Bitter Legacy: A Matt Royal Mystery (Matt Royal Mysteries) (22 page)

“Whoa, buddy,” said Logan, leaning into the car. “You okay?”

I took a deep breath, the bloodlust draining out of my system. Sometimes, not often, and only when greatly provoked, I lose a bit of control. A
red film fills my eyes and I become a man possessed by demons. I want to kill the object of my intense anger. So it was on that night. I think it was a reaction to the anticipation of my own death, and the relief that I was not going to die that day. Maybe it was the effrontery of a stranger who would put a hole in my precious hide or maybe it was just that I was stupid enough to let somebody get an advantage on me, somebody who was intent on causing my death. I am not proud of that part of me, but I live with it and usually control it.

“I’m okay. How about Jock?”

Jock leaned into the car. “Right here, podner.”

“That was some kind of high noon crap,” I said.

“I thought it had the right touch.”

“I owe you, buddy. I don’t think this asshole had my best interests at heart. How did you come to be in the middle of the street?”

“Let’s get this bozo restrained,” Jock said, “and then we’ll talk.”

I got out of the car. The gunman lay unconscious on the pavement. Jock pulled a plastic flex-cuff from his pocket and used it to secure the guy’s hands behind him.

“We’d better call Charlie Foreman,” I said. “He’s going to be busy tonight. I thought you guys were in the car when it went up.”

Jock grinned. “No, but with the car windows dark the guy with the grenade couldn’t tell that.”

“What happened?”

Logan spoke up. “We saw this one come out of the bar and make a couple of calls on his cell. Then he went to a beater parked on the corner and got what looked like a pistol out of the trunk. He wasn’t paying any attention to us, and we figured he might be after you. We got out of the car and came over here to see what was going to happen.”

They watched as the man with the phone waited by his car. After about twenty minutes, the Mercedes drove slowly down the street. He let a man off about a block behind where Jock and Logan were parked and then moved to the block just the other side of the bar. “When Jock’s rental blew up,” Logan said, “I figured you’d be next. It’s a good thing the Mercedes turned this way. Otherwise, we’d have had to get my car and come after you.”

“So,” I said, “you didn’t have a plan.”

“Not exactly, but we improvised,” said Jock, grinning. “It worked out. You’re not dead.”

I laughed, bleeding off nervous energy. “You’d think somebody would be here by now. The car hitting that building must have gotten somebody’s attention.”

“They’re probably still out in front of the bar watching the rental burn,” said Logan.

Less than five minutes had passed since the explosion. I was still a little shaky from the adrenalin rush, now subsiding. I’d thought my friends were dead and was sure that I’d join them very quickly. I pulled out my cell phone.

“What’re you doing?” asked Jock.

“Calling Charlie Foreman.”

“Hold up. I can’t be identified as being part of this.”

“The rental car is in your name, Jock,” I said. “They’ll figure it out sooner or later.”

“I rented the car in a name nobody will ever be able to trace. Just being careful.”

I shook my head. I could never get over my amazement at the trade-craft of my boyhood friend. Even on vacation from his world of spies and espionage and intelligence gathering, Jock had rented the car using one of the fictitious identifications he carries around with him like so much extra change. I motioned to the man lying prone on the ground. “What about him?”

“Let’s take him with us,” said Jock. “We might be able to pry some information out of him. Maybe that’ll start unraveling this mess.”

“I’ll get my car,” said Logan.

A siren screamed in the distance, getting louder, closer. Another took up the call, this one laced with a loud horn, coming from the same direction. Headed for the explosion, I thought. Logan disappeared around the corner and in a minute came back with his car. The first siren let out one more whoop and went silent. I heard the hiss of air brakes and then only the crackling of the fire across the square and the murmur of voices from the people gathered outside the Swamp Rat.

We loaded the gunman into the backseat. Jock joined him, a pistol in his hand. Logan started the car and drove straight out of town.

“I got around the corner just as the cops were pulling up on the other side of the square. A county fire truck came in right behind them. Where are we going?”

“I don’t have any idea,” I said. “Keep going straight. This road will connect us to the Tamiami Trail. We’ll figure it out from there.”

