Shark Skin Suite_A Novel Page 6

  “I’d say that’s good,” opined a voice from the backseat. “We came up empty three weeks ago.”

  “I wasn’t asking.” Bannon put the Lexus in gear and pulled around the other side of the mall.

  The theater idea had been a breakthrough. Until a month ago, their surveillance operation had taken forever. But now the parking lot generated a much higher sampling and extra good looks at the vehicles. Then there was the biggest advantage of all from working the movies.

  “Let’s get hopping,” said Bannon. “We’ve only got a half hour until they start turning their cell phones back on.”

  Chapter NINE

  MIAMI

  Coleman unsnapped his windbreaker in the heat. “We didn’t catch any bail jumpers today.”

  “I forgot they’re nocturnal,” said Serge. “Traveling great ranges on hidden trails through numerous habitats. Then they burrow in during the light of day and allow their brains to reboot from the last shift’s chemical fog. But now that it’s night again, our luck should change.”

  “You’re really smart.”

  The sidewalks began to awaken again with the pedestrian subculture. Strangers continued meeting by chance and bonding like unstable, short-life molecules. It was a lifestyle that intuitively knew navy windbreakers had block letters on the back, and the oncoming stream of foot traffic split in half to give Serge and Coleman a wide berth.

  “Hey!” Coleman pointed. “There’s your car. What’s it doing at that place?”

  “I strategically positioned it ahead of time.”

  “In front of the dumpy motel we were going to stay at before we found the house?”

  “Every budget motel in Florida is required to have at least one bail jumper.” Serge unfolded a page from his pocket. “The ones with the most jumpers are those establishments whose guests pull furniture from the rooms and sit outside their doors to increase negative possibilities.”

  Coleman clanged an empty miniature into a garbage can. “So how do you plan to find this motel’s jumper?”

  “He’ll find us.”

  Serge veered into the motel’s parking lot and read the document in his hand. Then he reached in his pocket again and took out a photograph.

  “But that’s a picture of you,” said Coleman.

  “They don’t know that.” Serge produced another photo and handed it to his buddy.

  “It’s a picture of me.” Coleman self-consciously squeezed his cheeks. “Is that how I look?”

  “Just walk slow and keep glancing back and forth from that photo to each person we come across.” Serge squinted at a group of shirtless men milling beside a low-riding pickup. “And keep turning around so they can read the backs of our jackets.”

  “Most of them are staring at us,” said Coleman.

  “And the rest are intentionally looking away,” said Serge. “That means it’s working.”

  A motel door opened near the pickup, and a man in a mechanic’s shirt stepped outside with a quart bottle.

  “Serge, that guy just took off.”

  “We’ve got a runner!”

  The mechanic sprinted along the front of the motel, hurdling people sitting outside their doors. He kept glancing back at the self-appointed bounty hunter gaining on him. The man’s feet slid in dirt as he tried to round the end of the building, and Serge dove for the tackle.

  “All right, you!” Serge yanked him to his feet and poked the stun gun in his rib. “No funny stuff.”

  They marched back to the Cobra, where Serge popped the trunk. “In you go!” The hood slammed.

  “Serge, you just threw a guy in your trunk in broad daylight.”

  “And normally that would attract attention.” Serge opened the driver’s door. “But look around. The overarching reaction is one of personal relief.”

  Coleman climbed in his side of the car. “Okay, you grabbed a guy who ran away from us. But I don’t see the money part.”

  “Here’s his wallet.” Serge pulled out the driver’s license. “Well, well, Mr. Nicholas Sharp, glad to have you on board . . .”

  An hour later, a ’76 Cobra rolled past the county jail featuring vertical window slits too narrow for a human. Surrounding the detention center was a scattering of squat concrete huts. Each had a phone number painted extra large so it could be read from the window slits.

  Serge pulled up in front of Ricky’s Bail Bonds. Dobermans barked and hurled themselves against the neighboring fence of a hubcap emporium. Next to the painted phone number was a large floating face with a broad smile, presumably Ricky, for the impression of a more upbeat business, like off-brand whole life insurance.

