J.D. Trafford - Michael Collins 02 - No Time to Die (5 page)

CHAPTER TEN

Deputy Maus sat and waited at the modern E.C. Honour gastropub off of Thirteenth and Bickell in downtown Miami.  There was a lot of dark wood, leather, and shiny brass fixtures. About 250 people fit comfortably in the place. There was a wall of glass separating the bar from the brewery. The gastropub was set up for patrons to eat food and socialize while watching the hops and barley turn into something magical through the window. In an hour, the pub would be bustling for lunch, catering to all the suits with expense accounts. but for now, it was quiet.

Maus
sat alone. Most of the restaurant’s staff prepped for the lunch service. A few waiters wiped down menus. Others rolled bundles of silverware in red cloth napkins.

Maus
didn’t want to be there. He had predicted that it was going to be a mess. He just had a bad feeling that the guy was going to be trouble.

Maus
thought about his dad. His dad was a Marine. He was so proud that his son was a Sheriff’s deputy. “My son the cop,” is how his dad introduced him at the Jesser VFW hall. “Still not a Marine, but pretty good.”

Maus
thought about his wife and two kids. She would ditch him in a second at the first sign of trouble. And divorce was the best-case scenario. He ran his hand through his cropped hair.
Cops don’t do well in prison
, he thought.

It was typical for cops like him to have another job working security. Businesses liked having off-duty cops in uniform hanging around. They were a deterrent.

So when Maus had started working for Jolly Boy on the side, it had been for the same reason that other cops get a second job. He wanted the money. It paid for the extras that made life worth living. It kept his wife out of his way. It paid for vacations and for any sporting event he wanted to see. It also paid for the toys: a big screen television, ATV, guns, and the boat.
I love that damn boat
, thought Maus. Now it could all be gone.

Maus
ran his hand across his scalp again. He was in rough shape. Being in the big city made it even worse.

Unlike in
Jesser, the big city people didn’t respect him. They didn’t fear him. The nerds and freaks ruled Miami. He looked around at the skinny waiters and the even skinnier waitresses. They all had piercings, gelled hair and at least two visible tattoos.

It wasn’t natural. Strength and size were supposed to dictate who had power. Power shouldn’t be given to the wimp who wrote the best computer code or a chick with glasses who could speak funny languages.

Big cities were filled with the people like the ones that he used to harass in high school. They fled Jesser; he stayed, and Maus liked it that way. It was natural.

Maus
ordered a Lone Jack Golden, because the bartender said it was the closest thing to Budweiser that they served. He prayed that Dylan wouldn’t take too long. He needed to get back to Jesser. The Sheriff was going to be looking for him. There weren’t too many murders in Jesser. Lots of bar fights and drunk drivers, but murders were rare. Everybody at the station was excited to catch the killer except him, for obvious reasons.

What a mess.

###

Dylan McNaughten arrived with a burst. His black hair was slicked back. He wore a tailored pale Michael Kors suit with a white open-collared dress shirt. He also wore black sunglasses to hide his bloodshot party eyes.

He looked around the
gastropub. His attitude was one of entitlement. He was born rich, raised rich, and expected to become even richer.

His title was “Senior Vice President of Operations” for Jolly Boy, but he didn’t know much about the business. He and his brother had inherited the company.

His brother, Brian, ran it, and Dylan just did the dirty work. In short, Dylan was in charge of finding and housing the immigrants that worked the fields. He didn’t care if Dylan kept regular office hours and he didn’t really care how hard Dylan partied, as long as he got the fields picked.

Dylan simply needed to keep the workers in line, pay them as little as possible, and ensure that there was no paper trail, no e-mails. The company always needed to be able to deny actual knowledge and thereby avoid responsibility.

That was the thing Brian insisted that Dylan understand – the company can’t know what happens in the fields. And for Dylan, his knowledge was the only thing that kept the easy money from his brother coming. His secrets gave him power.

“
Mausy.” Dylan put his hand on Deputy Maus’ shoulder. “We should get a booth.”

Maus
nodded, and got up. Maus took his beer in hand, and the two walked to a booth in the corner. They were an odd-looking couple.

As soon as they sat down, a waitress came over with two menus. She eyed Dylan, knowing who was in charge.

