“Call Andres,” she said to King. “Tell him I don’t need him in Tampa anymore and to get his ass up here.” She looked at Nolan. “You’re with me.”
Together they headed toward the back room where Becker was locked away. It was time to find out what the son of a bitch knew.
CHAPTER 8
Orlando’s son, Garrett, was still at school, so the only people home when she and Quinn entered were Mr. and Mrs. Vu, the Vietnamese couple who took care of the household and watched Garrett when Orlando was away.
“Welcome home, Jonathan,” Mr. Vu said.
“You look hungry,” the man’s wife noted. “I make pho special for you. Come, come.” She motioned for Quinn and Orlando to follow her to the kitchen.
“Maybe later,” Orlando told her. “We have some work we need to do so we’ll be up in the office.”
“But he just fly a long trip,” Mrs. Vu said.
“No problem,” Mr. Vu told his wife. “You can bring to them.”
While Mrs. Vu looked annoyed, she made no further argument and headed toward the back of the house, her husband following.
Quinn and Orlando went upstairs to the room Orlando used as an office at the front of the shotgun house. Where one desk had once been, there were now two. Quinn pulled his chair close to Orlando’s as she set down her phone and played the message through the speaker.
“Orlando, it’s me,” Abraham said. Though he was trying to sound calm, there was an urgency in his voice. “I need your help. Just a little research so it should be easy. It’s time sensitive, though. I really need you to call me back as soon as you get this. Thanks. I’ll talk to you soon.”
Quinn frowned. “He didn’t come out of retirement, did he?”
“Not that I’m aware of.”
She tapped CALL BACK. The first ring didn’t even finish before Abraham answered. “Hello?”
“You called?” she said.
“Thank God. I was starting to think that maybe you didn’t get my message.”
“I’ve got Quinn here with me.”
A beat. “Johnny?”
Only two people had ever called Quinn that. The other was dead. But while his mentor Durrie usually had a sneer in his voice when he’d said it, Abraham had always used the name with respect.
“Hello, Abraham,” Quinn said.
“What’s this about needing some help?” Orlando asked.
“I, um, well, I’m not sure if, um…” Abraham’s voice trailed off.
“Why don’t you just tell me what’s going on?”
“I was kind of thinking I could talk to you alone.”
“Alone?” she said. “You know I’ll tell Quinn whatever you tell me.”
“Even if I ask that you keep it to yourself?”
“Yes,” she said without hesitating.
“It’s okay,” Quinn said, rising from his chair. “I don’t want to make you uncomfortable. I’ll step out for a minute.”
“If she’s going to tell you anyway, don’t bother,” Abraham grumbled.
Quinn exchanged a look with Orlando. Abraham didn’t usually get upset easily.
“Seriously,” Quinn said, “if it’s going to be a problem, then we can—”
“No, no, it’s fine.” Abraham paused and took a deep breath. “Really, it’s fine. I just…” He fell silent again.
“Abraham?” Orlando said.
Nothing for a moment, then, “I need a little help tracking a vehicle.”
“Please tell me you haven’t taken on a job,” she said.
“Of course not.”
“So you want me to track this car down for fun?”
“I want you to track it down because I need to know where it went.”
“Why?”
He didn’t answer.
“Okay,” she said. “I guess I could look it up. Do you have a plate number?”
“I could look up a plate number myself. What I need to figure out is what route it took last night.”
“Took, as in past tense?”
“Yes.”
Looking more confused than ever, she said, “I’m not sure how you’re expecting me to do that. If you’re thinking satellite footage, that’s going to be time consuming and possibly fruitless.”
“No, I don’t mean satellite footage,” Abraham said, his exasperation leaking through again. “The vehicle I’m interested in has a transponder.”
“Oh,” she said. “Sure, if it has a transponder, that’s different. Are we talking a big rig?”
“It is not a big rig.”
“Then what?”
“A vehicle I’m trying to find.”
Orlando glanced at Quinn, silently asking, “What the hell?” Since he was thinking the same thing, all he could do was shrug.
“Do you at least have the transponder ID?” she asked.
“Of course I do.” He read off a number. “Can you track it?”
“It would help if I knew where I’m supposed to be looking, and, if possible, a more precise time frame than just last night.”
“Tampa, Florida, eleven twenty p.m. onward.”
“Is that where you are? Tampa?”
No response.
She frowned. “Abraham, what’s going on?
“Nothing. This is a small matter, that’s all. Something for a friend.”
“So you are working a job.”
“A favor only. Listen, if you don’t want—”
“Relax,” she said. “Why don’t you let me look into this and call you back, okay?”
“You won’t be long, will you?” he asked. “I need to know right away.”
“I’ll call you as soon as I can.”
Orlando hung up and stared out the window, lost in thought.
Quinn was considering breaking the silence when a knock on the door did it for him.
Orlando made no indication she’d respond, so he said, “Yes?”
“May we come in?” Mr. Vu asked.
“Please.”
Mrs. Vu came first, carrying a tray holding two steaming bowls of pho, and her husband was right behind her with glasses of her homemade lemonade.
“Thank you,” Quinn told them as they set the meal on the desk.
“If you want more, let us know. We bring up,” Mrs. Vu said.
With that, the couple left and pulled the door closed behind them.
Whether it was the click of the lock or the aroma of the pho, Orlando finally pulled herself from her trance. Without a word, she woke up her computer and began working. Knowing it was best not to disturb her, Quinn started in on his soup. It was as delicious as ever. Mrs. Vu had even added the exact amount of Sriracha sauce he liked.
“Well, this is not what I expected,” she said several moments later. “Turns out Abraham’s mysterious vehicle is an ambulance.”
Being in mid-bite, Quinn could only respond with a grunt.
She opened another program and plugged in the transponder number. The computer took nearly fifteen seconds to gather the data and display it in list form. After studying the results, Orlando clicked on one of the addresses and a map opened. She nodded to herself, then performed the task again with a different address.
“Huh,” she said.
“What?” Quinn asked.
“Looks like this ambulance only went on one trip last night, starting at a place called the Azure Waves Hotel.”
“Where did it go?” he asked.
She motioned for him to be quiet, so he dipped his chopsticks back into the pho, this time coming up with a tasty-looking piece of beef.
Finally, Orlando leaned back. “Well, they didn’t stay in town.”
“Where did they go?” he asked between chews.
“Mississippi.”
Quinn raised an eyebrow. “That’s a long way from Tampa.”
“It is,” she agreed. “Looks like they stopped at a private home in a town called Moss Point.”
Quinn leaned over so he could see the map. There were only four states in the US he had never been to. Mississippi was one of them. According to the map, Moss Point was in the narrow tab of land that touched the Gulf of Mexico at the southern end of the state, only a few miles from Alabama.