We traveled a couple of miles on an asphalt road that ran straight as an arrow. The dark was infinite and the sweep of our headlights revealed the flora of the Everglades pressing close. The only sound was the hiss of our tires on the pavement.

“Uh-oh,” Logan said. “Blue lights behind us. A cop’s coming up fast.”

The Hacker sat in the quiet of his old house, sipping a beer. His recliner was torn and poorly patched. It had been part of the furniture that came with the house when he bought it, and he couldn’t think of any good reason to get a new one. He had the windows open, and could hear the hum of the insects who shared the night. The single bulb hanging from the wire over his computer was the only light in the house. He balanced an ashtray on his lap, flicking ashes into it from his cigarette.

His thoughts had turned dark with suspicion. The old man had only provided him with half his fee and a promise to pay the rest when the job was complete. Now there was some question as to whether he could finish the task.

His biker cronies had not come through like they had in the past. They were a mean bunch, men given to violence, giving it and receiving it. How in the world had a lawyer and a retired financial guy taken the best of them out? Was there more to this than he knew?

And who were these other people who’d gone after Royal? Two days in a row. The go-fast boat was a good idea, but the execution was lousy. What about the home invasion? Another fuckup, but who were these guys? The Hacker knew that the bikers sometimes contracted out their wet work, but he didn’t know who they used.

The Hacker had been roaming the Longboat Key police computers. The dead men had not been identified, but the biker leader Baggett had assured him they weren’t his men. Was Baggett lying? If not, then who were they?

His searches ranged far, tapping into databases of all the local law, probing the drug lords’ servers. Yes, they all used computers these days,
bad guys, too. They needed their information at hand in order to conduct business, make decisions, keep the drugs flowing.

The Hacker thought that the men from the boat and the break-in might have been part of one of the drug cartels. But if they were, there was nothing in the computers. That he could understand, but the cops would have any ID plugged into their database, and by now, they would have figured out who the people were and where they were from. Fingerprinting was a science and the computers that did the matches were lightning fast. How was it that the cops hadn’t identified them?

He’d called the old man the night before, but the woman who worked there told him the old man had already gone to bed. The Hacker looked at his watch. Not quite nine. He got up from the chair, walked over to the computer, and pulled up the old man’s Web site. There was one page with a seven-digit number on it. He picked up one of his throwaway cell phones and punched in the numbers.

The woman answered. He asked to speak to the old man. She was gone for a minute or two and came back on the line. “He doesn’t wish to speak to you,” she said. “He says you haven’t held up your end of the bargain.”

“Listen, you bitch. You tell that old fuck that I’m not finished and when I am he’ll owe me the rest of the money. Tell him that if he’s hired somebody else to horn in on my job, I’ll take them out, too. And if he hasn’t hired somebody else, he should know that there are people out there trying to kill the same guys I am. And tell him I’ll find his fucking document.”

He slammed the phone shut, muttering to himself. He sat back in the chair facing the computer monitor. He pulled out the neck of his T-shirt, put his nose into it, sniffed. Didn’t have to shower just yet. He wasn’t going anywhere anyway. He had some planning to do. He still had a rabbit or two he could pull out of his hat.

“I don’t think we can outrun him,” Logan said.

“Pull over,” I said. “Let me talk to him.”

Logan flipped on his blinker and lightly touched the brakes, slowing the car. When enough speed had bled off, he eased onto the shoulder of the road and came to a stop. The cop pulled in right behind us.

A spotlight lit us up and the loudspeaker mounted in the cruiser’s grille came to life. “Get out of the car. Keep your hands where I can see them.”

“Do it,” I said to Logan. “Jock, you stay put.” He was lying on the backseat across the gunman, out of sight of the windows.

Logan and I opened our doors and got out, standing on either side of the car, hands in the air.

“Was I speeding?” Logan asked innocently.

The cop was standing beside his car, his open door giving him some protection. He had his service pistol trained on us. “Sir, somebody saw you leaving town just after a car was blown up. Called it in. I came after you.”

“Deputy,” I said, “my name’s Matt Royal. Call Lieutenant Charlie Foreman. He’ll vouch for me.”

