Fatal Decree (35 page)

Parrish looked at his watch. “It’s almost one,” he said. “I didn’t realize the time was getting by. We’ll go get some lunch and be back in an hour.”

“That’ll work,” said the deputy marshal. “He’ll be here when you get back.”

Parrish drove us to a small restaurant that sat on an outparcel of a tired shopping center a couple of miles from the safe house. Both establishments had seen better days, but the donuts had not held up and I was hungry. I thought nobody could really screw up a hot dog, but this place proved me wrong.

An elderly waitress brought us menus and then walked to a stool in the corner and sat down. We were the only diners in the place. The waitress was probably a retiree who couldn’t make it on her Social Security check and found herself living out her days in a trailer park and taking whatever job she could get to make ends meet.

There were a lot of people like that in Florida. I wondered if she had a husband, a family. I’d never know, but I always thought about those things when I saw the old people working at menial jobs. They seemed a little sad to me, the epitome of unrealized dreams of retirement in the sunshine. They come to Florida with high hopes and then something happens. They run out of money, or their spouses die, and their children don’t want to be bothered with them. They have no home to return to in the North where they’d lived their whole lives because they’d sold the house to finance their retirements. At their ages, they have no future, and hope disappears like an errant zephyr on a still day.

Reality hits them like a sledgehammer and one day they have to go back to work, waiting tables in dismal restaurants with bad food or greeting customers at Walmart. Their nights are spent in front of the TV, their sleep interrupted by dreams of happy times long gone. Maybe the melancholy that these sad oldsters induce in me is simply the fear that I’ll end up in the same place someday. No spouse, no family, no money, no future.

We nibbled at our food and talked about what we’d learned. “Perez is a strange fellow,” said Parrish.

“I wonder about a guy like him,” J.D. said. “It seemed important for him to establish his bona fides, give us a sense that he came from a good family, whatever that is.”

“I think he doesn’t want to look too closely at what he is,” I said. “He’s caused a lot of grief and the world would probably be a little better off if he’d never been born. Is he married?”

“He was,” said Parrish. “He never had any children and his wife packed it up years ago. Moved to Denver and remarried, cut all ties with the Perez family. I’m pretty sure he hasn’t heard from her in years.”

J.D. frowned. “I still don’t know why he came after me and why he revived the whale tail killings. None of that makes sense.”

“Maybe it will come together this afternoon,” I said. “Jock, are you seeing any connections to the agency here?”

“Maybe. Perez said that Fuentes was killed in a drug deal and then came back to life a couple of years later. That sounds similar to what we know about Escondido. If we can tie Fuentes and Escondido together, that print we found on the flap of one of the envelopes sent to Cantreras will be a pretty good indication that it was Fuentes who ordered the hit on Gene Alexander.”

“That seems like a mighty big coincidence,” I said. “Fuentes is involved in trying to kill J.D. and then just happens to get involved in the killing of a man on Longboat Key who is not related in any way to the whale tail murders or the grudge against J.D.”

Jock cocked his finger and pointed it at me. “Bingo, podna. That’s too neat a package. We’re missing something.”

“Is somebody setting this whole thing up?” I asked. “Pointing the agency at Fuentes, when all he’s guilty of is trying to murder J.D.”

“Did you say ‘all,’ Matt?” J.D. asked. “
All
he’s guilty of is trying to murder me? Nothing important or anything like that.” She was smiling.

“You know what I mean, precious.”

She rolled her eyes.

“I don’t want to break this up,” said Parrish, “but we’ve got a lot more to get out of Perez. You guys ready to start back?”

We finished our drinks and left the restaurant. I put a generous tip on the table for the waitress who probably needed the money and who was not responsible for the quality of the food.

We were back in the windowless room. Perez stood and said, “How was your lunch?”

“Sit down and tell me why Mariah wanted me dead,” said J.D. She wasn’t interested in pleasantries.

“Mariah is of the opinion that you knew that Caleb was the so-called whale tail killer. She was afraid that you would eventually tell somebody and word would get back to Miami and ruin the family name.”

