Shallow Breeze, page 5
part #2 of Pine Island Coast Florida Series
It was a perfect spot.
According to his rangefinder, the distance was three hundred and fifty-three yards to the side door of the station, the door from which they would escort Manuel Saucedo from the building and out to the transport vehicle. After taking a wind reading, he took his notebook from the bag and scratched his calculations down, factoring in elevation drop, crosswind, temperature, and humidity. He would have a single opportunity to engage the target. Accuracy was paramount. The figure unzipped the canvas bag, removed a .300 Win Mag sniper rifle, and screwed on a Carnivore suppressor. He grabbed a black blanket and positioned it on the coping cap. Setting the barrel of the gun on the blanket, he looked through the scope and clicked in based on his calculations.
The order had come down, and he had responded. Now all he had to do was wait. So he waited. Like an eagle scanning the wild grass of the valleys for a mouse in hiding.
Except he knew where its hole was.
* * *
When Garrett pulled up to the Grapeland Heights substation, he was met with the flashing blue and red lights of a dozen police cruisers flanking the west side of the building. He pulled into a parking space and got out. Something wasn’t right, that was for certain. He walked through the front doors, and a flustered young man in uniform met him from behind a desk. Garrett didn’t wait for a greeting. “What’s happening out there?” he asked.
“Umm…” the young man didn’t seem to know how to respond. Garrett pulled out his badge. “I’m DEA. I’m here to speak with a Detective Mendez and a Manuel Saucedo.”
The officer’s wide eyes widened. “I...well...there was a problem earlier. Mr. Saucedo was shot.”
* * *
Ellie had just glanced at the GPS on her phone when Garrett called. According to the app, she had forty-five minutes before she arrived in Miami. She pressed the button on the Silverado’s steering wheel, causing the Bluetooth to kick in and allowing her to speak hands free.
“Hey, Garrett. You in Miami?”
“Ellie.”
Her shoulders tensed. Garrett’s emotional intelligence was off the charts. He was never moody and didn’t show an abundance of whatever he might be feeling at a given time. It was one of the qualities that made him an excellent leader and good at his job. There had been very few times in her life when someone had spoken her name with such concern. The first when when her father sat her down on the front steps when she was five years old and told her that her mother had died. The second time was when Major had gotten a call through to her when she was in Afghanistan to tell her that her father had been killed in an automobile accident. Or, at least, that’s what they had all thought. Now, whatever Garrett had to say, something was wrong.
“Garrett,” she said. “What’s wrong?”
The line was quiet for a moment before he answered. Ellie could only hear the drone of her truck as it sped through the final stretch of Alligator Alley.
“They got him,” he said.
“What do you mean? They transferred him? I thought you got them to wait.”
“No. I mean they got to him. He’s dead, Ellie. They killed him.”
Ellie squinted into a pair of oncoming headlights, squinted into Garrett’s statement, trying to get clarity. “Killed him? Who, the Saucedo kid?”
His answer was compact, like the finality found in the discharge of a gun. “Yes.”
Ellie didn’t brake, but she stopped accelerating. There was no longer a need to drive fifteen miles over the speed limit.
* * *
Garrett hung up with Ellie and walked back around to the side of the building. The bushes, cars, and grass were pulsing with the bright reflection of the cruiser’s lights. He stepped up to the yellow tape and held out his badge as he ducked underneath.
A dozen officers were huddled together near the metal door on the side of the station. An ambulance, its rear doors shut, sat just beyond. Crime scene had not yet arrived.
“Garrett,” someone yelled. He looked toward a man standing near the wall. It was Joel Deavers, Special Agent with the DEA’s Miami office. “Joel,” he said. They shook hands. “How did this happen?”
Deavers shrugged then jutted his chin behind Garrett. Garrett turned and looked out to a three-story building a quarter mile away.
“That’s where the shooter was,” Deavers said. Garrett could see flashlight beams cut through the darkness, officers up there looking for clues: casing, clothing fibers, fingerprints. “Whoever it was, they were ready.” He pointed toward the exterior door. “From the threshold of that door to the cruiser was five feet. Maybe six. In that span the shooter got him clean.” Deavers started walking toward the huddle and nudged his way through. Garrett followed. A uniformed man was taking pictures, and a lady in slacks and a polo was squatting down, looking over the body of Manuel Saucedo. Garrett took her for the detective. They stopped ten feet from the body. There was no need to go any further. The body lay crumpled on the ground, Manuel’s back leaning against the stucco wall. Several feet up, the wall’s cream color was splattered with red blood and small chunks of the young man’s brain. His body lay on its side, the face, or what was left of the face, pointing away from the building. His right cheekbone, eye, and brow were gone. The other half of his face looked eerily calm, as thought he had accepted his fate and was waiting for enlightenment. A bulletproof vest clung to his chest, unnecessary and unused.
“Just him?” Garrett asked Deavers. “No one else was shot?”
“Just him. One round fired.”
Garrett stopped and looked at Deavers. He shook his head. “Poor kid. Did he give Detective Mendez anything?”
