Fatal Decree (10 page)

But, this deal could come off the rails without any reason. A dozen years before, one of his clients had given him ten million dollars to invest. He was told that this would be long term, that there was no reason to hurry the money through the laundering process, because it would be years before the owner of the money needed it. The controller invested the funds and sent the investor regular reports showing how wisely he had grown the
money. The reports showed that the controller took his percentage and made the money grow, so that the client was satisfied that in twelve years the ten million had become almost thirty million.

Now it was time to start moving the money out of the account. His instructions had been explicit and had come from the same client who had given him the money, a man named Arturo Fuentes, who was also known as the crazy don. The controller had no illusions about Fuentes. The man ran one of the biggest drug cartels in the region. He was based in Puerto Rico and ran smuggling operations into the mainland United States through Florida and Mexico. He was absolutely ruthless and unforgiving. Men had died terrible deaths because they’d made a small mistake in carrying out the crazy don’s orders.

The controller thought Fuentes was probably insane. He seemed to take pride in the fear he induced in his subordinates, and he made a point of regularly killing one of his managers chosen at random. Each of the men who reported to Fuentes knew that he could be next, that he might be the one chosen for execution. But, each of the managers also knew that if he tried to leave the cartel, he would invite not only his own painful death, but the death of his family members out to the second degree.

The controller was, thankfully, not one of the managers. He stood outside the organizational chart, hidden in his Miami office, quietly moving money. He became well known in Miami social circles and had a number of legitimate clients drawn from the moneyed layer of South Florida society who would have pulled their funds and run if there had ever been a hint of scandal attached to the profits they made.

The controller was accustomed to dealing with the insane drug dealers, greedy businessmen, and trust fund babies. He was not used to dealing with the scum the crazy don had now ordered him to support. In his mind, the controller heard the faint tolling of his own funeral bells. Maybe it was time for him to pull the plug and put into operation the escape plan he had so painstakingly built over the past thirty years. Maybe it was time to go.

“When did you get in?” I asked Logan.

“Just now,” he said. “Why do we have a federal prosecutor and the local fuzz here? You guys get caught running drugs?”

“Hello, Logan,” said David. “I wondered when you’d turn up.”

“Just got back on the island,” Logan said. “A little down time in Key West with my woman.”

“You look a little ragged,” said Jock. “Too much partying?”

“There ain’t no such thing as too much partying,” said Logan. He looked at J.D. “How’re you, dollface?”

“That’s it,” she said. “I’m going to shoot him.”

Logan laughed. “Tell me what you all are up to.”

David stood. “They can fill you in, Logan. I’ve got to be getting back to Tampa. Good to see you guys. You too, J.D.”

“I’ll see you out,” I said, and followed him to the street.

“David,” I said, as we reached his car, “if you get any hint of anything that might have something to do with this mess, let me know. J.D.’s tough, but somebody’s after her. Maybe if we use Jock’s resources and yours we can figure out how to stop this.”

“Count on it. It’ll be off the record, but you’ll know everything I know.”

We shook hands, and he drove away.

When I got back to the house, Jock and J.D. were bringing Logan up to date on the last few days. He sat quietly, taking it all in. When they finished, he said, “Matt, it’s time for a little Scotch.”

“Anybody else?” I asked.

J.D. looked at her watch and shook her head. “It’s almost four. I’ve
got to get back to the station and catch up on some paperwork. Why don’t I meet you guys at Tiny’s about five thirty?”

And that’s what we did. Logan called his girlfriend, Marie Phillips, and she got to Tiny’s just as J.D. pulled into the lot. A quiet evening on the island, a few drinks with friends at Tiny’s, a few more at Pattigeorge’s, and a finale at the Haye Loft with pizza and beer. Jock ordered the coconut cream pie for dessert, the one he always said was almost as good as sex, and which therefore made it the world’s second-best treat.

As I drifted off to sleep, I hoped that the rhythms of the island were re-asserting themselves, that maybe we were wrong and the deaths and turmoil of the last few days were over, that the sun would come up on Tuesday morning and our key would resume its lethargic existence, lulling those of us lucky enough to live on its shores into the near somnolence that defined our existence. I would not have slept so well had I known that the sunrise would bring death to an innocent and peril to my friends and change perceptibly the placid view we had of our island sanctuary.

