Fatal Decree (21 page)

I shook my head and picked up the pace, trying to outrace the devils who were taunting me with bleak thoughts of a future without J.D. I’d weathered that kind of loss once, and I could do it again. I just didn’t want to think about the pain that came with the loss.

But loss comes in many guises, and if I could have foreseen the events of the next day, I would have stayed in bed, hunkered under the sheets, seeking safe harbor.

Logan was waiting for me when I pulled in front of his condo complex. At six, the morning was still dark. We drove to St. Armands Circle and grabbed some Starbucks coffee to fuel us for the trip. We drove south on I-75, crossed the wide Caloosahatchee River and took the off ramp to Highway 80. The weather had cleared and warmed. We drove east into the rising sun, the highway coursing through small river towns until we reached LaBelle. We found the jail and parked in front.

I showed my ID and told the deputy manning the booth in the reception area that Chief Lester had made arrangements for me to see Bubba Junior Groover. It turned out that he was the ringleader and neither the DEA nor Bill Lester thought the others would be of any use to us.

Logan had laughed when I told him the name of our interviewee. “There’re generations of ignorant rednecks in that name. They can be some dangerous dudes.”

We were asked to wait for a few minutes and were then shown to an interview room where we found Mr. Groover shackled to a chair that was bolted to the floor. He was a small man with unkempt hair hanging over his ears. He had a scar that ran diagonally from the edge of his mouth to the tip of his chin and what I guessed was a permanent scowl. His skin wore the reddish complexion that field hands in this part of the world develop before they reach their teens. It’s what sailors call a blue-water tan, a mild sunburn superimposed on years’ worth of deep tan. He was wearing an orange jumpsuit and cotton slippers, the kind you have to slide along the floor to keep them from falling off your feet.

“Mr. Groover,” I said, as Logan and I took seats in the other two chairs
in the room, “my name’s Matt Royal. I’m here on behalf of the Drug Enforcement Administration.” I was stretching that a bit, but I figured this was not a man who would ask a lot of questions. “Do you know that agency?”

“Yep.”

“And you know that it was the DEA that arrested you.”

“Yep.”

“I know you’ve talked to some of the agents already. Do you understand that your cooperation will be taken into account at any sentencing?”

“Yep.”

“Do you know Pete Qualman?”

“Yep.”

“Where do you know him from?”

“We did time together.”

I was relieved that his vocabulary extended beyond yep. “Where?”

“Glades.”

“How long?”

“Couple of years.”

“What were you in for?”

“Drugs.”

“Using or selling?”

“Running.”

“You working out of the same airfield where you were busted?”

“Yep.”

“That wasn’t real smart, was it?” I asked.

“Didn’t turn out to be.”

“How long have you been out?”

“’Bout two years.”

“How’d you hook back up with Qualman?”

“Pete came here the day he got out. Needed work.”

“What kind of work?”

“He knowed about my crew and thought I might have a place for him.”

“Did you?”

“Yep.”

“Doing what?”

“Mule, mostly. He’d take the stuff from the planes down to Miami to our distributor.”

“How often would he make that run?”

“Two, three times a week.”

“When did he leave your employ?”

“He quit ‘bout two weeks ago.”

“Did he say why?”

“Yep.”

“What’d he say?”

“Had to go up to Sarasota. One of his buds from Glades was going to pay him a bunch of money for a job.”

“Did he have a car?”

“Nope.”

“How did he deliver the drugs to Miami?”

“Used mine.”

“How did he get to Sarasota?”

“He said somebody was going to pick him up.”

“What kind of job in Sarasota?”

“Don’t know.”

“You didn’t ask?”

“Wasn’t none of my business.”

“Where do your drugs come from?” I was jumping around with my questions, trying to surprise him, catch him off guard. It was an old trial lawyers’ trick. Sometimes it worked, but with a guy this dumb, I didn’t think it would.

“Mexico, I think.”

“You don’t know?”

“I’m just the guy what gets the stuff moving.”

“Who do you work for?”

“Can’t help you there.”

“You do know that this is the kind of information that’d do you a lot of good with a judge.”

“Yep. And I’d tell you if I knowed.”

“How do you get paid?”

