Shallow Breeze, page 16
part #2 of Pine Island Coast Florida Series
“Is this AFN’s version of a gag reel?” He looked around. “Where are the hidden cameras? This isn’t funny, you know.”
“I didn’t just spend the last eight hours on that plane to play a joke on you.” He tugged impatiently at the cuffs of his gloves.
“Okay, fine. Let’s say I bite. I guess this means that I’ll be doing your bidding the rest of my life?”
“Not mine. Certainly not. But the man who sent me here? Yes. He’ll own you.” He smiled for the first time. It looked unnatural on him. “But I promise. You’ll be much happier working for him than mopping floors in a military penitentiary in Kansas. Last I checked, the evidence against your little kleptomaniac ways is quite extensive.”
The prisoner crossed his arms. “I need to know who I’d be working for.”
The man huffed. Maybe in disgust, maybe in disbelief. “His name isn’t relevant. Does a fish ask who picked him out of the livewell and threw him back in the ocean? I think not, Airman. You’re being given a new chance to swim in the ocean again.”
Cardoza looked out at the airstrip, finally convinced, now intrigued.
“What’s your name? Do I at least get to know that?”
“Yes. You and I will be working closely together from here on out. Do we have an agreement?”
Taking one more look at the airstrip beyond and then a quick glance at the private jet, Cardoza said, “Yeah. Yeah, okay. We have a deal.”
The bearded man extended a large hand. “Trigg. Trigg Deneford.”
They shook, and Cardoza followed him up the steps. He ducked slightly as he walked through the door. Half a dozen single reclining seats encased in cream leather sat along each side of the plane. The ceiling was high enough for Cardoza to stand up straight, but Trigg kept his head tucked down until he located a chair and sat down. He looked at the ex-prisoner and spoke to him before plucking out his phone and thumbing across it.
“Make yourself comfortable. We’ll be in Tampa soon enough.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
He loved everything about his new life. His expansive office on the forty-first floor of the Bank of America tower. The prestige, the connections, and especially the work he had developed on the side, away from the eyes and ears of the authorities. He loved it all; everything but the rush hour traffic. He had left the Navy, left the SEALs, three years ago now and joined Hawkwing. This was the first time in his professional career he had had to deal with the mind-numbing monotony of traffic. It was like cattle being driven to a slow, inefficient death. It made every day anticlimactic. No matter the deals that were made, the success that was courted, the day would end with a herd of tired and hungry cattle vying for inches as they made their way back home.
Trigg Deneford loosened his tie and leaned against the driver’s door in a feeble attempt to relax. Half his time he spent traveling, meeting with both potential and current clients, massaging their interests and assessing their needs. Greenberg was happy with the results he was getting from his Executive Director. There had been a mild tension between the two men at first. Greenberg was his direct report, but he had initially said no to bringing Deneford on board. One phone call to Greenberg from his boss in Delaware was all it took to make sure Greenberg hired the man coming in for an interview later that day. The interview was to be only a formality. None of it had surprised Greenberg, really. Hawkwing was often more involved in politics than D.C. itself. They had to be. Fundamentally, they had been established as a para-military security team. It wasn’t until nine years ago that they extended their arms to domestic clients who had the bank accounts and chutzpah to hire them. The tension between Greenberg and Deneford quickly waned as Deneford performed his job far above expectations. Between his demeanor and his knowledge of the security industry, he had a knack for putting people at ease and signing them up. Deneford had made Greenberg look good. Business was a-boomin’.
A faint buzz came from the canvas briefcase sitting on his passenger side floorboard. He leaned down, unzipped the pouch, and pulled out the phone. His bluetooth was not connected to this one, so he answered the phone and set it to his ear. “Hello,” he said.
“Any updates?” The voice on the other end of the line was speaking Russian. Deneford understood but answered in English.
“No issues. The grid is widening.”
