Public Enemy Read online

  This remained the case until a year and a half later, when the olive skinned news anchor stumbled across a high-stakes card game in Key West. A few of the guys in the game kept referring to the weathered, baritone-voiced card shark taking all of their money that night as the “spy on the island,” and Medvez wondered what this meant. Afterward, putting his finely honed interviewing skills to work-dulled somewhat by the lines of coke he’d done in the bathroom between hands-he ascertained that his fellow gambler was in fact a spy of sorts, and resided on an island in the British Virgins.

  Medvez propositioned him on the spot.

  “What would it cost if I wanted a favor done?” he asked.

  Cooper sized up Medvez, the two of them out on the sidewalk in front of the restaurant they’d used for the game.

  “What kind of favor,” he said.

  When Medvez explained, Cooper pondered the request for a few minutes-standing there in his Tommy Bahama short-sleeved shirt at four in the morning-then said, “I won’t kill anybody for you, but this shouldn’t be too hard to handle. I’ll need whatever information you have on them, everywhere you’ve seen or associated with them, who you think they might work for, and so on.”

  Then he asked what Medvez had to offer in return.

  “You like boats?” Medvez asked.

  “Sure.”

  “Wanna take a walk?”

  “How far?”

  “Old Key West Marina. Five minutes, tops.”

  Parked as it was, roped beside the fuel depot in the island’s marina of choice, Cooper would always remember his first encounter with the squat-hulled, off-white-and-burnt-orange Apache 41 custom racing vessel. For him it had been like meeting that woman you were meant to be with-he felt he’d known her all along. Upon further inspection, the forty-one-foot boat revealed its brawny twin engines, luxury quarters belowdecks, and nearly untouched, mint-condition state. He knew the boat to be worth somewhere close to four hundred thousand dollars.

  “I’ll take it in advance,” he’d told Medvez back then, “but if I can’t solve your problem, you can have it back.”

  Medvez agreed, and in an odd way-because of his own love for the racing boat he’d had built to his exact specs-he found himself, over time, to be mildly disappointed by the lack of contact from the people Cooper had somehow silenced. Medvez never asked Cooper whether he’d actually retrieved the tape, and ultimately didn’t really want to know.

  Cooper took the name and number El Oso Polar had passed him on the Post-it and ran them through three separate wash cycles-the reverse directory services of CIA, FBI, and one private think tank. The machines returned three neatly pressed but slightly different packages. Between them came one post office box, three residential addresses-two in South Florida, one in Louisiana-one business address, two different versions of the man’s name, his social, printouts of four different credit bureau reports-the kind the manager at a car dealership pulled when you went in to buy a car-plus a basic breakdown of the person’s various bank and credit card accounts and loans and various supposedly current addresses.

  Cooper didn’t have much interest in placing phone calls to people he didn’t know, who didn’t expect his call, and who wouldn’t have any interest in answering the kind of questions he intended to ask. He did, however, have an interest in finding out who had sent the contract killer to take out Cap’n Roy. And his only current lead-at least outside of the entire federal government of the United States of America or anyone else who had access to reports or radio communications from U.S. Coast Guard antidrug task force fleets-was the name of the fence the Polar Bear had provided him. Cooper figured an in-person conversation with the man might yield some answers on who else had been aware of the intended transaction.

  He took his boat up to Naples-it was a long haul, but he was in the mood for a challenge. Including a couple of half-hour breaks, he made it in a shade under nineteen hours, bay to bay: five A.M. departure from his Conch Bay mooring and an arrival one hour shy of midnight at the fueling pier near downtown Naples. He’d made an average speed of forty-eight knots.

  Double-parking against a lengthy yacht that looked something like Po Keeler’s Seahawk, he kicked the bumpers off the edge, tied the two boats front to rear, then strolled through the rear cabin of the other boat on his way to the dock. He knew it was unlikely anybody would be using the big yacht anytime soon-with these kinds of boats, people liked having them more than using them. He took a cab to the single-building television station on the outskirts of Fort Myers.

