Heat Wave, page 11
“What the fuck!” Calisto shouted. “You dare to order me?”
Then the Mitus leader was off on another rant, and Chevalier just held the phone away from his ear while he waited till Calisto stopped for breath.
When that time came, Chevalier said, “Now, do you want to shout some more, my friend, or do you want to find a way to stop the killing? Before the president’s brother sends in the National Guard and puts us all out of business?”
To his surprise, a brief silence followed, and then finally Calisto said, “I’m listening.”
“Good,” Chevalier said. “We need to sit down and talk. We must find a way to stop this before it stops us. This war will bring us all down.”
“You think that by the two of us sitting down, we can stop Las Culebras or the Trenches from shooting at each other? And us?”
Sometimes Chevalier wondered how Calisto had ever become head of the Mitus; it was obvious the man was dumber than the chickens on the Chevalier family farm outside Belle Anse, back in Haiti.
“We all need to meet,” Chevalier told the phone. “You, me, Mendoza, Shakespeare—I would even invite someone from Wallace’s camp, if I knew who was going to end up on top.”
A long pause indicated Calisto was probably thinking about how Chevalier was dumber than the chickens back in Mitu.
Then Calisto exploded with a burst of obscenities, followed by, “You’re out of your damn mind, they’ll never go for it! I don’t think I even go for it!”
For a moment Chevalier wondered if he should just say to hell with it and set out to kill the other leaders. Unlike Calisto, however, the Faucones chieftain knew that killing Mendoza would only give the snake a new head, one that might be even more violent, more ruthless than Mendoza himself.
Patiently, Chevalier said, “Do you think it’s a setup?”
“Wouldn’t you, in my place?”
“I am in your place.”
“No—you’re the one proposing a sitdown. So how do I know, how do any of us know, it won’t be a goddamn trap?”
Chevalier couldn’t really argue with that thinking. “Manny, we have to do this. We have to sit down.”
“How are you going to convince us it’s peace, not war, you’re after?”
“We divide the arrangements—you should pick the place, Shakespeare can pick the terms, Mendoza the time…that way I make none of the decisions.”
Another long pause was followed by Calisto saying, slowly, “That could work.”
Good, Chevalier thought. Progress…
“But,” Calisto was saying, “then the problem is Shakespeare and Mendoza will want to know why I get to pick the place instead of one of them…and that doesn’t allow for Wallace’s man to pick anything. Not to mention, that if I was Wallace’s man, the only condition I’d wanna set is to get to shoot Mendoza in the face.”
“For this meet, we leave Wallace’s people out. They’re chickens with their heads cut off without their top man, anyway.”
“What about my other concern?”
“Split up the arrangements any way that people can agree on—I don’t care who picks the damn place, as long as it’s somewhere neutral and safe.”
Calisto said, “Three days ago I would have said anywhere public. After the Archer…I don’t know.”
Chevalier sighed to himself; this was going to take a while. But it had to be done.
Otherwise, the killings would go on until the National Guard put a stop to it or they were all dead. To survive, the gangs had to have a summit and they had to find a way to make it work. He laid all this out for the Colombian, and when Chevalier was finally finished, Calisto agreed with him.
Then they struggled with the idea for another hour and a half before they had a plan that Chevalier felt comfortable proposing to the others.
If nothing else, he thought he could at least work out a temporary peace pact with Calisto. And if the gang leaders could all come to a consensus, business and life as they knew it could go on.
Chevalier thought, too, that something bigger could grow out of this. In the old days, the days of Venici and Capone, rival gangs had moved away from killing each other into agreements that had given rise to a national crime syndicate.
Who knew? Maybe something positive could come from this, after all….
A brooding Horatio Caine was at his desk running scenarios on how to end the gang war when Calleigh Duquesne came in, the large duffel bag slung over her shoulder.
“All done?” he asked.
