The Guardians: The explosive new thriller from international bestseller John Grisham (31 page)

“Thank you. Let’s talk about witness protection.”

She doesn’t smile but she is obviously pleased as they take a giant step in the right direction. She says, “We can talk about it, but I’m not sure it will work in this case.”

“You can make it work. You do it all the time.”

“Indeed we do. So, hypothetically speaking, if we agree to stash you away, what do we get right now? On this table? Obviously we have Mercado. Was he your immediate contact? Was there someone above him? How many names can you give us? How much money? Who got it?”

DiLuca nods and looks around the room. He hates ratting and he has spent his career brutally punishing informants. However, there comes a time when a man has to worry about himself. He says, “I will tell you everything I know, but I want a deal in writing. Now. On this table, as you say. I don’t trust you, you don’t trust me.”

“Fair enough. We have a standard short-form agreement that we’ve used for years. It’s been approved by various defense lawyers. We can fill in a few blanks and see what happens.”

DiLuca is taken to another room and placed before a large desktop computer. He types his own statement:

About six weeks ago, I was approached by a man who identified himself as Mickey Mercado, said he was from Miami. He actually knocked on the door of my apartment, which was odd because very few people know me or know where I live. As it turned out, he knew a lot about me. We went to a cafe around the corner and had our first meeting. He knew I was a Deacon and had spent time at Garvin. He knew all about my criminal record. I was a bit rattled by this and so I started asking him a bunch of questions. He said he was a security consultant. I asked what the hell that means, and he said he worked for various clients primarily in the Caribbean and so on and he was pretty vague. I asked him how I could be sure he wasn’t some kind of cop or agent or some such prick who was trying to suck me into a trap. I asked if he was wearing a wire. He laughed and assured me he was not. Anyway, we swapped phone numbers and he invited me to visit his office, see his operation. He swore he was legit. A few days later, I drove to downtown Miami, went up about 35 floors, and met him in his office. Nice view of the water. Has a secretary and some staff. No name on the door, though. We had a cup of coffee, talked for an hour. He asked if I still had contacts inside Garvin. I said yes. He asked how difficult it would be to take out another prisoner in Garvin. I asked if he was talking about a contract. He said yes, or something like that. Said there was an inmate who needed to be “extinguished” because of some vague bad deal with a client of Mercado’s. He did not give me a name and I did not say yes to the contract. I left and drove home. In the meantime, I dug through the internet and found very little about Mercado. But I was almost convinced he was not a cop. Our third meeting took place in a bar in Boca. That’s where we cut the deal. He asked how much it would cost. I said $50,000, which was a big rip-off since you can get a guy rubbed out in prison for much less. But he didn’t seem to mind. He told me the target was Quincy Miller, a lifer. I didn’t ask what Miller had done and Mercado didn’t offer. It was just a business deal as far as I was concerned. I called Jon Drummik, the leader of the Dekes at Garvin, and he arranged it all. He would use Robert Earl Lane, probably the most dangerous man there, black or white. They would get $5000 each up front, another $5000 when the job was finished. I planned to pocket the rest and screw them. You can’t take cash to prison, so I had to arrange payment in cash to Drummik’s son and Lane’s brother. At our fourth meeting, Mercado gave me $25,000 in cash. I doubted I would ever see the other half, regardless of what happened to Quincy Miller. But I didn’t care. $25,000 is gravy for a prison murder. I then met with Adam Stone, our mule, and planned the killing. He delivered messages to Drummik and Lane. The attack was well done but they didn’t finish the job. Stone said another guard got in the way or something. Mercado was furious at the bad result and refused to pay the rest of the money. I kept $15,000 cash.

Mercado never mentioned his client’s name. He was my sole contact. Frankly, I didn’t inquire since I figured it’s best to know as little as possible in a deal like that. If I had asked, I’m sure Mercado would have ducked the question.

A friend of mine in Miami, a former trafficker, says Mercado is sort of a semi-legit operator who is often hired by traffickers to fix problems. I have met with him twice since the attack on Miller but both meetings were not productive. He asked if I thought it might be possible to get to Miller in the hospital. I went there and looked around but didn’t like what I saw. Mercado wants me to monitor Miller’s recovery and find a way to finish the job.