“Nothing really. That’s why we were transferring him. He said he wasn’t safe here, that it was too close to his haunts. We told him we had an agent who was almost here - you - and that it wouldn’t take long to question him once you got here. He was convinced that he hadn’t been followed but said if someone found out there could be swift consequences. He got more nervous with every passing hour. He was about to walk. We didn’t have any reason to keep him. He came in on his own accord and could leave that way. So to make him feel better we decided to move him. I was about to call and tell you when it happened.” Deavers looked back in the direction of the body. He sighed. “Whoever he was in with is one hasty SOB.”
Garrett set his hands on his hips. “So he didn’t give you anything? He directly said he had info on what was going on up my way.” Garrett focused on Deavers’ eyes as he waited for a reply. There had been tension between some agents in the Miami office and those in the regional agency offices, with the former holding back information so they could pursue leads first. It left Garrett’s office with a disadvantage when it came to tracking local activity. Hands had been slapped, but nothing substantial had been done to change things.
“I wish he had, Garrett. You can watch the interview tapes if you want. What little there is. Like I said, Manuel was clear that he didn’t feel comfortable talking until he was safe. He almost walked because we were waiting on you. We got a few nuggets, but all of those were local to Miami, most of which we already knew. He hadn’t gotten to the good stuff yet.”
Garrett heard the muffled sounds of a chopper coming in from the east. He and Deavers watched as it flew over the station and toward the building beyond, splaying its searchlight around the area. Deavers kicked at a tuft of grass. “They aren't going to find anything. Everything about this was clean and well executed.”
Garrett sighed and looked back at the chopper. Its spotlight was searching the ground at the perimeter of the warehouse. “Who’s going to lead the investigation on this murder?”
Deavers shrugged. “No clue. Probably that detective over there by the body. Hopkins, I think it is.”
Garrett would get his office to work with the detective in the event that the investigation came up with something meaningful. Garrett said, “If Manuel wasn’t followed here, then there’s a leak somewhere. This office or yours.”
Deavers shot him a defensive and slightly annoyed look. “Not my office. I didn’t tell anyone yet. It was just a routine interview on my end. Heck, I didn’t even get to ask him much. It could be a leak in your office, you know.”
“No,” Garrett said. “Same on my end. I only told one of my agents, and I trust her with all I’ve got.” He looked back up at the roof of the warehouse building. “Whoever leaked it didn't just know he was here. They also knew he was being transferred. They would have had what, a three or four second window to nail him from the time the door opened to the time he ducked into the back seat? That’s not enough time to swivel from the front door to the side and make a shot like that. Not unless they were highly trained.”
“That’s what I was thinking,” Deavers said. “Exactly what I was thinking.”
Chapter Eleven
He had never been here at this hour. Not at one o’clock in the morning. Not when it was eerily quiet and there wasn’t even the thin hum of distant traffic on the breeze. The only sounds he heard were a few grunts and shuffles.
Kyle Armstrong stood in a dark corner of his warehouse filled with dread and a mild case of nausea, watching one of his trucks being loaded with a new batch of his five year rum.
And cocaine.
He didn’t know how he would do it going forward, but for tonight Kyle had canceled his contract with his security company. Maybe with the next company he would tell them that he only needed their services during the weekdays and that he would cover it via another means on the weekends. But then that would probably run the risk of raising a red flag. “You don’t want us watching your warehouse one or two nights a week? Sure, no problem. This is South Florida, so a lot of our clients do that on the nights they are loading drugs. What days would you like us not to come?”
There were five men in all. They had shown up exactly when they said they would. Not a minute early. Two of them looked like supervisors, standing near the truck watching the other three load it up.
One of them, the tall, hairy guy - he looked like a mountain man, but not as wide - walked up to him. “Why are you standing way over here?”
“Because I don’t want anything to do with what you guys are up to.”
He nodded. “But you’re letting us use your trucks to distribute. That sounds a lot like you have something to do with it.”
“Look here, Bud, I—”
“Chewy.”
“What?”
“Chewy. That’s my name. Not ‘Bud.’” He turned and pointed to another man watching the truck being loaded. “And that there is Andrés.”
“Okay, Chew-y. Fine. Look, I’m not doing this because I want to. I’m doing it because the man you work for is forcing me to. This isn’t what I wanted.”
“Your agreement with Ringo is between you and him. I have only ever known him to be a very fair man. I’m sorry you see things differently.”
“Fair? You’ve got to be kid—”
“Mr. Armstrong, I’m not interested in hearing about your sense of injustice. I only came out here to see why you were hanging about in the shadows. If you would like, since we are currently working with your equipment, I thought you might like to see how we are doing things.”
Kyle narrowed his gaze on the man in front of him.
“After all, it might help you sleep better at night knowing that one of your trucks heading up I-75 is perfectly secure.”
Kyle thought about it, realized the man had a point, then nodded reluctantly. “Okay.” He followed Chewy to the rear of the twenty-five-foot dry freight truck. The man called Andrés looked Latino or Mexican and had a high protruding forehead and a sharp nose. His head was mowed down to the scalp on both sides, and the long black hair on top was pulled back into a short ponytail. Kyle nodded curtly at the man.
