Midnight Guardians Read online

  She came out onto the porch dressed in a suit cut in the most conservative style, but the quality of the fabric and the way it was tailor-made to her petite frame was obvious even to a fashion slug like me. In her left hand, she held a china cup of steaming coffee.

  “That fact does slip by a few of Billy’s visitors,” she said, hooking her right hand around Billy’s upper arm and leaning her face into his shoulder. Billy looked down into her eyes with a grin only a loving husband can make seem natural.

  “And you’re complaining, madam?”

  “Not a bit, baby,” she said, and then with a knowing smile of her own, “but the less I know about what you two are up to, the better.”

  Both of our faces immediately broadcast innocence.

  “Yeah, I thought so,” she said. Then she gave Billy a kiss good-bye, and me a lesser one on the cheek.

  “Lovely to see you, Max.”

  When the clicking sound of her heels on the tile to the front door diminished, I turned to Billy. “You’re a lucky man, my friend.”

  “I am indeed.”

  Their marriage had not been an easy union. As a black kid from the projects who made it to the penthouse, Billy had a tendency in his law practice to snatch up cases of injustice. Diane McIntyre was a white woman of social standing who broke all her ensconced family’s conservative social rules by becoming the first female judge in Palm Beach, where money, business, and brokered deals in smoke-filled back rooms have been a sitting foundation for more than a hundred years.

  As an unemotional counselor, Billy had always answered my simple questions about how he and his wife are able to make it work with a smile and a statement: “Love, my friend M-Max, the kind no man can put asunder.” A few hours later, I had a need to put something asunder, and love wasn’t going to help me as much as a fifteen-shot 9 mm would have.

  By 5:00 P.M., I was back in the parking lot of the West Boca Medical Complex, waiting to see if Andrés Carmen would come out. This time I was off to the side in the minor shade of a recently planted dogwood. I still don’t know why they plant those skinny-trunk trees in the grass separators of parking lots. Aesthetics? Had to be; I’ve yet to see a Florida parking lot with big canopied trees providing acres of shade for customers.

  At about 5:05 P.M., the end-of-the-day troop of employees began. Out the front doors came a bustling group that included several women dressed in those plain-cut pink scrubs that had made the transition from hospital surgery theaters and patient floors to the medical spin-off industries and learning campuses. Some of the men were similarly outfitted in blue. But I was looking for a slightly built young man with dark hair and a bit of a chin beard who’d be wearing a green version of this medical getup, the description Luz Carmen had given me of her brother.

  At 5:10 P.M., I recognized Luz. She exited the building with that same careful look she had two days ago, her head on a swivel, scanning the parking lot, searching for someone who might be searching for her. But this time, she was obviously with another woman, about her size, both of them dressed similarly in knee-length summer dresses and conservative short heels. They walked to a dark red Toyota Camry, and Luz got into the passenger side. I was relieved to see that she’d taken my advice and was getting a ride home with a co-worker. Maybe she was even staying with the other woman over the weekend, a suggestion Billy had made to her after I’d described the encounter in the park. If she noticed my pickup truck under the meager shade tree, she didn’t show it. The friend pulled out, and they exited from the opposite side of the lot.

  At 5:15 P.M., I spotted Andrés Carmen, walking with purpose out of the building, carrying a cardboard box a few books might fit into. He marched directly to a dusty white Toyota Corolla four rows back from the front and didn’t look around to check the perimeter, as his sister had, nor did he make any “have a good weekend” small talk with co-workers, nor offer waves of good-bye to anyone. His face was stoic and calm as he unlocked the driver-side door and set the box over into the passenger seat before climbing in.

  I started up my truck and then slipped into the exit lane behind him. My pickup is not the perfect vehicle for a tail. The color can draw attention and since the cab sits up, it’s easier to spot in a rearview mirror. But I didn’t detect any sense of watchfulness or concern on Andrés’s part. If his sister had told him of the drive-by shooting on Wednesday, he wasn’t showing any wariness. I kept a few cars back and as we wended our way out onto State Road 7 and headed south, I noticed that the only thing unusual about the young man’s driving was that he stayed meticulously on the speed limit. And for a South Floridian, he had an unusual habit of using his turn signals, a nearly unknown form of etiquette in this part of the country.

