"I never know when you're coming home for dinner," she complained. "Or if you're coming home at all."
"It's my job, hon," he explained patiently. "It's what puts bacon on the table."
He looked up Frank Little's home address. It was way out in the boondocks, in Parkland north of Sample Road. Roger drove by slowly, but when he saw a sign on the fence, unleashed pit bulls, he decided not to stop. It was flatland with no cover or concealment, and Fortescue knew a stakeout would be impossible.
Little's home was really a ranch with a separate garage, outbuildings, and what looked big enough to be a three-horse stable. Roger figured the spread for maybe five acres. There was a guy on a sitdown power mower working one of the fields, and another guy with a long-handled net fishing dead palm fronds from the surface of a big swimming pool.
"Two million," Fortescue said aloud. "Sheet, three million!"
He drove back to Copans Road and cruised by the FL Sports Equipment layout. No activity. Just a car parked outside the office. And what a yacht that was! A 1959 white Cadillac convertible that appeared to be in mint condition. That grille! Those tailfins! Roger's Volvo seemed like a pushcart.
He noted again the boarded-up fast-food joint next to Little's place. That would be it, he suddenly decided; his home away from home.
He was right on time for dinner that night, bringing a five-pound boneless pork loin as a peace offering to Estelle. They put the pork in the fridge for the next day because she had already baked up a mess of chicken wings with hot barbecue sauce. They had that with home fries and pole beans. Beer for the adults, Cokes for the kids.
After dinner, Roger went upstairs, kicked off his loafers, and crashed for almost two hours, sleeping as if he had been sandbagged. Then he rose, changed to dungarees, checked his armament, and began assembling his Breaking amp; Entering kit: small crowbar, set of lockpicks, penlight, bull's-eye lantern, a shot-filled leather sap, binoculars, small transistor radio, and a cold six-pack of beer.
At about nine p.m. he drove back to Copans Road, past FL Sports Equipment, looking for a place to park. He finally located a likely spot, alongside a darkened garage that did muffler and shock replacements. He loaded up with his gear and trudged back to the deserted fast-food joint.
Traffic on the road was light, but he tried to stick to the shadows during his amble. In the rear of the derelict restaurant he found a weather-beaten door secured with a rusty hasp and cheap padlock. He could easily have wrenched it away with his crowbar but didn't want to leave evidence of an illegal entry. So he spent five minutes picking the lock, holding the penlight between his teeth. Then he pushed the creaking door open.
It was unexpectedly warm inside, and smelly. He heard the rustle of wildlife which he hoped was just rats and not snakes. He made a lantern-lighted tour through what had been the dining area, kitchen, lavatory, and a small chamber that had probably served as an office.
It was this last room he selected for his stakeout because it had a boarded-up window facing FL Sports Equipment, Inc. Prying two of the boards farther apart gave him a good view of the blockhouse, driveway, and warehouse. He dragged a rickety crate in from the kitchen to use as a chair, turned on his radio with the volume low, and popped a beer. Then he settled down to wait.
He was still waiting at four in the morning, peering out the window every few minutes and walking up and down occasionally to stay awake. The beer was finished, and his favorite radio station had gone off the air. He packed it in then, and lugged all his gear back to the Volvo. He left the padlock in the hasp, seemingly closed but actually open. He drove home, and when he went up to the bedroom, Estelle roused and said sleepily, "When do you want to get up?"
"Never," he answered, undressed, and rolled into bed.
But he was back at his hideout the following night, and for three more nights after that. Estelle stopped complaining about his crazy hours, and his sons seemed to like the idea of Daddy being home during the day.
By the time he decided to end his vigil, he had compiled four pages of notes on ruled paper he swiped from one of the kids' notebooks. He read over his jottings on what he had observed and tried to make some sense out of it all.
1. Deliveries were made to FL Sports Equipment, usually well before midnight, by trucks and vans with familiar names lettered on the sides. They were carriers working out of Port Everglades and the Fort Lauder-dale-Hollywood Airport.
2. These deliveries were packed in wooden crates, some secured with steel bands. The boxes were long enough to hold smuggled AK-47s or other weapons, Roger reckoned, but he doubted if they did; each crate was handled easily by two men.
3. Pickups were made after midnight by an assortment of trucks, flatbeds, and vans, all with out-of-state license plates. Most of them were unmarked, although once the big Siena Moving amp; Storage semi showed up.
4. The pickups were cardboard cartons, and there was little doubt what they contained; one of them broke open and white baseballs went rolling all over the place. The loaders carefully collected every ball, and Frank Little, standing nearby with his clipboard, seemed to be verifying the count.
Fortescue, reading over his notes, concluded that for some reason the big wooden crates of baseballs were unpacked in the warehouse and their contents repacked into the smaller cardboard cartons.
One thing he couldn't understand was why the pickups, presumably by those wholesalers Frank Little had mentioned, were always made at godawful hours like two, three, and four o'clock in the morning. And why weren't the wholesalers' trucks painted with their names and addresses?
Most perplexing were the deliveries of imported baseballs from Port Everglades and the Lauderdale airport. After all, baseball was the National Pastime, the Great American Game. Surely baseballs would bear the stamp made in the usa.
"Hey, hon," Roger called to his wife, "you know that girlfriend of yours who works in the main Broward Library. The lady with the big teeth."
"You talking about Claire?" Estelle said. "Her teeth aren't so big. She's just got a lot of them is all."
"I guess. Well, will you give her a call and ask if she can look up where baseballs are made. Tell her I need the information as part of a crucial law enforcement investigation."
"Oh sure," Estelle said. "Baseballs are real crucial."
But she went into the living room to make the call, leaving Roger reading his notes in the kitchen, trying to see if he had missed anything.
Estelle came back in a half-hour. "Claire has a cold," she reported. "She's afraid it might be the flu."
"That's a shame," Fortescue said. "Did she say she'd look up where baseballs are made?"
"She didn't have to look it up," Estelle said. "She knew right off. Most baseballs are made in Haiti."
Roger stared at her. "Haiti?" he said. "That's amazing."
20
Rita arrived with a chilled bottle of premixed strawberry daiquiris and two plastic glasses. Harker took a blanket from his bed, and they went down to the beach. They sat close together, knees drawn up. It was a cool night, but there was no wind and there were so many stars that the cloudless sky looked as if it had been ordered from Tiffany's.
"How come you got out tonight?" Tony asked. "Don't tell me he's playing poker again."
"No," she said, "he told me he had a business conference. I said maybe I'd stop by the Palace and have a drink with the gang, but David said no one would be there. So I guess he's meeting with the other sharks."
"You know that check scam at the Crescent Bank?" Harker said. "Well, you're off the hook. There's no case against Rathbone. No evidence."
He told her how the Treasury check had disintegrated.