Office of the First Deputy Commissioner
Philadelphia Police Headquarters
Eighth and Race Streets
Sunday, November 16, 3:05 P.M.
“Yes—to answer the question that I’m sure has been on everyone’s mind—I’m damn well aware that this is a highly volatile situation,” the Honorable Jerome H. “Jerry” Carlucci, mayor of Philadelphia, all but growled. “To a large degree, the department has been lucky to keep quiet and compartmentalized the disappearance of the first two caseworkers. But with the McCain girl now gone missing, it would appear that that luck just ran the hell out.” He waved his right hand in the direction of the muted flat-screen television that was tuned to a local newscast. “Especially when the goddamn media gets wind of it.”
Five men, all standing, watched Carlucci pacing along the curved wall of bookshelves in the large third-floor office. Built in a circle design, the decades-old four-story “Roundhouse” was said not to have a straight wall anywhere, including in its elevators.
The men were First Deputy Commissioner Dennis V. Coughlin, whose office it was; Captain Francis Xavier Hollaran, Coughlin’s assistant; Chief Inspector Matthew Lowenstein; Captain Henry Quaire, the head of the Homicide Unit and who reported to Lowenstein; and Quaire’s number two, Lieutenant Jason Washington. All were in plainclothes.
Carlucci was a massive—large-boned and heavyset—sixty-two-year-old with intense brown eyes and dark brown hair graying at the temples. He wore the suit he had put on for church that morning, a pin-striped gray woolen two-piece with a light blue dress shirt with white French cuffs and collar, and a red silk necktie with a matching silk pocket square.
Before becoming mayor, Carlucci had spent twenty-six years in the Philadelphia Police Department, holding, he was quick to announce, every rank but that of policewoman. He spoke bluntly and did not suffer fools—period. When he reached across the proverbial political aisle, it usually was with an iron fist. That certainly had made him more than a few enemies, but he didn’t give a damn. He enjoyed the respect of far many others—ones who appreciated his ability to not only confront seemingly impossible problems but, more times than not, to effectively fix them.
Carlucci stopped at the window near the big wooden desk. He turned to Coughlin, who stood behind the desk, next to the high-back black leather chair that showed years of use. Coughlin, tall and heavyset, with a full head of curly silver hair and eyes that missed nothing, projected a formidable presence.
“Denny, where the hell did you say Ralph was?”
“He’s the keynote speaker at the National Chiefs of Police convention.”
“Which is where?”
“Vegas.”
Carlucci’s eyebrows went up. “Of course he gets to go to tony Las Vegas. I think the nicest place—and I use that loosely—that I went as commissioner was Newark.”
There were a few chuckles.
Police Commissioner Ralph J. Mariana was the department’s top cop—the last position Carlucci had held before his retirement and being elected mayor. Both the commissioner and the first deputy commissioner served at the mayor’s pleasure, although they were appointed to their jobs by the city’s managing director. The seven thousand policemen they commanded—the country’s fourth-largest force—were all civil servants.
Carlucci was neither surprised at Mariana’s absence nor was he angry. It was no secret that Mariana—a natty, stocky, balding Italian with four stars on his white uniform shirt—served as the face of the police department, while it was his three-star, Denny Coughlin, who effectively saw to the day-to-day running of the department.
And it was His Honor the mayor who ultimately called the shots.
The brass in the room had a long history—certainly professional but also to varying degrees personal—with one another. When young Philadelphia police officers showed promise, a “rabbi” quietly mentored them as they rose in the ranks, preparing them to take on greater responsibilities. Jerry Carlucci, for one example, then a captain and head of the Homicide Unit, had been Denny Coughlin’s rabbi.
Carlucci looked from Coughlin to the others.
“The department has run out of luck because Margaret McCain’s father . . . you are aware of who the McCains are?” he said rhetorically, continuing before anyone could answer: “For everyone’s edification, allow me to share. They’re among the Proper Philadelphians—the founders—right up there with the Whartons and the Pennypackers and the Rittenhouses. There’s the story that Michael McCain, one helluva clever lawyer who later became governor, banged heads with Ben Franklin over the way various parts of the Declaration of Independence were worded. And Will McCain, Margaret’s father, is a chip off that old block—the old man also was six-foot-something and had a hot Scottish temper. Would not surprise me if, like the old man, Will carries a gun everywhere. Hell, the McCains once owned the land that’s now the Radnor Hunt Club. So, understanding that background explains why Will does not take no for an answer. He’s like General George Patton—also a Scot—in that he gets what he wants. And what he wants right now are answers about his daughter.”
“I sympathize with her father and his frustration,” Chief Inspector Lowenstein offered. “The McCain girl has gone to great lengths trying to become untraceable—and done so remarkably quickly. His fear is grounded, and that is without the benefit of knowing anything about the other missing caseworkers.”
The ruddy-faced Lowenstein, who was Jewish, had a full head of curly silver hair. He was barrel-chested, large, and stocky.
“The damn fact of the matter,” Carlucci said pointedly, “is that we essentially don’t know a thing about what happened to those two women.”
The room was silent for a long moment. Then Coughlin came to Lowenstein’s defense.
“It’s certainly not for lack of effort,” Coughlin said evenly, the frustration in his tone evident. “Since those first two went missing last week, Matt has had an entire unit in Special Operations quietly running down every lead.”
Carlucci nodded.
“I of course understand that, Denny. As well as the frustration. Yet now we’re looking for three.” He turned to Lowenstein. “It sounds as if you’ve decided that Margaret McCain is a willing participant in her disappearance.”
