Macgregor, p.4
MacGregor, page 4
“Everything looks quite in order, Mrs. Cortez,” he said.
“Thank you, Senor Novarro,” she said briskly. “We had to make a few adjustments when Marie escaped, but I’m sure that will never happen again.”
Hanson lifted an eyebrow, his professional interest aroused.
“What precautions did you take?” he asked.
“Prior to the escape,” Mrs. Cortez said, “we put the sedatives in the food. Marie was a bright little girl and thought it through enough to starve herself so she could flee. Now, instead of putting it in their food, we give them all injections.” She shrugged. “The little ones cry, but I give them a lollipop and say, ‘It’s just a pinch, my dear.’”
Novarro nodded his approval. Then they heard footsteps approach, and the shrill voice of a complaining child demanded, “What is this place?”
* * *
Bonita and Tampa entered, Leslie between them. Immediately, Leslie spotted the rows of unconscious children.
“What’s wrong with those kids?” she asked, alarmed.
Panic set in and she turned to run, but Tampa grabbed her. She shouted for him to let go, and the children in the cots stirred in their sleep. She kicked him in the shins, and once again he started to lose it. His face purpled with rage, and he grabbed the child by the shoulders and shook her violently.
Everyone was frozen in shock for a moment, but Mrs. Cortez swiftly intervened.
“Stop that, young man,” she snapped. “That’s valuable merchandise.”
Tampa was jolted by her commanding voice, and he let the child go. Bonita pulled him aside, whispering soothing things to him, calming him down. Meanwhile, Mrs. Cortez put an arm around Leslie, and the child pressed against her, seeking safety.
The woman motioned to one of her techs, who approached with a hypodermic. Then she leaned down and stroked Leslie’s head.
“The doctor said you needed some medicine,” she said soothingly.
She fetched a lollipop from her pocket, offering it to Leslie. The girl gave a fearful smile, but she unpeeled the candy and put it into her mouth.
“You be a good girl, my darling,” Mrs. Cortez said. “All you’ll feel is a pinch.”
Leslie stood quietly, eyes wide, sucking on her lollipop, as the tech gave her the shot. She didn’t even flinch when the needle went in.
“What a brave little girl you are, sweetheart,” Mrs. Cortez murmured, wiping away a tiny drop of blood with an alcohol swatch and putting a small Band-Aid on the spot. There was a picture of the Cookie Monster on the Band-Aid.
“That’s the way to do it,” Novarro said with evident satisfaction. “Very professional.”
All of a sudden Leslie moaned and collapsed to the floor. Mrs. Cortez and the tech knelt beside her, checking her vital signs.
“She’s not breathing,” the tech said, his voice borderline panicking.
“What’s wrong?” Hanson demanded. “What’s happening?”
“I don’t know,” Mrs. Cortez said. “A bad reaction to the medicine, perhaps.”
“Well, do something,” Novarro snapped. “There’s a great deal of money riding on that girl.”
Mrs. Cortez didn’t reply. She was already frantically at work over Leslie, giving her CPR and massaging her chest.
Tampa gave Bonita a meaningful look. She could tell what he was thinking. They’d done their job and had five hundred coming to them whether the kid lived or not.
She gave his hand a squeeze.
“It’ll be fine, hon,” she whispered as the child thrashed about on the floor. “Puts us over the hump for a down on the RV.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
STORMY AIMED HER battered pickup at the closed gates of the Angelside Children’s Clinic. A uniformed guard ran out of the shack and raised a hand for her to stop. This only caused her to floor it, and the guard leaped out of the way just in time.
She crashed through the gate, continued on to the front of the clinic and screeched to a halt. She kicked the door open and hopped out. The gate guard started running toward her but came to a fast stop when he saw her turn and lift a pump-action shotgun off the front seat of the pickup.
Stormy pumped a round into the chamber then fired a blast into the air.
“Send out my granddaughter,” she shouted, firing again for emphasis. “If I don’t see my Leslie out here in five seconds I’m gonna blow shit out of this place.”
Then she started counting. “One...two...three...four…”
She opened up, blowing out windows, glass doors, firing round after rounding into the building.
