She looked at him. “What do you need?”
“I’d like to look at his workshop.”
She shook her head, tentatively. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
Tasker nodded. “I understand your reticence.”
She gave him a quizzical look.
“I understand your reluctance,” Tasker said. “But I need to check some information.”
She thought about it. “I don’t know,” she started slowly. “I don’t wanna get him in worse trouble somehow. You ain’t got a warrant, do you?”
“No, nothing like that. I want to see if I can back up Daniel’s story at all.”
She looked up at his face, almost studying it. “That other fella just tried to trick me into saying stuff the other day.”
“What other fella?”
“The FBI agent, Mr. Cobb. He told me all kinds of things, but he didn’t want to help Daniel. If Daniel can’t work, we’ll lose this place. I don’t think I should make it worse for him.”
“Mrs. Wells, I am not with the FBI. I swear to God, all I want is the truth. The truth might be that Daniel tried to make some extra money and didn’t tell you a thing about it. But if the truth is that he wasn’t involved, then that’s what I want to find out.”
She assessed him carefully. Looking up into his eyes and taking a step closer, she asked, “You swear that’s what you’re doing?”
Tasker looked into her beautiful face and felt himself hesitate as he lost concentration. This girl had to know she had this kind of effect on men. She was better than a polygraph. She knew no mortal man could look into her eyes and lie.
Tasker said, “I swear to you I just want the truth.”
She took a long moment, squeezed the boy at her side and then sent him into the house with a playful swat on the butt. She looked at Tasker again. “Okay, I’ll open it up. I don’t know why, but you look sincere. I don’t think you’re trying to hurt Daniel.”
“I do just want the truth. We have enough to hold him now, anyway. But if I find anything, then I’ll know we were right. And if I find something that helps him significantly, I’ll let the prosecutor know before his bond hearing this afternoon. That’s why I’m bothering you so early.”
She nodded slowly, obviously still coming to grips with the bizarre fate of her husband. She led him through the carport to the detached one-car garage. An oversized van with faded signs that said NARANJA ENGINEERING was parked at the end of the driveway.
She stood on her toes in her bare feet to reach the keypad that opened the door. “Go ahead. I got to get my other two fed.” She hurried past him toward the house without another word.
He nodded and proceeded to scan the top of the workbench. Nothing more than tools and some instructions for a welding torch. The garage as a whole was very neat and orderly. He knew the type. A place for everything and everything in its place. His father had run the dry cleaners in Boca like that.
He looked in a few containers, one with rusty roofing nails and one with a noxious smelling, gooey liquid. Then on a small, neat desk he found something that immediately caught his attention. A personal check. Bernie Dashett had written a check to Naranja Engineering for forty dollars. Giving an alibi was one thing. But this kind of detail was unheard-of. Tasker snatched up the check and headed back through the carport. As he neared the front door, Mrs. Wells stepped outside. Now in a sundress, she looked like the girl next door, if you lived next door to the set of Baywatch.
“Find anything?”
Tasker almost stuttered. “Maybe. We’ll know by the hearing. What if we talk then?”
“You help Daniel and we’ll talk any time you like.” She smiled and Tasker knew it was time to get to the office.
He walked through the front doors of the new FDLE building off 107th Avenue and Twelfth Street at exactly nine o’clock. Before he could make the inner doors, the receptionist called to him from behind thick, clear Plexar.
“This was in the mail shoot for you when we opened.” She held up an envelope a little larger than a sheet of paper. The word “Urgent” was written in red marker across the front with his name in the corner. The receptionist slid it under the glass.
He opened it as he took the elevator to the third floor. Walking down the hallway, he heard, but didn’t acknowledge, greetings from everyone he passed. He slid out an eight-by-ten photo with a note on the back. The comment read: “Nazi summit, Dell Linley et al., August 4, 2002.” There was an address and time marked on it as well. The “et al.” was something cops and prosecutors used to say “everyone else involved.” Sometimes it was to save time and sometimes it was just laziness. He turned over the photo and looked at two young men talking in the outside courtyard of a McDonald’s. The photo was taken from across the street with a telephoto lens. Who the hell would send him something like this? Tasker looked at the scene again and didn’t see the connection until he noticed the man inside the restaurant with two small children eating at a table. It was Daniel Wells.
All day he had wondered who had sent him the photo of the “Nazi summit.” The piece of the puzzle that had led to Daniel Wells’ immediate arrest. It hadn’t exactly been a summit, and more important, Wells had had nothing to do with it. So the question hit him again: Who had sent it to him? He toyed with the idea that it might have been the FBI agent who’d spotted the transfer of the Stinger, Jim Cobb. Maybe the guy realized he had screwed up and wanted to set things right. But it didn’t add up. Cobb certainly didn’t strike Tasker as the kind of cop that went back on a judgment, no matter how outlandish it was.
Now Tasker couldn’t worry about it anymore. He had other problems. He tried to talk to the assistant U.S. attorney just as the hearing started, but traffic was brutal, and trying to run down where the photo had come from and what it meant had taken time. It seemed clear to him that the FBI intelligence that had helped land Daniel Wells in jail was shitty, if it was based on this photo. Who has a summit of white racists with only two rednecks talking outside a McDonald’s? Wells wasn’t even with them. He was just having lunch with his kids. Tasker had just driven down past the McDonald’s in Goulds an hour ago and confirmed it was the closest one to the Wells house. They had the wrong fucking guy in jail.
The refurbished Magistrate’s Courtroom, or “ Mag Court ” for short, was in the Federal Courthouse on Miami Avenue in downtown Miami. A large deputy U.S. Marshal in a suit stood next to each door, since there was a prisoner involved in the hearing. The high ceiling and the space between the formal-looking magistrate and lawyers gave the courtroom the feel of a big meeting hall. The room wasn’t particularly crowded. A few old men from Miami Beach. They just liked hearing cases now and then. A few reporters and the guy who sketched the hearing. Federal courts, unlike state courts, didn’t allow cameras of any sort in the courtroom.
Tasker fidgeted in the seat as the hearing got underway. He didn’t want to just stop it, so he waited for a recess. They were going to look at Bernie Dashett first, anyway.
Tasker nodded to Camy, who was sitting up front. It took him a second to recognize Jimmy Lail in a nice blue business suit sitting next to her. After a short opening statement, the portly assistant U.S. attorney called Jimmy to the stand to summarize what had happened the day of the arrests. Tasker thought this should be good for a laugh.
When asked to lay out the whole scenario, Jimmy began, “After identifying one subject, Bernard Harold Dashett of 21468 Hallow Road, an undercover sting operation was set up to interdict the Stinger missile Mr. Dashett had offered on the open market.” He had a southern, possibly Texas, drawl.
Tasker was stunned. The idiot could talk. A casual observer would view him as an intelligent, professional law enforcement official. If they only knew.