The Council of Ten (17 page)

“Talk to the people who were in there. They saw what happened. They had to.”

“We have. All those who remember anything insist you killed everyone, including that innocent bystander who tried to intervene.”

“
Innocent bystander?
” Drew shook his head in mock disbelief. “That fucker tried to kill me after he killed the others, damnit! I should have let him. Then at least you’d be out there looking for the real killer. Or am I giving you too much credit?”

“That doesn’t explain the positive make we got on your gun.”

“I only fired two goddamn—” Drew cut himself off. “They set that up, too.”

“Who did?”

“The people behind all this.”

“Of course. The mysterious force you keep alluding to.” Wexler paused. “Now let’s talk about Selinas.”

“Mace,” Drew corrected. “I never knew him as Selinas.”

“Because as Selinas he was supposed to kill you, but as Mace he agreed to help you stay alive. Have I got that straight?”

“Close. Only you’re missing the point. There’s more going on here. If you’d open your eyes you’d see that. As Selinas, Mace killed other people connected with this. I already gave you their names. Check them out. There’s a pattern present. Everything’s connected and it starts with the grandmothers.”

Wexler softened his features. “Look, Drew, somebody wants you nailed with this awfully bad. They called us
and
the newspeople and fed your name. You’re alone, but you don’t have to be. Tell us who else you were working with. Who set you up? Talk to us and we’ll protect you.”

“Even if I had anything more to tell you, it wouldn’t help, not with what you’re up against.”

Wexler sat back down and straddled the chair once more. “Let’s take it from the beginning again.”

“I think I’ll take that Coke now… .”

The footsteps woke Drew up the next morning. He had no idea what time it was and realized he was ravenously hungry, having not eaten since the hotdogs nearly twenty-four hours before. Then again, even if those footsteps did mean breakfast was being served, Drew would have to think twice before eating it in view of Mace’s warning, which was still firm in his mind.

The problem turned out to be academic since it was an empty-handed guard who conferred with the one who had been posted outside his cell all night. It was that man who unlocked Drew’s cell and swung the door open.

“Come with me,” said the policeman who had just arrived.

“We eating out?”

“Just come along.”

Drew had no idea what to expect as he followed the man through the bowels of Miami police headquarters toward the main levels. In his mind he could almost see the Timber Wolf waiting for him upstairs with a plan to find who was behind everything that had happened, having changed his mind and ready to plunge back into the world he had abandoned.

Upstairs he saw no one he recognized. They gave him back his watch and money and told him he was being released. Drew gazed at the clerks in shock as he signed a series of vouchers. A pair of policemen escorted him to the building lobby where a huge man in a light suit was waiting for him. Drew looked at the man, then at the officers poised at either elbow.

“So, this is how it ends,” Drew said to no one in particular.

“Thank you,” the big man said and the guards took their leave. “There’s a car waiting for us outside,” he told Drew.

“I don’t suppose I have a choice of going for a ride or not, do I?”

The big man shook his head.

“Fine. I’m too tired to make any trouble for you and I’m too damn sick of running.”

“Let’s go,” said the big man and he led Drew out into the sun toward a waiting limousine.

“At least I get to go in style,” Drew muttered, searching himself for a smile.

It was about the time the limousine reached a small, isolated airfield somewhere north of Miami that Drew realized with considerable relief that they weren’t going to kill him. A single Learjet sat warming its engines and the limo came right up to it. The big man led Drew up the five steps leading to the cabin. The driver stayed behind and drove the car off as the Lear’s engines prepped for takeoff.

“You plan on telling me where we’re headed?” Drew asked the big man. “No, I don’t suppose you do… .”

“The
Islas del Rosario
off the coast of Colombia,” the big man said suddenly. “There’s someone who wants to see you.”

The flight was longer than Drew had expected, his own confusion and anxiety lengthening it. The big man refused to answer any more of his questions and for Drew the mystery of what was happening to him was agonizing. Someone had rescued him, saved his life. But who? And why?

The answers lay in Colombia.

