One of the building’s elevators reached the ground floor. Five beefy men rushed Serge and Coleman out the front door and threw them down on the sidewalk.
Coleman got up and rubbed his hands on his shirt. “Don’t take it too bad. Maybe the next people will hire you.”
“What are you talking about?” Serge checked his backpack and threw a broken thermos in the garbage. “Those guys hired me.”
Coleman looked puzzled. “I haven’t been hired much, but when it has happened, they don’t rough me up and throw me really hard on the ground.”
“Everything in the spy world is opposite.” Serge hoisted his backpack. “Remember the constant surveillance? If they took us out to dinner and had loads of laughs, that would mean I wasn’t hired. This way, anybody watching would mistakenly think we annoyed them. Standard protocol to distance themselves before they activate me.”
“But who would be watching?”
Serge shrugged and headed east toward the waterfront.
A city truck pulled up. Workers threw a shark in the back like they were picking up a discarded sofa on the side of the highway.
The truck drove off, revealing a black SUV with tinted windows parked on the other side of Flagler. The back window rolled down and a telephoto lens poked out.
Miami Morgue
A door flew open.
“You said you had something on the carjacker?” asked the lieutenant.
“And how,” said the examiner. “I’d love to meet the killer.”
“I’d love to kill him. So how’d he do it?”
The examiner clapped his hands a single time. “Okay, this is really cool. The mind that thought this up…” A whistle in admiration.
“Will you just spill it?” The lieutenant glanced at the foot of the autopsy table and tilted his head like a cocker spaniel. “Wait, what’s that metal canister with the evidence tag?”
“After I checked slides in the microscope, I went back to the police report. Your guys got lucky. During their neighborhood canvass, one of the uniforms found the canister in a trash bin behind a convenience store. He thought it was unrelated, but because of what it is, and the location, he logged it into evidence anyway as probable stolen property. More on that later. Take a look in the microscope.”
The lieutenant bent over and adjusted focus on twin eyepieces. “What am I seeing?”
“Chemical burn. Liquid nitrogen.”
The officer stood back up. “That’s all Greek.”
“It is to most people, so I set up a demonstration… This makes my whole month!”
“Can you get on with it?”
“Right…” The M.E. slipped on his thickest gloves and went to cold storage, retrieving a round thermal container the width of a punch bowl. Then he grabbed a disarticulated cadaver hand. “Don’t worry, we were going to throw this out anyhow. Now watch closely…”
The lieutenant didn’t need to be told. He leaned with rapt attention as the examiner unscrewed the container’s lid. Wisps of vapor wafted out the top.
The examiner held up the lifeless, severed hand, then giggled and dipped it wrist-deep in the jug. He listened to a wall clock tick. Then pulled it out.
The lieutenant scratched his head. “Looks the same, just a different color.”
Another giggle. He grabbed a tiny surgical hammer off the instrument tray and smacked the hand just below the knuckles.
“Jesus!” The officer jumped back as frozen slivers scattered on the floor. “It shattered like an ice sculpture.” A closer look. “There’s… nothing left.”
“And that’s liquid nitrogen, minus three hundred Fahrenheit.” The M.E. grabbed a dustpan and swept up the pieces. “But here’s the critical step.” He dumped the pan’s contents in a sink and turned on the hot water.
The lieutenant watched the remains melt and circle the drain until they were gone. “I still don’t get how he did it.”
“Easier than you’d think-if you’re as sharp as this guy. He probably poured the nitrogen down the dead man’s throat with a long funnel. But had to roll him around so it wouldn’t settle and freeze through a cavity wall. And for even distribution, he needed to repeat the process over and over, each time pouring in hot water to melt what he had just iced over, suctioning it out.”
“Suction?”
“You could do it with items as simple as a gas-can tube and turkey baster.”
“But where the heck does somebody get liquid nitrogen?”
“Anyone can get it,” said the M.E. “Just call the agricultural agent in any county and ask who maintains cryogenic chambers for animal husbandry, usually prize bulls.” He pointed at the metal tank near the foot of the autopsy table. “They even deliver, refills as low as thirty bucks.”
“Mother of God! I thought this might calm those reporters, but it’s even worse.” The detective grabbed the M.E. by the arm. “I don’t know who’s leaking to the press, but we cannot under any circumstances let this get out. Can you imagine the headlines?” He released the examiner and rubbed his own forehead. “How on earth am I going to identify the killer?”
“Might be able to help you there.” The examiner walked over and patted the top of the tank. “The sample chamber wasn’t empty. We can do a genetic test.”
“What? You mean you can identify the bull semen and maybe track down where he bought it?”
The examiner shook his head. “Not bull semen. Human.”
The lieutenant felt sick. “This definitely can’t get out.”
“Mum’s the word.” The examiner turned his back. “I’ll send it for DNA immediately after I write up the official cause of death.”
“Please tell me it’s something that won’t make a good headline.”
The examiner saved his biggest giggle for last.
“He froze to death in Miami.”
Palmetto Expressway
“Damn, it’s hot.”
The driver of a white van switched on a small, battery-powered fan glued to the dashboard.
The front passenger looked up from the Herald ’s sports section. “Take the next exit.”
They got off the highway, and two others trucks followed.
Opa-locka is one of the rough older areas, just north of Hialeah. Often tops national crime charts. Like driving through Baghdad. But not the violence part. Back in the 1920s, local founders kind of got hung up on Arabian Nights, and it now boasts the country’s highest concentration of Moorish architecture. City hall looks like a flying carpet might sail out a window. One of the streets is named Ali Baba Avenue.
There’s also a small airport that used to be big. The Graf Zeppelin paid a visit. Amelia Earhart took off on her fateful flight from here, and there’s now a public park in her name where people honor the pilot by playing Frisbee golf and visiting the insect museum.
Three white vans skirted the north side of the park and passed through galvanized airport gates. They raced toward the civil aviation side of the runways, across from the Coast Guard air-sea-rescue helicopters.
A twin-engine Beechcraft waited with its side door flopped down. Vans parked. A bucket brigade passed wooden crates up the airplane’s steps.
Behind the tail, a stretch Mercedes. Four solemn men in a row. Banker suits and haircuts. Arrogance. Victor Evangelista strolled across the tarmac with a loud smile. “Is that for me?”
The suits looked down. A briefcase handcuffed to a wrist. A key went in the lock. Airplane engines sparked to life.
Victor’s hair whipped from the propellers. He grabbed the briefcase in a deafening drone and tossed it to one of the jumpsuits. Victor never counted. And the men never looked in the crates. That level of business. Not trust. Certainty of consequence.