There was a pause, then the voice said, “This will be the last time we speak. Too risky for me and you have a strong hold on the ropes now.”
“I understand,” Trigg Deneford replied. “How will we stay in touch?”
“We won’t. Not directly. I’ll have someone contact you as needed. I got you started. You can handle it from here.”
“Fair enough. I need more space between me and Greenberg. He’s happy with my results, but the last thing I need is for him to start getting suspicious.”
“I’ll see what I can do. Maybe we can get something opened up in D.C. for him.”
“He likes it here.”
“Everyone has their price.”
A Nissan Maxima cut in front of Deneford’s Tesla just as he started to accelerate. He slammed on the brakes to keep the two cars from melding together and laid on his horn.
“Everything okay?”
Deneford cursed and allowed space between him and the Nissan. “Fine. Just a crazy driver. So the accounts will stay the same?”
“For now, yes. You’ve done a good job. Keep it up.” The line went dead.
Deneford stared down the blinking string of a thousand brake lights, pulsing on and off like Christmas lights. Soon enough he would leave his current role and step out of the corporate world altogether. He would never again have to leave an office at the end of a workday. He would work from home or out in the field. But traffic aside, this whole enterprise was turning out better than he had expected when he started.
His fingers flicked on the car’s blinker, and he crawled around the exit that would take him northbound on Interstate 4. He turned the phone sideways, weeded out the SIM card with a fingernail. He snapped it in two, rolled down his window, and flicked a piece out of the car. He slipped the phone back in his briefcase. When he got home, he would take out the motherboard, destroy it, and throw away the shell.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Norman Hardy had been arrested an hour earlier as he stepped from his car at Pebblebrook Plaza, a strip mall in Bradenton. He had intended to walk into the barber shop to get a haircut, but instead he got a complimentary pair of metal bracelets. Now, he sat in a dull room wearing an irritated scowl.
The room was everything one would expect. Light gray walls, linoleum tile floors, and a small, rectangular metal table with a microphone and two folding chairs on either side. A one-way window. The only anomaly was a picture hanging on the sidewall of a blue orchid painted in watercolor and set in a cheap, gold, plastic frame.
The old man sat stirring in his chair, not out of nerves but discomfort. He'd broken his pelvis twenty years ago in a car accident, and, ever since, an arthritic pain would creep into the area when he sat in one place for too long. The handcuffs, attached to an O ring in the table, didn’t give him enough slack to stand.
Ellie watched him through the glass, watched him stir, watched him fidget. She looked at Mark. “Ready?”
“Ready. I’ll be here. Good luck.”
Ellie left the room, walked down the hall, and nodded at the Sheriff's deputy who stepped away from the heavy door and opened it for her. Norman Hardy turned his gaze up and followed Ellie as she came in, walked to the table, and sat down. She shuffled her chair in and folded her hands, set them on the table. “Mr. Hardy,” she smiled. “Hello. Are you comfortable?”
“Why am I here?” he growled.
“Oh, I have a feeling you know quite well. Where should we start?” She gazed down at the notepad she’d set on the table. “How about,” she looked up at him. “Where were you two days ago at, oh, around two in the morning?”
“I’m not saying a damn thing until my lawyer shows up.”
“Fair enough.” Silence hung thick between them. Hardy rustled uncomfortably in his seat. Ellie kept her eyes fastened on him. Silence didn’t bother her. She’d used it as an ally many times before. Silence assisted the guilty in thinking through the consequences of being caught.
His lawyer was based out of Tampa and did not have a local office. He would probably make the two hour drive in an hour-and-a-half, which meant they had an hour before he got here.
Ellie moved back a few inches, brought a knee over a leg, and folded her hands on top of her thigh, the bottom of which still ached from the bruising she acquired the other night. “You’re in some big trouble, Mr. Hardy.”