They landed in Cartagena where another stretch limousine was waiting for them on the tarmac. Again the big man guided him inside, his vigil constant. Drew knew the man hadn’t slept during the flight, had barely closed his eyes. The limousine brought them to a dock where a cabin cruiser was waiting. Once more the big man ushered him aboard.

Drew was vaguely familiar with the
Islas del Rosario
, was aware that they composed a small chain of lavish islands two hours by boat from Cartagena. He tried to relax, but the hot sun bore into him and he found himself feeling weak and dizzy. After half an hour he went below to the cabin, accompanied by his huge escort, and drank ice water until his stomach ached. Then he returned to the deck and collapsed in a chair set in the shade.

The
Islas del Rosario
came into view an hour later. They were strikingly beautiful, lush green oases in the midst of a piercing blue sea. The water rolled upon the narrow beaches, seeming to fondle the sand. As the cabin cruiser drew nearer, Drew made out the large villas and smaller summer homes constructed on the larger members of the island chain. A few even boasted condominium complexes to rival the best that Miami and Palm Beach had to offer. Strange, he thought, how so many Colombians had made their way to America while numerous Americans had purchased property here.

Drew didn’t need to be told that they were nearing their destination. The presence of two armed patrol launches suddenly before them revealed that much, followed by the sight of a series of huge white parapets, something like guard towers, rising out of the center of the next island. Whoever had sprung him from jail was certainly well protected.

Four men, all dressed in khaki and all armed, were waiting on the dock when the cabin cruiser pulled in. The deckhands joked with them in Spanish and together they tied the boat down. Drew was led off by his giant escort to a waiting jeep. The man’s sole human move during the entire trip had been to strip off his suit jacket when they were about halfway to the islands.

This particular island was small and the massive villa Drew had caught glimpses of from the sea composed most of it. The ride by jeep was understandably short through the abundant flora, always with the sound of the sea not far away. The greenery cleared five minutes into the drive, allowing Drew to see one of the largest homes he had ever laid eyes on, something to rival the Post estate in Palm Beach. The enormous villa was three stories high and stretched into the forest for as far as Drew could see. A huge, cream-colored wall, the same shade as the villa itself, surrounded the entire complex. Two more guards swung open the main gate to allow the jeep to pass through.

Drew caught sight of three majestic marble pillars adorning the villa’s front. The structure, he surmised, was fashioned after the gothic homes of Spanish royalty from centuries before. The windows were wide and long. The villa’s exterior had an unfinished, stucco quality about it, adding to the rustic flavor.

There was yet another trio of guards waiting to greet the jeep when it pulled up before the massive entrance doors. Drew’s escort climbed out and conferred briefly with one of them.

“This way,” he instructed and led his charge down a flagstone walk that seemed to encircle the entire front. They passed through another guarded gate and headed toward a huge swimming pool enclosed by cabanas and small palm trees.

As they got closer, Drew could see a number of canopied tables placed around the pool. They were spaced well apart, some larger than others. Three figures sat at one, the middle figure with his back toward him.

The escort bid Drew to stop some fifteen yards from the table. The two men sitting on either side of the third said something to him and the man in the middle started to rise. He turned slowly and Drew figured at first that the sun was playing tricks on him and then he was certain that he had gone totally mad.

Because the man staring him in the face was no stranger at all.

It was Arthur Trelana.

Chapter 15

“I SAW YOU DIE,”
drew muttered, the lameness of the statement never really occurring to him.

Trelana stepped forward, the breeze toying with his thick, silvery hair. He spoke with only the barest traces of a Spanish accent. “And then, from what I understand, you were given the blame for my apparent murder. My death was an illusion I created just as my being responsible for your grandmother’s death was an illusion fostered by those behind your rather desperate predicament.”

“Then who was it I saw—”

Trelana came closer, flanked by his guards, and interrupted. “The man in Too-Jay’s was my double, a regrettable but necessary sacrifice to be explained in time. Come, let’s sit in the shade.” Only then did Drew realize how much he was sweating. Trelana let him catch up and they started walking, the bodyguards looming near. “I’ll call you Drew if you don’t mind,” the drug lord continued. “I have children older than you, so I’m sure you’ll understand. First, let me apologize for bringing you here in the manner I did. It was necessary, I assure you.”