“I don’t know if the word ‘willing’ is entirely accurate,” Lowenstein said, waving a sheaf of papers. “But it is looking like she could be the one making the decisions. What she’s doing seems almost planned.”
“What’re those papers?” Carlucci said.
“The initial responses to our electronic queries. I’m thinking that because of her job keeping track of the kids at Mary’s House, she became quite knowledgeable about electronic tethers—credit and debit cards, cell phones, E-ZPass, et cetera. She’s being careful. There’s been no signal from her personal cell phone, which could mean she has intentionally turned it off or that it has a dead battery. Her Land Cruiser’s GPS unit either is not working or has been disabled. When we queried the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission, her E-ZPass account came up with no active travel through any tollbooth in the last forty-eight hours.” He paused, then went on: “And there were only two charges on any of her half dozen credit cards. Both to the same PNC MasterCard. One was for forty bucks and change at a Gas & Go near the airport. The other was made a half hour later, at two o’clock this morning, at a Center City pharmacy for more than three hundred dollars.”
“Anything on their surveillance cameras?”
“We got a look at images at the Gas & Go, but they were too dark and grainy to tell if she was alone or not when she pumped gas. The pharmacy’s system was inoperable.”
“Okay, so it sounds like she topped off her gas tank, suggesting she’s hit the road—and is avoiding tolled ones. And the other’s probably for prescriptions? They aren’t cheap.”
Lowenstein shrugged. “Could be. If I were leaving town for a while, I’d want my meds. We should know shortly—we are waiting for a response from the store as to what its computer system says the itemized receipt shows she bought. But that’s the end of the trail. After that, there is nothing. It’s like she pulled the plug on everything.”
“What about that stuff they’re all doing on the Internet?” Carlucci said.
“Social media activity?”
“Yeah. That produced a number of leads with the other two caseworkers. Is she in touch with anyone through that?”
“It produced leads,” Coughlin put in, “but none went anywhere. The caseworkers themselves never posted anything on the Internet after they went missing.”
“And it’s worse with the McCain girl,” Lowenstein added. “We asked everyone—friends, family, neighbors, coworkers—and every single person said Margaret never really embraced social media. She tried one or two, then gave up on them. Her mother said she didn’t think that they were worth the time, that they took away from her privacy.”
Carlucci looked deep in thought.
“Okay. Back up,” he then said. “When was the last time she was seen?”
“As far as we know at this point,” Jason Washington picked up, as he pulled a notepad from his jacket, “the absolute last contact that any family or friends had with her was last night when she left dinner.” He paused and looked at his notes. “That was at Zama Sushi near Rittenhouse Square about ten-fifteen. She was with her cousin, twenty-year-old Emma Scholefield, who is a junior studying dance at University of the Arts.”
“And did this cousin have anything to offer?” Carlucci said.
Washington shook his head. “Not much more than Mrs. McCain had already told us she’d told her. The cousin stated that Margaret appeared absolutely normal, upbeat, her usual self. They talked mostly about her sailing trip in the British Virgin Islands and their plans for the upcoming Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays. When they left the restaurant, the cousin said that, as she started walking up the block toward her apartment, she saw Margaret get in her Toyota SUV and drive off toward Walnut Street. Margaret had told her she was looking forward to a good night’s sleep so she could hit the gym first thing in the morning.”
“Which never happened.”
“Right. Gym records show she hasn’t been there in three days.”
“Okay. Then what?”
“Mrs. McCain said that, at exactly ten thirty-one, she called Margaret’s personal cell phone, got no answer, and left her daughter a voice-mail message. At that time, according to telephone records, Margaret’s work cell phone had been connected for four minutes to the cell phone number that we believe to be the Gonzalez girl’s. It is a pay-as-you-go phone, and we do not know who purchased it.”
“Gonzalez is the dead girl?”
“Yes, sir.”
Carlucci considered all that, then said, “And the McCain woman’s fire alarm automatically called in at what time?”
“Precisely at ten forty-two. That was eight minutes after the call between the work cell phone and the go-phone ended. At ten fifty-one, nine minutes after the firehouse got the call, there was one last call from what we believe was the Gonzalez go-phone to Margaret’s work cell. There have been no other calls on Margaret’s personal cell phone—as noted, it’s off for whatever reason—and none dialed on the work cell phone. The Crime Scene Unit guys found the latter, broken, in a puddle in the alley. It looked as if it had been hit hard, maybe dropped.”
“And that go-phone?”
“Phone company records list at least two dozen different numbers the Gonzalez go-phone dialed or texted since last night, including Margaret’s work cell phone three times in a row today just after twelve noon. We traced its signal to West Philly, to the Westpark high-rise at Forty-fifth and Market. That’s of course a Housing Authority property, one in fair shape and full. So, no way for us to pinpoint in which apartment the phone could be. Then Anthony Harris had a great idea. He drove over there and began calling the phone over and over. Some miscreant with attitude finally answered, and when Harris told said miscreant that he had the money he owed him and was waiting with it outside the gate, the miscreant hung up. Then the phone went dead, the signal turned off.”
Carlucci grunted. “Damn. But that was worth the attempt. Has to be pretty good odds that someone owes that punk money. And, even if not, he would have taken the cash off Harris’s hands—even sending some surrogate to get it, in case he smelled it was a setup. Not grabbing the easy money must mean he’s really running scared, and that doesn’t suggest anything good.”
