The Black Palmetto (28 page)

Sam thought about that for a few moments. “You know, that might work.” He took out his phone and punched in Lora Diamond’s number.

The phone rang several times before a man answered. “What do you want?” The voice sounded familiar. He couldn’t quite place it, but it had to be Knox.

“Let me speak to Lora.”

“Sorry, she can’t talk right now.”

“Is she still alive?”

“She might be. Why are you calling?”

Sam paused for a moment. “I have some information, but I’m not giving it to you unless I can talk to her and know she’s alive.”

“What kind of information?” Tension edged into his voice.

“The FBI knows where you are,” Sam said.

Knox laughed. “They don’t know anything about me, much less where I am.”

“That’s where you’re wrong. If she’s still alive, let me talk to her and I’ll tell you the rest.”

Several seconds passed before Lora’s voice came on the line. “Sam, is that you? He said he’s going to kill me.” She sounded as if she had been crying.

“Don’t worry,” Sam said. “We’re going to get you out of there.”

Knox got back on the phone. “Okay, she talked to you. Now your turn.”

“They think you’re in a facility on Key Biscayne, and they plan to storm the place within the next few minutes.”

He was silent for a moment. “Why would they think that?”

“The acting chief of police in Iguana Key said the FBI got the info from Senator Blaine’s office.”

After a moment, Knox cursed, then a clatter preceded a loud pop, and the line died.

“Did he buy it?” Simone asked.

“I think so. Sounded like he threw the phone down and stomped on it.”

They conferenced their phones and decided to enter the woods from three different directions.

Sam pointed toward the driveway. “I’ll head in this way. That’s where they’ll probably focus their attention.” Likely the most dangerous path, too.

“Let’s go,” Simone said. “If we see cameras, we knock them out first.” She took the middle of the woods.

J.T. took the far side, where the trees had been thinned for a utility easement. He said he would go straight to the shore and work his way over so he could cut them off if they ran for the yacht.

****

“I just saw two guys heading for the dock,” J.T. said on the speaker in Sam’s pocket.

Sam put the phone to his ear. “You get a visual ID?”

“Not on the first one. He was too far away, but the one in the rear came a little later, and he looked like the homeless dude.”

Harpo?

Sam passed the building about fifty yards to his left as he ran through the trees, briars snagging his pants legs. “Okay, I’m on my way. Simone, can you check on Lora in the building?” He almost tripped over a body on the ground and stopped. It was Benetti, his clothes covered with blood, a crude tourniquet affixed to one arm.

“Will do,” Simone said. “I’m almost there.”

“Benetti is out of commission. Somebody cut an artery and he’s on the ground.”

Sam thought about Harpo again and recalled the blade. He hurried on and saw J.T. ahead of him, stepping onto the yacht. The big diesel roared to life as he reached the dock, and he leaped onto the craft’s deck.

J.T. stood outside the cabin, peering through a door that stood open. When he saw Sam, he said, “Harpo is unconscious on the floor in there, so Knox must be at the helm.”

Sam edged forward for a peek through the side of the windscreen into the wheelhouse. Knox stood there working the controls, a handgun on the console just inches from his fingers, a frantic expression on his face. Sam recognized him and stepped back.
Dudley Crew
, the police officer who had tried to roust him.

It all fell into place. Crew had a prime position to observe Richard Boozler’s every move, stay ahead of the murder investigation, and wait for the money to show itself. Sam told J.T.

They entered the cabin door, guns at the ready, as the yacht pulled away from the timbers. Harpo lay on the floor in the middle of the room. The wheelhouse was at the forward end, a step up from the rest of the room. It had sliding doors that were pushed wide open. Sam stepped to the far side of the room as J.T. eased forward along the closer bulkhead. It looked as if taking him would be easy, but then Harpo awoke and dropped his machete onto the hardwood floor.

Knox snapped his head around, grabbed the gun, and pointed it at the homeless man.

“Stop where you are,” J.T. said.

The assassin turned to him. A surprised expression on his face morphed into a sneer. “Lay your weapon on the deck, or I’ll shoot the bum.”

He didn’t appear to have seen Sam yet.

“No dice,” J.T. said. “I’ll splatter your blood all over that windshield.”