  In the lobby of the television studio, Cooper told the receptionist he had a story their evening news anchor would want to hear about. He told her it was about a film that had been made of a famous celebrity without the celebrity’s permission, and that competing media outlets would leap into a frenzy to cover the story if Ricardo Medvez didn’t come out and capture the scoop while he had the chance.

  At 11:23-Cooper watching the weather segment begin on the eleven o’clock news on the monitor in the lobby-Medvez barged into the lobby in the suit Cooper had just seen him wearing on television. The contrast between the dark fabric of the suit and the white shirt he wore made the anchor’s Latino skin tone appear even darker than Cooper’s island tan-though Cooper could see pale orange smudges of pancake makeup on the edge of the man’s shirt collar.

  Medvez saw it was Cooper who’d made the thinly veiled threat and grinned. He nodded to the receptionist that all was cool, saw Cooper had been watching the monitor, and opened the door to the newsroom.

  “Wanna watch the rest from back here?” he said. “We’re just wrapping up.”

  “Why not,” Cooper said, and followed Medvez into the newsroom.

  Medvez was good-very good. Cooper watched the last segment of the news from a folding chair four feet behind the assistant director. The AD gave Medvez his cues; besides the weather girl and sports guy, Medvez anchored alone. Seated in there watching the studio lights banging off of Medvez’s glistening hair, it wasn’t much of a stretch for Cooper to grasp the man’s appeal-old ladies and blue-collar men’s men would relate to the guy equally. Red state, blue state, displaced Cubans, blue hairs fresh off the links-no matter who you were, there was something in Medvez for you.

  Including the denizens of the narcotics, gay porn, and gambling industries.

  When they wrapped, Medvez offered Cooper a seat in the cubicle he inhabited in the center of the newsroom. Even after the last newscast of the day, there was a restrained but constant swirl of activity buzzing around them in a way that made Cooper think of a police precinct house. Medvez kept his jacket and makeup on but loosened his tie.

  “So to what,” he said, “do I owe the honor?”

  “I actually have a story for you,” Cooper said. “One with considerable sex appeal, in fact. Though not as much sex appeal as that tape of yours.”

  Medvez’s eyes went hard and shifty and Cooper could see most of the on-air aura drain from the newsman’s olive-orange skin.

  Cooper got on with it.

  “There’s an antiquities smuggling ring,” he said, “part of which is operating out of Naples. May even be a good old-fashioned curse involved, since a string of somewhat upstanding citizens have recently met their demise in connection with the smuggling operation.”

  Medvez leaned back in his chair.

  “Florida’s got plenty of murders to go around,” he said.

  “Well, you can scoop the competition on this one,” Cooper said, “help yourself hold on to that anchor seat and keep getting babes-or whatever. Either way, I’ve got something you’re going to do for me, so you may as well mix in a story along the way.”

  Medvez glared at him, his crumpled-up chin looking as though he’d just bitten into a lemon. Cooper pushed across the desk the complete stack of data related to the Polar Bear’s Naples-based fence.

  “The man described in these credit reports,” he said, “is the broker for the U.S.-based buyers of the pillaged artifacts. The reason I�
�m giving you his papers is I want you to find him. What’s in there should be enough for an ace reporter like you to track the guy down.”

  Cooper checked his watch.

  “I’ll give you until tomorrow afternoon. By then I’ll need to know exactly where I can find him. I’ll come by after the six o’clock news, and once you wipe that fucking makeup off, you’ll take me there and we’ll have a talk with the man. I’ll get you back by eleven and you can stay famous for another night.”

  Medvez lifted the stack of papers, Cooper thinking maybe to clock the guy’s name, then dropped the stack back on the desk.

  “What the hell you need me for?” he said. “I’m no reporter. I sit behind the desk wearing my ‘fucking makeup’ and say what other people tell me to say. I even wear shorts most of the time I’m on the air-the cameras can’t see below your waist.”

  Cooper stretched and yawned.

