Shadow Men

CHAPTER
8

"I've been bribed before. Asked to st-stay away from a case for p-1 political reasons. Hell, every criminal case c-comes down to a plea bargain offer at s-some point." Billy did not resort to swearing easily, so I knew he was pissed, or frustrated, or both.

When I got to his office at eight he was already working the phone. Allie served me my big mug of coffee at her desk in the reception room before showing me in. Billy had actually sounded congenial until I told him about the phone call to Richards's home two hours earlier. The information seemed to click things into focus for him. He started pacing the carpet in front of his windows, ignoring the view outside.

"These were corporate lawyers. I expected they w-would stonewall, say how impossible it would b-be to find any detailed records from all the way b-back in the twenties."

Billy had done a thorough job of tracking the name of the eighty-year-old corporate owners of Noren. Linking them, like a family tree, he had found the names and then the spin-off companies that the people behind the names had formed over the years. When he got into the sixties, he'd narrowed the list to a handful of real estate firms, independent contractors and a couple of large home-building enterprises. He went to the biggest of the group first, PalmCo, one of the largest and best-known development names in all of Florida. From the suburban tracks to the beachfront high-rises, to the shopping malls and now the business castles that were spiking up in every major city along the coast, PalmCo had a hand in the recreation of a one-time soggy seaside landscape. Billy had asked for, and with some hard pushing, been granted a meeting with PalmCo's legal representatives. It was held in the office of a private firm in West Palm Beach. Billy's reputation would precede him. Knowing this, he was astounded by the clear message the attorneys delivered.

"I even expected th-them to deny that they even hired itinerant workers on the old t-trail p-project. But they all b-but flat-out tried to buy me off. 'This historical matter would all b-be better off left in the p-past. It was a d-different time when business was so m- much less, uh, businesslike,'" Billy said, mocking the "boys will be boys" tone of the lawyers.

"Then he blows me a lot of sm-smoke about my reputation and wouldn't my time be much, much more valuable working on some big money eminent domain cases they c-could steer my way."

Big mistake, I thought to myself, being condescending to a prideful man who spent his life proving to himself and the world that nobody needed to hand Billy Manchester anything.

"And now this, this, amateurish th-threat against you."

He stopped pacing and stared outside. He could have been watching the dark bruised clouds to the west as they built over the Glades and marched east with a guarantee of showers. He never looked down. Billy never did.

"So what do you make of it?" I asked, to bring him back.

"They're scared."

"Hell, scared of what?"

"What we know."

"They don't know what we know. The damn little bit we do know."

"Sure they d-do. They know everything, Max. Even where you go to d-dinner. Even Sherry's phone n-number."

I didn't know how to respond.

"C-Corporate information gathering, Max. No big company s- survives without it. You're thinking l-like a cop instead of a P.I."

"Yeah?"

"First thing you'll have t-to do is get your truck swept for a tr- tracking device." I was still just staring at him. "Then, get r-rid of the cell phone you've b-been using. I'll get you a c-clean one."

By 11:00 A.M. I was back down at Global Forensics on Billy's suggestion. As a Philadelphia street cop, and even during my short and less than stellar stint in the detective bureau, I had little experience in electronic surveillance. We'd strapped up a couple of waiters and a shop steward with body wires while trying to work a South Philly mob case. I'd stood around watching a tech from the auto theft squad pull a LoJack unit after we followed a stolen Mercedes with a kilo of cocaine in the trunk for thirty miles into Jersey. None of that seemed to impress Billy, or William Lott.

"Nobody uses body bugs anymore, Max. These days you wire up a microphone to the inside of your cell phone. Everybody uses the damn things now, it's like wearing a fuckin' tie, you're considered naked without it.

"Your partners dial up your phone before you go into a meeting, they can hear every damn thing that's said and record it. Shit, they can monitor the thing from fuckin' Langley without ever having to get off their asses."

Lott was dressed in ratty, kneeless Levi's and a white doctor's lab coat with splatters of some reddish brown across the left chest and sleeve, the origin of which I was not about to ask. We briefly discussed Billy's, and now my, suspicion that somehow my movements were being tracked and my phone conversations were being intercepted.

"Goddamn government," Lott said. "You see that story about the medical chips? Surgically slip them under your skin and voila! Your own doctor can monitor your heart 'and several other serious medical conditions so that you'll be worry free.' How long before one of them comes with every fuckin' social security number, eh?"

I tried to keep my face as neutral as possible while the big man raised an eyebrow with his rhetorical rant.

"Uh, bugs, William?" I finally said.