Maus watched as the waitress purred at Dylan. Dylan took the menus from her. He winked, she giggled, and Maus was ignored.
The world was upside down in the big city
, Maus thought.

Dylan handed a menu across the table to
Maus.

“
Just transfer my friend’s tab from the bar over here, and we’ll order in a minute.”

A big, perfectly white smile stretched across the waitress’s perfectly tanned and perfectly smooth face.

“I’ll do that.”

The waitress turned and walked to the bar to transfer the tab. Dylan watched as she went. She knew his eyes were on her – in that way that all women knew when they were being watched – and so she gave Dylan a little extra bounce.

“Nice girl,” Dylan smiled, and then turned back to Maus. His smile went away, but the confidence and flash did not. “What’s the big emergency? I had to …” Dylan tried to think of something better than the truth, which was that he usually partied late and didn’t get up until noon. “Uh, I had to cancel, like, two appointments and, uh, rearrange my whole morning for this.”

Maus
leaned in. He looked around, confirming that nobody was nearby.

“
They found him.”

Dylan’s eyes narrowed; his mind already working the angles.

“I thought you took care of it.” Dylan played it cool. He made eye contact with the waitress across the room and gave her a smile and a nod. Then he looked back at Maus. “You get paid really well so that we don’t have problems.”

“
I must not’ve dug deep enough.” Maus bit his lower lip. It was his mistake, and he thought it would be better to admit it. He cracked his neck, and then took a sip of beer. “Animal dug him up and pulled him into a farmer’s field. The farmer found pieces.”

“
Anybody identify him?”

Maus
shook his head. “Not yet.”

“
But it’s not like you left his wallet on him. Right?”

“
Of course I didn’t leave a wallet on him.”

Maus
wasn’t that dumb, but there were other ways to identify a body.

Dylan shrugged, still playing it cool.

“I think you’re blowing this up,” Dylan let out a little laugh. “We got nothing to worry about. Nobody cares about these people. Nobody is going to claim him, and even if somebody wants to, it’s too expensive and too complicated. They won’t be able to figure it out.”

Dylan thought about some of the crime shows he’d seen on television.

“It’s not like he’s got dental records. He probably never even went to a dentist.”

Dylan flashed some more of his sparkle, trying to calm down
Maus. Dylan needed Maus on his side. They were The Keepers Of The Secrets.

“
Cheer up, Mausy. He was just a wetback. I bet his face was all messed up, too, like rotted, right? Nobody is going to identify him.” He laughed a little more at the thought, and then waved the waitress over.

“
I gotta run, honey, but put whatever my friend wants on my tab.”

Dylan got up. He took out a credit card and one of his business cards. He handed the credit card to the waitress, and then he wrote his cell phone number on the back of his business card. “And here’s my number if there are any problems.”

The waitress took the card. She read the front, and then turned the business card over to read the cell phone number on the back.

“
Like what kind of problems are we talking about?”

“
Like if you get lonely.” Boom, and a little more flash.

###

The
McNaughten brothers waited for Harrison Grant in the firm’s main conference room. The conference room was on the top floor of the Millennium Tower. Green and Thomas, LLP, had the top 25 floors of the tower’s 50 stories.

The conference room had all the
accoutrements that one would expect. A large oak conference table surrounded by two-dozen high-back, black leather chairs. One wall had all of the gadgets necessary to conduct video-conferencing around the world. Another wall featured the obligatory, inoffensive piece of abstract art. And the outside wall was floor-to-ceiling glass, which provided a picturesque view of Biscayne Bay.

Biscayne Bay defined Miami – a beautiful marine ecosystem stretching along the ocean’s coast and out for hundreds of miles. It was a place of recreation and fishing, but it was also under constant pressure from the millions of people living in Miami as well as one of the largest shipping ports in the world.

“Where is he?” Dylan McNaughten stood-up and walked to the window. He stuck his hands in his pants pockets while he paced the room.

Brian
McNaughten, Dylan’s twin, rolled his eyes.

“
Calm down. I just want to run this situation past Grant. I want to make sure we’re prepared if this worker is traced back to us. He’ll figure it out. He always does.”

“
I told you.” Dylan glared at his brother. “It isn’t coming back to us.”

