Neither Eriq nor Samernow knew Naples well enough to fly straight for the scene, so they waited for Ford to appear at the door. Wired, he’d have gotten the same message where he waited undercover in the Blue Whale.
When Ford came racing out, he saw the men from Miami, and he immediately told them to follow him out toward the northern section of Naples along the waterfront.
They sped toward the scene of the apprehension, each man silently praying this was it: a final end to their shared nightmare and vigil. Over the radio, another call came through from Bear. He was shouting for medical assistance. “Suspect down! Apparent heart attack! Captain Ford, if you can hear me, bring medics with you! I repeat, we need medical assistance at the scene!”
The other restaurant was within twelve city blocks of where they’d come from. When they entered Bayfront Charlie’s, a waiter whisked them through the place and out the back and onto the dockside dining area, where Detective Steve Bear was alternately pounding on the suspect’s chest and administering mouth-to-mouth, but the man lying on the weathered deck flooring looked as stone-still and unresponsive as a mannequin.
“ Damnit, we’ve lost him before we had him!” Eriq cursed, rushing ahead of the others, going to his knees over the suspect. A young girl stood nearby, simpering and blowing her nose; her eyes wide with fear: she kept repeating, “Is he… is he… is he…” Santiva looked down at the blue-faced man below the dim light, knowing that he was dead, sensing it, and also sensing that he was not the Night Crawler. He put a hand on Bear and told him to back off, a bit more harshly than he’d meant to.
“ There’s no more you can do, Steve,” Ford assured his man.
Eriq then took a pulse and found none. Medics rushed in and confirmed Eriq’s quick diagnosis while Eriq and Mark Samernow tried to match the face with the sketch of the Night Crawler. It was close, very close, but there were significant differences. This man was older, for one, more wrinkled; heavily tanned, yes, but it appeared a cosmetic tan, the sort one purchased in a bottle or a salon. His hair was streaked with silver, blue under the lights here, and it was wavier than Patric Allain’s.
“ He… he just keeled over when we moved in to make the bust; just freaked,” said Bear, a burly man doubling as a waiter in a black-and-white penguin-style tux tonight.
Santiva went to the girl. “How well did you know him?”
“ I didn’t… I just met him.”
“ How did you meet him?”
“ He offered to… bought me drinks and dinner, and he… he propositioned me.”
“ Propositioned you?”
“ Said we could do it on his boat. It’s in the harbor. He offered me money. Nobody never did that before…”
Stupid child, he thought. “So you met him here, at the restaurant?’’
“ I was at the bar…”
“ Do you know which boat is his?”
“ No… we didn’t get that… far…”
“ Anybody here know which boat is… was his?” asked Samernow of the lingering crowd and other police officers.
“ He said it was the two-masted schooner at the other end.” said the girl. “Said it was his baby. Said he named it the Southern Cross, after the diamond, not the star. He laughed about it. Said he was a retired real estate broker and former naval officer. He seemed like a real nice gentleman, and then all of a sudden he’s being arrested, and then he grabbed his chest, and… well, now he’s dead…”
“ Checks out from his wallet,” said Samernow, rummaging through the dead man’s cards and photos.
“ Doesn’t quite appear to jive with our information on the Night Crawler-” began Eriq.
“ Night Crawler? This guy’s the Night Crawler?” begged the young lady.
“ We don’t know that,” Mark Samernow assured her, gesturing for her to keep her voice down. “Very likely no.” But it was already too late; by now everyone in the place was buzzing with two words: Night Crawler.
“ Our information on this creep is that he’s capable of disguise and sleight of hand as well as charm, so…” continued Eriq as he once again kneeled over the man, whom the wallet proclaimed to be a retired American naval officer named George V. Slaughter. Eriq placed his hands over the forehead and right cheek, checking for cosmetics, and finding none he yanked at the man’s mustache and hair. “Nothing false about this guy, except maybe his line.” Eriq had noticed a photo of a woman and three children as Mark had rifled through Slaughter’s wallet.
“ What next?” asked Ford.
“ We have a look at his boat. We have to be sure, one way or another.”
“ That might take a court order. Could take a while.”
Santiva pointed down at Slaughter. “He’s got no place to go. Get the search warrant. Meantime, we’ll see if we can’t locate next of kin.”
The young detective who made the collar had turned white by now. He shakily said, “You think… you think my nabbing him, you know, caused his heart attack?”
“ Most likely he has a history,” Ford assured his man. “Don’t go punishing yourself, son. Wait here for IAD and-”
“ IAD?”
“ Internal Affairs’s is going to want to talk to you briefly. Just state the facts as you know them, Bear.”
“ Yes, sir.”
Naples wasn’t exactly a small town, but Eriq found that the police captain and his men had a small-town cohesive- ness which was charming and rare.
“ What about the girl?” Samernow asked Eriq.
“ Send her home for now, but get all her vitals.”
“ Gotcha.”
“ Meanwhile, I’m going to get a bite to eat here and sit on this boat while Captain Ford or one of our local guys gets us that warrant. Federal warrant might carry more weight…”
“ But you don’t think this guy’s our man, do you?”
Santiva shook his head. “No, no, I don’t. Not even in the ballpark.”
“ Then why’re we bothering?”
“ Protocol dictates. We’ve come this far. People here know we’re after the Night Crawler. This is going to be all over the news in an hour. We have to see if we can pluck some phoenix from these ashes, even if it’s a speeding ticket or boating violation. Hell, in a sense we have to cover our asses; this could blow up in our faces, like the police counterpart of a medical malpractice suit. A guy may’ve died as a direct result of our stakeout.”
Samernow nodded, understanding. “You think the guy’s family might sue the city or the FBI, or both?”
“ Nowadays? Who knows-all of the above, including you and me, Mark.”
“ Yeah, right. People’ve tried to sue for a hell of a lot less.”
Santiva went to the bar and ordered a whiskey sour, wanting to see what Jessica Coran liked about them. He wondered how she had fared in Key Largo and Metacumbe, wondered why she hadn’t been in contact, wondered where she was at this moment. When the bartender returned with his drink, he ordered a ham and swiss on rye with fries.
He found himself missing Jessica, missing her company, their partnership and camaraderie. Being apart from her now these several days, he realized just how important to him their friendship was, how much he valued her trust and respect. He admired the way she had barged in with regard to the investigation, and even her attitude toward the release of information which she believed vital to the well-being of others. It showed she had courage and heart, a brave heart. She had shown such backbone, that one…
Around him people buzzed; Ford was trying desperately to keep a lid on things, guiding IAD officers through the maze of what had happened here, and how it had happened, finally leading them to a still shaken Detective Bear. Ford seemed a good man, a solid cop.
Once more Eriq’s thoughts floated away to where Jessica might be. He might easily have taken a hard-nosed approach with her for having released information to the press without his express consent, but he hadn’t, for the simple reason that he had secretly agreed with her move. If the damned agency and the damned politicians would let him do his job, if they’d stop roping his hands behind his back, he most assuredly would have released everything they had on the Night Crawler himself the night Jessica had done so. Maybe then she’d see him in a
