Pineapple Grenade (25 page)

Ted pointed at the unlit control panel. “We’re not moving.”

“Oh, right.” Serge hit the button for the lobby.

Ted faced away, examining the secret note again.

Serge looked over his shoulder. “What have you got there?”

“Nothing!” Ted crammed it in his pocket.

“Sorry,” said Serge. “My manners.” A chuckle. “And I was just mentioning them. Life’s funny that way, like you’ll be using Reynolds Wrap on a sandwich, and suddenly a Burt Reynolds movie comes on TV. There are forces at work out in the universe that I don’t understand. Do you drink coffee?”

Ted anxiously watched overhead numbers, awaiting escape into the lobby.

“Wait.” Serge stared at Savage’s profile. “I know you.”

“Not me!”

“No, I’m positive,” said Serge. “I never forget a face.” The doors opened. “Have you ever done time?”

Savage sprinted out of the hotel.

Coleman popped some pills in his mouth. “That guy has serious problems.”

“We could be in luck.”

“How’s that?”

Serge led the way onto the street. “The first person we met today might be the most suspicious. Let’s follow him awhile and see if the pattern holds up.”

Ted walked urgently down Flagler Street, checking each storefront for a bar. Only perfume and suitcases.

Serge trailed discreetly with hands in his pockets. “Where do I know him from? It’s killing me.”

Ahead, Savage nervously spun around on the sidewalk. Serge ducked behind a hotdog cart. “What really makes me curious is he knew how to raise the invisible ink on the message I saw when I peeked over his shoulder.”

Coleman wrapped his fingers around an airline miniature of whiskey and sucked his fist. “Think he’s a spy?”

“Not a chance, but it means he was an interesting kid like me doing all the science tricks with lemon juice and, later, gasoline.” Serge stepped out from behind the cart. “He’s on the move.”

They shadowed Ted west.

A block behind, an SUV pulled away from the curb and drove well below the limit with a telephoto lens out the window.

A block ahead, Savage couldn’t find a bar. But he had luck with a liquor store.

He came back out with four airline miniatures of whiskey in his pockets. Ted clutched one in his hand, glanced around the street, then sucked his fist.

“Now,
that’s
suspicious,” said Serge. “He’s definitely our guy.”

Chapter Eighteen

Meanwhile . . .

Biscayne Boulevard.

Tourists strolled through Bayside Market with name-brand shopping bags. Some lined up for tours of the bay on large ferries, snapping photos of celebrity homes along Star Island. Stallone, Estefan, Shaq, Ricky Martin. Others ate lunch in Bubba Gump’s and Hooters and carried takeout to the neighboring park.

Behind them, rows of colorful international flags flapped in the onshore breeze. A loud din of construction. Workers putting final touches for the Summit of the Americas.

Near the sidewalk, a man in a hat sat on a park bench feeding pigeons.

Scooter Escobar ran across the boulevard. He took a spot on the bench and stared straight ahead. They exchanged newspapers. “You wanted to see me?”

“No,” said the man, code name Raúl.

“Then why’d you set up the meet?”

“You’re the one who called me. Are you still doing coke?”

“Yes.”

Someone took a seat on the other side of Escobar. He smiled. “How are things at the consulate?”

“Who the hell are you?”

“Malcolm Glide, your newest best friend. I hear we’re supposed to exchange newspapers.” Glide set a folded
Herald
in Escobar’s lap.

Scooter looked back and forth at the two men. “This was a mistake. I have to go.”

He began to stand, but Glide pulled him back down. “Why the rush? It’s a beautiful day. Old and new pals enjoying themselves. That’s what life’s all about.”

Scooter wept in his hands. “I can’t take it anymore.”

Malcolm leaned forward for a view of Raúl. “Is he always like this?”

Raúl shrugged. A pigeon strutted for a piece of bread.

Malcolm put an arm around Escobar’s twitching shoulders. “I’ve heard great things about you.”

“You have?”

Malcolm nodded extra hard. “You’re going to go far. Maybe work for us someday.”

“Really?”

Another emphatic nod. “So when I hear someone as talented and dedicated as you might have a problem, I can’t just stand by and not help.”

“Problem?”

“Raúl filled me in. It’s why you set up this meeting.” Malcolm smiled warmly. “I mean, anyone can accidentally fire a grenade launcher.”

“That’s what I kept telling him,” said Scooter.

“Telling who?”

“My uncle.”

“That’s right, the general. You let me have a little chat with him.” Malcolm held two fingers together. “We’re tight.”

“It’s too late.” Weeping again. “I know they’re going to send me home. They’ve already sent a replacement spy.”

“You mean Serge?”

Scooter’s head sprang up. “So it’s true?”

Malcolm laughed. “Not remotely. Except I do need to talk to you about that. I’m scratching your back, but I have an itch, too. That’s what friends are for. So I want you to go back to the consulate and act like everything’s normal, and find out everything you can about Serge.”

