Mortal Dilemma Read online

  “My God, Millie. What happened?” Wally asked.

  Millie looked up. “I told you not to come.”

  “Yeah. What happened?”

  “You happened.”

  “I don’t understand,” Wally said.

  “You told somebody about me.”

  “Never.”

  “Javier told me that you talked to a detective about me.”

  “I talked to a detective but told him my information came from a confidential source that I couldn’t and wouldn’t identify.”

  “Somebody figured it out.”

  “What happened?”

  She started to cry, great sobs wracking her body and tears trailing down her cheeks. “Javier cut my face. He wouldn’t stop, no matter how much I begged. He just kept cutting, taking chunks out of my cheeks. He ruined me. And the surgeons can’t make it better. Javier said this is what happens to whores who talk out of school. The pain was so bad I passed out. He threw water in my face and started cutting again.”

  “Millie, I’m so sorry. I’ll handle this.”

  “Go away, Wally. There’s nothing you can do.”

  “We’ll see.” He turned and left the room. He drove to the central police station and parked in the lot reserved for detectives and ranking officers. He was looking for the detective he’d confided in. After two hours he gave up and went home. He would be going on shift in an hour.

  When he got back to the station to check in, he went to a computer and used a friend’s ID and password to log into the police department’s personnel files. He knew there would be an investigation and some smart cop would look at the department’s servers and run a search to determine who had been looking for the detective. His friend was in Alaska on a fishing trip with three other cops. His alibi would be solid.

  * * *

  A week later Wally went to the hospital to help Millie check out. She wrote a check for part of the bill on a Wisconsin bank and handed the checkbook to Wally to return to her purse. He tore out a check, put it in his pocket and drove her to the airport for a flight home. She was going back to Wisconsin, to her hometown in the far north of the state. She planned to enroll in a nearby college and study to be a teacher.

  Millie had come to believe that Wally had nothing to do with her being outed to Javier. He was at the hospital every day, concerned and helpful. On the day her bandages were removed, he looked at the red welts that crisscrossed her face and told her it wasn’t too bad and with time it would get better. He had a plan that he did not share with her.

  They stayed in touch by email and Wally thought she was feeling better about herself. Maybe being back in her old bedroom at the family home was a catalyst for good. Her parents had welcomed her with the warmth and love they’d always displayed toward their only daughter. She had talked to the college admissions people and would enroll at the beginning of the new semester that would start in a few weeks. She told her parents and her old friends that the scars on her face were the result of an automobile accident.

  * * *

  Two months went by before Wally put the first phase of his plan into action. He’d found the home address of the detective in the personnel files he’d broken into while Millie was in the hospital. Early one morning Wally was parked in his personal car a half block from the detective’s house. He watched as the man got into his car and pulled out of his driveway. Wally followed him and when they were three or four miles from the house, he pulled up beside the detective at a stop sign, waved at him to roll down his window, and said, “I need to talk to you. I’ve got some good information that I don’t want to be seen giving you at the office.”

  “Where do you want to go?”

  “Let’s pull into that parking lot around the corner,” Wally said.

  The detective followed Wally and parked right beside him. Wally got out of his car, a pistol held down beside his leg. He walked to the driver’s side window and stuck the pistol in the detective’s face. “Put your hands on the steering wheel,” Wally said.

  “Hey, man, what’s going on?”

  “Do it, or I’ll kill you.”

  The detective complied. Wally handed him a pair of handcuffs. “Use your right hand and put the cuff on your left wrist.”

  “You are surely fucking up,” the detective said.

  “Do it.”

  The detective put the cuff around his wrist as ordered and Wally said, “Now, reverse the procedure.”

  The detective did so and Wally checked to make sure they were secure. “Now get out of the car and hold your arms down in front of you.” The detective got out of the car. Wally looked around the lot. Nobody there this early. It had probably been a parking area for employees of the adjacent building at one time. The place may have been a factory of some sort, but it had been abandoned many years before. Grass and weeds grew through the cracks on the asphalt surface of the lot.

  “Put your hands on the car,” Wally said. “Assume the position. You know how to do it.” The detective spread his feet and leaned into the car. Wally unlocked the cuff on the detective’s right wrist, holding his pistol muzzle in the middle of the other man’s back. He pulled both the man’s arms behind his back, one at a time, and locked the cuffs again. He searched the detective, took his gun and his handcuffs and key. “Get in the front seat.” Wally drove out of the parking lot and headed west.

  “I hope the hell you know what you’re doing, Officer, because your career is about to come to a screeching halt.”

  “You keep talking, Detective, and I’m going to shoot you in the foot.”

  Half an hour later, Wally turned off on a service road that ran due south into the Everglades. The road was dirt and a pall of dust billowed behind his car. He drove for five miles and came to a stop. The road had been laid on a ridge that was a foot or two above the water of the great river of grass. There was water on either side and Wally heard the occasional roar of the bull gators. They were close.

