Lost (22 page)

The driver, a middle-aged Haitian with velvety dark skin and delicate features, responds in formal, rhythmically accented English. “Oh, yessuh, plenty much work nighttime. The people, they go to the clubs and dance all night. They go to the beach and watch the sun come up. Maybe then I take them to the airport, they fly home to New York or Chicago or Los Angeles.”

“Rich people.”

“People with money, yessuh,” he says, gently correcting his passenger. “Rich people, you know, they have full-time chauffeur, S-Class Mercedes.”

Shane hadn’t really considered the distinction between rich people and people with money. But of course there is an important distinction. Taking himself as an example, he isn’t wealthy but he’s able to hire a car. Therefore he belongs to the category of people with money, in the form of a valid Visa card with sufficient credit. That’s all it takes. Not so long ago, within living memory, an average middle-class person wouldn’t dream of hiring a car and driver. Such luxuries were considered the province of millionaires. Nowadays the average lawyer or dentist is a millionaire, at least on paper. A typical school superintendent in a reasonably prosperous district might in retirement be worth a million dollars, if she bought the right house at the right time and invested in tax-deferred funds. On certain blocks in Manhattan, doormen are millionaires. Not doubt about it, billionaire is the new millionaire. Partly it’s a social construct, a mind-set, partly a weird inflation not entirely based on money. And yet money and the getting of money are still at the heart of it, making people behave in not always predictable ways.

Shane is thinking about money and wealth and what it all means because he doesn’t know exactly how Edwin Manning’s superwealthy status plays into the situation. Is it a straight abduction for ransom? Some sort of extortion scheme that may or may not involve Manning’s private hedge fund? A scam engineered from within the family, targeting dear old dad? What? Somehow he has to find an angle, the leverage to pry it all open and, hopefully, extract Kelly Garner alive.

Not an easy or a certain task. Despite the assurances he’s given to Mrs. Garner, Shane is keenly aware of the cruel statistics of abduction cases. If it’s a straight-up money deal there’s a high probability that the daughter has already been killed. Particularly if she just happened to be along for the ride. Why bother with the risk and trouble of keeping an extra victim alive if the target is Manning’s son? For that matter, the only reason to keep the son alive is to establish proof of life prior to a payoff. Making the payoff ends the need for proof of life, often with fatal consequences for the victim.

Shane likes the casino connection. If Seth Manning flew his father’s corporate plane to an airfield in the Glades—a theory yet to be proved—and Kelly Garner’s cell phone has been logged through a cell tower not far from tribal land—established as factual—then it stands to reason the tribe and/or casino is somehow involved, if only by proximity.

“You gamble?” Shane asks the driver.

The man shrugs. “Sometimes, you know, the lottery tickets.”

“Games? Slot machines?”

The driver laughs. “Put my money into a machine that will not give it back? No suh.”

“Folks love to gamble.”

“Many do,” the driver concedes. “Not me. Do you gamble, suh?”

“All the time. But not games or slot machines.”

“Champ de courses?” the driver wants to know. “Racetrack? Horses?”

“People,” Shane tells him.

“Ah,” says the driver, as if he’s been let in on a great joke. “Yessuh, very good.”

The car service required an itinerary, obviously. Shane had mentioned Naples, a two-hour drive straight west, across the top of the Everglades. He paid up front for six hours, with the credit card on record for any further charges. The driver, he has been assured, will remain with the car for however long Mr. Shane desires.

The way he figures, if it takes more than six hours it will mean he’s been shot or abducted, or both.

From Brickell they head out Calle Ocho, through Little Havana. Calle Ocho eventually morphs into 8th Street, widens, and then becomes U.S. 41. Same desolate area he and Mrs. Garner explored earlier, searching for cell towers. The main difference being that at night the road seems to exist all on its own. As if the endless, grassy horizon melts away with the setting sun. A mile or so beyond the junction with Krome Avenue, the last major intersection, he instructs the driver to turn north into what looks like the middle of nowhere.

“There’s a 7-Eleven I want to check out,” he explains. “Don’t worry, the road’s good.”

The driver’s glance reveals suspicion. “Is no 7-Eleven that way,” he says.

“Maybe it’s some other chain. Gas station slash convenience store, whatever. Two or three miles north, on the right. Do you mind?”

