Justifiable Homicide: A Political Thriller (Robert Paige Thrillers Book 1) (3 page)

A few minutes later, the waitress delivered his tea and took his order.

As he ate, he glanced across the street. Priscilla walked out of the Century 21 office with two men in suits flanking her. One of them held her by the arm. She didn’t look happy, but she accompanied them without resistance or looking around for help. They walked to a car parked illegally in front of the building. The other man opened the door for her and she got in. The car had government license plates.

Paige looked at his watch. Eleven fifty-three. He remembered she had a twelve o’clock appointment. She would be missing it, unless those were the guys she had the appointment with, which he doubted.

He decided he would call her on her cell phone, but not for a few hours. Something felt wrong. Calling now might get her in trouble. He would wait.

After enjoying the view and his fried pork and cheese sandwich he was ready to go. He liked Cuban cuisine. His sandwich had been very tasty, in a salty and greasy sort of way. It was a wonder Cubans could live past the age of fifty without having a heart attack.

He needed to visit the
Miami Herald
and the radio station where Raul had worked. Since the radio station was closer, he headed there first.

In the car, he turned to WTFM, a mostly Spanish-speaking station, although it did have a few English-language programs. Most of the radio personalities and ads bounced back and forth between Spanish and English, sometimes within the same sentence. Paige listened to it occasionally to practice his Spanish.

It took about twenty minutes to drive there in the light pre-rush-hour traffic.

The station occupied a freestanding building in one of the low rent parts of Miami. Not in a seedy neighborhood exactly, but not a safe place to walk at night. The building looked like it could benefit from a little paint.

He went inside and walked straight to the reception desk.

The Hispanic woman behind the desk looked up and smiled at him. She appeared to be in her late thirties and had short, curly black hair with a pink streak on the left side. Her large hoop earrings and chipped green nail polish added to the mystique. She looked like she wanted to make a fashion statement but didn’t know what to say.

“Hi. My name is Robert Paige. I’d like to speak with the manager.”

With surprising efficiency she picked up the phone and tapped a few buttons. “Ricardo, there’s a Robert Paige here to see you.”

Paige could hear a response but couldn’t make out what he said.

“Please have a seat.” She waved in the direction of a couch and some chairs on the other side of the room. “Mr. Diaz will be right with you.”

The manager walked out before he could pick up one of the Spanish language magazines piled on the table.

“Hello, I’m Ricardo Diaz. How may I help you?” He extended his hand, a practiced smile on his face.

Paige shook it. “Hi. Robert Paige. I was a friend of Raul’s.”

Diaz quickly withdrew his hand, his expression altered to one of apprehension.

“I’ll be direct. Can you tell me whether Raul was receiving threats?”

Diaz’s expression turned from apprehensive to worried.

“Ah, Mr. Paige, I’m afraid I can’t help you.”

Paige sensed the man wanted to say more, but something prevented him from continuing. Paige could see it in his eyes. He was frightened. The silence made Diaz uncomfortable.

Diaz broke the silence. “Some FBI agents visited me this morning. They told me not to discuss the case with anyone. They said if I discussed the case I would be in violation of national security.”

Diaz fell silent, shifted on his feet, and looked out the window. “They told me I couldn’t even tell anyone about their visit.” He glanced at Paige. “I’m sorry, but I can’t talk about it. I’ve probably said too much already.”

“Do you know who might have killed him?”

“He’d been getting threats for years, but I can’t say any more. Sorry.”

“I respect your position. Thank you for your time.”

They shook hands and Paige left. Another dead end.

On his way out, he glanced at his watch. There was still time to pay a visit to the
Miami Herald
. Had the FBI been there as well?

Traffic started to pick up. It took about a half hour to get to the
Miami Herald
offices. Raul’s boss was John Lasky. Paige didn’t know what his title was, but he remembered Raul used to complain about him for being a spineless piece of shit. He’d killed several of Raul’s columns because of fear they would offend somebody. Raul got incensed just talking about him.

