Текст книги "Lost"

Автор книги: Chris Jordan

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 10 (всего у книги 21 страниц)

The man in the vest avoids eye contact, stares off into the distance. “We’re very sorry for your troubles, Mr. Manning, but we can’t speak to the dead. And even if we could, the person would not listen. The person will do what he wants to do.”

“I’m not asking you to speak directly to Ricky at this point. I’m asking you to convene the council, make it look like you’re considering his request. I’m begging you. Help me find my son.”

The man in the vest reaches into a pocket, removes a pair of classic Ray-Bans, and puts them on. Eyes completely concealed, he looks as regal as a shirtless man can look. “I am sorry, Edwin, but what this person does is no longer our business. There is nothing we can do.”

“That’s your position?” Edwin says, taking care to keep his voice level and nonthreatening. “Just let it happen? Let your nephew cut off my son’s fingers, feed him to the buzzards, piece by piece? That’s your position?”

The man in the vest shrugs. “What can I do? I told you, he is dead to us.”

“What happened is, Ricky asked to borrow the corporate plane. I felt I owed him that much. But it was just an excuse to snatch my son, who he knew would be piloting the aircraft. He wants me to intervene with the tribal council, get him reinstated.”

“Not our problem. He is no longer Nakosha. There will be no reinstatement.”

Edwin looks down from the porch, observes his security detail drinking bottles of Coke in the shade, looking fairly relaxed, given the situation. The young tribal members have backed away, giving the visitors—the violators—space. Near as he can tell there have been no more threats about the concealed weapons. Good. He hasn’t got time for that. Just as he hasn’t got time to enter lengthy, cordial negotiations with Joe Lang or other members of the council. Seth hasn’t got time. Time is the enemy. Time is death.

Edwin leans forward, doesn’t bother looking into at the opaque sunglasses, which he assumes are meant to be, if not a direct insult, a way of maintaining a cool, impregnable distance. “Let me tell you what will happen if my son dies,” he begins, softly but insistently. “First, I will close off all lines of credit to the tribe and to the gaming enterprise. You may find another source of financing, but it will be, at the very least, difficult and more expensive. Second, I will seek to tie up all tribal assets. I don’t mean your land or your houses or your trucks and motor homes, those can’t be touched. I mean your money. Based on my belief, as elucidated by the army of cunning, soulless attorneys who will represent me, that you and the council and every member of the tribe have a shared responsibility to oversee the actions of one of their own. Call him dead, if you like. Kick him out of the tribe, fine, that’s your prerogative. But you will not be able to hide behind any legal, ethical or tribal fictions that the actions he has taken against me personally are not a direct and deadly consequence of the actions you took against him. You hurt him, therefore he hurt me because he knew I’d come to you on bended knee, which I have. I have asked for your help and you spurn me.”

Edwin pauses, his heart slamming like a tag-team wrestler pounding the canvas, begging for mercy. Outwardly the man in the snakeskin vest has not reacted beyond a slight thinning of the lips.

“If my son dies because you refused to help me, refused to help a man who helped you and your people, then I promise you this. On the graves of my wife and son, I swear I will spend every penny of all my wealth to wreck havoc upon your people. I will hire lobbyists. I will bribe politicians. I’ll buy judges. Whatever it takes, on all levels—county, state and federal—from now until the last day of forever. You will have to spend every dollar of casino income defending yourselves. You think you have trouble with Ricky Lang? Imagine what will happen when those young men down there find that you’ve squandered their future income on lawyer fees. If my son dies because of an argument you and your cronies had with your crazy nephew, so help me God I’ll seek to prove that the Nakosha are not a distinct tribe, and therefore do not deserve tribal status. And after I’m dead it won’t end, because I’ll have endowed a foundation whose sole purpose will be proving that you’re not Indian at all, but a band of escaped Cuban sugarcane slaves who hid in the swamp and played Indian when it suited your purpose.”

“That’s a white man’s lie,” says the man in the vest, softly, his jaw muscles clenching.

“It’s a white man’s world, Joe,” Edwin reminds him. “But look, I didn’t come here to make threats or throw my weight around. I came here asking for help. Help me, please.”

The man in the vest takes off his pricey sunglasses. His eyes give nothing away. “The council will meet,” he says. “There will be a discussion.”

On the long and bumpy ride out, Edwin Manning orders Sally Pop to stop at the sign warning visitors that firearms are prohibited in the sovereign territory of the Nakosha Nation. The Hummer idles, engine growling.

