The Black Palmetto (25 page)

“You lock the door?” Larson asked.

“Course I did,” Sling said.

Larson told Sam to sit down in the chair across the table from Simone. He pulled a large nylon tie from a plastic bag on the table and bound Sam’s wrists behind him.

“Okay,” Larson said, standing over him. “If you got buddies anywhere out there, they won’t be getting in here to help you, and we’ve called reinforcements to sweep the area. In the meantime, you’re going to tell us where to find that computer flash card.”

That didn’t sound good. His head pounded. Beads of perspiration rolled down his cheeks.

“We don’t have it,” Sam said. He wondered how much time they had before the reinforcements came, or if that might be just a bluff.

Larson kicked Sam’s chair leg. “We know you don’t have it on you, but you know where it is.”

“You’d better hope she isn’t hurt,” Sam said, nodding toward Simone, “or you won’t ever get your hands on it.”

“You talk big for a man with his hands tied.”

Simone seemed to be coming around, her eyes blinking. The only thing they’d get by stonewalling might be some torture. These guys seemed more like the types who would use cutting tools, rather than water boards. If he could just get his hands freed, they might have a chance.

“I can take you to it,” Sam said. “Just cut me loose.”

“Not so fast. Give me some details and I might consider it.”

After staring for a few moments, as if trying to make up his mind, Sam sighed and said, “We left it for safe-keeping with a guy in Iguana Key.”

Simone took a deep breath, seemingly disoriented, and glanced at Sam and then Larson. She jerked at her bindings. “Hey, untie me!” she snapped, her eyes narrow slits.

Larson eyes cut her way and then refocused on Sam. “Give me a name.”

“The acting police chief, Lonnie Cates,” Sam said.

“I don’t believe you.”

“Don’t worry, he doesn’t know what it is. And for that matter, neither do we. I asked him to mail it somewhere if we don’t show up to collect it.”

The big man nodded. “Okay, we’ll see.” He stepped through the door the sling man had used earlier, which probably led to the kitchen.

Sling man came over and sat down. He laid his gun on the table and grinned at Sam. “Too bad you didn’t know we were Federal officers when you shot us last night. We’ll make sure you serve some time when this is all over.”

“You’re not Federal officers,” Sam said. “Maybe contractors.”

Sling man shrugged, but the grin leaked away. “Same thing.”

Larson came back into the room. “You better be right. Somebody with authority is going to see the police chief. That flash card is government property, and if he’s got it, he’ll turn it over.”

Uh oh
, Sam thought. Figuring these guys for lowlifes, he hadn’t expected them to send someone to see Cates.

A door slammed against the wall to Sam’s left, and J.T. came out of a closet, his gun out front. Harpo followed. Larson swung his handgun toward the newcomers. J.T. fired three times before Larson could squeeze off a shot. The slugs knocked him off his feet. Sling reached for the gun with his good hand, but Sam kicked his knees from underneath the table and Sling’s chair tipped over.

J.T. stepped around Sam and pointed the gun at Sling’s head. “Give me a reason to pop you, man. That vest won’t do you a bit of good.”

Sling put his good hand out in front of him as if that might protect him from a bullet. “Don’t shoot! I’m not a threat!”

Harpo cut Simone’s bindings first, and then Sam’s. Larson sat up, groaning, and tore his shirt open. He wore a vest, also. The three slugs looked like shiny new nickels stuck to it.

“They called somebody,” Sam said. “We need to get out of here.”

J.T. bound both men’s wrists and ankles. Larson’s phone sounded off, and a moment later Sam heard the sound of vehicles out front.

“That’s the guys I called,” Larson said. “They’re government agents, and it’ll go easier on you if you just give yourself up.”

“Yeah, right,” Sam said.

They gagged the men with their shirts while someone rapped on the door. When they finished, Harpo said, “This way.”

He led them into the closet, which was actually some kind of pantry.

Gallon jugs sat on shelves, covered with dust. The wall boards had been removed from a place in the corner about four feet high and two feet wide. Sam heard muffled pounding, probably men at the front door trying to break in.

“We used to sneak in here and steal old man Sherman’s wine,” Harpo said as he grabbed one of the gallon jugs and ducked through the hole in the wall. The others followed and found themselves in the toolshed Sam had seen from the outside. Yard tools hung from the wall, all brown with rust and rot because of a leaky tin roof.