“Naples not that way, no, suh.”

“I need to use the bathroom.”

The driver shrugs, reluctantly turning north as instructed. Exhibiting a tension that must soon be dealt with, before he calls his dispatcher with suspicions about the passenger, or panics and goes for whatever weapon he has stashed under the seat. Shane keeping an eye on the guy, trying to relax him with small talk, but the driver doesn’t want to play. He wants, understandably, to know what’s going on, why a big white guy who looks like either a cop or a criminal—often indistinguishable from an immigrant’s point of view—would hire a car to take him to a dubious all-night convenience store out in the bad-news boonies.

When they arrive at the no-name store the driver deftly pulls into the brightest circle of lights and quickly slips out of the vehicle before the motor stops ticking. Standing by the door pretending to stretch, or maybe he’s practicing putting his hands in the air, expecting a holdup.

Shane strolls around the front, reaching for his billfold.

The driver sees him coming and freezes, eyes round with fear.

“Hey,” says Shane, holding out the billfold. “No worries. You familiar with that expression? I think it’s Australian.
No worries.
Nice, huh?”

“What you want?” the driver asks, terrified.

“What do I want?” says Shane. He opens the wallet, extracts a hundred-dollar bill, tucks it into the driver’s shirt pocket. “I want you to relax. Get yourself a soda or a pastry or whatever.”

The driver, for all his nervousness, is reluctant to leave the vehicle.

“Take the keys with you,” Shane suggests. “I’m not stealing the car, okay? Nothing going on here except a slight detour. You’ve already done your part.”

“Not thirsty,” the driver says, as if suspecting an ambush inside the brightly illuminated convenience store. Maybe some cracker confederates ready to feed him to the gators and steal his lovingly polished vehicle.

“Suit yourself,” Shane says, trying to sound soothing. “Fact is, you got me where I need to go. Or in the neighborhood, anyhow.”

“Why you come here, to this place? Nothing here, no, suh.”

Shane flashes a conspiratorial grin, a man-to-man kind of smile. “There’s this lady, okay? Got a place not far from here, out behind the store. Cute little trailer park.”

“A woman?” the driver says, starting to relax.

“Special lady,” Shane says, nodding. “We need to keep it sort of quiet, okay? No strange cars in her driveway. No limousines arriving in the middle of the night.”

“A woman.”

“Yup, a real fine woman. I might be a while. How about if you come back in, say, three hours? Another hundred to drive me back to Miami, plus the regular fee on my card at the hourly rate, keeps the owner happy. Can you do that?”

The driver buys it.
Cherchez la femme,
that he understands, accepts. It’s agreed that the horny, woman-chasing passenger will call when he’s ready to be picked up.

“Glad we got that settled.”

“Yessuh. You call me, I meet you right heah, this place.”

“Deal.”

Shane shakes the driver’s limp hand, then returns to the Town Car, retrieves his drawstring backpack. The backpack having been left for him at the hotel desk by a former associate—not Sean Healy—in the Miami Division. The backpack’s contents, difficult if not impossible to clear through airport security, and therefore obtained locally, include a KA-BAR
fighting knife, military-grade night-vision goggles, and a handheld Garmin GPS unit. Plus a small, powerful flashlight and a hand-dandy roll of duct tape. Because you never know when duct tape will come in handy. He leaves the driver with the impression that the backpack perhaps contains an assortment of sex toys for the lady’s pleasure.

“Better check my batteries,” Shane says with a leer, hefting the pack.

It’s all the driver can do not to roll his eyes.

12. Welcome To The Bat Cave

A few hundred yards behind the all-night convenience store there is, indeed, a small, decrepit trailer park. Maybe thirty units, most of them set on wobbly concrete blocks in the previous century, and now slowly sinking into the dirt and weeds. Half again as many vehicles, high-riding pickups and fat-bottomed sedans, some functional, many under repair or abandoned. The abandoned vehicles have a feral look, as if they might slink away like furtive animals. More likely, they will erode and dissolve into the sandy soil, leaving nothing behind but iron oxide and tinsel-size flakes of chrome.

A few dim lights are exuded from the trailers themselves, but there is no activity that signals wakeful occupants.

No matter, Shane has no business here.

