Mortal Dilemma Page 9

  “Could you tell if he’d been drinking?”

  “No way to tell yet,” Kevin said. “They’ll run tox screens when they get him to the morgue. We’ll know soon enough.”

  “I take it that there’s been no canvass of the neighbors.”

  “Not yet. We’re waiting until people start waking up. The chief didn’t want to roll them out of bed in the middle of the night. He was afraid it would cause a panic. Dead neighbor on the beach in the wee hours.”

  “Do you know where the chief is?”

  “He had to go back to the station for something. Here he comes now.”

  Chief Bill Lester was picking his way through the low dunes that bordered the beach. J.D. walked to meet him. “You sure know how to interrupt a vacation, Chief.”

  “Welcome back, J.D. Did you enjoy Key West?”

  “You mean all seven hours of it?”

  The chief smiled. “Sorry to drag you back, but I figured you might have some walking around knowledge about the victim’s sister’s murder that would help us here. Something that didn’t get into the paperwork.”

  “No sweat, Bill. I don’t know what this is all about, but I think the sister’s murder is the place to start. I’ve already got somebody in the Orlando area trying to dig up some financial information on Mr. Fortson.”

  “You suspect him for the murder of his sister?”

  “That may be too strong, but I certainly want to dig a little deeper on him. He got a lot of money as the result of Rachel’s death.”

  “Who gets the money now that Fortson’s dead?”

  “Good question, Bill. I’ll have to wait until Monday to start digging into that.”

  “You’ve got your work cut out for you. What about Matt?”

  “I left him in Key West. Am I still suspended?”

  “No. The Alachua County sheriff gave me verbal clearance to get you back to work. Said it was a good shoot and he’ll be filing the paperwork on Monday. You’re good to go.”

  “Thanks, Chief. All things considered, I’d just as soon still be on suspension and lying on a beach in Key West.”

  “There are no good beaches down there.”

  “Well, there’s that.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 1

  IT WAS A little before six. I was sitting on Paul Galis’ deck reading the morning paper and sipping a large coffee that I’d bought at an all-night convenience store on the way back from Boca Chica. “Anything interesting in the news?” Jock asked. He’d slipped quietly outside and gave me a start. It must have shown. “A little jumpy, podna?”

  “Jeez, Jock. You’ve got to start making more noise. You scared the hell out of me.”

  “What’s on the agenda today?” he asked.

  “We need to talk, old buddy. There’s a coffee maker in the kitchen. Already loaded. Just turn it on.”

  He returned a few minutes later with a steaming cup. “J.D. still in bed?”

  “She’s probably in Longboat by now.”

  “Lover’s spat?”

  “Bill Lester called her back for a murder that happened on the beach a few hours ago. I took her out to Boca Chica, and a sheriff’s helicopter picked her up.”

  “I slept through all that?”

  “We tried to keep quiet,” I said. “I never want to interrupt a man and his hangover. How’re you feeling this morning?”

  “Like a man who survived a hell of a drunk. I’m done with the drinking for a while.”

  “What about your plans for finding an island and going to ground?”

  “That’s still my plan. I was dead serious last night. I’m done.”

  “I have a favor to ask. A big one. Maybe bigger than anything I’ve ever asked before.”

  “Whatever you need, podna. You know that.”

  “I want you to agree to stay here at Paul’s for a few days. Give me a chance to sort things out. Figure out who’s trying to kill you.”

  “I’ll be putting you all in danger.”

  “Think about it for a minute. Nobody knows you’re here. The bad guys wouldn’t know that you and Paul have a history, or for that matter that Paul and I do. J.D.’s on Longboat surrounded by cops. Bill Lester knows what’s going on, so he’s going to be extra vigilant.”

  Jock chuckled. “I can’t see J.D. sitting still for that.”

  “She won’t know.”

  “Okay. What about you?”

  “I’ll be fine. I’m not just some retired lawyer lying in the sun.”

  “Matt, I know that better than anyone. I’ve watched you work. We’ve been in scrapes together, and of all the people I know, including some of the best trained agents in the world, you’re the one I’d always pick to be on my side in a fight. But these guys, if they’re who I think they are, are the most brutal bastards in the world. They’d think nothing of taking out a building full of women and children if their target was there. Killing is what they do. They’re like wolves. They run in packs. You take out one and there’re several more waiting in the shadows. They won’t stop until they’re all dead. Or we are.”

  “I know that.”

  “Then, leave it alone.”

  “You haven’t been thinking too straight, Jock. If you disappear, the threat to J.D. and me remains. The fact that they can’t find you won’t stop them from trying to kill us.”

  “You’ve got a point,” Jock said.

  “And what if they do find you and kill you?”

  “Then I’m dead.”

  “And what about J.D. and me?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re worried that the bad guys want to kill us to ruin your life. What do you think your death will do to us?”

  He sat quietly, mulling over a thought that apparently had not occurred to him. “I haven’t thought that through very well, have I? What are you thinking about doing?”

  “How many people are in Youssef’s group?”

  “About ten, we think.”

  “Do you have names, pictures?”

  “Yes.”

