Monday, 4 P.M., hour sixteen of Operation Joanie. No sign of Hal Bonner.
Frank Sheffield was sitting behind the wheel of one of a dozen surveillance vehicles in play this afternoon, a brown UPS truck. He was idling at the stop sign on Seaview Lane, a side street off Old Cutler Road when Hannah Keller passed in a red Porsche convertible, a Boxster, if Sheffield wasn’t mistaken. Hannah and her kid, with the convertible top up, windows down. The kid sticking his arm out the window, making a wing with his hand, riding the bumpy air currents.
Frank put the big truck in gear, rolled onto the roadway. He was wearing the UPS uniform, brown shorts and shirt, heavy black brogans. Wondering how the UPS guys stood it, the sticky synthetic threads, the sun-absorbing color. He was miked up, a black dot on his collar, and a flesh-colored receiver plugged in his left ear.
“I got her,” Frank said. “Red Porsche Boxster. License AGP Five-Six-Six.”
In his earpiece Helen Shane rogered that.
“I’m rolling now, four cars back. There’s Hannah’s Porsche, then a green Camaro, a blue late-model Toyota Corolla, a black Dodge van, then little old us. And there’s some idiot on a red dirt bike riding my bumper. Maybe somebody could pull him over, write him a ticket.”
“Frank, you stay with the Porsche only as far as Cocoplum Circle, then sixteen will take over. You hear that, sixteen?”
Forty agents, leapfrogging, falling away. Two choppers rotating positions, several hard-wired video cameras at the fixed locations. Yard-service workers along the route, mailmen, Rollerbladers, dog-walkers. It was a first-time thing for Frank. All the stops pulled out. Big-budget production, the full orchestra. Helen with the baton in her hand, keeping the beat, making sure everyone stayed on key.
She was back at the command post, a three-bedroom suite on the top floor of the Grand Bay Hotel. Big bank of windows with a sweeping view of Biscayne Bay and the Dinner Key Marina. Probably two thousand a night for a room like that. Though Sheffield wasn’t privy to the deals, he assumed the room was comped to Senator Ackerman. Helen said the Grove was a central location, fifteen minutes from every venue on their game plan. Had to hand it to her, the lady wrote herself a nice part in the script.
“Did you say a blue Corolla, Frank?” It was Helen in his ear, her voice strained today. The plan unfolding. Sixteen hours down, fifty-six to go. Starting at midnight, due to close up shop midnight Wednesday. Helen was on hyper-alert, as though Senator Ackerman was standing next to her, ready to promote her on the spot, or tear off her stripes.
“That’s right. Blue Corolla, peeling fake leather top. Looks like just the driver, no passenger. Can’t tell if it’s male or female.”
“Didn’t we have an earlier sighting on a blue Corolla? Did you pick that up, thirteen?”
Thirteen came back with some static.
“Thirteen, go again,” Helen said. “You’re breaking up.”
Thirteen backed down his squelch and a male voice that Frank didn’t recognize said, “A blue Corolla was parked five houses down from the Keller house earlier this afternoon. Departed simultaneous with target vehicle.”
Helen took a few moments to digest it. Maybe she ran it by the Senator or Charlie Pettigrew back at command central. When Helen came back on, her voice was steely.
“We’re going to take the Corolla. This could be our target. Repeat, this could be target. All ground units in the blue team, and both our birds will converge. Wait till the other side of Cocoplum Circle. Corner of Poinciana and LeJeune Road. Twelve and fourteen get in position at Poinciana. Let the Porsche pass through, then intercept the Corolla at the intersection. Move the choppers. Three, five, and eight converge on the area immediately. One and four, you should be moving south on LeJeune. Everyone wait for my signal.”
“Shit,” Sheffield said. “We haven’t even got going yet, we’re already catching the guy. That’s no fun.”
Helen said, “No random traffic, Sheffield. If it’s not critical, stay off the air.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And, Sheffield, disregard previous order. You’re to keep target in sight. You stay with Hannah. We’re taking down the Corolla.”
“I hear you,” Frank said.
It was supposed to be a kick in the nuts. A message from Helen. If Frank wasn’t going to take this seriously, fine. But it meant he wasn’t going to be included in the bust. Which would’ve pissed him off if he’d been an androgen junkie. But that wasn’t Frank. He never tried to duck the action, he just didn’t need to jack up his pulse rate on a regular basis like most of the other guys.
Anyway, since coming on duty this morning at 6 A.M., spending the first hour studying the case files in that Grand Bay Hotel suite, finding in the pile of paperwork a glossy photo of Hannah Keller, Frank had been taking this in a different direction. He was thinking how in a few days when this was over, he was going to have to call her up, see if maybe she wanted to come over to Key Biscayne, visit his favorite tiki bar for a margarita, watch the driftwood pile up on the shoreline.