“Shooting, yes. Testing? Haven’t even started yet.” She sat the bag on one of two chairs opposite Caine’s desk, then took the other herself. “I just figured you’d want to get this piece of evidence back to LaRussa on time.”
“Good thinking.”
“I’ll start checking the bullets and shell casings right away.” She gave him a chipper smile. “Might even be able to give you some kind of report by the end of the day.”
“Wish I had a hundred like you,” Caine said.
“Sorry. One of a kind.”
He smiled, the first time in a while. “Yes you are…. Anyway, it probably won’t hurt to keep a U.S. attorney at least a little happy. If he turns out not to be implicated in any of this, we’ll want him on our side.”
Standing, Calleigh said, “Oh, and I printed the AK-47 before I tested it, but I haven’t had time to run the prints through AFIS yet.”
Rising himself, Caine slipped on his suitcoat and came around the desk. “Don’t be shy about letting me know what you come up with.”
“I won’t be.”
Tripp didn’t go with him this time and, when a weary-looking LaRussa came out to the lobby to meet him, Caine held out the duffel bag.
“Twenty-three hours, thirty-one minutes,” Caine said pleasantly.
LaRussa tried to smile, but he couldn’t quite pull it off.
“What’s the matter?”
LaRussa walked Caine off to one side, away from the receptionist. “Pelitier’s lawyer just called—our boy’s clamming up.”
Surprised, Caine asked, “Why?”
LaRussa shrugged. “Hey—we both work in big buildings with lots of ears. These guys have friends in the system. Maybe they got wind that you’re retesting the gun, and now they think they can weather this storm without rolling over on any of their confederates.”
“But we’re not reopening his case.”
“I know. What you said yesterday was just you…playing me.”
“Ken, listen—”
“I’m a big boy, Horatio. Anyway, if Pelitier’s lawyer heard somehow that you checked that gun out, they’re just extrapolating that you’re reopening the case.”
Thinking out loud, Caine said, “Well…if the guy’s lawyer knows the gun’s being tested—”
“He also knows there’s no way that’s a bad thing for his client—who has a real good alibi for both Wallace and the Burnett killings, namely having his ass behind bars.”
“Us testing his gun doesn’t in any way erase what he did in Little Haiti.”
Another shrug. “His attorney doesn’t see it that way.”
Shaking his head, Caine said, “Then Pelitier’s lawyer is going to get his client a lethal injection.”
“That doesn’t help my end game of getting drug dealers off the street, Horatio.”
Caine said nothing.
“What about your tests?” LaRussa asked. “You find anything?”
“Too early to tell. When I know more, you’ll know more.”
LaRussa stuck out his hand. “No hard feelings. We really are on the same team, you know.”
This time, Caine didn’t mind shaking the man’s hand at all.
Andrew Chevalier was surprised.
Which wasn’t something that happened to him very often. After spending the whole day on the phone, he’d managed to arrange a summit meeting between himself, Calisto, Peter Shakespeare of the Trenchs, and even the reclusive Antonio Mendoza of Las Culebras.
After Wallace’s men had attacked and burned his house, Mendoza had gone underground; the only way the Culebras honcho had agreed to the meet was if everyone brought a lieutenant…and he got to pick the time and place.
The other gang leaders seemed even more nervous now, and Chevalier himself felt a shiver of fear running through his stomach; but, still, he’d done it—they’d all agreed to sit down and talk.
It might all come to nothing, but at least they were making the effort. Of course the other possibility was that he’d just helped Mendoza set them all up, and by morning they’d all be dead and that crazy Culebra would be the only one left.
After all, a man with the balls to hit a DEA agent was capable of anything.
Chevalier had a plan of his own, in that case.
While most of Chevalier’s troops were untrained gang kids with little more going for them than blind devotion to the Faucones’ cause, a few handpicked others had been trained to be far more lethal.
If anything happened to Chevalier tonight, Mendoza would pay for it with his life.
