Florida Firefight (12 page)

The ground shook. Windows rattled. Birds screamed in the trees.

It was 11:45
A.M.

Naked, Dr. Winnie Tiger braced herself on one elbow. Her blue-black hair hung in a veil over half her face and onto her right breast. She swept the hair away with her right hand.

“We sent it back to them,” said Hawker. He threw the covers aside and stood looking out the window. There was a corona of yellow light above the pine trees near the airstrip.

The Indian woman nodded sleepily, not understanding. Her eyes asked a question.

“The bomb,” Hawker said. “You asked what we did with the bomb they put in my car.” Hawker pulled the curtains away from the window for a better look. He wished he were at Chatham Harbor to see how the Colombians were reacting. It was important to know how disciplined they were.

He turned and looked at the woman. The beauty of her made him ache. He stepped into his jeans and reached for his sweater. “Around here you get overnight delivery with airmail,” he said, leaving.

fourteen

Hawker figured it would take about forty-eight hours for Medelli to get his business finished, refuel the yacht, take on provisions and sail for the anonymity of the Gulf of Mexico.

The Colombians, he knew, would be burning the entire time to take revenge on Mahogany Key for the killing of Pedro Cartagena and for the bombing of their plane.

Medelli would condone the retaliation, but he wouldn't want to be around to see it. People in the diplomatic service don't mind brutality as long as it can't be traced back to them.

At least that was what Hawker hoped. He needed the forty-eight hours, desperately needed them. And so did the town. They all had a lot of preparing to do.

Hawker worked at the computer inside his cottage. Outside the townspeople worked at the restoration of the Tarpon Inn. Hammers and lumber
whammed, whacked;
men shouted orders, and there was the grind and hydraulic whine of a backhoe.

The landscaping was almost done. They had planted a hedge maze of jasmine and little oasis islands of coconut palms with fountains.

The whole parking lot had been screened by yellow-bloomed oleander and red hibiscus.

The new marina manager had replaced all the metal signs with hand-chiseled wooden signs, and he had re-sided the grim cement marina office with cypress planking that had been worn to silver during its years as a fishing shack.

The work was only three-quarters completed, but the Tarpon Inn Lodge had never looked better. The outside had been scraped, sanded and sprayed with bleach and water to kill mildew, then painted a bright sailing-schooner white. The hurricane shutters were green.

Earlier that afternoon, walking from Winnie Tiger's cottage, Hawker had seen Harley Bates, their fishing guide, returning from an early charter. With him was Peter Barrett, executive editor of
Field and Stream
. Bates carried a snook in each hand, struggling beneath the weight of them. Barrett was grinning as he took pictures.

Word was getting out about Mahogany Key's Tarpon Inn. And it was spreading fast. It would take another few seasons before the work they were doing now would really begin to pay off, but it was a start. Winnie had come up with the idea of slipping word to a national feminist group—through an anonymous letter, perhaps—that the owner of the Tarpon Inn had vowed he'd sell the place before he would allow women to enter the sacred confines of his fishing and hunting club bar. They would get national publicity from that, and Winnie guessed—correctly—that the barons of industry and business from all over the country would stand in line to join.

So things were going as planned. So far. Hawker had been a cop too long not to know that just when things seem their smoothest, alarms start going off, and even the best plans can crumble.

Hawker hunched over his computer, damn well determined to make his first assignment from Jacob Montgomery Hayes a success. He had worked too hard to see the plans fall apart. Not now. He liked the people of Mahogany Key too well. And Medelli and his left-wing politicos were long overdue for a fall.

The first thing he did was get a telephone hookup with Comp-U-Serve, a general information data center in California. The computer there questioned him in lime-green letters on his own video screen. He wanted: (1) general—South America; (2) specific—political; (3) specific—guerrilla armies; (4) specific—Tigre squad.

The computer didn't have much, but it had enough. The menu offered him a partial chapter from a master's thesis on Guatemalan politics, a variety of short news stories (two from the Chicago papers, which mentioned the Tigre squad in relation to the murder of young Jake Hayes), and an excellent translation from a Bogotá political journal that had in-depth information on the guerrilla army.