“We’ve got an unmarked sitting on the Westpark high-rise, in case the phone goes live again and he hits the street,” Lowenstein said. “We also have one keeping an eye on her business, Mary’s House, and one at the residence.”
“On the chance that the doer will return to the scene?” Carlucci asked, but it was more of a statement.
“It’s a long shot but we’ve all seen it happen before.”
Mayor Carlucci looked at Jason Washington.
“What else did they find at the scene?” Carlucci said.
“To begin with, the front door was wide open when the firefighters arrived,” Washington said. “The door showed evidence of forced entry—it’d been kicked in. But whoever did it, if they left any other fingerprints, footprints, whatever, we’ll never know. The fire department did their job quite thoroughly—drowning the blaze and trampling the crime scene. They got the fire out, and who the hell knows how much evidence. Neighbors we questioned immediately began calling it a home invasion, and repeating that to the media. We did not go out of our way to disabuse anyone of that.”
“But?” Carlucci interrupted.
“But here’s the problem: Who tries to cover a home invasion with Molotov cocktails? There was one broken on the kitchen’s marble counter, the other intact in the middle of the floor. Most robberies are in-and-out jobs. They don’t bother destroying the scene.” Washington pulled a folded sheet of paper from his coat and went on: “The medical examiner wrote that the Gonzalez girl did not die in the fire. The autopsy this morning found that her lungs had no fire smoke damage—and that there were two mushroomed .22s inside her cranium.” He mimed a pistol with his thumb and index finger and pointed behind his right earlobe. “Entrance wounds here. Putting a .22 behind the ear is not exactly the hallmark of a home invasion, either.”
Glances were exchanged as they nodded agreement. They knew that a .22 caliber round, due to its low mass and velocity, was not powerful enough to penetrate the bone of a skull. But it could enter through soft tissue at the ear—then bounce around, effectively scrambling the brain and causing death more or less instantly.
“It’s more the mark of a professional hit,” Denny Coughlin said.
Carlucci grunted and nodded.
“Questions then become,” Washington went on, “Why the girl? Or were they targeting Margaret and the girl got in the way? And of course if they were targeting Margaret, why did she just disappear?”
“Who is this girl?” Carlucci said. “Gonzalez, did you say?”
“That’s right,” Washington said. “Krystal Angel Gonzalez, age nineteen. She had an EBT card in the pocket of her blue jeans.”
He paused, and Carlucci then nodded, affirming that he knew it was an Electronic Benefits Transfer card, which looked and worked like a plastic debit card.
“Food stamps,” Carlucci said.
“Now called SNAP,” Washington went on, “for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. We ran the card, got off it her name and Social Security number, and that pulled up a hit with CPS. She’d been in and out of foster homes since age six. Before turning eighteen, her Last Known Address was in South Philly, at Mary’s House. She also had twenty-two bucks cash in her jeans—all singles, one rolled up and containing cocaine residue—and two orange fifty-dollar poker chips from Lucky Stars.”
Washington motioned with the sheet from the medical examiner.
“The autopsy also found evidence that she was healing from rough sexual activity,” he said. “Most likely that she’d been sexually assaulted, especially considering the welts on the back of her legs that the medical examiner believes were from a wire coat hanger.”
Carlucci made a sour face as he shook his head.
“Such a damn shame,” he said. “But the sad fact is that if I had a dime for every time some trick in Philly got whipped with a pimp stick, I could be living the high life like our boy Matty.” He paused. “Which reminds me, Denny, where the hell is he?”
“To use your phrase,” Coughlin said, “he’s living the high life. They’re in the Florida Keys. Jason was just in touch with him.”
“They?”
Washington nodded, and explained, “Mrs. McCain gave us a list of Margaret’s friends. Amanda Law was on it. She said Amanda and Margaret had spoken since she returned from her vacation. Amanda is with Matthew, so I called him and requested that he discreetly inquire if Amanda had heard from her.”
“Charley’s daughter, the doctor? Any truth to the rumor I heard that they’re getting married?”
Washington nodded. “Indeed there is. They are.”
For the first time, Carlucci’s face brightened. “Good. Her old man, like Matty’s, was as solid a cop as they come. Maybe since she understands cops she can keep ole Wyatt Earp out of the headlines.”
“Jerry,” Coughlin put in, “I wouldn’t mind having him on the case. He runs easily in those social circles—”
“No,” Carlucci snapped, making eye contact. Then he sighed. “No, Denny, not right now. Maybe later—”
His cell phone began ringing. He made a look of annoyance, then glanced at its screen, muttered, “Damn, McCain,” then put the phone to his head and answered in an authoritative, even tone, “Carlucci.”
All eyes were on him as he said: “Who just heard from Maggie?”
Off Big Pine Key, Florida
Sunday, November 16, 4:02 P.M.
Matt Payne double-checked the lightly laminated NOAA navigation chart, then picked up the binoculars, scanned ahead of the Viking, and after a moment located what he was looking for—the outer markers of the channel that led to Big Pine Key, Little Torch Key, and Little Palm Island.
If he had wanted, he could just as easily have looked at the screen of the GPS unit, which would have pinpointed the exact location of the markers and the entire channel, and the boat’s exact position relative to them, then dialed in the autopilot. But Matt, as much as he appreciated technology, liked to practice his map and compass, dead reckoning, and other navigation skills—believing that it wasn’t a case of if technology was going to fail but when it would crap out on him.
As wise ol’ Murphy made law, “If anything can go wrong, it will—and at the worst possible damn time.”
Only a fool tempts fate at sea. . . .
