A Dark and Lonely Place (54 page)

He heard nothing from Leon, though Gram seemed pleased that they expected company. They ate dinner and chatted. She puttered with Laura in the kitchen for a bit, then returned to her favorite chair. They watched the news and part of a Marlins game, as John cleaned their guns and reloaded them with fresh ammunition. He wore his in a shoulder holster he’d worn on the job and covered it with a loose sports shirt over his T-shirt. Just after dark, he thought he saw a flash of light in the woods between the house and the road. He doused the living room lights, drew his gun, and nudged the front door open with his foot.

“Is this how you normally greet visitors, John?” Gram asked from her chair in the dark.

“No, ma’am,” he said.

“Good,” she said. “If it was, I expect you wouldn’t have many.”

He heard the car before he saw it. A white Ford Crown Vic, the same model used by Miami police, other law enforcement agencies, and cab companies, emerged like a ghost from the dark and crunched slowly across the gravel toward the house. This was no cab. Gun in hand, John hit Leon’s number on the cell phone.

“Where you at, buddy?”

“If we’re at the right place, we should be closing in on your front door,” Leon said. “Wanted to stay under the radar, so we killed the lights as we left the main road. Dark as hell out here. I miss downtown already.”

“How many of you?”

“Just us two, Johnny. We’re getting outta the car now. We’d appreciate it if you don’t shoot at us. Guns give us the jitters.” He and his companion laughed.

John watched Leon and a tall, lean, middle-aged man exit the car. The stranger wore blue jeans and a Cubavera. He carried a briefcase.

John turned the house lights back on, reholstered his gun, and greeted them at the door. Leon hugged him for the first time, his grip surprisingly strong. “Sorry about your brother, Johnny. Robby was a good man. A true warrior. Somebody you always want on your side.”

Leon kissed Laura’s upturned cheek, then turned to introduce his companion. “This here’s my colleague, Arthur Bass.”

“Colleague?” John extended his hand. He liked Bass on sight, something about his clear gray eyes, his body language, and his command of the room. Bass had a strong jaw and a firm handshake. They reminded him of someone he couldn’t remember.

“Heard lots about you, John. Thought you were gonna mess up our operation for a while. Turns out we have more in common than I thought.”

“Place smells great.” Leon sniffed the air with a hungry look.

Gram gave Laura a stare that asked if she’d forgotten her southern hospitality. “Have you eaten?” Laura asked the visitors.

“Not really,” Art said. “We’re on serious business and had to get here in a hurry.”

“How’s a roast beef sandwich sound?” Their eyes lit up.

“Mayo or red horseradish?”

“Bless you, girl,” Leon said with a sigh. “Both, please.”

“Exactly what I was gonna say,” Art told her.

As Laura toasted onion rolls in the kitchen, John asked, “What business, Leon? Exactly what business are you in?”

“I’m his boss,” Art said. “His name isn’t Leon, and he’s been working undercover for us for more than eighteen months investigating gunrunning and money laundering in South Florida.”

“And who is us?” John’s eyebrows rose.

Art shrugged. “ATF—Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Leon’s good. We thought he’d wandered off track with you, but he was right on the mark, as usual. He recently gave us a fella in Miami with warehouses full of sophisticated weaponry he’s desperate to unload. His original buyer, from the Middle East, didn’t show. Ron Jon Eagle was the broker. His murder killed the deal. He’d guaranteed the buyer Miami Police protection. The buyer backed off when he read the newspapers and saw that Eagle couldn’t even protect himself.

“Eagle and the cops, both city and county, that he participated with in all sorts of illegal operations, had a falling out.” Bass paused, took a bite from the sandwich Laura had placed in front of him, closed his eyes, and sighed aloud.

Leon had already worked his way through half his own sandwich.

“The cops were fine,” Bass said, “with protecting and assisting in the smuggling and sale of counterfeit cigarettes and luxury watches, using the bank accounts and facilities of the tribe’s gambling operation to launder money for drug cartels in Colombia and Mexico, running prostitution rings with underage girls, and the delivery and distribution of illegal drugs, but, God bless America, they drew the line at selling weapons to terrorists. When they opted out, Eagle threatened them. The man had a thing about getting even. They’d done too much business together, and he knew too much.

“From the get-go, Leon identified you as the only Miami cop he knew for sure was not in Eagle’s pocket. You see where I’m going with
this, John? While some of us thought you’d distracted Leon from his mission, you actually accelerated the case we wanted to make all along.” He patted his mouth with a napkin and drank some of his sweet tea.