He moves purposefully up the little pathway that winds among the trailers. Actually walking beside it, so as not to make the gravel crunch underfoot. If the Haitian driver happens to be checking out his passenger—unlikely—he will see Shane blend into the shadows, bound for Airstream glory.

On the far end of the clearing, a row of tall, wispy casuarinas that either survived the last hurricane or have sprung
up since. Sometimes called she-oak or ironwood, the pinelike casuarinas are more than sufficient cover for a man who wants to vanish into the wilderness, and who knows how to use the patchy shadows as camouflage. Within a few strides the wispy trees give way to a vast scrub of slash pine and saw palmetto, sturdy and sharp, and it will stay this way, Shane knows, for miles and miles. The ground elevation is a crucial foot or so higher than the great river of grass the white folk call the Everglades, and is therefore perfect for sandy pinelands. Which does not mean there will not be a few wet, low-lying spots among the saw palmetto, and pocket gopher holes just right for snapping ankles.

Most of the bigger and more lethal life forms—snakes, gators, panthers—gravitate to the water’s edge. Larger animals aren’t keen on the serrated, bladelike leaves of the well-named saw palmetto. Deer and wild boar sometimes stray into the scrub, but tend to be reclusive, fleeing from the sounds of interlopers. Pythons, the exotic Glades invaders that started out as house pets, prefer thicker vegetation, bigger trees, and tend to feed on various rodents and small pigs. Much more dangerous are the lesser snakes, the diamondback and the coral, which explains Shane’s sturdy, high-cut hiking boots. A panther would have to be crazy with hunger to take on prey Shane’s size, so the big cats don’t worry him half as much as the hidden holes and fissures underfoot.

Now that he’s clear of the trailer park and prying eyes, Randall Shane makes no effort to be stealthy. Better to let the wildlife know he’s stomping through their world, give ‘em a chance to hide or flee. By his calculation, as indicated on Google Earth’s remarkably detailed satellite images, he has slightly more than a mile to the first waypoint.

All he has to do is head straight west for two thousand
paces. Nothing to it. Except it turns out he can’t proceed in a straight line, not without cutting his limbs on spiny fronds of saw palmetto. So for every yard west he has to dodge one north or south, or back himself up and find a new path when the scrub gets too thick.

One mile becomes two, and that makes him hurry. At this point he has not bothered to don the night-vision goggles, mostly because he knows from experience that moving quickly in NV gear can be more dangerous than traveling blind. It’s like running while looking through binoculars. Plus there’s a quarter moon a few degrees above the horizon and the air itself, moist and tangy, seems slightly luminous. Hurrying is never a good idea at night, in a dangerous locale, and a low-lurking palmetto frond finally snags him only yards from the waypoint.

Amazingly nasty plant. It sliced right through his jeans just below the knee, and blood seeps from his shin. A mere flesh wound but it itches something fierce. Cursing himself for not being more careful, Shane removes the roll of duct tape from the backpack and quickly wraps it around his leg, molding denim over the gash. Stop the bleeding for now, deal with cleaning up the small but nasty wound later.

Temporary repair complete, he studies the terrain, carefully weaves his way though the last few yards of palmetto, and at long last finds himself standing on a narrow dirt road. Not dirt, actually, but the limestone marl that forms the brittle base of most of southern Florida. He’s pleased to see that the white gravel road—little more than a path wide enough for one vehicle—heads northwest, just as indicated on the satellite imagery.

The hand-held GPS calculates the he’s 3.12 miles from his destination. The same unit also informs him that it’s been
fifty-five minutes since he left the comfortable leather seat of the Town Car. In a little less than four hours the sun will rise. Time to put the pedal to the metal.

He adjusts the pack, finding the sweet spot between his shoulder blades, increases his respiration until his lungs are fully filled with the warm, humid air, and then begins to run.

Randall Shane is a large man, too big and heavily muscled to make a good long-distance runner—a marathon is out of the question, it would pound his joints to dust. But with his long stride eating up the yards he figures he should be able to cover a mere three miles in a little less than twenty minutes, no problem.

Half an hour later, lungs aching, heart slamming, drenched in sweat, he finally staggers to the edge of the hidden landing strip, collapses to his aching knees and vomits copiously into the gravel.