He smirked confidently. He wasn’t a good looking man. For all his money it seemed that he had not gone out of his way to take care of himself over the years. His face was worn, tired, creased not just around the eyes but in the flat areas of his forehead and cheeks, areas that generally only sagged. So when he smirked it looked more like Ellie was staring at a discarded plastic bag than the face of a old man. “You don’t have anything on me,” he said. “This is absurd. Me? Killing a manatee? Near my island? You people are about as competent as a blind, blindfolded driver.”
Ellie frowned. “I’m sorry, Mr Hardy. Did they give you the impression that you are in here for harming an endangered and protected species?” It was what they had told him after they read him his Mirandas, after they booked him. A psychological diversion.
A puzzled look ran across his face. “That’s what they said. You’re with the EPA, right?”
“No, I’m sorry. That room is down the hall. See, you’re here talking with me for being under suspicion as an accomplice to murder.”
“Murder?”
“Yes. I’m so sorry for the miscommunication.”
Ellie flipped open the gray file sitting on the table and slid a picture in front of him. Ellie didn’t look at it. She had seen it enough times. She would never forget the first time she saw the bottom half of the dead boy’s body that night on the television mounted above the bar at The Salty Mangrove.
“What the hell is this?” he scowled.
She slid another picture to him. It showed a saw palmetto dusted in white powder. Do you see this right here? This white powder. You’re a smart man. You know what that is. This was found less than fifteen feet from the boy’s body. Which means that whoever was moving this killed this boy.”
“That’s got nothing to do with me!”
“Oh, but it does,” she said. “And I’m going to tell you why.” The first move had been to make the old man think he was being brought in for something different than drugs. That would mean he wouldn’t be girding up his mind for a defense. He would be caught unawares. The second move was to indirectly pin Adam’s death on him. That, coupled on the heels of their knowledge of his drug involvement, would make him feel out of control. And out of control people tended to talk sooner. Anything to get back to a sense of safety. It was the best thing they had for a bad situation.
She continued, shifting the conversation. “How long have you been bringing drugs onto Turner Key?”
“I want my—”
“Yes. Your lawyer,” she interrupted. “I know. And he is on his way. Should be here in about fifty minutes by my guess.”
“Then you’re wasting your time until he gets here.”
“I don’t think I am,” she said. “You see, I was there the other night. Personally. I saw the whole thing.”
“Saw what?”
So she told him. She told him about slipping into his cove unseen and placing the bugs and watching the exchange. She told him about their tracking of the boats and where they knew they had gone. And with every sentence his demeanor became more flustered, nervous. It was a risky move, telling him everything. If he left here an hour from now, he would make some calls and everything they found out the other night would be worthless by the time he got back home and decided what to have for dinner. But Ellie had never been one to fire off one shot when she thought the whole magazine was needed. Garrett wanted to bring him in. So she was going for broke.
“You’re lying,” he said when she finished.
Ellie rattled off the make and models of the three boats that entered the cove the other night. “Yours, I believe, was a Mako Pro with a Mercury outboard.” She saw it. It was subtle, but she saw it. That sliver of fear, of dread. That instantaneous sliver that is there one nanosecond and gone the next, like the glint of the sun on the blade of a moving knife.
Ellie shut the file, set her hands on the table. “Now here is where it gets interesting, Mr. Hardy. Because, you see, we intercepted the second boat. The one that was headed into Cape Coral. And we have the drugs. And we tested the drugs. Do you know what we found, Mr. Hardy?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “The drugs found at the scene of this boy’s murder match those that came on and off your island.” She repositioned the photo back in front of him. “And that means, without error at all, that you are an accomplice to this boy’s murder.”
“There’s no way!” he snapped. “I had nothing to do with that. I saw it on the news.”
Hardy wouldn’t know that detailed analysis had to be done in Miami and that it could take two weeks or more for results to come back. She picked up her phone and pecked at it with her fingertips then turned it around so he could read it.
Hardy squinted while he scanned the words that Mark had texted to her ten minutes earlier: It’s a match. We’re throwing everything at him. Just got off the phone with the Governor.
