Dead of Night (36 page)

Professionals
...

It was the Russian woman charging me. The one who’d taken such pleasure in torturing Jobe Applebee. I got a flickering look at the short blond hair, the feral eyes, her skin glazed orange with industrial light. She had something in her hand. An aluminum flashlight?

It made no sense. Even if it were a gun, she couldn’t be planning to take me down all by herself.

The driver’s-side window of the blocker car was tinted; I could see a vague male shape at the wheel as the woman stopped abruptly a couple of yards away. As she lifted her hand toward me—
maybe it’s a weapon
—I reached for my cell phone, feeling for the keypad, hoping to hit the redial button, any number would do. I wanted there to be some record of what was happening here.

I tensed, expecting to hear a gunshot. Instead, a laser-bright light blinded me momentarily. From behind, two huge, hairy hands grabbed me from inside the van, one of them locked around my windpipe. I didn’t have a chance to bury my chin against my chest but managed to wedge a couple of fingers between my Adam’s apple and the man’s hand, hearing the woman whisper something harsh in Russian.

An instant later, my back muscles spasmed as if voltage charged when I felt a sickening, hypodermic pain—a needle had been driven deep into the side of my throat. I felt the gagging pain for several long seconds before the needle was removed.

More whispered Russian as I coughed and heaved reflexively, feeling woozy-headed, eyes blurring ... I was aware of a flooding weariness as my brain struggled to translate the grotesque images that gradually appeared before me.

The Russian woman, with her feral eyes, now had the skeletal face of a screaming death’s-head. Her partner appeared briefly, walking upright, then was liquefied and reassembled as an animal from a cartoon vision. He dropped to all fours, his body as thick and hairy as a lion, but with the leering, hairy head of a jackal.

“Walk, you clumsy idiot. If you make us carry you, we’ll let you die here.”

The screaming death’s-head spoke a whispered English, heavily accented.

I then stood for a moment, teetering on the edge of an expanding abyss—the trunk of a car was opening next to me, I realized. A third figure was now involved. A man with a plaid jacket, a Bronx accent, eyes smoldering with the stink of cigars.

I tried to say his name—Jimmy Heller—but the words exited my numb face as the blubbering sound of an invalid weeping.

“Tough guy,” I heard the squatty little detective say. “The way he handles himself—like his shit doesn’t stink. Listen to ’im now, crying like a baby.”

I watched, beginning to tilt earthward, as the checkered jacket became an animal’s spotted pelt, and smoldering eyes centered themselves on Heller’s pointed, yellow face—the face of a hyena. Then I was falling ... falling toward a dark concavity that had been the trunk of a car but was now a spinning coffin.

Felt the air go out of me. Felt an acidic welling that signals the need to vomit as the coffin lid slammed shut ...

Dasha had been thinking about it Friday morning when she’d found the address of Sanibel Biological Supply on the Internet, and used MapQuest to print directions. She was still excited; couldn’t wait to meet the man face-to-face.

She’d also printed Ford’s photograph.
Those eyes ...
thinking of the way he’d used a boat as a weapon added to the anticipation.

She had Broz drop them at Orlando International, where she used a counterfeit credit card to get another rental, a green Pontiac midsize, nondescript.

Aleski was with her, of course. Aleski, whose right eye was now swollen closed, ear blood-clotted beneath antibiotic salve.

Irritating. She’d have much preferred to make the trip alone, she and Ford, two operators meeting—that’s the way she pictured it—but there was no escaping Aleski. Like a dog, the way he followed her around. Lately, though, it was more like a guard dog.

Four hours later, they were driving over a causeway bridge onto Sanibel Island, mica-bright water beneath, the molten fire of a western sky familiar in a misplaced way.

An image formed in Dasha’s mind: the Foundry furnaces of Volstak blazing, doors wide, ghost men swinging shovels ...

Her mother had worked the factories at lunchtime. To Dasha, the heat from the furnaces felt like heaven. Her mother said they were doors that opened to hell.

“This is a pretty island. I like the way coconut trees look at sunset.”

