him at a future date. He knew the stoner was a regular at some of the clubs that hosted the spring breakers, lived at home with his parents, and worked at Wendy’s.
But paying off the young man had virtually depleted his Ecstasy supply. So it was convenient that he found himself at this house. He was careful never to leave anything at his little apartment at the beach. He didn’t know if his landlord, Lester, ever peeked in the apartment. Since he had one room to himself here, he made use of the closet and had it packed with his stuff. Wedged up in the corner, up high where his nephew couldn’t reach it, was a Tupperware container that held his Ecstasy and a few other pills he’d acquired. He stood up on a stool and reached way back into the crowded closet and found the plastic container behind a bag of old T-shirts. He sat back on the bed and opened the container. He only had two Ecstasy tablets left.
That meant he’d have to visit his Ecstasy source very soon.
Tony Mazzetti had two anonymous tipsters that said the triple shooting he was investigating was done by a rival gang that sold meth on the outskirts of Jacksonville. The shooters were not only a gang, they were a white supremacist group called the Hess Party. The fact that someone called them something other than a street gang and associated them with a fringe group like racists meant that a special unit in the sheriff’s office probably had been keeping tabs on them over the years.
Now Mazzetti found himself in the third floor office of the intel unit, better known as the “rubber gun squad.” Members of the rubber gun squad didn’t have to make arrests or go to court to prove that they were working. They collected information on groups that most cops had no idea even existed. From radical Muslims who attended mosques in the area, to the few members of the Klan who rambled through North Florida, the intel squad knew what they were doing and what they intended to do. Groups like that always had informants moving in and out. They found that out the hard way about ten years ago, when it was discovered that sixteen of the eighteen attendees of a Klan rally were all informants of various state, federal, or local police agencies.
Mazzetti looked across the table at the stern and serious face of Lonnie Freed, a detective for the last nine years in the rubber gun squad. Mazzetti and Freed had worked as road patrolmen soon after he graduated from the academy. Freed had been wound too tight for the road, going by the book on every possible infraction. A ticket for speeding had to have an extra sheet just for his narrative details. He drove sergeants crazy with probable-cause affidavits that were six pages long. But he found a home here in intel, where they honored straitlaced, hardworking, meticulous cops who viewed every group from the B’nai Brith to the Taliban as a dangerous threat to U.S. national security.
Mazzetti said, “What about this Hess Party?”
The thin detective with the thick glasses spoke in a fast, clear tone. “The Hess Party is named after Rudolf Hess, the deputy Fuhrer under Hitler who fled to England during the war. He was also the last prisoner of Spandau Prison. He died at ninety-three in 1987. Hess was considered-”
Mazzetti had to cut him off. “Come on, Lonnie, get to the fucking point. Do you think these assholes that live right here in South Jacksonville are good for the shooting?”
Lonnie nodded his head. “Oh yeah, they’re badasses. They’re not even true racists. They use it as a marketing tool to scare people so they can sell more meth and make money.”
“Why would they shoot up a drug house on Market Street?”
“Like I said, they’re not crazy-it’s got to be a business matter. Maybe the Street Cred boys were trying to move in on the meth field. Or maybe they just owed them money. The Hess Party is not the kind of group to shoot someone just for running their mouths.”
“Would they be smart enough to use a spy shacked up across the street?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Because there was a white dude in the house across the street. But when I tried to talk to him he gave me the slip.”
“I hope they’re not that sophisticated.”
Then Mazzetti remembered the speckled pill marked J2A that he’d taken from the house and left on his desk. “Does the Hess Party ever deal in X?”
“Not that I’ve ever heard of.”
“Thanks, Lonnie, you were just as helpful as you used to be on the road.”
The intel detective grinned and said, “Sure, anytime, Tony.”
Mazzetti thought, What a dweeb.
It had taken Stallings fifteen minutes to convince Patty to take the evening off and have dinner with Tony Mazzetti. It wasn’t that he didn’t want her with him, but he didn’t want her to screw up her life like he already done to his own. Although having dinner with Tony Mazzetti seemed like a mistake in itself.
Stallings decided to go by the Wildside and see if Larry, the bartender, had any new information for him. He found the athletic bartender at the far end of the club, at a secondary bar that seemed to be more for VIPs than the general crowd. For a Monday night the place was on the loud side with groups of young college girls and hungry- looking fraternity nerds setting up camps at various places around the dance floor.
Larry gave him a broad smile and said, “Hello, Detective. What brings you around here?”
“Just wondering if anything was new on your end.”
The bartender shook his head. “I haven’t seen Donnie Eliot in here since last week.”
“He’s still in the can.”
“No shit? What for?”
“Possession.”
“So you don’t think he’s the one that gave a girl the X?”
“No, it doesn’t look like it. What about the other guys in the videos? Have you seen either of them?”
Larry shook his head. He reached in his shirt pocket and pulled out Stallings’s business card. “I told you I’d call if I saw them. The one cop hasn’t been back in here. Neither has the guy who gave me a big tip. I’d know them if I saw them again.”
“You guys been busy?”
“Spring break is winding down. About half the schools are back in session-that means about half our bartenders are gonna be laid off soon.”
“You won’t be asked to leave, will you? You’ve been here quite a while, right?” Stallings had noticed the other bartenders and staff all had T-shirts with the Wildside logo on them, but Larry wore a white, oxford button-down shirt. There were no logos, nothing to indicate he worked at the bar, and it had a collar.
“I work here in the season and then float around from time to time, but I think it’s gonna be my choice.”
Stallings said, “So you’ll still call me if you see any of the guys I’ve been looking for?”
Larry absently filled a glass from the Diet Coke fountain spigot and handed it to a busty waitress, who didn’t even notice Stallings. Larry looked behind Stallings, smiled, and said, “It looks like someone wants to talk to you.”
Stallings turned around, and for the first time in quite a while was truly surprised.
The voice said, “I bet we’re here for the same reason.”
Stallings’s stomach did a little flip.
Thirty-six
It was a little after six in the evening when Yvonne Zuni walked out the front door of the Police Memorial Building. She wanted to make it to the gym and then by her sister’s house before she even could think about eating. Her usual fast gait carried her through the lobby and down the stairs quickly until she heard someone call out, “Hey, Vonnie.” She turned to see who was calling her by her nickname. There was no one by the front door except one young man in jeans and a casual pullover. She paused for a second, then realized who stood there.
“Look what the cat dragged in,” she said as Gary Lauer stepped from the shadow of the pillar and walked toward her.
He smiled that charming smile of his and said, “Still the last one out of the bureau every night, huh?”
“There’s always plenty going on, and a good sergeant has to be on top of everything.” She checked him out from his perfect haircut, perfect ass, and perfect legs to his beat-up Top-Siders. She paused for just a second at the