“Let’s see,” I said. “Your family includes one crazy woman who abused her son who became an embezzler and a serial killer. She had a daughter who married a drug lord and is crazy herself and you’re a money launderer for the cartels. How much of that good name can possibly be left?”

Perez smiled. “I admit there’s not much left of the family. Most of them have long since moved away from South Florida and those of us who are left are not exactly considered top drawer. But Mariah doesn’t understand that. She seems consumed with the idea that the family name has to be protected. And then there was the thirty million dollars.”

“What thirty million?” asked J.D.

“Well, it’s not exactly thirty million,” Perez said.

“Tell me about the money,” said J.D., steel in her voice.

“Just before his death, when he knew he only had a few days to live, Caleb told Mariah that he had given me ten million dollars for safekeeping. He also told her the ten million had grown to thirty million.”

“Had it?” J.D. asked.

“No. It was actually about five million, but I’d given Caleb reports over the years that showed the money was growing. I was afraid to tell him I’d lost a lot of it.”

“What were you planning to do when he got out of prison?” asked J.D.

“Run. I’ve got the five million in secret bank accounts placed around the world.”

“So Mariah wanted the money and you didn’t have it.”

“That’s about the size of it.”

“Why didn’t you just run when Caleb died?” I asked.

“Things weren’t in place yet. I thought I had twenty years, but he died years before he was supposed to be released. I had to scramble to get all the little pieces put together, get set up so that I could get the money out of the banks without any traces that would lead to me, set up my getaway house. There were just some things I hadn’t done. Caleb was diagnosed with a glioblastoma about a month before his death. No chance of survival. He chose to do nothing to prolong his life by a few months. I had to stall Mariah until my plans were ready.”

“How did you do that?” asked J.D.

“I knew Caleb planned to kill you when he got out of prison. He blamed you for the time he’d spent in custody. Mariah knew about his desire to take you out. She told Caleb when he was diagnosed that if he wanted you dead, he had to come up with a plan to have you killed after he died. The money was the key, so I convinced him to tell Mariah that she wouldn’t get the money until you were dead. I figured that’d give me time to get the hell out of here.”

“Weren’t you afraid that Mariah wouldn’t go along?” I asked. “That she’d just demand the money right away?”

“Sure,” Perez said, “but I had a plan for that, too. By the time Mariah got you killed, I’d be gone.”

“What if she decided she wanted the money without killing me?” J.D. asked.

“The only way Mariah could get the money was through me. I told her that I had it set up so that if something happened to me, the money would disappear. If I died of natural causes, the money could be retrieved by using bank codes that would be sent to her by a lawyer in another state ninety days after my death and after an autopsy had been completed by a pathologist of the lawyer’s choosing. I’d hoped that she would decide that
the ninety-day window was too much even if she managed to kill me and make it look like a natural death.”

“She could have tortured you into telling,” I said.

“I convinced her that I had a weak heart. I told her that as part of the deception so that she didn’t have to worry that if I did die of natural causes the money would disappear. I thought it would also give her the idea that torture of any sort might kill me. I figured she would think she could get the money more quickly by killing Detective Duncan. I planned to be gone by the time that happened.”

“So,” J.D. said, “I was sort of the staked goat that would draw Mariah and give you time to get away.”

“That’s about it,” said Perez.

“You’re some piece of work, Perez,” J.D. said. “I should have left you to the bastards in the jail. Tell me how you went about trying to kill me.”

“Caleb had a friend, a longtime cellmate named Jeff Worthington. Caleb said he was one of the smartest men he’d ever met. He made a deal with Worthington to follow up and kill you. He told Worthington all the details of the whale tail murders. Caleb said Worthington was a natural killer. He liked the power the kill gave him. I was to fund the operation with Caleb’s money and then give Worthington two million dollars when you were dead.”

“Who was working with him?” asked J.D.

“He had three of his buddies from prison.”

“What are their names?” J.D. asked.

“Qualman, Bagby, and Steiffel.”

“Qualman and Bagby are dead,” said J.D. “What happened to Steiffel?”

“He’s dead too,” said Perez. “Worthington killed him and dropped him in the Gulf of Mexico.”