Chewy stepped up to the truck’s open cargo door, grabbed a box, and slid it out to the edge. He ran a sharp fingernail across the cellophane tape and opened the flaps. “Here. Take a look.”
Kyle stepped closer and leaned in. There were twelve bottles of rum set in a cardboard grid.
“Pretty cool, you think?”
“Where’s….where’s your...stuff?” Kyle asked meekly.
Andrés smiled. Chewy didn’t. Chewy said, “At the bottom. For the sake of time, I won’t remove it. The box has a false bottom.”
Kyle looked quizzically at the box, stamped with his logo. “But my boxes are custom to my bottle sizes. There isn’t any room for a false bottom. The flaps wouldn’t close.”
“These aren’t your boxes. They’re ours.”
“You had your own boxes made with my logo?”
Chewy and Andrés looked at each other, nodded, then looked back at Kyle and nodded again.
“Geez, Louise,” Kyle groaned. “How much of your product is in each box?”
“Just under a kilogram. Two pounds each. They’ll go directly to our drop point, and the bottles will be switched back into your own boxes and sent along your normal route.”
Andrés leaned in and said in a thick accent, “Ringo sends his thanks. He is really not so bad, you know. Once you start working with him. He likes you, Kyle. I think that he really does.”
Kyle nodded half-heartedly and then walked back to his darkened corner of the warehouse to watch them finish loading. Chewy was right. Being back here did make him feel cleaner. It did make him feel morally superior. He wasn’t the one loading up that truck. He wasn’t the one driving it. And it was he who didn't want to be doing this. And yet here they were. Loading his trucks with his permission. It was the closest thing he had ever experienced to a real nightmare. His forehead felt warm and his throat sticky. He had put everything he had into this distillery. All his education, his money, his time, his dreams. And now he stood here watching a few thugs load up his truck with cocaine. It was beyond belief.
He couldn’t tell them to stop, to get out of his warehouse and he was going to call the cops on them if he ever saw them again. If he knew one thing, Kyle knew he couldn’t do that. Just the very thought of Ringo sent a slow, systematic chill down every one of his vertebrae. He was a slave now, a slave to Ringo’s whims and wishes. And yet, he is really not so bad, you know. Suddenly, Andrés’s comment jogged something loose from beneath the layers of Kyle’s memory, a seemingly small and insignificant detail from his last conversation with Ringo. Kyle stared at the concrete floor and absentmindedly shuffled his feet, trying to pinpoint just what it was, what it was that he had subconsciously noticed about Ringo.
It was his eyes, that cold look in his eyes. No, it wasn’t that. It was his eyes, yes; certainly his eyes. But it wasn’t only the coldness in them. That was definitely there. But what dawned on Kyle as he stood there watching men load drugs onto his truck was that he had also seen something else behind those eyes. He hadn’t seen it then, when Ringo was sitting in his office chair, when Ringo was talking to him or grabbing up a free case of his rum. But he did now, and it came to him as a revelation of sorts. And it wasn’t just kindness. It was...well, what exactly was it? And that’s when it hit him. It hit him right in the old gray matter that what he had seen in Ringo’s eyes, far under the layer of power and control, beneath the willingness do to violence to those who opposed him, was a warmth, a tenderness, perhaps. Not toward Kyle, certainly not. But for someone or something.
Suddenly, Kyle began to wonder if Ringo might be more complex than the cliché strong man who enters your house and forces you to do his will.
Chewy called to him. Kyle snapped from his internal musings and walked over to the truck.
Chapter Twelve
Ellie snuck the broom under a table leg and slid a hardened french fry out into the pile of crumbs and sand on The Salty Mangrove’s small restaurant floor. Grabbing the dustpan she stuck it beside the pile and brushed in the debris. She emptied it into the trashcan and started sweeping the other half of the floor. She thought about yesterday's events. How she had met Paul Greenberg and Trigg Deneford in Tampa and whether or not one of them might be involved with dealing drugs in Lee County. She thought about Ringo, whoever he was, and how he or his people had executed Manuel Saucedo in cold blood. Whatever information the young man had, it had died with him. Local investigators would question known associates of Cripta Santo, his family, and those who lived in his neighborhood. But it would just be a formality. No one was going to talk, to speak up about suppliers or killers. That just wasn’t their way, which was one of the reasons Manuel’s willingness to talk was such a big break. She thought about the pilot on the plane who had crashed not a hundred yards from where she was now and the picture that had surfaced of his wife and son.
The wood-framed screen door behind her creaked on its spring. “From Southern belle to janitor?”
Ellie turned to see Mark and Garrett standing in the doorway. “Quite the contrast,” Garrett finished. They walked in and allowed the door to smack closed behind them.
Ellie dumped the contents of the dustpan into the trash. “Hey, guys. What’s up?”
Garrett said, “I know you’re off the clock today, so kick us out if you want to.”
She sighed. “I did want a day off, but I know there’s a lot to discuss after what happened yesterday.”
The both nodded and stood there silently. “Have a seat over there,” she said. “It’s not lunchtime yet, but do you want anything? I can heat something up. Anything to drink?”
