"The one in the crate."
Pelly looked over to Ortíz. Then back at the man. "Yes, the satellite."
"It's in the garage in the back."
Ortíz said, "I'll stay with our friend. You two check the garage."
Ike followed Pelly out the door and through the house. He still held the empty pistol. He couldn't believe he had just shot a man up close. He'd shot a girl, too, but that was an accident. He was becoming a killer.
They didn't encounter anyone else in the house as they searched for the back door to the one-car garage. Going in through the kitchen, they found the bomb in the middle of the clean garage with only the top of the crate torn off.
Pelly stood on his toes and looked out of one of the windows built into the wooden garage door. He turned back to Ike. "The man working on the car has headphones on. He's still there."
Ike, still shaky from the adventure, said, "How're we gonna move this thing?"
"We'll get another rental truck. The fat mechanic earned his stolen one."
Duarte casually walked up to the duplex and waited for the man standing by the front door to look up. There was no need to be rude. Yet.
The man's eyes came up to meet Duarte's. He said, "We're not buying."
"I'm not selling anything."
"Then get lost."
Duarte tried not to smile. "I'm looking for Ike Floyd."
"Who're you?" The man's angular face made him look angry even though he didn't sound like it.
"I'm the guy looking for Ike."
"Oh, a smart-ass. You look like you might be an Italian or Spanish smart-ass."
"I'm from Florida, and I need to talk to Ike. Where is he?"
"Look, Mr. Florida." Now he sounded pissed off. "I don't care who you are or what you are. This is a private club, and by lookin' at ya, I doubt you could join."
Duarte kept a calm expression. Something like this made him realize how little his heritage mattered to most people, but when he found an idiot like this, it was all he could do not to take his head off. Instead he simply started to step around the wiry man.
The man tried to grab Duarte's arm as he said, "Wait a minute. I said…"
That was all he got out once Duarte had bent the man's wrist in the most unnatural downward position.
In a quiet voice, he said, "No loud noises or you won't write any letters for more than a year. Understand?"
The man nodded furiously as he hunched his whole body, hoping for the slightest relief he could get.
Inside it looked like a comfortable museum, with couches along the walls and shelves of knickknacks. On the walls, vintage posters of the Ku Klux Klan and Nazis hung in an orderly fashion.
Duarte said, "You guys love your memorabilia, don't you?"
The man just said, "Let up, let up."
Duarte did slightly and said, "Where're your buddies? I need to talk to someone about Ike."
The man nodded forward, and Duarte could see two men inside a small room off the hallway. He thrust the man with the sore wrist inside the room, then stood in the doorway until they were done bouncing off one another.
A wide man, who resembled a pro lineman, stood up from a chair that looked like a kid's prop next to him. "Who in the hell are you?"
Duarte kept it short. "Look, guys, I just need to talk to Ike Floyd. You know where he is?"
The man Duarte had seen at the door massaged his wrist and said, "I think he broke my fucking arm."
The lineman and the third man, a real young guy about Duarte's size, stepped toward him.
It was on.
29
WILLIAM "IKE" FLOYD NODDED TO MR. ORTÍZ AND PELLY. SITTING in the new Ryder rental truck that Mr. Ortíz had secured, he was anxious to get on his way and put some distance between him and these two. The men from the house had fled, and Ortíz didn't seem to care.
Mr. Ortíz looked at Ike and said, "Take no more chances. Contact me in three days. Pelly and I must handle some problems and then we will meet you in Houston. Is this clear?"
"Yes, sir."
"You surprised me back there. You were decisive."
Ike didn't tell why he was so decisive. He couldn't let them find out how he was tricked. Craig got what he deserved. He tried not to think about the girl bleeding out from her neck wound.
Mr. Ortíz said, "I do not believe the men who fled will go to the police. That was a criminal enterprise. They will run."
Ike nodded. He hoped this crazy Panamanian was right. Then he said, "What about the mechanic? He saw Pelly and me. He could link us to the killing."
"Pelly and I will decide if we need to talk to this man." He patted the step van's hood. "Now you must go."
Ike nodded to Pelly, who looked like he had grown his winter coat in the course of the day. Then he pulled the van out onto the street. He was headed to Houston, but first he needed to sleep. Maybe for a long time. It wouldn't take long to get to the Texas city, and he knew he couldn't call for a few days. He was going to sleep; the only question was where. As his eyes blurred from the wave of exhaustion and relief that swept over him, Ike realized he was going to have to find a place here in Lafayette if he wanted to stay on the right side of the highway and not run the van into an embankment.
He saw a little motel with a yellow sign that said THE CAJUN INN. He slowed the big step van to swing into the parking lot of the motel.
Duarte had yet to punch one of the three men who continued lunging at him inside the headquarters of the National Army of White Americans. He simply kept dodging and feinting and watching the men miss him and often stumble onto the hard, wooden floor.
The big lineman couldn't maneuver well enough past the shelves of statues and memorabilia. He knocked off several pieces, then froze, cursing his size.
For fun, Duarte turned and kicked over a shelf, sending little ceramic figures flying.
"Stop," yelped the big man, then he crouched for another shot at Duarte.
Duarte took the lunging man's arm and redirected him into the nearest wall, literally knocking out the drywall with the man's head. The big man stumbled, then collapsed on the floor.
The thin man with the sore wrist now had a metal shelving support he swung like a sword. He whipped it past Duarte's right ear, then stepped up to deliver a blow to the top of Duarte's head. The ATF man stepped to one side and watched the heavy metal support slip past him and end up breaking the big man's arm as it came to rest on the floor. The man still made no sound.
The third man stood motionless as the one with the sore wrist yelled. "C'mon, Sean, kill this motherfucker."
Duarte had had enough of this skinhead and swung his right foot into the man's jaw, sending him to the floor near the heap of his giant friend.
Now Sean realized this wasn't going his way. He turned and started to run away from Duarte down a hallway. In three quick steps, Duarte was close enough to shove the man and send him flying to the floor.
Duarte ducked his head down the other hallway to ensure that no one else was in the building, then went right to the man named Sean. He was the only conscious one, and due to his youth he might be more inclined to talk, and talk fast.
Duarte stood over him. "Sean, I'm in a hurry. You can tell me where Ike is or I can make you tell me." Duarte cracked his knuckles. "Which is it gonna be?"
The young man held up his hands. "Last I saw him was Kansas City."
"What was he doing there?"
"He rented a U-Haul there. About five days ago."