Going Dark (Thorn Mysteries) (16 page)

She was over in the dark by his dresser, fumbling around, then went into the bathroom again, shut the door, switched on the light. In there for several minutes. Frank wondering, What the hell? Then she came out, the light turned off again, went back to the dresser.

“Everything okay?”

“Everything’s fine,” she said. “Better than fine.”

On the way to the door she came over, stooped, kissed him once more, her right hand pressed hard and flat against his hairy chest, then her fingers closed, gripping, tugging on the hairs, Nicole a little more into pain than he was used to, but he accepted it, enjoyed the novelty of it, didn’t question it.

“Do you have to go?” he heard himself say as she got to the door.

“You need your rest, Frank. You’re not as young as you used to be. You were huffing, heart racing, I thought I might have to call the paramedics.”

“Your heart wasn’t racing?”

She was at the open door. The room dark, the sound of the surf. He could only see her from the bathroom light, not enough to read her face. He could’ve gotten up and tried to coax her back to bed, but she was right, he had nothing left. Who was he trying to kid? But it bothered him that her heart might not have been racing. Bothered him a little, but not so much he mentioned it aloud, that she’d even noticed he was out of breath, because he’d noticed nothing like that about her, noticed only the sounds she made as she climbed up the octaves to that high note she hit and hit and hit.

In the dark she said, “What exactly are you concealing?”

“What?”

“About Turkey Point, this operation. There’s something you’re hiding.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Oh, yes, you do.”

Frank was quiet for a moment, considering, then said, “You’re good.”

She stayed in the doorway, a hazy moonglow behind her in the tall pines that bordered his property.

“What it is, I’ve got a guy. An informant. I didn’t recruit him. He called me. He’s gotten involved with these people, the ELF group. There was something bothering him about it all.”

“What was bothering him?” She wasn’t angry. Sounding neutral, patient.

Frank was relieved. “Nothing specific. He called last week. I haven’t heard from him again.”

“Which guy is it?”

Frank was silent, thinking. Taking too long.

“You don’t trust me, Frank.” Half statement, half question.

“Can we talk about this tomorrow? I’ll lay it all out, everything, okay?”

“Sure. I understand. You don’t want to spoil the afterglow. Don’t want to mix business with pleasure. Sure.”

“Now you’re pissed.”

“Not at all. Get some sleep. We’ll talk tomorrow.”

Then she backed out the door and was gone.

*   *   *

No one spoke to Thorn. Flynn kept his distance. At suppertime Flynn walked off and sat by the obstacle course with his Subway sandwich. Wally tagged along and planted himself a few yards away.

Thorn got the last sandwich in the ice chest, turkey with Swiss, so soggy he could’ve eaten it with a spoon. He sat by himself on the rocky soil on the western side of the island. A small gap in the mangroves with a sunset view over the mainland. His minder, Pauly, stood ten yards away watching him eat.

After darkness settled, a solid wave of mosquitoes moved in, a mass so thick even Thorn was driven inside the tent. On a cot across the way, Flynn was immersed in a paperback novel. Wally was at his laptop, tapping the keys in staccato bursts. Cameron did some biceps curls with fifty pounds in each hand, while Leslie lay on her cot and stared up at the fabric of the tent. At the mesh window, Pauly stood and gazed out into the darkness.

One by one they got beneath their sheets. Cameron turned off the single lightbulb hanging from a crossbeam. There was no talk, no good-nights, no camaraderie. Just darkness, except for the blue glow of Wally’s computer as he continued to click the keys in rapid bursts.

Hours later when Thorn came awake in the middle of the night, Wally’s computer was shut down. The electric fan churned and men were snoring, one louder than the others with a wet catch in his throat, and damp, fluttering lips.

Thorn turned his head to the side.

Sitting on the edge of the adjacent cot was Pauly Chee. Pauly’s naked chest gleamed with sweat and moonlight; his eyes were black sapphires glowing from deep within. They were fixed on Thorn.

Pauly was chewing something slowly, something thick and gummy that flexed his jaws. Watching Thorn without pause. Draped across his shoulders, a python glimmered like black jelly as it oozed between his arms and wrapped its slippery, undulating length around his torso, once, twice. Pauly uncoiled the snake and guided it onto the floor, and the python slid away into the darkness.

