“I can hear the siren...”
Lucas told Forte about the emerging theory that they’d all been chumped, that Bob and Lucas were set up to be killed on Romano’s doorstep.
“And we don’t know who’d do that?”
“If we knew that, we’d know who the drug runners are and who killed the Coast Guardsmen,” Lucas said. “Who benefits from Romano going down? Whoever set us up were tracking Bob and I, and they didn’t expect the FBI teams to be there. If it had gone as they expected, Bob and I would be dead and Romano would be toast.”
“This Elliot guy—don’t get hurt, man. I’m fairly screwed up myself,” Forte said. “Bob was one of my favorite people of all time.”
“Have you talked to Rae?”
“Somebody’s doing that now. I expect she’ll be calling you,” Forte said.
“Ah, Jesus.”
They were halfwayacross Miami when Rae called. Lucas looked at his phone, didn’t want to answer it, but he did: “Rae.”
“Lucas. I needed to tell you, I talked to Russell. This wasn’t your fault and I don’t blame you in any way, shape, or form.”
“Ah, jeez, Rae...”
Lucas let her go, his eyes closed, as she began to cry. When she could speak again, she said, “Russell said you were there with a whole bunch of feds, so this wasn’t some crazy Davenport cowboy thing.” She said something else, but Lucas couldn’t make it out as her voice squeaked higher as she began to cry again. “I should have been there, if I’d been there he wouldn’t be dead...”
Lucas said, “Rae, your being here wouldn’t have changed anything except you might be dead yourself. The shooters came out from behind us and started spraying bullets. We were set up. We didn’t have a clue. If one of the feds hadn’t see them come through the motel door with guns and hadn’t yelled at them and opened up... I’d be dead, too. I never even saw the fuckers until they were down.”
“Was Bob...”
“Ah... Goddamnit, this is hard, Rae. We never saw it coming. Bob was here and then he was gone, no pain, no fear, no warning. He was hit twice... Listen, I’m not going to talk about this anymore. I’m trying to run down the guy who set us up.”
“Get them! Get them, Lucas!” she said. And then, “Oh, my God, I got a call coming in from Shirl. The service must’ve notified her. Hang on, I’m going to her call for a minute...”
She went away and a moment later, was back: “Lucas, I need to talk to you some more, but right now Shirl needs me...”
“Call me later in the day,” Lucas said. “I’ll have more about the guy we’re looking for.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know—maybe kill his ass,” Lucas said.
“Lucas... Lucas, just take him,” Rae said. “Take him and squeeze him. Now I gotta go, I gotta go.”
She was gone.
Parker, who’d heard Lucas’s side of the conversation, said, “Let’s not kill his ass, okay? Let’s have a nice professional arrest and slam his ass in jail.”
“We’ll do what we gotta,” Lucas said. Then, after another moment, “Yeah, we’re not going to kill him. We won’t have to. He’s already dead.”
“Excuse me?”
Lucas shook his head.
The city wasas quiet as it ever got, three o’clock in the morning, the night people sliding along, big coupes with gray primer on their fenders and doors, long-haired guys looking sideways out the windows as they jumped the traffic lights...
When they got to Elliot’s house, two Miami-Dade cop cars and a van were parked at the fence, and five cops were standing in theyard, all of them vested and helmeted. They were part of a SWAT squad, the leader told Lucas. “What are we doing here? We understand he’s involved in a shooting...”
Lucas gave him a quick recap of the shootout. The cops had heard various versions of the shootout and as he and Parker filled in the details, the cops all shaking their heads, the leader asked, “If this Bob was your partner, what are you doing here? I mean...”
“I know what you mean,” Lucas said. “I’ve got the background on Elliot and we didn’t have time to fool around. Have you knocked?”
