It was a fair question. Dave hoped that he would never have to kill anyone and felt more or less certain that he could pull off the job with the minimum of violence. But that was hardly what a character like Tony Nudelli wanted to hear. He wanted to see a convincing show of cold-bloodedness and all Dave could think of was Harry Lime. What would Harry have told this guy?
'Am I ready to take the life of another human being if I have to? I think that's a fair question,' he said with what he hoped was an amused insouciance, like Harry's. Dave stood up and walked round to the shutters and, staring out of the louvers, played a scene. He hoped that Tony and Al were not keen movie fans.
'What can I say? Except that nobody thinks in terms of human beings these days, Tony. Governments don't, so why should we? They talk of the people and the proletariat and I talk of the mugs. It's the same thing. They have their five year plans and so have I.' He turned to face them again and smiled laconically. 'The dead are happier dead. They don't miss much here, poor bastards.'
He thought he'd played it nicely. Light, amusing, ruthless, with a superficial excuse for his own behavior. If he'd started talking about how tough he was and how much of a killer he could be Nudelli just wouldn't have bought it. He was too old a hand at killing to buy anything too definite. Of course Dave was no Orson Welles.
But then Tony Nudelli wasn't exactly Joseph Cotten either. Tony was right about one thing though. Dave would have done the speech better if he'd been wearing a hat. To get properly into character. A black homburg, just like Harry's.
'I'd like to cut you in, you know,' he said, for added effect. 'I've no one left in Miami I can really trust.'
Chapter EIGHT
It was the Florida Department of Law Enforcement -- the detective branch of the State Police -- that had put Kate on the trail of the boat Rocky Envigado was probably planning to use for his next transatlantic shipment of cocaine. From its offices in Pompano Beach, the FDLE had been keeping two characters, Juan Grijalva and Whittaker McLennan, under surveillance on suspicion of involvement in an insurance fraud. They tracked one of these men to a meeting with an Irishman, Gerard Robinson, who was staying at the Breakers Hotel in Fort Lauderdale. Checking through a list of Robinson's telephone calls, the FDLE found an Isle of Man number. Since the Isle of Man is a British tax haven, the FDLE thought they were onto something and so they contacted the National Criminal Intelligence Service in London for assistance. NCIS told them that the number belonged to Keran Properties, a company in which New Scotland Yard had a long-standing interest. Keran was managed by a local firm of accountants, Pater, Hall, Green, who were themselves under surveillance following a tip-off that a notorious cannabis smuggler, now doing time in a Spanish jail, was a director of Keran. NCIS also informed the FDLE that Jeremy Pater, one of the partners in PHG, owned a house in the British Virgin Islands, as well as a share in a flourishing yacht management company, Azimuth Marine Associates. The managing director of Azimuth was Alonzo Avila. A photograph of Pater, Avila, and a third unidentified man was e-mailed to the FDLE, who contacted the FBI computer records department in Miami in an attempt to put a name to the face.
Pater, Avila, and Azimuth Marine were not known to the computer records department. But the third man was. He was Chico Diaz, Rocky Envigado's most trusted sicario leader. As soon as Kate was up to speed with the FDLE's inquiry, she went to speak to Kent Bowen.
'Jesus Christ, Kate, you wanna run all that by me again?' yawned the AS AC.
'It is a little complicated, sir,' admitted Kate.
'Complicated? It sounds like an episode of Soap. Jesus Christ, Kate.'
'Well sir, Azimuth Marine is one of the leading companies in the management and marketing of luxury yachts. Management, charter marketing, crew placement, you name it, they have representation in virtually every international yachting port of call from Fort Lauderdale to Hong Kong.'
Bowen adopted a pained expression. 'Kate? Just the bottom line, if you don't mind. I've got arteries hardening here.'
Kate felt herself coloring with irritation. Never before had she worked for an ASAC with a manner as casual as Kent Bowen. 'Just the bottom line' was not the way the Bureau worked. At the FBI Academy in Quantico, the emphasis had been on building up a complete investigative picture. An investigation was not a sheet of accounts to be summarized in a simple statement of profit or loss. And now this
patronizing asshole...
'We think we've found the boat, sir.'
'You have? Well why didn't you say so in the first place, Kate?'
'Because I assumed you'd want to know exactly what makes me believe that we've found it, sir. The intellectual and reasoning processes--'