They hurried out the door of the shed to a dark yard. Harpo led them a few feet to the fence. He lifted the wire from the bottom and made an opening large enough for a person to squeeze past. They crawled through, one by one. When they were on the other side, Harpo stuffed a snarl of vines through the hole and hooked the wire back into place. Sam heard loud voices as they ran through the brush toward the plane. The darkness made for rough going. Harpo tripped and dropped his jug of wine. Sam helped him up, and Harpo chuckled when he picked up the jug and found it still in one piece.

Lights went on behind them from inside the fenced property. Sam’s pulse picked up a few beats. It would be a matter of minutes before the men found the hole in the fence. After that, chances of escaping would decline exponentially. He glanced back and saw more lights.

“Faster,” Sam said. “They’re not far behind us.”

They made their way to the point where they had landed. Sam breathed a sigh of relief when the cockpit lit up and the engines began their whining windup. Two shots rang out, and Sam thought he heard the whistle of a round passing overhead. One smacked into a tree trunk a few yards away.

“Stop where you are or you’ll die!” It sounded like Larson, maybe fifty feet back. Sam could hear their feet thrashing through the underbrush.

Harpo chopped the rope free from the tree trunk with one swing of the machete, and they scrambled aboard.

“Get us out of here,” Sam said.

The pilot yanked back on the throttle and the turboprop engines reached maximum rpm as the plane lurched away from shore. The Gulf had smoothed out, and as they lifted off its surface, the powerful engines pinned them comfortably to the backs of their seats. They were airborne in less than thirty seconds.

“Anybody get hurt?” Randy asked.

“Sam and I have a headache,” Simone said, “but I think they got the worst end of it.”

“Why didn’t you tell me about the hole in the fence before I climbed over?” Sam asked Harpo, who had taken the seat behind Simone.

“I guess I just forgot about it. I haven’t been here since I was about twelve.”

He closed his eyes and had a smile on his face, maybe reliving the memories of sneaking into the place and taking his first drink of stolen wine. The jug sat at his feet, and he opened his eyes and reached down to pull out the cork that had been there for no telling how many years. The pungent aroma of alcohol and some kind of berries wafted through the cabin.

“I’ll have a drink of whatever it is you have back there,” Randy said.

“You got any cups?” Harpo asked.

The pilot half turned and said, “In the overhead compartment.”

Simone eyed Sam, a questioning expression on her face.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “It’ll be okay.” He reached and tapped Randy on the shoulder. “Did you see the Cigarette come out of the canal?”

“Yeah, he headed northeast, toward Miami.”

“Did the boat look seaworthy?” He recalled the sickening sound it had made when it smacked to the ground on the far bank of the canal.

Harpo poured cups of wine and passed them around. Even Simone took one. Sam took a sip. It tasted like blackberries, with a hint of vinegar.

Randy took a big gulp of the wine before answering. “Come to think if it, it looked a little different, the bow riding too high. He was moving pretty fast coming out of the canal, and that boat should’ve ridden on an even plane.”

“Could have a cracked hull,” Sam said, “taking on water. If that’s the case, he’ll be getting another boat pretty soon.” He tapped J.T. on the arm. “Is he still on the scope?”

“Yeah, he is. He made it to Biscayne Bay, and he’s stopped there on shore. Might be at a marina. If he gets another boat, our signal is worthless.”

Randy passed his cup back to Sam and said, “Pour me another.”

Chapter Thirty

Sam took out his phone and saw a text message waiting from Lora. He realized that it had been sent about an hour before, probably while he was unconscious. Maybe Lora hadn’t been abducted after all. Or, more likely, Knox had her phone.

He opened the message.
If I see the airplane again, I will kill her.

Apparently, Knox hadn’t discovered the tracking device J.T. had left on the boat, or he would have removed it. But he must have seen the plane more than once and put it together.

No one had said anything about why they continued to search for the man. Sam and Simone were on the hook for getting the lab’s half-million back, and J.T. stayed on in hopes of getting his hands on some loose cash. Sam told himself that he wanted to get Lora back safely, but he couldn’t deny the lure of that long-forgotten drug money. Split three ways, it would dwarf the fee their employer would pay. Besides, they didn’t have Benetti anymore, and there was also that chance that their employer would turn on them once they handed over the flash card. Lots of things to consider. They might need that money to disappear.

Sam wondered about the message. Knox wouldn’t hesitate to kill Lora, and Sam didn’t want the guilt of that following him around for the rest of his life. On the other hand, the guy might kill her anyway, just to eliminate loose ends.

