Shallow Breeze, page 17
part #2 of Pine Island Coast Florida Series
“That’s okay. Have you ever met Mr. Nunez in person?”
“No. But I heard them mention his name.”
“How did you come to do business with Mr. Nunez?”
He sighed. “Weirdest thing. I was out fixing the dock one day, and a couple Mexicans came in on a skiff and asked me about the island. If, you know, they could use it here and there.”
“Why would they think you wouldn't just report them? It seems like a bold move, doesn’t it?”
Hardy’s jaw clenched. “Because they knew that I had…” His voice trailed off, and he looked down at his hands.
“That you had what?”
“Never mind.”
“That you had what?” Ellie repeated. But she knew the conversation was finished.
Hardy sat up straight, and his eyes cleared. Apparently, he had just realized how he was about to implicate himself with something entirely different. “I’m done talking now, young lady. I’m done, you hear me? I’m waiting for my lawyer to get here. I want you to leave now.”
Ellie gathered up the file and the notepad. She picked up the picture. “Fair enough.” She stood up. “Thank you for your time.”
* * *
Ellie exited the interrogation room and walked back down the hall to the observation room. Another deputy scanned his badge and opened the door for her. Ellie thanked him and walked in.
Both Mark and Garrett were there. “Hey,” she said to Garrett. “I didn’t think you were coming.”
“I needed to talk with you. Great job in there,” he said.
“Incredible,” Mark echoed.
“Thank you. It’s Nunez. We can get him. We just have to find out where he is.”
They all turned to look through the glass. Norman Hardy was busy looking at his fingers, still picking at them nervously.
“I don’t care how good his lawyer is,” Garrett said. “He’ll have to work some kind of plea deal after what he just said. He’ll cough up a lot more.”
“I know,” Ellie said. “So, what’s up?”
He turned away from the glass and nodded to a small table in the corner of the tiny surveillance room. “Let’s have a seat.” They followed him over and sat down. Garrett pulled out his phone and thumbed through his texts. “That property they moved the cocaine to at Ridgeside is in a discretionary trust. At my prompting Glitch did a little digging under the radar. You won’t believe who the trustee is.”
“You’re going to make me guess?” Ellie asked.
“A Mr. Trigg Deneford. Sunburst Trust Advisors.”
Mark let out a low whistle.
“No kidding,” Ellie said. “I would have thought he would have a been a little more careful than that.”
“He might have thought he was. You pick up a few properties, make it look like you do a little real estate investing on the side. Put it all behind a walled garden of a trust and you have a layer of anonymity. It takes a lot of paperwork to see who’s in those trusts. Unforeseen by him, I have access to a Glitch and am willing to get slapped on the wrist if need be. Wasn’t exactly legal, you know.”
“So what’s the bad news?” She knew there was bad news. Garrett wasn’t the best at hiding his concerns. He may have been on the DEA’s tactical Foreign-Deployed Advisory and Support Teams and done a couple tours in Afghanistan sniffing out opium stashes, but he hadn’t been trained in concealing his emotions like she had.
He smiled coyishly. “Wrong? Why would something be wrong?”
She raised her eyebrows.
“Okay, fine. Listen, here’s the deal. I’m going to send Jet’s team to Ridgeside to seize that house.”
The muscle along Ellie’s jawline peeked out as she clenched. She looked away, shook her head.
“I know what you’re going to say,” Garrett said. “And I get it.”
Mark said, “We’ve dug deep, Garrett. I’m with Ellie on this one. None of the big dogs will be at that stash house. Then we’ll never find the invisible hand. Raiding the house after you arrest Norman Hardy is like waving hello and calling olly olly oxen free.”
“Maybe not,” Garrett rebutted. “We’ve raided local homes before, and it didn’t stop investigations from proceeding. The fact is, my superiors know that there is a fresh shipment of Mexican cocaine sitting in a house in Cape Coral. We wait a few days, it could all be gone, partitioned out to street dealers. These guys just want to make money. They aren’t just going to disappear, and if they do it will only be temporary. They’ll resurface once the fire dies down. They always do.”
