“Yes, we’ll want to get it all safely stored in the panic room before they announce who wins the election.”
“Yes, sir. It goes pretty well. I go out in one of our boats and meet Camilo around the bend far out in the Bay. His boys load me up and I bring it in. The Secret Service agents don’t pay any attention to me. Then I bring it in slowly over the next couple of days before we make another run.”
“Has Emilia noticed anything?”
Gargrave rolled his eyes. Emilia Acevedo, Jack’s housekeeper, was not the smartest thing in the world and Gargrave couldn’t understand why Jack kept her on.
“Nothing, sir. She’s noticed nothing.”
Gargrave looked over Jack’s shoulder.
“It’s Carlos Rodriguez, sir.”
Jack turned to see Carlos, a recently appointed Secret Service agent and Jack’s childhood friend, walking across the green from Jack’s house.
“Right on time, Carlos,” Jack said as they hugged each other. “Still up for the poker game tonight?”
“Sure am, Jack.”
“How many days have you got off?”
“Just three.”
“Stay up here with me and Babe at my house if you like.”
“Maybe one night with you, but I gotta stay at my mom’s in Little Havana or she’ll bitch for a month,” Carlos smiled.
“I’ve got to run in to see my dad, so why don’t you meet me back at my house in twenty minutes. Babe’s coming over for a swim in a little while.”
“Sounds great. See you there.”
Carlos turned and headed back across the green.
“We’ll have to watch ourselves around Carlos, sir.”
“I know. Ever since he joined, I’ve kept my mouth shut around him. Don’t want to compromise his position.”
“Yes, sir.”
It was delicate being around one of his best friends who just happened to be a Secret Service agent. Rodriguez was assigned to the detail protecting Lydia Pearson, an ex-First Lady who lived in Tampa. Just as well he was almost always on the other side of the state.
Chapter 5
ALLIGATOR ALLEY
Aricela Oyebanjo pulled into a Shell station off Alligator Alley on her way back to Miami from Naples. She was thoroughly pissed off. She hadn’t had her Ford Escape for three months and it was already overheating. She was on the outskirts of Weston and had finished crossing through the Everglades, a trip she hated, but since Fernando Pozo insisted she expand their operations on Florida’s West Coast, she was making the trip over every week.
She’d passed two other gas stations that didn’t look like they had a mechanic until she came to the Shell station, which had two bays with cars waiting to be worked on.
She got out of the Escape but left it running and went to a grease-smeared gringo in a dirty set of overalls who wiped his hands on an equally greasy rag as he moved out of a bay and walked toward her.
“Help ya, ma’am?” he said, squinting in the bright December sunlight. She saw his expression change when he got a clearer look at the scar that ran across her face. She was used to the shocked looks of people repulsed by her ugly scar. It always caught them by surprise.
“Yes, thank you. My car—it’s brand new—and it’s overheating. What could it be?”
“Lemme have a lookee-see,” he said lazily.
He popped the hood and turned to her in less than ten seconds.
“Broken hose is all. Take me ten minutes to fix it.”
“Oh, thank you. That’s a big relief.”
“I think the clamp was too tight, ’cause this car is new and the hose oughta be just fine.”
Aricela didn’t give a damn about the details.
“I appreciate it. Please hurry. I’m late for a meeting in Miami Lakes.”
Gringo loser, she thought.
“I’ll get it done fast, ma’am.”
She went into the station and bought a can of Diet Coke with the single dollar she had in her pants pocket and watched the gringo from the inside where even though it was December, the a/c cranked.
While the gringo worked, Aricela went over in her mind how well things were going on the West Coast. They were rapidly expanding not only her chain of Cambio Xtra check-cashing outlets, using different names and various corporate covers, but Severo’s MediClínica outlets as well. They were well established in Naples, Estero, Fort Myers and Cape Coral. Aricela had very good feelings about the expansion north to Port Charlotte and Sarasota. They’d make a fortune for Cuba when they moved into the Tampa Bay area, working the cities of Clearwater and St. Petersburg with their large populations of aging seniors and crooked doctors and predatory nursing home operators, who, whether they knew it or not, were going to help Aricela and Severo fleece the U.S. government out of billions.
She smiled as she finished her can of Diet Coke. She reached up and touched the puffy ridges that ran along the length of her disfiguring blemish.
She remembered the horrific day she was attacked. She’d been taping the snout of a bait dog they were sacrificing to train a pit bull terrier she and Severo were preparing for an upcoming fight, but the bait dog, a Doberman with a bad leg, knew when she approached him with duct tape, what she was going to do. Once his snout was closed with the duct tape, the Doberman wouldn’t be able to defend itself against their prize pit bull, and the dog they were training would maul the Doberman to death.
But this is the way they trained their dogs. Many dogs had to die for a good dog to win a tough fight.
The sound of the tape as she pulled off a two-foot length as she leaned down toward him startled the Doberman and he lunged at her face. In one hand she held the roll of duct tape and in the