The photo was a few years old, a publicity shot for her book jacket or something, soft focus, a lot of diffused light. Blond hair cut short, wide-set blue eyes that flickered with sass. Which brought it all back, the way he’d felt about her back then, a quiver in his chest. Knowing enough not to try to hit on her in her period of grief. Anyway he’d been involved at the time. A dark-haired girl named Darlene, or Arlene. He wasn’t even sure of her name, but he remembered Hannah vividly. A rough-and-ready lady with an ironic take on things. No bullshit, straight to the point. And, he seemed to recall, she had a first-class pair of calves. As sculptured as a dancer’s with narrow ankles. Not that legs mattered all that much, or any body parts. He’d just noticed. And remembered.
Now the caravan was moving through the tunnel of banyans along Old Cutler, a half mile till Cocoplum Circle. Pretty day, a good breeze off the water, golden sun rippling through the dense layer overhead. Traffic moving fine ahead of him. A little buildup of cars heading south, the other way, probably some business folks getting a jump on rush hour.
In his ear, Helen Shane was staying in touch with everyone, flitting back and forth between the two dozen units. The urgency in her voice rising. But Frank ignored her, keeping his eyes on the red Porsche. Nice car. The book business obviously doing well. He’d read a couple of them early on, liked them fine. She had a good ear for street talk, some good zingers about cops and bad guys. Her heroine, he seemed to recall, was one kickass broad. Quick with a comeback, fast on the draw. He hadn’t kept up with Hannah’s career, though. His reading tastes ran more toward the sports page, following whatever Miami team was in season.
The UPS truck entered Cocoplum Circle, rolling through the YIELD sign. Keeping Hannah in view on the other side of the fountain. The red Porsche, then the Camaro, then the blue Corolla. He heard the distant thump of one of the choppers. He steered the top-heavy truck around the tight circle, then took the second spoke off of it, north onto LeJeune Road, heading into the heart of Coral Gables. Hannah and her kid stopping at the light up ahead. The guy on the dirt bike was revving his engine in Frank’s rearview mirror. Fucking Miami drivers.
Frank watched as the blue Corolla peeled off with most of the other traffic onto Ingram Highway, heading for Coconut Grove.
Frank pinched the button mike that was fixed to his collar, lifted it close to his mouth.
“Corolla’s heading east onto Ingram. Repeat, Corolla’s no longer following the Porsche.”
“Roger that,” Helen said. “I hear you.”
Frank waited for a moment. One car behind the Porsche. When the light turned green, he said, “So, Helen, you still going after the Corolla?”
“The Corolla’s an anomalous sighting. Stand down. All units stand down. Let the Corolla go.”
“It could be our guy,” Frank said. “He might’ve seen us following and broken off.”
“Thanks for the insight, Sheffield, but that bicyclist you just passed back on Cocoplum was one of our guys. He got a good visual and reported the driver of the Corolla to be a young white female.”
“Maybe Hal is a master of disguise.”
“It’s anomalous,” Helen said, clicking off.
“Anomalous,” Frank said. “Man, tomorrow I gotta bring along my thesaurus. Stay up with you people.”
“Cut the chatter, Sheffield. Keep your eye on the goddamn ball.”
It was Senator Ackerman. His voice was hard and full of phlegm as if he’d been staring again at the photograph of his daughter.
Then it was Helen speaking, moving her men around the chess board. Sixteen here, twenty-three there. All the pieces still in play, the game moving forward. Fifty-six hours left.
Misty had the evening shift at Hooters. All the happy-hour idiots streaming down from the high-rise office buildings, loosening their ties, guzzling two or three quick ones before heading off to the suburbs in their fancy leased cars to join their skinny wives and coddled kids.
Misty parked in the covered lot and took a minute to stash the derringers behind the backseat. A few thousand dollars of hardware. The only valuable thing she owned aside from her Radio Shack computer. Something she’d started doing a few years back, a hobby, collecting derringers. Saving up her cash till she had a couple of hundred extra bucks, then picking out another one at a gun show or pawnshop. Mostly used ones, each with its own smoky history. She liked the idea of a little gun like that. Tuck it away in a pocket, no bulge. Carry two of them or three and nobody would know what firepower was passing by. She scrimped on clothes, movies, eating out at restaurants, so she could add to her collection. With some women it was shoes or purses or jewelry. You had to spend your extra money on some damn thing.
In the rearview mirror she touched up her makeup, then walked across the lot to the Bayside Market. The place was busy as usual, teenagers and old folks, South Americans. Calypso music tinkling over the speakers, a strong breeze flowing off the bay. Out on the Intracoastal some big white yachts idled past, laughing gulls squawking overhead.