Thorn lay still and listened to the man’s soft chewing like a dog working deliberately through his rawhide treat. On the sweetening breeze he smelled the scent of tarnished copper rising from the mangroves, and he could sense the swelling barometric pressure of an approaching storm and hear its faint cannon fire from out at sea.

He glanced over at his son sleeping peacefully two cots away, then lay back and shut his eyes, and as he drifted down a long slope back into sleep, he had a dreamy vision of Pauly’s python cruising out of the tent and into the tall grasses—that giant snake heading off to track the last of the island’s raccoons and mice and nesting birds, then Thorn was watching the knobby back of a monster croc sink beneath a black satin sea, sink and sink into the cold depths that were darker than any grave.

NINETEEN

AT SUNRISE FRANK ROLLED OUT
of bed, pulled on his gym shorts, laced up his Brooks running shoes, stretched for a few minutes to get his blood moving, watching the morning TV news.

All the anchors were hyped about the tropical storms lined up, five of them starting off the coast of Africa and stretching into the Gulf, where Ivan was growing into a Category 4 hurricane. Juanita was next in line. Miami was in her cone, and all the storm guys were revving up their 3-D maps. Kurt was next, then two others farther out that hadn’t earned names yet.

Sheffield switched off the TV. He got much better hurricane info from Matthew White’s e-mail updates. Matt farmed lychee nuts down in Homestead, and as a hobby he forecast hurricanes. Though he had no formal training, Matt’s tracking predictions had a much higher success rate than did those of the TV guys with all their degrees and cool devices, plus Matt did it without a bit of hype.

Sheffield walked to the beach and trotted off. Four miles on the hard-packed sand, thinking of Nicole the whole way, her line about his huffing. This was a woman worth getting in shape for.

Afterward, dripping sweat, he went over to his dresser, got his cell, flipped it open. The
Recent Calls
screen was up. A screen he rarely used. Frank stared at it, thinking of last night, Nicole’s groping around on the dresser, going into the bathroom, staying for a while. He scrolled through the recent calls, incoming and outgoing, finding nothing of note. Maybe she was checking for old girlfriends. Or maybe Frank was having a paranoia flash. She was probably just gathering her own stuff off the dresser, or any number of other perfectly innocent possibilities.

Sheffield let it go. He stood in the open doorway of 106, the efficiency apartment he called home, and dialed the office. In early as always, Marta Gonzalez, his secretary for the last fifteen years, picked up on the first ring.

“Not coming in? What is it now? New drain field? Roof leak?”

For the last few years Sheffield had been remodeling the Silver Sands, the wreck of a place he’d inherited from his old man. Twenty rooms, two stories, a rectangular mom-and-pop motel from the forties with a subdued art deco style. Two hundred feet off the white-sugar sands on Key Biscayne, wedged between massive condo towers on three sides. The place hadn’t been remodeled in all the years his parents owned it. It went broke, then the old man died, and suddenly it was Frank’s, a run-down building sitting on primo land. In the current market the land was worth 4 to 5 million, or so the Realtors told him.

But once he picked up his hammer, hung his first sheet of drywall, started plastering, a lot of happy memories began firing off, the sweet old days when his granddad and grandmom ran the place and he’d played there every summer day while his parents were off at work, back when the key was a slow, empty island with an expansive view of the city of Miami across Biscayne Bay, back when the tallest downtown buildings were no higher than six stories.

“No, it’s not the motel,” Frank told Marta. “First, call Metro homicide, see who’s heading up the Marcus Bendell death. Happened yesterday morning. Marcus Bendell, spelled like it sounds.”

“Got it.”

“I want anything they’ve got. Crime-scene photos, the whole deal.”

“And what do I tell him it’s about?”

“An FBI investigation into a possible terrorist cell.”

Marta was quiet for a moment before asking if there was more, her voice more businesslike now.

“Who’s our best cybersleuth?”

“Angie Stevens.”

“Yeah, Angie. I want to meet her this afternoon, two, three o’clock. And I want background checks on four people.”

“My pencil’s poised.”