“What do you see?” Edwin asked.

Sally peers helplessly out the window, eyes popping more than usual. “What am I looking for?” he asks plaintively.

“You tell me,” Edwin suggests. “You’re the security guy. Maybe, I dunno, the surveillance camera on top of the sign? The camera that lets the really smart Indians watch the really stupid cowboys try to hide their guns?”

“Shit,” says Sally, clocking the small but rather obvious CCTV camera mounted on the pole holding up the sign.

Stink Breath rolls down his window and leans out, giving the camera a pudgy middle finger. “Remember the fuggin’ Alamo!” he shouts.

“That was Mexicans,” Edwin points out, “not Indians.”

“Same thing,” Stink Breath insists.

9. Rockin At The Europa

Million-dollar penthouse condos don’t look like all that much these days, at least from the outside. Just another row of windows in another silver tower scratching at the city’s jagged skyline. In downtown Miami the old tropical pastels having given way to a more businesslike brushed chrome and raw concrete. One of many such recent structures in what used to be the Brickell Avenue financial district, which has been transformed, according to Shane, into a financial/residential/retail area with thousands of new units under construction, presold or occupied.

The elevated cranes are everywhere, crawling like thin steel spiders, weaving a brand-new city in the sky. Progress measured by the cubic yard, total square feet and creative financing.

“Boom doesn’t describe what’s happened to Miami,” he explains, surveying the glittering new tower with a pair of small Nikon binoculars. “More like one of those crazy reality movies, Real Estate Gone Wild. A lot of it fueled by Latin American money. Makes a lot of sense if you look at an aviation map—Miami is right in the center of air-travel routes from all of South and Central America. Wealthy family from, say, Caracas, they keep a nice place in Miami, come here to shop every couple of months, check on the investments. And if the crap ever hits the fan back home, they’ve already got a stake in the good old U.S.A., and a ready-made roof over their heads.”

“So it’s all about money?”

“Sure. Money and security.”

“Speaking of money, I gotta ask,” I say, a little nervous. “What do you charge? I mean, this is going to be expensive, right? Helping me find Kelly?”

He lowers the binoculars. “Please don’t concern yourself. When the job is done, when your daughter is safe home, we’ll sit down and determine a reasonable fee. Some of the people I’ve helped are wealthy and some are not. People pay what they can afford. It all evens out.”

“I was just, you know, concerned.”

“Don’t be. Not about my fee, in any case.” He returns to the binoculars, subject closed. “I see somebody. One of Manning’s underlings, I assume. Looks like he’s pouring himself a drink at the stand-up bar.”

Shane hands me the binoculars, lets me look for myself. We’re on a balcony facing the condo tower. In a manic burst of energy I’d checked us into Europa, an elegant new hotel in an exclusive little enclave on Biscayne Bay. The place is absurdly, almost offensively pricey, which is what got me nervous about money, but it has a direct view of Manning’s condo from the balcony, and so on impulse I had handed over my American Express card and tried not to look at the per-night total for adjoining rooms. A big ouch. The careful, businessperson part of me still counting dimes while the desperate mom throws caution—and credit—to the soft tropical winds.

To be more specific, the breeze from the bay is sultry, moisture laden, smelling faintly of salt and a fecund odor that Shane says comes from the mangroves miles away. Whatever, I’m adjusting to the heat, buying into my new sense of mission. If Edwin Manning and his minions are here, there must be hope.

“That’s him!” I exclaim. “The bald jerk with the pop-out eyes.”

“The guy from the airport?”

“Yes! He’s got his arm in a sling.”

“Got his ass in a sling, more like.”

“He’s pointing his finger at the guy with the drink, telling him something. Doesn’t look like a happy conversation.”

“Lemme see.”

I hand over the binoculars.

Shane studies, nods. “This is good. We’ve got the right address.”

“You already got that from the Internet,” I point out.

“Yeah, but it never hurts to confirm. Back in the day, I was on a stakeout once for a whole week? Two teams, twelve-hour shifts, waiting for the suspect to show his face. Turns out we had the wrong side of the building, the suspect was coming and going the whole time. We were staking out the wrong apartment. My mistake.”

“I prefer to think you never make mistakes.”

He places the binoculars in my hands. “Me? To err is human.”

“Where are you going?” I ask.

“Back to my computer. Just thought of something.”

“What should I do?”

“Keep watching.”

“What am I watching for?”

Shane looks at me. “You’ll know it when you see it. Something out of the ordinary.”

