Shock Wave

nine

“Billy, you gotta get back on the horse what threw ya,” said his supervisor, in his typical Long Island take on English.

“Sure, boss. Just take me a few days to get a handle on something decent.”

“In the meantime, I got a lead request from our Pensacola office about some fugitive down here.”

“What’s he wanted for?”

“Selling some kind of homemade explosive. Got him as part of a RICO on dope smuggling as well as separate charges having to do with an incendiary device. Could be fun.” He handed Tasker a folder with six sheets of paper and a photograph. The wide, dark-haired man had a surfer cut. He looked like he might be thick with broad shoulders and a perpetual five-o’clock shadow.

“I’ll jump right on it. Do you mind if I let my buddy from the city tag along?”

“Free manpower, no problem.”

“He just likes to get out once in a while, and I screwed up his chances on the Stinger case.”

“Don’t forget, he’s on your badge outside the city. Keep a good eye on him.”

“Believe me, boss, with Sutter you always keep an eye on him. If you don’t, he’ll have your woman, your money-and still be your friend.” Tasker winked and headed out.

Derrick Sutter stood outside the Miami Police substation on Fifty-fourth Street, waiting for Tasker to pick him up. He tried to dress down, based on where they were headed. No one in Florida City would appreciate his imitation leather jacket or fine, almost real, jewelry. He’d even changed his shiny Thom McAns for a pair of hiking boots he never thought he’d wear.

He spotted Tasker’s gold Monte Carlo a block away and moved to the street, looking from one apartment complex to the next. He jumped in, suddenly conscious that he didn’t want anyone from this neighborhood seeing him with a white guy. Even a real decent white guy like Tasker. Was he a racist? He couldn’t care less.

“Appreciate you taking the brother outta the city for a while,” Sutter said with a smile.

“How’d you clear it with your boss?”

“He assigns me all over the place. I’m workin’ with vice four times in the next three weeks. He don’t know I’m not on the missile case. Hell, he probably didn’t even see it on the news. Now what do we got?”

“Fugitive from the panhandle. Lives in Florida City. Shouldn’t be a problem to find.”

“I never been to Florida City.”

“You’re shittin’ me.”

“Furthest south I been is that tittie bar near Kendall.”

“You love your topless joints,” Tasker said.

“That a problem?” asked Sutter.

“Only if you’re short of cash like me.”

“If Florida City or Homestead don’t have a notable titty bar, then I never been there. In fact, I think the Wells house is the furthest south I ever been and that was just last week.”

“You had to pass Florida City to get to the Keys.”

“Never been to the damn Keys. Hate the beach. That’s why I only visit my folks on holidays.”

“Your parents live on the ocean?”

“Don’t sound so surprised. Haitians ain’t the only black folk that came from waterfront property.”

“I didn’t mean that. I just figured they lived in the City.”

“Hell, I don’t even live in the City. And just because I live on Miami Beach don’t mean I do it ’cause of the beach. I live there ’cause of the pussy.”

“Where do your parents live?”

Sutter folded his arms. He usually avoided this type of conversation. It chipped away at his image as the urban defender of the people. Tasker was a friend. Probably his best friend. He wouldn’t give him a hard time. “They live over on Hollywood Beach.”

“For how long?”

“I dunno. Fifteen, eighteen years.”

“So you lived there too? What, until you were eighteen?”

“Twenty-two.”

Tasker broke out in a broad smile. Sutter had noticed that the FDLE agent didn’t smile all that much, so he didn’t mind if it was at his expense once in a while. He waited for the inevitable grilling about his childhood as he took in the scenery, heading south down US 1 after the interstate ended.

Tasker held off a minute and then asked, “Where were you born?”

“ Miami.”

“How old were you when you moved?”

“Two days.”

Tasker just looked at him.

Sutter wanted to move this along. “I was born at Jackson Memorial because my mom was a nurse there and got a good discount. I grew up in Hallandale until I was twelve, when we moved to the condo on Hollywood Beach. Satisfied?”

“What’d your dad do?”

“Liquor store robber.”

“Good money in that, huh?”

“You moron, he’s an accountant.”

Tasker slowed so he could look over at Sutter. “So Mr. badass, supercool Miami urban legend was raised on the ocean in Hollywood.”

“Only since I was twelve.”

“What about being from the street?”

“ Ocean Avenue is a street. How do you think we drove home?”

Tasker kept staring at him. His mouth even dropped open.

Sutter said, “Now you can stop, you’re giving me the creeps.”

“So the urban-street stuff is all bullshit?”

