Double Strike (A Davis Way Crime Caper Book 3) (20 page)

TWENTY-ONE

A tropical disturbance for us is a thunderstorm for everyone else. When the I states—Iowa, Irving, Indiana—forecast a weather event dumping seven to eight inches of rain in an hour, they say extremely heavy rain, thunder and lightning, sustained winds, flash-flooding likely. Here, everything’s tropical, so for the same weather event, they say, “Run! Run for your lives! Make parking lots of the interstates! Jam the phone lines with preemptive calls to your insurance carriers! Get out!” In addition to the land-based frenzied panic, a forecast of tropical rain on the Gulf is accompanied by small-craft advisories, coastal flood warnings, and air-travel paralysis—nothing taking off, nothing landing.

Fantasy, Baylor, and I were deep in 3B watching surveillance feed at nine on Friday morning. Baylor won the sleep award, having logged five hours. I’d driven to work in rain heavy enough to have my windshield wipers on the top notch, but as deep in the building as we were, the streets could be flooded, with convenience stores floating up and down Beach Boulevard, and we wouldn’t know it. No Hair called to say Mr. Sanders’s plane couldn’t land because of the storm. (What storm? Did he mean the rain? The plane couldn’t land in the rain?) The pilots were trying to fly west of it and land at Lakefront Airport in New Orleans, but a thick line of squalls was diverting flights trying to land everywhere from Galveston to Panama City, and the Bellissimo Gulfstream 650 was one of the few misdirected flights with enough fuel onboard for a week of hold pattern. It might be awhile. Then, Davis, get up here for our conference call.

Fantasy pulled up a weather map. “It’s coming down.” She whistled. “But it will pass straight through.” She read, “‘Wide area of organized thunderstorms with frequent lightning and sustained winds between forty and fifty-two miles per hour.’ It’s nothing,” she said. “It’ll be over before lunch.” Fantasy had a baby, K3, the youngest K son, at home with no electricity and no running water eight days after Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005. It took a lot more than a tropical storm to rattle her.

I stared at the weather model. “Yeah, but look where it’s going.”

A severe thunderstorm watch had been issued for the entire state of Alabama. When the storm blew past the Welcome to Mississippi sign, twenty miles east of Biloxi, it would visit Mobile, Alabama, then head straight up the state, where it would no longer be a tropical disturbance. It would be a severe thunderstorm. Warnings and watches had been issued.

The storm was forty-five miles wide, moving at fifty miles per hour with forecasted wind gusts up to sixty miles an hour, small-cell cyclones possible, likely to spawn up to thirty small tornadoes across the state, and it would continue a zigzag path of destruction until it reached the southern tip of the Appalachian mountain chain, where it would become stationary. And dump twelve inches of rain and hell. On DeKalb County, Alabama.

Fantasy patted my arm. Pat, pat. “That storm won’t get there until ten o’clock tonight, Davis. They’ll be in and out of there by then.”

*     *     *

Richard Sanders’s office, like half my home and so many other beachfront properties, had a wall made up entirely of glass—the magic real estate words for where I worked and lived, Gulf View! The view today was blue-black, with sheets of rain colliding on the impact-resistant hurricane glass.

No Hair and I were waiting on Felton Parham from the Department of Justice, who was caught in the storm. I guess so.

I waited patiently, drumming my fingers to the beat of the weather. No Hair paced back and forth in front of the Gulf View! storm. When he paused, he scratched the top of his head with four crooked fingers at lightning speed like he was trying to find his tickle spot. It’s his nervous move.

“Settle down, No Hair.”

He looked at his watch. “He’s late.”

“Right,” I said, “because he’s swimming here.”

The countdown had begun.

In the casino business, if takedowns weren’t clean and quiet, operations were disrupted on the gaming floor. When that happened, the place cleared out. When gamblers left the casino in droves, profits tanked. When we stopped generating vast amounts of revenues, word got out. When the media got a hold of it, the headlines read “Trouble in Paradise?” When the Associated and United Presses spread it like wildfire, the only way the Bellissimo could get gamblers and their money back in the door was to let them drive away in shiny new cars. And we just weren’t up for a shiny new car giveaway. At least until we could all get some decent sleep and married.

