“Not yet,” I said. “Nick, Kim’s been hurt.” I gave him a brief explanation. He listened without interruption, the condensation from the ice dripping on top of his brown bare feet.
He shook his head, glanced at a pelican soaring over the water, and said, “Sean, I’m in good shape now. Let me join you hunting for these guys. Kim’s like a sister to me. I’m coming with you.”
“You’re still not fully healed. Sit tight. I’m trying to come up with a plan that will remove Kim from any of this.”
“How fast can you pull that off?”
“Not fast enough.”
Dave said, “It’s believed Courtney Burke was spotted in New Orleans. Toss your ice in the freezer and come aboard Gibraltar. I was about to show Sean an image of what looks a lot like Courtney.”
Nick nodded, walked back inside St. Michael, and reappeared with a six-pack of Coronas in his hand. He followed us to Gibraltar, sitting on a stool at Dave’s bar, popping the top off a beer. “Want one?”
I shook my head. “Not now.”
Dave said, “I’ll be mixing a batch of Grey Goose martinis after five-thirty.”
I picked Max up and set her on my lap, scratching behind her hound dog ears. Her brown eyes began to close.
Dave picked up his tablet and found the image. He enlarged it on screen and said, “The sketch artist was interviewed. He said he’d spotted the girl eating alone on a park bench near Jackson Square close to the French Quarter. He said, even with her dark glasses and hat, he could tell she was beautiful. He told a reporter that the girl had a face of an angel — a face he had to draw, if he’s to be believed.”
Nick sipped his Corona and said, “To me, it sounds like a way to pick up women.”
I studied the image. “It’s hard to say, but from the sketch, it could be Courtney. There’s a resemblance … but it could be a million other young women, too. We can’t be certain it’s her.”
Dave nodded. “But we can be certain of one thing: whoever sent those two bounty hunters to Gibsonton, whoever intimidated and hurt Kim … you can bet they’ve sent their troops to New Orleans, or they may already have someone in the city.”
Nick said, “Maybe that’ll take the heat off Kim.”
I said, “If they find Courtney in New Orleans, yes. But they still believe Kim knows the name of the woman who lent her mobile phone to Courtney. Dave, do you have anyone at your old place of employment who you can unconditionally trust?”
“There are a couple at the agency who haven’t retired. I’d trust them in any situation.”
“Good.” I wrote down the number and handed it to him. “Here’s the number to the woman I told you about — the one Courtney called. I believe it’s connected to somewhere in South Carolina or across the state line near Augusta, Georgia.”
Dave looked through his bifocals. “Okay, what do you need?”
“The physical location of the person who has that number. It may be a landline or a mobile phone. I need the address. Home or apartment. If it’s a mobile, and the GPS is on, I’ll need her location as I’m tracking her.”
“That’ll take minutes to find out.”
“Good. It’s urgent. Did any of the news stories say whether Courtney’s been spotted by anyone else in New Orleans?”
“No one has come forth, but with Carlos Bandini adding money to the Crime Stoppers reward, it’s now at two-hundred grand. That’ll bring out the sentinels and ghost hunters.”
Nick chuckled. “The Big Easy has its share of ghost hunters.”
I said, “The question is — if the girl in that sketch is Courtney, why did she go to New Orleans? What’s there or who’s there? Will she stay hidden in the city? Now that she’s been seen, probably not. Where will she go next?”
“Good questions,” Nick said. “It’s too damn bad that all this is happening with your ex-girlfriend, at least with her politician husband, because if Andrea Logan gave a damn about the girl who might be her daughter, she could be in a position to help find her. But you can’t even tell Andrea because it places Courtney in the cross-hairs of an assassin. Screw it, Sean. I’m worried about Kim now. Call Andrea and tell her to tell her husband to back off or you’ll kick his sanctimonious ass the length of the Washington Monument.”
“I did call her a half hour ago.”
Nick’s dark eyebrows arched. “What’d she say?”
“She listened, mostly. For half a minute. Without mentioning Senator Logan by name, I urged her to tell him to leave it alone … or there will be consequences.”
Dave exhaled, set his tablet on the table and said, “You walk a fine and very dangerous line, Sean. Logan has the full protection of the Secret Service. If you even utter a threat specifically against Logan, they’ll arrest you so fast your head will spin. It’s a hell of an unfair advantage. He’s could have access to the NSA’s resources to monitor calls, emails, and any electronic communications through its PRISM program and Patriot Act. Is Logan privy to it? I don’t know. Regardless, he can be in his jet or luxury bus on the campaign stops, whisper treacherous directives for his subordinates to follow, and stay beyond reproach in the eye of the law and the public. But you, Sean, have to play by the rules.”
“Maybe,” I said standing. “Maybe not.”
“What do you mean?” Nick asked.
“I might not be able to threaten Logan, personally. But I can send a sincere message through someone else.”
Nick leaned forward on the barstool. “Sincere? Through who?”
“That will depend on who they send. The invite goes out tonight. Dave, I’m going to give you a call in a little while. Play along. They’re listening on my main phone, no doubt. And now it’s time to turn the tables.”
64
It’s not difficult to find a sex shop in Daytona Beach. The hard part is going into one to buy something that’s not about sex, but rather about life or death. I needed a blow-up doll of a woman. The shop in the heart of A1A, a block from the Atlantic Ocean, smelled of latex and bleach. Its inventory of blow-up dolls was limited to one blond and three brunettes, fully blown up, all appearing to have the same anatomical assets. I picked a brunette. The beefy clerk was unshaven, lots of tats, one earlobe stretched with a black onyx piece of jewelry the size of a quarter. He had a silver pin through his right eyebrow. “Be eighty bucks,” he said.
I paid in cash.
“Have a nice night,” he said, sitting back on a stool in front of the register, picking at a scab in the center of a Daffy Duck tattoo on his Popeye forearm.
I walked outside and into a wall of humid heat in the late afternoon, the sound of the breakers clashing with the bass throb of rap music coming from a low-rider car at the traffic light. Max sat in the front seat. “We have company,” I said to her, setting the doll down in the Jeep’s rear seats, glad my new passenger was only five feet tall. Max stuck her head between the front seats, glancing back at the naked doll, and then up at me. She cocked her head, looking at me for a brief Max moment.
I couldn’t think of anything to say.
Driving to my old cabin on the St. Johns River, about forty minutes west of Daytona, I rehearsed in my mind the conversation I was about to have with Dave Collins. It had to sound real, and it had to strike a sense of urgency that could set a trap for a killer or killers.
I made the call.
Dave said, “Hello.”
“I heard from Courtney.”
“You did? Where is she, Sean?”
“She was in New Orleans. She’s been driving back to Florida. The kid’s scared. She’s tired and wants this to end.”