  After a half hour of trailing him, the only other hint that the kid might be acting unduly careful was his use of the secondary highway even though he was now well south into Broward County. I-95 would have been a lot quicker, even though it often clogs up at rush hour. Still, on this particular north-south corridor, you had to stop at every major intersection for traffic lights and folks turning into the endless shopping plazas, car dealerships, and fast-food restaurants.

  If you were getting paid for your time on the road—which I was, as Billy’s investigator—it was no big deal. But if you had someplace to go, it engendered the kind of drudgery or frustration that inevitably leads to road rage incidents, screaming matches through lowered windows, and the horn blowing that every city from New York to San Diego puts up with on any given day.

  As a result, I was pleased to see that Andrés wasn’t pulling any of that constant lane-changing or light-to-light turbo jumping that might gain you a car length in the grand scheme of things. I’d only had to endure three “dudes” with their woofers blasting through opened windows trying to impress with their bass music thumping. By the time Andrés finally pulled into a light industrial park in the city of Plantation, I was getting bored.

  It seemed obvious that the boy was turning in a box full of patient identifications and maybe order records to someone up the line in the scheme his sister had outlined. And I was here only to document for Billy so he could connect enough dots to get the feds to pay attention. Still, when Andrés hit his signal and made another left turn into a covey of low-built offices and warehouses, the traffic flow cut down considerably; I had to drop back to avoid being obvious.

  I let the kid get a couple of blocks ahead. When he pulled up into a parking spot in front of one of the businesses, I did the same and watched from a distance. Andrés got out of his Toyota Corolla with the cardboard box under his arm and again, without a glance to either side, walked into the building through a double glass door. I did a quick surveillance with a small pair of binoculars. The signage on the doors read BIOMECHANICS INC., with no names, proprietorship, or hours of operation. I jotted down the spelling and the address to turn over to Billy.

  The cars already parked in front of the place were a Mercedes SL with a Florida plate and a Cadillac Escalade bearing a plate holder from a Dade County dealership I recognized. Again I noted the numbers for Billy to track on the computer. Although some of the buildings in the block had garage-style doors for equipment loading, there was no such entrance for BioMechanics, and no trucks in the vicinity bearing their name or logo. If they were dealing with equipment, medical or otherwise, it wasn’t being handled on this side of the building.

  Then I did a quick assessment. I was parked in front of a place called Baseball City, USA, a warehouse with a glass-fronted entrance that advertised hours and days for indoor hitting practice, pitching machines, and on-site coaching for all ages. While I sat there, three boys about twelve or thirteen came out wearing cleats and hats and balancing aluminum bats on their skinny shoulders. A parent unlocked the side doors of a family-style van and the boys scrambled in, laughing and probably trading jibes over which of them had been whacking the baseballs harder, and who’d been whiffing for the past hour. While I was smiling at the thought of my own boyhood trips
to a batting cage in South Philadelphia, my eye caught a glimpse of shiny green metal, just for a second, passing between buildings another block away. The color was too distinctive to be coincidental—the drive-by Monte Carlo.

  I began a reassessment of the street: narrow, flanked by buildings. There were only other parked cars to duck behind for cover if bullets started flying; could be innocent children in the line of fire. I was about to hit my ignition: Before I’d let a drive-by occur, I’d park in front of Andrés’s car, confront him inside the BioMechanics office, and blow my own surveillance. If the kid was indeed selling stolen patient info to some graft joint inside and my actions spoiled Billy’s case, so be it.

  My fingers were on the key when the door that Andrés had walked through opened, and a man stepped out, took a few steps into the street, and flipped open a cell phone. My fingers loosened on the key while I studied him. There was something familiar about him, though not the clothes. This guy’s conservative slacks, open, white Oxford shirt, sleeves rolled to the elbows and bright against his dark skin, added up to a black man’s Obama look. It was his carriage that betrayed him: He had that neighborhood slouch in his shoulders and hips, and that way of looking up and down the street without raising his head, not like he was looking for something expected, but for anything unexpected. All this gave me pause.