  Coleman grabbed his door handle. “How’d you know to come here?”

  “That phone call I made to Mahoney on the way over,” said Serge. “Had him check around for outstanding warrants. Bondsmen now share Internet databases to cut losses.”

  Bells jingled and a prune-headed man looked up from a desk cluttered with courthouse forms, sandwich wrappers and crumbs. A rotating table fan whirred in the corner.

  “Ricky?” asked Serge.

  “No, Benny.” The man stuffed a last bite of chicken salad in his mouth and hit one of the sandwich wrappers with a flyswatter. “Who the hell are you?”

  Serge turned around to show him the back of his jacket.

  “Bounty hunters?”

  “Not really. We just bought the jackets at one of those police supply stores where police never shop, only weirdos who blog in their skivvies about the feds and black helicopters and go to those stores to buy nunchucks and samurai swords that you never see on a cop’s belt, but then again I’ve never been arrested in Malaysia.”

  The swatter knocked over a bobblehead of a Miami Heat player. “Why are you telling me this?” The man stood up and went on a mission with the insect weapon.

  “Because I’m just about to save you twenty grand.”

  Benny lost interest in the fly. “You got three minutes.”

  Serge took a seat and slowly looked around the single-room office. “This is just like Jackie Brown, the movie based on the classic Elmore Leonard book that was set in my hometown. Can I call you Max Cherry?”

  “Two minutes.”

  “Talk on the street is you’d like to have a word with one Nicky Sharp.”

  Benny put the impatience on hold. “You know where Nicky Sharp is? That shitbag skipped out on twenty G’s!”

  “If I’m not mistaken, the standard fee is ten percent of whatever you stood to lose.” Serge crossed his legs and interlaced fingers behind his head. “I can bring him in if you want.”

  “Can’t do it,” said Benny.

  “Sure I can,” said Serge. “It’ll be easy.”

  “No, I mean it’s against the law. You said you weren’t a real bounty hunter.”

  “So?”

  “So, under Florida statute you can’t apprehend someone unless you have a bail-bond license. I could go to jail if I accept a capture from you.”

  “But I know a bunch of guys who are only bounty hunters.”

  Benny nodded. “A lot of guys get their bondsman license with no intention of opening a bail office, just so they can nab fugitives.”

  “That’s legal?”

  “Tell you what: Nicky’s forfeiture put a big hurt on my monthly nut. So if you can provide a pinpoint location and it’s an easy apprehension—and you’re not involved in any way that would get me in trouble—I’ll go that ten percent.”

  Serge stretched as he stood. “Oh, I think I might be able to pinpoint him for you.”

  A minute later, they stood at the Cobra’s trunk.

  “What are you doing?” asked Benny. “I thought you said we were going for a drive.”

  “I actually said we were going to the car.” Serge popped the trunk. “Already in plastic wrist restraint
s. Is that an easy enough apprehension?”

  “Jesus Christ!” Benny slammed the trunk and pointed toward the jail. “Are you crazy? They can see!”

  “Okay.” Serge shrugged and headed for his driver’s door. “If you don’t want him . . .”

  “Didn’t say that.” Benny quickly glanced both ways. “Pull around back.”

  The ’76 Ford Cobra cruised south on U.S. 1, Serge thumbing a wad of cash and swilling his new brand of Dunkin’ Donuts coffee. He noticed something up ahead and handed the currency to Coleman. “Stick that in the glove compartment.”

  “Man, I can’t believe this money was just sitting out there.” He popped the latch. “And barely any work.”

  “But I still feel the process has too much fat on the bone.” The muscle car jumped a curb and screeched to a stop.

  “Another budget motel?” asked Coleman.

  Serge jumped out and spun on one foot in a triple ballerina pirouette, brightly announcing the words on the back of his jacket as it flapped behind him. Then he fell to his right knee, closed one eye and pointed accusingly at each person outside a room.

  A shirtless man took off running.

  So did Serge. “I love this state! . . .”