The dark blue of the deeper water now gave way to a glistening aqua green. The depth sounder, confirming what he read on the chart, showed they were running in sixty feet of water. Closer to shore, and the clear, shallower water there, the white of the bottom could easily be seen.
When he put the optics on the console, he saw his cell phone screen light up and a text message box appear:
Michael J. O’Hara, a Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter, and Matt had developed an interesting—if unusual—close friendship over the years. The wiry thirty-seven-year-old, of Irish descent and with a head of unruly red hair, was unorthodox but uncompromisingly fair—and thus had earned the respect of the cops who walked the beat on up to the commissioner himself.
It was O’Hara who, when Payne had been grazed in the forehead by a ricochet bullet in his first shoot-out, photographed the bloodied rookie cop standing with his .45 over the dead shooter, and later wrote the headline: “Officer M. M. Payne, 23, The Wyatt Earp of the Main Line.”
I’m not working any cases, Matt thought as he texted back: “OK. ASAP.”
What could I know that he wants for a story?
Matt turned to Amanda, who was reclined on a long cushion beside him, reading a book titled Cruising Guide to the Bahamas.
“Almost there,” he said.
“Great!”
She put down the book and went to stand beside him.
He pointed to a long narrow outer island.
“That’s Big Munson. It’s about a hundred acres of little more than mangroves and mosquitoes.”
“The one where you and Chad reenacted Lord of the Flies?”
He looked at her. She was grinning mischievously.
“Maybe Chad. He’s never shied away from power grabs. For me it was more like Treasure Island mixed with Crusoe, thank you very much. Anyway, Little Munson, which is all beach and palm trees and dripping with creature comforts, is next to it.”
As he made a slight course correction to the north, putting the Viking on a compass heading of 310 degrees, another pack of the go-fasts appeared ahead. It was headed for the same channel, and after the first boat began slowing to idle speed for the approach, the others a moment later dropped their speed almost at the same time. Matt counted nine boats.
He then eased back on the Viking’s throttles. As the big boat slowed, her hull settling lower in the water, he thought he heard the faint sound of a police siren.
Immediately, he muted the music, looked back over his shoulder, and exclaimed, “What the hell?”
There was in fact a siren. And it clearly was coming from a Florida Marine Patrol boat, its emergency light bar flashing over the center console’s aluminum tube T-top roof.
About two hundred yards ahead of the police boat was a twin-engine, thirty-foot-long center console fishing boat. Matt grabbed the binoculars. He could make out a lone, shirtless, dark-skinned man aboard, his dreadlocks flying almost straight back as he stood with a death grip on the steering wheel.
“What’s that boat doing?” Amanda said.
“Not to sound like a smart-ass, but I’d say he’s running. He’s got to have that thing at wide-open throttle. There’s little more than the props in the water. But why? You can’t outrun the cops here.”
“Looks like he’s headed for those Poker Run boats.”
The go-fasts now were beginning to form a single-file line as they approached the channel’s first outer marker.
In no time, the fleeing boat caught up with the back of the pack of go-fasts, the police boat in hot pursuit. It began weaving in and out of the line, coming dangerously close to colliding with the first two that it passed. The captains of some of the other boats, realizing what was happening, quickly maneuvered to get out of the way. A few lay on their horns, shouted, and, fists pumping, made obscene gestures as the boat flew past.
The police boat broke off its high-speed chase but still followed.
The burly man with the dreadlocks, not slowing, then entered the channel.
Matt saw that a thirty-three-foot Coast Guard boat with triple outboards and its emergency lights flashing had appeared farther up the channel near the end of a small island. It turned sideways, effectively shutting down the channel.
“See? Nowhere to run,” Matt said, his tone incredulous. “He’s headed right into the hands of the Coast Guard.”
The boat then made a hard turn to the right, leaving the channel.
“I’ll be damned! He’s trying to cut across the shoal at Big Munson!”
The boat’s propellers began churning up sea grass and sand as it entered the shallow, maybe two-feet-deep, water. Another center console police boat—this one with a large golden badge and the words MONROE COUNTY SHERIFF on its white hull—then appeared ahead of it, at the far end of the thickly treed key.
The speeding boat started to make a zigzag course, the man with the dreadlocks clearly trying to come up with some evasive course.
Then he suddenly made a hard 90-degree turn to the left.
“He’s going to run ashore!” Amanda said.
The boat was headed directly for the sandy white beach and thick vegetation that edged Big Munson.
Just as the boat got close to the beach, the driver throttled down.
The boat appeared to settle softly in the shallow water—then shot up onto the sandy shoreline and suddenly pitched up. It went airborne briefly before landing in a more or less cushion of mangrove trees, stopping with the bow pointed skyward. The impact had thrown the man with the dreadlocks to the deck.
The boat’s twin outboard engines, their exhausts no longer submerged and muffled, made a deep pained roar. After a long moment, the stunned man was able to get up and, one at a time, shut them down.
Matt could now see that the area forward of the center console had some sort of cover. And people had started scurrying out from under it.
Then, from the tree line twenty yards away, one, then two, then a half dozen more boys in T-shirts and dark green shorts suddenly ran out onto the beach, then turned and went as fast as they could toward the boat. Slung on the shoulder of the last one in line was a medium-sized white duffel bag with a red cross on it.
“Well, how about that,” Matt said. “Here come the real first responders—Scouts in action.”
The burly man with the dreadlocks hopped down onto the beach. The others began to follow quickly, one by one sliding over the side of the boat and landing on the sand.