  He got out of the car and sat on the trunk sipping from a bottle of water. Another fifteen minutes went by and the dust cleared. There were no cars or people in sight. Nobody would come up on him without dust being stirred up. He’d hear an airboat long before he saw it.

  Wally opened the passenger side door and dragged the detective out of the car. The man fell on the road, unable to catch himself with his hands cuffed behind him. “What the fuck?” he said.

  “We’re going to have a little conversation,” Wally said, standing over the man as he lay in the dirt.

  “About what?” A hint of fear was creeping into his voice.

  “About Javier Mendez.”

  “What about him?”

  “How long have you been on his payroll?”

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

  “Detective, this can go easy or hard, but the end result is going to be the same. You’re going to tell me what I want to know.”

  “And if I do, what then?”

  “I’ll take you in and you can give your confession all over again to the internal affairs people.”

  “About three years.”

  “What?”

  “I’ve been on Javier’s payroll for about three years.”

  “What do you know about Penny Parkins?”

  “She was one of the whores Javier’s son Francisco ran.”

  “What happened to her?”

  “Francisco killed her. It was an accident. She wanted to leave the life and he didn’t want her to. There was a fight and I guess Francisco hit her too hard. She died.”

  “Was her body in the boat that exploded near the port?”

  “Yes. Francisco was taking her body out to sea to dump it.”

  “Was Francisco aboard the boat?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you know what caused the explosion?”

  “Yes. The man who owns the boat is a drug runner. He had some cocaine stashed on the boat. He’d just made a run from Bimini bringing the stuff in. He’d off-loaded mos
t of it, but there was some left on the boat for delivery to another dealer. That deal was supposed to go down late on the day Francisco decided to steal the boat to take Penny’s body offshore. The boat owner had wired some semtex explosive to a cell phone and hid it in the boat. It could be detonated by a phone call. It was the guy’s security system. If somebody stole his boat, he could dial a number, and poof, the boat and the thief would disappear.”

  “So, when he saw his boat was gone, he dialed the number and no more Francisco.”

  “Right.”

  “Where’s the guy now?”

  “Javier wrapped some anchors around his neck and dropped him in the Gulfstream.”

  “You’re doing good. Now tell me about Millie Magnus.”

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

  Wally shot the detective through his right foot. The man screamed.

  “Want to try again, Detective?”

  “Yes.” He was talking through gritted teeth. “I know her. What do you want?”

  “How did you figure out she was my source?”

  “I staked out your house and saw her come there. I followed her home to her townhouse and got the address. I also got some pictures of her. I gave them to Javier. He knew exactly who she was.”

  “What happened then?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Wally aimed the pistol at the detective’s left foot. “I’ve got lots of bullets,” he said.

  “No. I’d tell you if I knew. Javier paid me off and said he’d take care of her.”

  “What did you think he meant?”

  “I figured he was going to kill her. It didn’t matter. She was just a whore.”

  Wally shot the detective through the head. It was the first time he’d ever killed a man. He waited for the horror of his actions to overwhelm him. Nothing. Satisfaction was as close as he could come to describing the emotion that he did feel. The bastard he’d just sent on to whatever reward or punishment awaited him had sealed his fate when he fingered Millie to Javier.

  Wally unlocked his handcuffs and put them in his pocket. He pulled the detective’s body over to the bank and rolled it into the water. The gators would have a snack tonight.

  * * *

  Over the next few days, Wally heard rumors around the station that the detective was missing. The consensus was that he was dirty and had run afoul of his underworld bosses. He was probably tied to an anchor at the bottom of the Atlantic. Then, two weeks after the detective disappeared, two dour men from Internal Affairs came to visit Wally at his apartment. They had heard rumblings that the detective had been instrumental in giving Javier Mendez the identity of one of Wally’s confidential sources. What could he tell them about that?

  Wally shook his head. “I gave the detective some information I got from a confidential source regarding the death of Francisco Mendez, but I didn’t tell him the source’s name.”

  “What was his or her name?”

  “I can’t give you that.”

  “We can make life hard for you,” the IA detective said.

  “I know my rights, Detective,” Wally said. “I don’t have to give you a name.”

  “We’ll be seeing you again, Officer,” the IA detective said and left with his partner.

  The rumors didn’t stop and Wally was slowly ostracized from the police brotherhood. He couldn’t be fired on what IA had, but other cops began to ignore him and go out of their way to snub him. He was never invited to the after-hours drinking parties at a local bar. He was becoming a pariah, but he didn’t care.

  Wally took two of his days off and drove to Tampa where he’d heard of a master forger. For three thousand dollars, he walked out with wonderfully forged ID documents including passports and active credit cards in the names of two different people.

  A few weeks later, Wally used one of the fake IDs and took a flight to the Cayman Islands. He lay on a beach for five days, drinking piña coladas and enjoying the solitude. On the third day, late in the morning, he appeared at a bank in George Town that he had previously looked into and was satisfied that it would suit his needs. He opened a secret numbered account with five thousand dollars in cash and a fake ID and passport.