  “I think you need to call Dave Kendall and let him know what’s going on. We need the information on Youssef and his people.”

  “Okay. What else?”

  “We need to figure out how they know who you are and how they found out about J.D. and me. How do they know where you are?”

  “I’ve been thinking about that,” Jock said. “There has to be a leak in our agency.”

  “What about other intelligence agencies you’ve worked with in the past? Could the leak be coming from there?”

  “Possibly.”

  “We need to find out.”

  “I’ll call Dave this morning. Bring him up to date and get him to send the pictures and names of Youssef’s men.”

  “Jock, call Dave now. Roll him out of bed if necessary, but I want to be at the bar you were in yesterday when they open this morning. I’d like to have those pictures to show around. You never know. Maybe somebody saw the one who shot you. Have Dave send the photos to my phone.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 1

  I FOLLOWED PAUL Galis to a small café perched on the side of U.S. 1, just before the bridge leading to the next key. It was a little after seven and I was craving breakfast. I was wearing my running shoes, a pair of chinos, a baseball cap bearing the logo of the Tampa Bay Bucs, and a golf shirt that hung over the Walther PPK/S twenty-two-caliber pistol that was tucked into my pants at the small of my back. Jock had given me the weapon, saying that it was untraceable. I parked the rental next to Paul’s unmarked cruiser and walked into the air-conditioned restaurant.

  A server brought us menus and coffee, and we settled into a booth overlooking the sound. “They’ve got the best waffles south of Miami,” Paul said. “And real maple syrup they get directly from Vermont.”

  “Sounds just right.” I nodded at the waitress.

  When she’d gone, I said, “Can you put up with Jock for a few day
s?”

  “Sure. What’s going on?”

  “I think he needs to keep out of sight. I want to see if I can find the people who’re trying to kill him.”

  “How’re you going to do that? We don’t have any clues, nowhere to start.”

  “Paul, you know what Jock does.”

  “Sort of. I don’t know much beyond the fact that he works for a secretive government agency and has lots of pull.”

  “That’s about all anyone needs to know. But, I know a lot more and have some information that I can’t share with you. National security and all that crap. I’ve at least got a starting point, and Jock’s agency will give me more help as I need it.”

  “What can I do, other than babysit Jock?”

  “I’m going to start turning over rocks and there may be some very bad people crawling out from under them. They’re not going to be cooperative. How close are you to the sheriff?”

  “Like brothers. We started with the department on the same day and were partners on patrol for a couple of years. I took a leave of absence and ran his campaign six years ago when he was first elected. Why?”

  “I need him to make me a special deputy, give me some law enforcement credentials.”

  “I’m pretty sure you have to go through a police academy to get deputized.”

  “You’re right,” I said. “I looked it up. But the sheriff is a constitutional officer in Florida and he has the power to appoint a special deputy. One who has no enforcement powers. He can’t arrest anybody or enforce the law in any way. He’s just honorary, but he gets a badge. If the sheriff will appoint me, nobody has to know that I’m toothless as a cop. I just need a badge to flash.”

  “Doesn’t the badge say ‘honorary’ or something like that on it?”

  “It does. But mistakes happen, and I could inadvertently be given a real badge. Given the people I’ll be dealing with, I don’t think it’ll ever come back on the sheriff.”

  “Let’s go to the station and I’ll run it by him.”

  * * *

  I followed Paul as he crossed the bridge to Stock Island, turned north, passed the Key West Golf Club and the animal shelter and pulled into a reserved parking space in front of the modern building that housed the sheriff’s headquarters. I parked a few places down from him in what seemed to be general parking. We bypassed security with a nod from Paul, took the elevator to the second floor and a secretary escorted us into a spacious office overlooking a lot of green water.

  Galis introduced me to the sheriff and explained a bit about Jock’s background and why I was trying to ferret out the bad guys and what I needed. He might have led the sheriff to believe I was an agent of the same shadowy organization to which Jock belonged. I didn’t say anything. If it came to that, Dave Kendall would back up the story that I was one of his.

  The sheriff called his secretary and asked her to dig up a badge that hadn’t been assigned to anyone. When she brought it in, he swore me in as an honorary deputy and handed me the badge. It was real, not an honorary one. “You’ll need to go down to the ID section and get Matt a picture identity card to go with the badge. I’ll have Carla call down and tell them the ID needs to be real, not honorary.”

  “Would it be too much to ask that we give me a fictitious name?” I asked.

  “I guess not,” the sheriff said. “In for a penny, in for a pound. What name do you want on the identification card?”

  “Don Monk,” I said.

  “Okay. If this comes back to bite me, I’ll just blame Carla,” the sheriff said. He laughed. “Damn if I’m not turning into a real politician.”

  When we finished at the ID section, I was a bona fide Monroe County deputy sheriff, at least as far as the idiots I’d be dealing with would know. I left Paul at the elevator and made my way back to my rental. It was only a little after eight and the bar I was headed for wouldn’t open until nine. Paul had given me the name and phone number of the cab driver who’d taken Jock to the hospital. His name was Tariq Gajani, a Pakistani national who was a legal resident of the U.S. That information was like a big red arrow pointing to Gajani as a bad guy. But then I was probably letting my darker side slip out. The fact that he was Pakistani, and presumably a Muslim, did not make him a terrorist. Still, it didn’t hurt to keep my guard up.

