“And he just drove away. Leaving two witnesses behind.”
“Witnesses to what?” Southey asked.
“His crime. Happy the Baker blew up your town, officer. I don’t know how or with what, but he’s your guy.”
“Holy shit, I mean, damn! We were sitting right there with the guy!”
Agent Spurling said, “Mr. Jones, please tell us what-”
“Hold on a sec,” Stoke said whipping out his cell phone. He speed-dialed Sharkey’s number at his new Coconut Grove office in Miami. The phone rang four, five times. Stoke could see his office, the little pink stucco bungalow hidden by the banana trees, all the windows open, the bamboo chaise where he’d take a nap when things were slow. He could even see Luis there now, snoozing on those soft green and white cushions.
“Tactics,” Shark finally said, too cheery, trying to sound awake.
“You napping on the job, son?”
“No, sir, I was in back, you know, a pro’lem with the air conditioner and-”
“Time to jump and scatter, Shark. We’ve got something out here.”
“Tell me, and it’s done.”
“Luis, listen carefully. That tape we shot a week ago in the Grove. That night from the boat? Not all of it. But pull every scene that includes Paddy Strelnikov, a.k.a. Happy the Baker. It’s at the very end of the tape, coming out of the house with the cake. Edit. Burn a disc. I want you to email that footage to, hold on, what’s your e-mail address, Agent Spurling?”
She told him, and Stoke gave it to Sharkey. “We need this stuff now, okay? Keep the disc as backup. FBI’s got to get this guy’s face on the national wire right now. Call Barry Pick at Miami-Dade. Tell him cake boy did Salina. Tell him to watch the airport, Happy could be coming home or even there already. You cool?”
“Cool runnin’, mon.”
“Later, Shark.”
Spurling was looking at him.
“You’ve actually got tape on this guy?”
“Lots of it. We were surveilling Chechen Russian mob guys on another matter and picked him up accidentally. He’s involved with a guy we’re looking at for something else. Yurin.”
“Urine?” Agent Spurling said, a puzzled frown creasing her brow.
“I know, I know. It’s confusing, isn’t it? But it’s Yurin with a Y. All Beef Paddy, that’s Happy’s moniker, was delivering a bomb in the form of a birthday cake. This was at a party where this guy Yurin was running security. Did you put out an APB on the white truck?”
“Happening as we speak, Mr. Jones,” Spurling said, snapping her phone shut.
“You have to figure he dumped it nearby. Way too easy to spot. He hides the truck somewhere, steals an abandoned car, heads to an airport. I’d get everybody available working that truck. Five-mile radius.”
“Yeah. Sorry. We didn’t even begin to make this guy as a suspect. Just a nutjob. Who the hell is he?”
“His real name is Paddy Strelnikov. American-born Russian. Mafiya type from Brooklyn. We think he’s KGB. A sleeper assassin, possibly working directly for someone in the Kremlin. The last time I saw Paddy, he was in Miami. He killed a Chechen terrorist responsible for attacks against the Russian population and the threats against the Kremlin.”
“Holy shit,” Officer Southey said. “Russians in Salina?”
“Yeah, you two are lucky to be standing here. John Henry, I want to talk to the manager of the motel where Paddy was staying. See his room.”
“That’s easy. You’re staying there. Motel 6.”
“Let’s go.”
JOHN HENRY HAD parked the FBI car at the same overlook where Paddy and the two cops had watched the town blow up.
“This is where the three of them, the suspect and the two officers, observed the explosion. The bakery truck was parked right where you’re standing.”
Stoke walked to the edge of the cliff, looked down at the smoking, glittering remains of Salina. Then he turned around and stared at the dense woods behind him. He saw a couple of dirt roads, almost overgrown, leading into the park’s interior.
“Where’s the motel? Up here on the cliff somewhere, I’d guess?”
“Yessir. It’s just on the other side of those woods. Right on the state highway. Maybe a mile, mile and a half. Nothing up here on the bluff was touched. Only reason the motel and the park survived.”
“Can you drive a car through that stuff? Or do we have to drive around to get to the highway?”
“I don’t know that you could get a car through there, sir. Those are nature trails. Pretty thick.”
“Let’s take a walk, John Henry. I love nature.”
Five minutes later, glancing up as he walked, Stoke said, “Lots of broken branches back in here. Both sides of the trail. High up, too.”
“Yessir, I noticed that.”
“Looks almost like a damn truck came through here recently, doesn’t it, John Henry?”
“There it is. Down in that ravine.”
Stoke looked to his left. At the bottom of a very steep ravine, he could see the white bakery truck. It was on its side, the cab partially submerged in a swiftly running creek.
“Let’s go,” Stoke said, and ten minutes later, they’d managed to work their way down to the truck. It was banged up pretty bad, glass gone from the windshield, water running right through a portion of the cab. One of the two rear doors was hanging ajar.
“Accident?” John Henry asked.
“I think he ditched it. Long gone, I think, probably hiked through the woods to the motel, changed clothes in his room, and then stole one of the abandoned cars in the lot and boogied. But go through the cab, okay? Best you can. Check the glove compartment, and check under the seats. Might find something helpful, though I doubt it, many times as this bad boy’s been around the block. I’ll look in the back.”
He lifted the rear door and looked inside. Doughnut boxes, a lot of them, as if they’d been through a cement mixer. Most of them still sealed, but a lot had popped open, and there were hundreds of gooey cream, chocolate, glazed, and jelly doughnuts stuck to the ceiling, the walls, lying around. Stoke resigned himself to going through every last one of the damn boxes. After all, it was Happy’s MO, wasn’t it? The last time he had delivered a bomb, it had been inside a bakery box.
“John Henry,” he called out ten minutes later.
“Yessir,” came the reply from the cab.
“Come back here and take a look at this, will you?”
“Nothing in the cab, sir,” John Henry said a minute later, peering into the gloom inside the truck. He could see Stokely sitting in the midst of hundreds of opened doughnut boxes. Gooey stuff all over him.
“Gimme a hand in here, John Henry,” he said. “Help me get out of all this crap. Can’t even stand up, the floor’s so bad.”
“Disgusting.”
“That’s one point of view. Elvis would’ve thought he’d died and gone to heaven in here.”
Agent Flood took Stoke’s hand and helped the big black man scramble out of the upended truck. Stokely stood with one foot in the icy creek, his entire body covered in creamy caramel icing and sprinkles from head to toe.
“Check this out,” Stoke said, wiping icing from his eyes with his one free hand.
He held up a small, silvery object, like a desktop sculpture of a human brain, stem and all. But the thing about it that caught John Henry’s eye was that it was as shiny as a brand-new mirror. Like the little piece of metal he’d seen back at the trailer. And the stuff sprinkled all over his dead town.
“What the heck is it?” Flood asked.
“It’s a Zeta computer. Called the Wizard. Sell ’em all over the world for about fifty bucks apiece. Even cheaper in Third World countries.”
“Oh, yeah. I’ve seen those.”
“Damn right you have. Millions of them have been sold in the last few years. We’ve got to get back to the trailer and show this thing to that bomb-squad guy. What’s his name?”
“Robb. Peter Robb.”
“Yeah, Robb. Show it to him.”