Luke Palmer
NINETY-NINE
A week passed as the hunt for Pablo Gonzales intensified. Federal agents shadowed me from a distance. They tried to blend in, but were as obvious as clouds floating overhead. I swam in the ocean at night, my arm healing well. Elizabeth spent her days reading and sequestered on the sailboat in Cedar Key. I called her daily.
I took a seat at a corner table in the Tiki Bar and waited to have breakfast with Dave. Under the paddle fans, two fishermen sat at the bar. A noisy family of tourists ordered breakfast a half dozen tables away from me. At the far side of the restaurant, a man dressed in a long sleeve denim shirt and shorts, sat alone, read the paper and tried his federal best to remain innocuous.
Dave pulled up a chair, and I told him about Palmer’s letter. He asked, “Are you going back in the forest to hunt for it?”
“Not now, not yet.” I looked in the direction of the agent. “Too many shadows trying to follow me.”
“They’re trying to catch some of Gonzales’ dogs, seize them and hope to be lead back to Pablo.”
“Their presence is having the opposite effect. Do me a favor and call whomever you still know at Langley or Quantico. Tell them to pull back their surveillance. They want to catch Gonzales’ dogs, but the pack won’t come around if there’s a constant federal presence.”
“I’ll do what I can. Not many of my colleagues left there anymore. There’s one, and he’s the guy you need now. Cal Thorpe.”
“Thorpe is good, but at this point he would get in the way. I have a plan and for the first step at least, I can’t include him.”
Kim Davis, her face tanned and radiant, stepped up to the table to take our breakfast orders. After we ordered, she folded her arms across her breasts and said, “Nick told me they almost sank his boat with a rifle shot through his bilge. The whole marina’s been upside down talking about this. Did they catch that Mexican drug lord?”
Dave said, “He’s actually Argentinean, he moved his operation to Mexico years ago. Far as we know, he’s still at large.”
“Sean, does this mean you’re not safe?”
“I’ll be fine.”
She looked up as a family entered and took seats at a table. Her eyes dropped back to mine. “You need to go wherever Joe Billie goes. Apparently, nobody can ever find him unless he wants to be found.”
I smiled. “You have a good point.”
“I’ll turn in your orders.”
When she left, Dave said, “Word I hear is they believe Gonzales is deep in Mexico City. They’re not sure if he managed to smuggle his nephew’s body out of the country. For all we know, it could be iced down on a container ship bound for Cozumel or stored in some refrigerated unit around Tampa Bay.”
“It’s amazing that no one knows anything. These people can’t just vanish into thin air.”
“I do know there’s a directive from the White House to bring in Gonzales, no matter what it takes. We have some of our best moving through Mexico right now, turning over rocks, kicking in doors and generally using the same tactics Gonzales has used as we hunt him down.”
“They won’t find him that way. His money buys the best protection — silence.”
“Somebody will talk, they always do.”
“I’ll try to draw out Gonzales.”
“What are you going to do, Sean?”
“We talked about using me as bait. Now, I think I know how to set the hook.”
ONE HUNDRED
Two nights later, I knew Dave still had some clout in DC. I could actually feel the federal presence lift like fog dissipating. I walked Max on the grass near the marina parking lot before coming back down L dock toward Jupiter, listening to the boats in the distance and the call of a laughing gull flying overhead. The scent of lemon shrimp and snook cooking over charcoal was alluring.
I fed Max, dressed in black jeans and a long sleeve dark shirt and wedged the Glock under my belt. I knew Gonzales was not going to stop hunting me. For psychos like him, revenge had no expiration date.
I thought of Elizabeth hiding in Cedar Key, thought of Molly and Mark buried under the Florida sand, thought of Nicole Davenport who wore fairy wings one midsummer’s night, her fantasy ending in a monstrous rape and death. I could see Luke Palmer’s bloated neck and face as blowflies crawled in his open mouth and nose. Gonzales wanted revenge for his nephew, regardless that he was killed because he was about to kill, again. He could rot in hell. Their deaths and that of the others, all innocent, demanded justice.
I picked up Max and rubbed her head. “You’ll be staying on Dave’s boat for the night, okay? Maybe you can get in some winks between his snores.” I set her down and she trotted toward the salon’s sliding glass doors. “Okay, let’s go to Uncle Dave’s.”
Max quickly made herself at home on Gibraltar, jumping up onto Dave’s couch. He sipped from a glass of red wine, leaning back from his computer screen, his bifocals reflecting the pop of revolving light from the lighthouse. “You won’t get any second chances out there. You know that…”
I nodded and said, “It’s time to fish.”
I drove my jeep north to Daytona Beach, parked in a pool hall lot, and begin walking. I headed to the strip, the guttural rumble of Harleys bouncing off the biker bars and beachfront motels. I watched cars stopped at a traffic light, assuming one of the cars was a tail. A shirtless man, hair matted down from dirt and sweat, eyes sunken in his narrow face, stood at one corner holding a cardboard sign that read: Hungry
College kids on spring break, bikers on permanent break, tourists and conventioneers crisscrossed each other as the traffic lights changed. Each group marched with its own agenda, most of the crowd seeking the hedonism promised by the ‘world’s most famous beach.’
I walked past a strip joint as a half dozen college men stood outside and counted dollars. “Why do they make you pay a friggin’ cover charge?” one of them asked, his voice drowned out when two businessmen opened the club’s door, the grinding music blasting onto Ocean Drive. I passed a tattoo parlor, its bluish light spilling from the window framing a teenage girl who was trying to look brave while a bearded artist, cigarette dangling from his lips, injected ink into a spot just above the crack in her butt.
In the distance, I could hear an eighteen wheeler shifting gears to cross the Broadway Bridge over the Halifax River. I continued walking, scanning each car as it passed, looking at the tops of high-rise condos, taking in each corner, and crossing streets with people who smelled of sun block, reefer and stale beer.
I walked for more than an hour, up Ocean Drive and back down the strip and the boardwalk. I couldn’t detect anyone following me. Maybe Gonzales had decided to call off his troops. Maybe he no longer had a bounty on my head, and all was forgiven in the death of Izzy. Maybe I’d hit the lotto.
Just as the traffic light changed to green, a dark Chrysler switched lanes, pulled forward and passed me. Through the back window, I could see the driver look in his rearview mirror. He spoke to the other man in the front seat. It didn’t look like there was anyone in the back seat. The driver tapped his brakes once approaching the next block and turning right.
Bingo. I knew they’d been following me, now I’d give them the opportunity to come a little closer. I stood on the street corner, allowing them time to circle the block. I heard a siren somewhere in the mosaic of neon, music and the thunder of motorcycles.