Scooter sniffled and wiped tears off his cheeks. “But I thought your government assigned him to us.”

“Well,” said Malcolm. “Things are a little confusing right now, especially with the assassination plot against Guzman.”

“What!” said Scooter. “Someone’s going to kill our president?”

“Oops, I shouldn’t have mentioned that.” Glide leaned closer and whispered, “Forget you heard anything.”

“No problem.”

Glide released his grip on Scooter’s shoulders. “That’s my boy! . . . Now let’s all get back to work.”

They exchanged three newspapers again and left in different directions.

Downtown

Serge and Coleman continued west on Flagler.

It was slow going from perpetual stops; Ted Savage constantly twirled on the sidewalk and crisscrossed the street. Everywhere he looked, every face, every vehicle, every office window, suspicion lurked. That man at the cash machine? The woman selling roses on the corner? The mother with the baby stroller? Two teenage boys in white T-shirts running past him with a purse? The screaming restaurant owner chasing them? That plump guy a block back pointing at Ted . . .

“Put your arm down!” Serge snapped at Coleman. “He’ll see you pointing.”

“He started running.”

“He saw you. Move!”

Coleman was soon a distant second to Serge. Two streets later, he caught up and fell back panting against a sandwich shop window. “Why are you stopping?”

Serge fed quarters in a slot. “To buy newspapers.”

“But he’s getting away.”

“No, he’s taking the stairs to the Metro Mover. The last one just left, so we have time.”

“To read newspapers?”

“Not read.” Serge let the spring door on the box slam shut. “We’ve been spotted, which means we need to take surveillance to the next level. We’re going to employ one of the most sophisticated Cold War techniques . . .”

Serge explained the procedure as they climbed the public transit platform and reached the top just as another automated monorail car slid up on the tracks.

Ted was too focused on getting inside the sanctuary of the car to notice anyone else. He waited at the front of the platform, inches from the closed doors—
“Come onnnnnnn!”
—until they hissed open. Ted jumped into the futuristic pod, plopped down on a seat, and let his head fall back with a big exhale.

Others stepped in from the platform and filled the rest of the car. Business commuters, students, tourists, street urchins, fishermen. The car lurched, then quietly glided out of the station on twin elevated rails.

Multilingual conversations.

The tram swung south, sailing through an architecturally funky square cut in the middle of a condo tower.

“I took too many pills,” said Coleman. “We just went through a building.”

“That was real.” Serge worked with his newspaper. “Just don’t forget our stealth technique.”

The route curved around Bayfront and north by Miami-Dade College. Stop after stop, people on and off. A black SUV following as best it could from streets below. Ted pulled another miniature from his pocket, waiting to use the distraction of the upcoming stop at Freedom Tower Station. He checked oncoming passengers and those already seated, then sucked the tiny bottle in his fist. Tension sheeted off Ted as his eyes wandered until they reached the bench seat at the opposite end of the car, where a couple of riders sat obscured by the newspapers they were holding up.

Ted suddenly choked on saliva and pounded his chest.

Staring back at him were two sets of eyes, each peering through a pair of circles cut in the newspapers. Ted jumped to his feet and ran to the front doors, trying to pry them open before the car had come to a stop at the next platform.

“He’s on the move again,” said Serge.

Newspapers flew. A race down the station stairs.

“Is this the chase part?” asked Coleman.

They ran diagonally through honking traffic on Biscayne. Under the overpass with I-395. Scrambling up the embankment, Serge closing in, Savage perpetually glancing over his shoulder. “Who are you guys?”

“Pay no attention to us,” yelled Serge. “Just keep doing what you’re doing.”

“Get away from me!”

Serge reached the top of the overpass. “I remember now!” He stopped and cupped hands to his mouth.

A chain-link retaining fence ran along the highway. Savage leaped up onto it like a house cat hearing a garbage disposal.

From the rear. “Ted! . . . Ted Savage!”

Chapter Nineteen

Interstate 395

“Leave me alone!” yelled Savage, clinging to the highway fence.

“Ted!” shouted Serge. “I’m on your side!”

“Go away!” Ted yelled back. “You’re . . . Wait, how do you know my name?”

“I’m a big fan.”

“Bullshit! You’re with the Company!” His fingertips went red to purple. “I know how this ends. You’re walking along on a spring day, and a car pulls up. Maybe it’s someone you know, someone you trust, and they ask if you want a ride . . .”

“This ain’t that movie, Ted. Come on down.” Serge took a step back to defuse the standoff. “You’ve been through a lot.”

Coleman struggled up the rest of the embankment and lay down in the dirt. “I don’t like the chase part.”

Ted really wasn’t looking forward to climbing the fence. He dropped and fell to his knees. Serge helped him up.

“Thanks,” said Savage. “So if you’re not in the trade, how do you know my name?”