The Guardians(77)
“You’re crazy, man.”
“Who’s got the key?”
“I do, but I haven’t stepped inside in years. The electricity was cut off long ago, but you can sometimes see lights at night. Lights moving around. Only a fool would walk through those doors.”
“I need some air.” They step outside into the heat and walk to their vehicles. Riley says, “You know, this is weird. Kenny’s been dead for twenty years and nobody from the outside has shown any interest. Now, in less than a week, you and two others come snooping around.”
“Two others?”
“Two white dudes showed up last week, asking questions about Kenny. Where did he grow up? Where did he live? Where is he buried? I didn’t like them and I played dumb, gave ’em nothing.”
“Where were they from?”
“I didn’t ask. I got the impression they wouldn’t tell me anyway.”
Chapter 38
Quincy’s first surgery is a six-hour repair job piecing together a shoulder and collarbone. It goes well and the doctors are pleased. I sit with him for hours as he recovers. His battered body is mending well and some of his memory is returning, though the attack is still a black hole. I do not tell him what we know about Drummik and Robert Earl Lane, or Adam Stone and Skip DiLuca. He’s heavily medicated and is not ready for the rest of the story.
There is a guard of some variety sitting by his door around the clock, often more than one. Hospital security, prison guards, Orlando police, and FBI. They take turns and I enjoy chatting them up. It breaks the monotony. I often marvel at the cost of it all. Fifty thousand dollars a year to keep him in prison, for twenty-three years now. A drop in the bucket to what the taxpayers are now spending to keep him alive and fix up his wounds. Not to mention the security. Millions, and all wasted on an innocent man who should never have been incarcerated in the first place.
I’m napping on the rollaway cot in his room early one morning when my phone buzzes. Agent Nolton asks if I’m in town. She has something to show me. I drive to her office and follow her to a large conference room where a tech guy is waiting.
He dims the lights and, still standing, we look at a large screen. A face appears—Hispanic male, age about sixty, ruggedly handsome with fierce dark eyes and a salt-and-pepper beard. Agnes says, “Name is Ramon Vasquez, longtime senior management in the Saltillo Cartel, sort of semiretired now.”
“The name is familiar,” I say.
“Hang on.” She clicks and another image appears, an aerial of a small resort tucked into the side of a mountain that is surrounded by the bluest water in the world. “This is where he spends most of his time. The island is Martinique, French West Indies. The getaway is called Oriole Bay Resort, owned by one of a million faceless companies domiciled in Panama.” She splits the screen and the face of Mickey Mercado appears. “Three days ago our friend here used a Honduran passport to fly to Martinique where he met with Vasquez at the resort. We showed up but couldn’t get in, and that was probably a good thing. The next day Mercado used a Bolivian passport to return to Miami through San Juan.”
It hits hard. “Vasquez was the boyfriend of Diana Russo,” I say.
“Still is. They’ve been together since about the time of her dear husband’s untimely death.” She clicks again. Mercado disappears and half of the screen is black. The other half is still the island. “No pictures of Diana. According to what we’ve been able to piece together, and I won’t bore you with stories of how shaky intelligence can be anywhere in the Caribbean, they spend most of their time living in luxurious seclusion at their resort. She sort of runs the place but keeps an extremely low profile. They also travel a lot, all over the world. DEA is not sure if their travels are related to trafficking, or if they just want to get off the island. They think Vasquez is past his prime but still does a little consulting. Could be that the Russo murder happened on his watch and he’s expected to clean up the mess. Or, it could be that he is still active in the business. Whatever he does, he’s extremely careful.”
I back to a chair, fall into it, and mumble, “So she was involved.”
“Well, we don’t know for sure, but she suddenly looks a lot guiltier. She renounced her American citizenship fifteen years ago and became a full-fledged citizen of Panama. Probably cost her fifty grand. New name is Diana Sanchez but I’ll bet she has others. Who knows how many passports. No record that she and Ramon have ever officially tied the knot. Apparently, they have not reproduced. Seen enough?”
“Is there more?”
“Oh yes.”
The FBI was monitoring Mercado and was preparing to arrest him when he made an inexplicable blunder. He picked up the wrong phone and made a call to a number that cannot be traced. The conversation, though, was recorded. Mercado suggested to the man on the other end that they meet at a crab shack in Key Largo for lunch the following day. Moving with a speed that is remarkable and makes me happy to be on the same side as the FBI, Nolton got a warrant and her agents arrived first. They photographed Mercado in the parking lot, filmed him eating crabs with his contact, and photographed both as they got into their cars. The late-model Volvo SUV is registered to Bradley Pfitzner.
On film, he looks to be in decent shape, with a gray goatee and waves of gray hair. Retiring in luxury seems to be suiting him well. He’s almost eighty years old, but moves like a much younger man.