Off in the distance there was a wail of many, many police cars. Stormy blazed away.
It was night before a red-faced jailer named Charlie Fisher escorted Mac to the holding cell where Stormy paced like an underfed, tattooed leopard. When she spotted Mac she rushed to the bars.
“Thank friggin’ God you came,” she cried. “I can’t find out what the hell they did with my Leslie.”
“Hold on, Stormy,” Mac said. “First, let’s get this show on the road. Then you can tell me what’s going on.” He motioned to the jailer. “Can you help us out here, Charlie?” he asked. “I posted bail and I’m waiting for the release form to hit.”
“Sure, Mac, no problem,” Charlie said. He checked his watch. “I’m off in ten. If the release takes longer than that, I’ll give Sam a heads-up.”
Mac thanked him, and Charlie opened the door and let him in. Stormy ran to Mac, who embraced her, holding her until she was calm. Finally, Stormy pushed away and gave her wet eyes an angry swipe.
“I hate to cry,” she said. Her temper flared. “Hate it. Hate it.” She took a deep breath, getting herself together. She looked up at Mac. “They grabbed my Leslie, Mac,” she said, “and they won’t give her back.”
“I called the clinic,” Mac informed her. “They claimed she was never admitted.”
“Bullshit. She got on that bus. I’ve got witnesses.”
Mac said nothing, waiting until realization sank in. Stormy groaned.
“God damn, I don’t have shit, do I? None of those women will talk to the law. Jesus Christ, what am I gonna do?”
“When I was checking around,” Mac said, “I heard some funny business about Angelside--phony treatments, phony bills. But nobody said anything about kidnapping.”
Stormy snorted. “It’s white slavery, that’s what.”
Mac lifted an eyebrow. “Come on, Stormy. In this day and age?”
She shrugged. “I’m the poster child for that shit, Mac, you know that. My mother sold me to a motorcycle gang when I was a baby. Just about everythin’ that can happen to a body happened to me after that. Up to and includin’ bein’ a crack whore.” She dragged a hand over the tattoos on her arms. “That’s how I wound up with this garbage all over me.”
Mac smiled. “When I was looking for a housekeeper, a good friend mentioned your name. Said you were as honest and hardworking as they come. But she warned me first-- ‘Don’t mind the tattoos,’ she said. And I’ve never regretted taking that advice.”
“You’ve been good to me, Mac,” Stormy said. “And good to Leslie, too. No tellin’ where her momma is. Heard she was dead, but I don’t know for certain. My poor Debbie never did recover from bein’ my kid. It’s my fault and I know it. But I can’t take that back.” Her voice broke, and she struggled for control. “So the least I can do is take care of Leslie, you know?”
“I know,” Mac said, as gently as he could.
Stormy took several deep breaths. Finally, she got up the nerve to ask: “Although you never came right out and told me what you do for a livin’, Mac, I got the general idea sometimes it involves nasty stuff. Stuff other guys are scared to touch.”
He shrugged. “I fix things, is all. Kind of a handyman for people in bad trouble.”
Stormy gripped his arm. “Well, Mac, as sure as my soul is damned to hell for all eternity, I am in bad trouble. And I need your help in the worst way. Nothin’ I can do to repay you. I don’t have a mother-humpin’ cent to my name. But if you ever need a friend, Mac, for anythin’ up to and includin’ blowin’ some son of a bitch away, no questions asked, just call on me.”
“I don’t often need the services of an assassin, Stormy.” Mac said dryly. “But if I ever do…”
Enormous relief washed over Stormy. She sagged back on the cot, and tears started to flow.
“God damn it to hell, Mac,” she said. “What must you think of me? There I go leakin’ tears again. Shit, shit, shit.”
CHAPTER NINE
ABOUT A HUNDRED yards short of the sign that promised fishermen and campers that Lake Okeechobee was only ten miles ahead, Mac turned the Jeep off the highway onto a country road. It was tarmac for about a mile, running between two bottomless Florida ditches notorious for devouring drunk drivers on moonless nights.
Mac didn’t have a lighting problem as he steered the Jeep down the track. It was just dusk, the setting sun sending red rays across the swamp, illuminating a barefoot boy fishing in the shadow of a mossy oak. For just a second he remembered what it was like when he was boy with not a serious thought in his head, except maybe if a mouse was really better than a frog to bait a bigmouth bass.