  Back in the day when I was a Philadelphia beat cop, we used to fill out FI cards—field investigation notes on index cards—for anybody we considered suspect or worth keeping track of. We’d watch some guy hanging on a particular drug corner, or catch someone driving with their headlights off in a suspect area, and stop him, not for a violation, just a chat. We’d note his name, physical description, and take a Polaroid photo. “That’s it, sir. Have a good day and if you don’t belong here, don’t come back.” I’d had a whole box of FI cards, but I also had a good recollection for faces. It was old cop habit, one I couldn’t kick. As I watched the guy down the street talk into his cell phone, I went through the FI box of street attributes in my head.

  I didn’t know this guy from Philly; it wasn’t that far back. He wasn’t a client of Billy’s, but someone peripheral to a case I worked for my lawyer friend and colleague. This was a man used to checking out the streets, who was comfortable with it—a man who guarded his work.

  A dealer—yes, a drug dealer from northwest Fort Lauderdale, one who’d actually helped me track down an animalistic killer who was targeting elderly women. The face flooded out of the past, followed by the name: The Brown Man. But what the hell was the Brown Man doing dressed like a casual businessman, hanging out at the location of a possible Medicare fraud office?

  From my left, a Honda Odyssey rolled up in front of Baseball City and started disgorging half a dozen little leaguers. I hit the key to my ignition and pulled out to put my truck between them and the Brown Man. As I searched every possible corner for a flash of green, I could feel all the muscles in my neck and shoulders tighten with anxiety.

  When I turned back to the Brown Man, I saw Andrés come out of the BioMechanics door, now empty-handed. The two men appeared to exchange a few words, and then split, Andrés into his car, the drug dealer into the office. When the white Corolla pulled out, I relaxed a bit and went back to surveillance mode. I gave Andrés a few hundred feet, and then eased my truck out to follow. We’d gone three blocks when the metallic green Monte Carlo yanked into view, the rumble of its engine guttural and ominous. When the car jumped in behind Andrés’s, I was thinking only one thing: pursuit.

  It took the kid about thirty seconds to figure what was going on. Once the Corolla hit the turn onto State Road 7, it bolted south without the slightest hesitation at the stoplight. Oncoming traffic screeched to a halt as the Monte Carlo rumbled unimpeded through the intersection. Stupidly, I was too far back; by the time I got close to the turn, irate drivers were already starting to inch forward. I cut the corner through a gas station driveway at a speed that turned several heads and elicited a “fuck you” from a patron. The move put me back on tail of the Monte Carlo.

  Andrés had now pulled a Jekyll and Hyde as a driver. As patient and unhurried as he’d been on the roadway to make his delivery, he was now a madman. I kept my eyes fastened on the chrome of the Monte Carlo. But ahead of him, I could see dozens of brake lights flashing, and the roofs of vehicles skewing off to the left and right. I didn’t bother to look at my own speedometer, but I knew from experience that in this kind of traffic and on this kind of road, our cars might have been hitting forty-five m.h. or fifty at certain stretches. But even those speeds were twice as fast as anyone else, and crazy enough to scare the shit out of everyone caught in the mix.

  I worked my way up within a two-car length of the Monte Carlo’s bumper and rode it, following like it was a snowplow in bad weather, thus avoiding the swerving commuters and obstacles slewing in its wake. The Monte Carlo’s rear window was too tinted to see how many people were inside, or whether they had noticed me following. The only thing I could make out on the back window was a cartoon of a devilish-looking boy pissing on an oval Ford symbol. Somehow the insult seemed personal; I was starting to get angry.