Skip DiLuca

With the conspiracy to kill Quincy still active, the FBI must make a decision. It prefers to watch Mercado and hope he leads to bigger fish, perhaps even using DiLuca as bait. However, as long as Mercado is on the loose and planning to finish off Quincy, the danger is real. The safest route is to arrest Mercado and apply pressure, though no one within the Bureau expects him to talk or cooperate.

DiLuca is kept in jail, in solitary, under surveillance, and far from any form of communication. He’s still a career criminal who cannot be trusted. No one would be surprised if he contacted Mercado if given the chance. And he would certainly make sure Jon Drummik and Robert Earl Lane knew that Adam Stone is a rat.

Agnes Nolton makes the decision to arrest Mercado, and to get Adam Stone away from Garvin. Plans are immediately made to move him and his family to another town, one near a federal prison where a better job is waiting. Plans are also in the works to send DiLuca to a camp where surgeons will alter his looks and give him a new name.

Once again, patience pays dividends. Using a Honduran passport and the name “Alberto Gomez,” Mercado books a flight from Miami to San Juan, and from there he rides an Air Caribbean commuter to the island of Martinique, French West Indies. The locals scramble to pick up his trail in Fort-de-France, the capital, and he is watched as he takes a cab to the Oriole Bay Resort, a lush and secluded getaway on the side of a mountain. Two hours later, a government jet lands at the same airport and FBI agents hustle to waiting cars. The resort, though, is booked. It has only twenty-five quite expensive rooms and they’re all taken. The agents check in to the nearest hotel, three miles away.

Mercado moves slowly around the resort. He has lunch alone by the pool and drinks in the corner of a tiki bar with a view of the foot traffic. The other guests are high-end Europeans with their mix of languages, and none raise suspicions. Late in the afternoon, he walks along a narrow path fifty yards up the mountain to a sprawling bungalow where a porter serves him a drink on the terrace. The sparkling blue Caribbean stretches for miles below him. He lights a Cuban cigar and enjoys the view.

The man of the house is Ramon Vasquez and he eventually wanders onto the terrace. The woman of the house is Diana, his longtime mate, though Mercado has never met nor seen her. Diana waits and watches from a bedroom window.

Ramon pulls up a chair. They do not shake hands. “What happened?”

Mercado shrugs as if there are no problems. “Not sure. The job wasn’t finished on the inside.” They speak in soft, rapid Spanish.

“Obviously. Is there a plan to complete the deal?”

“Is that what you want?”

“Very much so. Our boys are not happy at all and they want this problem to go away. They, we, thought you could be trusted for something this simple. You said it would be easy. You were wrong, and we want the deal closed.”

“Okay. I’ll work on a plan, but it most certainly will not be easy. Not this time.”

The porter brings Ramon a glass of ice water. He waves off a cigar. They chat for half an hour before Mercado is excused. He eases back to the resort, suns by the pool, entertains a young lady during the evening, and has dinner alone in the elegant dining room.

The following day, Mercado uses a Bolivian passport and returns to San Juan.

Chapter 37

There are only two incorporated municipalities in Ruiz County: Seabrook, population 11,000, and the much smaller village of Dillon, population 2,300. Dillon is to the north and farther inland, rather remote and seemingly forgotten by time. There are few decent jobs in Dillon and not much in the way of commerce. Most of the young people leave out of necessity and a desire to survive. Prospering is rarely thought of. Those left behind, young and old, muddle along, living off whatever meager wages they can find and checks from the government.

While the county is 80 percent white, Dillon is half and half. Last year its small high school graduated sixty-one seniors, thirty of whom were black. Kenny Taft finished there, in 1981, as had his two older siblings. The family lived a few miles out from Dillon in an old farmhouse Kenny’s father bought at a foreclosure before he was born.

