“Yes. I hate to admit it. It goes against my reputation as a slimeball.”
As charming as he appeared, there was no proof that any of what he said was the truth.
“Daron, I asked you twice. This is the third time. Why did they want to kill him?”
“The truth?”
“No,” I said. “Lie to us.”
He was quiet for a good thirty seconds. I thought maybe he’d fallen asleep on the ground, but then I saw the ember at the end of his cigarette glowing brightly.
“I don’t know for sure.”
“An educated guess, Daron. Come on.” Em was her sarcastic self.
“You’ve called me a liar all night long. You questioned the computer files, you questioned the FBI reference, you questioned why I was hauled out of the trailer, and you accused me of taking money from a dead man, even though I never once told you that. Why should I tell you my thoughts on Michael Bland or anything else about this traveling sideshow? Why?”
“Because my best friend may be in the same situation. Because James is missing and I want to figure out who is behind this. Why did they want to kill Michael Bland?” I needed to know. Desperately.
“Because they thought he was a plant.”
“Jesus.”
“Was he?” Em had kneeled down, almost on eye level with Styles.
“He might have been.”
“What makes you think so?” I couldn’t wait for this answer.
Styles tossed the cigar away and I could hear it hiss as it hit the damp grass. “Remember I told you that someone, maybe from a government agency, told me to leave and not associate with these bozos? Someone who knew I was in Washington? You remember I told you someone gave me a warning?”
I remembered. Another story in a long line of questionable crap from Daron Styles.
“Well, Bland was the one. Warned me. Wouldn’t say any more than that. Told me I could be a suspect in a murder.”
“He knew you’d been in Washington? The same summer that the senator was shot?”
“There was a brief mention of it. Like, ‘look, I know you were in D.C. when Fred Long was murdered. These guys here know it too. You could be a suspect.’ ”
“And what does all that mean?”
“I don’t know, Skipper, but it happened. And then he gave me a phone number to call if anything happened to him.”
“So? It could have been the phone number of his mother? Maybe his sister? Ex wife?”
“No.”
“How do you know?”
“I called it.”
“And?”
“They answered ‘FBI. Miami.’ ”
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
W e were juniors at Samuel and Davidson University in Miami when the FBI appeared on our campus. Twice. The first time, we heard about it through a friend in the business school. Some crazy freshman sent an e-mail to the White House, saying he wished the president would die in office. And he sent it out over the network at Sam and Dave U. I doubt if there was much investigation, other than why the kid was that stupid. They found him in about two hours.
Two suits drove onto campus, went directly to the kid’s dorm room, arrested him, picked up his computer as evidence, and no one at the university ever saw him again. I don’t know if they charged him or let him off with a warning, but as far as I can tell he never came back to Sam and Dave. James’s theory is that the kid is in solitary confinement at a secret prison a mile underneath Washington D.C. I just hoped that James wasn’t joining him.
The second time the FBI showed up, it was in the form of a semiattractive woman recruiter. She had blond hair, kind of swept up, and she set up at a job fair and I picked up a brochure. I talked to her for a while but I think they were looking for someone with a lot better grade point average, and probably someone with a little more motivation. I just thought it would be cool to have a job where you wore a suit and a shoulder holster. They wanted someone with a business and accounting background. It never would have worked.
I guess I shared a healthy, or unhealthy, fear of cops and officers of the law, just like James, even if they used attractive women as recruiters. I’d seen what they could do. So I figured that if the FBI was really tailing Em, if they really did have a plant on the park grounds, and if Thomas LeRoy really thought that James and I were plants, things were pretty serious. I was even more worried about James. As far as I knew James was on the grounds. But where, I had no idea. No idea at all.
Em looked at Styles with uncertainty. They stood, leaning against the truck, warily watching each other. “So you’re saying that this guy trusted you with the information that he worked for the FBI?”
“Look, I’m telling you what I know.”
“And you know about the FBI? You can get license plates tracked, you know about FBI plants? Excuse me for questioning this, Daron, but you seem like the least likely person to have any knowledge of the FBI.'
“Yeah. I would normally act offended, but I know what my reputation is. And I’ve fostered it to a certain extent. You probably have every right to question my qualifications. I’m very close to the core of this situation. And I’ll tell you why. But I don’t want this to go any further. Do you understand?”
I couldn’t wait to hear this one.
“Do you know what I do for a living?”
Em stared back. “As far as I can tell, you steal suitcases and try to sell women’s shoes.”
She’d figured it out.
“No. That’s a sideline. I sell knockoff stuff. Basically from the trunk of the Buick.”
“Knockoff stuff?”
“Louis Vuitton handbags, I’ve got ’em. Coach purses, you can’t beat my price. Fendi, Chanel, Versace, they’re my specialty.” He talked with his hands. Dramatic, like a cheap hustler. Which I guess he was. “All cheap imitations. Although,” he paused, “they’re not as cheap as they used to be. These knockoff companies are getting pretty damned good, and a good fake costs a little more than it used to. You take the Emporio Armani sunglasses, I mean — ”
“What the hell does this have to do with the FBI?”
Styles dropped the sunglasses story. “More than you think. The FBI investigates intellectual property crimes.”
“What kind of crimes?” I had no idea what he was talking about. When someone mentioned intellectual I was usually lost.
“Intellectual property crimes. Trademark and copyright infringement.”
Em nodded. “So you, selling knockoff purses — ”
“Purses, watches, DVDs, perfumes.”
“You could get arrested by the FBI?”
“I could.”
“For a couple of purses out of your trunk?”
“The cops are involved too, and they’re a bigger worry. But, the FBI is in charge of that shit, and when they are trying to bust one of the big warehouses where we get our stuff, or they’re trying to track down some importers and arresting people at the port authority, then I’m in a lot of trouble. They can take me in, arrest me, get me a federal conviction if they think it helps their case.”
“Really?” I had no idea I was dealing with a Federal criminal. I thought he was just a two-bit crook. I wondered if James knew. It would elevate Styles in his book.
“Yeah. You’d think they’d all be working on terrorists, but there’s some of ’em who work the DVDs and
