Chapter SIXTY-NINE
We were back in the windowless room. Perez stood and said, “How was your lunch?”
“Sit down and tell me why Mariah wanted me dead,” said J.D. She wasn’t interested in pleasantries.
“Mariah is of the opinion that you knew that Caleb was the so-called whale tail killer. She was afraid that you would eventually tell somebody and word would get back to Miami and ruin the family name.”
“Let’s see,” I said. “Your family includes one crazy woman who abused her son who became an embezzler and a serial killer. She had a daughter who married a drug lord and is crazy herself and you’re a money launderer for the cartels. How much of that good name can possibly be left?”
Perez smiled. “I admit there’s not much left of the family. Most of them have long since moved away from South Florida and those of us who are left are not exactly considered top drawer. But Mariah doesn’t understand that. She seems consumed with the idea that the family name has to be protected. And then there was the thirty million dollars.”
“What thirty million?” asked J.D.
“Well, it’s not exactly thirty million,” Perez said.
“Tell me about the money,” said J.D., steel in her voice.
“Just before his death, when he knew he only had a few days to live, Caleb told Mariah that he had given me ten million dollars for safekeeping. He also told her the ten million had grown to thirty million.”
“Had it?” J.D. asked.
“No. It was actually about five million, but I’d given Caleb reports over the years that showed the money was growing. I was afraid to tell him I’d lost a lot of it.”
“What were you planning to do when he got out of prison?” asked J.D.
“Run. I’ve got the five million in secret bank accounts placed around the world.”
“So Mariah wanted the money and you didn’t have it.”
“That’s about the size of it.”
“Why didn’t you just run when Caleb died?” I asked.
“Things weren’t in place yet. I thought I had twenty years, but he died years before he was supposed to be released. I had to scramble to get all the little pieces put together, get set up so that I could get the money out of the banks without any traces that would lead to me, set up my getaway house. There were just some things I hadn’t done. Caleb was diagnosed with a glioblastoma about a month before his death. No chance of survival. He chose to do nothing to prolong his life by a few months. I had to stall Mariah until my plans were ready.”
“How did you do that?” asked J.D.
“I knew Caleb planned to kill you when he got out of prison. He blamed you for the time he’d spent in custody. Mariah knew about his desire to take you out. She told Caleb when he was diagnosed that if he wanted you dead, he had to come up with a plan to have you killed after he died. The money was the key, so I convinced him to tell Mariah that she wouldn’t get the money until you were dead. I figured that’d give me time to get the hell out of here.”
“Weren’t you afraid that Mariah wouldn’t go along?” I asked. “That she’d just demand the money right away?”
“Sure,” Perez said, “but I had a plan for that, too. By the time Mariah got you killed, I’d be gone.”
“What if she decided she wanted the money without killing me?” J.D. asked.
“The only way Mariah could get the money was through me. I told her that I had it set up so that if something happened to me, the money would disappear. If I died of natural causes, the money could be retrieved by using bank codes that would be sent to her by a lawyer in another state ninety days after my death and after an autopsy had been completed by a pathologist of the lawyer’s choosing. I’d hoped that she would decide that the ninety-day window was too much even if she managed to kill me and make it look like a natural death.”
“She could have tortured you into telling,” I said.
“I convinced her that I had a weak heart. I told her that as part of the deception so that she didn’t have to worry that if I did die of natural causes the money would disappear. I thought it would also give her the idea that torture of any sort might kill me. I figured she would think she could get the money more quickly by killing Detective Duncan. I planned to be gone by the time that happened.”
“So,” J.D. said, “I was sort of the staked goat that would draw Mariah and give you time to get away.”
“That’s about it,” said Perez.
“You’re some piece of work, Perez,” J.D. said. “I should have left you to the bastards in the jail. Tell me how you went about trying to kill me.”