“Money gets wired into my bank account.”

I was surprised. Maybe this one wasn’t as dumb as he pretended. “You have a bank account?”

“Yep. Don’t everybody?”

“I guess. You don’t know where the money’s wired from?”

“Nope. I think those other guys from DEA was going to talk to my bank. Maybe they know.”

“Qualman’s dead, you know.”

A momentary cloud passed across his face, perhaps a frown. “Nope. Didn’t know that. How’d it happen?”

“He was shot by a government agent. Qualman was trying to kill a cop.”

“Boy, that don’t sound like ole Qualman,” said Groover. “Must’ve been a lot of money involved.”

“You don’t think he’d shoot a cop?”

“He would if there was enough money involved. I just can’t believe anybody in their right mind would give him that much money for doing anything. He wasn’t the brightest-eyed beast in the gator hole.”

I almost choked on that metaphor, but I soldiered on. “Where did he live when he was working for you?”

“In our bunkhouse.”

“He make any friends other than your crew?”

“His girlfriend.”

Ah, finally. A nugget of information. “What’s her name?”

“Jenny Talbot.”

“Where does she live?”

“Over near Clewiston.”

“Address?”

“Don’t know it. She’s out in the cane fields.”

“Can you give me directions?”

“Yep.” He gave me a detailed route to Jenny’s house.

“When did you last see Qualman?”

“’Bout a week ago, I think.”

“Can you be more specific?”

“Last Sunday. He stayed with Jenny Saturday night, and I saw him just before he left. Sunday, right after lunch.”

“Did somebody bring him?”

“Nope. He was driving a BMW. Sweet ride.”

I turned to Logan. “You got anything else?”

“No, Counselor. I think you just about covered it.”

We drove to Clewiston following Highway 80. Smoke from the stacks at the sugar refinery billowed into the sky like a beacon, drawing us forward. We stopped at a McDonald’s for coffee and then followed Bubba’s directions south. We made a couple of turns off county roads and found ourselves on a track that ran straight as an arrow through miles of sugarcane fields. We passed two settlements that housed the workers who cut the cane, many of them Jamaican immigrants. We pulled off the road into the yard of a single house that sat about fifty feet from the berm. It was a small, clapboard building with a tin roof showing large patches of rust. An hour had passed since we had left Bubba sitting chained to the chair in the interview room.

We parked and went to the house. I knocked on the screen door and in a few minutes it was answered by a pretty young woman wearing a T-shirt and cutoffs. She was in her late teens or early twenties. She had long blonde hair, reaching to her shoulders. It looked as if she didn’t own a brush or comb. She was barefoot, her toenails covered with chipped black polish, her feet dirty.

“Can I help you?” she asked.

“Are you Jenny Talbot?”

“Who’s asking?”

“My name is Matt Royal. This is Logan Hamilton. I’m a lawyer up in Longboat Key, and I need to speak with Ms. Talbot.”

“That’s me,” she said. “Come on in.”

We walked into a small room that held a threadbare sofa and two straight chairs. A small TV sat on a table across the room from the sofa, a morning show of some kind playing soundlessly.

“Have a seat,” she said, pointing to the sofa. “I know who you are. Bubba called me from the jail.”

I was surprised. “He did?”

“About twenty minutes ago.”

“Did he tell you about Pete Qualman?”

“Yeah. That’s why he called. Said Pete’s dead.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t make no never mind to me,” she said.

“I thought you were his girlfriend.”

“Nah. We’re like those people on the TV, I guess, friends with benefits.”

“How so?”

“He’d come around when he got horny. Usually brought me a little gift or something. I’d haul his ashes and he’d leave. Came about twice a week.”

I was surprised. “Are you a prostitute?” I asked.

I saw anger flare in her face, a tightening of the jaw, redness creeping up from her neck, a grimace. “Fuck you,” she said. “I ain’t no whore. I liked it when Pete come around.”

I was losing her fast. “I’m sorry, Ms. Talbot. I didn’t mean to offend you. Can we start over?”

She relaxed a bit, sat back in her straight chair. “Okay. What do you want?”

“I want to know about Pete,” I said. “Who his friends were, why he was going to Sarasota, what kind of job he had up there, that sort of thing.”