“
But it might,” Brian said. “An ounce of prevention, brother. We need to protect ourselves.”

“
I don’t have time to wait in conference rooms.” Dylan looked around, and then looked back at his brother. “Does he understand who we are?”

Dylan’s face was getting red, and he was getting more jumpy. He had wanted to be sober for his meeting with
Maus, but after a few hours of work, he needed a hit. Dylan needed the confidence that only cocaine provided.

“
I’m sure he knows who we are.” Brian pulled a chair out from the table and patted the back of the chair. “Have a seat.”

“
I’m not sitting down.” He wasn’t going to be polite and cautious any more. Dylan took a small plastic bag and straw out of his pocket. “Why can’t he come to us?”

“
Because that’s not how it works, and I don’t want to pay a lawyer $600 an hour to drive to our office.”

“
Who cares? We got money.” Dylan poured a little bit of his cocaine out on the conference table and cut a few lines. He needed the hit, but he also did it to piss off his brother.

Brian looked around; making sure the door was closed.

“You think you could do that in the bathroom?”

“
This is as good a place as any.” Dylan stuck the straw in his nose and drew in the white powder. He put the straw back in his pocket, and then Dylan let the drugs work him over. He loved cocaine. He had always loved cocaine.

Brian tried to stay calm. His brother made him nervous. One trip to
Hazelden and two trips to Betty Ford hadn’t made one bit of difference, mainly because Dylan didn’t care. The only reason Dylan went was because Brian had threatened to cut him off and lock all of his money away in a trust fund.

“
I know we have healthy bank accounts,” Brian said, “but I want to keep it. You don’t accumulate wealth by paying for things you don’t have to.” Brian talked slow, like he was explaining something to a child. “And I figured you’d have other ways to spend $600.”

Dylan looked at his brother. His eyes were bugged, and he sneered at Brian while he thought it over. $600 would buy a nice bit of coke, he thought, that was a pretty good point.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

“I called in a favor to get this meeting,” Jane said. “So let me do the talking.”

“
What do you mean?” Michael found a meter on Fourth Street in downtown Miami and parked under a palm tree. “You’re making me nervous.”

That was true. Sweat rolled down Michael’s neck, and then down his back. His stomach turned somersaults.

He had been in Florida for less than three days, and Michael knew the feds were already tracking him. He wanted to help Pace and his family. He also liked and wanted to help Jane, but now she’d asked him to do something crazy. 

Michael didn’t think that Jane knew what she was doing to him. He didn’t think there was any way that she could know. But Jane had purportedly scheduled a meeting with somebody at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Florida. Michael was about to walk into the offices of an organization that had been investigating him for years.

“Besides meeting with the feds – who are constantly trying to deport your clients, by the way – how exactly does an Assistant United States Attorney owe you favor?”

Ignoring Michael’s question, Jane grabbed her notebook and large purse off the floor of the SUV. Then she unlocked her door.

“Are you going to answer me?” Michael repeated the question, before Jane got out.

“
Maybe. … It’s a long story.”

“
I think I should know before we go in there.” Michael looked up at the tall building, while Jane sighed.

“
Well, if you have to know.” Jane stopped fiddling with her purse. She turned to face Michael. “We were sort of engaged to be married.”

“
So you’re not exactly calling in a favor,” Michael said. “More like exploiting a personal relationship.”

Jane opened the door.

“That’s a more cynical way of looking at it.”

###

The United States Attorney’s Office in Miami was in the James Lawrence King Federal Court Building. It was a modern building built in the 1980s with lots of white stone, and then  after the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, accented with the hasty addition of concrete barricades.

Jane and Michael made it through the metal detectors and past a probing wand.

Michael thought that the guard was particularly thorough in patting down Jane. He expected a remark, but Jane didn’t say anything. He realized that she was nervous, too.

They got into the elevator. The doors slid shut, and they were alone.

“
When was the last time you talked with this guy?” Michael asked.

Jane paused, thinking. A bell rang. The doors slid open, and they stepped out into the hallway.

“It was the night I called off the engagement.”

“
You
called off the engagement?”

Jane pursed her lips, thinking.

“Well, that may not be entirely accurate. There was a lot of yelling. I think he may believe that he called off the engagement. It was sort of mutual.”

