Justifiable Homicide: A Political Thriller (Robert Paige Thrillers Book 1) (4 page)

“What enemy?”

“I asked Lasky that same question. He didn’t have an answer. All he said was that I had become a threat to the newspaper and that I had to go.”

“Didn’t the newspaper raise any First Amendment concerns about free press and free speech?”

“Maybe they did. I don’t know. I don’t talk to the people that high on the food chain unless I have to. They’re more concerned about the bottom line than they are about free speech or free press. I think most of them never even read the Constitution.”

“So, what are your plans? What are you going to do about a job?”

He leaned back in his chair, pondering his response. “I don’t know. If I stay in journalism, I’ll probably have to leave Miami. The
Herald
is the only game in town. Anything else would be a step down.”

Paige decided it was time to ease back to a more casual discussion. Right about now each of the others he’d interviewed had handed him his hat. He wanted to keep Witherspoon talking in case the journalist thought of something else to reveal.

“Are you married?”

“Yeah. My wife has a good job in one of the offices downtown. If we move, she’d have to quit and find another job that probably pays a lot less. And the kids would have to make new friends in a new school.”

“Being a journalist with integrity can cause problems.”

He chuckled again. “Yeah. Maybe I’ll go to work for CNN—the Communist News Network. That way I won’t have to have integrity. I can just report the news the government wants me to report.”

“Oh, I forgot to ask. Why did you use a different email account for your second email?”

Witherspoon smirked. “You noticed that, huh? I think they’re monitoring my main email account. Just to be on the safe side—I don’t want to be one of those reporters who gets arrested, you know—I went to a local Internet café, created a new account just for you, and sent you the second email.”

“Just for me? That’s considerate.”

“You’re welcome. I probably wanted to meet with you more than you wanted to meet with me. Nobody else wants to talk about Raul Rodriguez. By the way, what’s the next step for you? Are you going to keep digging into this case? I exhausted all my leads before I got fired.”

“It seems I’ve exhausted all of mine too. I don’t know what I’m going to do next. But one thing I do know—I’m not ready to quit. Raul was a friend of mine.”

They exchanged pleasantries for a few minutes, then got up and walked out, Paige to the left and Witherspoon to the right.

The two men parked in the black van across the street watched Paige as he exited Starbucks. Their electronic dish had monitored and recorded their conversation. The driver turned to look at the man operating the equipment.

“Did you get it all?”

“Yeah. Let’s go home. I think Paige is done for the day.”

Paige and Sveta gazed at the Miami sunset from her terrace. He stood behind her, caressing her waist.

His cell phone rang.

“Hi, Bob. It’s John Wellington.”

“John, it’s been a while. How are Sarah and the kids?”

“Fine, thanks. Bob, I’d like to get together for a little chat. What’s your schedule like for next week?”

“I’m only teaching on Tuesdays and Saturday mornings this semester, so any other day is fine.”

“Cushy job, Bob. Are you sure you’re a full-time professor?”

“The university thinks so. Let’s not tell them any different.”

“I’ll keep your little secret. How does Wednesday sound? We can meet for lunch.”

“Sure. Which office will you be at on Wednesday?”

“Actually, I’d prefer not to meet you at any office. This isn’t exactly going to be a Commerce Department discussion, if you know what I mean. How about the Rusty Pelican on the Rickenbacker Causeway? I like the panorama of Biscayne Bay from there. I’ll make a reservation for noon. Maybe we can get a table with a nice view.”

“I think all the tables there have a nice view, don’t they?”

“Yeah, probably. It’s nice to see that you’re helping me spend taxpayer dollars efficiently.”

“I do what I can. See you Wednesday.”

Paige slid the phone back in his pocket and gave Sveta his “everything is fine” smile. He behaved normally, as though it were just a regular phone call.

“Who was that?”

“John Wellington. You remember him, right? My former MBA student who works for the Commerce Department. He has a consulting assignment for me.”

“Yes, I remember him. Let’s go to bed, honey. I want to cuddle.”