A couple of them began limping. The man with the dreadlocks helped them to a spot on the beach, then directed the others to sit with them. They more or less made a line paralleling the shoreline.
“Oh my God!” Amanda said, shocked. “They’re okay after that? It’s amazing they weren’t killed! I should see if they need a doctor.”
“There’s no way to get you there—even if I thought they’d let you.”
The Boy Scouts arrived at the scene and immediately began checking the injured and performing first aid.
The police and Coast Guard vessels came in as close to the island as possible without running aground.
“Why aren’t the cops rushing ashore?” Amanda said.
“Why should they? Those people aren’t going anywhere. They’re on an island surrounded by what looks like ten levels of law enforcement.”
—
Five minutes later, Matt lined up the Viking to follow the Poker Run pack through the outer markers of the channel.
He heard more sirens, these coming from the Overseas Highway. All the action on the water had caused the heavy weekend traffic to slow to a crawl. Weaving through it were two Mobile Intensive Care Unit ambulances, their sirens screaming. They came to a stop beside the water’s edge at the foot of the bridge.
“And here come the paramedics.”
From the corner of his eye, Matt noticed something moving quickly. He looked to his left and saw a big blue-hulled Fountain speedboat overtaking the Viking. It roared around them, then cut its speed and smoothly dropped in behind the last boat in the pack.
Lucky for him it really isn’t a race, Matt thought. He’d have come in dead ass last.
But what a beautiful boat. I wonder if they’re going to screw it up with some stupid shrink-wrap design like those other go-fasts.
Clearly it doesn’t need them to attract hot women. Look at all of them!
Amanda did not notice. She was looking through the binoculars and watching the police. They now were wading ashore and approaching the accident scene.
“Well, that’s curious,” she said.
“What?”
“The people who were on the boat are smiling at the cops like they’re long-lost friends.”
Little Palm Island, Florida
Sunday, November 16, 7:15 P.M.
The resort’s intimate dining room featured warm wooden floors, a high-pitched ceiling, and a wall of windows that offered a picturesque view of the pristine white beach—lined with tall, leaning palm trees—and beyond it the vast Atlantic Ocean. The room, which was maybe half full, held only twenty-five round tables, each with seating for four. They were nicely separated so that the guests—and their conversations—would not be on top of one another.
Amanda Law, wearing a simple but elegant linen dress and sandals and with her thick hair now unbraided, sat between Chad Nesbitt and Matt Payne, who looked almost like twins—Chad was a little shorter and stockier—both dressed in khaki slacks, cotton knit shirts, navy blazers, and deck shoes.
Matt had his stainless steel Colt .45 Officer’s Model tucked inside his waistband at his right hip.
“Even if you had broken bones, you’d be smiling, too,” Chad said, stirring his second Myers’s dark Jamaican rum and tonic cocktail. “Goodbye, Communism. Hello, Land of the Free and Home of the Brave.”
“And that happens all the time down here?” Amanda said as she delicately squeezed a slice of lime into her glass of club soda.
Chad shook his head. “There are far more quiet landings than a wild running aground like today. I heard someone today say it’s up to eight thousand people so far this year—and that’s just here, not counting coming up through Mexico. The Cubans are willing to do anything for freedom. You’ve heard of the wet-foot, dry-foot policy?”
Matt shook his head.
“What—” he began, then stopped as he saw the waiter approaching with a full round tray.
“If you’ll please pardon the interruption,” the waiter said, placing an enormous bowl before Amanda. “For the lady, our coconut lobster bisque to start.”
“That looks wonderful,” Amanda said. “Thank you.”
He put a plate in front of Chad and said, “The seafood seviche with crisp plantain chips.”
And then he put two plates in front of Matt, who was taking a sip of eighteen-year-old Macallan single malt whisky.
“Crab fritters, sir,” the waiter said. “And this, of course, is the tuna and oyster sashimi you called about earlier.”
Matt looked at the waiter and was about to ask a question when he saw another waiter coming toward them with an enormous round plate piled high with finely crushed ice, on top of which were two dozen oysters on the half shell. The waiter put it on the table at the empty place setting.
“Enjoy,” the second waiter said, then both left.
“Can anyone tell me,” Matt said, looking between Amanda and Chad, “whose brilliant idea it was to instruct servers to say, ‘Enjoy!’ Is that an order? The entire purpose of why we came is to enjoy the meal. It’s not like we need to be told to.”
“Want to explain why you’re about to enjoy two dozen raw oysters?” Amanda said. “And oyster sashimi?”
“I thought you knew, my love, that these mollusks have a special, shall we say, romantic effect,” Matt said, smiling as he held up one of the half shells with an oyster. “Please enjoy one . . . and by one I mean help yourself to a dozen, of course.”
“Really, Matt?” Chad said, shaking his head and grinning. “You’re absolutely shameless.”
“I think, Romeo, that you’ve already caused enough trouble being overly romantic,” Amanda said playfully, picking up her soup spoon. “And thanks to the condition you put me in, I have to be careful about not eating high-mercury fish. I really wanted some tuna.”
“Well, suit yourself,” Matt said, then put the half shell to his lips and slurped the oyster out. Hand on his chest as he chewed, he looked at Amanda with an exaggerated face of extreme gastronomical satisfaction. Then he swallowed, exchanged the empty shell for a full one, and looked at Chad. “What were you saying about that dry-wet policy?”