The Jeep crunched over gravel, then a tractor-rutted track that ran through farmland reclaimed from swamp. It had rained recently, and steam rose from row after row of yellow squash, broad leaves straining wide to catch the dying rays of the sun. In other areas there were teepees of runner beans, colonies of Big Boy tomatoes, melon patches rich and loamy and filling the air with their sweetness, all mixed in with a whole field of yellow corn so sugary on the blessed evening breeze that it made Mac’s teeth ache to sink into a cob.
Developers had pushed Boca Raton deep into the farmlands that had once surrounded the beach town. In Mac’s boyhood, a kid couldn’t bicycle more than a mile before running into farms, with their fresh-from-the-field veggie stands; or sweet water fishing holes with makeshift docks where a boy could relax against the pilings and pitch his line. It wasn’t so long ago that in the middle of Boca there were mossy oak forests so thick you could easily get lost. Now it was given over to condo developments named after the trees they replaced, like Oaks Of Boca; or mini malls, medical complexes, and the Florida Atlantic University Campus, which sprawled across many acres of what had once been a lush wilderness.
He glanced over at Stormy, who sat silently beside him, grim-faced and motionless, except for the tattoos jumping on her lean, muscular arms whenever she moved. He wished there was something he could say to comfort her, but it would most likely be a lie.
Just as he spotted the vehicles crouched around a raw, empty place in a nearby field, he saw Stormy’s left bicep bunch. Her arms might have been scrawny; but her bicep stood out in stark relief, easily as big as an orange. Which was huge for a woman of her small proportions. On that bicep he saw a skull with a hypodermic rammed through its temple, grinning up at him, blood dripping on both sides.
“Is that it?” she asked, her voice quivering, stretching her arm, the skull vanishing, as she pointed.
“Think so.” Mac pulled the Jeep off the track and tucked it behind a stand of trees.
It became truly night as the sun dipped below the horizon. When he shut off the engine sounds of crickets and frogs and other nocturnal creatures seeking one another exploded into his ears. He was momentarily confused, disoriented, as he flashed back on other landings--also perilous, but on more distant shores.
Mac shook off the images as Stormy started to get out. He put a hand on that skull-decorated bicep. But he did it gently.
“Maybe you’d better wait here, Stormy. Cops can get touchy about crime scenes, you know?”
He braced for an outburst, but Stormy reacted as he’d hoped. She was oddly subdued as she turned to him.
“Oh, God, Mack What if it’s Leslie?”
“Let’s just take it as it goes, Stormy. Okay?”
Stormy sniffled and nodded obediently. It broke his heart. But he knew better than to touch her, or offer any kind of comfort, because she would not only snap, but hate him for being the cause of it. He handed her some DEET to ward of the mosquitoes and she dutifully splashed some on. Mac did the same and it was just in time because the stinging little bitches were already swarming around them. There’d been recent mosquito-borne problems with Nile and other dreaded diseases that neither Mac or Stormy wanted any part of.
When you live in the middle of what is basically a swampy jungle, but are surrounded by thousands of people, it is sometimes difficult to remember that all dangers might not necessarily come from your fellow man. In Boca, a wealthy person’s town, a well-protected town, you were almost as likely to be mugged by a “skeeter” carrying the Nile disease, than a junkie with a knife. Sometimes gators ate poodles at the local golf courses, but that was another deal all together. Personally, Mac thought the gators had a right to all the interloping poodles they could find.
Mac exited Jeep and gingerly made his way across the muddy field. A few cops were wrestling light stanchions into place to illuminate the area. A police photographer was stalking the scene, the flash on his camera strobing across the stark particulars of someone’s final nightmare.
When he reached the gathering of vehicles and cops and technicians, Lt. Snow spotted him and came over. She was dressed for a swamp-side homicide investigation--faded jeans, rubber boots and an old khaki shirt. An ID hung on a leather thong around her neck. A light stanchion blasted on and she held up her left hand to block glare. A gold band gleamed on her ring finger.