“
Does he even know we’re coming?”

Jane shook her head.

“No.”

“
But you said that you made an appointment.”

“
I lied.”

###

They waited in a plain government conference room for 20 minutes. The walls were barren except for two large poster-sized photographs hung side-by-side. One picture was a portrait of the Attorney General in front of a flag. The other one was a nearly identical photograph of the President of the United States. The two giant heads with their four gigantic eyes peered down on them while they sat.

Eventually their unsuspecting host arrived.

Both Jane and Michael stood up.

On another day, the Assistant U.S. Attorney who entered the room would have been an attractive guy. At the moment, however, he looked like death. He was too thin. His hair was disheveled, and he had large, dark circles under his eyes.

His whole body tensed when Jane gave him a stiff and awkward hug. Then he noticed Michael and Michael caught the look. His eyes looked at Michael’s wrinkled khaki pants, short-sleeve shirt, and sandals. His expression was: Who the hell are you?

“I’m Michael.” Michael extended his hand, trying to be warm and friendly.

“
Michael?” He hung on the last syllables of Michael’s first name. He wanted a last name and Michael didn’t want to give it to him. But there really wasn’t a choice.

“
Michael Collins.” They shook hands in the way that men do; two dogs sniffing one another.

“
I’m Justin Kent.” He gestured to the chairs. “Please sit.” And they all sat down.

Kent looked at Michael.

“So are you volunteering or working for Jane?”

“
Volunteering,” Michael said, thinking that was the least complicated explanation for his presence.

“
That’s great.” It was obviously meant to be a compliment, but the tone was flat. Kent turned to Jane.

“
Jane does …” his voice cracked. Kent looked her over before finishing. “Jane does good work.”

There was another lull in the conversation. Everyone wanted to be polite, but the silence lasted a little too long. There was frost in the air.

“So the receptionist said that you’re working on a case,” Kent said. “What do you need me for?”

Michael was thinking the same thing.

“It’s Tommy,” Jane said. “He’s been missing for a few weeks. He’s sick, and I wanted to know if you could find out whether immigration has him in custody.”

“
I shouldn’t do that.”

“
Come on,” Jane said. “Tommy was a good source for you. He trusted you and you trusted him.”

“
Why don’t you call ICE? You don’t need me for that.” Kent checked his watch.

“
Justin, you know how they are.” Jane started to continue, but stopped short. Jane took another tack. “Maybe you should explain to Michael what you do.”

Kent shifted in his seat. It was clear that he was trying to figure out how to act. Should he be mad, friendly, or business-like? It appeared as though he had settled on mildly irritated.

“I’m pretty busy, Jane,” he said. “I don’t have time for this anymore.” Kent shook his head. “I don’t even know why I agreed to this. I’m not going to get sucked into your schemes again. The last one almost cost me my job.”

“
I thought the information was good.”

“
But it wasn’t good,” Kent said. “We came up with nothing.” Kent started to continue, raising his voice, but then stopped himself.

It was then that Michael realized why he was there. It was going to be harder for Kent to say no when there’s a witness, an outsider. Michael was being used as a shield.

Jane tried to keep the meeting going, ignoring the digression.

“
Michael,” she turned to him, “Justin Kent is one of the nation’s experts on modern-day slavery. That’s what he prosecutes here. He investigates human trafficking, everything from sex rings to maids to farm laborers. Immigrants who are brought here illegally to work for little or no pay. That’s how we met. We were on a panel together at a conference.”

“
Two attorneys tilting at windmills,” Kent said, “but I’m not doing it any more. Politically nobody wanted me to do it from the beginning. Now it’s time. Time for a transfer.” Kent looked at Jane. His voice softened. “I’m thinking about going to Washington D.C.”

“
We just need a phone call,” Jane said. “Just a quick look at whether anything new has come in.”

Kent looked back at her, thinking.

“We’ve got nothing, Justin.” Jane pleaded. “Not just with Tommy. I got another call from Jolly Boy’s attorney. The negotiations are cancelled. We’ve got no funding. We’re about to be evicted from our office. The board meets tomorrow. If I can’t show them something, the board is going to vote to shut us down.” Jane reached out and took hold of Justin Kent’s hand.