“I should be thanking you for posting my bail, especially since I was in jail for
your
murder.”

“Bail?” Trelana queried. “Oh, there was no bail to post. I had to use other means to get you out. Again, necessary. You’ll understand why in good time.” He gestured toward the canopied table they had reached. “Please, sit down. We’ll have a cold drink. You must be famished. I’ll send for something right away.”

“Yes,” Drew said thankfully. “Please.”

Trelana joined him under the canopy at the wrought iron table and waved the two bodyguards away with a simple flap of his hand. They took up a silent vigil in the shade near the series of cabanas off to the side of the pool.

Drew, meanwhile, tried to form a fresh impression of Trelana. He looked considerably younger than his sixty-plus years, at least on the outside. His skin was bronzed and creased little by wrinkles. His eyes were a piercing shade of brown, almost black, missing nothing. But it was his eyes that gave away the fear that lurked within, the rapid shifting that indicates a man taken to looking constantly over his shoulder. The lines of his neck muscles were stretched and taut, his throat seeming to remain forever dry and uncomfortable despite the swallowing of ice water from a huge glass he drained and swiftly refilled.

A man dressed as a waiter approached the table and Trelana spoke briefly to him in Spanish.

“I find it best that the help know only their native language,” he explained after the waiter had nodded and left. “I’ve just ordered you a substantial meal. But I’m sure you’re hungering for more than merely food.” His expression turned almost warm. “I suppose I’m partly responsible for the hell you have experienced. I’ll explain it all as best I can, starting with what got you involved in the first place: your grandmother.”

Drew flinched.

“She did work for me,” Trelana continued after swallowing more ice water. “Her reasons, as I understand them, were based on her concern for you. Near the end of your college career, the money was drained that had formed your support. She sought a vehicle for earning more and I provided her with a lucrative one.”

“You make it sound like a … business arrangement.”

“Because that’s what it was.” Trelana sighed and stroked his glass. “I make no apologies for what I am and I refuse to engage in curt denials. There is a need for the services I oversee, a need for a central organization to coordinate certain facilities that people would find elsewhere anyway. Does that make sense?”

“I suppose it does to you, but I can’t accept your business, no matter how you put it.”

“Neither could your grandmother after a time, but I’m getting to that. The key to any successful smuggling chain is to use it sparingly, only when the need arises. That is how men like myself stay ahead of those in law enforcement, who formed our primary antagonists until recently. When was the last time your grandmother ventured down to Nassau?”

“About two weeks ago. She’d been back only three days when …” Drew let the statement tail off.

“I hadn’t sent her down there in nearly a year. It was generally only once a year—sometimes less, but never more.”

Drew stared at the drug lord, dumbfounded.

“Someone penetrated my organization, utilized the chain I created to bring in their own powder.” Trelana’s eyes sharpened. “You told the Miami police about your friend Mace. What were his last words to you?”

“That something different was going on. Something … worse.”

“Indeed. I had come to the same realization myself but only recently. I am what is commonly referred to in my business as an overlord. And like any lord, I do not hold complete control over all my subjects, which explains how the truth of the penetration escaped me for so long. My suspicions began with the murder of a courier of mine named Lantos.”

“By Selinas—Mace. Yes, he told me!”

“Lantos’s role was to deliver money and instructions to the next link in the chain, a rather unsavory but efficient pair named the Rivero brothers.”

“Rivero!” Drew almost shouted. “Mace told me their name, but I couldn’t remember it.”

“He was hired to eliminate the brothers, too, no doubt. The Riveros, keep in mind, were the ones responsible for distribution of the cocaine as per Lantos’s instructions. You see where this is leading, Drew. You must.”

Drew nodded uncertainly. “The instructions that the Riveros received for distribution weren’t yours and neither was the cocaine they received through the grandmothers. Yes, I see what you mean by penetration. But then Mace, as Selinas, comes in.”