people here at this hour of the night, maybe the car is here.”
“Quite an imagination, James.”
He shot me a look. “You got a better idea?”
We walked down between the two buildings, about fifteen feet apart. The yellow forklift was parked close to the outside wall. It was old and beat up, the yellow paint chipped and faded, and the fork tines themselves looked worn and shiny.
“There.” James walked up to the building. “A door, right here.” He was whispering. “And right over here, a door on the other building. I knew I saw something. Someone went from one building to the other.”
We looked at each other. It meant nothing.
“Ah, fuck it. I thought maybe-” He drifted off. I started back to the Jeep.
“Skip!” A loud, course whisper. James was pointing wildly, beyond the forklift.
I walked back and followed him. Seven car lengths from the forklift the dark sedan sat against the wall, passenger side out. The dark blue paint was scratched to the bare metal, and swatches of white streaked across the surface. The top of the car was severely dented and the windshield had a crack from top to bottom. It appeared that in the battle of the box truck versus the Buick, the truck had won.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
T HE CUBANS’ BUICK sat there in plain sight and a line from The Pit and the Pendulum came to mind.
A fearful idea now suddenly drove the blood in torrents upon my heart, and for a brief period, I once more relapsed into insensibility.
There. I’d like to see James, Angel, or Em identify that line. But it was true. I lost all sensibility and felt my heart beating about triple speed.
James rubbed his fingers over the white scratches. “Sons of bitches.”
Angel smiled and in a hoarse whisper said, “I recognize the car. The Cubans with the gun. So,” he looked around, “the white car must be in one of these buildings.”
“And what are we supposed to do? Just open the doors and see for ourselves?” This Hardy Boy fantasy was getting the best of me. Actually, the idea of looking inside didn’t sound bad.
No one answered.
“All right, we came to find Victor. If it wasn’t his body in the burned-out building, my guess is he’s inside one of these. I suggest we sit in the Jeep and wait. For maybe an hour. Let’s see if there’s any activity. It’s almost midnight. Let’s give it till one o’clock.”
We walked back to the Jeep and Angel parked it in the next lot. From there we could see the two metal buildings and just get a glimpse of the space between them. If the Buick or the Lexus left, it had to drive out the front.
We waited. Three amateur sleuths not knowing what we’d do if we found our evidence. The biggest fear was thinking we might not find it. We were silent for ten minutes. Across the street on the river was a beat-up ocean trawler, probably loaded with bicycles and used automobiles, ready to head down to South America, while up ahead was the gleaming tower that is the Four Seasons Hotel. Construction cranes sprouted up everywhere around the skyline, rising into the black sky like shadowy robots. Em called Miami “Crane Town.”
“I may be sick again tomorrow, pal.”
I laughed. “James, you pull it off better than I do. I try to sound sick and I come off like a bad actor in a high school play.”
“You were in the senior play, pardner. And if I remember, you weren’t convincing at all. Lieutenant Cable in South Pacific, right?”
“How about you, Angel?” I decided to probe.
“What? Was I in a high school play?”
“No. Do you work? Have a job?”
He didn’t answer.
We spent three or four minutes in embarrassing silence, the stifling heat and lack of a breeze closing in on us.
“Maybe we should call Fuentes,” James said. “We could ask him for some overtime.”
I thought about calling Emily. I needed to tell her that she didn’t need to go through this alone. So I was immature, I didn’t have a future, and hung around with questionable characters, but it didn’t make me a bad person. Deep inside you know who you are, you know what kind of a person you are or what you expect to become. I was going to be successful. Wildly successful. It just wasn’t something that I’d figured out yet. I don’t know if it’s age or experience that eventually gets you to that point in your life, but I knew, and I know now, that I will be successful. And in the back of my mind I believed I could be a good father. I would be a good father. No question.
“Self-employed.”
“What?” I’d been lost in thought.
“You asked what I did.” Angel reached for the binoculars, took them from their case, and trained them on the buildings.
Another ten minutes went by and I wiped the perspiration from my eyes.
“I wasn’t that bad an actor. Hell, I got an award for outstanding senior in the school play.”
“Yeah. However, if I remember, Heidi Moose was the only other senior who had a lead and her rendition of Bloody Mary was abysmal at best.”
“Abysmal?”
“She sucked.”
I checked my watch. If we left at one, were in bed by two, I could get about five hours of sleep.
I could deal with that. I had to hang on to the security sales job. At least till the next best thing came along or until I was wildly successful.
“James, if you call in sick-you’ll still have a job?”
“Shit. Lindsey isn’t going to fire me. The last time I was with her she told me I was the best thing that ever happened to her.”
“You and Lindsey?’
He shrugged his shoulders. “Something to pass the time, Skip.”
“Someone just stepped outside.”
Angel handed me the glasses. I strained to see in the dim light. I could make out a man carrying a briefcase. He stood by the forklift, looking around. Instinctively, I slid lower in my seat.
“What?” James leaned forward. I handed him the binoculars.
“Probably one of the men who picked up the mail.”
“I say we call Fuentes and let him come down here and check it out.” James didn’t sound as confident as he should have. “Really, Skip. Tell him we found the place and let’s get out of here.”
“You forget one thing, James. Fuentes told us to drop off the envelope and leave the entire thing alone. He was adamant about that.”
“Shit.”
A heavy cloudbank broke and for just a moment the moon lit up the area like daylight. I could see the guy with the briefcase motioning to someone inside the doorway and a second later the ribbed steel door in front of the building groaned and started rolling up. I reached back and retrieved the binoculars.
“That is one huge overhead door.” It was sliding up, exposing a massive opening. Now the clouds covered the moon, but lights burned inside and the glow spilled into the parking lot. I could see the white Lexus on the concrete floor, headlights on, ready to leave the building.
“What’s stacked up in there?” James pointed toward the opening.
I concentrated but could only tell they looked like wooden crates. “Boxes.”
Angel took the glasses and looked at the scene for a minute. Three men were standing around the car having an animated conversation. With our windows down we could hear voices but nothing specific.