“He didn’t have no friends to amount to anything. He lived down in the next settlement in a bunkhouse with some of the crew Bubba ran.”

“Did he ever mention any of the crew as a friend?”

“No. I don’t think he had much to do with them.”

“What about the guy in Sarasota?”

“What about him?”

“Did Pete ever tell you that he was a friend, where they met, what the job was in Sarasota?”

“I know it was some guy he’d been in the lockup with over near Belle Glade.”

“Glades Correctional?”

“I guess.”

“Do you know the friend’s name?”

“Jeff, I think.”

“Last name?”

“I never heard it.”

“How did Pete get here? Did somebody bring him?”

She smiled, the first sign of life I’d seen in her face other than the anger when I’d accused her of being a whore. “No. He had a sweet ride. Took me for a drive. Real leather seats and a sound system that’d knock your shoes off if you cranked it up enough.”

“What kind of car?”

“I don’t know. He said it was German.”

“BMW?”

“Could be. I don’t know nothing about cars.”

“Was he planning to come back to see you?”

“I suppose. Next time he got horny.”

“Did he say where he got the car?”

“Said he borrowed it.”

“From whom?”

“Didn’t say. I figured it was his boss’s car.”

“Jeff?”

“I guess.”

“Do you work?” I asked.

“Sometimes I get a job waitressing. Not lately, though. Times are tough.”

“Where do you get the money to live on?”

“I got a couple of kids and the state sends me a check every month.”

“Where are the kids?”

“They’re with my daddy. Over to Clewiston, shopping.”

“Does your father live here?”

“Yeah. This is his house. Well, it belongs to the sugar company, but he works for them, so he gets the house.”

“Does your mother live here, too?” I asked.

She laughed, a short, bitter-sounding bark. “She run off when I was a baby. It’s just Daddy and me. Always been that way.”

I paused for a moment, thinking about this young woman. I wondered what she might have become had she been born into different circumstances. She was pretty and perhaps a different upbringing would have rubbed off the rough edges. She could have been a coed up at Gainesville or Tallahassee instead of rotting in this hidden part of Florida.

We were in the middle of the state, about sixty miles either way to Ft. Myers on the west coast or Palm Beach on the east. In some reality, we were thousands of miles or years removed from the golden people that lived and played and laughed on the gilded coasts. There was surely nothing to laugh about in this blighted place.

“Do you know anybody that might help us find this Jeff?”

“Nope. Can’t help you there.”

I thought for a moment and looked at Logan. He caught my eye and shook his head once, quickly. I got to my feet. “Thank you, Ms. Talbot,” I said. “We’ll be on our way.”

She stood, a flash of anger turning her face into a rictus of outrage. “You bastard,” she shouted. “You think I don’t know who the fuck you are? You think I’m some backwoods whore who don’t know nothing? I saw it on the news. You’re the bastard what killed Pete.”

I didn’t think now was the time to explain what happened, not that she’d believe me anyway. Logan was getting out of his seat. “Let’s go, Matt,” he said.

I think if I’d known what was waiting in Jenny’s front yard, I would have just stayed inside. Barricaded and calling 911 for help.

Logan and I walked through the door to the front porch. Two black men were standing in the front yard, spread out a little, perhaps ten feet separating them. They weren’t young, probably in their forties, but they were big and muscular. They looked like men who worked the cane, worked hard getting the stalks to the trucks that hauled them to the refinery. One man held what I took to be a cane cutter, although in this day of mechanization I was sure it was obsolete, maybe an antique. It had a wooden handle about a foot and a half long with a leather strap at the end, fashioned to go around the wrist so that the instrument wouldn’t slip out of the hand of its wielder. The business end had a blade set into the handle at a right angle and fastened by a screw and bolt. It was slightly curved and seemed to be sharpened on both sides. The blade terminated in a rounded point. An ominous weapon.

“Can I help you, gentlemen?” I asked, standing on the porch, Logan beside me. We’d left Jenny inside.

“Jenny called us, mon. Said narcs were coming. I guess that’s you. You narcs?” His accent was Jamaican, the harshness of his tone ameliorated by the Caribbean lilt that coated his words.