he greeted me with a firm handshake across a state-issue desk. He was a tall black man with gray hair cut in a flat top and a beard that was carefully trimmed to follow the edges of his jaw line. He looked more like a college professor than a southern prison warden.
"So, Mr. Freeman. You were a detective in Philadelphia when our Mr. Moticker was convicted, do I have that right?"
"Yes sir."
"And you are now working as a private detective on a case in South Florida?"
"Yes, sir. It's in the very preliminary stages, sir," I said, the lying coming easily since it was marginal.
"Well, I will be up-front with you, Mr. Freeman. I asked Mr. Moticker if he had any objections to speaking with you and although he said he remembered you and was willing, he seemed, as I am, perplexed as to what information he might have to help you."
I only nodded.
"Frankly, I have only been the warden here for eighteen months, but Mr. Moticker has been here quite some time and has earned a certain respect from both sides out there on the pound. I would not like to see anything change that."
"And neither would I, sir. I'm not sure he can help, but if he's willing, I'd like to give it a try," I said, giving nothing up, and hoping it was enough.
The warden stood up.
"Let's go, then."
An open walkway led out to the first gate, chain-link, with a guard dressed in brown with a radio clipped to his belt. No gun. No nightstick.
He greeted the warden, looked at me, and the first snap of dry metal let us through to a cinder-block control room. Inside a fishbowl of two-inch shatterproof glass another guard said hello to Bowe, and I was quickly run over with a security wand and had to hand over my keys. When we were ready, the guard hit the electronic lock on the second metal door and we were back outside.