“I got a text from Knox,” Sam said. “He knows we’re following him. That’s the reason he set the trap back there.”

“What did he say?” Simone asked.

He showed her the message and she read it aloud so J.T. could hear.

After a couple of beats, she said, “We could land somewhere close to his location and get a boat.”

“That sounds good,” Sam said. “If we’re a mile away, he won’t see or hear the plane.”

A few minutes later, Randy said, “Uh oh.”

“What’s wrong?” J.T. asked.

“The instrument panel is going haywire again. It’s doing the same thing it did before.”

“So, what does that mean?” Sam asked.

“It’s really dark out here, and I can’t see anything on radar. It’s just like this thing to break after sundown. A couple of hours ago, I would’ve been fine.”

“Can you land us?”

“I’ll have to land at the airport, where I’ll have lights and a visual of the runway.”

“That’s okay, we can get a taxi from there.”

J.T. guided him in using the GPS on his computer, and twenty minutes later Randy landed and taxied to his boss’s hangar. Sam dug into his bag for a couple of stacks of the cash they had taken from Chopin’s wall and handed them to Randy. He grinned and told Sam he would be in touch about his situation.

They got into a taxi and headed to Sam’s marina. There, they borrowed Jack Craft’s car and rode to the location of the GPS signal. It turned out to be a marina in South Miami.

There had been no signal change for the last couple of hours, so Knox either thought he was safe, or had left the Cigarette. When they reached the marina, the four of them split up to search the docks.

A few minutes later, J.T. called Sam. “I found the boat, but he’s moved on.”

****

The stern lay low in the slip. It was an amazing craft to make it that far with several hundred pounds of water in the hull. Knox had abandoned it, so he now had another boat or had commandeered a vehicle.

“I’ll check with the office,” Simone said. “Maybe somebody saw him.”

“Worth a try,” Sam said, “but it’s dark, and there’re a lot of unoccupied boats. It would be easy for him to limp in here in the Cigarette and hotwire another rig.”

Sam and J.T. searched the broken boat. Knox had taken anything that might tie him to it. The racing motorcycle was gone, too. The police probably wouldn’t find any prints, either, if they ever discovered the boat and put it together with Boozler’s disappearance. Knox had probably wiped it clean.

When they neared the dock office, Simone stepped out.

“The night guy said the Cigarette came in a couple of hours ago, and the man running it paid for the night. He said another boat, a forty-five-foot cruiser, had the slip next to the Cigarette, and it left a little while later. The owners of the boat were out of town, and he thought they had come back early without telling him, so he tried calling them, but nobody answered.”

“You get the boat number?” Sam asked.

“Yeah, I got it.”

To J.T., he said. “You think we can track them on GPS?”

“Probably.”

She handed him the note and they went to the car. Upon reaching the marina, Sam returned Jack’s car keys and headed to his boat.

Simone and J.T. had gone ahead, and when Sam got there, J.T. said, “I found the GPS for the boat. It isn’t far from here, going up the coast.”

“Okay,” Sam said. “I’ll start the engines if one of you will get the tie lines.”

J.T. said he would untie them.

“Hey, what happened to Harpo?” Simone asked.

Sam shrugged. “I don’t know. Guess we left him at that marina.”

****

Harpo had watched the big boat for a while. Finally, the killer stepped out on deck, undid the tie lines, and went to the wheelhouse. The engines started a minute or so later, and Harpo wondered where Simone and the two men had gone. He’d walked around looking for them, and that’s when he spotted the killer.

If the man got away, he would kill more people, and Harpo couldn’t let that happen. Before the boat could pull out, he slinked down the dock and eased aboard, the machete hanging comfortably in his shirtsleeve. He could move quietly and hide like a cat. He’d had plenty of experience.

Dr. Worth had just signed off with a prayer and parting words: “Be on the lookout for the Devil and banish him.” Harpo would be doing some banishing, all right, but first he had to rest. All this effort had taken its toll on him. The wine had just made it worse, and he regretted taking the first drink, which led to another and another. Now, he felt as if he might pass out. He found the perfect place for a nap on the back of the boat, inside a big horizontal locker. Several life jackets lay inside, but he squeezed under the locker lid and sank into cushiony softness. There were a couple of inches to spare between his face and the lid. It reminded him of the times he’d sacked out in the display coffins when no one was around. Best sleep he’d ever had, but getting situated in the darkness of the box, he thought this might be even better, except for the heat and the banishing chore he had ahead of him.