In the bedroom of his crib in Little Haiti, Chevalier slipped on his Kevlar vest under an oversized black shirt. He put on a black suit coat and then pulled on a large gold cross. He genuflected and kissed the cross, once, twice, three times. Chevalier, a staunch Roman Catholic, felt sure that Jesus would protect him from harm, just as He always had.
The meeting was set for 3 A.M. in, of all places, the bar of the Archer Hotel.
Boarded up now, the windows had been shattered during the shooting of Kurt Wallace, both the bar and the hotel itself were still closed for repairs. As the scene of the first killing, the Archer bar would seem the least likely place for such a summit.
Which made it the perfect meeting place for four men who wanted no one in the city to see them together.
Half an hour before the appointed time, Chevalier and his most trusted aide, Jean-Claude, pulled into the parking ramp on the corner of Twelfth and Collins. Jean-Claude slid the maroon Hummer into a place, the vehicle’s roof a scant few inches from the concrete roof of the parking level.
They climbed down, and Jean-Claude clicked the remote lock. The horn honked in answer, the lights blinked once, and the pair walked out into the cool night air.
As they walked toward Ocean Drive, Chevalier said, “Is Caje ready?”
Jean-Claude—tall, skinny, pockmarked, with a fade haircut—replied, “He’s ready. Anything happens to us, Mendoza dies.”
“I may have to kiss Calisto’s ass to keep the peace—do you have a problem with that?”
“Calisto is a pig.”
“The question stands, Jean-Claude.”
Jean-Claude’s shrug was barely perceptible. “Tell the mother whatever you want, and when the time comes, Calisto will end up in the swamp, the gators feeding on his balls.”
Up ahead, the yellow-and-black police tape was in tatters now.
“When the time comes,” Chevalier said.
7
Gang of Four
THE PHONE WOKE Horatio Caine, who was sleeping restlessly, anyway, on the first ring. The bedstand clock registered just before four in the morning.
The CSI supervisor threw on a white shirt and dark slacks and a crime scene windbreaker; then, as he strode to his car, he had a thought. He flipped open his cell phone and punched in a number.
“Burnett,” the familiar voice said, thick with sleep, possibly drugged sleep.
“It’s Horatio. I heard they sent you home. Sorry about the hour.”
“No rest for the wicked.”
“Or the good guys, either, it would seem.” Caine leaned against his car. “And how’s the arm?”
“I’m out of the pitching lineup…otherwise, it’s a glorified scratch. They just kept me the one night, for observation. What’s up? You didn’t call at four A.M. for a medical update.”
“Kind of, I did—to see if you were ready to get back in the game.”
“Like I said, long as I don’t have to pitch.”
“Listen, I know this is too soon…after Joanna.” Hell, they hadn’t had the funeral yet….
“That’s why it’s not too soon, Horatio. You got something?”
“I need your help. Somebody wanted you and your gang expertise eliminated from the equation. I could use that expertise right now. Can you meet me?”
“Where?” Burnett said, no nonsense.
Caine told him.
“Whoa,” Burnett said. “Back to that address?”
“Back to that address.”
The sound of Burnett sitting up in bed was followed by, “Listen, I got Nickerson babysitting me…staying a few days while I, you know…sort things out.”
Burnett was talking about another DEA agent, his former partner, the retired Gabe Nickerson.
“Good to have friends,” Caine said.
“Mind I ask him to tag along? He’s been on the bench a while, but he still knows his stuff.”
“Gabe’s help would be appreciated.”
A half hour later, Caine once again found himself standing on the sidewalk outside the Archer Hotel. No rain fell tonight, but a cool breeze swept in off the ocean, like the ghost of that fateful first night’s nasty weather, giving the air a decided chill.
A block north, the tourists had retired for the evening, leaving the Versace mansion a silent tribute to the deceased designer. Caine recalled all too well the day he’d been called to the house and had found the blood on the front stairs where Gianni Versace had been gunned down on the steps of his home.
