“That’ll probably be tomorrow morning the way it’s going, get out of the way, you cocksucker...”
Virgil asked, “You armed?”
“Of course.”
“You ever shoot anybody?”
“No.”
“Okay, let’s sort of follow my lead, huh? We’re a major problem for this guy. If we take him down, he’s going away forever.”
“Got it.” He leaned on the truck’s horn and didn’t get off it until the car in front of them, a Prius, edged off to the right, and the woman in the driver’s seat gave them the finger as they went by.
“At least another mile,” Virgil said. His phone rang: Weaver.
“You there yet?” Weaver asked.
“Couple more minutes, at least.”
“Okay, I called the Miami office, they’ve got links to everyone. There’s a street... 42nd Avenue...”
“We see it on the map.”
“Okay. There’ll be a cop car sitting at the intersection of 42nd and Curtiss, he’ll have his flashers on. He’ll take you around to wherever it is that you need to go.”
“Great, thanks, man.”
“I’ve been looking at the other Miami airports, I think you’ve got the best chance—that’s the closest general aviation airport to Broward, in Miami-Dade. Get him.”
“We’re there... well, almost,” Hamm said. He edged through a red light and they were moving fast again, came up to 42nd, made the turn north into the airport.
A block up the street, they saw the flashing lights of a cop car.
“Here we go,” Virgil said.
When they pulledup to the cop car, a heavyset flatfoot got out, chewing on a sandwich wrapped in wax paper. “You guys are looking for somebody at the airport?” he asked, still chewing.
“He could be flying out of here in a private plane, a twin-engine plane, would have been in the last little while, we don’t know where to go, who to ask,” Virgil said, blurting it all out in a jumble of words.
The cop swallowed and said, “Well, it’d be out of one of the four fixed-base operators, they do everything from single-seaters to jets, so...”
“Let’s go, take us there, lights and siren,” Virgil said, not quite shouting.
The cop had taken another bite of his sandwich, chewed once, swallowed, made no move to get back in his car. He said, “I could do that, but there are four of them, probably take us a half hour. Or I could call them all and that’d take two minutes and if he’s out here, we could go right to it.”
“We gotta hurry,” Hamm said, and hewasshouting. “Make the calls, make the calls.”
The cop nodded, asked, “What’s the guy’s name again?” and when told, punched a number into his cell phone. “Hey, Betty, this is Gene Potts. Yeah, how ya doin’? Listen, we’re looking for a guy named Behan who might have left here in the last hour or so in a twin-engine plane, don’t have any further information, the FBI is looking for him... No. Thanks, Betty.”
Hamm said, “Jesus. Jesus.”
Potts punched in a new number. “Hey, Bill, this is Gene Potts. Yeah, how ya doin’? Listen, we’re looking for a guy named Behan who might have come through here in the last hour or so, flying out in a twin engine... Yeah? Where is he? Yeah? Listen, I got the FBI here, we’ll be with you in two minutes.”
He hung up and said to Virgil and Hamm, “He’s here, at Catskill Aviation, but he’s on the way out.”
“Lead the way, and fast, really fast,” Virgil said. They piled into their cars and took off. Though Potts was a slow talker, he was a fast driver, and took them down the street and into a parking lot in front of a sprawling white concrete block building where a man was waiting at the front door.
Hamm jammed the car in a handicapped parking space and heand Virgil jumped out and ran toward the man at the door, who asked, “What’d he do?”