He gave her the names. Pauly Chee, Wally Chee, Claude Sellers, and Cameron Prince. Told her to call the Bureau’s liaison at the Department of Defense, see what kind of soldier Pauly was, service record, special training, medical history, medals, date of discharge. And the civilian side, too. High school, college, traffic tickets, all of it. Run the full background check on the others. Criminal, financial, work history.

“Later this morning I’ll be at Metro PD watching a video. Anything comes up that might endanger all mankind without my immediate intervention, I’ll have my cell with me.”

“Try turning it on. Much better reception.”

“Another thing,” Sheffield said. “We need to put together a team for a force-on-force drill. Five from SWAT.” Frank gave her the names of the four he wanted, including a fifth as an alternate. “See if we can get all five together later this afternoon. I should be back by one. Anytime after that.”

“Oh, Nicole McIvey called. Seemed to know you.”

“Called this early?”

“Said she’s an early riser.”

“She told you that?”

“Oh, yeah, we had a nice chat.”

Frank was quiet, not happy with where this was going. “She’s with the grid police, NIPC. What kind of chat?”

“Just some girl talk.”

Marta was in her early sixties. Three grown daughters, seven grandkids, thirty years on the job. More friend than subordinate.

“Girl talk?”

“You wouldn’t understand. Being a man and all.”

“Try five words or less.”

“Is he seeing anyone?”

Frank looked out at the parking lot. A building-code inspector had arrived in his white Jeep to check the installation of the new hurricane windows. Juan Medira, a Cuban guy who appreciated Frank’s stubborn refusal to sell out and as a result didn’t bust his balls on the trivial stuff.

“Well, what’d you say? Am I seeing anyone?”

“Not for more than a month at a time.”

“That’s what you told her?”

“This is important to you, this Nicole woman?”

“I’m not sure. Maybe.”

“Well, I did tell her you’d be one hell of a catch.”

Juan was walking over with his clipboard, talking on his cell. He waved at Frank, and Frank gave him an almost-done wave back.

“Good answer, Marta.”

“No, it’s not. Moby-Dick would be one hell of a catch. Doesn’t mean anybody’s going to land that big old whale.”

“Anything else?”

“You want my opinion of her?”

“After one phone call?”

“The lady is
muy
ambitious.”

“Everyone we work with is ambitious. I’d be worried if she wasn’t.”

“I mean
muy
. Like, I don’t know the right word. She’s nice enough, polite, not pushy or anything, but there’s something about her.”

“Oh, come on, Marta.”

“Not pushy, but intense. A lady with a plan. Eyes on a prize.”

“The prize being me?”

“My guess is, you’re part of it. That’s for sure. But, hey, I don’t want to get involved in your personal life. Too messy. Unprofessional.”

“I think we’re a little past that.”

Over the last few years, they’d grown close. Even helped each other through bouts of cancer. Prostate for him, breast for her. Camping out in the hospital pre-op, post-op, Frank bringing Marta takeout black beans and rice from La Lechonera, her favorite Cuban joint, and badgering her nurses to quit yakking and do their damn jobs. Marta doing the same when he was laid up.

Juan took a seat at the concrete picnic table, snapped his phone shut, and gazed out at the parade of yummy mommies speed-walking on the shore.

“And before I forget,” Sheffield said. “We need eyes in the sky, aerial imagery. Call our friend at NSA, see if he’s willing to give us some satellite time. If he refuses, try Miami-Dade PD, see if we can rent one of their drones for a few hours.”

“They’ve never been very cooperative.”

“Ask nice.”

“Can I tell them what we want a peek of?”

“Prince Key. Small island in southern Biscayne Bay, three, four miles due east of Turkey Point. I want real-time feeds, close-ups, what’s going on down there. How many citizens are walking around, what they’re doing, if they’re armed. If county won’t cooperate, hell, we’ll hire a small plane, do flyovers with telescopic lens. Agent Sanford’s a pilot, right? See if he’s available.”

“You’re worked up. Haven’t heard you like this lately.”

Frank raised a finger to Juan—one more second.

“And we need a boat. Border Patrol, Fish and Wildlife, Park Service, somebody cruising around out there to watch for comings and goings. The kind of boat that would blend in.”

“I’ll call around.”

“Last thing. Any updates from our guy? Phone or text?”

“Your confidential informant?”

“You heard something?”

“Not a word.”

Frank was silent, staring through the palms at the white sands.