The famed designer, going out for the mail or morning paper, had been literally blown out of his slippers, shot in the head. They’d found two .40-caliber shell casings and a dead mourning dove at the scene. The search that had followed had led to Andrew Cunanan, Versace’s murderer, inside a houseboat bedroom, lying on a bed, where he’d eaten his gun.
The MDPD had worked its tail off on that case, but when the story had made the national news, the FBI had shouldered forward, front and center, to take the credit for bringing down the “mad dog” killer. That was why a case like this one, with its blurring territorial lines, raised so many hackles and hard feelings.
Caine appreciated that Jeremy Burnett had never been the attention-seeking, headline-hogging kind of fed. Burnett took credit for what he did, and the blame for any screwups, and always made sure that if someone from the MDPD helped him on a case, that individual got the due credit. Among the personnel of MDPD, Burnett was referred to as a “damn good cop”—lofty praise for a fed.
“I thought it was the killer who returned to the scene of the crime,” a voice behind Caine said.
He turned to see Burnett, just a hint of a smile on the man’s otherwise haunted face.
“Well, all kinds of rules are getting broken tonight,” Caine said.
The DEA agent looked gaunt, and the healthy growth of beard told Caine the man hadn’t shaved since the attack on his house. Oh, Burnett’s hair was neatly combed, and his eyes were sharp, and he wore a gray suit and nicely knotted tie. But he was still more than a little shell-shocked—no surprise, as his wife had been killed and he’d been shot barely sixty hours ago.
Caine hoped his judgment hadn’t been poor, calling the man in on this.
Accompanying Burnett was a tall, rangy African-American with close-cropped black hair flecked with gray and bright, all-seeing brown eyes. Gabe Nickerson was a healthy, fit fifty, with only an extra ten pounds or so to indicate retirement was having any effect.
Caine was pleased that Nickerson was staying with his ex-partner. Remembering how hard Ray’s death had hit him those first few days, Caine knew Burnett could use some support and company about now.
“Guys, I’m gonna apologize for the reaming you’re both gonna get,” Caine said, “from Matthers.”
Nickerson’s roughly winning voice said, “What, they gonna fire me?”
“It’s just that you both…particularly you, Jeremy…have a conflict of interest. Let’s establish that you’re just consulting with me, at my request.”
Burnett put a hand on the CSI’s shoulder. “And you haven’t been squeezed yet for looking into a friend’s murder? Violation of department policy, right?”
“With all the bodies piling up right now,” Caine said, “and the National Guard breathing down our necks, I don’t think my bosses are going to argue with me working any case.”
“I take it we’re not at the Archer,” Burnett said, “out of nostalgia…or to re-enact a crime.”
“Good call,” Caine said. “Something went down here tonight.”
Both Burnett and Nickerson were frowning, and the former said, “You mean—the killer really did return to the scene of the crime?”
“We should see for ourselves, don’t you think?”
Nickerson asked, “Haven’t you been inside yet, Horatio?”
“No. Just got the call saying we had another gang hit with four unidentified victims. That’s why you’re here—to tell us who the dead guys are…and then fill me in on the gang politics of what went down.”
“Lead the way,” Burnett said.
New crime scene tape had replaced the frayed old strips. The front of the hotel was still boarded up, multiple holes in the plywood letting light through from the inside, where halogens were already up. The trio had to go around back, via the alley, to get in.
The rear door led them into a narrow hallway, after which they found themselves passing through the kitchen. Back here, even though the lights were off and those halogens (running off power generators) supplied the only illumination, nothing seemed to be terribly wrong.
“Electricity in the building still off, huh?” Nickerson asked as they moved past the stainless steel counters and cupboards.
Caine nodded. “Bullets did a lot of damage. The owners are talking a complete remodel job.”
“Where were they the night of the shooting?” Nickerson joked.
Burnett asked, “What about the hotel itself?”