Misty had on the tight orange shorts and the white cotton Hooters T-top, shortened to expose her navel. Underneath the T-top was the pushup bra that laid her breasts out for display on an extra-reinforced white cotton shelf. An engineering marvel and requirement of the job. You wanted tips, you had to have tits.
Most of the girls had plastic ones, saline-filled or olive oil, or whatever they were pumping into them this year. Every week another girl showing off her new boobs in the kitchen, letting everyone have a squeeze, check how real they were. All the cooks standing in line, the dishwashers drooling. Misty kept hers natural. Not gigoondas, but big enough to get by. Though in the last year or two she had to admit they were starting to get a little gravity-challenged.
She walked in the big glass front door and right away she could see something was wrong. All the girls gathered at the bar, folding napkins. No one looked over. No one said hi.
Then Jesus Cardozo, the young manager with the sweaty face and Hitler mustache, came bustling out of the kitchen, spotted her, and sailed right over to where she was standing just inside the door.
“Let me guess,” Misty said. “You’re about to fire my ass again.”
Jesus just stood there inside a fog of cheap cologne. The other girls stopped folding napkins. They were out of earshot, but they were leaning toward her. She could feel the bra tightening around her chest.
“I been telling you, Misty,” Jesus said. “I been asking you to try harder.”
“Okay, okay, so I’ve been a little mopey. I’ve been going through a bad patch, that’s all. What can I say? You never get down, Jesus? A guy like you, you’re always up, happy-go-lucky, twenty-four hours every day? I don’t believe that.”
“You didn’t think I’d hear about what you did, Misty? You think no one would tell me? You dump a glass of beer on a man’s head, I’m not going to find out?”
“Hey, I was going to tell you about it.”
“This is something we can’t have, Misty. You ruined this man’s fancy-ass toupee. We gotta pay for this goddamn thing. It’s sixteen hundred dollars, this hairpiece. It’s imported from Italy, the hair of some special order of nuns for chrissakes.”
“It was an accident. I stumbled.”
“That was no accident. It was on his fucking toupee, Misty. How’s that an accident? Explain it to me, the accident part. I got eyewitnesses come talking to me, telling me what you did. You poured a beer on the man’s head.”
“Hey, the guy was sexually harassing me. He had his hand all over my butt. What’m I supposed to do, call over a lawyer, sue the guy on the spot? I did what I had to do. I cooled his jets.”
Jesus shook his head.
“Doesn’t matter he touched you, Misty. You’re a big girl. That’s part of the job.”
“Asshole can do anything he wants to me, I got to stand there and take it? You rewrite the Constitution, did you, Jesus? I lost my inalienable rights all of a sudden?”
“You have a problem with a customer you come talk to me. That’s how it works.”
“Oh, yeah. I’ve seen whose side you come down on, Jesus.”
“Misty, you poured a beer on this man. He’s sitting there doing business with his clients and you embarrassed him. You ruined the man’s expensive fucking hairpiece. We gotta sell a lot of beer to make up for that sixteen hundred dollars.”
“The guy should be happy I didn’t slam him with the beer mug.”
“Look, Misty. Maybe it’s come time for you to look around for something you like better than serving beer. Some other line of work.”
Misty looked over at the other girls. They’d gone back to folding napkins, chatting away like nothing was happening. None of them were her friends. They talked to her, shot the shit, but that was it. Not friends. Worked alongside a couple of them since she dropped out of community college her sophomore year. Five years and zero friends.
“Yeah, yeah, you’re right, Jesus. I should’ve just stood there and let the asshole grope me. What was I thinking? I should’ve pulled down my shorts, made it easier on him, let him get way inside there.”
“Look,” Jesus said. “I could give you one more chance. I know you got problems, Misty. I could see if I can forget this. Put it behind us. I’m not a bad guy. Maybe we can make a bargain between us.”
“Let me guess,” she said, raising her voice so the other girls could hear. “Because you’re being so nice and all, letting me keep my job, you expect to come over to my apartment again. Crawl in beside me, make me breathe your dead-fish halitosis for two minutes while you work up to one of your premature ejaculations. Is that the bargain you had in mind?”
Jesus looked over at the other Hooter girls. Everyone frozen, watching.
Misty reached behind her, worked her hands up under her shirt. She unclipped the bra, then shrugged her arms through the sleeves of her white Hooters T-shirt and slipped it free, and tossed the bra at him. Jesus caught it by one strap and held it away from him like a rotting animal.
“You know, Jesus, actually, I have to thank you. Last couple of months, I’ve just been delaying the inevitable. Now, because of the fuckhead in his Italian wig, I can start working full-time on my true calling in life. And listen, man, I want to tell you something. Thanks for the mammaries.”
It was the same stupid joke the customers used all the time. Not the parting shot Misty would’ve wished for, but, hey, Jesus caught her by surprise. Next time she got fired, she’d do better.