  “I’ve been looking forward to a nice, long run on the beach,” he said. “The kind you don’t get living on an island with only a quarter-mile stretch of sand. I’m sleeping in, tracking down some huevos rancheros, then scooting out for as long a run as I can handle. Presuming my mostly broken-down legs can take it, I’m taking a shot at seven miles out, seven back. When I’m done, I’ll shower off at my hotel, load up on seafood fettuccini at Vergina on Fifth, then stroll over to the Tommy Bahama store and re-stock my wardrobe with the latest in tropical silk fashions.” Cooper stood. “With all that on my plate, it just seems counterproductive, spending my brief stateside time doing something like scrounging up a current address on some black market art smuggler.”

  Medvez shook his head, expression still puckered and nasty. The anchor was well aware of the fact he didn’t have any choice in the matter.

  Cooper smiled, then mimicked the words Medvez had used to sign off from the news.

  “You take care, now,” he said. “See ya tomorrow at six.”

  24

  Sore from the run, and full after a Polar Bear-size helping of seafood pasta, Cooper rode in the passenger seat of the news anchor’s S500 AMG sedan. Medvez, unmasked, had the wheel. With his deep bronze skin he didn’t look much different without the makeup-Cooper thinking maybe a decade older, provided you were examining him from as close a place as the passenger seat.

  “You can see his place from here,” the anchor said.

  He pulled into a parking lot serving a set of shops and restaurants called Tin City and parked in a slot that faced the main drag, so that when he tugged the emergency brake they were staring out the front windshield at the condominium tower across the street. The Tin City parking lot was nearly empty; Cooper could see the roof of a tour boat parked in the channel beside the parking lot. He knew the inland-most edge of Naples Bay to reach past Tin City and under Highway 41, where it squeezed down to the size of a creek and dissolved into salty marsh. It was long since dark, and rush hour, what little downtown Naples had of it, had just about wound down for the night.

  Medvez handed him a pair of binoculars.

  “Second story, corner unit, right side of the building,” he said. “Pretty easy to see most of his place with those curtains pulled.”

  Cooper adjusted the lenses and had a look.

  “Left his lights on,” he said.

  “Place looked that way at six A.M. and again at noon when I came back,” Medvez said. “Unless he gets up real early, I don’t think anybody’s been home since last night.”

  “What about the other addresses?”

  Medvez shrugged. “Couldn’t reach him at any of his numbers; no answer on his e-mail. Answering machine at the condo you’re looking at gives you one of those computer voices telling you the machine is full. I checked all four of the addresses your documents listed as his places of residence during the last ten years-turns out two were business addresses, two residential. One of the businesses is now one of these banks that pop up every couple of weeks around here, Sun Coast or whatever. Bank just moved in two months ago. One of the residentials is an apartment four miles east on Highway 41, where a single mother and her two loud teenage sons live. The other business address looked pretty much vacant to me, and this was the other address on the list.”

  Cooper dropped the binoculars and eyed Medvez.

  “Back in the reporting groove, eh?” he said.

  Medvez offered another shrug.

  “Broke a couple investigative stories to earn the anchor’s seat,” he said, “but that was a long time ago.”

  “What do you mean by ‘pretty much vacant’?”

  He nodded. “Warehouse. Seafoods, it says, but it doesn’t look or smell dirty enough for that. Might be a cold-storage place-definitely not retail, not where it’s located, over on the bay in about as bad an area as you’ll find around here. Couple of fish-packing firms and tour boat offices next door. There were a few things going on even as late as five in the other buildings, but nothing in your guy’s warehouse. Lights out all day. Nobody working there, no cars in the lot, no boats on the pier. Actually the pier’s busted and rotting, hasn’t seen a boat in a couple hurricanes. Parking lot ain’t much better-quarter-mile dirt road gets you there and you find nothing but the warehouse at the end. The neighboring operations have separate entrance roads and their own asphalt parking lots.”

  “You go in yet,” Cooper said, motioning with the binocs, “take a look around the condo or the warehouse?”

  Medvez’s face pinched in on itself, that lemon-chewing look again. “Reporting compelled by extortion, yes. Unprompted breaking and entering? No.”