Paige walked through one of the several front doors into a bustling lobby. A male and female receptionist sat behind a counter, chatting with each other.

He approached the one sitting on the left, a woman of retirement age with glasses and close-cropped graying hair.

“Hi. I’d like to see John Lasky.”

“Just a moment.” She turned to the directory on her computer screen. “He’s on the third floor. You can take the elevator over there.” She nodded toward the elevator bank to Paige’s right.

A small group of people waited to get into the next car. As he stepped in line behind them, he smelled two distinctly different fragrances emanating from the women ahead of him.

The doors opened, and the group crammed in. The woman with the sweeter of the two fragrances moved over and stood next to him, which made for a more pleasant ride.

He squeezed out on three, leaving her behind to continue her journey. He looked around to get his directions and strode up to the first person he saw.

“Could you please tell me where I can find John Lasky?”

“His office is down the hall on the left,” he said, pointing.

“Thank you.”

Paige checked the names on the doors as he passed each office. It was much quieter and businesslike here. He felt like he’d stumbled into the middle of a beehive with everyone working silently in their little compartments. After seven or eight doors, he came to Lasky’s office. A middle-aged pencil of a man with glasses sat behind a desk piled with papers in disarray. As Paige walked in, he glanced up from his galleys.

“Yes?”

“My name is Robert Paige. I know you must be busy. I’ll only take a moment of your time.”

“Yes, I am busy. I’m working on deadline. What do you want?”

He sounded a little gruff, much like Raul had described him.

“I was a friend of Raul Rodriguez. I’m hoping you could tell me something about—”

Lasky held up his right hand and cut him short.

“I can’t talk about Raul. Is that it?”

Paige took one of the two visitor’s chairs, sat down, and leaned back. “Well then, may I talk to the reporter who covered the story?”

“He no longer works here.”

What? Raul had been dead for less than forty-eight hours. The Raul story must have been the last one he covered. “Do you know how I can contact him?”

“Nope.”

“How can you not know how to contact him? He worked for you.”

“As I said, I’m on deadline.” He went back to reading his computer screen. Paige continued to sit silently in the chair, staring at Lasky. He thought hoping his presence and silence would trigger a response. It didn’t work.

After about 30 seconds he realized he wouldn’t be able to squeeze any useful information out of this guy.

“Good luck with your deadline.”

“Thanks.” He continued reading the screen as he said it.

Paige turned around and walked out. Something wasn’t right. He didn’t recall the name of the reporter who covered the story, but it would be easy enough to find. The article sat on his kitchen table at home.

As he returned to his car, he decided to give Priscilla a call before starting for home.

“Hello?”

“Priscilla. It’s Bob Paige.”

“Yes, I know. I could see your name on my screen.”

She sounded scared. Her voice trembled.

“Bob, I can’t talk to you. Please don’t call again.”

She hung up before he could reply.

Someone had to be monitoring the case. Everywhere he turned he got shut down. The two men he saw her with that morning were part of it. And their car had government plates.

He got in his car and started the drive back to his condo in Sunny Isles Beach, discouraged but not beaten.

As he pulled away, a dark blue sedan parked a hundred feet away started up behind him. It kept far enough back that Paige wouldn’t observe its presence.

The driver looked over to his companion. “It looks like he’s going home. We’ll follow him anyway, in case he makes a stop along the way.”

His associate turned off his iPad and looked straight ahead. He had been reading
Hunter
by Robert Bidinotto. The driver had already read it, a book about a vigilante who sought to do justice when the criminal justice system failed.

As soon as he got home, Paige grabbed the newspaper and turned to the Rodriguez article. Written by Leroy Witherspoon. It listed his email address below his name.

Paige sent him a brief email.

Dear Mr. Witherspoon:

My name is Robert Paige. I am an accounting professor at St. Frances University. I was also a friend of Raul Rodriguez. I would like to meet with you briefly at your convenience. Please let me know when and where it would be convenient.

He hit SEND, then took a brief nap before getting ready for dinner at Sveta’s.