Sometimes Mac regretted that band. He had done things in the past to assure its permanence by keeping Mr. Snow out of an orange jumpsuit. He wondered what she saw in the creep.
He gave a philosophical sigh. Snow heard the sigh, took it for impatience and flashed a smile of apology.
“Hang on a sec, Mac,” she said.
She motioned to some men grouped around a muddy hole. They were zipping up a body bag that contained something pitifully small. They stopped their work, and Mac saw a ghastly little face framed by the bag.
“Over here, Mac,” Snow said unnecessarily, and he followed her over to the body bag.
He looked down at the mottled features of a teenage girl. Jesus, he thought, in a couple of years she would’ve been a heartbreaker. Then he hated himself for not wondering about the mind behind those mud-crusted eyes. Shit, she could’ve grown up to be a Madam Curie, or a Madeline Albright.
Ah, but who could goddamned tell with someone so young? Beautiful or brilliant. Or maybe both. Bottom line: those long, elegant fingers wrinkled by grave mud would never be accepting a beauty crown, much less the Nobel Prize.
He gave himself a mental shake. Jesus, it was always so much tougher with kids.
Mac turned to Snow and said, “It’s not Leslie.” Then he licked dry lips and added, “Thank God.”
He immediately regretted the words. “What a lousy thing to say,” he told Snow. “God shouldn’t be thanked for shit like this.”
He noticed her red-rimmed eyes. She looked like she’d been up around the clock. Longer than this detail had taken. Once again, he wondered about Mr. Snow. Shook that off as well. Damn, he was getting punchy.
“How’d it happen?” he asked.
Snow lifted her hand, making it into a pistol. Pointed it at her head.
“One right here,” she said. “Like a drug deal gone bad. But she’s no dealer. She’s just a kid.” She patted his arm. “Sorry for the wild goose chase, Mac.”
“Don’t be sorry. Just get the son of a bitch who did this thing.” Then he had a thought. “Who found the grave?”
Snow smiled a bitter smile and shook her head. “Go figure,” she said. “It was one of your cousins. Albert Gomez.”
Mac straightened up. “Mad Albert,” he said. “No kidding. What was he doing out here?”
Snow made a strained attempt at humor. “Some kind of a frog survey,” she said, rolling her eyes at Albert’s weird ways. “I didn’t really get into it with him… There’s only so much a person needs to know about frogs.”
Mac allowed a small smile. “Unless you’re Mad Albert.”
Snow grimaced. “Unless you’re Mad Albert.”
She went back to her work. Yelled at the men carrying the body across the muddy field as if they’d done something wrong--like their ham-handedness had somehow caused this tragedy.
Then, like a bad prophecy waiting to follow the shout, a big razorback hog broke from a clump of bushes and ran across the field. The men nearly fell trying to avoid the animal. It had been years since Mac had seen a wild pig, and he thought about the old cracker wives’ claims that a pig running across your path meant starvation, or worse. Or, perhaps in this case it was a lucky omen. Maybe, just maybe, old Florida hadn’t entirely vanished into gated communities filled with retired people from Brooklyn or New Jersey.
But the moment the pig disappeared into a stand of trees the entire train of thought dissolved and his footsteps grew weary thinking about that poor damned kid as he trudged back to the Jeep.
Images of all the other dead or doomed children he’d dealt with over the years flashed through his mind. Like when he’d been a cub reporter--before the Company got into his shorts--and he’d worked an old teenage suicide. Sort of a Ross McDonald mystery—sins of the fathers—but not so classy, as it turned out.
That had been his first. Guy and his dog walking by an old abandoned spring house. Dog ducks into the rubble, growling and digging. Finds teenager missing fifteen years--head on one side of the spring house, body on the other. Frayed old rope still hanging there in the middle.
Mom’s hope that the boy--her beautiful but always so sad and out-of-place boy--had run off with the circus was put paid by that scene.
There were others. So many damned others. Kids beaten to death and buried. Kids beaten near to death, then locked into closets to die. Kids with cigarette burns because they cried. Kids with broken bones because they didn’t. Brutally raped kids, and children seduced by sick adults who won their trust because they were their fathers, mothers, uncles and even priests.
