Lucas and Weaverwent outside. A fire truck was still there, now spraying water on the blacktop at the side of the Romano building, and Lucas realized they were washing away the blood left behind by Bob and the wounded FBI agent. He turned the other direction, down the street, and said, “Listen, Dale. Romano said what I was thinking. Whoever the Coast Guard killers are, they spotted Bob and me, and followed us. They checked into the motel right behind us and waited for us to hit Romano. They thought it’d just be me and Bob. And they torched the room on the way out because they thought that would get rid of their DNA. I bet they were wearing gloves when they went down.”
“Yeah, they were. We might have still gotten some DNA, fire doesn’t always wipe it out anymore... but that’s irrelevant now.”
“What Romano said... you’ve identified them?” Lucas asked.
“Yes. We printed them, they popped right up.”
“Do they hook up with Romano somehow?”
“No. They were basically for hire, whatever you needed done,” Weaver said. “They collected on debts, protected dealers, they were suspected in a couple of gang killings.”
“Then I think Romano nailed it. We were chumped. We’ve got to get up to Miami and knock down Magnus Elliot’s door, and the sooner the better. He’s the guy who set us up.”
“I’ll get a SWAT team, but you and I have to stay here. Or I do, anyway, I’ll see what the guys from the Miami office have to say. They’ll want everyone who fired a gun to be here while they work out the sequence of events.”
“That’s fine, send the SWAT team, but I don’t think we’ll really need them. Elliot may not have known what he was doing, or maybe he did. Either way, he’s now a liability to whoever set us up. He’s probably dead. If he isn’t, he soon will be, so we gotta move. If he’s not dead, he’s squeezable.”
“Miami-Dade can have somebody there in five minutes. I’ll make a call...”
He walked away to make the call, and as Lucas looked after him, he thought,I should have done this earlier, I shouldn’t have frozen up...
Lucas walked throughthe mess around Romano’s building, the fire trucks, the cops, the smell of water and smoke, the constant chatter of cops talking and shouting, radios scratching out more talk. He thought about finding the motel desk clerk again, but when he went to look for her, she’d been taken somewhere else to be interviewed. He went back to the street, saw Weaver talking to one of the task force agents and went that way.
Weaver saw him coming and said, “Miami-Dade will have somebody there right now. I’ve called the overnight judge for a new warrant.”
“I’m going up there,” Lucas said. “If your guys need me... tell them I left without permission. Or whatever, but I’m going. I never did fire a weapon, so...”
He stepped away but Weaver hooked his arm and held on.“Nope. Not by yourself.” He looked around the parking lot and shouted, “Parker! Parker!”
The young agent hurried toward them and Weaver said to Lucas, “Parker was on the far side of the building, he never fired his weapon. The Miami office guys will be pissed if he leaves, but he wasn’t involved.”
Parker came up and Weaver told him, “Get the bus keys from Andy and take Lucas up to Miami, where he tells you to go. Then both of you get back here soon as you can depending... on what happens there. Parker—lights and siren the whole way.”
Weaver turned back to Lucas: “It’s the only vehicle we have with lights and siren. Take off.”
CHAPTER
FIFTEEN
Parker was asteady driver, even in the gargantuan Suburban, but had never driven a cop car. Halfway to Miami, pushing an elderly Buick down the highway, he said, “I’ve never run a car with lights and siren going. It’s weird. Some of the cars scatter in front of you, some never see you at all. The ones that don’t see you, shouldn’t be on the road. There are some other ones that are just friggin’ ignoring me.”
Lucas said, “Yeah.” Not up for idle conversation.
“I’m sorry about Bob. You okay?”
“No, I’m not,” Lucas said. “I can’t get it out of my head. I’m fucked up here.”
After a long silence, Parker asked, “Are you sure you should be doing this? We could get a couple of guys from downtown...”
“I’m sure,” Lucas said. “I need to find out what happened. Did Elliot see us coming? Were we set up right from the start? Were we set up at all... No, we were set up. No question. I need to know how Elliot was involved. If he was...”
As they gotoff the expressway and headed east, Lucas took a call from Washington, from Russell Forte: “Lucas, I got a plane ticket down there, I’ll see you this afternoon. Are you still at that TRYP place?”
“Yeah, we never checked out. Why are you coming?”
“To see about Bob, for one thing. And to see about you. I need to talk to you about what you’re doing and what you’re planning to do. I’ve got a guy picking me up at Fort Lauderdale, I should be at your hotel by three o’clock.”
“I don’t know what I’m going to do. Right now I’m headed north with one of the task force agents to see if we can find the guy who put us on Romano.”
