T. Lynn Ocean - Jersey Barnes 03 - Southern Peril (11 page)

The third member of the Divine Image Group, Michael, refilled wineglasses. Ordinarily the server would have hovered near enough to know exactly when the glasses were less than a quarter full. But earlier, the group had told Deanna they’d like privacy during their meal. “If you want to bring up today’s technology,” Michael said, “what about fiber samples and DNA matching and all that high-tech forensics garbage? Surely they’d have found something to tie us to the scene. For that matter, what about 911? If everybody had cell phones back then, one of us would have called for help right off the bat.”

“That might have been a good thing, if the cops came.” Jonathan’s chin arched up as he waited for the last of the Scotch to roll into his mouth. He spotted Deanna and motioned her with an empty lowball glass. “Maybe then we wouldn’t be in this mess.”

Leo scraped up the last flakes of salmon with a chunk of bread and stuffed the wad in his mouth. “Yeah, well, we wouldn’t be where we are, either. I rather like where I am. I like my Mercedes and my mountain house and the fact that my wife doesn’t have to work and my boy is going to Princeton and my girl will be going to Europe next summer with her senior class. If you want to start playing the weepy what-if game, take a minute to stop and think about how much we’ve given to this community.”

The table quieted when the men saw Deanna approach. She served a fresh Scotch, refilled water glasses, scraped crumbs from the table, cleared plates, disappeared.

“Whoopee,” Jonathan said. Thick and slurred, the single word traveled slowly through the thin wire in the ceiling. Morgan adjusted his earbud. “I listen to pampered people bitch about their lives and dole out antidepressants. And then you two give them new noses and suck out their fat. How …
meaningful.”

“What we give our patients is
confidence,
and don’t you ever forget that.” Leo’s finger went up. “And anyway, as far as giving back, I was talking about all the donations we make for good causes. New playground equipment at three parks. State-of-the-art kennels at the animal rescue. Landscaping around the low-income housing. The orthodontics program for needy kids. Shall I keep going?”

On the monitor, it looked like the boozed-up doctor shook his head no.

“He’s right, John,” Michael said. “You’re a good doctor, and you help your patients deal with their lives. And Leo and I are good cosmetic surgeons. We make our patients happy. The three of us do more for this community than any medical group I’m aware of.” He downed some water. “Besides, it’ll all be over soon. Another year and we can get out.”

Leo burped, wiped his mouth, drank some wine, shook his head as though confused. “I still can’t figure out how he found us. It’s never made any sense. How did he know it was us, and how did he track us down after all these years?”

“You sound like a damn broken record,” the shrink said. “How many times are you going to bring that up? How did he know? How did he find us? How did it happen? How, how, how?”

Leo’s head rolled back and to one side in a “whatever” gesture. “It’s a valid question. It was pitch black that night. Nobody saw us. The only two witnesses were dead. It doesn’t make sense.”

Jonathan sucked some Scotch and slammed the glass onto the table. Morgan jumped in his office chair.

“My ID card. It was my ID card, okay? My freakin’ student ID card.”

Michael’s voice dropped a few octaves. “What are you talking about, John?”

“The next day, after it happened? I couldn’t find my student ID. It was in my shirt pocket the night before, at the party. I know I had it. And I searched everywhere. Your car. The frat house. Our apartment. Everywhere.”

“Son of a bitch,” Leo said. “You were staggering drunk that night. You were bent over puking your guts out, you drank so much.”

“It must have fallen out of my pocket,” Jonathan said, sounding far away.

“He had to have been following that car, then, when we ran it off the road,” Leo said. “He saw the wreck and stopped, but we’d already gone.”

“Yes,” Jonathan agreed, as though he’d already been through the scenario a thousand times in his head. “He caught up with the car all right. The money was gone, but he found my ID.”

Riveted, Morgan held his breath.

“And he waited all these years to come after us,” Leo said. “Son of a bitch, John.”

The shrink swirled his melting ice, tried to get the remaining traces of liquor from them. “So sue me.
I’m
not the genius who took the duffel bag.”

Leo sighed, and the sound seemed to last forever in Morgan’s ear-bud. “Look,” Leo reasoned. “We’re all in this together. Another year, everything will be paid back. We’ll be done with this lunatic. We’ll get out and get on with our lives.”