“Wet-foot, dry-foot,” Chad corrected, as he piled seviche on a plantain chip. “It’s U.S. immigration policy, unique to Cubans trying to come to America. If a Cuban national can step on U.S. soil, he or she can stay, and a year and a day later becomes nationalized. If, however, they get intercepted at sea—anywhere on the water, even if it’s a foot deep, that’s the ‘wet foot’—they get shipped back to the Castro Brothers’ Happy Havana. Which they just risked their lives to flee—maybe for the third or fourth time—because the Castros don’t exactly welcome them home with a brass band.”
Chad ate his seviche, and began piling more on another chip.
“And the cops try keeping them from reaching land?” Amanda said.
“As you saw, that can get almost comical, a real cat-and-mouse catch-me-if-you-can game. But they have to. Otherwise, if word got to the Cuban masses that everyone could just step ashore and begin enjoying the bounty of America, Florida would be flooded. I mean, c’mon, they’re not exactly rushing to Haiti, which is half the distance. It’d be worse than during the Mariel Boatlift. Remember that, Matt?”
“Yeah,” Matt said, after washing down another oyster, “when Castro let something like a hundred thousand leave in 1980. And it happened again in ’94. The luckier ones landed packed in boats barely able to float, carrying little more than their Eleguá.”
“‘Eleguá’?” Amanda parroted.
“The West African–Caribbean Santería god that they believe controls their paths, their destiny. Eleguá is represented by a clay disc that’s the face of a child. Castro cleverly cleared out his jails and loony bins, forcing them onto the boats. The more desperate lucky ones used rafts smaller, and less seaworthy, than a bathtub. Little more than tire tubes and blocks of Styrofoam lashed together. God only knows how many did not survive the trip.”
Amanda considered that for a moment and, sadly shaking her head, said, “And you acquired this vast knowledge how?”
“Next door, around the campfire when we were kids camping on Big Munson. And, later, on family trips to the Caribbean.”
“So now,” Chad went on, “out of Miami’s Little Havana, the exiles there have created a cottage industry of sorts. They charge Cuban-Americans upwards of ten grand to have a relative snuck out of Cuba and snuck ashore here.”
Matt nodded thoughtfully. “Which explains why that guy was determined to get those refugees onto land. A dozen people at ten grand each comes to a hundred and twenty thousand reasons.”
“What happens to the guy running the boat?” Amanda said.
“Likely nothing,” Chad said. “Often he’s a Cuban, too. They don’t earn even a dollar a day—and that’s in pesos, which are worthless anywhere but Cuba. So, he’s broke. But if he produces a Cuban national identity card, he’s home free—literally. Even if he gets locked up, he probably won’t serve any real time, and when he’s released, wouldn’t surprise me that someone slips him a nice cash payment. And maybe puts him and his Eleguá in another boat for another run.”
“Frightening,” Amanda said.
“Yeah,” Chad said, then drained his drink. “But I’ll tell you what’s really becoming frightening.”
“What?” Matt said.
“Philly. Just when you think it’s bad enough, things get worse.”
Matt grunted. “No argument there.”
“I mean it’s something new every day. Did you hear what happened to Maggie McCain’s place? Daffy drove by it this afternoon. I just heard about it shortly before that.”
Daphne Elizabeth Browne Nesbitt was Chad’s wife and the mother of Matt’s toddler goddaughter. The Nesbitts lived minutes away from Maggie in Society Hill, at Number 9 Stockton Place, one of three enormous (four thousand square feet) units built behind the facades of a dozen pre-Revolutionary brownstone buildings.
What the hell is up with this? Matt thought.
Everyone knows but me? Damn it!
“Maggie?” Amanda immediately said. “Is she okay? What happened?”
“A home invasion,” Chad explained. “At least that’s what we think it started as, but then her place caught on fire. Luckily the fire station is close by. I didn’t want to bring it up at dinner, but . . .”
“Her house was invaded and burned? When?” Amanda said, then muttered, “How come I didn’t hear?”
“Happened late last night. She wasn’t home, as far as anyone knows. But word from the neighbors is that a Crime Scene van was there long after the fire truck guys left.” He looked at Matt. “I’m surprised you don’t know anything about this.”
No shit. Me, too, Matt thought.
But now I know why Jason called. They must be treating this as a homicide.
How exactly does Maggie fit in? Clearly she is missing. . . .
“I don’t know about a lot of Killadelphia cases that are working,” Matt said. “Don’t forget that our City of Brotherly Love averages a murder a day.”
He felt Amanda looking at him and met her eyes. He could see sadness in them—and that her mind was in high gear.
Amanda then pulled out her cell phone and placed a call. A minute later, wordlessly, she hung up.
“Maggie didn’t answer,” Amanda said matter-of-factly, looking at her phone as she thumbed the screen. “I got one of those canned mechanical messages saying that her voice-mail box is full. And then it hung up on me.”
She slid the phone back in her purse.
“I just texted her to call me. I wonder if Sarah has heard from her . . .” she said, pulling her phone back out to send another text.
And that just answered part of the Black Buddha’s question.
Why the hell is Jason keeping this so secretive?
Well, she gave me my opening . . .
“When did you last hear from her, Amanda?” Matt said.
“Maybe a week ago, after Maggie got back from her sailing vacation in BVI. I forget which day.”
“She was okay?”
Amanda shrugged. “She seemed to be. Why wouldn’t she be? I didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary. But then I was pretty caught up in my own world, making plans to come here and all.”
“Daphne,” Chad offered, “didn’t even know she was back from the islands.”
“I wrote Maggie a letter of recommendation for when she applied to UC-Berkeley,” Amanda said suddenly, wistfully.
