“I guess they haven’t got back yet,” Downey said. “I don’t know if that’s good or bad. If they didn’t bring him, we’ll hang them up by their feet and shake it out of them.”
A rig turned in from the highway a few minutes later, a pickup pulling a house trailer.
“Let’s get parked,” Downey said. “A pickup-that could be them.”
They were motionless, and consequently, Downey hoped, fairly invisible, when the pickup and trailer combination lumbered on in. There were two men in the cab, one with red hair. They turned into a different street, moving almost to the end of the line before dropping the trailer. Then, instead of parking there, they returned to the berth that had been rented by Benjamin and Vaughan.
“Our guys,” Downey said. “If Canada’s in that trailer, this is going to be easy.”
“If,” Werner said from the back seat, his first word in some time.
In Homestead and along the county roads to the south and east, the fiddlers and pickers had put their instruments away for the night. The last drinkers were returning to the park for a few hours sleep before stumbling off to another day in the fields and on the machines. When Shayne saw the pickup and trailer come in from the highway, he shook Rourke awake.
“Mike?” Rourke said, sitting up. “Went to sleep for a minute. Did you say something?”
“They’re back with the stuff Soupy sold them. Do you remember what we’re doing out here?”
“I think so,” Rourke said, scratching. “We’re after the guys who were trying to snatch Canada, only you and Frieda snatched him instead. And they think you’re really two other guys-wait, I’ll get it in a minute.”
“That’s close enough. The two other guys who have the rip-off concession at the site, and here they come.”
“Except that Canada-”
“Is here with us, sound asleep, instead of in the trailer where the kidnappers think he is. You’ve got it. Can you stay awake?”
“If that’s coffee I smell.”
“Just made,” Frieda said.
“Mike, tell me again what you want me to do, so I’ll be sure I have it straight.”
“You’re the back-up man. Frieda and I are going to be in the trailer. We’ll set it up to fit the story. If I’m wrong about all this, or if I’m right and they don’t fall for it, or if something happens to scare them off, we’ll waste the night. On the other hand, if it works, it ought to work all the way. They’ll come in one at a time, and we can handle up to three. If you see more than three, let’s get some cops. Don’t go back to sleep.”
“Have I ever gone to sleep when I was supposed to stay awake? Well, once or twice maybe, but never in anything this important.”
Keeping low, Shayne and Frieda zigzagged cautiously across the chessboard of parked cars. She had pulled on a loose sweater, which hid the shoulder holster. She still wore her perky fisherman’s cap. Shayne worked on the door with his picking equipment and small light. When he had it open, she joined him inside.
The huge payloader wheel occupied much of the floor-to-ceiling space in the main room. The rest of the loot from the Homestead robbery had been neatly stowed in closets and under beds. Using only the pencil flash and being careful with that, they set the scene. Frieda had brought a sleeping bag from the van. They stuffed it with pillows to give the illusion of Canada’s bulk and roped it to one of the beds. Shayne raised the blind in that bedroom just enough so someone outside could look in and see something on the bed that looked like the prisoner, doped up and helpless.
Then they settled down for the wait.
After the first letdown, which had lasted a couple of hours, Downey was feeling lucky again. He liked it when he followed a hunch and the hunch paid off. He had interpreted that scene at the construction site with a professional eye. He had gone straight to the one man in Miami who could tell him what he wanted to know, the identity of the officially sanctioned thieves. He was now one hundred percent certain that Larry Canada, with a million-dollar price tag tied to his big toe, was parked inside that trailer, a valuable piece of property waiting to be hijacked back. He had to be there. No other possibility fitted the facts. But because the two people in his party were still somewhat skeptical, he made one final reconnaissance. The amateurs they were up against had made a typically amateurish mistake, leaving one of the slatted blinds in the trailer only partially drawn. He looked in carefully. It was Canada, all right, zipped up in a mummy bag. Those contours were unmistakable.
Now there were various ways they could do this. Using the outside booth near the office, he called the nearest barracks, who wanted to know who was calling so they could write it down. He told them to forget that, he didn’t want to end up in the bay with his feet in concrete. What he had for them was this. Certain people at the Leisure City trailer park had picked up a shipment of high-quality Venezuelan brown in Key West. They had already disposed of much of it, but there was enough left to make a nice seizure for somebody. If they were willing to invest the time, he was willing to give them names and the license plate of their camper because he had been stiffed out of his share of what should have been a lucrative deal.
Earlier, Downey had drawn on his personal cache for the negotiation with Simpson. He had a horror of the stuff personally, but sometimes it was the only way to get information. He had another three ounces in a manila envelope in his car. Benjamin and Vaughan had left the pickup unlocked. Downey sneaked past and stuck the manila envelope on the floor under the front seat, the first place a cop looks when he is searching a vehicle.
They left DeLuca in Miami. Greco didn’t expect a man like DeLuca to involve himself on the point-and-shoot level, but considering that they were strangers in town, it would have been helpful to come along and make sure they were going the right way on the Interstate. The arrows got confusing as hell out by the airport, and Greco wasted an hour before he could get himself straightened out. Nick slept through it all. He was in a terrible mood when he woke up, depressed and paranoid, and Greco had to give him a real locker-room talk-don’t let your friends down, so on and so forth-and tell him how easy it was going to be. It had to be easy, in fact, or they would go back to the girls, and tell DeLuca they hadn’t been able to find the fat man.
According to DeLuca, Canada had been kidnapped, not by professionals who knew what they were doing, but by a couple of two-bit boppers. Their target would be immobilized, without bodyguards, pinpointed, an easy knock- over. It would seem that the kidnappers had killed him, and there would be less heat. Canada’s loyal followers wouldn’t be thinking in terms of revenge, and the transition would go smoothly. There would be rumors that DeLuca had masterminded it, but that was O.K. It would show he was capable of using his head. If he saw a chance of avoiding trouble for himself and his people, he took it.
Greco was used to parking lots, but this one, plunked down in the middle of unfriendly countryside, was ridiculous. He thought at first it was going to be like looking for one particular car at Shea Stadium during a Mets double-header, in short, impossible. They were looking for a white pickup with a camper body over the cab. It turned out that there weren’t too many of those. They drove up and down the streets until they found it. Now what to do? As far as he could tell, only one road connected the parked trailers with the highway. That could be blocked by a single car. Whenever Greco went into a restaurant, he looked around for the exits before sitting down because he wanted to have a choice of directions. He decided there was only one thing to do here-leave the car on the highway and walk in. He drove back, found a grassy place where he could pull over, then raised the hood when he left, to indicate engine trouble in case anyone wondered.
Nick didn’t like it. His platform shoes were designed for walking across carpets, not ground. Greco explained it: if they got caught in there, with their car on the wrong side of a barricade, they were in trouble. There were no subway stations in this part of the world. They needed wheels.
Nick continued to grumble. He tried walking in stocking feet. That wasn’t much better. Strange noises came from the vegetation. He was hobbling badly by the time they came in. Greco immediately saw one defect in his plan. In here, nobody walked. On their own two feet, they stood out, especially in their Miami Beach clothes. So he picked up a gas can from beside one of the dark trailers. Now if anybody saw them, they were going for gas.
“I didn’t think it would be like this,” Nick complained.
Neither had Greco. Having lived his whole life in a city, he would have preferred a city location. To date, he had killed two people. The first time, he had been angry. The guy had lied to him and tricked him, and he deserved what he got. Greco was surprised at how little it affected him. He had thought it would be more of a high. The next time, he was driven to a bar in the South Bronx. His man didn’t know him, but he saw something in Greco’s manner.