“Leon says you’ve got documentation that’ll back up your case.” The ATF supervisor nodded toward his briefcase. “We have enough to back up ours. If you show us yours, we’ll show you ours and combine forces. We can broaden the hell outta this thing. You’ll be our star witness for the prosecution, and we’ll clean out that rat’s nest of a department once and for all.”

“It’s never once and for all.” John sighed and smiled at Laura. “It’s cyclical; it’ll happen again.”

“Well,” Art said, “hopefully not in our lifetime.”

John glanced at Gram, nodding in her chair. “She just said this morning that the more things change, the more they remain the same. That’s true.”

“We can offer you protection—”

Gram’s eyes suddenly opened, fixed like arrows on the door. Startled, John turned to look. Too late. In that instant he realized that he had never asked Gram why the woman who came to help her each day happened to take this one off.

The locked door burst open with such force that it ripped out half the wooden door frame. A man stepped through it wearing a ski mask and carrying a MAC-10 automatic weapon. Despite the mask, he looked familiar.

“Freeze!” he demanded. “Nobody move, or I’ll waste you all right here, right now. Be my guest. Hello, Ashley,” he said.

“Myerson,” John said.

“Who are these jokers?” Lt. Mac Myerson gestured with his gun and looked surprised. Clearly he hadn’t expected Leon and Art. He squinted at Leon. “Do I know you?”

Leon shook his head.

“I know I’ve seen you around someplace. Doesn’t matter,” the lieutenant said. He brandished the weapon, his finger on the trigger, and demanded they drop their guns onto the carpet.

When John hesitated, Myerson swung the weapon toward Laura’s head. She and John exchanged an anguished look as he and Bass slowly complied. Myerson kicked both guns into a corner.

“Who are you?” Gram rose half out of her chair. “Look what you did to my front door! Put that gun away and get out of my house!”

“Sit down and shut up, old lady!” He waved the gun in her direction.

She sat down stiffly in her rocker, her eyes angry.

“Leave her alone!” Laura shouted and moved toward her.

“Stop right there!” the gunman said. “Don’t move! You either,” he told John.

“She’s more than a hundred years old!” Laura said. “She doesn’t know anything about all this!”

“Too bad, pretty girl. Too bad for all of you. I don’t care who the hell, or how old, you are. You’re in the wrong place with the wrong person.” He turned to John. “Any hired gun coulda been sent to waste you. But you caused us so much grief, you self-righteous son of a bitch, we decided you had to know who killed you, that it was us.

“So okay, there’s five of ya.” He shrugged. “So what? Wouldn’t cause a ripple in Miami. When they hear it was you, it’ll be a relief.” He leveled his gun at John.

“No,”
Laura cried.

“It’s all right,” John said.

“Or”—Myerson grinned and aimed the gun at Laura—“wanna see the girlfriend go first? Sounds like a plan to me.”

The boom shook the room like an explosion. It rattled dishes on the table. The muzzle flash blinded them. The concussion made their ears ring. And the force of the blast hurled the lieutenant against the wall amid a shower of blood. He slowly slid down to the floor, leaving parts of his internal organs stuck to the wallpaper.

Gram’s favorite chair still rocked gently. It was empty. She stood in front of it, holding her late husband’s smoking twelve-gauge Remington shotgun.

“Another John Ashley is not gonna die on my watch,” she said, “not if I can help it.” She tottered a bit, took a deep breath, stood up straight, then sat back down in her rocker and surveyed the room.

“Now, look at that mess,” she said, annoyed.

“It’s okay,” Laura said. “It’ll be okay.”

“Nice shooting, Gram.” John gently took the shotgun from her hands.

“No kidding,” Bass said, as they all breathed a collective sigh of relief.

“It runs in the family,” Gram said.

“I love these women!” Leon said passionately.

Bass and John had already retrieved their own weapons. “Let’s see who else is here,” John said. “Laura, take Gram into the pantry and close the door.”

Before she even helped Gram to her feet, the broken door, half-hanging from its hinges, was kicked open by one of the two marginal homicide detectives who had planted evidence to frame John after the motel shooting.

“Everybody freeze,” he cried, his Glock automatic in both hands, eyes darting. He took in the mess, including what appeared to be his lieutenant’s liver slowly dripping down to the carpet. His eyes widened and focused on John. “Drop it!” he shouted.

John obliged, dropped the shotgun, and came up with his revolver. “Drop your weapon now,” John said, “or I will kill you.”

