“I’ll need to send someone to check the shelf price . . . Jerry!”
“I just told you I checked the price. And they’re clear on the other side of the store. It’ll take forever.”
Jerry arrived and removed iPod earbuds. Serge heard faint Metallica.
She handed him the chips. “I need a price check.”
“Where do we sell these?”
“Somewhere far away.”
Jerry replaced the earbuds.
“No!” Serge’s arms shot out. “I’ll pay the extra. I can’t wait! Jerry!”
Jerry disappeared into the aisles.
Serge gave the woman a punched-in-the-stomach look. “He took my sour cream and garlic.”
Coleman had Little Debbie crumbs on the corners of his mouth when Serge returned to the service stand. “What happened to our sour cream and garlic?”
“No human will ever see that bag of chips again.”
“Where’d he go?”
Serge watched Jerry emerge from an aisle, scratch his head and disappear down another aisle. “Teenage wasteland . . . Forget the chips. Life’s too short.”
Serge scanned another item.
“Please place item in bag.”
“Serge,” said Coleman. “It’s already in the bag.”
“I know.” Serge lifted the item and set it down again.
“Unscanned item in bag. Please remove.”
Serge removed it.
“Please place item in bag.”
Coleman leaned toward the register’s screen. “How does it know what’s in the bag?”
“There’s a magic scale inside the counter.” Serge put the mixed nuts back in the bag.
“Item not in bag.”
Serge stuck his hand into the bag and pressed down.
“Item weight does not match item purchased.”
Serge removed the nuts.
“Try scanning something else,” said Coleman.
Serge scanned something else. Ding.
“Item not in bag.”
“There’s an ‘ignore’ button on the touch screen,” said Coleman. “It’s if you don’t want to place the item in the bag.”
Serge pressed the button and placed the item in the bag.
“Unauthorized item in bag. Cannot proceed. Please see customer service.”
Serge looked over at the service stand and a woman laughing on her cell phone.
“Screw it. I’m going on.” He swiped another item.
“This is your first warning.”
Serge ran over to the service stand. “Excuse me—”
The woman held up a finger. Into the phone: “You would not believe what I heard about Hector . . .”
“Hell with it.” He ran back and scanned something else.
“This is your second warning.”
“I’ll just pay.” Serge inserted a twenty. Rurrrr. He inserted it again. Rurrr.
“What’s the matter?”
Serge flattened the corners of the bill. “It keeps spitting my money out.” He stuck it in again. Rurrr.
“This is your third warning.”
“Serge, the lighted number eight on the pole is now flashing red.”
“Shit,” said Serge. “Heat’s coming down . . . but the woman’s off the phone!”
He ran over again as she hoisted a purse strap over her shoulder.
“We’re having a total collapse of your business model at number eight!”
“Sorry.” The woman started walking away. “I’m on break.”
“Is someone else going to replace you?”
“Oh, yeah. Linda.”
Serge looked around. “Where is she?”
“On break.”
Serge ran back as Coleman scanned a six-pack.
“Age-restricted item. Please show ID to service personnel.”
Serge covered his eyes. “Not the age-restricted item!”
“Please show ID . . .”
“Serge, the flashing red light now has a bell going off with it.” Coleman popped one of the beers.
“Please step away from the counter and cooperate.”
“What do we do now?” said Coleman.
“Rage against the machine . . .”
The replacement clerk finished a smoke break and approached the store entrance as two men sprinted past her into the parking lot. She reached the service stand and stopped. A bunch of employees were standing around a pole with a now un-lighted number eight jammed down through the shattered glass of the product scanner.
Chapter Thirty-One
MEANWHILE . . .
The curtains were drawn tight on an upper-floor suite in a Biscayne Boulevard resort.
Enzo Tweel set a room-service tray down in the hall and returned to his suite’s writing desk. He picked up an eight-by-ten zoom photo from the dossier, studying it while imagining permutations of how the target might appear with a beard and change of hair color.
Then he grabbed several pages of background workup. With the demise of Felicia, everyone thought a neat little bow had been tied on a quite messy mission at the hemispheric summit. It had been designed to take out an incorruptible undercover American agent who was getting too close to an arms pipeline from Miami to Latin America. And it worked. The agent was neutralized. But in the process, way too much collateral damage and an avalanche of unwanted media attention. Then it quieted down. Two years had passed without any blowback, and all the mistakes were considered ancient history.
Then a loose end.
Enzo had been hired by a South American junta from the tiny nation of Costa Gorda. Actually a secret junta within the junta, who made their fortunes by allowing wholesale money laundering and letting all manner of contraband find safe harbor on the way to somewhere else. Oh, and open arms to any rogue CIA operation.
The junta’s clandestine service had its own version of Big Dipper Data Management, but one that was far more effective. And the correlation of their data had just reached a tipping point beyond coincidence. They’d recently noticed a new spate of Web hits on the sites of several U.S. senators and congressmen, all with corresponding Freedom of Information Act requests. They came from a cluster of IP addresses in South Florida, and all the politicians had cozy, clandestine ties to the junta. They knew the secrets. Not big stuff like the assassinations of the agent and Felicia. They didn’t want to know that. But they knew.
There could be only one conclusion: Someone, somehow, had begun snooping around about that two-year-old debacle in Miami. The junta’s intelligence service dug some more . . .
Enzo set down the eight-by-ten photo of Serge. The target was far too mobile, but there was one known associate with a static address on the Miami River, and the wiretap on Mahoney’s phone had yielded a mother lode. Enzo knew about all the clients, and about Serge picking off members of the gang, as well as the recently verified address of a fake DEA agent, and even about Sasha and South Philly Sal.
The junta never told Enzo how to accomplish his missions. Just get results. And Enzo now had sufficient information to rough out his plan on a legal pad. He picked up an untraceable cell phone and dialed.
“Hello? Is this Mahoney and Associates? . . . My name isn’t important. This involves the safety of one of your employees named Serge Storms . . . Well, I’ll tell you . . . I was discreetly working with him two years ago. Remember that sordid affair at the summit? Turns out they’ve sent someone back to Miami to tie up loose ends . . . Yes, I know who. His name is Enzo Tweel, but he’s using the cover of a local scam artist named South Philly Sal.” Enzo abruptly hung up.