Vicki has put together a spotty history of the Tafts, and they have seen more than their share of suffering. From old obituaries, we know that Kenny’s father died at fifty-eight, cause unknown. Next in line was Kenny, who was murdered at the age of twenty-seven. A year later, his older brother was killed in an auto accident. Two years later, his older sister, Ramona, died at the age of thirty-six, cause unknown. Mrs. Vida Taft, having outlived her husband and all three children, was committed to a state mental hospital in 1996, but the court records are not clear about what happened after that. Commitment proceedings are confidential in Florida, as in most states. At some point she was released, because she died “peacefully at home,” according to the obit in the Seabrook weekly. No will has ever been probated for her or her husband so it’s safe to assume they never signed one. The old farmhouse and the five acres around it are now owned by a dozen grandchildren, most of whom have fled the area. Last year Ruiz County assessed the property at $33,000, and it’s not clear who paid the $290 in taxes to prevent a foreclosure.

Frankie finds the house at the end of a gravel road. A dead end. It has obviously been abandoned for some time. Weeds are growing through the sagging planks of the front porch. Some shutters have fallen to the ground, others hang by rusty nails. A thick padlock secures the front door, the same around back. No windows have been broken. The tin roof looks sturdy.

Frankie walks around it once and that’s enough. He carefully steps through the weeds and returns to his truck. He’s been sniffing around Dillon for two days and thinks he’s found a decent suspect.

Riley Taft’s day job is chief custodian at the Dillon Middle School, but his real vocation is ministering to his congregation. He’s the pastor of the Red Banks Baptist Church a few miles farther out in the country. Most Tafts are buried there, some with simple headstones, some without. His flock numbers fewer than a hundred and cannot afford a full-time pastor. Thus, the custodial job. After some phone calls, he agrees to meet Frankie at the church late in the afternoon.

Riley is young, late thirties, thickset and easygoing with a wide smile. He walks Frankie through the cemetery and shows him the Taft section. His father, the oldest child, is buried between Kenny and their mother. He narrates the family tragedies: his grandfather dead at fifty-eight from some mysterious poisoning; Kenny murdered; his father killed instantly on a highway; his aunt dead from leukemia at thirty-six. Vida Taft died twelve years ago at seventy-seven. “Poor woman went crazy,” Riley says with wet eyes. “Buried her three children and went off the deep end. Really off.”

“Your grandmother?”

“Yep. So why do you wanna know about the family?”

Frankie has already gone through the song and dance about Guardian, our mission, our successes, and our representation of Quincy Miller. He says, “We think Kenny’s murder didn’t go down the way the sheriff said.”

This gets no reaction. Riley nods to the back of the small church and says, “Let’s get something to drink.” They walk past the tombstones and markers of other Tafts and leave the cemetery. Through a rear door they step into the church’s narrow fellowship hall. Riley opens a fridge in a corner and pulls out two small plastic bottles of lemonade.

“Thanks,” Frankie says, and they settle into folding chairs.

“So what’s this new theory?” Riley asks.

“You’ve never heard of one?”

“No, never. When Kenny got killed it was the end of the world. I was about fifteen or sixteen, tenth grade I think, and Kenny was more of a big brother than an uncle. I worshipped him. He was the family’s pride. Real smart, going places, we thought. He was proud to be a cop but he wanted to move on up. God, how I loved Kenny. We all did. Everybody did. Had a pretty wife, Sybil, a sweet lady. And a baby. Everything going his way and then he’s murdered. When I heard the news I fell to the floor and bawled like a baby. I wanted to die too. Just put me in the grave with him. It was just awful.” His eyes water and he takes a long swallow. “But we always believed he stumbled across some drug dealers and got shot. Now, twenty-plus years later you’re here to tell me something different. Right?”

“Yes. We believe Kenny was ambushed by men working for Sheriff Pfitzner, who was counting his money with the drug dealers. Kenny knew too much and Pfitzner got suspicious.”

It takes a second or two for this to sink in, but Riley absorbs it well. It’s a shock, really, but he wants to hear more. “What’s this got to do with Quincy Miller?” he asks.

“Pfitzner was behind the murder of Keith Russo, the lawyer. Russo made some money as a drug lawyer, got flipped by the DEA and became an informant. Pfitzner found out about it, arranged the murder, and did a near flawless job of pinning it on Quincy Miller. Kenny knew something about the murder, and it cost him his life.”