Hawker skimmed through them all but settled on the Bogotá journal. Three things caught his attention.

One was the paragraph: “The Tigre squad is a paramilitary organization that recruits in small numbers throughout South and Central America. Membership seems to be based loosely on racial criteria, with strong Indio-Spanish backgrounds favored, and an absolute, near-religious dedication to the cause. As stated many times in Tigre squad literature, their ultimate aim is the infiltration and overthrow of Anglo-influenced governments through coercion, violence and economic sabotage.”

The two other items that caught Hawker's attention were names. They were the same names he had found in the address section of the dead Colombian's billfold: Medelli and Guillermo.

Anton Nuñez Guillermo, though he was never personally associated with the Tigre squad, had, apparently, written a passionate pseudopolitical religious monograph while in college that the Tigre organization had adopted as its bible. Guillermo, it seemed, was half political hero, half god.

Hawker cleared with Comp-U-Serve and made two phone calls.

First he called a Mafioso acquaintance of his, Louis Brancacci, in Chicago. Like many cops, Hawker had found it necessary to court underworld connections to aid him in his police work.

Brancacci was a soft crime baron in south Chicago. He ran numbers rackets and gambling houses, all catering to old money and the upper middle class. Brancacci refused to deal with poor blue collar slobs determined to gamble away the grocery money. As he had pointed out to Hawker more than once in comic earnest, no one respected the American family more than he. Brancacci was a crook. But he was a crook with morals. And that was more than Hawker could say for many of the law-abiding politicians he had met.

“Hawker,” exclaimed the distant voice. “How's my favorite cop? Or should I say ex-cop?” The high machine-gun-clatter laugh sounded like it was coming from Mars. Hawker could picture Brancacci sitting in his comfortable den in his comfortable Cicero suburban home, feet up, white silk tie knotted on dark shirt, drinking fruit juice and watching a ball game.

“Need some information, Louie.”

“Ha! And why should I help? You're not a cop anymore, right?”

“Because we're friends, Louie. Besides, it's got nothing to do with you or anybody in your little boys' club back home. There's a guy in Washington, a diplomat—a Colombian named Guillermo. Can you find out if your people have had any dealings with him?”

“Sure, Hawk, sure. May take me a couple of phone calls—but you're going to owe me one for it. Ask those East Coast boys for a small favor and they hold it over your head like they saved your old lady from drowning.”

“I'll let you win at racquetball next time we play.”

“You're becoming a real human being, Hawker. They ought to give medals.”

“Can you call me tonight?”

“Yeah, where are you? The old cops' retirement home? Ha!”

Hawker and Brancacci talked for a while longer, then Hawker tried the little two-room police station on Mahogany Key. Chief Ben Simps didn't answer. He finally reached him on the phone at his luxury houseboat.

“Simps? Hawker. I want to see you this afternoon. Alone.”

“Can't this afternoon, Hawker. I'm just getting ready to go out in my boat. I'm going to anchor off White Horse Key and do a little fishing. I'll be back in three days. By then the FAA boys will be done with their investigation of that plane explosion. I don't want to answer any questions about that, Hawker.”

“Have you called them yet?”

Simps hesitated. “No. I had a feeling you'd be calling me first. You did it, didn't you? You blew up the plane.”

Hawker ignored the question. “I'll see you this afternoon, Simps. Not in three days. Understand? I'll meet you at the station at five. Be there.”

Hawker hung up before Simps could reply.

Using the Visicalc program, Hawker turned once again to his computer. He wanted to enter all the random data he had and set up an orderly system of graphs that, he hoped, would give him a group of probabilities. Hawker had information, but he had no answers. He hoped the computer would provide some.

It didn't.

He worked until the sweat beaded on his forehead. He entered a datum, reentered it, swore at the computer, and only the expense of the unit saved it from being slapped, banged and abused.

