Trapped (26 page)

lionaire. 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.

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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 sta-

tistics 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?”

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

“Champ de courses?” the driver wants to know. “Race-

track? 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 conve-

nience store, whatever. Two or three miles north, on the right.

Do you mind?”

“Naples not that way, no, suh.”

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“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 indis-

tinguishable 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.”

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“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 lim-

ousines 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 under-

stands, 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 as-

sociate—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-

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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 assort-

ment of sex toys for the lady’s pleasure.

“Better check my batteries,” Shane says with a leer, heft-

ing 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 hap-

pens 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 casua-

rinas that either survived the last hurricane or have sprung

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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 pine-

lands. 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 ani-

mals 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 diamond-

back 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

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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

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