“Caleb had a friend, a longtime cellmate named Jeff Worthington. Caleb said he was one of the smartest men he’d ever met. He made a deal with Worthington to follow up and kill you. He told Worthington all the details of the whale tail murders. Caleb said Worthington was a natural killer. He liked the power the kill gave him. I was to fund the operation with Caleb’s money and then give Worthington two million dollars when you were dead.”
“Who was working with him?” asked J.D.
“He had three of his buddies from prison.”
“What are their names?” J.D. asked.
“Qualman, Bagby, and Steiffel.”
“Qualman and Bagby are dead,” said J.D. “What happened to Steiffel?”
“He’s dead too,” said Perez. “Worthington killed him and dropped him in the Gulf of Mexico.”
“When?”
“Right after they tried to kill you on that island just north of Longboat Key.”
“Leffis Key on Anna Maria Island,” J.D. said, her tone flat.
“Yes. That’s it.”
“Where’s Worthington now?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” said Perez. “I was trying to reach him yesterday when the DEA showed up at my office.”
“He wasn’t much of a lawyer,” I said.
“No, but it worked for a few days. I thought we might have to use him to get to some of our idiots if they got caught. I was pretty sure at least two or three of them would be arrested before we concluded our operation. I was just trying to cover all the bases and it worked. If we hadn’t set him up as a lawyer, he wouldn’t have been able to get the drugs into the jail to kill Bagby.”
“What happened to the real Ben Flagler?” I asked.
“Worthington killed him. Gave the body to a gator hunter who needed some bait.”
“Why the whale tail copycat?” asked J.D.
“Mariah followed through with Caleb’s wishes and copied what he’d done to the women in Miami. Caleb wanted you to know that the whale tail killer was back in business and you were about to be a victim. He wanted you to live in fear for a time before you died.”
“Well,” said J.D., “he didn’t scare me, but he managed to really piss me off.”
“That wasn’t the plan,” said Perez, “and I didn’t think the whale tail thing made a whole lot of sense. That’s the reason I put a stop to it after the first two.”
“Where were you going to get the two million to pay Worthington?” J.D. asked.
“I wasn’t. I’d be gone before he came to collect it. I used some of the druggers’ money to pay the early expenses. By the time they discovered it, I’d be long gone.”
Parrish said, “With you controlling all their money, I don’t understand why the cartel put a price on your head as soon as you were arrested.”
Perez shrugged. “I guess they just wrote me off,” he said. “They’d sacrifice the money in return for me being silenced. Purely a business decision.”
“Why didn’t you run before you were arrested?” asked Parrish. “You must have seen this coming.”
“I thought I still had a couple of days. I would have been gone by this morning if your people hadn’t arrested me yesterday.”
Jock spoke up finally. “Tell me more about this guy Fuentes.”
“What can I tell you?” asked Perez. “He’s known as the crazy don. He’s notorious for killing people in the most brutal ways. A lot of that was exaggeration.”
“I’ve heard of him,” said Jock. “Stories about the crazy don have been circulating for years. We’ve never had a name, just ‘the crazy don.’”
“Now you have a name,” said Perez. “See? I believe in living up to my end of a bargain.”
“He’s the one who kills his managers now and then as an object lesson,” said J.D. “We always thought he was an urban legend.”
“He’s real,” said Perez, “and he likes to torture his victims. But Mariah is the one who kills the managers. Does it for sport. Like I said, she’s crazy as hell and she pretty much runs things. Fuentes is seen as the big cheese, but Mariah pulls all the strings. She’s the puppeteer.”
“Was Fuentes’s name Escondido before he disappeared and came back from the dead?” asked Jock.
Perez looked surprised. “It was,” he said. “How did you know that?”
Jock ignored the question. “Tell me about the Guatemalans,” he said.
“What Guatemalans?” Perez asked.
“The ones trying to kill J.D. and Matt,” Jock said.
“I don’t know anything about that.”