  SOUTH TAMPA

  Lights remained low inside a two-story Mediterranean Revival home on the west side of the peninsula. The owners had paid four hundred thousand when it was first constructed fifteen years ago, then watched its value rocket to seven-fifty, then fall back to four.

  The dimness was cut by the flickering of a giant plasma TV in the living room. A married couple of nineteen years sat shoeless on the sofa watching an old James Bond movie where Paul McCartney sings the theme song. Two plates of mostly eaten rigatoni sat on the coffee table. The woman got up with an empty glass. “Would you like some more wine?”

  “Sure.” The husband hit pause as she took his glass and headed for the built-in, temperature-controlled wine cabinet with see-through doors.

  The phone rang.

  “I’ll get it.” She changed direction and picked up the receiver. “Hello?”

  “Is this Mrs. Madison?”

  “Yes?”

  “Does your daughter drive a convertible yellow Volkswagen?”

  “Uh . . . who is this?”

  “There’s been an accident.”

  “What! Where! Is she okay?”

  “Not really. She’s unconscious and bleeding. Doesn’t look good.”

  Mr. Madison jumped up from the couch. “What’s going on?”

  “Caylee’s been in an accident,” said his wife. Then back in the phone: “Is an ambulance there?”

  “No.”

  “How long ago did you call?”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I personally don’t have the need,” said the caller. “I’m fine, but my passenger airbag failed to deploy.”

  “What’s that mean?” asked Mrs. Madison.

  “It means your stupid fucking brat blew a stop sign and killed my wife . . .”

  “Your wife’s dead?”

  “ . . . So now I’m standing here staring at your spoiled rich kid, wondering whether to call that ambulance. But currently I’m leaning toward wanting you to feel what I’m going through right now.”

  “Please!” shrieked Mrs. Madison. “You have to call an ambulance.”

  Mr. Madison got the drift and snatched the phone away. “Who is this!”

  “Someone watching your daughter circle the drain.”

  “You son of a bitch!”

  “That’s no way to persuade me to call an ambulance.”

  Mr. Madison clenched his teeth with focus. “What do you want?”

  “Ten thousand dollars wired immediately.”

  “Bullshit!” Mr. Madison whispered sharply to his wife, “Get my cell phone and call Caylee.”

  “Good thinking,” said the caller. “That’s what I’d do.”

  “How do I know it’s really my daughter?”

  “You don’t. It could be any yellow Beetle with a sunflower in that stupid dashboard holder and some other girl wearing a tie-dye Smashing Pumpkins T-shirt . . .”

  Mrs. Madison’s panic in the background: “Bruce, she’s not answering!”

  “Bruce,” said the caller. “I think I hear something. Sounds like a cell phone somewhere down on the floor of the car. Oh, and we’re way, way out in the country down this farm road. I wouldn’t be expecting any motorists to happen upon us anytime soon.”

  “Okay, listen,” said Mr. Madison. “I’ll get you the money.”

  “Thataboy, Bruce.”

  “But you have to call an ambulance in the meantime. I swear I’ll still wire the payment.”

  “No dice.”

  “We don’t have time!”

  “Couldn’t agree more, Bruce. So you probably want to stop wasting it on the phone. From the high school parking sticker on her car, I’m guessing there’s a wire place open at this hour no more than five minutes from most of the homes in that district. Here’s the address and the number you’ll be sending to. I’ll call your cell when it arrives. Got something to write with? . . .”

  Mr. Madison reached the wire office in less than three minutes.

  “Are you okay?” asked the clerk at the transfer desk.

  “Here,” said an ashen Bruce, slapping three credit cards on the counter and a piece of paper. “Try the Visa first and send ten thousand to this number.”

  The clerk stared at him.

  “Hurry! It’s important!”

  “Okay, okay, Jesus . . .” The clerk rushed through the procedure and pressed a final button to complete the electronic marvel. “There. It’s off. Would you like a receipt?”

