Broken Toy [Suncoast Society] (Siren Publishing Sensations) (2 page)

“Oh, boy. I’m fucked.”

Once they were seated at the table and had menus, Al asked. “So, give me the deets. What happened?”

Bill gave his friend credit. Al tried not to laugh. Tried damned hard. But by the time Bill finished the story, Al finally had to let out a chuckle. “Uh, wow.”

Bill nodded. “Wow is right. Not the good kind of wow, either.”

“So, okay, serious question here. What
is
your type of woman? Or are you into guys, because man, I’ve got a cousin in Sarasota who’s single and he’s not bad looking, according to Sue.”

Bill scowled at him, earning another laugh.

“Come on, I had to yank your chain.”

“I don’t have a type. I’m not saying I don’t appreciate an attractive woman, but there’s got to be something under the hood to spark my interest. The chassis is irrelevant if there’s not much more than a hamster and a rusty wheel inside.”

“Such a romantic. I can see why ladies are flocking to you.”

“I’m serious. You asked, I’m answering.”

“Yeah, yeah.” He put his menu down. “So tell me. I’m listening.”

“Smart. A sense of humor. Someone who won’t be terrified being with a cop. Someone independent enough to stand on her own.”

“We talking Mensa-smart?”

Bill gave him “the look” again.

“Sorry.”

“You know what I mean.” Bill lowered his voice. He tried not to delve into his memories and make comparisons, but he couldn’t help it. “You knew Ella. She was curious and loved to try new things. She was laid back.”

The blanket of melancholy settled over him once more. “If I woke up on a day off and said, ‘Hey, let’s go to a car show,’ or whatever, she’d be game. She had a fun side. She had a playful side.” Bill rearranged his silverware on the table. “She was vulnerable and strong at the same time. She didn’t cling to me, but when we were together, she knew when I needed her.”

Al stared at him. “You just described a golden retriever.”

Al was the only person he’d tolerate that kind of crap from because they’d been friends for so long. Still, he gave Al “the look” once more.

His friend’s tone turned serious. “I’m sorry. I’m trying to help.”

“I know you are, and I appreciate it. Whenever it’s meant to be, it is. If it’s not…” He shrugged. “I was lucky enough to have the love of my life once. I’m not naive enough to think I’ll have that kind of luck a second time.”

* * * *

Bill spent the afternoon working on a case involving counterfeit prescription slips and took a man into custody for that. Then a burned car, reported stolen the night before, was found over near the mall.

Fortunately, that rounded out his day. By the time he was ready to go home a little before seven that night, he breathed a sigh of relief he hadn’t caught any disturbing cases. Not that they had a lot of those in their sleepy part of southwest Florida, fortunately, but it was always a good day when the worst complaint he had was getting a little soot on his pants while trying to read the VIN number stamped on a burned-out car.

“Did you want to come over for dinner tonight?” Al asked him on the way out.

Bill shook his head. “Nope. Look, don’t make Sue feel bad. Just tell her I said thanks, but it didn’t work out. For me, at least.”

“Will do.”

He didn’t feel like cooking, so he stopped at his usual haunt, Marelli’s, a small family-run Italian restaurant not far off US 41. The same family had owned and operated it for over three decades. A few years earlier, it had been leveled by Hurricane Charley. The owners had rebuilt it better than ever while still retaining the homey, cozy feel of the old place.

Fortunately they weren’t very busy since it was a weeknight. Dori, one of the owner’s granddaughters, smiled when she spotted him walking in. “Anywhere you want, Bill,” she said to him.

He nodded and grabbed a menu and a set of silverware from the hostess stand as he headed toward the back, to a small two-person table right next to the kitchen. In this restaurant, he loved sitting near the kitchen. He enjoyed listening to the family’s banter, getting a few extra minutes to chat with the staff and owners, and he could even lean over and refill his own water and tea from one of the waitress stations without bothering anyone.

They made him feel like family, including to the point of insisting that he come to their homes to celebrate holidays for the past several years after they found out he was a widower.

At least they hadn’t tried fixing him up on dates with anyone.

Yet.

After Dori finished with the table she was serving, she poured glasses of water and iced tea for Bill before walking over and setting them in front of him.

She flashed him a friendly smile. “I was beginning to think we weren’t going to see you tonight.”

“And miss spaghetti Tuesday on a Wednesday? Are you nuts?”

She cracked up over
The Walking Dead
references every time. “You’re too much. And it’s Thursday. The special?”

He nodded and handed her the menu. “Yep. Don’t know why I bothered grabbing a menu.”

She took it from him. “Just to make work for me.” Her grin made him smile in return. She stepped over to the pass-through window to the kitchen. “Bill’s here,” she called out. “Usual,” she said by way of giving them his order. Then she carried the menu back to the hostess station and greeted an older couple who’d just walked in.

The kitchen door swung open and an elderly man swept through, dressed in checked chef’s pants, a black shirt, and a kitchen towel draped over his shoulder. He wore a beaming smile on his face, his hand already extended for a shake. “There he is. How are you tonight, my friend? We missed you last night.”

Bill stood to give him a hug. “Good enough, Papa Tom. How are you?”

“Eh, no complaints.” He planted himself in the chair on the other side of the table. “I see you brought no work with you tonight. Must have been a good day?”

Bill shrugged. “Not the worst.” Everyone called Tom Marelli, the family patriarch and head chef, “Papa Tom” if they were considered part of the family. The eighty-two-year-old had been born in Italy, but emigrated to New York with his parents and siblings when he was two.