I heard a popping sound coming from the back of the house. My first thought was that someone was making popcorn, but then my brain woke up and identified the noise as gunfire. The door to our room swung open and banged against the wall. The deputy marshal named Bert was holding a pistol and beckoning us out. “Hurry,” he said. “We’re under assault. We need to get you out of here.”
“We need our weapons,” said Jock.
“They’re on the table in the hall,” said Bert, “help yourselves. These guys have automatic weapons.”
We grabbed our pistols and ran toward the sound of gunfire. Bert stayed with Perez, put handcuffs on him and secured him to a handrail in the hall that had apparently been installed just for this purpose.
There were two other young men at the back of the house, crouched below the windows in the family room. Most of the glass panes were gone, shards littering the faded carpet. One had an M-16 rifle and the other a more modern M-4. Bullets were still coming from the rear, ricocheting about the room, embedding themselves into the walls.
“They’ve got us pinned down,” said one of the men. “I’m Tom and this is Lloyd. We’re deputy marshals.”
“Anybody at the front of the house?” Jock asked.
“Bert has it,” said Tom. “What about the sides of the house?” Jock asked.
“We’re almost blind on the west side,” said Lloyd. “Only one bedroom with a window. I checked the east side and I didn’t see anybody in that house next door.”
“That doesn’t mean they’re not there,” said Jock.
“I know,” said Lloyd. “How the hell did they find us?”
“I’m not real worried about that at the moment,” I said. “Any idea how many of them there are?”
“Not sure,” said Tom. “More than two. You can tell by the amount of fire.”
Jock looked at me. “What’s Special Forces doctrine for a situation like this?”
“When surrounded, attack,” I said.
Tom spoke up again. “Bert called this in. We’ve got law enforcement on the way, but they may take a while to get out here with enough force to make a difference. The Coast Guard is getting a helicopter in the air, so we’ll at least have some eyes on them soon.”
“Unless that Coastie chopper is armed, it’s not going to do us a whole lot of good,” I said. “I don’t think we can wait for a look-see from them. If we don’t do something quick, we’ll all going to be dead by the time the reinforcements arrive.”
“Any big ideas?” asked J.D.
“Tom,” I said, “do you have anything flammable here?”
“There’s a five-gallon can of gasoline in the garage. We use it to fuel the lawn mower when the maintenance people come.”
“How much is in it?”
“I filled it up yesterday.”
“We haven’t had rain in days,” I said. “Those fields out there look dry as bones. The wind is blowing from the south right into the scrub. If we can set the stuff on fire, we can burn those bastards out.”
“How’re we going to get the gas out there?” asked J.D.
“Let me think,” I said. “How far back from the house do you think the first palmettos are?”
“Probably no more than thirty feet,” said J.D.
“About ten yards,” I said. “I can run that in less than five seconds. Can you guys give me enough covering fire to hold them down that long?”
“Carrying the gas can?” She looked a bit incredulous.
“Yeah,” I said. “Five gallons weighs less than thirty-five pounds. No big deal.”
“That’s a suicide mission,” said J.D.
“The suicide mission is staying put in this house,” I said. “How about it? Can y’all hold them for that long?”
Tom looked at J.D. “You know how to use that gun you’re holding, lady?”
“I’m a police detective,” J.D. said. “I was on the firing line when you were still in junior high.”
“Sorry, Detective. I didn’t know.”
J.D. smiled at him. “It’s okay, Marshal. What if we put Tom at the rear corner of the west side of the house. Think you can get there through the front door without drawing fire?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Jock and I’ll stay here and Lloyd can go to the back corner of the house on the east side. Is there a back door out of the garage?”
“Yes,” said Tom. “It opens to the backyard.”
“Okay,” said J.D. “Tom and Lloyd can take turns with short bursts into the palmettos. Jock and I’ll fire out pistols from here. That should give Matt some cover to make it to the edge of the scrub.”
“Sounds like a plan,” I said. “Let’s do it.”
But, as with many plans, we’d made a slight miscalculation. And that proved deadly.