The detective, eyes still wide, swallowed hard, dropped his weapon, raised his hands, turned around, and dropped to his knees. He knew the drill.

John handed the detective’s gun to Leon. “Shoot him if he moves,” he said.

“With pleasure,” Leon said enthusiastically.

John and Art hit the porch in time to see two men in a black Chevrolet Suburban back down the lane at high speed.

“Don’t chase ’em!” Art stopped John and punched 911 into his phone. “Let the locals get ’em.”

And they did. Both were in custody in less than twenty minutes.

“Did you know that Gram had the shotgun?” John asked Laura.

She shrugged. “She’s always kept it right there, under the afghan. It belonged to my great-granddaddy.”

“He had a still in the woods back behind the house,” Gram explained. “That runs in the family too, darlin’.”

“I guess it does,” Laura whispered tearfully.

John called Joel Hirschhorn an hour later.

“Hey, John. Doug McCann, FBI, is trying to reach you,” the lawyer said. “Nice guy. We had a long conversation. They want you to come
in; they’re talking immunity. They need you to testify. And my guy at Justice wants to meet you. They’re interested in a long list of civil rights violations by the local police, including the deaths of prisoners and suspects. The feds are fighting over you, John. They want to clean up the mess down here and need your help. Any deals we make include Laura, of course.”

“I’ll have to think about it and talk to her,” John said.

“You’re in demand, John. Big changes are coming to this city. Thanks to you, they’re putting it all together,” his lawyer said. “Jeff Burnside, the Channel Six reporter, says you owe him an exclusive. He taped an interview with me a few hours ago. They’re airing a major exposé tomorrow night. How quick,” Joel asked, “can you get to my office? The US attorney for the Southern District is on the other line. Wants to shake your hand.”

“We were here first, John,” said Art Bass of the ATF.

“Your lawyer’s right,” Leon said later. “This is gonna be big. Bigger than anything Miami’s ever seen before and ever will again.”

John and Laura exchanged a secret smile. “I wouldn’t be too sure about that,” he said.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I
am grateful, as always, for all the heroes present and past: Miami assistant police chief Philip Doherty, Miami-Dade Police homicide major Raul Diaz, Miami sergeant and marine law enforcement officer Art Serig, all now retired, and fallen hero Miami police officer John Rhine-hart Riblet, killed in the line of duty on Wednesday, June 2, 1915.

Special thanks to another hero, Dr. Sander Dubovy, associate professor of ophthalmology and pathology at Miami’s Bascom Palmer Eye Institute, and as usual to criminal defense attorney Joel Hirshhorn, and my pastor, the Rev. Garth R. Thompson, who try their best to keep me on the straight and narrow. When they can’t, my getaway drivers, the redheads: Marilyn Lane, Joy Gellately, and Mimi Gadinsky save the day.

I will always be indebted to Dr. Stephen J. Nelson, one of the world’s best pathologists and chief medical examiner for the 10th District of Florida. The usual suspects include the ever creative and inspirational Miami Beach Community Church Writers Group: the romantic Bill and Mitzi Richardson, the elusive Edgar Bryant, poet and ace photographer Robert Williams, the astonishing Jeffrey Rand, and the ever-evolving T. W. Stone. I could not have written this without the generous help of Jorge Zamanillo, who specializes in yesterday, today, and tomorrow as vice president of expansion at HistoryMiami.

I owe a special debt to writers Ada Coats Williams and the late Hix C. Stuart, who explored the notorious, bullet-riddled exploits of Florida’s best-known outlaws. Stuart actually interviewed John Ashley live, in the 1920s. Wish I could have been there! The hero of Morningside, Elvis Cruz, was generous with his time and expertise, and thank you, as always, to
The Miami Herald,
especially Monica Leal, keeper of the morgue, and Andrea Torres, ace reporter, friend, and true sister. Master musicians Rick and Ann Stewart and that most stirring of all tenors, Dale Kitchell, played major roles, as did computer geniuses Bill Swift
and Mike Haines. My editor Mitchell Ivers; my agent Michael Congdon; the gloriously brilliant Katie Grimm; Mara Lurie and James Walsh; and my longtime conspirators, Ann Lee Hughes, Sesquipedalians Patricia Keen, Dr. Ferdie Pacheco, Luisita Pacheco, Al Alschuler, and friend Robert M. Wasserman, who shares my love of history and justice, and last, but by no means least, T. Michael Smith, my partner in crime.