Actually, she wanted to do more than cuddle, and so did he. After she had fallen asleep, he lay awake, forearm slung over his forehead, replaying the conversation he’d had with Wellington. Something in the tone of John’s voice told him it wasn’t a regular assignment.

That bothered him.

Paige stood in front of his office door, flipping for the key. He felt tired just thinking about the long day ahead—two morning classes and an MBA class at night, with a lot of paper shuffling and meetings filling up the time in between. He’d work from nine in the morning until nine tonight. Then he’d be off until Saturday.

He used to work like that every day when he was a tax attorney in Manhattan. Paige smirked whenever he thought of his university schedule. Compared to his old Manhattan job, he was practically retired. Mentally, he divided his university salary by the number of hours he worked. On an hourly basis, he made more as a professor than he had as a tax attorney.

He pushed open the door and pocketed the key. A manila envelope lay at his feet. He picked it up, sat down, and opened it.

Out fell a folded piece of printer paper … and a photo of him and Sveta from last night, standing on her balcony.

Warily, he unfolded the paper. “Bad things will happen to you and your Russian slut if you keep asking questions about Raul Rodriguez. We can fill two new coffins if you like. Your choice.”

A sudden chill ran up his back, causing him to jerk.

No one had ever threatened him before. He had felt fear as a kid from an occasional schoolyard bully, but his feelings at this moment were far more intense. His life had never been on the line before, and now Sveta’s life also hung in the balance.

Maybe I should drop the Rodriguez probe. It just wasn’t worth it. I don’t want to put Sveta in harm’s way.

He looked at the printout and photo again. Then became angry.

He never walked away from anything in his life before. He wasn’t going to do it now. He decided to get the bastards.

The only problem was, he didn’t know who they were.

He could keep asking questions about Rodriguez. If he did, they would come to him for sure. He wouldn’t have to try to find them. But they would probably go after Sveta first. She was an easier target, and he wouldn’t be able to protect her. There was no simple solution.

He couldn’t warn Sveta. She wouldn’t be able to take the news calmly. It would only make things worse.

He couldn’t take the note and photo to the FBI. That would put him on their radar screen. They could possibly threaten to arrest him for interfering with a federal investigation, which would mean he would have two threats to deal with instead of one. Ever since 9/11, the FBI and other federal agencies had gone nuts. They saw terrorists behind every blade of grass, and they didn’t mind shredding the Constitution to get them. He couldn’t trust them. They had become as much of a threat to Americans’ individual freedom as the terrorists. Maybe more so.

He wouldn’t do anything for now. It was Tuesday, and he would be busy all day. He wouldn’t have time to pursue Rodriguez’s murder, and they wouldn’t do anything to him until he started to ask questions again, or at least they wouldn’t if they were men of their word.

Class had finished at nine, but a couple of students wanted to ask questions after class, so he hung around for a half hour to answer them. He walked toward his car in the darkened, practically empty parking lot. Most of the evening students had already gone home.

He’d been distracted all day because of the photo and note. It’s all he could think about. He couldn’t focus on his work because of it.

He thumbed through his keys as he passed a black van parked two spaces from his car. The side door slid open.

His head snapped around. Two men stepped down from the van.

One moved off to Paige’s left. The other walked straight toward him, sliding his hand into his right pocket. “You really need to stop asking questions about Raul Rodriguez. People could get hurt.”

He pulled his hand from his pocket. There was just enough light in the parking lot to see that he had brass knuckles. The man picked up speed as he got closer.

Paige tensed up. Then he recalled the words Sensei Kimura had told him when he hesitated to attack.
“Take a chance.”
Attack first.

Paige unleashed a powerful front kick to the guy’s groin, followed immediately by a punch to the face, stepping forward as he launched it, putting all 180 pounds of his weight into it and letting out a blood curdling yell. Paige felt the guy’s nose cartilage snap. As the attacker flew back from the impact of the punch, Paige gave him a round kick to the head with all he had, slamming the heel of his foot into the guy’s temple.

