* * *
Ten minutes later, the hearse drivers came out of the car wash building, walked back into the garage. The overhead door went up, the hearse backed out, and rolled out of the car wash. Lucas watched on the mapping computer as it headed south on the island, then east, and finally stopped. “Funeral home,” the computer operator said. “They’re dumping the body.”
“The heroin is in the garage,” Orish said. “This is good. This is good.”
Nothing was moving at the garage and a half hour after the hearse arrived at the funeral home, it set off again.
“You know what?” Orish said, after watching the tracker for a while. “I think they’re coming here. Either here or over at the Hampton Inn.”
“They’ll probably stay overnight and then head back to Florida,” Devlin said. “By the time they get back, they’ll have another load.”
“I’m hoping we’ll only do this once,” Orish said.
“We’re all hoping that. We’ve got a couple of people undercover, risking their necks with every load,” Lucas said.
Orish: “Then let’s get it right the first time.”
CHAPTER
TWENTY-FOUR
Behan called Cattaneo and asked, “What do you think?”
“It’s still a little rough, but we’re going out. Willy’s okay with it—he wants the cash.”
“Talked to Dougie,” Behan said. “The hearse is in the garage.”
“Excellent,” Cattaneo said. “Though that sounds like a euphemism for a guy who has trouble getting it up, finally getting a hit of Viagra.”
“What?”
“Never mind,” Cattaneo said. Behan thought he had a good Irish sense of humor, but he didn’t. When he got off the phone, Cattaneo wandered into the living room where Belinda was looking at three different shades of blue acrylic paint and said, “That fuckin’ Behan can be a moron.”
“Don’t let him hear you saying that,” his wife said. “Are you going out for sure?”
“Almost for sure. I mean, we’re going out, but we actually have to get out there before we decide to dive.”
* * *
Cattaneo called Virgil and asked, “You all set?”
“How’s the water?”
“I’m looking out my window. I’m not seeing whitecaps, but it’s rolling some.”
“I don’t want to go over the side if the boat’s gonna come down on me and crack my head like a fuckin’ walnut,” Virgil said.
“We gotta be careful, but it’s not all that bad—we’ll know more when we get out there, and if you think it’s too rough, we’ll come back. It’s your call.”
“’Kay. I’ve made a couple changes in the rigging, nothing major. When do you pick us up?”
“Same time as last time?” Cattaneo said.
“See you at the boat.”
* * *
A half hour before Regio was to pick them up, Virgil helped Rae fix her Sig 928 to her leg, just above the anklebone, with a piece of black gaffer tape. He first folded a piece of the tape back on itself, as a handle, that Rae could jerk free of her leg with her left hand, while she pulled the gun with her right. The first time out, they’d fixed the gun to her leg with an ankle compression wrap, but Rae said it hadn’t been secure enough, and she’d had to sneak quick readjustments on the boat.
With the gun firmly in place, she jogged up and down the apartment a few times and said, “Much better.”
Regio showed up at 3:30, and the three of them carried the scuba gear to the Lexus, did the back-street crawl to check for tails. When he was satisfied, Regio took them to the boat, where Cattaneo and Lange were ready to cast off. Both Cattaneo and Lange were wearing light foul-weather suits. The sky was mostly cloudy, the leftovers from the cold front.
“We need rain suits?” Virgil asked. “If it’s that rough . . .”
“Just in case,” Cattaneo said. “If we really need them, you won’t be diving.”
“Not much air,” Virgil said, putting a hand up into the breeze, and looking up into the sky.
“We’ll see when we get outside,” Cattaneo said.
* * *
They made the run to the Port Everglades cut, went through, past a rusting inbound Panamanian freighter, and out on the ocean. When they turned north, into the wind, they got some rock and roll, but nothing serious.
“What do you think?” Cattaneo shouted down the hatch.
“If it doesn’t get any worse than this, I’m okay with it!” Virgil shouted back.
“Good man!”
* * *
As darkness fell over the boat, Virgil suited up, checked and rechecked all the gear, went topside to look at the water. The rollers were perhaps two feet high, but showing no foam. “Looks okay, but I’m still worried about getting hit . . .”
“We’ll do it a little different this time,” Cattaneo said. “There’s nobody out here, so when I’m coming up to your light, I’ll stay well off to your left as you’re looking at me. I’ll kill the engine a couple of boat lengths farther out. By the time I get to you, we ought to be dead in the water.”
“But still riding up and down,” Virgil said.
“Yeah, but you won’t have any momentum to deal with. Shed your gear, stay well back, and we’ll pull it over the side. Then we’ll take the lift bags and you can stay off to the side, finning, until you’re ready to grab the boarding ladder. We’ll take the fins when you’re ready, and once you get your feet on the ladder, you’re good. We’ll help you up.”
Virgil nodded: “That should work. I mean, this really isn’t much, the rollers.”
Cattaneo said, “Better get your tanks on; we’re ten minutes out.”
Nine minutes and forty seconds later, Virgil took the big step into the water, got oriented as the sound of the boat faded away, and started toward the line of heroin cans.
* * *
Rae watched Virgil disappear over the side, then said to Cattaneo, “I’m gonna go lay down. Call me when you turn around.”
“You want somebody to lay down with?” Regio asked, showing some teeth.