When Hurricane Charley had hit several years earlier, Bill had gone out of his way to track down the family and make sure they were all safe when he found out the restaurant had been destroyed by the storm. Much to his relief, they’d all been safely hunkered down at one of the daughter’s homes in North Port.

Dori called from the other side of the dining room. “Papa Tom!” She waved at him, motioning him over to the table.

The old man threw up his hands. “My apologies, it seems I’m wanted.”

Bill smiled. “You have a big fan base.”

He stood. “It could be worse. It could still be snowbird season.”

Bill watched, amused, as the man crossed the dining room, quickly leaning in to hug the couple who’d requested his presence. Now that it was May, the winter tourists and seasonal residents had mostly returned home. Even in the dead of summer, sometimes the worst time of the year for local eateries, Marelli’s always did a brisk business with locals.

When snowbird season hit, locals wanting to eat had to call ahead and make a reservation.

The food was good, better than average, and everything was prepared in-house. The prices were reasonable. But it was Papa Tom and the rest of the Marelli family who drew in the business.

The community had banded together after Charley to come help clear the property, salvage what they could of the kitchen equipment, and then get the rebuilding started. Even during the rebuild they served a limited menu of takeout in the parking lot, under tents donated by a local businessman who was a frequent customer.

Dedication. And that was why Bill usually ate there four or five nights a week, sometimes even more often.

It was also why he had to do a minimum of three miles on the treadmill every morning before work, to keep from gaining weight.

A small price to pay for the company and the food.

Tonight’s special, eggplant parm. They knew he liked a larger salad and smaller portion of pasta on the side to help counteract the stomach-spreading effects of their delicious food.

By the time he arrived home nearly an hour later, he felt physically stuffed. As he switched on lights on his way through the house, he tried to ignore how lonely and empty the house felt.

Nine years, and I still can’t get used to it. Maybe I
should
get a cat.

At least then he wouldn’t have to worry about not getting home on time to walk it, like he would a dog.

After a shower, setting the coffeepot up to start automatically in the morning, and checking his e-mail, he finally slid into bed. It was something he always put off as long as he could.

The lonely minutes between hitting the sheets and sleep taking him were always the most agonizing part of his day.

FDLE Special Agent Gabriella Villalobos took a deep breath and walked into the conference room. Currently, the four interview rooms they had were full, with people waiting. This would have to do.

In her hand she carried a file folder, but the truth was she knew the contents inside and out. Jorge Martinez was a piece of shit, of that there was no doubt. This wasn’t his first bust, but this one would put him away for the rest of his life, if she had anything to say about it.

This time, instead of a penny ante drug bust, it was for human trafficking, child endangerment, kidnapping, child abuse, aggravated child sexual assault—the list went on, growing more sickening with each charge.

The vanload of young girls they’d rescued from an industrial park in Hialeah before dawn that Thursday morning appeared to be from all over, including Haiti, Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Columbia, and Nicaragua.

He was, it would seem, a multinational scumbag. It also meant a paperwork and jurisdictional nightmare involving people from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Florida Department of Children and Families—since all but one of the girls was a minor—and a whole slew of alphabet-soup law enforcement agencies, local, state, and federal.

He sat manacled at the ankles, his hands cuffed to a chain around his waist, another chain locking his ankles to the table. Currently, his seven cohorts and a shit-ton of johns were being booked and processed and interviewed.

“So, Jorge. How are we doing today?”

He grinned. “
No hablo
.”

She grinned back and sat down, and in Spanish said, “Well, aren’t you in luck, asshole?” She switched to English. “I do
hablo
. In fact, I
hablo
quite fucking well.”

His smile faded a little, but he didn’t respond.

It wasn’t professional, and she knew it, but there wasn’t a recording device in this room. She intended to stretch the boundaries a little to soften him up before anyone else got to him.

She continued in Spanish. “I want to talk to you about the girls we rescued from the storage unit this morning.”

The smiled faded the rest of the way off his face, leaving the scar running at an angle across his right cheek, from the corner of his eye to his nose, a deep furrow in his flesh.

“One of them,” she continued, “her name is Luisa Gutierrez, and she says she’s only eleven and you raped her before you pimped her out.”

“She lies. I didn’t rape her. And she’s older than that.”

“Um, not according to the records we obtained from the Mexican embassy twenty minutes ago. Her parents reported her abducted six months ago. We were sent a copy of her birth certificate.”

He glared at her, his eyes reminding her of something dark and dangerous, like a Komodo dragon.

Only uglier.

“She lies.”

“Really?
That’s
what you’re going with?” She nodded. “All righty then.” She flipped to another page in her folder. “Maria Hondo. Thirteen. Guatemala. She lying, too?”

He nodded.

He’d been Mirandized, and they had that on video, but she knew what the fucker was doing. He had someone he worked for, someone who fronted the money that supported the operation, probably a drug lord, and wouldn’t lawyer up because he wouldn’t give up the next rung of the shitty ladder he clung to.

Fuckers like him didn’t say anything. They knew if they ratted out their bosses, someone would take them out their first week in general population, if not sooner. They considered doing their time a badge of honor and the price of doing business.

What he didn’t know was two of his guys, lower level shits she’d already mindfucked into thinking they were going to jail for life and a future filled with assrape and giving blowjobs—if they lived that long—had already rolled over on him and were asking to cut deals with the prosecution before they’d even been arraigned.

Goes to show what happens when you hire cheap help.

She slowly closed the file and stood, walking around behind him. “You know, Jorge,” she said, switching back to English, “it’s not nice to lie.”