Individual, solo-act misdemeanors were kicked out daily. And on my watch, we’d busted groups several times—a false-shuffle gang, a color-up roulette ring, a pimp booking gigs and passing out room keys to his girls (and two boys) from a circular corner booth in Ivories, the piano bar just inside the casino—but this one was all ours. Both ways. Dissention within the ranks. Implosion. Bad apples in the Bellissimo barrel. With the exceptions of Missy and Red Jennings, the thieves were on our payroll. We had to outsmart and outmuscle the smartest and strongest criminals yet—our own.

The door opened and Felton Parham was ushered in. He had the same shock of white hair he’d had the day we’d processed Elspeth Raiffe’s body, the same steel-gray eyes, the same Drew Carey eyeglasses, and I think he was wearing the same navy suit. The cuffs of his pants were dark where they’d sopped up the tropical storm and his shoes were still wet from the rain. Otherwise, he looked like he could have been sitting outside Mr. Sanders’s door since the last time we’d seen him.

“Jeremy, Miss Way.”

“Have a seat, Felton.” No Hair swept an arm.

Felton commented about the weather; we all agreed it was a gully washer.

He told us we’d done a good job. The man’s white hair was so thick, I wondered if he knew about bull juice. He was quite and pleasantly surprised we’d pulled it off. He asked where Mr. Sanders was.

“Trying to get here.” No Hair gave the storm a nod.

Felton Parham nodded.

A representative from the ATF, one from the DEA, plus a SWAT guy, all in uniform and all out of Birmingham, Alabama, joined us by video conference from the Fort Payne police station. The men represented the agencies leading the joint task force moving in on Lickskillet and Have A Seat later today, and everyone at the table wanted it to be a successful mission—we’d like to keep our jobs, and government agencies can’t buy the kind of goodwill shutting down a homeland drug cartel provides. Personally, I wanted Walter Shaefer busted out. The very reason I’d been invited to this all-male acronym review.

Too soon, the meeting was turned over to me. My knees were knocking under the table. I introduced Walter—his background, his role, his captivity, his suspected location, his high-school girlfriend, and how vital it was (to Apple, IBM, Google, and Microsoft) that he be protected. In the end, it was just a “Don’t Shoot Walter” sermon, and my congregation agreed; they all said amen.

#SaveWalter

“Have you made provisions for the weather?” I asked the split screen of faces. The big burly men assured me they weren’t worried about a little rain. We saluted each other and signed off. Before No Hair hit the stop button, we heard the ATF guy talking to the SWAT guy off-camera. “What did they say the woman’s name is? The redhead? David?” I caught my breath. They were talking about me. And we could hear them. (I could have said something really stupid. I could have said several really stupid things. These boys were about to rip me a new one. In front of my boss. And a Department of Justice man.) No Hair’s thumb hovered over the stop button as he leaned in to listen. So did Felton Parham. I covered my eyes and held my breath. “Is she one of ours?” another one asked. “She works for the casino.” “Oh, hell, no. She’s CIA.” “That woman is from Pine Apple in Wilcox County. Her name is Davis and she’s with the casino.” There was a pause, then one asked, “Are they hiring?”

No Hair pushed stop. Mr. Parham turned to me. “If you ever decide to leave the casino industry, Miss Way, I’d like for you to give me a call.” He placed his business card in front of me and stood. He wished us luck. He disappeared.

The dust settled. “You done good, kiddo.”

“Thank you, No Hair.”

A ray of sunshine cut across the floor as the storm finally moved on. To Alabama.

*     *     *

It was like watching trees grow. The next two hours lasted twenty. Fantasy, Baylor, and I stared at surveillance monitors until we thought we’d go blind. When Baylor gets bored, he makes machine-gun noises. When he gets bored with machine guns, he makes aliens-at-war-while-driving-spaceships noises. He was driving us crazy.

Of the ten people who would be turned over to the authorities tonight, half were in-house, and we’d gone over every inch of surveillance video twice from the time they’d gone to their rooms after Strike closed. We had live feed aimed on their doors now. The Jennings poked their heads out at noon, had lunch at Bones (ribs, fries, slaw, and peach cobbler with vanilla ice cream), then right back. Cassidy Banking had a pedicure in the salon on the mezzanine at eleven-thirty, then back to her room. Hope she enjoyed it; it would be ten to twenty before her toes looked that good again. Bald bartender brother Wesley left his room at ten wearing jeans and a ball cap pulled low over his eyes, played three-card poker until eleven thirty, then back to his room. Levi Newman hadn’t, that we could see, even rolled over.

“He probably takes Ambien,” Fantasy said.

“Maybe he’s washing his wig.”