Jonathan laughed, but it was an ugly sound. “If either one of you thinks it’s going to be that easy, you’re both idiots. He might not let us out.”

I held out
the pill to the pharmacist, the single light blue pill I’d found in Morgan’s office safe. The fellow seemed friendly enough, and the pharmacy chain’s advertisements boasted a caring, helpful staff. Maybe their TV commercials were true.

“I was hoping that you could identify this for me,” I said. “It has numbers there, on one side.”

“Is this one of your prescriptions?”

I gave him a story about my elderly father combining his prescriptions into a weekly pill dispenser box—I’d just spotted such a device hanging on a counter display—and explained that he’d thrown away the original prescription bottles.

“Are his prescriptions filled here?”

“Yes.” I figured it to be the right answer.

“I’d be happy to pull up his information and help you out,” the pharmacist said. “But your father will need to be here. The data on an individual is confidential.”

I argued that I didn’t want confidential information. I only needed a single pill identified. He spouted another roadblock answer.

“Your television commercials are completely wrong.” I snatched the tablet off the counter.

I found another drugstore two blocks away, one whose pharmacist was much more accommodating. She examined my pill, flipped through a reference book, and was back at the counter in less than five minutes. “It appears to be alprazolam, one milligram. Generic substitute for Xanax.”

“What’s that for?”

“Mostly anxiety or conditions of nervousness.”

I looked at the single pill. “Prescription only?”

“Absolutely,” she said. “It’s a controlled substance.”

“So this is something that people might abuse?”

She put the pill back in its plastic bag and handed it to me. “People can abuse pretty much any drug known, including over-the-counter stuff. Alprazolam is one that can be addictive, like painkillers.”

I chewed on that information as I drove to the Barnes Agency. Had Garland been dealing prescription drugs to restaurant customers before he died and storing his product in the small safe? If so, that could explain the list—they were his buyers. But the earless thug had mentioned the wife, and the list was in Rosemary’s handwriting. Rosemary passed away a year ago. Brad said the DEA had been working on his current case for more than a year. The time frame fit. But if Garland or Rosemary were selling dope, where had the drugs come from? I recalled the photo in Morgan’s office. Garland had the appearance of a man who could be into anything: name-brand silk shirt, smooth black skin, great smile, bushy eyebrows over mischievous eyes. An ex-athlete, college professor, banker, or crime lord. But Morgan’s mother looked like a well-kept, classy woman with warm eyes. Rosemary had one appearance, and it wasn’t that of a drug pusher.
Then again, I know as well as anybody that looks can be deceiving. During my days with SWEET, it was my job to deceive.

I thought again of the blue pill. It could have come from a valid prescription, written by the family physician. But who would keep a personal prescription inside a locked safe? Spud’s massive portfolio of drugs was kept in plain view, on the kitchen counter.

I pulled in to find the agency’s small lot packed with nine vehicles. Four belonged to Rita, JJ, Trish, and Andy. I didn’t recognize the others. I opened the front door to lots of happy chatter. And moaning. The latter sounds came from a woman sprawled facedown on Andy’s massage table. He worked on her lower back.

“Hiya, boss,” he said, glancing up. “You here for the party?”

“I retired, remember? I’m not the boss of anything. And I wasn’t aware of a party.”

Andy leaned back and made a face as though he’d been hit with a mean comment. My response probably had sounded petty, defensive. But it was true. Nobody had invited me. I felt left out and was reminded of how much I missed having Ox around. Probably I was a different person without him. Probably I was a downer to be around. No wonder they hadn’t told me about the party.

“Don’t mind her,” JJ said from behind a desk. Her feet were up and she sipped something from a champagne flute. Real glass. Probably real champagne. “All those shuffleboard games at the senior center have made her grouchy. Jersey hates to lose.”

“Ha, ha.” I scanned the front office to see several unfamiliar faces, all women, all smiles and gossip, as though they were at an Avon party.

“We’ve started having a little get-together every few weeks,” Rita said, and introduced the strangers to me. “We sample wines. We let Andy work his magic. Everyone gets fifteen minutes on the table.”

