Chapter 72
JACK HAD CALLED ahead to Private’s new East Coast office. A senior operative, Diana DiCarlo, was waiting at the gate when Emilio Cruz disembarked at Miami International Airport.
CIA trained, DiCarlo was very efficient. She handed Cruz a briefcase with everything he would need: gun, surveillance equipment, car keys, and phone numbers of Private sources throughout South Florida. And she told Cruz where his subjects were staying.
Cruz checked in to the Biltmore, the room directly above the men he was tailing. He set up his microphones and listened.
Later, he followed his subjects from the hotel to clubs and restaurants, even watched them place their bets at the dog track in Hialeah.
Now, three days into the job, he was in South Beach, the flashiest, sexiest part of old Miami.
Emilio Cruz was sitting on a coral-rock wall, the beach rolling out before him to the ocean’s edge. He was dressed to blend in, wearing a wife beater under an open shirt, black wraparound shades, hair banded at his nape.
He appeared to be engrossed in the daily racing form, but it was a prop. He had a camera eye embedded in the frames of his sunglasses that was not just taping; the images were bouncing off a satellite a couple of miles overhead, sending pictures and sound back to the office in LA.
Directly ahead and maybe thirty feet away, three men sat on a bench facing away from him and toward Ocean Drive.
They were talking together, but their eyes were on the inked, half-naked girls skating by on the hot plum-colored sidewalk.
The two men Cruz had been following were Kenny Owen and Lance Richter. Both were NFL referees. Owen was bald and freckled. Richter was twenty years younger, with a lot of bushy brown hair, a fresh sunburn, and a gaudy Rolex watch that must have weighed a pound.
Five minutes ago, the refs had been joined by Victor Spano, a lieutenant in the Chicago-based Marzullo family.
Cruz had almost said it out loud.
Holy shit.