  Bruce jumped as a cell phone went off in his pocket. He got it out as fast as possible, momentarily fumbling it in the air, then pressed it to his head. “The money just went through! Call the ambulance!”

  “What?” said a young female voice.

  “Caylee?” said her father. “Where are you! What are you doing?”

  “I just got out of the movie and turned my phone back on,” said the teen. “Then I immediately called you like you always tell me to.”

  A total of five such calls shattered the evening in nice homes across south Tampa. One of the dads was a lawyer and figured out the scam in time. Another was able to reach his daughter by phone because she ditched the movie to make out with a boy she wasn’t allowed to see. That left three payments totaling $30,000 that were picked up by an associate in Costa Rica. Not bad for a day’s dirty work.

  Bannon was already reclining on his own south Tampa sofa when he received the last confirmation from Central America. It came in on the same disposable cell phone that he had just used to give a bunch of parents heart attacks. “Thanks, Sanchez . . .” Bannon held a second, just-out-of-the-box disposable phone in his other hand. “Same time next Saturday. Take down this new number . . .”

  Then he sank smugly into his couch and resumed watching the Golf Channel. Someone in knickers extolled the virtues of keeping knees properly bent in a sand bunker as Bannon broke apart a cell phone with his hands.

  Chapter TEN

  DOWNTOWN MIAMI

  A run-down two-story office building stood in the shadow of a drawbridge on the bank of the Miami River. Junkyards and auto salvage and Jamaican trawlers moored to the shore. Unfed guard dogs barked. The drawbridge began to rise, and motorists cursed in six languages. The office building’s population had dwindled to a handful of tenants in the heat of the summer.

  The reason: no air-conditioning.

  The building was circa World War II, and the original interiors had been accidentally preserved due to landlord neglect and depressed economics of the sketchy river district. Spiderweb cracks spread across the
old lath-and-plaster walls.

  As the sun reached its zenith, heat seemed to well up from the ground. One of the upstairs transom windows was open, and a large plantation fan whapped out of kilter. Below the fan sat a high-usage oak desk chronicled by numerous overlapping coffee-mug stains. Next to a half-empty bottle of rye were the current tenant’s propped-up feet, wearing old oxfords with an Adlai Stevenson hole in the sole. The office door had a pebbled-glass window with flecked gold lettering: MAHONEY & ASSOCIATES, PRIVATE INVESTIGATIONS.

  A single fedora rested atop the hat rack in the corner.

  Mahoney leaned back in his chair and flipped through a deck of playing cards with girlie pictures. Attractive, topless women back when their eating habits were healthy. He slapped down the queen of spades, who covered her key parts with Japanese foldout fans.

  A pith helmet Frisbee’d through the air and landed on the hat rack next to the fedora. Mahoney peered up with a steely glint. “Doctor Livingston, I presume?”

  “What, this?” said Serge, looking down at his new Rudyard Kipling ensemble. His right hand held a capture pole with a rope loop. “It’s my new safari suit.”

  Mahoney flipped over the queen of hearts to find a pinup with a feather boa.

  Serge pointed. “Do I see coffee?” He reached for a cold mug atop another brown desk circle, and drained it in one long guzzle. “So I decided to treat myself to new threads. Bet you’re dying to know why I went with the big-game hunter look. I’ll tell you! Every lawyer and future lawyer needs an exotic sport to cement his image, and I’m going on that big python hunt in the Everglades. But I know what you’re thinking: The python hunt is over—and what a travesty! They barely caught anything. Here we are supposedly in the middle of some apocalyptic invasion of Burmese pythons slithering through the suburbs in such staggering numbers that there must be an eight-hundred-pound snake under every kitchen sink with a poodle-shaped lump in its stomach, and state officials offer eye-popping cash prizes to unleash our entire population, which musters at the rallying points like that scene from Jaws where they post the bounty on the shark, and a million people show up at the docks with ridiculous fishing equipment like axes and shotguns. And then our great python hunt is over, and we only come up with sixty-eight of the suckers. We’ve had more than our share of national shame over the years, but sixty-eight is just embarrassing—”