Aleski’s first combination of sentences since they’d left Orlando. He sat there, his face looking as if he’d been beaten with a hammer, now suddenly the insightful romantic.

The images of furnaces and ghost men lingered. “Shut your stupid mouth. Concentrate on the job. I told you—this man, Ford, isn’t some typical American amateur. You can’t even defend yourself from a woman. And you’re wasting your time thinking about fruit trees?”

“Sorry, Dasha.” Aleski sniffed, obviously irritated, but still not done with it. Finally, he asked, “Coconuts are fruit?”

“Oh God...”

“I didn’t know that. But, if they are a fruit, why are they called ‘nuts’?”

“Enough!”

“I’m tired of you speaking to me as if I’m stupid! Fruit is
soft
on the outside. Nuts are
hard.”

Dasha couldn’t wait to park the car, get away from Aleski. Find a private room, take a long, sudsy shower. The stink of Mr. Earl seemed to cling—it had to be her imagination. But work came first.

The woman drove straight to Dinkin’s Bay because that was the professional thing to do. Check out the place; fix landmarks in her mind.

The first of several disappointments that night.

Following the map, Dasha turned right onto Tarpon Bay Road. Narrow shell lane, mangroves. Rounded a slow curve... then braked to a stop when they were confronted unexpectedly by a man in the process of locking the marina gate.

“Sorry, folks! Friday nights, we always close at sunset. Unless you got an invitation.”

A wide-bodied older man, white plantation hat, smoking a cigar.

Dasha had been so worried he’d get a close look at their faces, she had nearly skidded into the swamp in her rush to get away.

“It must be a very exclusive marina if customers are required to have invitations,” Aleski said as tires spun, shells flying. “Have you ever been on such a wealthy island?”

Fool.
“Shut up!”

Dasha didn’t get her shower, or a hotel. On west Gulf Drive, they’d stopped at Tradewinds, then Island Inn. Both desk clerks said the same: It was December 17, a week before Christmas, and every room on the island was booked.

Fuming, the woman parked the rental a few blocks from Dinkin’s Bay at a little shopping center—Bailey’s General Store, Island Cinema. Then she and Aleski walked to the marina gate, as if they were a couple out for an evening stroll.

All she wanted to do was eyeball Marion Ford’s home and lab; have a plan. Maybe get a look at the man himself. Decide if it was plausible to break in later, stick him with 10 ccs of Versed, and snatch him.

The Mossad profile was alluring in itself, but the photo had really hooked her.

Yes. Exactly the same. But had the photo lied? Photos often did.

There was a secret place within her where she hoped the photo was accurate.

Now, though, there was loud music playing beyond the marina gate, people dancing on docks silhouetted by holiday lights. Big party going on.

Dasha and Aleski returned an hour later. Then three hours later. Then at midnight.

Music was still booming.

Finally, nearly 3:00 A.M., Sanibel traffic had thinned enough for them to attempt to wrestle their way through the mangrove swamp that bypassed the fence and gate. Mosquitoes screamed in their ears; muck sucked at their shoes. The bay stank of rotting eggs. Awful.

“Duck! Stay down.”

Off to the right, there was an abrupt detonation of light. It transformed the mangrove leaves overhead from black to beige, erased stars. Blinding.

Dasha tensed as the light became a focused yellow conduit that panned along the mangrove fringe. It nearly found them once, swept away, but then returned quickly and found them again.

The light came from a house previously unseen, a structure built on stilts over water. The bright conduit swept back and forth, the timing unpredictable. It went off for seconds, sometimes minutes, before the blazing column began to probe again.

A lone figure up there on the porch, wide-shouldered, who knew how a search was done.

The unpredictable rhythm kept the Russians pinned for more than half an hour while mosquitoes drank their blood in the sulfur stink, and dropping December chill.

Back in the car, Aleski said, “I feel like I’m going to be sick. My eye’s infected, my ear’s infected. I don’t mind that rotten egg odor so much. But something in this car smells worse. What’s that terrible perfume old women wear?
Lavender.”

“Shut up! You
fool.
Shut your filthy mouth!”