“No, you won’t. You’re probably after the money, like everybody else, and I didn’t bring it with me.”

Sam leaped up the step and rammed Knox against the console. Knox sprang back and pointed his gun at him, but Sam knocked it away with his left hand and slammed his right fist into the side of his opponent’s face. He felt bone give way under his knuckles. When the man staggered back, Sam twisted the weapon from his hand and tossed it to J.T.

Knox took a deep breath and sighed, as if outdone. Then, like lightning, he spun and threw a roundhouse kick at Sam’s chin. Sam jumped back, feeling the wind from the man’s foot as it whooshed past his face. He stepped in and kicked Knox in the stomach. The man doubled over, fell back against the console, and slid down to the floor.

“Watch him,” Sam said to J.T.

J.T. moved in and dragged the killer to the corner.

Sam stepped to the controls, pulled back on the throttle, and reversed the propellers. After a few minutes of maneuvering, he had the craft back to the dock.
This might work out after all
, he thought.
Get off this boat and take Lora home
. He hadn’t heard back from Simone and hoped she’d found Lora unharmed.

As he turned to go for the tie lines, Sam saw Harpo standing. In a blur, the homeless man flung the machete at Knox. The blade twirled end over end, like a boomerang. It struck the killer in the shoulder, and the tip of it sank a couple of inches into his flesh. He screamed and grasped the knife by the handle, pulling it free. Blood soaked his shirt from his neck to his sternum.

Knox stood up and swung the machete in J.T.’s direction, backing him up, and ran for the door. When he got within a few feet of Harpo, the homeless man fired a handgun at his head. It missed, and the killer slapped the pistol from his hand with the machete. He grabbed Harpo by the hair, pulled him close, and stuck the blade to his throat.

“Stay where you are,” he said to Sam and J.T., “or I’ll cut his head off. I mean it, no one move.”

Knox forced Harpo to squat down with him as he picked up the gun. He dropped the blade to the deck and put the gun to the side of Harpo’s head. Holding his hostage against him like a shield, he backed through the door. When he stepped onto the outside deck, Sam eased toward him.

Simone came into view behind Knox, eliminating any chance Sam would have for a clear shot.

“Hey, over hear,” Simone said.

Knox turned his eyes toward her and jerked the gun around.

She fired one shot. The killer’s head snapped back, a crimson spot the size of a dime spattering on his forehead.

Harpo wriggled free as Knox fell back against the rail behind him and slid down. Sam strode to Simone’s side. The dead man’s eyes were frozen in a startled stare.

Peering down at the body, she drew a deep breath and exhaled. “Guess that’s that.”

J.T. came out a moment later, surveyed the situation, and made a clicking sound with his tongue. Sam knew he was thinking about what Knox had said about the money.

Sam put his hand on the back of Simone’s neck. It felt warm and soft. “Good shot.”

She turned to him, a thin smile on her lips. “He got what he deserved.”

Maybe he did, and maybe he deserved a lot worse.

“Did you find Lora?” he asked, letting go of her neck and dropping his hand to his side.

“Yeah, she’s okay. She was in a room in the back of the place. I left her waiting outside the building.”

A muted
whump whump
of helicopter blades sounded off from the west. Sam stepped around the cabin to the stern and spotted the craft in the distance over Biscayne Bay.

“We’d better get going. I think those guys are coming here.”

Simone joined him. “What about the body?”

“They’ll take care of it. Let’s go.”

When they came back, J.T. said, “I got his wallet and phone. Might tell us something. He also had some keys.”

“What about prints?” Simone asked.

Sam tried to remember what he had touched. The guys in the chopper would probably get rid of Knox’s body and clean up the blood, but Sam didn’t want to get hauled in on a boat theft charge because of his prints. He hurried into the wheelhouse and wiped down the helm with his shirttail. Back outside, he didn’t see Harpo and asked about him.

“I don’t know,” Simone said. “I guess he ran off.”

J.T. stepped toward the door. “I’m going back inside for a look around the boat.”

The helicopter noise had gotten louder. “We don’t have time for that,” Sam said. He gazed skyward. “Those guys in the chopper will be landing in a couple of minutes. Anyway, Knox wouldn’t have left that much money unguarded on the boat, and he didn’t have time to hide it just now with Harpo on his tail.”