The attacker dropped. His head hit the concrete like a coconut. He was out cold.

Paige spun around. A row of beefy knuckles flew at his face, grazing his chin. Paige slammed a side kick into his attacker’s solar plexus, but couldn’t fully extend his leg because he was too close. Paige was off balance. The guy’s forward movement nearly knocked him to the ground.

This second guy was larger than the first. Paige moved to the side and regained his balance. The big guy just kept coming. Luckily for Paige, he was fairly slow on his feet.

Paige didn’t want to spar with him. That would take time. The first guy might wake up any moment. It would be two against one. Time to do something he had never done in karate class, an illegal move that would have gotten him disqualified in a tournament.

He let loose with a kick to the stomach. The guy’s hands dropped. Paige delivered a flurry of punches to his unprotected face. It wasn’t enough to knock him down, but it was enough to disorient him long enough to set up a kick to the kneecap.

As the attacker raised his arms to protect his face from the punches, Paige let out a yell and slammed his heel into the guy’s kneecap, causing the man’s leg to snap backward.

His target screamed and dropped to the ground. He clutched his knee and rolled to one side. But he was still conscious. If he had a gun, he could still be dangerous. Even deadly. Paige had to knock him out, which meant kicking him in the head. Paige jumped to the side, positioning himself. He delivered it football style. If his head were a football, Paige would have just kicked a fifty-yard field goal.

Both of the aggressors were out cold, but they wouldn’t stay that way for long. The parking lot was deserted. No witnesses. Paige could hear some cicadas chirping away, but other than that, the night was quiet. A light breeze wafted across his sweaty face.

What to do next? He thought about calling the police, but the pair could wake up before the police arrived. Besides, he was carrying a Glock in the door pocket of his car. In most states, including Florida, carrying weapons on campus was illegal, in spite of the Second Amendment’s prohibition on infringing on the right to keep and bear arms. No Florida judge had had enough backbone to declare such restrictions unconstitutional. If the police decided to search his car, they could charge him with a felony.

He needed to know who they were. He searched them for ID and rifled through their pockets. They weren’t carrying ID, but they did have guns, which he took.

Next he grabbed their right hands and rolled the barrel of the guns across their fingertips to capture their prints. Then he placed the guns in his briefcase, which he’d dropped.

He took out his handkerchief and dabbed it on their mouths to collect blood samples and DNA, making sure to use different corners of the handkerchief for each of his assailants. Then he snapped photos of their faces, the van and the license plate with his cell phone. He sent them to his email, just in case he lost his phone. Then he left.

On the way home he replayed the events of the parking lot in his mind. Sensei Kimura would have been proud of him, although he might have criticized the crispness of his technique, which had faded over the years.

Was it over? No, he didn’t think so. It was strange that neither of them were Hispanic, since it was mostly the Hispanic community that got incensed over the Cuban embargo. They were just a couple of white guys in gym clothes.

He decided to start carrying a gun on his person. But it wouldn’t be his Glock 17. Too bulky. He would carry his 9mm Makarov.

He had grown fond of Makarovs while working as a freelance CIA asset in Armenia, and later Bosnia, where he had been hired mostly to recruit new CIA assets. The Makarov had been a favorite of various Eastern bloc police and military forces ever since World War II. It was compact and easy to handle. The main drawback was that it only held eight rounds, less than half of what his Glock held.

He would give the photos, DNA samples, and the assailants’ two pistols to Wellington when he met him for lunch. Wellington would know what to do with them. He was more than just a Commerce Department bureaucrat. Much more.

After the parking lot incident Paige had trouble getting to sleep. He wondered about the next encounter he would have with those men. Maybe there wouldn’t be another encounter. Maybe they would disappear if he dropped his private investigation. Or maybe they would plant a bomb in his car – or Sveta’s. Or perhaps they would just shoot him, like they had done to Raul. There were all kinds of possibilities, and he didn’t care to think about them. There was nothing he could do at any rate except wait for them to contact him again.