Public Enemy Read online

  “I’m old-fashioned.”

  “Meaning you like to discuss such things in person.”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Or you just prefer to be a pain in the ass, in hopes it’ll get you somewhere the phone call wouldn’t.”

  “Come on,” Cooper said, “why the gunslingers?”

  El Oso Blanco shook his massive head.

  “You tell me, ‘Cooper,’” he said. “The guns came at the behest of the buyer. Stupid and unnecessary, no matter what you’re shipping. Unless you’re running dope, the U.S. task forces don’t give a shit what you’re shipping. Might get a little sticky from all the red tape if you’re caught, but those boys think they’re fighting a war, and they don’t have time for anything but the front lines. I advised the buyers as much, but I was paid what I asked to get, and the goodies were out of my hands the instant the wire transfer landed. I knew they wanted the gunslingers, so I worked that into the shipping terms in advance. That’s what they wanted, so that’s what they got.”

  “As it turns out,” Cooper said, “that shipment was worth quite a lot of money.”

  “Oh, I know what it was worth. It was obviously worth quite a lot of trouble too.”

  “You know what happened with the Coast Guard?”

  “Sure.” Borrego pointed with his fork at the computer screen on the desk. “‘Coast Guard Guns Down Smugglers at Sea,’ or something to that effect.”

  “You get a call from the buyers once the story broke?”

  “I wouldn’t get that call directly anyway, but no.”

  “You find that surprising?”

  “That I didn’t get a call?” Borrego shrugged. “Mildly.”

  “Who’d you sell to?”

  Borrego began packing up the remains of his meal. “Considering that you’ve come and alerted me to the ‘string of bodies,’ as you put it, I’d be happy to break protocol and give you a name. He isn’t the buyer, of course. Only another middleman. A fence. But unless he’s relocated already, which is something he frequently does, you can find him in Naples.”

  Food and silverware pushed aside, Borrego removed the napkin from around his neck, pulled a pen from a drawer, wrote something on a Post-it, and held the Post-it across the desk for Cooper to take.

  “Should be able to reach him here.”

  Cooper leaned in and took the Post-it.

  “Appreciate the help.”

  “Appreciate the warning.”

  “What about the source?” Cooper said.

  “You know, Señor Cooper, you are one greedy bastard.”

  “Selfish too,” Cooper said. “Also angry.”

  There came that brownish-yellow grin again. It faded, though, and the Polar Bear said, “No cigar there, campañero.”

  “Why not?”

  “Only way this artifact-acquisition system works is to retain the anonymity of the seller. I’ve got people out there-South and Central America, Africa, China-do my buying for me. And when they buy, they do it on a no-questions-asked basis. We pay close to the lowest price, but you always know you’ll never be ratted out by the Polar Bear.”

  He grinned again, pleased at this declaration of his reputation.

  Cooper thought for a moment. “You know where your people bought it, though,” he said. “Geographically speaking. And I imagine telling me that wouldn’t be ‘ratting out’ on your suppliers.”

  “Interested in a tour through rebel-infested Central American jungle?”

  Even hearing the term Central American jungle made Cooper’s stomach roil. He tensed up, Cooper starting to get pissed off at the indecipherable presence of butterflies that kept lightening his midsection whenever he put too much thought into the source of Po Keeler and Cap’n Roy’s goddamn gold artifacts. He thought for a moment of the statue of the priestess, camped out on the shelf in his bungalow: Yeah, Cooper, he heard her decayed, gritty voice croak, we up here in the afterlife waitin’ for your help. Up here lookin’ down at a slice o’ Central American jungle, about where you lost track of a few things yourself.

  “I’m not following you,” Cooper said.

  “No joke, amigo,” Borrego said. “I like to get out there once in a while-two, three times a year, minimum. Head out with my boys and do the buy myself-maybe even coax some tomb raider or other to take us along for the spelunk.”

  “Spelunk,” Cooper said.

  “The journey belowground-into the caves. The tombs, if you can find them. Still plenty of ’em out there-Inca gold, Mayan antiquities, art and treasure been hidden for a thousand-plus years. Technology and civilization just now getting us in on some of it.”