Hardy blinked hard under the bright halogen lights, his eyes bloodshot, his face drained of any confidence he may have had when he entered the room. He looked confused, like someone had just told him that his bank account was empty. Finally he said, “They wouldn’t do that to that kid.”
Ellie smiled inside. She had him.
“Who wouldn’t?”
Hardy wasn’t thinking rationally anymore. He was stunned.
“My partners.”
“And who are your partners, Mr. Hardy?” All she had to do was to get him to implicate himself. He was on the edge.
He blinked, focused on Ellie, then blinked again. “I’m not saying anything,” he said.
Ellie smiled patronizingly. “You know, I don’t think that you really know what these other players do when they aren’t coming and going from your properties. You don’t have the foggiest clue, do you?”
He remained silent. Ellie noticed how his index finger started nervously picking at his thumb. Less than a half hour before his lawyer showed up.
“I’m sure that right now you’re thinking about how you will get to hide behind your money. How James Hoch of Hoch, Finley, and Harris will bill you at eight hundred dollars an hour over the next year until he can make all this just go away for you. Well, you can’t hide behind your money this time, sir. You saw the text about the Governor. He’s pretty upset that an old tennis buddy of his like yourself is doing this kind of thing in his state. Makes him look bad. Really bad.”
“We haven’t played tennis in twenty years.”
“That doesn’t matter. What does matter is that he knows you and won’t tolerate your newest hobby.” Ellie lifted her chin and looked at Norman Hardy, her eyes calm, his flickering in panicked disbelief. “So, then. This is where you help me out, Mr. Hardy. Before your lawyer gets here. I promise, when I see your lawyer’s greedy face step into this room, all bets are off. Think about it. If the Governor himself is pressing on this case, you can be sure you’re in a heap of trouble, so no big-time, slick-haired lawyer will be able to dig you out. Are we communicating?”
The old man’s face was drawn tight, and he rubbed the thin, loose skin on the top of his hands. “You can’t put that kid’s death on me.”
“I don’t have to. Your actions already have.” She spread out her hands. “It all matches and points to you. Maybe you didn’t pull the trigger, maybe you weren’t even there. That’s fine. The fact is, the cocaine is the same. And we have all the footage from last night. The only leverage you have is if you give me something right now. Something to help us catch the people you are working with. A dash of quid pro quo. Before your lawyer gets here. If I even sniff his overpowered cologne, the Governor and I will make sure you rot.” She smiled at him, kindly, the way a granddaughter would look at her grandfather and ask if he would like to go for a walk.
His eyes fixated on the metal door behind Ellie. He looked as if for the first time he was realizing that his new business was not morally neutral. As if he had done far more than simply make a speck of land available. A light was dawning against the worry in his eyes. His shoulders slacked. “A man came to see me a few nights ago. Out at the island. I...I’d never seen him before.”
“What is his name?”
“Andrés...Andrés something. Martinez. That’s it. Andrés Martinez. Tall. Mexican or South American. Something like that. I can’t ever tell with those people.”
“What did he want?”
“He told me to stop working with…” He trailed off.
“Mateo Nunez?” Ellie finished for him.
He looked surprised. “Yes. Nunez.”
Inside, Ellie was cheering. “So this Martinez guy. He told you to stop working with Nunez?”
“Yes.”
“Anything else?”
“And not to move forward with the operation.”
“Why?”
“He didn’t say. Only that his boss wanted me to stop working with Nunez altogether. I don’t even know how they knew. He just showed up out of nowhere and starts ordering me around.”
“What is his boss's name?”
Hardy shrugged. “I asked him. He said it wasn’t important.”
“Any reason to think he was the boss?”
He looked confused again, like he hadn’t thought of the possibility until now. “I suppose not. He was confident. Yeah. I mean, he was sure of himself.” Then he shook his head. “But I don’t know.”
