“Can we trust him?”
She looked over at Jimmy by the Honda. “Sure. He can help. He knows what Wells looks like. What could he screw up now?”
thirty-two
Miami police detective Derrick Sutter was now completely in his element and intended to show the FBI what that meant. Whereas the Feds were just driving around aimlessly hoping to see Wells, Sutter knew who to ask. He’d already called four of his snitches and had them out and about. Now he was checking with the convenience stores and gas stations along Seventh Avenue. They might not talk to most cops but they’d talk to him. And he didn’t have to spend half an hour introducing himself. They all knew him. This was what local cops were paid for: knowing the community and its residents.
The first three places were able to say quickly they hadn’t seen a blue pickup or even a white man anytime during the day. Sutter gave them each his cell number, increasing the number of eyes working for him every time he stopped. If Wells was still in the area, Sutter would hear about it.
Farther south, moving toward a more industrial area, Sutter stopped at a place with a sign that simply said GAS. The clerk was encased in a cement building the size of a port-a-let with one pane of thick bulletproof glass and an old window air conditioner cemented into the side of the building. It hummed and labored in the humid Florida heat.
Sutter tapped on the glass with his open badge case.
The clerk looked at him without moving.
“I need to talk to you,” said Sutter in a loud voice.
“So talk,” said the young black clerk calmly, as he set down some kind of textbook and leaned into a microphone. His hair was braided neatly against his scalp.
“Come on out.”
“Can’t.”
“What d’you mean?”
“No key. Boss locks me in for four hours, then lets me out for a break. That’s how he keeps three stations running.”
Sutter snapped his head back. “Where do you shit?”
“I don’t.”
“What if there’s an emergency?”
“I call his cell.”
“What if you got robbed?”
“Can’t be. No way in and the glass is solid.” He rapped the tinted slab of ballistic glass with the edge of his book.
Sutter scratched his head. This was a new one. “Tell you what, I’m busy right now, but I’m gonna rap with your boss later. That cool?”
“Cool,” said the young man, obviously not a fan of the system.
“Let me ask you about your customers. You been here since eleven or so?”
“Yep, since ten.”
“You see a white guy in a blue pickup?”
“Nope. Only white man I seen was in a big ol’ step van. He bought a lot of gas, too.”
Sutter nodded and started to walk away. He paused and opened the folder he’d carried all day long. He pulled out an eight-by-ten photo of Daniel Wells. “Was it this man?” he asked the clerk, holding the photo to the window.
“That was the man,” said the clerk with no hesitation at all.
Daniel Wells finished his second Cuban sandwich. This was a great little place. He sat at a small patio table under an umbrella somewhere south of where he needed to be. He ate a leisurely lunch, waiting for the afternoon traffic to start to kick in. This quiet lunch place catered to truckers, and he was a trucker-right?
He sat in the cool shade and drank a Coke, satisfied with himself. He’d planned and prepared this huge event all by himself. No sponsors, no extra cash, no cops on his ass, no one to even drive him around. He’d just used his American know-how and ingenuity. This would take some damn Arabs fifteen men to do, and half of them would blab. He didn’t need his own terrorist cell. He could be a damn example to the young people of America. If you use your head, plan and follow through, there is nothing you can’t achieve.
He finished his drink, laid a healthy three-dollar tip on the table and crossed the street to his van. In ten minutes, he was driving past the Orange Bowl. He could see the Interstate 95 traffic building. A smile crossed his face as he headed north to get on the interstate headed south. He’d already decided that the perfect place to leave the van was the overpass where 95 tangled with the Dolphin Expressway on the way to Northwest Eighth Street, creating a spiderweb of ramps, one on top of the other. He waved to a couple of kids who looked at him like he was the ice cream man.
Tasker had spread the word as soon as Sutter called. Wells was now in a step van. Some of the agents from down south were headed up to the city. He had a lot of people working on extremely vague information. But they were all ready to do their duty. Bolini had been very hesitant to call in FBI agents. Tasker didn’t know if the Fed thought he’d look like a fool for letting Wells operate for so long or if it was something else. He didn’t have time to talk to Bolini about it now and wasn’t sure the FBI would be able to help if they did show up.
Tasker knew the van with NARANJA ENGINEERING written on the side. A clerk from a gas station said the lettering was peeled off but you could still see it. Tasker was so worried about what Wells had planned that he hardly noticed the constant throbbing of his head or the ache in his ribs or the increasingly bloodstained bandages over his various cuts. He knew that if they had enough time they’d find him. He kept his eyes open for anything that moved. Bolini was on the next street, trying to coordinate the search with Tasker. They moved their cars like sharks through the unsuspecting drivers and pedestrians crowding the streets.
On Eighth Avenue, Tasker, cruising slowly in his Cherokee, spotted a van taking the ramp up to Interstate 95.
He clicked his Nextel radio to reach Bolini. “I may have him.”
“Where?” came back after the beep.
“Getting on a southbound ramp to 95.” Tasker punched the gas and closed the distance until he saw the side of the van. Clearly the removed letters said NARANJA. He grabbed his Nextel. “That’s him, that’s him. Ninety-five southbound.” He scanned the phone for Sutter and clicked it again. “Derrick, we see him. Southbound from Fifty-fourth Street on 95.”
A beep, then Sutter’s response: “We’re on our way.”
Tasker was up the ramp and in southbound traffic in thirty seconds. The van was in sight ahead in the right lane. Bolini pulled up behind Tasker. They followed him a mile. He made no funny moves and gave no hint of where he was headed. Tasker closed the gap to three cars. He didn’t care if Wells burned him now. There was no way he was getting out of Tasker’s sight again. One way or the other, this would be over soon.
Then Wells slowed to a crawl and started to pull off at the Eighth Street ramp near the Orange Bowl and the Miami PD. The four-story rise of ramps where the north-south highways met the east-west stood in front of him.
“What the hell?” said Tasker quietly to himself.
The van came to a complete stop right under the overpass, on the shoulder of the road.
Tasker didn’t like the looks of this one bit. He started to hit the gas, but was cut off by a big refrigerated truck which abruptly slowed to a near stop. Tasker couldn’t see anything but the truck’s rear doors.
Wells patted the van’s dash like it was a dying pet. “You been good to me.” He looked out the window, then up to the layers of roads running overhead. He smiled and twisted around in his seat. A four-inch square with a simple battery-operated clock fastened to it was strapped onto the interior gas tank. Wells never used the same type of timer twice. Sometimes digital, sometimes analog, sometimes motion sensors. He loved the variety. This timer had about five minutes on it. Long enough to clear the area and move on to the next phase of his plan.
As he was leaning out of the van, ready to move, he noticed two other cars on the shoulder, then realized one was Bolini. It only took another second to recognize Tasker in that ugly gold Cherokee. “Oh shit!” he breathed out and leaned back into the van, pushing the minute hand ahead four minutes with his finger. He didn’t know how long he had left, but it wasn’t much time. He jumped through the van and out the passenger door, then let his momentum take him down the little embankment until he ran across the loop coming off the interstate, headed toward the Dolphin Expressway and then for the fence in a dead run.