The Guardians(56)

Vicki, Mazy, and I look at each other as this settles in. The only person on the planet who can confirm that Keith Russo was an informant is sitting in one of our old mismatched chairs and calmly sipping coffee.

“Who killed him?” I ask tentatively.

“Don’t know, but it wasn’t Quincy Miller. It was a hit from the cartel.”

“Which cartel?”

He pauses and takes a sip of coffee. “You ask me why I came here. I heard about your efforts to exonerate Miller and I applaud what you’re doing. They got the wrong guy because they wanted the wrong guy. I have a lot of background I can share without divulging confidential stuff. Primarily, though, I just wanted to get out of the house. My wife is shopping today around the corner and we’ll meet for a nice lunch later.”

I say, “We’re all ears and we have all day.”

“Okay, first a bit of history. By the mid 1970s, when the DEA was created, cocaine was raging across the country and coming in by the ton in ships, planes, trucks, you name it. The demand was insatiable, profits were enormous, and the growers and traffickers could barely keep up. They built huge organizations throughout Central and South America and stashed their money in Caribbean banks. Florida, with eight hundred miles of beaches and dozens of ports, became the preferred point of entry. Miami became the playground for the traffickers. South Florida was controlled by a Colombian cartel, one that is still in business. I was not involved down there. My section was from Orlando north, and by 1980 the Saltillo Cartel out of Mexico ran most of the cocaine. Saltillo is still around but it got merged with a bigger outfit. Most of its leaders got butchered in a drug war. These gangs are always up and down and the casualties are breathtaking. The savagery is unbelievable. I won’t bore you.”

“Please don’t,” Vicki says.

I have another quick visual of Tyler and the crocodile feast, and say, “We have a fair amount of background on Sheriff Pfitzner and what went on in Ruiz County.”

He smiles and shakes his head, as if reminded of an old friend. “And we never caught that guy. He was the only sheriff that we knew of in north Florida who was in bed with the cartel. We had him in our sights when Russo got hit. Things changed after that. Some of our crucial informants got lockjaw.”

“How’d you flip Russo?” I ask.

“Keith was an interesting guy. Very ambitious. Tired of the small town. Wanted to make a lot of money. Damned good lawyer. He had some drug clients in the Tampa–St. Pete area and sort of made a name for himself. An informant told us that he was taking big fees in cash, reporting some or none, even moving money offshore. We watched his tax returns for a couple of years and it was obvious he was spending a lot more than he was making on Main Street in Seabrook. So we met with him and threatened him with an indictment for evasion. He knew he was guilty and didn’t want to lose everything. He was also guilty of laundering money for some of his clients, primarily the Saltillo boys. He did this by using offshore shell companies to buy Florida real estate and doing all the paperwork. Not terribly complicated stuff, but he knew what he was doing.”

“Did his wife know he was an informant?”

Another smile, another sip. Duckworth could tell war stories for hours. “This is where it gets really fun. Keith liked the ladies. He was careful not to chase ’em in Seabrook, but Tampa was another story. He and Diana kept an apartment there, ostensibly for reasons related to their work, but Keith used it for other reasons. Before we flipped him, we got warrants and had bugs in the apartment, office, even at home. We were listening to everything, including Keith’s calls to his girls. Then, we got a real shock. Seems as though Diana decided to play the same game. Her dude was one of her drug clients, a pretty boy who worked in Miami for the Saltillo Cartel. Ramon Vasquez was his name. There were a couple of times when Keith was in Tampa hard at work and Ramon sneaked into Seabrook to visit Diana. Anyway, you can imagine what kind of shape the marriage was in. So, to answer your question, we were never sure if Keith told his wife about being an informant. We warned him not to, of course.”

“What happened to Diana?” Vicki asks.

“Somehow the cartel found out about Keith working for us. I strongly suspect that another informant, a double agent, one of our guys, sold the information. It’s a dirty business with loyalties that can change daily. Hard cash and the fear of being burned alive can flip a lot of people. They took out Keith, and Diana eventually left town.”

“And Ramon?” asks Mazy.

“He and Diana hooked up in Tampa for a while, then kept moving south. We didn’t know for sure back then but we suspected he sort of semiretired from his trafficking career and stayed out of trouble. Last I heard, they were still together somewhere in the Caribbean.”

“With plenty of money,” I say.

“Yes, with plenty of money.”

“Was she involved with the murder?” Mazy asks.

“That has never been proven. You know about the life insurance and the joint bank accounts, but that’s not too unusual.”

I ask, “Why didn’t you bust Pfitzner and the cartel?”

“Well, after the murder, the case evaporated. We were within a month or two of a huge bust that would have produced a lot of indictments, including some charges against Pfitzner. We had been patient, too patient, really, but we were fighting with the U.S. Attorney’s office down there. They were overworked and so on. We couldn’t get the lawyers fired up. You know how they are. After the murder, our informants vanished and the case fell apart. The cartel got spooked and pulled back for a while. Pfitzner eventually retired. I was moved to Mobile where I finished my career.”