  Cooper didn’t say anything about the relative youth Susannah Grant had pinpointed as to the origins of the Keeler artifacts-a hundred and fifty years at most.

  “Appreciate the offer but I’ll take a pass,” Cooper said. “You go along for the ride on the shipment in question? If not, why don’t you just tell me where you got them.”

  “Well, that’s the point. We purchased them in a remote, mountainous region along the border between Guatemala and Belize-but we’d have to get out and track down the sellers, among other things, to pin it down any better than that. I could track them down if I nosed around those parts for a bit, but there isn’t exactly a phone number.”

  Borrego waved the receptionist in from the perch she’d clung to in the doorway, and she came in and cleared the remains of his lunch, shooting Cooper a series of dirty looks along the way. Or maybe she’s taking the time to admire the sharp crease of my cheekbones.

  Then the Polar Bear stood and extended a hand.

  “Offer stands,” he said.

  Cooper, who tended to tower over the average guy, had to look way up as he took hold of El Oso Blanco’s paw and shook. Man had to be six-nine, maybe taller. An effective guess on his weight seemed impossible.

  “While I enjoy a nice eco-tour as much as the next soul,” Cooper said, “that part of the world isn’t exactly my favorite. I’ll be getting hold of your Florida buyer, though.”

  “Fence. You going to call him?”

  Cooper cocked his head a notch, unclear as to what Borrego was asking.

  “Just curious,” the Polar Bear said, “if you were planning to call the man on the phone, or whether you’d ride in on a train to get past his security guards.”

  Cooper released Borrego’s paw from the handshake.

  “What I’m curious about,” he said, “is when I can expect to get my gun back from your army of one.”

  Borrego motioned to his bodyguard and Cooper turned and caught the Browning as the velociraptor threw it.

  “Hasta luego,” Cooper said, and took his best shot at stepping on the bodyguard’s toe on his way out of the office. The security man pulled his wingtip back as Cooper passed-and Cooper might have caught the velociraptor smirking at his lame attempt.

  Despite the relative humiliation, Cooper exited the administrative building and headed for the train tracks.

  22

  It was six o’clock in the morning when Cooper heard the phone ring forty or fifty times. Somebody finally silenced it-meaning it wasn’t too much of a stretch to peg the three hard whacks at his door for Ronnie, coming to say the call was for him.

  “Rise and shine,” Ronnie said, “you sorry rummy fuck!”

  Cooper’s first thought was, Who’s dead now? But doing his best to ignore this thought, he reached under his bed, picked up, then heaved his Ken Griffey Jr. Autograph-Special Louisville Slugger in the direction of the front door of his bungalow.

  It wouldn’t do anything to Ronnie but scare the daylights out of him-Cooper was too tired to get up and take the swing that would have done the trick-so he made sure of his aim, watching with satisfaction as the heavy bat careened off the concrete floor of the bungalow in a single hop then rocketed into the jalousie panes on the door. The bat shattered all twelve louvered panes to splinters, gouging a hole in the screen beyond-Cooper hopeful, though unable to see whether the
hardwood handle of the bat had reached far enough through the screen to strike Ronnie in the shin.

  “Keep out!” he bellowed.

  Through the window near the foot of his bed, Cooper saw Ronnie stroll down the stairs and pass out of view-middle finger extended all the while, dropping a foot with each step taken down and away from the bungalow.

  A fuck-you puppet show, Cooper thought-what a fine way to start the day.

  He found a saggy set of black shorts with an AND1 logo on the thigh and slipped on his Reefs. He ignored, even enjoyed the eighty-five-degree rain as it dumped its thick drops on his mussed hair and naked, weathered shoulders. He came through the dark, empty kitchen with its huge stainless steel appliances-detecting, as with every early morning, the faint scents of hops, barley, rum, and conch fritters emanating from the floor, probably inherited as much from the old mop used to scrub it clean as from the food and drink spilled on it the night before.

  In a cubbyhole behind the kitchen sat a hulking phone. It seemed Ronnie had left the receiver off the hook.