Tuesday morning. The strains of
The Girl from Ipanema
roused me from a deep sleep. The anemic light of a false dawn was seeping through my bedroom windows. I looked at the clock on my bedside table as I reached for the phone: 6:30.

“Morning, J.D.,” I said.

“Sorry to wake you, Matt. Sharkey just called. There’s another body.”

“Where?”

“Leffis Key. I’m on my way there.”

“Jock and I’ll meet you. Where’ll you be?”

“Just come down the path. You can’t miss us.”

I woke Jock, brushed my teeth, and threw water on my face. We took my car and stopped for coffee to-go at the Village Deli that shared a parking lot with Tiny’s. We crossed the Longboat Pass Bridge and turned into the parking lot of the Leffis Key Preserve, nestled on the bayside near the southern tip of Anna Maria Island. A sand path ran from the parking lot toward the bay. A few hundred feet east of the parking lot the path forked, with each trail leading to a boardwalk that wound through stands of dogwood, fig, southern red cedar, green buttonwood, sea grape, and other plants, skirting the water in numerous places.

Longboat Key and Bradenton Beach police cruisers were in the parking lot. I saw J.D.’s Camry nosed in against a sand dune. Jock and I started for the path and were stopped by a cop in a Bradenton Beach uniform.

“Sorry, sir. The key is closed for now. You’ll have to go back.”

“I’m Matt Royal,” I said, “and this is Jock Algren. We’re supposed to meet Detective Duncan.”

“I’ll have to check, sir,” he said, and pulled his radio mic from the Velcro tab on his shoulder. The conversation was short. “Go on down the path, Mr. Royal. You’ll run into them.”

I thanked the officer, and Jock and I followed the path until we came to the fork. A half-dozen uniformed officers from both forces were standing around, eerily quiet, respectful of the dead woman who had brought them to this place. J.D. and a Bradenton Beach police lieutenant were at the edge of the knot of uniforms, talking softly. I could see beyond them to a stunted tree that stood at the apex of the fork in the path. A dead woman was propped against the tree, hands folded demurely in her lap. She was middle aged, possibly older, blonde hair that was two shades too bright to be natural, a thinness bordering on emaciation, tattoos on her arms and shoulders. She was nude and a rope snaked around her torso holding her to the trunk of the tree.

I recognized the three Longboat Key officers as men who would have been on the night shift, their tour coming to an end. Steve Carey was standing alone a couple of yards from the other officers. He nodded as Jock and I came up. “Morning, Steve,” I said. “Know anything yet?”

“No. J.D. just got here. We’re waiting for the forensic guys.”

J.D. saw us and walked over. I handed her the cup of coffee I’d brought, knowing she’d need it. She smiled. “Thanks, Matt.”

“Is it the same M.O.?” asked Jock.

“It is,” J.D. said. “Shot in the back of the head, small caliber slug, no exit wound.”

“And the whale tail earring?”

“Yeah. And the initials in the back of her neck.”

“I guess I did shoot the wrong man on Saturday,” said Jock. “Qualman was just a hired gun.”

J.D. shook her head. “The man you shot was trying to kill me, Jock. But I don’t understand your argument. If Qualman didn’t kill Nell Alexander, why did he have her BMW?”

“I think he killed Nell,” said Jock, “but he was just the messenger. I think whoever is running this show may be after you, and Nell was just a random kill. Something to get your attention, to draw you toward the Miami killings.”

Steve Carey had been looking toward the victim as we talked. I wasn’t paying any attention until I heard him yell, “Hey.”

I looked up in time to see him knocked to the ground, blood pouring from his left shoulder. In the same instant, I heard the crack of a rifle coming from the east, farther down the sand track that formed the southern fork in the path. Everyone hit the ground, a trained response to the sound of gunfire. J.D. was already moving toward Steve, and I had risen to my knee, pistol drawn, beginning to point toward the sound of the rifle, when it cracked again. Anyone who has been in combat, and I have, knows the sound of a round whizzing near your head. That sound took me back to the ground. In the second I was on my knee, I had seen two men in the distance, perhaps a hundred feet away at the point where the southern fork intersected with a boardwalk that ran down to a viewing platform at the water’s edge.