“But everything is out of the ordinary,” I protest. “I’m supposed to be adjusting hemlines, not spying on billionaires.”

“Keep watching,” he insists, heading for his laptop.

I keep watching. He keeps clacking on the keys.

Eyeballing the interior of Manning’s condo gives me a new appreciation for bird-watchers. I had no idea it was so much work, keeping focus. Plus the lens distorts things and it takes concentration to figure out what, exactly, you’re looking at. For instance I keep seeing this flash of white, and assume that someone is darting across the big room, but that doesn’t really make sense—why run?—so I keep looking and eventually figure out it’s a reflection from a TV screen that must be wall mounted, facing the interior of the room, or maybe coming from a corner. Which also explains the dull looks from the heavy guy with his arm in a sling. He and two other burly types just sitting there staring like a row of hypnotized apes. Monkey see, monkey sit. And yes, I do know that apes aren’t monkeys. Having been corrected by Kelly, who as usual was rolling her eyes at my ignorance.

Part of me can’t wait for her to grow up and have kids of her own, so we can commiserate, talk about the bad old days when she was a teenage drama queen. Another part of me wants her to be ten years old again, the year of no hospitals when she was rediscovering the world, seeking approval and encouragement from me. Like I was a person who had valuable insights to share. Like I really and truly mattered. Whereas now I’m this fatally uncool, totally hopeless repository of embarrassment who has nothing to offer, whose role has been reduced to that of a housemaid—except no self-respecting housemaid would tolerate that level of scorn. A scorn that made my precious daughter think it was okay to keep so much of her life from me. Her thrill-seeking, death-defying life. Her own personal flyboy kind of life.

Talk about exciting—fast cars, motorcycles, airplanes, parachutes. An entire life kept secret from the tedious bore who does her laundry.

How could she? How could my little girl do this to me? It’s like all her life I’ve been saying the equivalent of be careful crossing the street and she decides to run out in traffic just to spite me. Sticking out her adolescent, know-it-all tongue as the bus runs her down.

Okay, I’m a thousand miles from home, sick with worry, but I’m also really and truly pissed at my own daughter. This is where I’m at, mentally and emotionally: I want to rescue the little bitch so I can kill her myself.

Which is, of course, insane.

“Anything new?” Shane asks, making me jump.

“I don’t get how a guy your size can sneak up on people,” I say.

“Squeakless sneakers,” he says.

“Squeakless sneakers?”

“Hard to find but worth their weight in gold.”

“I’m really really mad at her,” I confess.

His big hand brushes his bearded chin. “Of course you are. You’ve a right to be. We get her back, you can ground her for a year.”

“Fern says I should chain her to a radiator.”

Shane gives me an odd look, and then it hits me.

“Oh my God, I can’t believe I said that! That’s what kidnappers do, isn’t it? Chain the victims to radiators.”

“We’ll find her,” he assures me. “You have my pledge.”

I believe him. But he doesn’t say whether she’ll be dead or alive. My first impulse is to burst into tears for the twenty-third time, but my tear ducts are empty, and wanting to cry just makes my eyes itch.

“You have your cell phone?” he asks.

I nod.

“I want you to put me on speed dial,” he says. “I’ll set mine to vibrate and if you see any cops or security guards heading my way, you hit the dial.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Oh,” he says. “Sorry. Forgot you can’t read my mind. Manning has a local motor vehicle registered in his name. A big orange Hummer, which ought to be easy to find. I’ll enter the garage beneath his building, locate his vehicle, and leave him a little surprise.”

“Oh. What kind of surprise?”

He holds up a Baggie with something small and rectangular inside, looks like a black electrical switch.

“Am I supposed to guess?” I ask.

“Sorry. It’s a handy-dandy GPS tracking device.”

“Something you got from the FBI?”

“No, ma’am. This particular model is readily available online. Magnetic mounted, motion activated. So where Manning goes, we can follow.”

“Is that legal?”

“Absolutely not,” Shane says. “That’s why you’re keeping an eye out for the cops.”

10. What Needs To Be Done

Far below, the wet street glistens like black glass. Traffic lights gleam in electric jellybeans colors, cinnamon-red and spearmint-green. Amazing how a little rain can make a city look all shiny and clean, especially at night. Air smells fresher, too, although a faint aroma of tropical funk remains. Eau de rotting vegetation, or maybe it’s something deeper, something more malignant, released from beneath the fragile ground by marauding bulldozers, probing shovels, long-forgotten sins.