  “Yep,” he said upon snatching the receiver.

  “Good morning, Professor.”

  Upon hearing the sound of Julie Laramie’s voice, Cooper instantaneously jerked the phone from his ear and dropped it from great elevation onto its cradle.

  He made his way leisurely back through the garden to his room, where he removed the AND1 shorts and slid beneath the sheets again. He could feel some sand in the covers, the way he always felt some, even if he’d had the sheets washed thirty minutes prior.

  The ringing started up again, and after twenty-one of the phone’s shrill, bleating rings, the clamor ceased. To Cooper’s great relief, the sounds of the diminishing rain on the metal rooftops and wind-rustled palms washed over the club.

  Then he heard those goddamn footsteps coming up the porch again.

  “Fuck’s sake, Guv,” Ronnie said. “I hung up on her, but she’s waking up all the guests.”

  “The hell you expect me to do about it?”

  “Don’t know how many times I need to tell you, old man. Give these fucks your sat phone number and maybe the rest of us can sleep till six-thirty-maybe seven.”

  “You sleep till seven, Woolsey’ll have your ass, ‘Guv.’”

  “Be my pleasure,” Ronnie said. “Bleedin’ ’ell, I been trying to get ’im to fire me since my first day here.” He went silent for a minute, but Cooper didn’t hear any footsteps, so he knew the errand boy was still standing there.

  “Was nice havin’ her around, you know,” Ronnie said. “Why don’t you take her call, you effin’ stump?”

  Cooper, his voice almost delicate, said, “Ought to mind your own business.”

  He heard the pooled raindrops dripping from the gutters, from the railings, from an occasional wide, waxy leaf. The rainfall itself began to abate, and the wind, too, slowed. After a while, Ronnie’s departing footsteps mingled briefly with the regular mix of sounds.

  After another while, Cooper lying in his sheets listening, the last of the sounds of draining water ended too, and the silent heat began to beat down on the places the rain had moistened, and warm the roof of his bungalow, and infiltrate the depths of his room.

  Another day has begun, he thought, here in Conch Bay.

  Cooper sat in the blistering inferno that was his porch, the old stoop made that way by the direct sunshine that struck and cooked it every afternoon between the hours of two and five. It hadn’t been designed quite right to handle the direct, oppressive afternoon sun. He’d once planted a thermometer out here to measure how hot it got, and the thing had actually sprung a mercury leak. It had registered higher than 140 degrees on the day it broke, but Cooper had decided this wasn’t quite possible-that he’d simply bought a faulty unit that wasn’t made for direct sunlight.

  Around noon, the kitchen phone had started up with another ring cycle, and somebody had taken down the number of the woman everybody had already been told not to bother to come get him for. Now, baking in the afternoon heat, Cooper, bored with too many options on how to spend the remaining hours of the day, begrudgingly punched in Laramie’s number on his sat phone. He was informed by the man who answered that he’d reached the LaBelle Motor 8 Luxury Motel. As instructed by the information scribbled on the slip of paper, he requested room number eighteen.

  She answered on the second ring.

  “All right, what is it,” he said.

  Laramie’s interpretive delay lasted only a couple seconds.

  “Why did I call, you mean?” she said. “Maybe I was calling just to catch up.”

  “Maybe not.”

  Cooper leaned slightly forward in his deck chair and planted his elbows on his knees, the sweat pouring out of him in the heat of his outdoor oven. He’d never tried it, but frequently wondered whether eggs would fry out here if he cracked open a pair on the reading table between the chairs. He reflected that for a few months, on and off-between trips aboard the Apache to a string of resorts-Julie Laramie’s rear end had logged its share of oven-hot hours in the other chair on this deck, but not many; not enough. Laramie hadn’t liked the afternoon heat-she preferred the porch at night, under the stars.

  Though as it turned out, she hadn’t preferred much of that, either.

  “I’m-” Laramie said, then stopped. “This is mildly awkward.” She hesitated again, Cooper suspecting she was hoping for an encouraging word or two-Go ahead, Laramie-but he didn’t bite. Effectively maintaining his reputation as a grouch.