J.D. was next to Steve, who had not moved since he hit the ground. “He’s breathing,” she shouted. “We’ve got to get that sniper.”

Cops were coming alive now, firing from their prone positions. Jock was moving at a crouch through the trees and bushes that bordered the path. Seconds had passed since the first shot and Jock hadn’t gotten very far. The rifle fire had stopped, and I could see only one man on the path. He was holding a weapon, bringing it into firing position.

A hail of automatic fire came our way. It was high and I could hear the slugs ripping through the foliage above us. Everybody put their heads down again. No one wanted to be standing if the shooter brought the muzzle lower. He ripped off a fusillade and then disappeared. I stood, as did a couple of the other cops. The man stepped back into the path and fired again, a short burst, high. We went back to the ground. Jock hadn’t moved. He was still in the foliage, but only a few feet down the path. The man ducked toward the boardwalk, and seconds later, reappeared and let go another short burst.

The shooter disappeared again, and this time, he stayed gone. Nobody moved for a minute or so. We didn’t know if he was coming back. Jock moved a few feet down the path, still in the bushes. Another minute passed, and then I heard the roar of high-powered marine engines coming from the bay to the south of us where a sheltered anchorage lay.

Jock was moving at a run along the path. I got to my feet and followed. J.D. was ordering somebody to call for an ambulance. I wasn’t sure the guy with the gun was gone, and I ran on the edge of the sand, ready to jump into the bushes that lined the path if he showed again.

Jock was only two or three yards ahead of me when he reached the intersection. He turned right toward the boardwalk and I followed. We got to the viewing platform in time to watch a go-fast boat receding in the distance, her wake roiling the three sailboats anchored in the cove. The boat cleared the anchorage and turned right into Longboat Pass heading at high speed for the open Gulf of Mexico.

We ran back toward the fork and met some of the officers coming our way. “They’re gone,” I said. “They were in a blue go-fast boat with white topsides, possibly a Fountain, thirty-five feet in length, center console, headed out Longboat Pass.”

One of the officers said, “I’ve got this,” and began speaking into his mic, putting out the word to the Coast Guard and the marine patrols from the various law enforcement agencies. He also asked for a helicopter. I didn’t think it would do much good. That boat could run better than seventy miles per hour, and the Gulf had been flat when we crossed the Longboat Pass Bridge a few minutes before. The boat would be into Tampa Bay in a few minutes.

Steve was awake when we got back to the fork. He was in pain, but he only grimaced. “You okay, buddy?” I asked.

“I will be. I think. Matt, lean down here.” I did and he whispered something I didn’t hear. I shook my head. “Closer,” he said. And when I was close enough for him to whisper into my ear, he said, “You take care of J.D. She’s not as tough as she thinks she is, and I’m pretty sure that round in my shoulder was meant for her.”

It was nearing midnight, a time when the predators stalk their prey and death comes quickly to the unwary. Jeff Worthington was not pretending to be a lawyer on this dark Monday evening. He was carrying out the orders of the controller. Sort of.

The controller had saddled him with a cretin named Steiffel, a man Jeff had known in prison. If Steiffel had a first name, Jeff had never heard it. Steiffel was big and slow and stupid, but the controller had been told that he was an expert with a sniper rifle, that he’d been trained by the Marines before he ran afoul of the law. Jeff didn’t believe it, but there wasn’t much he could do about it.

Steiffel had acquired a car earlier in the afternoon by simply taking the airport shuttle bus to Tampa International and stealing a vehicle from the long-term parking lot. He’d driven back to Bradenton and was parked in the parking lot of a bar on Cortez Road waiting for Jeff to call with instructions.

Jeff parked his Mercedes in the lot of a small strip mall in West Bradenton and walked three blocks to an all-night Walmart store’s parking lot. He stood in the shadows of the store overhang and watched a Hispanic couple leave an older Nissan in the lot and trudge into the store. In two minutes, Jeff was in the car, hot-wired it, and drove to a dark section of Bradenton that catered to the Mexicans who were employed by the landscape companies that trimmed the yards of rich people.