“I’ll do that, Mr. Royal. Were you leaving town just now?”

“Yes,” I said. “I heard the explosion and saw the fire when I came out of the Swamp Rat. I didn’t see any reason to stick around.”

The deputy leaned into his shoulder, speaking softly into the radio microphone that was clipped to the epaulet of his shirt. He listened, then spoke into it again. He looked up at us, still behind his door, still at least twenty feet away from us. “Mr. Royal, do you have some ID?”

“I’ve got a driver’s license and a card identifying me as a member of the Florida Bar.”

“May I see it?” He motioned me toward him.

I stood still, one hand raised, and used the other to lift my wallet out of my hip pocket. I held it up and walked toward him. I gave him the license and bar card, and he held them up so that the light from his spot was on them. He gave them back to me.

“Thanks, Mr. Royal. The lieutenant said he knew why you were here and to let you go on about your business. I take it that’s Mr. Hamilton, the owner of the car.” He pointed to Logan still standing by his car.

“It is. Do you want to see his ID?”

“No, sir. Sorry to bother you. Y’all have a nice evening.”

He shut down the spotlight, turned off the blue lights, and drove off into the dark.

“That was close,” said Logan. “If he’d looked into the car, I don’t know how we’d have explained Jock and shithead back there.”

“That might have been a problem.”

Logan and I got back into the car. “What now?” he asked.

“The Tamiami Trail’s just about a mile ahead,” I said. “Turn right when you get there. I remember a pullover between here and Naples. We can stop there. There won’t be much traffic.”

We pulled off the highway onto a berm that ran for about a hundred feet along the road. It was grass covered and stretched several hundred feet into the swamp. A wide drainage ditch ran along the far side, parallel to the road. The black water of the ditch was broken by little red dots when the headlights shined on it. Alligators. They lived there.

Logan brought the car to a stop well off the road, near the ditch. The gunman was still unconscious. We pulled him out of the car and laid him face up on the grass. Jock found an old tin can, refuse dropped by someone with no regard for his pristine surroundings. He bent down and filled it with dirty water from the ditch and threw it into the gunman’s face. He came to, sputtering, making a production of it. I thought he’d been faking it, had probably been awake for a while. I shined a flashlight into his face.

“Time to wake up,” I said.

“Where are we?”

“Who are you?” I asked.

“They call me Turk.”

“Okay, Turk. I’ve just got a couple of questions. You up to answering them?”

“Go to hell.”

“Ah, tough guy, huh. I eat tough guys like you for breakfast. You really don’t want to fuck with me.”

“Untie me and I’ll show you tough.”

I chuckled dryly. “Turk, I’m not going to untie you. I’m simply going to roll you into the ditch over there and give the gators a snack.”

He paled in the glow of the flashlight. One does not live in the Glades without nurturing a healthy fear of alligators. “What do you want?”

“Who sent you after me?”

“What if I tell you? What then?”

“You’ll walk out of here.”

“Where are we?”

“On the Trail. About five miles from Belleville. You can walk home.”

“I don’t know who sent me, but I know why.”

“Talk to me.”

“Jason Blakemoore told me about a black dude who said he was a Seminole. Said he had some papers that would make him rich. Said he’d own the phosphate.”

“What phosphate?”

“All of it. All over the state.”

“What’s this got to do with me?” I asked.

“I called my brother about the black guy. He works for the ConFla people up near Lakeland, where I used to work until I got disabled. I thought maybe we could make a few bucks out of it. If he told his bosses, the guys what owns all that phosphate, maybe we could get a reward or something.”

“Did you?”

“A little. A guy come to see me. Gave me five hundred bucks. Told me
the people he represented appreciated my help and would call on me again if I kept my mouth shut. Gave me a way to contact them if I got any more information.”

“Who was it that came to see you?”

“I don’t know. Never saw him before or since.”

“How’re you supposed to make contact?”

“I get to a computer, put in a Web address and get a number from that. It changes every day. I get the number every morning, so if I need it, I got it. Never used it until tonight when I heard you talking to old B.J. I remembered Jason talking about you helping out the black dude.