  We swerved through traffic. I knew these high-speed gigs didn’t last long, despite the ones you see on most dangerous police videos. It was going to end soon, and badly. Trying to anticipate, I took a chance, looking up ahead as we approached another traffic light. Andrés’s white Corolla jerked east, with the Monte Carlo following, cutting off a wall of vehicles and stomping out of the turn, smoke roiling out of its wheel wells as he punched it. I was caught in the cloud, unable to see a damn thing. As I waited for the inevitable jolt of some other blind driver hitting me, my stomach clenched. The scream of tire rubber and the blare of horns created a noise cloud of its own. All I could do was hold the line until we straightened out.

  Now the kid was getting wild, searching like a trapped mouse for someway out: he’d start left, get cut off, and spin right. It wasn’t working. The Monte Carlo was on him. I was on it. And no doubt a dozen people behind us were calling 911—fine with me. I just hoped the kid was smart enough to keep moving. Once he stopped, that automatic rifle that had been trained on me and his sister was going to start blasting. And this time, I was sure it wouldn’t be firing into the trees.

  My hope ended when the white Corolla pitched right, jumped a curb, and squealed into a neighborhood complex. We’d suddenly ducked out of traffic, but Andrés had isolated himself in a corridor of attached, two-story condos. There was one way in and one way out—no yards between the buildings. Zero lot lines. Zero choices. I saw him hit the cul-de-sac in front of the Monte Carlo and whip into a circle. It was a face off he could not win, so I punched it.

  Two of the passengers in the Monte Carlo were halfway out of their car, rifles in hand, when my truck smashed into their trunk. Given that my bumper is set much higher, it buried into the green metal and sent the two men rolling into the street like tossed-away dolls. I’d long ago disabled my air bags, so I saw their weapons go clattering across the macadam. Still the jolt stunned me for a second, and the sight of the violent rear-ender must have done the same to Andrés. When I shook off the initial shockwave, I stared over the top of the Monte Carlo into Andrés’s eyes. He hesitated, looked at me, and then started cranking his steering wheel.

  As the Corolla started past, I caught movement from the back passenger-side door of the Monte Carlo, and punched my accelerator again until the whole tangled mess of metal and rubber started scraping across the pavement. The Monte Carlo’s door stayed shut. I threw the truck into reverse and punched it again, cranking the wheel one way and then the other, trying to free the front end of my truck from the ass end of the Monte Carlo like some giant blue-black cat dragging a metallic green lizard from a neighborhood garden. Finally, bumpers tore loose and I was free.

  But so were the inhabitants of the drive-by sedan—and they were armed. I kept the truck in reverse until I closed on the main road, and then U-turned it. I might have
heard sirens in the distance, but I didn’t hear gunfire. I shut out the voice that said someone might be hurt, and pulled out into traffic. In the vernacular that would surely show up in the police report, I fled eastbound.

  — 9 —

  BY THE TIME I reached I-95, my heart had stopped thrumming and my fingers had finally come out of their vise grip on the steering wheel. In my head, I ran the list of charges that a responding officer would soon be tallying: leaving the scene of an accident with injuries; reckless endangerment, including multiple moving traffic violations. I knew most major intersections in South Florida had video cameras mounted above their traffic lights. We’d probably blown through three of them during the chase. They’d have all our tag numbers and descriptions and, soon after that, our DMV records. If the first responding officers arrived on the cul-de-sac scene before the Monte Carlo got away—if the damn car was even drivable—they might get lucky and bust the occupants in possession of deadly weapons, which would make it easier to explain my role. But it still wouldn’t be a free pass.

  When the cops start pulling info from their computers, the first thing they’d get is my attorney’s address. Billy’s is the one I’d used on my Florida driver’s registration as my home. What the hell else was I supposed to use, the longitude and latitude of my shack on the river? They’d be knocking on Billy’s door within twenty-four hours.

  I pulled over into the driveway of a gas station just before reaching the interstate entrance and watched an employee and two people pumping their own gas stare at the front of my truck as I parked. When the attendant sauntered over, I raised a palm to him to indicate I’d be with him in a minute; then I got on my cell. Billy’s a preemptive strike kind of guy. I would need him eventually. It would be better to get him into the loop early. He answered on the third ring.