Sitting next to him, Wells, with his hands cuffed behind his back, said, “Women, they can be a pain in the butt.” He nodded and smiled.
Jimmy looked at him and said, “If you open that redneck hole in your face again, you’ll wish you were on that tanker.” He nodded toward the still-burning hulk on the bridge; firemen were spraying it with a white foam.
Wells just shrugged.
Jimmy looked back at his former girlfriend and took a deep breath. He was a young, good-looking guy with a great job. What chick wouldn’t want to hook up with him? He was just killing time with her anyway. He felt a little better until he saw Camy kiss Sutter on the lips again as the paramedics started to take him away.
Jimmy stared at them and said out loud, “I don’t want to hear anything from you. You’re in enough trouble.” He turned to make sure his message had gotten through, but there was no one there.
Jimmy twisted his head in every direction, looking for the missing Wells, or Bolini for help. The crowd was milling all around, and Jimmy couldn’t see any sign of the handcuffed man.
“Oh shit!” He started to run through the crowd.
thirty-six
A week later, Bill Tasker sat on his patio, Derrick Sutter in the lounger next to him. A week of rest had helped him recover only a little. He still wasn’t supposed to drink beer because of the antibiotics and painkillers he was using, but he decided one Icehouse with his partner wouldn’t kill him. Even though he had seen a lot of corpses that looked better than he did right now. He had thirty stitches in different cuts in his legs. Fifteen on his arms. Ten in one gash along his hairline. One wrist was broken, which he hadn’t even realized at the time. Both legs had torn muscles, and his right ankle was sprained. He’d had to have a buzz cut to remove his burnt hair and allow the doctors to examine his head properly, and he had a couple of decent burns on his face and shoulder.
Sutter, on the other hand, had a bandage on his foot near his ankle and a pair of crutches. Dressed in a sharp pair of pants and button-down Oxford shirt, he was casually telling Tasker about his passionate affair with the lovely Camy Parks.
“I’m telling you, Billy, sometimes she’s like a wild animal, and sometimes she really is a princess.”
Tasker held up his hand. “I get the idea.” He looked toward the sliding glass door. “My girls are inside.”
Sutter shrugged. “Sorry.”
Tasker asked, “How long you gonna be out of work?”
“They say I can be back at light duty next week. What about you?”
“Won’t say. Need to be evaluated Friday. I figure two weeks.”
Sutter smiled. “Why? Take some time. Two weeks ain’t shit. You need a couple months, all you been through.”
“How’s Jimmy Lail doing?”
“Camy says he’s obsessed with finding Wells. She says he’s on surveillance every day, looking for him.” Sutter started to laugh. “You heard he had his car stolen, too?”
“Really. The Honda? Where?”
“Off Biscayne. The day we chased Wells. With everything else going on, no one made a big deal about it.” He looked back at Tasker. “Camy says he doesn’t care about the car, or anything but Wells.”
Tasker nodded. “I know the feeling.”
“But he’s got help. Now the FBI knows what one of their snitches tried to do. They’ve got everyone out beating the bushes. Lot of local cops, too. But the FBI is definitely leading the charge.”
“The name Eric Rudolph mean anything to you?”
Sutter smiled and nodded.
Tasker thought about the similarity between the Atlanta Olympics bomber and Wells. Both had gotten away with it for a while. Rudolph had evaded a massive FBI hunt for five years, until some local cop found him digging in a dumpster. Tasker decided he wouldn’t hold his breath until Wells was captured.
Sutter tapped a Miami Herald on the table between them. “You okay with this bullshit?”
Tasker smiled, looking at the headline: FBI AVERTS DISASTER. “Yeah, it’s true. Bolini came through.”
“But you risked your ass.”
“We all did.”
“I just think that’s absolute bullshit.”
Tasker shrugged. He really didn’t care. He’d accomplished what he set out to do. Wells would turn up. Nuts like that always make mistakes. They’d have time to find him. No one had seen or heard from him or Alicia in the seven days since the tanker exploded. Tasker figured they were together.
Sutter looked at Tasker and said, “That reminds me.”
“What?”
“You guaranteed me I wouldn’t get shot by the FBI if I helped on this case.”
Tasker smiled. “I think I said I could almost guarantee it.” He sat up on the lounger. “Besides, what are you bitchin’ about? The wounds are getting less severe every time. Next time it’ll probably just be a graze in the arm.”
Sutter and Tasker sat on his patio in Kendall and laughed together over all the things that had happened in the past few weeks. They laughed so long and so hard that Tasker’s girls came out to make sure everything was all right.
Tasker put his arms around their small shoulders and kissed them each on the forehead.
“Yep, girls. Everything is just fine.”
thirty-seven
Daniel Wells took the exit off Interstate 10, heading south toward New Orleans. They weren’t going to stay here more than a night, but Wells needed to look around. He had an idea about his next show. It had been a long drive, but the kids had slept most of the way. Alicia had apologized from Tampa to Tallahassee about helping the cops, but he said he understood. He didn’t know what he’d do, either, if someone threatened to take the kids.
It had been one wild week. Starting with his attempt to light up Miami… all the way to this road trip. He’d been lucky in Miami and knew it. When old Sal Bolini slapped the cuffs on him, he had tightened his fists and pulled his hand up so Sal had closed the cuff on his left fist instead of his wrist. Then, when the younger FBI guy was not paying attention, he had just stood up and walked away a hundred feet or so, letting the crowd swallow him up. The cops all rushing to the scene were too intent on the burning tanker to notice anyone filtering through the crowd. Slipping his left hand out of the cuff had been a lot more painful than he’d thought it would, but it only took a few seconds of determined struggle. A few blocks away, he’d found a tricked-out lowrider Honda, popped the window, jumped in and took the fast little sucker all the way to Tampa. He’d used a twenty he’d found in the car’s console for some gas and a sandwich at the gas station on the west side of Alligator Alley.
Now he held the steering wheel to the Ford station wagon with his right hand because his left wrist was still sore from slipping the handcuffs in Miami. He had a white bandage over his knuckles on his left hand and still couldn’t move his thumb. Considering the alternative, he wasn’t upset by the injuries.
He had been a little disappointed that his stunt had not gotten more than a day’s play in the national news, but the memory of that scene was burned into his head. He still felt the charge from it.
Alicia, snoring lightly, snuggled up under his arm closer. He hugged her.
Still, the tanker would be nothing next to his next plan. He smiled when he saw the sign for the Superdome, then glanced down at the book he’d stolen from the Miami Public Library: The Principles of Nuclear Fission.
James O. Born