“You mean Bezerkly?” Matt said derisively. “Home of Peace, Love, and Anarchists.”
Amanda shook her head.
“There are also normal people there, Matt. She was simply looking for a different environment. And boy did she find it. She’d followed a girl friend out for undergrad, then realized she really wasn’t a West Coast type. So she then decided, after two years, that it wasn’t for her. She said she came home to make a difference in Philly. And then I wrote another recommendation for when she went for her master’s degree at UP.”
“No good deed goes unpunished,” Matt said. “She could have gone and made a difference anywhere.”
“Yes, she could have. Someone else we know has similar resources and options.”
Matt met her stare—she doesn’t have to say what those glistening eyes are screaming, “Stop playing cop . . .”—and after a moment raised his eyebrows.
“Touché,” he said.
She made a thin smile and nodded, then cocked her head and said, “What did you mean by that, Matt? ‘No good deed . . .’? You don’t know something bad has happened to her.”
Well, I cannot tell her that Jason asked.
But after she gets over the initial shock of this, she’s going to put two and two together. . . .
He shrugged. “You’re right. I don’t know. Just a gut feeling.”
Amanda nodded thoughtfully, then put her napkin beside her plate and said, “Excuse me. I’m going to get some air.”
Matt immediately got to his feet and put his hand on her chair, sliding it back as she rose. Chad stood, too, absently wiping his hands on his napkin.
I shouldn’t have said that, Matt thought, looking at her sad face.
And so much for the oysters—nice job, Romeo.
If I knew it wouldn’t upset her more, I’d tell Jason I’d help.
Damn it . . .
As they watched Amanda walk toward the entrance to the restaurant, three men—one fit and tanned who looked to be in his thirties and two middle-aged and sunburned—entered. Young blonde women, in tight dresses and high heels, were on their arms.
Amanda, seemingly oblivious to the group, squeezed past and went out the door.
The blonde with the younger man, who evidently was leading the group, giggled and grinned as she leaned into him. She was trim and tall and tanned, with a beautiful face featuring bright emerald eyes that seemed to miss nothing.
The younger man scanned the restaurant. He and Chad made eye contact, and Chad nodded once. Then he turned to the group and gestured for them to go into the bar.
Matt studied the guy as they left, and did not like what he saw.
“Who was that?” Matt said as he and Chad settled back in their chairs.
“Nick Antonov’s guy. He’s local, out of South Beach.”
“Looks like an ABC.”
“SoBe?”
“Okay, a SoBe ABC. South Beach American-born Cuban.”
Chad nodded. “Right. Forgot that one. Well, Little Havana is right next door to South Beach. Anyway, I met him yesterday at Key West International. The FBO put Nick’s small jet next to my Lear. Something Perez, I think.”
“‘Small jet’?”
“It’s a Citation. His bigger one is a Gulfstream, a G-four, I think.”
“You mean Tikhonov’s G-four,” Matt said.
Yuri Tikhonov, forty-eight, had significant investments in Philadelphia, as well as other cities in the U.S., in Europe, and in his homeland of Russia. He was worth billions, having made his first thousand million dollars shortly after the age of thirty-five. Many of the skills that made him a highly successful businessman, it was said, he had honed in the Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki, Russia’s agency for external spying and intelligence gathering.
Others suggested that it had more to do with his close relationship with high-ranking politicians in the Kremlin—men he had served under in the SVR, once known as the KGB.
“Okay, I take your point,” Chad said. “The planes are the casino’s. And since Nick works for the casino, and it’s Tikhonov who owns a huge chunk of the casino, they’re his. I just never see him on them.”
Matt speared two oysters from their shells as he said, “I don’t have to guess why those Florida hotties are hanging with older guys.”
“That’s the curious thing. They’re not from Florida. The girls are Russian. They work at the casino. Casinos plural—I heard that they rotate the girls. That one on Nick’s arm, Star, she’s a twenty-one-year-old Ukraine.”
“What about those older guys?”
“I dunno. Maybe Nick’s clients from Philly or Jersey?”
Matt was quiet for a long moment, clearly lost in thought. Then he made a face and drained his single malt. Putting down the glass, he looked at Chad.
“How tight are you with Antonov and his crowd?” Matt suddenly said, somewhat sharply.
“What do you mean?” Chad shot back, his tone indignant. “I don’t fuck around with those girls—or any girls—if that’s what you’re implying. The mother of your goddaughter would have my nuts served to me on the tip of the dull rusty knife she used for the castration.”
“And the girls on your boat?”
“Screw you, Matt! They’re hired by the PR firm. They’re legit.”
“No shit?” Matt said, pushing his chair back to stand. “How can you be sure?”
“I’m sure, damn it,” Chad said, working to keep his voice low. “Why are you even suggesting otherwise? What’s gotten into you?”
“Well, it wouldn’t be the first time you got conned into some shady deal.”
Chad tossed his fork and knife onto his plate and crossed his arms.
“You’re not going to let that thing with Skipper go, are you?”
Matt shrugged. “‘That thing’? I’ve told you that I don’t begin to blame you at all for his death—the dipshit was going to get himself killed one way or another all on his own. I’ve been told that I shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, but it’s one thing that he ruined his life—and it’s something entirely worse that he almost got Becca killed. As I’ve said, my point is that you didn’t walk away from Skipper when you could have.”