Trigg being on the trust of the Ridgeside house was the connection they had been waiting to find. The knot that brought it all together. Now they had it. It was both exciting and disappointing at the same time. Ellie spoke to her disappointment. “Garrett, there’s no way Trigg is at the top of this thing. Who’s above him? We’re so close to getting in tight with him. I - or, rather, Shirley Dunham - has an appointment with Trigg next week to drill down to brass tacks on all this. Let him show his cards before we move on this house. He gets a good enough lawyer and he’s scot-free. Besides, you know Trigg will just say he was renting the place and had no idea what was going on there.”
“I know.”
“You know I came on to catch Adam Stark’s killer. That’s all. I don’t know where Nunez is right now. If Nunez is behind that murder, then we’re about to let him vaporize again because we couldn’t hold the line a little longer. This is crazy, Garrett.”
“But we don’t know that Nunez was behind Adam’s death, Ellie. There are other players out there too. Zamaco, and this Ringo guy seems to be a pretty big deal...who knows who else? We haven’t even dug in far enough to know because we’ve been so focused on Nunez and Hawkwing.” He ran a hand across his lips. “You know, maybe I should have waited to ask you to come on. But with you being back home and my wanting to find the sources...I thought it was the best move.”
“Don’t second guess yourself, Garrett,” Mark said. “You did right.”
Ellie nodded. “He’s right. I get it. It seems like the good guys always have to fight through the bureaucratic bullcrap to get anything meaningful done. I don’t like this, but if it’s what you’re getting pressured to do, then let’s get it done. When the dust settles, we’ll regroup and figure out where to go from there.”
They all stood up. Garrett put a hand on Ellie’s shoulder. “We should all go get a beer when all this is over.” He stood up. “I’m giving it over to Jet. He and his team will move in tomorrow night before all the new product gets sold off to smaller distributors. Next morning we’ll bring Deneford in and have a chat with him. You both can observe curbside, but I want him taking the lead.”
At that moment the door to the interrogation room opened, and a large, shiny-toed, shiny-haired man in a pinstriped suit waddled in.
Ellie smiled at Garrett and gave him a friendly pat on the back. She grabbed her paperwork and dipped her head toward the glass. “I think I’m going to let you handle this on your own.”
Chapter Thirty
They waited.
The raid was set for nine p.m., five minutes from now. Mark and Ellie sat a couple streets over in his unmarked agency-issued Grand Marquis. At her request he had let her have the wheel.
“You look like a dog waiting for his owner to tell him he can jump out and go get the stick,” Mark quipped.
Ellie rubbed the tops of her thighs impatiently. “Garrett doesn’t need me out there. I know that. I just wish I were.” Ellie knew Nunez wouldn’t be in there. But that didn’t matter. She just wasn’t used to sitting things out. She had secured small airfields, gotten in and out of highly secured estates belonging to some of the wealthiest and most ruthless people in the world. In and out without a scratch, leaving all the right people either dead or in zip ties. It was times like this when she realized she was still adjusting to life beyond the CIA. She had been off the team for over three years now, out of the Agency for coming up on one, but the combined seven plus years she spent in training for, and in the field with, TEAM 99 were baked into her DNA like yeast into a loaf of bread.
“Where are you at with all this?” she asked him. “You still against us going in there tonight?”
“I’m on your side. We should have waited until we had more on Deneford, but hopefully something good will come of it. Maybe we can find enough to nab Eric Cardoza.”
“Why single him out?”
“I don’t know. He gives me the creeps, for starters,” he said.
“How so?”
“Not sure. That scar, his lifeless eyes. Almost like he was wired from the get-go to get into trouble. Reminds me of a weasel.”
A mangy dog trotted past them and stopped underneath the yellow haze of the streetlight. He sniffed the air, growled at the grass, and then kept on down the street.
