Mortal Dilemma Page 14

  I took two more steps up, high enough that I could train my pistol on the rifleman, but still low enough to give myself some protection. “Drop the rifle,” I said, “or I’ll shoot you dead.”

  The man turned his head and looked squarely at me. I saw a look of recognition cross his face. He knew me, and he was hunting me. But what he didn’t know was that I’d been hunting him, too. I recognized him immediately. He was one of the men in the array of pictures Dave Kendall had sent me. He started to turn his body toward me, the rifle coming around. “Drop the weapon,” I said, loudly. He was bringing the weapon up into firing position when I shot him in the chest. Twice. Two quick shots, each one finding its mark.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 1

  MIDAFTERNOON, REUBEN CARLSON walked into J.D.’s office. “Got a minute?” he asked.

  “Sure. What you got?”

  “I’ve gone through all the emails on Fortson’s computer. I don’t think he ever deleted anything. There were more than a thousand of them, so I didn’t actually read them all. I read enough of them to get a sense of what was going on and then used a search function to find names or words that I thought might be pertinent. That tends to weed out the garbage.”

  “Did you find anything of interest?”

  “Some things. He had a fair amount of correspondence with a lawyer in Orlando named D. Wesley Gilbert. Does that name mean anything to you?”

  “No,” J.D. said. “I never heard of him.”

  “I Googled him. It seems that he’s a big deal in Central Florida. I think he’s the head honcho in the city’s biggest law firm, and they have branches in several states. The firm is called Gilbert and Deming and is named for the two guys who founded it about a hundred years ago. D. Wesley is the grandson of the original Gilbert.”

  “Matt will know him. He practiced law in Orlando for a long time. I guess I’m not surprised that Peter Fortson was dealing with the top legal people. The trust was huge.”

  “That’s the problem,” Reuben said. “I don’t think Gilbert was actually representing Fortson or the trust.”

  “How about the bank that serves as co-trustee?”

  “Nope. The bank uses the same firm, but a different partner represents it.”

  “Was the connection between Fortson and Gilbert just social?” J.D. asked.

  “It could have been, but that’s not what piqued my interest in Gilbert. The emails between them seem to be using a rudimentary code. Some of the sentences don’t make a whole lot of sense in plain English.”

  “Don’t tell me you were able to break the code.”

  “I wish. But there were some words and phrases that struck me as an attempt to disguise who they were really talking about. For example, the term Abe’s Kids pops up several times in discussions that appear to be about transferring money for charitable deductions, but I could find no reference anywhere to a charity by that name.”

  “Anything else?” J.D. asked.

  “There were several emails dating to a few weeks before Rachel’s murder from Gilbert to Fortson that sounded a little intimidating. The lawyer seemed to be warning Peter that somebody named Wally would be upset if he didn’t get the money Fortson owed him. A few weeks after Rachel died, there was another email from Gilbert saying that ‘everything was hunky dory with Wally.’”

  “I wonder who Wally is,” J.D. said, “and why Peter owed him money. Gambling debts, maybe?”

  “Could be. Maybe we’ll know more when we get the financial records.”

  “If we get them,” J.D. said. “Anything else?”

  “Think about this. If D. Wesley is the connection between Wally and Fortson, and Wally is some kind of enforcer for gamblers, then we might be able to track them all online and see just what Gilbert is up to and whom he’s dealing with.”

  “You’re making my head spin. Do you think Gilbert might be dirty?”

  “If Fortson was dirty,” Reuben said, “it would stand to reason that the lawyer was, too.”

  “We’ll need to tread very carefully if we try to tie Gilbert into this. He sounds like he’s heavy timber in the legal community up there.”

  “When you talk to the detective who’s helping you out in Orlando, can you ask him about Gilbert? See if there’s any dirt on him that Matt might not have known about.”

  “I can. You keep plugging on Fortson’s laptop. Maybe we’ll strike gold.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 1

  I LET MYSELF off the houseboat and walked back up the pier. No one took any notice of me. Enough noise emanates from a working marina that the puny sounds made by the little revolver would have been lost among the ambient racket made by people working on boats, starting engines, and calling to one another.

  I stopped at the harbormaster’s office at the end of the pier. The man behind the counter wore a blue short-sleeved work shirt with “Cap’n Dave” embroidered above the right pocket. “Cap’n Dave?” I asked.

  “That’s me. Can I help you?”

  I flashed my badge and said, “I hope so. I’m Detective Don Monk. Does anybody live aboard the houseboat in slip three on the first pier?”

  “Sure. The Abbotts, but they’re off on a Caribbean cruise. Won’t be back for another week. Anything I can help you with, Detective? Is there a problem?”

  “No, thanks. There’s no problem. Somebody told me they thought an old friend of mine had moved aboard that boat, but I didn’t get an answer when I knocked.”

  “Maybe it’s another boat. I could check.”

  “Thanks. His name is Paul Reich.”

  He checked his computer. “No. Sorry. No Reich here.”

  “Okay. My friend must have been mistaken. Thanks, anyway.”

