The Lonely Silver Rain (9 page)

Or I could undo the umbilical cords that affix the Busted Flush to the slip, and head down around the peninsula and somewhere up the other side. Find a place where I could anchor out, and use the dinghy for shoreside supplies, live small and careful. And longer.

Or close up the Flush and fly to Cairns up there at the top end of Australia. Summer there, and the fishing is good. Walk over to the aquarium at feeding time and study the dwarf crocodiles and think about Jornalero's associates. Sample the brawny Australian beach lassies who can windsurf all day without tiring a single muscle.

Hang around and let them keep trying.

When I walked out to the Flush I found a man sitting on the finger pier, legs dangling, staring at the Flush and tapping cigar ashes into the water. He looked fat, but from the way he carne to his feet, all in one motion, I knew he was in better shape than he looked. He wore a blue work shirt and khaki pants, a Greek seaman's cap and thick leather sandals. He was short and broad with a square jaw, no neck, a deep red sunburn, small brown eyes, deep-set, white eyebrows and lashes.

I was a good ten inches taller than he. He tilted his head and looked up at me and said, barely moving his lips, "Three four nine one two three eight. In ten minutes. Now point to something over near the motel."

I did as asked. He thanked me, touched his cap and went trudging away. I called that number ten minutes later.

"Hello?"

"This is McGee."

"Trav, how the hell are you? Tommy T. told me to look you up when I got here."

"How is old Tom?"

"He's fine. You going to be aboard about eight? I want to just stop on by and say hello."

"I'll be right here."

"Great! See you." Whoever he was, he was careful.

Even though my security system indicated nobody had been aboard, I checked the whole houseboat carefully. And when I was through I put on snorkel and fins and took the big underwater light and checked the hull and all the adjacent pilings. I came up shivering and took a hot shower. And then there was nothing to do but cook something and wait for the man in the Greek hat.

"McGee," I said, and stuck my hand out. He took it and I pulled him in and held tight as Meyer slid in behind him, closed the door with one hand and jabbed him once in the back with the barrel of my Colt Diamondback and then moved back away from him to what I had told Meyer is a safe and appropriate distance.

"Browder, the man behind you is not very familiar with firearms. The revolver is cocked. There is a shell in the chamber. His finger is on the trigger. If you do anything quick and funny, it might twitch."

"Nothing quick. Nothing funny. Believe me." After I had tied him to a stanchion with a length of braided nylon line, Meyer was able to take a deep breath again. I emptied his pockets and put everything on the table. He had a silver money clip in the shape of a dollar sign, worn from long use, with four hundred and twenty dollars in it. He had some crumpled ones and some change in the same pocket as a Swiss Army knife with a cracked red handle. I patted him down and found an ankle holster with a little two-shot derringer in it, two rounds of.22 Magnum hollowpoints. He stood as patiently as a horse being groomed.

"Going to do it with the derringer?" I asked him.

"It wouldn't look like an accident, would it?"

"Why does it have to be an accident anyway?"

"I'll give you a number and you dial it and let me say something into it. They will get a voiceprint, okay? Then they'll clear me."

I had to retie him where the phone would reach. He said the phone was manned twenty-four hours a day. I wasn't familiar with the area code. It was answered on the second ring by a male voice repeating the last four digits of the number I'd dialed. I held the phone to Browder's face and he said, "Okay Browder for clearance. Give them a description."

"Hold," the voice said.

We all waited for a long ninety seconds and then the voice said, "Browder, Scott Ellis. Five foot seven, one hundred and seventy-five pounds, age thirty-eight, brown eyes, ruddy complexion, S-shaped scar inside of left forearm, first joint of little finger of left hand missing, hairy mole right shoulder, faded blue tattoo right forearm of anchor and five stars in a circle around it. Browder is on detached duty with the Drug Enforcement Administration."

I said thank you to a dead line and untied him. "You don't want to check the hairy mole?" he asked.

"No, thanks."

"It isn't all that hairy anyway."

"Just for luck, I'll hang on to the derringer, though."

"Don't let me leave without it."

"Mr. Scott Browder, this is Meyer."

They nodded at each other. He massaged his wrists and said, "I could guess you'd be careful. What I hoped was no whop on the skull first. Hits on the head make me throw up. After the bomb thing they really wondered if they should go after somebody with all that amount of luck."

"Sit down. Drink."