When he returned from Sveta’s at about eleven, two email messages from Leroy Witherspoon were waiting for him. The first one said:

Thank you for your email. I am sorry, but I will not be able to meet with you.

Leroy

The second one had arrived fifteen minutes later. It had a different email address.

Dear Professor Paige,

Please disregard my earlier email. I can meet with you tomorrow at ten o’clock at the Starbucks down the street from the
Miami Herald
. I’ll be the black guy with glasses wearing a white shirt.

Leroy

Paige sent him an email confirming the meeting, then went to bed.

The dark blue sedan parked outside his condo building pulled away, replaced by a black van.

The Central Intelligence Agency owns anyone of any significance in the major media. William Colby (former Director of the CIA)

The next morning, Paige awoke at seven, had cereal with strawberries for breakfast, and did some leg and lower back stretching exercises. He practiced his karate forms three times a week, but this morning he wasn’t in the mood.

He had been studying martial arts, on and off, for more than twenty years. He’d studied judo with Dick Adelman in Erie, Pennsylvania briefly in high school but couldn’t afford the monthly payments. While he worked as a tax attorney in Manhattan, he studied Taekwondo with Henry Cho, and later studied Shukokai, a Japanese karate style, with Shihan Shigeru Kimura in Hackensack, New Jersey, along with his ex-wife and daughters. He’d continued his Taekwondo studies with Masters Brown and Cook in Fayetteville, North Carolina while a visiting professor at Fayetteville State University, and also studied Krav Maga. He still competed in tournaments on a regular basis but wasn’t quite as sharp as he’d been in his thirties.

He arrived at Starbucks two minutes early. A slender black guy with glasses and a white shirt sat at a corner table facing the front door. He appeared to be in his mid-thirties. Witherspoon stood as Paige approached the table.

“Hello, professor. Please sit.” He motioned to one of the chairs. “Would you like coffee?”

“Yeah, I suppose that would be appropriate for this place.”

“I’ll be here.”

Paige stepped up to the counter and ordered a medium cappuccino. He usually preferred his coffee with a twist of caramel, either hot or iced, but this morning his taste buds hankered for a cappuccino.

He returned to the table with his coffee a few minutes later. “Thank you for agreeing to meet with me.”

“No problem. Now that I don’t have a job, I have time on my hands.” He grinned, exposing a full set of crooked white teeth.

“Yes, I did have a question about that, if you don’t mind my asking.”

“I don’t mind. Go ahead and ask.”

“One day you’re covering the Raul Rodriguez story, and the next day you’re no longer working at the
Herald
. Is there a connection?”

“That’s the reason I got fired, actually. John Lasky told me to drop the Rodriguez story and find something else to report on. I continued to interview people in my spare time anyway. I don’t like being told what to do, especially when it comes to my job. I had a feeling there was more to the Rodriguez story, so I kept digging. Everyone I interviewed was afraid to talk about it. Someone must have been threatening them. I wanted to find out who and why.”

“I guess you have a problem with authority, huh?”

He snickered. “Yeah, you noticed that?” He took a swig of his coffee and gave Paige another slightly crooked grin. A rebel and proud of it.

“It all goes back to my days in the army. They gave me a low-level journalist job, probably because they didn’t trust me with a gun. I developed a liking for the work and a disliking for the army. After I left the army, I got a series of junior reporter positions in the Miami area and worked my way through the master’s degree program in journalism at Florida International University. A few months before I graduated, I landed a job at the
Miami Herald
. I’ve been there ever since, until a few days ago. I didn’t get where I am by backing down like some junior reporter.”

“Did your boss give you any specifics about why they wanted you to drop the Rodriguez story?”

“Yeah, he was quite specific. My boss’s boss’s boss got a visit from the FBI. They threatened him as well as the newspaper. They said federal law gave them the authority to shut down the newspaper and arrest anyone they want if national security is involved, and that the Rodriguez case involved national security. They said any further reporting about Rodriguez might give aid and comfort to the enemy, which is treason.”