Working on the premise that the computer is never wrong, Hawker decided he either didn't have enough data or he was setting up his probability graphs incorrectly. Sometimes the computer made Hawker feel downright dumb. He was about to call Timothy Hoffacker, his computer-whiz friend, when a knock at the door interrupted him.

The massive shape of Logan loomed outside. He stepped in, looking sheepish and pleased. His dark beard had been combed, and he wore clean clothes.

“Glad I wasn't on the noon flight out of Mahogany Key,” he said with a smile.

“How many Colombians were on the plane?”

“One. A guy named Velindez. I'd seen him around. Tough guy. Liked to throw his weight around. I wasn't here, but I heard he and a couple of his buddies beat one of the crabbers half to death their second month in town.” Logan's eyes narrowed to slits. “They didn't find much of him.”

“From the sound of the explosion, I'm surprised they found anything at all. You know your explosives.”

“I'm just a cook.”

“I need to write that down someplace. I keep forgetting.”

“I came to talk to you about the men—the men working on the lodge. Just about every man in town, in fact. They know about Sandy's murder, and they know how she died. She was well liked in this town. Grew up here. They were calling for Colombian blood this morning. But they were still a little scared. You know about the last time they went to Chatham Harbor?”

“Yeah,” said Hawker. “I know.”

“They're not dumb. They figure you or I had something to do with that plane blowing up—mostly, they figure it was you. A couple of the boys came to me during lunch hour. They want you to lead them on another raid. They want another chance to clean out the Colombians. They said they're going no matter what. But they'd rather have you leading them.”

Hawker shook his head. “It can't be me. It has to be one of their own. If I provide the courage while I'm here, then they'll figure the courage leaves when I leave.”

“You're going?” Logan eyed him shrewdly. “After all the work you've done getting this lodge fixed up, why would you leave? You are the new owner, aren't you?”

“I think you know better than that,” Hawker said softly.

Logan said nothing for a long minute. Finally he nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I guess I did know.” He turned to go, but stopped at the door. “Oh, by the way, quite a few of the boys want to take the afternoon off.”

“Christ, they don't want to go after the Colombians already, do they? Tell them they ought to do it tomorrow night. Hell, lack of planning is what killed them the last time, and by then I should have just the guy to lead—”

Logan was laughing. “Yes, they're eager to go after the Colombians. But they're more eager to do something else.”

“What's that?”

“When the plane blew up, you know what came pouring down like rain? Money. Beautiful money. Twenties, fifties and hundreds, mostly. The stuff is thick out there in the mangroves. I even noticed a few bills stuck in the live oak outside your cottage. They want the afternoon off so they can go money hunting.”

Hawker was suddenly deep in thought. The paragraph from the Bogotá journal kept buzzing through his brain, as elusive as an answer to a very complex problem. That was when it finally dawned on him—

“Hawk! Did you hear me?” Logan was looking at him strangely. “What about the men? Can they have the afternoon off?”

“What? Oh, yeah. Tell them to take the afternoon off. And tell them they'll get their second chance at the Colombians. There'll be a meeting at the lodge tonight—midnight.”

When Logan had gone, Hawker sat in meditation for a time. He was sure he was right. It explained almost everything.

He made two more phone calls, then worked at the computer for another long hour, using the RUSTLED software to plant a bogus career record under his name in some very important computer banks.

That done, he dialed Eastern Airlines in Miami and made reservations on the midnight flight to Washington, D.C.

There were still a few things he had to do. The second was to visit Boggs McKay, Mahogany Key's star athlete and born leader, now turned hermit.

The first was to find a ladder.

fifteen

Boggs McKay lived in a platform house on an acre of salt-beaten land on the bank of the Chatham River.

Chickens scavenged among the weeds. Rusted car parts, broken chairs and other junk spilled out of the shed. The house was of warped gray planking with a tin roof, and there were no curtains on the windows. A potbellied horse dozed in the shade of a black mangrove, its tail swatting mosquitoes.

You could smell the river from the long dirt road that led to the house.