  I walked outside and stood in the shade of the overhang on the harbormaster’s little building, watching the parking lot. I thought about the Abbotts, a couple I didn’t know and in all probability would never know or even hear about again. But our lives had intersected in a strange fashion, and the Abbotts would never know about it or about me. If the sniper had come while the Abbotts were home, they would surely be dead now. On the other hand, if I’d never come to Key West, they’d be alive, regardless of whether they had gone on the cruise or stayed home on their houseboat. It is often some such random intersections of lives that spell disaster and sometimes, under other circumstances, great happiness. We don’t get a choice about those chance junctions, because we cannot see them coming.

  It was about time for Tariq to arrive, if he was going to. I was pretty sure that the man on the houseboat was going to plug me as soon as Tariq identified me. On the other hand, maybe he didn’t need Tariq to tell him I was the target. I was also curious as to why they would take out a sheriff’s detective, unless they knew who I really was.

  I called Dave Kendall while I waited. “Dave, I’ve taken down another of the bad guys, the one named Kadir, but now I’ve got a body on somebody’s houseboat. Any suggestions?”

  “Damn, Matt. You’ll killing people right and left. What’s gotten into you?”

  “Survival instincts, I guess. That and the fact that those guys have really pissed me off.” I explained what had happened and Tariq’s involvement. “The people who live there won’t be back for another week. Can you help me get rid of the body?”

  “I’ve got a cleanup team in Miami. I can get them there tonight. Give me the address.”

  As I was hanging up, I saw Tariq’s taxi pull into the parking lot across Palm Avenue. He backed into a space, giving him a view of the entire lot. I crossed the street and came up behind his car. I stayed at an angle so that a chance look in the rearview mirror wouldn’t give me away. I moved quietly to the passenger side of the taxi, reached for the handle and snatched the door open. I slipped into the front passenger seat and stuck my pistol in Tariq’s side, down low where it wouldn’t be seen from the parking lot. “Drive,” I said.

  He looked at me, looked at the pistol,
and cranked the car. “Why are you doing this, Detective?” he asked.

  “Why did you set me up to be killed?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Your friend Abdullah Kadir knew.”

  “Who?”

  “The guy with the rifle. You know, the one you let out of your car twenty minutes ago. He’s dead, by the way. Now drive or I’ll shoot you right here.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “I’ll direct you. Just get moving.”

  * * *

  Twenty minutes later, we pulled into Paul Galis’ driveway on Lower Sugarloaf Key. It was nearing four o’clock. I wasn’t sure what condition Jock would be in, but I was hoping he was up to a little interrogation. “Get out of the car,” I told Tariq, “and get in the trunk.”

  “No.”

  “Get in the trunk or get shot. It won’t make any difference to me.”

  He got out of the car as I held my gun on him. I pulled the keys out of the ignition and opened the trunk. He crawled in. “I won’t be long,” I said. I closed the lid and went inside the house.

  Jock was still sitting on the sofa drinking a glass of what appeared to be iced tea. He looked up as I walked in. “Hey, podna. You okay?”

  “I’m good. How’re you?”

  “Better. TV’s getting a little monotonous.”

  I was happy to see a little spark of humor. “I need you to talk to a man who tried to kill me today. You up to that?”

  “What happened?”

  I told him about Tariq, supposedly a Pakistani who was in the country legally, and my suspicions about his involvement with Youssef’s group. “He brought a sniper with him and put him in place to kill me. I got the sniper and brought Tariq here. I need you to talk to him. Find out who the hell he is.”

  “Did you bring the sniper, too?”

  “No. He’s dead.”

  “You killed him?”

  “Yes.”

  “One of Youssef’s men?”

  “Yes.”

  “Was the killing necessary?”

  “Yes. It was him or me.”

  “Good.”

  “Suppose it hadn’t been self-defense, Jock? What if I had killed him in cold blood?”

  “But you didn’t.”

  “Yeah, but I would have if it had come to that.”

  “Then his death would eat your soul. Eventually.”

  “Are you up to talking to Tariq?”

  “Yes. Where is he?”

  “In the trunk of a taxi out in the driveway.”

  Jock grinned. “Did the driver charge you extra for hauling the guy in the trunk?”

  I laughed. Jock was coming around. A little at a time. I went out through the garage to get Tariq. I pulled him out of the trunk and tied his hands behind him with a piece of rope I’d found on a work-table in the garage.

  I brought him into the house and sat him down in a chair across from Jock. They stared at each other for a moment or two and then Jock spoke to him in a language I did not understand. Tariq stared at Jock and didn’t say a word. Jock spoke to him again and Tariq spoke back, agitated, pleading.

  Jock looked at me and said, “Let’s go outside for a minute.”

  We walked to the front door and stood on the stoop. I could watch Tariq through the glass pane set into the door. “He’s not Pakistani,” Jock said. “He’s an Arab.”

  “How did you figure that out?”

  “Urdu is the national language of Pakistan. Almost everybody speaks it, and certainly someone with the education Tariq claims to have would be fluent in it. Since English is also an official language, he would be fluent in that as well. You said his English isn’t very good and now we know he doesn’t understand a word of Urdu. I told him in Urdu that I was going to cut his nuts off and then ask him some serious questions. He didn’t even blink, but when I told him the same thing in Arabic, he about had a heart attack.”