“When?”

“Right after they tried to kill you on that island just north of Longboat Key.”

“Leffis Key on Anna Maria Island,” J.D. said, her tone flat.

“Yes. That’s it.”

“Where’s Worthington now?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” said Perez. “I was trying to reach him yesterday when the DEA showed up at my office.”

“He wasn’t much of a lawyer,” I said.

“No, but it worked for a few days. I thought we might have to use him to get to some of our idiots if they got caught. I was pretty sure at least two or three of them would be arrested before we concluded our operation. I was just trying to cover all the bases and it worked. If we hadn’t set him up as a lawyer, he wouldn’t have been able to get the drugs into the jail to kill Bagby.”

“What happened to the real Ben Flagler?” I asked.

“Worthington killed him. Gave the body to a gator hunter who needed some bait.”

“Why the whale tail copycat?” asked J.D.

“Mariah followed through with Caleb’s wishes and copied what he’d done to the women in Miami. Caleb wanted you to know that the whale tail killer was back in business and you were about to be a victim. He wanted you to live in fear for a time before you died.”

“Well,” said J.D., “he didn’t scare me, but he managed to really piss me off.”

“That wasn’t the plan,” said Perez, “and I didn’t think the whale tail thing made a whole lot of sense. That’s the reason I put a stop to it after the first two.”

“Where were you going to get the two million to pay Worthington?” J.D. asked.

“I wasn’t. I’d be gone before he came to collect it. I used some of the druggers’ money to pay the early expenses. By the time they discovered it, I’d be long gone.”

Parrish said, “With you controlling all their money, I don’t understand why the cartel put a price on your head as soon as you were arrested.”

Perez shrugged. “I guess they just wrote me off,” he said. “They’d sacrifice the money in return for me being silenced. Purely a business decision.”

“Why didn’t you run before you were arrested?” asked Parrish. “You must have seen this coming.”

“I thought I still had a couple of days. I would have been gone by this morning if your people hadn’t arrested me yesterday.”

Jock spoke up finally. “Tell me more about this guy Fuentes.”

“What can I tell you?” asked Perez. “He’s known as the crazy don. He’s notorious for killing people in the most brutal ways. A lot of that was exaggeration.”

“I’ve heard of him,” said Jock. “Stories about the crazy don have been circulating for years. We’ve never had a name, just ‘the crazy don.’”

“Now you have a name,” said Perez. “See? I believe in living up to my end of a bargain.”

“He’s the one who kills his managers now and then as an object lesson,” said J.D. “We always thought he was an urban legend.”

“He’s real,” said Perez, “and he likes to torture his victims. But Mariah is the one who kills the managers. Does it for sport. Like I said, she’s crazy as hell and she pretty much runs things. Fuentes is seen as the big cheese, but Mariah pulls all the strings. She’s the puppeteer.”

“Was Fuentes’s name Escondido before he disappeared and came back from the dead?” asked Jock.

Perez looked surprised. “It was,” he said. “How did you know that?”

Jock ignored the question. “Tell me about the Guatemalans,” he said.

“What Guatemalans?” Perez asked.

“The ones trying to kill J.D. and Matt,” Jock said.

“I don’t know anything about that.”

I heard a popping sound coming from the back of the house. My first thought was that someone was making popcorn, but then my brain woke up and identified the noise as gunfire. The door to our room swung open and banged against the wall. The deputy marshal named Bert was holding a pistol and beckoning us out. “Hurry,” he said. “We’re under assault. We need to get you out of here.”

“We need our weapons,” said Jock.

“They’re on the table in the hall,” said Bert, “help yourselves. These guys have automatic weapons.”

We grabbed our pistols and ran toward the sound of gunfire. Bert stayed with Perez, put handcuffs on him and secured him to a handrail in the hall that had apparently been installed just for this purpose.

There were two other young men at the back of the house, crouched below the windows in the family room. Most of the glass panes were gone,
shards littering the faded carpet. One had an M-16 rifle and the other a more modern M-4. Bullets were still coming from the rear, ricocheting about the room, embedding themselves into the walls.