“
Please. I’m begging you.”

###

Michael and Jane sat alone for another hour.

“How long do you think it’s going to take?” Michael leaned back in his chair.

Jane didn’t respond. She stared out the window, instead. It wasn’t much of a view, only the side of another office building across the street, more glass and stone.“You told me things were bad, but I didn’t know about the board meeting.”

He waited, but only got more silence. Jane sat with her arms crossed, staring off at the distance, tapping her foot.

“
It doesn’t make sense. They should be lining up to give you a grant. Justin was right about that … you do great work.”

Jane turned to him.

“Thanks.” She had tears in her eyes. “I shouldn’t cry. Lawyers don’t cry. Lawyers are supposed to be tough, right? You’ve seen me beg and plead more in the past three days than …” Her voice trailed off.

Michael countered her pity.

“I think you’re pretty tough.”

Jane wiped a tear away from her cheek.

“Lawyers are cheap bastards.”

“
Yes they are.”

“
But weird too,” Jane said. “They drop $100 on lunch. They spend all this money for the top floors of whatever building seems the most prestigious. They buy oak desks, fancy suits, and expensive cars. But then when it comes to donating to legal aid …” Jane shook her head. “Nothing.”

Michael nodded, remembering his own time at the firm.

“At Wabash, I wasted so much money, pissed it away. I was stupid.”

“
Our board wants us to have an annual fundraising dinner at this hotel in downtown Miami. They want to have all the firms sponsor the tables, bring in a famous speaker, and then have the speaker praise them all for their commitment to legal services for the poor.”

“
I’ve been to those.” Michael thought back to the various functions he had attended as an associate, excuses to drink at an open bar and be seen.

“
The firm buys the table. I get to drink heavily and I don’t give the organization a dime. The firm pays for everything.”

“
And when you subtract the costs, the organization barely raises a thing.” Jane’s voice hardened.

“
You know I sent a letter to every lawyer in Miami, Naples and Fort Myers last year. I personally bought the list from the bar association, put it on my credit card. All I was asking for was $25 – they probably had three times that much in their wallet – and we sent out the letter and waited, and waited, and waited, and then three weeks later I get one response. It was a donation for $50 from a law school classmate of mine who works at Florida Legal Aid. She probably makes less than me, which is about one-fourth the salary of a first-year associate at any of those firms.”

“
Lawyers.” Michael shook his head.

“
Cheap bastards.”

###

Michael eventually found a water pitcher and Styrofoam cups in a government-issued credenza. He filled up the pitcher from the hallway drinking fountain, and then returned to the conference room.

“Water?” Michael began pouring himself a glass.

Jane nodded, and so Michael poured another and handed it to her.

“So when did you break off the engagement?”

Jane took the glass of water. Michael could see that she didn’t want to talk about it.

“Come on,” Michael said. “I’ll tell you about mine if you tell me about yours.”

Jane raised an eyebrow.

“You were engaged?”

Michael nodded. “It was the happiest six hours of my life.”

“Seriously?”

“
Seriously.” Michael took a sip of water. “But I made the mistake of being honest.”

“
You’re saying honesty isn’t the best policy?”

“
Perhaps honesty isn’t the best policy … all at once.” Michael smiled, finishing his water. He poured himself another. “Once upon a time, I was a pretty good lawyer. I dropped out, and I thought she deserved to know the reasons why.”

Michael was surprised at how good it felt to talk to her. Jane was somebody who might understand.

“I knew she’d be upset, but I thought it’d be fair to let her know upfront. Full disclosure.”

“
Sorry.” Jane didn’t ask for more details, and Michael wasn’t ready to tell her more. Not yet.

“
So how about you?”

“
I love my job,” Jane said. “It drives me crazy, but I love my job and what I do. I got out of law school and decided to blaze my own path. I harassed all of these foundations to give me money to start, but after a few years they lost interest. Immigration was a big deal in the mid-1990s, then things shifted to charter schools and wrap-around services for inner-city kids, then it was about giving everybody who’s poor a laptop computer, and now it’s all about childhood obesity. I ask for money and they’re like, ‘haven’t you solved that problem yet?’ and ‘why are you still around?’ or ‘what are your benchmarks for effectiveness?’”