  “I didn’t know you spoke Urdu.”

  “Not much call for it except at the convenience stores.” There was that little spark of humor again.

  “Let me call Paul and tell him what’s going on. I’ve got to meet Russ Coit at six, so I need to get everything we can out of Tariq quickly.”

  * * *

  I came back into the living room. Jock and Tariq were sitting and staring at each other. I’d talked with Paul who told me that he was on his way home, but he’d make arrangements to hold Tariq in an isolation cell at the jail for as long as we needed him kept there. He’d just need some paperwork from Dave Kendall justifying the detention on national security grounds. I assured him we’d get that moving.

  I sat down in front of Tariq. “You tried to kill me. Why?”

  “I’m not saying anything.”

  “Tariq, I’m not going to let you bleed all over my friend’s furniture, but I don’t mind taking you out back, tying you to a tree, and slowly cutting off body parts. I’ll probably start with your dick.”

  He stared at me. I pulled my pistol and hit him across the face with the barrel. The sight on the end cut his cheek and blood started to flow. I got up and went into the bathroom and brought back a towel, wrapped it around his neck, and sat back down.

  “I told you I didn’t want blood on my friend’s furniture. The towel will catch it, but I warn you, next time I’m going to cut something off.”

  Jock got up and walked out of the room. “You okay, Jock?” I asked.

  “I can’t watch this.” He was slipping back into the state he’d been in since he’d arrived in Florida. I didn’t know what to do about that, so I concentrated on Tariq.

  “You’d better start talking to me, Tariq.”

  “I know who you are, Mr. Royal.”

  That surprised me. “Well, that explains it. I thought you were just stupid enough to go around killing cops. How did you know?”

  “I knew when I saw you at Starbucks this morning. I’d seen a picture of you.”

  “Who gave you the picture?”

  “My associate.”

  “Youssef?”

  “Yes.”

  “When did he give you the picture?”

  “Yesterday.”

  “Why?”

  “It was a picture of you and a woman. He said I was to kill you if I saw either of you.”

  “Who are you, Tariq? We know you’re an Arab, not a Pakistani. Do I have to send somebody to bring your brother-in-law out here?”

  “He’s not my brother-in-law.”

  “Who is he?”

  “A Pakistani man with a family.”

  “Why is he helping you out, pretending to be your brother-in-law?”

  “Because I told him I would kill his family if he didn’t.”

  “Your name’s not Tariq Gajani, is it?”

  “No. I am Shaheed Mustafa.”

  “Who is Tariq?”

  “The taxi manager’s brother-in-law. I took his place.”

  “How did you pull that off?”

  “Tariq is dead, but his brother-in-law thinks we’re just holding him. I don’t go to the taxi company’s office or have anything to do with the other drivers. The brother-in-law gave me the cab to use.”

  “How long has this been going on?”

  “I was in Miami where I’ve been since September. I’ve been working on a project there.”

  “Terrorism.”

  “Holy war.”

  “Right. I’m sure our people will want to know a bit more about that. What brought you to Key West?”

  “I got a call from Youssef early yesterday, shortly after midnight. He told me to go to Key West and wait for orders. I got here at sunup and called Youssef to let him know I had arrived. He told me about the cab driver, Tariq. I was to call for a cab and ask specifically for Tariq. I told the dispatcher that Tariq had brought me from the airport the day before and I liked him and wanted to use him again.”

  “How did you manage to kill him?”

  “I asked him to take me to a
house where Youssef was staying. I pulled my pistol and made him go inside. Youssef cut his throat and I took the taxi and waited for further orders.”

  “Why did you identify Akeem’s and Youssef’s pictures at Starbucks this morning?”

  “I don’t know. Youssef told me that if you showed me any pictures of them, I was to identify them. We knew the police wouldn’t be able to find them, and we wanted to appear to be cooperating.”

  “Did Youssef know who I was at that time?”

  “No. We thought you were Detective Monk. Until I recognized you.”

  “But you identified the men to me even though you knew I wasn’t the police?”

  “I saw your badge. It looked real. I thought you might be working with the police, so I identified them.”

  “Is Youssef still at the house where you took Tariq?”

  “No. The house was empty and Youssef just used it to get the cab. He left with me and I dropped him off on Duval Street.”

  “Where’s Tariq’s body?”

  “In that house.”

  I heard a car pull into the driveway. Paul was home. I glanced at my watch. Five thirty. I had to get a move on. Paul came in the door and I told him that the man on his sofa was Shaheed Mustafa and that he was a terrorist and had been responsible for the death of Tariq Gajani. Paul talked with Shaheed for a few minutes, got the address of the house where Tariq’s body was located and then turned to me. “I’ll get this idiot bedded down in a nice isolated cell. Can you get Kendall to send the paperwork right on?”

  “I’ll do that,” I said. “I need to get to Lower Sugarloaf International. My friend will be landing there in about twenty minutes. And I left my rental car at the Garrison Bight Marina.”

  “The forensics people can pick up the taxi and get your car back to Avis. I’ll drop you off at the airstrip on my way back to the jail with this asshole. Where’s Jock?”