  Cooper set the binoculars in the well behind the emergency brake.

  “I’ll educate you on the latest techniques,” he said. He motioned in the direction of the building. “What’s a place like that go for? Looks like a two-bedroom, maybe three at most.”

  “Right in town here? Seven-fifty, eight.”

  “For a territorial view of Tin City and the marsh?”

  “Relative paradise, my dear extorter.”

  Cooper nodded. He liked the term-relative paradise-if not the concept.

  “Let’s have a look,” he said.

  The middleman’s Uniden answering machine contained twenty-seven messages. Cooper listened to all of them, determining that twenty of the messages had been left during the prior five days. There did not sound to be anything of substance as to his whereabouts for the evening, at least not that Cooper or Medvez could understand. Cooper took notes on a pad the middleman kept beside the answering machine.

  The guy’s car and condo keys, residing on the same ring, sat on the counter in the foyer. Most of the lights in the place were on, including those in both bathrooms. The condo turned out to be a two-bed, two-bath, the second bedroom set up as a home office-Dell desktop, HP printer, Ikea file cabinets, boom box, telephone handset nestled in its charging base. The office had a view to the marsh.

  With Medvez leaning, half hidden against a hallway doorjamb, Cooper rummaged through the office. He dug up little more on the man than the credit reports and related documentation provided by his sources had already told him-couple of contacts he hadn’t known about before, written here and there, but that was it. He took a few dozen shots at the password that would unlock the computer, but couldn’t hack his way in. He knew a few people who could, but that wouldn’t do him much good at the moment.

  In the master bedroom, Cooper flicked on the light and discovered a very neat room, decorated about the way you’d expect a bachelor to decorate a bedroom. The drawers contained clothes that looked as though somebody else did the folding; the closet displayed two dark suits and a reasonable selection of tropical leisure wear.

  There was some milk getting close to the spoil date and a pair of Bud Lights in the fridge, but nothing else worth noting anywhere in the condo.

  Medvez, who had not moved from his place against the doorjamb, said, “You know what you’re doing, don’t you?”

  Ignoring the comment, Cooper made one last swing through, his t
our concluding in the foyer, where the answering machine lay. He had the sense, from no specific evidence, that the man who’d been living here was no longer around-at all.

  He jerked his chin at Medvez.

  “Why don’t we go see how vacant that warehouse is,” he said.

  Medvez shrugged and followed him out the way they’d entered.

  Looking at the old building from the interior of the Mercedes, Cooper experienced a vision of being eaten by an alligator the minute he stepped from the car. There was just something about any partially developed area of Florida swampland-the look of the pines, the shrubs, the fat tropical leaves-that always gave him the sneaking suspicion there were some nasty critters laying low, looking for an easy meal.

  Shrugging off his Yankee’s sense of dread, he exited the car and crunched across the gravel parking lot-thinking, as he went, he’d have called it that, gravel, rather than dirt. Monitoring the edges of his peripheral sight with an eye wary for gators, he strolled the perimeter of the warehouse.

  He found pretty much what the anchor had described: the aging wooden structure was built on undisguised landfill, and reached partway out into a narrow, swampy portion of the bay as a kind of wharf, the wharf’s single, dilapidated dock offering little in the way of support. There was only enough latent light from the neighboring buildings for Cooper to see the exterior features of the place, but when he tried to examine the interior through the caked-over windows he found it a useless effort.

  Cooper found a window with its lock hinge out of whack, fought the friction brought on by the couple dozen layers of peeling paint, and swung himself inside the rickety warehouse. He quickly found a light switch, and with the sound of a dying mosquito, a pair of tin-coned lights flickered on from the ceiling. He turned to observe Medvez climbing in behind him-the man unable to resist.

  Between its rows of boxes and bookshelves-racked to the gills with yellowing paperbacks-the place looked to Cooper like a distribution center for the crap they put outside head shops. He saw painted wooden statues depicting various native peoples, totem poles, dark hardwood furniture, tables full of brass and cast-iron figurines, and stacks of large picture frames wrapped in protective material.