  Two days later, Wally used the other fake ID and flew to Nassau, Bahamas. He checked into a gambling resort and stayed three days. He visited another bank and opened another numbered account with the second fake ID, using the last of his savings. Then, he went home.

  * * *

  Another month went by, and Wally decided it was time to strike. Time for Javier Mendez to pay for his sins. Wally knew the location of the Mendez mansion, a great pile of excess that one architectural reviewer had called a spectacle of inelegance overcome by self-indul-gent profligacy.

  On the night he chose to bring retribution to the Mendez household, Wally parked his personal car a block down the street from the eyesore in which Mendez lived. He had watched the place for two weeks and every evening at that time, Mendez’s limousine had rolled down the driveway precisely at seven o’clock with Mendez in the back seat. He was driven to a nondescript building two miles away. Wally knew the building housed an upscale private club that was frequented by the cream of the South Florida underworld. The Mendez limousine left the club at precisely 8:50 each evening and turned into his home’s driveway at exactly 9:00. It was ritualistic, Wally thought.

  Wally sat and waited and when the limousine turned the corner into Mendez’s street, he followed, lights out, and turned into the driveway behind the big vehicle. The driver had gotten out of the car and was moving around to the passenger side rear door to open it for Mendez when he noticed Wally’s car. He stopped, and Wally shot him dead with a silenced forty-five-caliber semiautomatic pistol. He then went to the limo, opened the rear door and stuck his pistol into the side of Mendez’s head.

  “Get out, nice and quiet,” Wally said.

  “What is this?” Mendez asked.

  “We need to do a little negotiation.”

  “My men are inside. They’ll kill you on sight.”

  “Javier,” Wally said, “you’re not in any position to bargain right now. Here’s what we’re going to do. You call or whistle or whatever you do to contact the men inside and you tell them to come outside. Right now. All of them.”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “Because, if you don’t, I’m going to shoot you and leave your body right here in the driveway.”

  “I’ll have to use my phone.”

  “Okay, but if anything looks the least little bit out of the ordinary, you die. They might get me in the end, but you’ll be dead.”

  “I understand,” Javier said, and made the call.

  In less than a minute, two men came out the back door and walked down the driveway. Wally shot them both.

  “Are there any more?” Wally asked.

  “No. Just the two.”

  “Get out of the car. You’re going in the trunk of your limo. I’ll be back to get you in a few minutes.” He handcuffed Mendez’s arms behind his back and helped him into the trunk.

  Wally backed his car out of the driveway, drove two blocks and parked. He’d taken the precaution of replacing his license plate with one he’d stolen earlier in the evening from a car of the same make and model as his that he found parked in the long-term parking garage at the airport. Even if the car was reported as having been seen in the neighborhood, it would not be connected to him.

  He took a backpack from his car and walked back to the Mendez home. He opened the limo trunk for Javier, and said, “We’re going inside. If there are any more people there, you will die immediately. Understand?”

  Javier nodded. “There were only the two you killed. They were good men. Who sent you?”

  “Let’s go to your study. You do have one, don’t you?”

  Mendez led him into a richly appointed room lined with bookshelves full of books that Wally thought had never been read. Wally placed Mendez in a chair and said, “Millie Magnus sen
t me.”

  Mendez blanched, then caught himself and sputtered. “That whore.”

  “Yes. That whore. The one you carved up like a side of cheap beef. Time to pay up.”

  “What do you want?”

  “I want you to wire ten million dollars into a bank account in Nassau.”

  “Where am I going to get ten million dollars?”

  “Don’t bullshit me, Javier. You’ve got that much in your checking account.”

  “The banks are closed.”

  “The Internet is open.”

  “I couldn’t transfer that much even if I had it.”

  “Javier, you’re not cooperating. That will get you killed. I know your bank. It’s mobbed up to the hilt. What you’re going to do is call the manager and then you’re going to use your computer to get into your account and transfer the money. The manager can send a signal to the bank’s computers that will approve the transfer.”

  “I’m not going to do that.”

  Wally pulled a knife out of the scabbard attached to his belt. He put the point of it against Javier’s cheek and sliced downward. Blood flowed and Mendez screamed. “Does that hurt, Javier?”

  Mendez nodded.

  “Want another one?” Wally asked.

  “No.”

  “Make the call.”

  Mendez shook his head. Wally sliced him again. Mendez screamed in pain and shuffled in his chair, trying desperately to get away from the knife.

  “Make the call,” Wally said.

  Mendez nodded and Wally asked for the number.

  “Use my cell. It’s in my pocket. The bank president’s name is Cal Hoover. His home number is in my phone’s contact list.”

  Wally retrieved the number and pushed the call button and put it on speaker. “Any funny stuff, Javier, and I’ll slit your throat.”

  Mendez nodded. A man answered the phone. “Cal, this is Javier Mendez. I have an emergency and need to transfer some money to Nassau tonight. Can you authorize an Internet transfer?”