  Laramie went on anyway.

  “I’m in a complex and difficult situation,” she said. “I’ve been given permission, and instructions, to speak to you-officially, I mean. To recruit you. As a member of my team.”

  Cooper sat silently for a while, elbows pressing reddish indentations into his thighs.

  “That is awkward,” he said.

  “I’m in Florida. Obviously I’m unable to discuss why, or what we need you to help us with, on the phone. We’ll pay for you to come meet with us.”

  Cooper began a kind of repeating, monotone chuckle.

  “I know I’ve offered to pay you before and you laughed at me then too. I know you don’t need-”

  “No problem,” Cooper said. “If I were interested in coming, I’d happily pay my own way. Actually, I’d charge it to my expense account, so it’s just a matter of which department pays.” He realized something, thinking of Laramie’s call in a slightly different way, then said, “Or which agency.”

  “It’s important for you to come up here and meet with us. With me. There isn’t really a choice.”

  Cooper said, “No choice, eh?”

  “We’ll discuss it when you arrive. I can’t until then. You’ll need to trust me. But we’ll get you up here the fastest way we can do it.”

  “Not interested,” he said.

  “No, it’s not-look, you have to come. You’re necessary.”

  “Not sure,” Cooper said, “how I was unclear.”

  The occasional, distant ping of interference over the satellite connection did its audio dance while neither of them said anything for a while.

  Then Laramie said, “If you don’t come, the people I work for have told me they will consider freezing your assets. They have the capability, and you’ve told me where you put enough of it for us to get hold of a significant portion of your money.”

  Cooper’s monotone Morse chuckle resumed then quickly overtook him, verging on an all-out belly laugh of the sort the Polar Bear of Caracas had levied on him two days before. After about a minute of this, Cooper finished up his laughter as though it were a delicious drink and sighed.

  “I’m sorry,” Laramie said, “but the people I work for instructed me to tell you that this would be our only recourse were you to decline my initial recruitment effort. It’s that important. And I don’t have time to ask more than once. If I need to force you to come, I’ll do it.”

  “‘Initial recruitment effort,’” Cooper said. “That’s nice. Y
ou know, I find it amusing the way the American government believes itself all powerful in places it has less pull than a gecko. Good luck to you.”

  He took a great deal of time removing the phone from his ear, holding it beneath his chin so he could find the button, and plowing his thumb into the word End printed in red letters on the upper-right corner of the keypad. He set the phone on his reading table, leaned back against the rear spine of the deck chair, and closed his eyes to soak in the convection waves of mercury-busting heat.

  He considered, with enormous satisfaction, that he still had at least another hour and a half before the temperature would sink below three digits again.

  23

  Throughout Collier and Lee counties and all the way back to Miami, Ricardo Medvez was regarded by all-rich, poor, chic, nearly everyone in between-as the news anchor of choice. Their trusted man, host of the six and eleven o’clock news, telling it like it was from his seat in the studio of the Fort Myers NBC affiliate.

  In certain, less public circles, Medvez was also known for some other things: a gambling addiction, frequent trips down the crystal meth, coke, and freebase superhighways, and a generous propensity for lump-sum payoffs engineered to discourage numerous paternity suits from making the rundown of his own news broadcast.

  Having largely succeeded in keeping his evening and weekend activities under wraps, however, Medvez-who otherwise considered himself starkly heterosexual-had, one night, made a tape. Perhaps it’d been the freebase talking, or maybe he’d just unlatched a long-locked closet door, but one night Medvez, jumping on the phone, ordered up half a dozen male prostitutes, punched the record button on a couple of camcorders, and made a private porno flick that made Deep Throat look like a Pixar movie. He got plenty of mileage out of the tape, taking it with him wherever he knew he’d possess sufficient private time with a VCR.

  The odometer wore out, though, when one of the people he owed a hundred grand in gambling debts to got hold of the tape. From that point on, the interest rate on his gradually accumulating vig jumped a few dozen percentage points and Medvez assumed he was fucked for life.