Morbid thoughts. I keep waiting for Shane to emerge, figuring he’ll have to cross the street to get to Manning’s condo building, but either the big guy has an invisible cloak or he’s got a different route in mind. Should I call, check that he’s okay? No, his instructions were very specific: buzz if the cops show. Most definitely he did not suggest that I call for a chat, or to make sure his cell is set on vibe rather than “Teen Spirit.”

I’ve seen that movie where the hero gets caught when his phone trills at exactly the wrong moment. Can’t let that happen. Randall Shane must be protected at all costs because he’s all I’ve got. The police in Long Island, the obnoxious FBI agent, they’re all just going through the motions, issuing bulletins and be-on-the-lookouts. The assumption being that yet another wild teenager has run off with her boyfriend. Big whoop, happens every day. Girls eventually come home or they don’t, it’s up to them, no matter what mom has to say on the subject.

And why exactly is this nonsense humming like a bad song in my brain, one of those stupid popzillas you can’t get out of your head? Because some tiny, miserable part of me worries that the worst may have happened. Okay, not quite the worst, not Kelly in a shallow grave, but Kelly involved in some sort of death-defying stunt, helping her flyboy hit up his dad for a few million bucks, just for the thrill of it. I’ll deny it to anyone who asks, Fern included, but the fact is that if circumstances are exactly wrong, if the temptation is too great, even so-called good kids like Kelly can suddenly go off the rails. Like all teenagers, she’s vulnerable to the impulsive, wouldn’t-it-be-cool riff that can lead, when things go bad, to prison or death.

When Kel started getting seriously mouthy, acting like a different person, I did a little Google search to see if childhood cancer had any long-term effects on behavior, maybe like post-traumatic stress disorder. Having cancer is certainly traumatic and stressful, right? Anyhow, that was my theory. Then I clicked on an article that had nothing to do with chemo or surviving cancer. It was a scary description of what physically happens to the human brain during adolescence. According to the article, the brain starts shedding synaptic connections at about age twelve to fourteen. Synaptic connections are what enable us to think rationally, to process information, so why is the teen brain getting rid of vital connections? Because it’s preparing for the next big growth spurt, which results in the formation of the deep neurological connections that enable adults to make reasoned decisions. The article compared the teen brain to a plant pruning itself so it will eventually grow stronger. For a couple of crucial years, the adolescent mind tends to react emotionally—and often inappropriately—because the rational connectors are still in the process of forming. Which explains lots of things, from slammed doors and hysterical tears to kids who play Russian roulette with sex or, God forbid, actual guns.

What makes me think my own darling daughter might be capable of making a really bad decision? A decision that changes her life, or maybe ends it? Because I’ve been there. I was that girl. There were no glamorous flyboys in my life, no billionaire dads, but even so I had managed to screw up so badly that two lives were put at risk. And all because I surrendered to a crazy impulse on a moonless night.

My dark secret, you see, really is about darkness. Not metaphorical darkness, but real, actual darkness. A darkness so complete that the sultry summer night made me think I was invisible, invulnerable. Like whatever happened in that darkness did not count. And yet, of course, it did, no matter how hard I tried to deny it at the time.

What happened that night all those years ago, in the secret darkness, still haunts me. Makes me think crazy, frantic thoughts. Makes me ashamed to imagine, for even a moment, that Kelly might behave as stupidly, as selfishly, as I had once behaved.

She’s better than me. Smarter than me. No way is she participating in some scatterbrained extortion scheme. Kelly didn’t come home because she can’t come home. She needs help. She needs her mother. Too bad her mother is weak and pathetic. Too bad her mother keeps falling apart.

“Mrs. Garner?”

Shane stepping out on the balcony, observing me with concern.

“It’s not ‘Mrs. Garner’!” I blubber. “I’m not married! I was never married! Garner is my maiden name, my father’s name.”

“Sorry,” he says. “I forgot. Why are you crying? Has something happened?”

Crying would be the polite description. Bawling my eyes out is more like it. Guess the tear ducts weren’t empty after all.

“She’s not me!” I blubber. “She’s better than me! She might run away, she might risk her own life, but Kelly would never, ever hurt another person! Not on purpose.”

Not sure how it happened, but I’m weeping into his big chest. Strong, gentle hands hold me tight but not too tight. I’m aware of the damp rain clinging to his close-cropped beard, and the newer dampness of my own tears.