I had a laptop at my left elbow streaming live satellite radar of my home state—watching, waiting, praying. I talked to my father. “What’s going on, Daddy?” “Wearing my flippers, Punkin.” I talked to Bradley; we had a valid marriage license. (!) We had three quiet, simple wedding options we could choose from tomorrow: the Biloxi courthouse, Borrowed and Blue Wedding Chapel in New Orleans, or hop a plane to anywhere and come home married. Lunch came and went, and Baylor was the only one with an appetite. Fantasy and I were too full of coffee to be hungry, we didn’t want anything from Taco Bell, we never want anything from Taco Bell, we were sick to death of Taco Bell. Finally, the clock ticked around to two, and Angela texted.
Let me in
.

At ten till three, I had my hand on the door to leave for Strike when it burst open from the other side. No Hair almost knocked me down rushing in, quickly followed by Mr. Sanders. No one spoke. (What is going on?) No Hair held up Mr. Sanders’s phone and poked the arrow. Levi Newman’s face filled the screen.

“Richard, Jeremy, any other assholes to whom it may concern, listen up. I’m not going down for the lesbian’s murder. I’m not going down for the pot farm. I’m not going down for Strike. If I do, she’s going with me.” A wild-eyed, gagged, blonde head was shoved into the tiny display screen, then quickly shoved off camera. Flashes of phone fumbling, and then Levi Newman’s face again. “If you think you’re coming after me, think again. I’ve got your Inspector Lucille Ball Clouseau.”

Except he didn’t have Lucille Ball Clouseau. He had Bianca Casimiro Sanders.

*     *     *

Baylor’s assignment was the Strike Casino. Stay there, don’t move. You’re the manager, a bartender, a waiter, and security. Keep things as normal as absolutely possible.

Mr. Sanders stopped speaking after the first thirty minutes, not that he was able to form complete sentences before he grew quiet. (“
How
—?
Why
—?
When
—?
How
—?”)

Fantasy worked Security. She hand-picked them off the floor to work with us and called in subs to take their places. She briefed Biloxi Police Chief Michael Dawson, and he dispatched six officers and two detectives to the Bellissimo. At four o’clock we quietly raided Strike. Wesley Bartender, Cassidy Banking, all five IT guys, two waitresses, and the Jennings were walked out of the Strike casino and downstairs, where no one wants to go, without incident. Wesley Bartender was the only one we had to cuff. Cassidy Banking and her sister Missy Jennings were hysterical, and they had been from the moment they realized they weren’t in the service hall behind Strike because they’d received emergency phone calls. We had the Jennings separated and in individual interview rooms, Wesley Bartender in a third, who had bloody busted knuckles from punching the concrete wall, and Cassidy Banking in the fourth and last room breaking the sound barrier. The IT guys and the waitresses were piled into the drunk tank, across the hall from the interview rooms, and the gold, naked bikini waitresses had been given blankets they were wearing like capes.

No Hair and I split them up: he took the boys and I took the girls.

I let the door slam behind me and slapped a file down in front of Missy Jennings. There was mascara. Everywhere. A hard set to her jaw. Evil in her eyes.

“You sneaky bitch.”

No jazz hands.

“Shut up, Missy.” I pulled up a chair. “Tell me where Levi is.”

*     *     *

The call from Levi Newman’s to Richard Sanders’s phone traced local—it bounced off one of three cell towers within a rock’s throw of the Bellissimo, so we didn’t take the time to narrow it down to the specific tower. It pinged at one eighteen, but Mr. Sanders didn’t listen to the message until two thirty-seven. By five o’clock, a team of forty-two plainclothes Biloxi police, along with as much of our staff as could be spared (as much of our staff as could be trusted), had systematically searched the three million square feet of casino and hotel without turning up a trace of Levi Newman. Or his hostage. The Sanders residence was perfectly intact. We went back over the surveillance video of his movement and activity from when he entered the casino manager’s residence (down the hall from Jay Leno’s place) twelve minutes after Strike closed, and watched, frame-by-frame, as room service had been delivered forty minutes later—the single, solitary activity between him entering the room and Mr. Sanders receiving the call. We found the room service waiter in his boxers, bound and gagged, in the bathtub of Levi Newman’s suite. Which meant he abducted Bianca sometime after four a.m. this morning, made the call to Mr. Sanders from at least fifty feet outside one of the Bellissimo doors at one this afternoon, and by now they could be hundreds of miles from here. Or out to sea. Or landing in Phoenix.