"Thanks. Scotch, no ice, little bit of water. You can guess why I wouldn't carry an official ID."

"Infiltration?" I asked.

"After Operation Southern Comfort a lot of our guys were made, so I'm one of the new batch."

"Operation what?"

He looked disappointed. "It was big, like five tons of coke by plane, with a relay strip in the Bahamas. Anyway I'm involved with the peopl who never see it or touch it or have a direct contact with anybody who does see it and touch it. I'm after the arrangers. Not like Jornalero. He just does money for them. Long ago he used to hire the mules for the Colombianos. He worked his way up and, because he's smart, mostly out of it. They could get him for currency violations if they thought they could make it stick. But he covers his tracks good."

"Can you tell me who wants me killed?" I asked, giving him his drink.

He sipped it, nodded approval and said, "What would you do if I gave you names?"

"Pay visits."

He looked at me with disapproval. "McGee I am not going to tell you how much I know about you. You are big and you are lucky and you have some good moves. If I wanted to get you killed quick, I'd give you some names. How can I impress you? We are talking about very big money and very smart people. Listen and believe. It would be like sending a twelve-year-old girl on a naked reverse against the Raiders. It is a class you will never be in."

"Who is Cappy?"

"Short for the Capataz. That isn't his name. It means the Foreman. He's way down the list. He's enforcement. You scrambled three of his people. Rick Sullivan is having his knees rebuilt. Louis LaLieu will spend a year with his dental surgeon. Dean Matan has four broken bones and some ripped tendons in his left hand. And Cappy is annoyed."

"Who did it to Billy?"

"I don't know and I don't think Cappy knows, and I would guess that the man in Marseille Cappy contacted for a favor wouldn't know either exactly who did it. Just like nobody really knows who put your bomb together or who mailed it. Incidentally, word went back to Marseille that the wire job was sloppy. They wanted it done so that it wouldn't be picked up in an autopsy. They should have used a big injection of insulin."

"A bomb isn't exactly accidental-looking."

"After that missed, they decided on accidents. Too many killings and you have a lot of official attention, and that is bad for business. The people in Peru would understand the accidents were arranged."

"What was my accident going to be?"

"I couldn't say exactly, but I think you were supposed to walk out into heavy traffic. Those three were standby talent, strictly second-class, McGee."

Meyer asked his first question. "Mr. Browder, if Mr. McGee stays here, what are his chances of staying alive?"

Browder looked at Meyer with more interest. "Slim to none."

"And why is that so important to somebody?"

"Friend Meyer, you ask the hard ones, don't you? Something is stirring. What you've got in the Miami-Atlanta area is a loose amalgamation of two groups. They work very cozy together. It's in their interest. Let's call one the Old-timers. Some syndicate families, gambling interests, vice, narcotics. But not down on the nitty-gritty level. Making policy, suggesting arrangements, selecting the right people. Let's call the other group the New Boys. Rednecks, Cubans, Jamaicans, Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, Guatemalans, Peruvians, Bolivians. Smuggling narcotics, peddling weapons, murder and arson for hire. And again you have a top layer of policy people, negotiators. For a while the Old-timers and the New Boys were killing each other off. Wiser heads prevailed. They have the same problems of product and cash flow. So they have been working together. Now there is trouble in paradise. It has something to do with you, McGee, and with Ingraham and his wife and Jornalero and that stolen boat and Gigi Reyes. I've discussed matters with my associates and my superiors, and the general feeling is that if we can find the right buttons and push them, there is going to be a full-scale war again. Crazy Marielenos running around in panel trucks full of automatic weapons and grenades. And some fruit may drop off the tree. We may get enough to build some tight cases.

"Lately, it's getting a little better. When we can't build a solid criminal prosecution, we can bring a civil action and tell the clown to either show up on the stand and explain his income taxes for the past fifteen years, and how come he could buy a two-million-dollar home on the beach, or we take the house off his hands. It stings them pretty good. But I like the tight cases better."

"Which side wants me dead?"

"The Old-timers, mostly."

"What can I do?"

"I don't know yet, McGee. First I want to know every detail about the boat. How you looked, where you located it. What you did aboard. The whole thing."

He made me go over the part about the boat coming over from Yucatan twice. And he wanted every detail about the interior of the Sundowner, known then as the Lazidays. The exact position and condition of each body. The placement of the roll of fifties, and the spare fifties around the head of Howard Cannon. The shape and placement of the bruises on the thighs of the Peruvian girl. The clothing on the others. I closed my eyes and rebuilt the scene. It came back so vividly I could hear the lazy buzzing of the carrion flies, feel the sodden weight of my sweat-soaked clothes.