  According to the background check run by the sheriff’s detective working on the case, Gajani had come to America a couple of years before and was working for his brother-in-law who was a shift manager for the cab company. He had no criminal record.

  I called him. I didn’t want to give him my real name in case he was somehow involved in the whole thing. I was pretty sure my ID would pass even a close inspection. “Mr. Gajani, this is Detective Don Monk. I’m with the sheriff’s department and I’d like to talk to you about the guy you took to the hospital yesterday afternoon.”

  “Okay. I don’t know what I can tell you, though.” He spoke heavily accented English. “I just took him to the hospital. He wasn’t saying much at all.”

  “Just routine,” I assured him. “Trying to get the paperwork in order. Where can I meet you?”

  “We can’t do this on the phone?”

  “Afraid not. It shouldn’t take but a few minutes.”

  “Can you meet me at the Starbucks at the corner of Duval and Fleming?”

  “I can be there in ten minutes,” I said.

  “I’m wearing a Florida Marlins ball cap.”

  “I’ll find you.”

  Just as I touched the off button on my phone, it chimed, indicating an incoming text. It was from Dave Kendall and contained ten photos of dark-skinned men caught in candid shots. I assumed they had been taken with a long lens. Some of them appeared to be low resolution and were a bit blurry.

  * * *

  Gajani was a small dark man with a mustache and smartly trimmed beard. He was neatly dressed and appeared to be in his late twenties or early thirties. He was sitting at a table next to a window overlooking Duval Street. He stood when I approached and we shook hands. “Can I get you a coffee?” I asked.

  “Thank you. I’ll have three shots of espresso in a small cup.”

  Ugh. I’d be climbing the walls. I ordered my standby, a skinny vanilla latte. It’s never too early to start watching your weight. I brought the drinks back to the table and took a seat. “Mr. Gajani, I appreciate your meeting me. I only have a few questions. Just trying to tie up all the loose ends.”

  He nodded.

  “First of all, can you tell me how you happen to be in this country?”

  “I graduated from University in Pakistan as an electrical engineer. I came to this country on a work visa, but the company in New York that hired me to work as an engineer lost a big contract a few months after I started there and they didn’t need me. I also needed to work on my English, so my brother-in-law got me a job with the taxi company he works for.”

  “How long have you been in Key West?”

  “A little over a year.”

  “You like it?”

  He smiled. “What is not to like?”

  “Let’s talk about yesterday afternoon.”

  “Okay.”

  “Were you dispatched to pick up the wounded man?”

  “No. I was driving by.”

  “What made you think to stop?”

  “He was pretty drunk.”

  “How could you tell?” I asked.

  “He was staggering, and seemed about to pass out.”

  “Did you see any blood on his shoulder or arm?”

  “Not at first.”

  The timbre of his voice changed when we started talking about his picking up Jock and there was a little tightening around his eyes, a subtle change of expression. It’s hard to describe, but experienced trial lawyers learn to read small signs that tell them when a witness is lying. We call it our bullshit meter, and it seldom fails. When the meter pegs into the red zone, the lawyer’s mind moves into cross-examination mode. I had to be careful here.

&nb
sp; “When did you first notice the blood?” I asked.

  “When he got into the back seat.”

  “Did he tell you where he was going?”

  “No. He mumbled something, but I did not understand him. When I saw the blood, I drove him to the hospital.”

  “I guess you see lots of drunks in Key West. Especially during Fantasy Fest.”

  “Yeah, but you see that most every night.”

  “So, you must pick up a lot of drunks. How many per day, would you say?”

  He hesitated, unsure of what his answer should be. Did he sense the trap? “Not so many.”

  “Why not? There are a lot of them on the streets.”

  “I’m pretty busy with sober customers.”

  “Where would you have taken your passenger yesterday if you hadn’t noticed the blood?”

  “Wherever he wanted to go.” He was taking quick sips of his espresso before he answered each of my questions. Trying to give himself time to think. As soon as he answered, I threw another question at him. I wanted to keep up the momentum, keep him off balance.

  “You just told me he was almost passed out when you first saw him. What would have happened if he had gotten into your car and passed out without giving you his destination?”

  He took another sip of espresso, then faltered. He started to rise from the table. “I have to get back to work.”

  “Sit down, Tariq,” I said. “Now.”

  “I am leaving.”

  “If you don’t take your seat, I’m going to arrest you.”

  He sat. “I’ll call my brother-in-law, and he can have a lawyer meet us at the jail.”

  I pulled my pistol and held it close to my chest at table height. I wanted him to see it, but didn’t want to spook the other customers. His eyes widened as he caught sight of the weapon. “Tariq,” I said, “I want you to listen to me very carefully. I am not going to take you to jail. I am going to find a nice deserted place and tie you to a tree and see how many questions you can answer before I put a bullet in your head.”

  He blinked several times, took a final swallow of his espresso, and spoke very quietly. “If I talk to you, they will kill me.”