“It’s okay,” he says, speaking in a craggy whisper. “It’ll be okay, I promise.”

I want, I want, I want—what do I want? Not sex, I’m wound way too tight for that, vibrating with the exclusive, overwhelming need to find Kelly. Plus the big guy isn’t really my type, not physically. Although that, I suppose, could change, given time and proximity. But no, the wanting is linked to something else, a deeper need, something that can’t be satisfied by sex. What I want is something I can’t even articulate. Father, brother, protector, friend, my own personal superhero, all these things and more, all of it balled up into a need so powerful that I cling to Randall Shane like he’s the last man in the universe.

Bless the guy, he seems to understand that all the frantic clinging and weeping isn’t about getting him into bed. His hands never stray, never explore, and somehow I know absolutely that he’d never take advantage of my emotional state.

Instead he lets me cry, allows me to sob my heart out until there’s nothing left but hanging on. After a while he gently disentangles himself, heads into the suite. He locates the well-stocked minibar and returns with a bottle of Perrier and a glass filled with ice cubes the size of fat diamonds.

“Drink,” he suggests. “You need the fluid.”

“I’m really, really sorry.”

“Don’t be. Never apologize for being a good mother.”

That sets me back for a moment. “How do you know I’m a good mother?”

He shrugs. “I just do. Care to share?”

“Share?”

“What set you off. Something that happened when you were Kelly’s age.”

“I said that?”

“You implied,” he responds.

My knees suddenly go wobbly—I’m a puppet with severed strings, looking for a place to collapse. Shane leads me to a plush leather sofa, remains standing. “We’ll get to this later,” he suggests. “Whenever you’re ready.”

“What about them?” I ask, indicating the condo tower that looms over the hotel. Wanting rather desperately to change the subject.

“Mission accomplished, more or less,” he says with a grin. “If the Hummer, moves, it will inform my laptop, and you in turn will inform me.”

He sits me in front of his computer, shows me the software. The screen frames a map of downtown Miami, and on it the location of the tracking device pulses like an orange gumdrop. Looks very much like the navigation screen on Fern’s Escalade, the one that tells her when she takes a wrong turn. The one she yells at.

“If the vehicle moves more than three feet, two things will happen,” Shane says. “The program will bong until you click on this button, okay? Then you’ll call me. If you can’t get hold of me, just sit tight. The program will track Manning, show us where he goes.”

“I’m supposed to call you? But where will you be?

He shrugs, avoiding my eyes. “I’ll be, um, otherwise occupied for the next few hours.”

At first I assume he’s going to try and get some sleep, maybe take a pill, but that’s not it. He has another mission, a mission he’s not willing to discuss.

“So you want me to share, but not you? That doesn’t seem fair.”

“Fairness is not a factor,” he informs me, crossing his long arms over his chest. “Over the next few days there will be things I need to do—actions that must be taken—which are not strictly legal.”

“Like planting a tracking device.”

“Like that,” he admits. “Some of these actions, it’s best you have no knowledge.”

“But I want to help.”

“You are helping,” he assures me. “But when two or more individuals engage in a criminal activity, that can result in conspiracy charges. Easier to prosecute and easier to prove than an individual action. We want to avoid legal jeopardy, if possible.”

“Criminal activity?” I ask. “Did you say ‘criminal activity’?”

“Break the law, you’re engaging in criminal activity. No point sugarcoating it.”

“What kind of criminal activity?” I ask.

“Best you have no knowledge. That’s the point.”

“Bad things?”

He smiles, shakes his head. “Not so bad. Not major felony. But if I happen to be in violation of a particular statute, it will be just me, do you understand?”

“Except for the GPS thing,” I point out. “I’m part of that conspiracy.”

“You are,” he concedes. “My apologies, but I can’t monitor the vehicle on my own. Not and do what needs to be done.”

“Okay,” I say, feeling completely spent. “You do your thing, I’ll do mine. Still want me to buzz you if the cops show up, or if Manning leaves the building?”

“Absolutely.”

A moment later he’s gone and I’m all alone. Just me, the binoculars, and a pulsing gumdrop on a computer screen.

11. Cherchez La Femme

Randall Shane finally has his Town Car. Not actually his own, of course, but hired from a car service. And because Shane will not put himself behind the wheel when he’s been awake for more than twenty-four hours, the car service has also supplied a driver.