"I got to think," Browder said.

He was a pacer. He frowned and paced and, with fresh drink in hand, made little grunts, mumbles and hand gestures.

He stopped in front of me and pointed down at me. "You! Have you got any cowboy clothes? Hat, shirts, boots?"

"Nothing."

"Buy them tomorrow morning. Get high heels on the boots and a big high crown on the hat. I want you seven and a half feet tall. I want you looked at. I'll bring the eye patch. He's dead, but they won't know that in the Yucatan, will they?"

"Is that a question?"

"Hell no. Shut up. Let me think." And he went back to pacing.

Finally he dropped into a chair and clapped his thick hands together. "It's a chance, but maybe the only chance you got, McGee. Bring money. A good chunk of it. Can you bring fifty big ones?"

"To where, for what?"

"You and me, we're going on a buying trip."

"I thought you were up there on the policy level, Browder."

"Hell no. I'm third or fourth string. If I want to go buying and have a source, why should they stop me? They let people turn a dime. They don't want them to get greedy and foolish. I had been working on the idea they came over from Veracruz or Tampico. If it was from Chetumal, and they made a buy, I know the name. It had to be through him or somebody close to him. I know the name but I don't know how to make the contact. We can't roam around asking. I think I know who can tell me how to make the contact. What you do, McGee, you stay low. Buy the cowhand clothes. Wait for a call from me day after tomorrow. I think we'll be taking the Monday or Tuesday afternoon flight on AeroMexico to Cancun."

"I can hardly wait," I said.

"Save the funny routines. This can get us both shot."

"If you take more than five thousand out of the country, they…"

"Fifty big ones makes a pack of hundreds this thick." He held up a hand, thumb and finger about two and a half inches apart "Got a passport?… Good. I'll take the money in. Pack a carryon with what you'll need for three or four days. I don't know this minute if it's on or off. Maybe they think so much of me they don't want me to go out on a buy because I could get picked up coming back. On the other hand, if I'm coming up with the money and they're getting their percentage when they buy back from me for the wholesale market, what is there to lose? I'll let you know."

"If it happens," I asked, "who am I supposed to be?"

"I never heard his real name. They called him Bucky. Didn't look much like you. He had a round pink face. But tall. Real tall. He lost an eye in a bar. He walked into a dart game. Drunk. He didn't say much. He smiled a lot. He could do a pretty good John Wayne imitation. He did a lot of field work, so all the sources knew what he looked like. Word gets around. They called him the Estanciero. It means the Rancher. Bucky was never on a ranch in his life except the night he got killed. It was a routine landing on a ranch strip in Pasco County and Bucky was there with a van to off-load the product and take it up north somewhere. Birmingham, I think. Some locals tried to hijack the load but they got cut down. Two of them got it. One of the others fired from long range, in the dark, probably just aiming in the general direction of the airplane, and took Bucky right in the throat. So one of the two people off the plane took the truck north, after the two of them had loaded Bucky and the two dead hotshots into the cabin. The pilot took it fifty miles out over the Gulf, put it on automatic pilot and heaved them out. What happened hasn't exactly been advertised. I know because it is part of my job to find out things like that, and the pilot likes brandy."

He looked at his watch and stood up. "Got to go. Look, I don't want to make you nervous. There's very little rough stuff going on these days. I'll be in touch."

After he had been gone ten minutes I said to Meyer, "If he is after my fifty thousand, that's the most elaborate con I ever ran into."

"I think he's real," Meyer said. "Is that the right word?"

"Probably not. The man is basically unreal. But he's what he says he is."

"You're saying I should do it? I should go with him?"

"Do you think that's the kind of decision I should make for you?"

"Why do you keep answering a question with a question?"

"Doesn't everyone?"

"Okay, Meyer. Seriously. Life is full of signs and portents. Something hides in the shadows and keeps trying to tell you things you should know. But the language is never clear. You aimed a finger at me a while back and said, 'Bang, you're dead.' It is so unlike you to do a kid thing like that, I get the feeling something was trying to talk to me through you."

"It was just a dumb impulse."

"I guess the whole situation is making me too jumpy."

"And if you stay right here and make no moves at all, you're going to get jumpier."