“I’d say there’s, oh, fifty thousand dollars in here. What would you say?”
Jackie wasn’t saying anything at the moment. They knew how much was in the envelope. Without counting it.
Tyler said, “This is your money?”
Jackie said, “If I were to tell you, no, it isn’t . . .”
She saw Tyler start to grin.
“That I was supposed to wait in the cafeteria and a man I don’t know would come by and pick it up . . .” Without looking at the other one she knew he was grinning too. It made her mad. “And I saw you cowboys looking at T-shirts and thought one of you might be the person . . . Listen, if it’s yours, take it.” She glanced at Nicolet.
He was grinning. Both of them having fun.
Tyler said, “You should know if you bring in anything over ten thousand you have to declare it. You forgot or what? You could get a two-hundred-and-fifty-thousand-dollar fine and two years in prison. You want to talk to us about it, or you want to talk to Customs?”
Jackie said, “I’m not saying another fucking word.”
Mad. At these guys, their attitude, and at herself for being so dumb.
Nicolet said to Tyler, “You tried,” and put his hand on her shoulder. He said, “Those Customs guys, all day they see people coming back from their vacations, trips to Europe, the Caribbean, while they have to sit there working. You can understand it makes them hard to get along with. You want to talk to them or a couple of good- natured guys like us? Someplace quiet we can sit down and take it easy.”
“I don’t have to talk to anybody,” Jackie said.
“No, you don’t,” Nicolet said. “But would you extend us the courtesy of listening to what we have to say? Help you get this straightened out?”
Florida Department of Law Enforcement was on the eighth floor of a glassy gray-blue building on Centrepark Boulevard in West Palm. They were in an office Faron Tyler shared with another agent, gone for the day: two clean desks, a wide expanse of windows looking east, a calendar on the wall, and a sign that read: “Bad planning on your part does not automatically constitute an emergency on my part.”
Jackie Burke thought it might be true, but so what? She stood at the windows. With a slight turn of her head to the left she could see Ray Nicolet’s legs extending toward her, his cowboy boots resting on the corner of the desk. He said, “You see that canal right below us? I was up here one time, I saw an osprey circle around, dive down there, and pick up a bass, a pretty good-size one. Faron, you remember that?”
“Last summer.”
Faron Tyler was somewhere behind her.
She heard Nicolet say, “It’s starting to get dark, huh? Rush-hour traffic on the freeway picking up, everybody going home . . .”
“I want a lawyer,” Jackie said. She got her cigarettes out of the shoulder bag, feeling only about four or five left in the pack. She wondered if she should save them.
But then Tyler’s voice said, “There’s no smoking here.”
So Jackie lit the cigarette, using the tan Bic that matched her uniform, and dropped it back in the bag. Without looking at Tyler she said, “Arrest me.”
“It can happen,” Tyler said. His voice closer this time. “Or we can work out what’s called a Substantial Assistance Agreement. That’s if you’re willing to cooperate, tell us who gave you the money and who you’re giving it to.”
There was a silence.
It was a game to them. Nicolet playing the good guy, out of character but having fun. Tyler, though, came off as a decent guy and wasn’t too convincing as the heavy. Jackie was fairly sure they didn’t want to charge her. Cooperate, name a few names, and they’d give her a break. About all she could do was try keeping her mouth shut. Maybe send out for cigarettes.
When Nicolet said, “You have a good lawyer?” she didn’t answer.
“Can she afford a good one,” Tyler’s voice said, “is the question.”
He had a point.
“Otherwise she’ll be in the Stockade three weeks, easy, before a public defender gets around to her. In there with all those bad girls . . . I don’t know, maybe they pay her enough she can afford a high-priced defense.”
“Jackie, you have an apartment in Palm Beach Gardens?” Nicolet said, the ATF agent getting into it now. “That’s a pretty nice neighborhood.”
“Considering,” Tyler said, “she works for a little shuttle airline.”
There was a silence again, Jackie looking at downtown West Palm Beach in the distance, the sky still blue but fading. She heard a drawer open. Nicolet said, “Here,” offering her an ashtray. “I brought this myself, to have when I visit, and I used to smoke.” The good guy again, saying now, “That parking lot you see right there? Behind the hotel? You can sit here and watch drug deals go down. By the time you get over there everybody’s split.”
Jackie placed the ashtray on the windowsill. “Is that what you think I’m into?”
Behind her, Tyler said, “I notice you have a prior. Wasn’t that about drugs?”
“I was carrying money.”
“Four years ago,” Tyler said. “With another airline then and they fired you. But you didn’t answer my question. Wasn’t it money for a drug payoff? Taking it out of the country?”
“I think,” Nicolet said, “Jackie was carrying it for one of the pilots. Guy that happened to be her husband at the time. They found her guilty of conspiring . . .”
“I entered a plea,” Jackie said.
“You mean they offered you a deal and you grabbed it. A year’s probation and your hubby drew five to ten. He must be out by now.”
“I think so,” Jackie said.
“That’s right, you got a divorce. You remarried—what about your present husband?”
“He died last year.”
“You go through ’em,” Nicolet said. “What kind of work did he do?”
“He drank,” Jackie said.
They let it go and she heard Tyler’s voice say, “Now you’re in a different kind of business, coming the other way with a payoff, selling instead of buying. Wasn’t this money given to you by a Bahamian named Walker? I believe it’s Cedric Walker. Lives in Freeport?”
Jackie didn’t answer, watching her reflection in the glass raise the cigarette.
“Name doesn’t ring a bell? How about a guy named Beaumont Livingston?”
Beaumont—she had met him only once, with Mr. Walker. No, she had
met him; but made up her mind not to say anything.
“You don’t know Beaumont?”
Not a word—staring through her reflection at a dark strip on the horizon she believed was the ocean.
“He knows you,” Nicolet said. “Beaumont’s Jamaican. That is, he was. Beaumont ain’t no more.”
Jackie could feel them waiting. She didn’t move.
“He used to fly over to Freeport a couple of times a month,” Nicolet said. “Maybe you’d recognize him. Faron, we could arrange for Ms. Burke to look at the body, couldn’t we?”
Tyler’s voice said, “No problem.”
She turned her head enough to see Ray Nicolet reaching into his cowboy boot, the left one crossed over the right. He drew out a snub-nosed revolver, laid it on the desk, and slipped his hand into the boot again to rub his ankle.
He said, “They found Beaumont yesterday morning in the trunk of a car, a brand-new Olds registered to a guy in Ocean Ridge. He’d reported it stolen. I had a chance to speak to Beaumont just the day before, about his future. He was in jail at the time, not too sure he wanted to do ten years.” There was a pause before Nicolet said, “Beaumont was bonded out and got popped before I could talk to him again.” There was another pause. Nicolet said, “You may not know Beaumont, but what if
the guy who popped him knows you?”
There was a silence.