“Really.” Rita’s management style certainly differed from mine. On the other hand, billing hours had remained steady since I’d
turned over control. And my two partners certainly looked relaxed. Not stressed, considering the types of clients and assignments the agency takes on. Maybe the addition of Andy to our small team had been a good thing.

I eyed Trish. “Have you had your fifteen minutes of shame yet?”

She nodded, a circular sort of neck roll that resembled a dance move. “Just finished. He worked on my shoulders. I feel like rubber.”

“Okay, Gumby. Think you can focus long enough to discuss business? You know, that stuff you do called
contract work,
for which I pay you? The reason we are meeting here”—I checked my watch—“in five minutes?”

“You rarely ever pay me in actual cash,” Trish reminded me. “Personal use of the agency’s old clunker of a surveillance van is hardly monetary compensation. For that matter, it seems that every time I climb behind the wheel, the fuel gauge is sitting on empty. Hello? Have you looked at the gas prices lately? I’m actually
paying
to work for you each time I fill the tank.”

We moved into the blue room, out of earshot. I noticed the addition of new toys: a lightweight night vision scope, a wiretap detector, and a colorful sports watch. A pang of curiosity made my fingers twitch, and I picked up the watch. It was a videocamera. The stem to set the time was actually a miniature lens, and the square faceplate was the screen. I’d always loved checking out new gadgets and weapons. I supposed I still could, although it didn’t make much sense to be up-to-date on the latest covert camera equipment when I’d never use it in a practical application. It would be like learning to shift the gears of a race car, knowing I’d never drive on a real track. Pointless.

“Don’t take this the wrong way,” Trish prefaced, “but you’re like … really tense or something. Lighten up, will you?”

“I’m fine,” I said, but the barb hooked my subconscious and hung there, a seed that might sprout into something for me to think about
later. Any conclusions would probably have to do with Ox. Or rather the absence thereof.

Trish did the head roll thing again. “Here’s what I’ve got on your new DEA friend.”

Brad Logan had been with the DEA for eleven years, she said. After graduating college, he successfully sold high-end real estate before—in a strange new direction—he applied for a special agent opening and got in. He had a clean bust record. He worked well both solo and in teams. He was single when he went in, married a nursing supervisor, divorced six years later. One male child, eighteen, in his freshman year at UNC Charlotte. Brad owned a town house, rode a Harley, liked to surf. And he was most likely coming to the end of his undercover days.

Brad’s was a high-danger position. For that very reason, Trish said, field agents often get assigned to a different position after ten years. Or they retire and find a new career. If the formula held true for Brad, the current drug ring case he worked might be his last hurrah before changing career paths. For his sake, I hoped he’d go out with a win. For the judge’s sake, I hoped the DEA’s interest in Argo’s restaurant would quietly go away.

Trish cleared a space on a table and sat, feet swinging. “I think you’ve found yourself a basic DEA guy who also happens to be a hottie. No ulterior motives. No personal ties to Argo’s or Morgan’s family. Just a man doing a job.”

Thinking I should put a few chairs in the blue room, I copied Trish and slid my butt onto the opposite table. Although the Barnes Agency wasn’t typically a party pad. Meetings were normally held in the front main office. “I sure would like a few specifics on the case he’s working. Other restaurants, if there are any, names, types of drugs.”

“Then you’ll need to get it directly from Brad. Why not seduce him and then search his place?”

“That’s a thought.” Seducing him might be fun. And get my mind off Ox.

“Or use Soup.” Trish did an imitation of our friend Soup sitting at his electronic command center, like an orchestra conductor, blissfully happy in his element. “Soup could probably hack into their system and have a full report to you by tomorrow.”

“Sadly, Soup is in Amsterdam. Vacationing. Even the best hackers in the country need to cut loose and take a break once in a while.” Soup is an ex-fed who now worked for himself and, thankfully, represented only the good guys. I missed having Soup on call. I was missing Ox and Lindsey and, now, Soup. I needed to get a grip.

Trish shrugged. “Well then, that leaves the option of getting it directly from the source.”

“I sense that Brad is not one to leave stuff lying around. Probably doesn’t even keep anything to ID him at his place. In fact, if I were him, I’d have a second place somewhere. Rented with cash under a fake name. A personal safe house of sorts.”