Matt and Chad had grown up with J. Warren “Skipper” Olde, whose history of booze and drug abuse had begun when they all attended Episcopal Academy prep school. His father made a fortune building McMansion subdivisions across the country. While the twenty-seven-year-old Skipper had a few legitimate—if questionably successful—real estate projects in development in Philadelphia, it turned out that he supplemented his cash flow by being actively involved in the manufacture and sale of methamphetamine.
Skipper, on September ninth, had been in a seedy motel room at the Philly Inn, one of the properties owned by the company that Chad Nesbitt had invested in. It was on Frankford Avenue, which had come to be known as the Boulevard of Broken Dreams. They had planned, when the timing—and tax break—was right, to demolish and replace the two-story motel with upscale condominiums. At about two o’clock that September morning, with Becca Benjamin, Skipper’s twenty-five-year-old girlfriend, waiting right outside the room in her Mercedes SUV, the meth lab in the room exploded.
The motel became consumed by the chemical-fueled inferno. Two illegal aliens who had been cooking the methamphetamine were killed. Skipper was critically burned. Becca suffered burns and a severe head injury.
Ambulances rushed Skipper and Becca to the advanced Burn Center at Temple University Hospital. There, Matt met the head of the burn unit, Amanda Law, MD, FACS, FCCM.
The bodily injuries had been bad enough. But the next day one Jesús Jiménez, sent to permanently settle an ongoing disagreement over drug money, snuck into the Intensive Care Unit and pumped thirteen rounds of 9mm into Skipper.
Amanda had confided to Matt that it was her brutally cold professional assessment that Jiménez had done Skipper a favor. There was no question that if he was not going to die from his burns, he would’ve suffered a long and painful recovery from them and never been the same again.
Meantime, Becca, recovering from her injuries, battled with Survivor Guilt, and Amanda had arranged for her to be treated by Dr. Amelia Payne, who had been her suitemate at the University of Pennsylvania. The surname was no coincidence—Amy was Matt’s sister, and had long held the same opinion as Amanda vis-à-vis the Wyatt Earp of the Main Line hanging up his gun belt.
—
Chad looked out the dining room windows at the Atlantic, then turned back to Matt and said, “I thought I was doing the right thing investing in Skipper’s project. And when it all blew up, so to speak, especially after learning about the damn meth, I admitted I’d made a mistake—a huge mistake, okay?—one that I’ve been lucky has not caused any fallout with Nesfoods. As you just said, ‘No good deed goes unpunished.’” He paused, then added, “So, that said, I am not making any damn mistake with Antonov and whatever he and his South Beach Cuban are up to.”
Matt met Chad’s eyes for a long moment, nodded, then exhaled audibly.
“Okay. Sorry,” Matt said, not sounding completely apologetic. “It’s just that something about that SoBe Cuban rubbed the cop in me really wrong. It triggered my Don’t Believe Anyone mode. That, and I’m suddenly ten kinds of really pissed off. I brought Amanda down here to have a pleasant time away from Philly—and we’re not here forty-eight hours and the shit has followed us. Now she’s upset . . .”
Chad nodded. “I understand, man. No apology.”
“Thanks,” Matt said, and looked over his shoulder. “If Amanda returns, tell her I’ll be right back.”
“Where are you going?”
“To hit the head. Mother nature calls.”
And to make a call so maybe we can get this shit behind us and get back to having a good time.
Right. Dream on, Matty.
Unless we find out that Maggie has suddenly popped up safe somewhere, her missing is going to keep weighing on Amanda. . . .
—
Matt crossed the dining room and entered the gentlemen’s facility that was between the dining room and the bar. When he exited, he turned in the direction of the bar. He expected to see the men with the young women as he entered, was surprised they weren’t there, then went through the bar and outside. He followed the path lined with flickering tiki torches down toward the immaculately groomed beach, pulling out his cell phone as he went.
When he looked at the screen, he saw that Mickey O’Hara had texted three times and, in the last hour, called twice and left voice-mail messages.
What the hell is up with him?
Well, first things first . . .
He speed-dialed Jason Washington.
“Good evening, Matthew,” Jason answered on the first ring.
“Sorry to have taken so long. It’s been a very interesting day since you called.”
“What do you have for me?”
“I’ll tell you about the other later. To answer your question about Maggie McCain, Amanda said she has not spoken with her in about a week. She doesn’t recall exactly which day. But it’s been since Maggie came back from a trip to the Caribbean.”
“We’re aware of the trip. Did she say if she understood it to be business or pleasure?”
“We”? Matt thought. That certainly sounds official.
“‘Vacation’ was the word she used. Amanda has spent the last half hour trying to call and text her, since learning about her house catching fire—”
“How did she hear that?” Washington interrupted.
“Not from me, obviously,” Matt said. “Chad Nesbitt told us just now at dinner. Said it started as a home invasion. Any truth to that?”
“Your friend whose family owns Nesfoods?” Jason asked, but it was more of a statement and effectively evaded Matt’s question.
“Yeah. He’s down here on business. Actually, it seems like half of Philly is down here.”
“Did he say how he knew? Did he have any other information about her?”
“No, not really anything else. Only that his wife had driven past and seen the damage and crime-scene tape—and said that she hadn’t known Maggie was back from her trip.”
There was a moment’s silence before Washington said, “Okay, got it. Thank you.”
“What the hell is going on, Jason?”
“Let me know if Amanda hears from her. I will get back to you, Matthew,” he said, dodging the question as he broke the connection.
Matt stared at the glowing screen.
If she hears from her?
Then if someone did die in Maggie’s house, it wasn’t her.
She’s simply missing.
He shook his head, then speed-dialed Mickey O’Hara.