“You get much work this time of night?” Shane asks, settling into the shotgun seat. Fully retracted and lowered, the seat accommodates his long legs without his knees bumping the glove box. Taking the front so he can keep a keen eye on the driver’s skills, which at first glance appear to be sufficient. No squealing tires, no herky-jerky braking action.

The driver, a middle-aged Haitian with velvety dark skin and delicate features, responds in formal, rhythmically accented English. “Oh, yessuh, plenty much work nighttime. The people, they go to the clubs and dance all night. They go to the beach and watch the sun come up. Maybe then I take them to the airport, they fly home to New York or Chicago or Los Angeles.”

“Rich people.”

“People with money, yessuh,” he says, gently correcting his passenger. “Rich people, you know, they have full-time chauffeur, S-Class Mercedes.”

Shane hadn’t really considered the distinction between rich people and people with money. But of course there is an important distinction. Taking himself as an example, he isn’t wealthy but he’s able to hire a car. Therefore he belongs to the category of people with money, in the form of a valid Visa card with sufficient credit. That’s all it takes. Not so long ago, within living memory, an average middle-class person wouldn’t dream of hiring a car and driver. Such luxuries were considered the province of millionaires. Nowadays the average lawyer or dentist is a millionaire, at least on paper. A typical school superintendent in a reasonably prosperous district might in retirement be worth a million dollars, if she bought the right house at the right time and invested in tax-deferred funds. On certain blocks in Manhattan, doormen are millionaires. Not doubt about it, billionaire is the new millionaire. Partly it’s a social construct, a mind-set, partly a weird inflation not entirely based on money. And yet money and the getting of money are still at the heart of it, making people behave in not always predictable ways.

Shane is thinking about money and wealth and what it all means because he doesn’t know exactly how Edwin Manning’s superwealthy status plays into the situation. Is it a straight abduction for ransom? Some sort of extortion scheme that may or may not involve Manning’s private hedge fund? A scam engineered from within the family, targeting dear old dad? What? Somehow he has to find an angle, the leverage to pry it all open and, hopefully, extract Kelly Garner alive.

Not an easy or a certain task. Despite the assurances he’s given to Mrs. Garner, Shane is keenly aware of the cruel statistics of abduction cases. If it’s a straight-up money deal there’s a high probability that the daughter has already been killed. Particularly if she just happened to be along for the ride. Why bother with the risk and trouble of keeping an extra victim alive if the target is Manning’s son? For that matter, the only reason to keep the son alive is to establish proof of life prior to a payoff. Making the payoff ends the need for proof of life, often with fatal consequences for the victim.

Shane likes the casino connection. If Seth Manning flew his father’s corporate plane to an airfield in the Glades—a theory yet to be proved—and Kelly Garner’s cell phone has been logged through a cell tower not far from tribal land—established as factual—then it stands to reason the tribe and/or casino is somehow involved, if only by proximity.

“You gamble?” Shane asks the driver.

The man shrugs. “Sometimes, you know, the lottery tickets.”

“Games? Slot machines?”

The driver laughs. “Put my money into a machine that will not give it back? No suh.”

“Folks love to gamble.”

“Many do,” the driver concedes. “Not me. Do you gamble, suh?”

“All the time. But not games or slot machines.”

“Champ de courses?” the driver wants to know. “Racetrack? Horses?”

“People,” Shane tells him.

“Ah,” says the driver, as if he’s been let in on a great joke. “Yessuh, very good.”

The car service required an itinerary, obviously. Shane had mentioned Naples, a two-hour drive straight west, across the top of the Everglades. He paid up front for six hours, with the credit card on record for any further charges. The driver, he has been assured, will remain with the car for however long Mr. Shane desires.

The way he figures, if it takes more than six hours it will mean he’s been shot or abducted, or both.

From Brickell they head out Calle Ocho, through Little Havana. Calle Ocho eventually morphs into 8th Street, widens, and then becomes U.S. 41. Same desolate area he and Mrs. Garner explored earlier, searching for cell towers. The main difference being that at night the road seems to exist all on its own. As if the endless, grassy horizon melts away with the setting sun. A mile or so beyond the junction with Krome Avenue, the last major intersection, he instructs the driver to turn north into what looks like the middle of nowhere.

“There’s a 7-Eleven I want to check out,” he explains. “Don’t worry, the road’s good.”

The driver’s glance reveals suspicion. “Is no 7-Eleven that way,” he says.

“Maybe it’s some other chain. Gas station slash convenience store, whatever. Two or three miles north, on the right. Do you mind?”

“Naples not that way, no, suh.”