“What made you get into all this?” Ellie asked. “The DEA. You never told me.”
“I think you know that I spent three years with the Atlanta PD. I liked it enough, but I wanted to do more. So I put in for the DEA and got accepted. My dad, he was DEA.”
“No kidding.”
“Yeah. He got in about five years after Nixon started the agency. Retired with it. It took me a while to want to follow in his footsteps, but,” he tossed his hands up, “here I am.”
Mark’s phone buzzed. He read the text out loud. “They’re in position. Thirty seconds.”
Ellie put the car in gear and slowly turned the corner. She turned left up onto Ridgeside and slowed. Jet’s team would go in from the front, and four agents - two on each side - would troll down the side of the house and enter through the back door. Ellie brought the car to a stop and turned off the headlights. They looked down the street and waited. Seconds later they saw the darkened silhouettes of the Special Response Team in full SWAT gear, huddled together with weapons drawn. The door had been reframed to swing outward so that battering rams would be ineffective in the event of a raid.
Ellie rolled down her window. She watched as a SWAT member kneeled down by the door, attached a device to it, and backed away. Moments later a small explosion went off, and the team flooded the house with urgent yells, commands to the team, and warnings to the home’s inhabitants.
Ellie edged the car up and stopped at the next door neighbor’s curb. Mark, nearest to the house and feeling the nerves of being on his first raid, said, “Do we need to be so close?”
“You have your firearm, right?” Her Glock was strapped to her leg in a thigh holster.
“Of course. But that doesn’t mean I want to use it. I’m still getting used to not being behind a desk.” He nodded toward where the team had disappeared into the house. Two agents guarded the exit. “That’s what they’re for.”
More yelling and then a couple gunshots. Mark flinched.
“That wasn’t ours,” Ellie said. ‘The caliber wasn’t large enough.” Her adrenaline pumped a little faster, right along with her heart.
Suddenly, light streamed through a side window as the curtains were pulled back. The window slid up, and a leg appeared over the sill. Then two legs.
Ellie’s body straightened. “Why is no one on that side of the house?” she said out loud, half to Mark and half to herself. Her hand moved to the door handle, and she jumped out of the car. “Stay here,” she called to Mark as the door shut. By now the body had slid all the way out of the window, and the man’s feet were on the ground. He looked wildly around and darted into the darkness of the backyard. Surely an agent would still be positioned in the back for extra measure.
Ellie ran after the man and came into the backyard. No one was there. A small porch light was on, and light streamed out of the splintered back door where the second SWAT team had entered. There were only a couple small trees, a charcoal grill, and an adirondack chair lying on its side. She heard a rustle at the back fence line, saw the thin branches of the bushes move, and heard footsteps on the other side.
She darted toward the bushes and jumped a short chain link fence into the next backyard. A latch rattled beyond, and she saw a darkened figure jump a wooden gate. She followed after, reached the fence, and scaled it. Her feet came down into the front yard of a small house. A tired light from the porch lit the yard. More footsteps. The man was thirty yards down the street, his arms and legs pumping like he was being chased by demons.
Ellie pursued. She would catch him. She had no doubt. The only thing potentially stopping her was if he got out of sight and hid. He knew this area better than she did and might have a couple friends in the vicinity. All he would have to do was slip into their house.
She felt the tightness of her Glock holster against her thigh as she sprinted after him. The man up ahead turned right, and Ellie gave it everything she had. She came out onto the next street less than ten seconds later. He was still on the road, heading for the entrance of the subdivision. She was closing the gap. He was closer now.
“Freeze!” she yelled.
He turned his head back as he ran beneath the orange glow of a street light, and Ellie saw a cell phone pressed against his cheek, his eyes wide. Ellie also saw the hard outline of his face. She saw the scar. The scar that began at his lower jaw and snaked its way up his cheek until it stopped just below his eye.
She was chasing Eric Cardoza.
