“Gets dark around six . . .”
“Sundown is a few minutes before six o’clock,” Virgil said. “I looked it up. Let’s say we want to be cruising past the drop-off spot between six-thirty and seven.”
Regio nodded: “We’ll pick you up at four o’clock. Be ready.”
“We’ll stop and refill my tanks on the way back to the apartment,” Virgil said. “I want to get a nap if I can, before we go out.”
“We’re on. For sure. The thing you gotta do, is figure how to rig up all that gear so you don’t get all tangled up in it. That was a problem . . . in the past.”
* * *
From the car, Virgil called Lucas and filled him in. “If we’re going past the drop-off at six-thirty, and they’re picking us up at four, that means the boat’s got to be close. You’ve still got the tracker on their Lexus?”
“We do. We’re watching them now.”
“If they find it, I could be fucked,” Virgil said.
“They won’t find it. I can guarantee that.”
“And what do you do if they show up with a different vehicle? One you can’t track?”
“We’re talking about that,” Lucas said.
On the way north, off the Keys and headed for the scuba center, Rae said, “I’m starting to pucker.”
“I didn’t think good-looking women had anything to pucker.”
“You’d be wrong about that,” Rae said. “The thing is, I sorta like the feeling.”
Virgil glanced at her, smiled: “So do I. So does Lucas.”
“So did Bob,” Rae said.
CHAPTER
NINETEEN
Michael Behan, Jack Cattaneo, Marc Regio, and Matt Lange met at Behan’s waterfront condo and Behan opened with, “This Willy guy—he can do it?”
“That’s what the diver chick said,” Lange said.
“And you think he’s legit?”
“I do,” Regio said. “Matt’s a little nervous about him.”
Cattaneo asked, “Why?”
“Can’t really tell you why,” Lange said. “You’ve talked to him, Jack. He comes across as this stoner, lazy do-nothing slacker, but then, all of a sudden, he seems a little too . . . smart. A little too driven. He opens his mouth and all this technical stuff comes out.”
“But only about diving,” Regio said.
Lange: “That’s true. Only about diving. He seems to have trouble with his cell phone.”
Behan and Cattaneo looked at Lange for a couple beats, then Cattaneo asked, “You nervous enough to pull the plug?”
“If it was a small deal, I might pull it. But the guy’s a hell of a diver, and . . . I don’t know. This chick he’s with, she’s no kind of cop, I promise you that. She’s right out of the ghetto. So . . .”
Behan considered that, turning to look out the oceanside windows, scratched his ass once, turned back, and said, “That shit’s already been down there way too long. Could be silting over, could be gone. That’d be a hell of a hit. Other than you being nervous, he looks good?”
Lange nodded.
Behan looked at Cattaneo. “Jack?”
“I say we go with him. There’s enough shit down there to make everybody in the organization a rich man. And I’ll be on the boat. That’s what I think: I’m sure enough that I’ll be on the boat.”
“The least we can do is fuck him out of his money,” Regio said.
Behan smiled and said, “I like the way you think. But. If he brings up anything, it’s not going to be much. How many can he handle at a time? Three? Four? Even with the lift bags, I can’t see him doing more than that. Underwater? Swimming a half mile? So if he brings up anything, we pay him. Because we’ll need him for the other tubes. This is a long-term operation. Might be the first of a bunch of operations.”
“Jaquell brought up six in one load,” Lange said.
“Because she knew exactly where they were, to the foot, and she was going straight up and down. She had it easy. Doing what we’re talking about . . . using this DPV thing from a half mile away, maybe she could do it, maybe not, but she wouldn’t be bringing up six,” Cattaneo said.
“Okay. So we pay him,” Regio said.
“Which brings up another problem,” Cattaneo said. “Say he brings up three tubes, and we pay him what? More than twenty grand in cash? If they’re the kind of people we think they are, ten grand goes up their noses the first night, and then they start splashing money around town. He could get noticed.”
“This chick, Ally, seems to be the brains of their operation,” Regio said. “She has Willy under her thumb. We’ll have a conversation with her. Make the point that if his behavior pulls in any cops, his next dive will be in the Everglades.”
Behan said, “Jack: the boat’s ready?”
“It’s perfect. Our vulnerable spot would be if the Coast Guard jumped us exactly during the pickup. That won’t happen, because we’d see them coming on the radar. If we see them coming, we slow down, they board us, we drift until they’re gone and we go on to the pickup,” Cattaneo said. “If they board us and tell us to follow them into port, we leave Willy in the ocean. He sinks the cans, marks the exact GPS coordinates and then uses this DPV thing to pull him to the beach and we pick him up there.”
“He knows this is the plan?”
“Not yet. We’ll explain it to him tomorrow,” Cattaneo said. “When he’s on the boat.”
“What if they board after the pickup? Coming into the marina?” Behan asked.
“That’s trickier,” Cattaneo said, “But it won’t be like the last time. There’s a bow stateroom, one narrow bed, and we’ve filled it up with dive gear, tools, a bicycle, like we’re using it for storage. The bed’s on an eighteen-inch platform, screwed to the hull, with a hollow space underneath. When the tubes come over the side, we run them to the bow, stick them under the bed. When they’re all in there, we screw the platform back down. We’ve rehearsed it: we can get the bed screwed down and the junk tossed in the cabin in four or five minutes. If we have five more minutes, all the scuba gear will be stowed on top of it. But I don’t think any of this will be necessary. I’ve gone up to Boca Raton a half dozen times since Christmas and nobody ever looked at me. Whoever heard of a drug runner in a slow boat?”