Late the next morning, though, their luck changed. One of Dr. Stokes’s stooges tipped off Mr. Earl.

It was Hartman, the stooge, vice president in charge of environmental oversight.

Dr. Marion Ford was on his way to Kissimmee. He had called for an appointment; was returning to ask questions about Frieda Matthews’s death. It sounded like he planned to retrace the woman’s steps, Hartman said, and he claimed he had Applebee’s computer files.

“An interesting opportunity to introduce yourself to the man you were supposed to interview last night,” Mr. Earl told her, his contempt undisguised. “If you can manage to get back in time.”

 

 

At a little after 5:00 P.M., Saturday afternoon, when they were near Kissimmee, and only a few miles from the Bartram county line, Mr. Earl called again, his voice oddly formal. “Dr. Ford is on his way to the county hospital. I don’t know for certain, but a friend of his may be the victim of an unusual parasitic fish.”

“You’re not serious. A candiru?” Dasha’s vicious mood was instantly lightened. “Those fish were my idea. Wonderful! Did it actually climb into this man’s—”

“Yes,” Mr. Earl interrupted, “we’re trying to shed light on the matter now.”

He was in a room, people listening. Obvious.

Dasha thought he was joking about the fish, working some kind of angle, until he added, “One of our employees insists it’s true, and he doesn’t find it humorous. He came to me and demanded that I notify law enforcement. I’m sitting here with him right now. Dr. Jason Reynolds, Department of Environmental Oversight. And a detective from the sheriff’s department who just finished taking his statement.”

Dasha could guess the cop’s name: Jimmy Heller.

She was already driving faster, phone to her ear.

“Dr. Reynolds told Detective Heller some very disturbing things. About company employees taking part in a conspiracy to pollute the Everglades with exotic animals. Worms. Parasites? Snakes, too—but he’s only guessing about snakes.

“We may have a terrible scandal on our hands if we don’t take immediate steps. But Detective Heller and his department can only do so much.” Long pause. “That’s why we need our head of company security. The detective has agreed to turn the investigation over to our internal affairs department once you get here. Hopefully, that’ll be very soon.”

The woman understood. “You’re at the ranch? Twenty minutes.”

Mr. Earl said, “I’m so very glad you’re taking this seriously. If what Dr. Reynolds says is true, he’s going to need all our help and protection. Unfortunately, Dr. Reynolds has also confessed to taking part in the conspiracy, so we’ll need to assign him one of our corporate attorneys.”

Another message there: They had leverage on Reynolds if needed.

 

 

Located on the Tropicane acreage, several miles from the mansion, was a place known as the “Chicken Farm.” A dozen employees lived there—“multiple executive housing” was the classification, because the company couldn’t acknowledge that it was actually a commune. There was an organic garden, goats for milk, hens for eggs, a spring-fed pond where residents could swim naked, smoke dope, baptize themselves during sacred satanic rituals—Dasha didn’t know or care.

More than a year ago, she’d done a “security/safety assessment” at Mr. Earl’s insistence. It had to do with singling out problems that might cause Tropicane legal headaches down the road. She spent an afternoon at the Chicken Farm, the only time she visited the place.

She came back and said to Mr. Earl, “You got a bunch of overeducated American brats playing dress-up games, every one of them a lawsuit waiting to happen. My advice? Pour gasoline around the doors, wait until they’re stoned, then strike a match. Mass suicide—cult groups do that sometimes.”

That won Mr. Earl’s broadest grin. “I hear what you’re telling me.
Fire
them. Woman, you don’t need to tell me about spoiled white kids.”

They both had a good laugh. The man could be funny on occasion.

Her advice didn’t seem so extreme now, sitting alone in a locked room with Jason Reynolds, one of the overeducated American brats.
Doctor
Reynolds, he reminded her, when he got tired of playing his flaky, nice-guy role. Scraggly-haired with a goatee, wearing a silly tie-dyed T-shirt, sitting there with his scrawny arms telling her he was concerned for the environment, doing his humanitarian duty, that’s all. And didn’t appreciate being interrogated by a company security hack.