Chapter Thirty-One
Mateo Nunez kept one hand on the wheel of the Robalo, its single outboard motor moving him through the water at eight knots. With his free hand he tried calling Trigg Deneford for the twentieth time in the last fifteen minutes. Again, it went straight to voicemail.
He mumbled a frantic prayer to Saint Jude and tossed the phone back into the console. He was nervous. He hadn’t been nervous for years; not since he’d moved into the shadows and let his front men do most of the work. Sure, the DEA had raided two of his houses last year, but he rebounded quickly and was personally no worse the wear because of it. After all, they never got him and never seemed too interested in trying. What he had created over the years was like a lizard’s tail. The feds would cut it off, and it would grow back soon enough. Nunez would watch the papers with their headlines showing agents posing next to his apprehended kilos. They would have large, proud smiles on their faces, and Nunez would laugh before throwing the paper aside.
But tonight he wasn’t laughing. Tonight he was worried, and he felt something he hadn’t felt in a long time.
Fear. A mild panic even.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Eric Cardoza turned the corner and disappeared around a clump of banana trees. They were out of the subdivision now, heading east down Pondella Road. Ellie pulled up and came to a stop as she turned the bend. Her breathing was labored, but she forced herself to breathe slowly from her mouth so her hearing wasn’t impeded by the rush of blood pulsing through her ears. She unsnapped the top strap from her holster and removed her weapon. She brought the slide back, and a round entered the chamber.
The street was wide - two way with an concrete median - and small businesses ran along the length. A strip mall on the left. An old car wash with eight bays on the right, each one lit with halogens, half of which had burnt out or were in the process of trying to. Beyond the car wash was a used tire shop and a discount shoe store after that.
Cardoza would have had time to make it across and past the front of the tire shop before she came out onto the street. Ellie jogged down the side of the car wash and looked down the back length. A high chain link, suffering from rust and passers-by pulling it up from the bottom, rose up eight feet above the ground, creating a flimsy barrier to the apartment complex on the other side. Thick, tall crape myrtle trees lined its length. Ellie froze as a clipped rattle sounded from thirty feet away further down the street. The fence. Keeping her gun trained out in front, Ellie cautiously moved past each washing bay and toward the area of the fence the sound had come from. The fence stirred again, rattling like a perturbed snake. She got closer and peered through it into the apartment parking lot. Then she saw him. He was running diagonally away from her further into the complex. She holstered her gun and got on her knees. Pulling up a loose section of fence, she shimmied underneath and came up into a group of crape myrtles in desperate need of a trimming. She tore out of them and ran in the direction she had seen him go, followed him through the open stairwell and back into the open. She saw his foot disappear behind the next building.
Ellie knew this complex.
Her father used to drop her off at Lizzy West’s apartment to play when she was little. She and Lizzy would ride bikes and play hide and seek with the other kids in the neighborhood until way after dark. Other than a few more cracks in the asphalt, it didn’t appear to have changed much at all. Quickly, she brought up her childhood memories of this place and dusted them off. There were eight, maybe ten buildings, each with two stairwells and a small playground in the middle of the complex.
She ran down the stairwell Cardoza had passed and came out onto a line of parking spaces hugging the sidewalk - half of them empty - and another fence that she was glad to see. The north and east side of the complex still butted up against a motor pool owned by the city. Old trucks and vans in need of service sat next to auto bays that were shut down for the night. One section was a junkyard of sorts, apparently used as a place to pick the spare bones off vehicles put out of commission. The fence was strong and lined with razor wire at the top. The layout meant that there were only two ways for Cardoza to get out of here: back the way they had come or the main complex entrance to the south.
Ellie ran down the length of the building before darting across the grass to another building. If Eric was going to find his way out through the main entrance, she would beat him there. Ahead of her, an older man carrying a bag of groceries was walking away from his car toward the sidewalk. Ellie gave him a wide berth and sped past on his right. He didn’t seem to notice her.