J.T. stopped and shook his head. “Yeah, guess so. We were so close.”

When they got back to the building, Sam didn’t see Lora. “You think she went back inside?”

Simone frowned. “No, there was a car out here. She must’ve driven away.”

While wondering if he should check for her in the building, a thought hit him. “Did you ask her about the other guy that was here?”

“Lockman? Yeah, I did, and she said he must have slipped out when Knox did.”

“I didn’t see anybody else,” J.T. said.

Sam could feel his heart pounding in his chest. The sense of dread had remained with him from the moment J.T. mentioned the new assassin on the scene. Now, it was worse than ever, and he thought he knew why.

“Lora is Lockman.”

Chapter Thirty-Four

Though Harpo hadn’t killed the man, he thought he had helped with the job. Now he needed to get out of there as fast as he could. If the police came, he would be the first one they would blame. Running through the woods, he came to a dirt driveway. As he stepped into it, a green car came roaring toward him, its tires throwing sand and gravel. He jumped back and fell to the ground as it passed. The driver glanced his way, but kept going. She looked like the woman from the newspaper office.

He got up and dusted debris from his face and hair. The vehicle disappeared around a corner and he followed, hoping for a path away from the death. As he passed an area that seemed familiar, he remembered the encounter with the gun-toting man. Wondering if the guy might have died, he cut into the woods, but didn’t find him.

Angling back toward the drive, he spotted a car snuggled into the undergrowth and stepped over to it. The driver’s door stood open, and the man he had cut with the machete sat slumped against the steering wheel. Touching his fingers against the man’s neck, he felt a pulse.

What could he do? This went way beyond his medical training. There wouldn’t be any help from Dr. Worth, either. The signal had died when the bad guy slugged him on the boat. After a moment of deliberation, he went to the other side, opened the door, and dragged the wounded man over the console to the passenger seat. The guy landed upside down, his face jammed against the floor mat. Breathing hard from the effort, Harpo decided that was the best he could manage. He went back to the driver’s side, got in, and started the car.

Though he had no idea as to his location, he thought he would try to find a hospital for the man. He backed out, drove about a hundred yards to the street, and took a left. A couple of minutes later he reached a highway and headed across a big bridge. The skyscrapers on the other side told him it had to be Miami.

The traffic going across moved swiftly, but when he hit the top of the off-ramp, everything ground to a halt. He could see several vehicles with flashing lights a quarter-mile ahead. Three police cars, a fire truck, and two ambulances.

A few minutes passed before anything moved. Then he saw the newspaper woman’s green car cut out of the line about twenty cars ahead and roll down the shoulder around the emergency vehicles. He wondered why he hadn’t thought of that himself, and did the same thing.

He idled by a five-car pile-up. Steam rose from broken hoods, fluids covered the pavement, groups of people stood talking. EMTs carried an injured man on a stretcher. Another EMT stepped out of an ambulance carrying a bag. Harpo jammed the brakes and jumped out of the car. “Hey, Doc, hold up.”

The man turned around. “What is it?”

Harpo ran around to the passenger side, swung the door open. “This guy is in bad shape. I think he’s dying.”

The man frowned. “Was he in the accident?”

“He’s lost a lot of blood.”

Glancing back toward the wreckage, the EMT sighed and stepped over for a closer examination. He opened his bag and pulled out a stethoscope. “How did he get turned upside down?”

Harpo didn’t answer, because he was already hurrying down the ramp on foot.

****

“Isn’t that Harpo up ahead?” Simone asked.

Sam took a quick look, the traffic now moving at a stop-and-go pace. “I think so.”

“Maybe he can tell us what happened to Benetti.”

As they drew even with the homeless man, Sam lowered the window. “Hey, Harpo, get in the car.”

The homeless man turned, gave them a frown. “No, thank you.” He kept walking.

Sam drove alongside. “Come on. You’re a long way from home.”

He seemed to consider that for a moment then hurried over.

When they got underway again, J.T. said, “I can’t find the woman on the monitor. Knox must’ve removed her transmitter before he left for the boat.”

Sam sighed. “He probably knew exactly where to cut.”

“Yeah,” J.T. said, “thanks to your sharpshooting.”