He nodded in approval, maybe giving me more credit than I was due for my silence.

"Never can be too careful, Max," he said, continuing to wipe his thick fingers, and moving to the doorway that led back outside to the parking area.

"I don't do the work myself," he was saying over his shoulder as I followed him past my truck. "But I will personally refer you to the best in the business."

We were halfway across the access road, heading for the warehouse door on the other side, when Lott called out: "Ramon! Mira, Ramon!"

"These cats are not early risers," he said over his shoulder. I looked at my watch. We were headed for the open door where I had seen the young group of Hispanic kids working on the tricked-out Honda.

"Ramon! I got business for you, dude!"

Before we reached the door, a young man poked his head out from the garage bay and then stepped out, still fastening the snaps on his calf-length shorts.

"Hey, Mr. Lott. What up?"

They greeted each other with extended fists, barely touching knuckles. Ramon appeared to be in his mid-twenties, dark, almost black eyes, a thin line of a mustache, and a collection of sparse beard under his chin. His hair was shaved to the top of his ears all around his head and then it was long and slicked back to a braided pony- tail. He was assessing me as sure as I was him.

"This is my friend, Max Freeman," Lott said. "He's got some bug problems with his truck that maybe you could help him out with."

I extended my hand in a more traditional manner and Ramon shook it.

"You look like a cop, Mr. Freeman," he said without the slightest tone of accusation or disrespect.

"I used to be," I replied, trying to match his composure. I looked at the tattoo on his right arm, impressive artwork of the Virgin Mary, much higher quality than prison ink work.

"He's a P.I. now," Lott said, cutting in. "He works mostly for Billy Manchester."

Ramon's placid eyes reacted immediately to Billy's name, as though absorbing the glint of light. A smile came to his face.

"OK," he said, the flat wariness gone. "Wheel it over, man. My friends and I will take a look."

Lott and I walked back to my truck and parted in front of his lab.

"No questions asked, and believe me," he said, "these kids know more about the electronics of this shit than any FBI tech I ever met."

When I backed my F-150 into his garage, Ramon explained his work terms. "One hundred in cash and we keep whatever hardware we find. You don't get it for no evidence in some courtroom," he said, then changed the seriousness in his voice and winked. "But you do get to drive around free."

For the next hour I sat in the shade in a cheap lounge chair listening to an odd form of Cuban rap while Ramon and two of his boys crawled in and under my truck with a variety of tools and sensors and voltmeters. I was lost trying to eavesdrop on their conversations, which were carried out in some form of hip Spanglish peppered with street slang. When they were finished, Ramon walked me outside holding two chunks of electronics. One was the size of a cigar box. The other, a single cigarette pack.

"Both of these are tracking devices, Mr. Freeman. Whoever is keeping the leash on you, man, they ain't taking no chances. This one is a real-time vehicle tracking device. They had it plugged into your battery so it could run constantly. It's got a modem so they can access it from a PC and map exactly where you been and for how long. It's long-range and very expensive, man. The local law can't usually afford them, even when they're trying to follow the stolen car shipments to the islands.

"And since the serial numbers are gone," he said, pointing to a rough acid burn on the metal casing, "I'd say it was a private enterprise doing the installation."

He looked in my face for reaction. I didn't give him any and he shrugged it off.

"This other is more run of the mill. Works like a LoJack. Once we unhooked them, they're deactivated and your friends are going to know, claro?"

"Si. Pero es no use por tu?" I answered, bringing a smile to Ramon's serious face.

"We have our uses for them-and a market, my friend."

"I'll bet you do," I said, peeling off five twenty-dollar bills. "No listening bugs?"

"Nada. But that's not so much anymore," Ramon said. "It's hard for the transmitters in a car. Too much noise, and now with cell phones, man, they just use an intercept."

"A cell phone intercept?"

"Yeah, sure. Someone with the money for something like these would probably use a Strikefisher. It's compact enough, they can carry it around. It's got plenty of range. They can pick up your cell frequency and hear everything you're saying, no problem."

I was thinking about the white van, the thirty-five-foot fishing boat on the river near my shack, any place I'd made a call to Billy.

"Thing about these private guys, they don't need no warrants, man. It's all fair game, dude."

"So how do I avoid it?"

Ramon smiled. "Stay off the phone, man. Do business face-to- face," he said, pointing his finger at me and then back at himself. "It's old school. But it's safe."

I shook Ramon's hand and got in the truck.

"Good doing business with you, Mr. Max. And tell Billy Manchester ciao for me, eh?"