“That’s one way to look at it.”

“Is there another way to look at it?”

Sutter gazed out at the Dadeland Mall as it sprawled, and simply said, “Not really.”

Using some information on data sheets that Sutter had never seen as a City of Miami cop, they drove right up to a house that the fugitive, Anthony Mule, probably lived in. At least he’d paid the electric there in the past month. The small concrete-block house sat on the northern edge of Florida City. The place wasn’t in bad shape, with a fairly new roof. Sutter thought about it and realized that every house in Florida City had a fairly new roof, at least since Hurricane Andrew.

“What’s the plan?” asked Sutter.

“Let’s ask a few neighbors, to see if he’s around.” Tasker surveyed the street. “You take this one and I’ll go next door.” He pointed at the two small houses sitting in front of them.

“You crazy? These rednecks’ll think I’m here to do their lawn or that I’m a home invader. You ask, I’ll wait.”

“You’re a racist. Give these people a chance. I’ve found that no one wants a criminal living next to them. They’ll talk to us.”

“Okay, Saint Bill, you follow me while I ask, we’ll see who’s crazy.”

The house next door had a wraparound porch and a small putting green for a front yard. Sutter walked to the door while Tasker stood near the carport, where a three-year-old Buick LeSabre sat. In truth, Sutter really hadn’t had much experience with neighborhoods like this. In the City, areas were bad or ritzy. Nothing in-between. The funny thing was that the bad areas only had a few bad people. Most everyone else treated him, and even the cops in general, pretty good. It was the rich people who were a pain in the ass, always demanding things and treating the cops like servants. This was like a foreign land to him in the south county, with all the trees and plants and pickup trucks.

An elderly lady, so small she may have been a midget, came to the screen door but didn’t open it. Before Sutter could identify himself or ask anything, she said, “No, I have someone cut my grass already.”

Sutter threw a look over to Tasker. He turned back to her. “No, ma’am”-he pulled out his badge-“I just wanted to ask you a few questions.”

The woman gasped and stepped back. “I’m calling the police.”

“I am the police.”

“There is nothing here worth taking.” She put her hand on her chest like she was feeling faint.

Sutter shook his head. “Lady, I’m not a criminal. Here, look.” He motioned Tasker to the door. “I brought my own white man.”

As soon as the old lady saw Tasker, she calmed down and stepped back to the door. She eyed them carefully.

Tasker said, “I’m Bill Tasker with the State Police. We were wondering if we could ask you a few questions.”

The lady sighed and said, “Oh, why yes, of course. What do you want to know?”

Sutter said, “Well, first off, how come I show you a badge and you think I’m a robber, but he just says he’s with the police and you believe him?”

“Because you’re black.”

Sutter was shocked, then a little amused. In this world of political correctness gone bad, this lady just told him the truth. That was better for his soul than all the lying store clerks and lawyers and politicians who said one thing and did another.

The old lady added, “I’m sorry, son. I just don’t see many colored police officers down here. I was wrong.”

Sutter could’ve kissed the old lady. She was honest and admitted she was wrong. Maybe these old, ignorant rednecks weren’t so bad after all.

After a few minutes they learned all they needed about Mr. Anthony Mule. He pronounced it Mule-lay, with an accent on the e. He lived alone. Didn’t talk to the neighbors much. Was up all night and quiet all day. She didn’t think he left the house too much but he had a fair number of visitors. He had an old van and sometimes carried surfboards around in the van.

Armed with that information, Sutter and Tasker decided a quiet recon was the way to go. They split up and eased around the outside of Mule’s home, peeking in windows where possible and looking for signs of life.

Sutter noticed one window-mounted air conditioner running in the rear bedroom. Tasker found a beat-up Ford van with two surfboards crammed inside behind the house. They concluded it was a good bet the fugitive was asleep in the back bedroom.

Sutter said, “What’s your policy say? Call in SWAT, alert the locals, write up a plan, call the media and wait for the guy to come out?”

“Funny. I’d usually knock, but this guy won’t come to the door.”

“Let’s try the kitchen door. If he ain’t home, we lock it back up and come back another time.”

Tasker nodded his head in agreement.

The rickety old door popped out at the bottom and was missing a couple of jalousies in the middle. The handle was unlocked, but a bolt held it near the top of the door. Without hesitation, Sutter popped out a spring-loaded knife and slid it up the crack of the door jamb. In less than three seconds, the door was open and they were inside the hot, musty old house. The smell of cheap homegrown pot hung in every inch of the house. All the interior doors were open but one. The one with an air conditioner.

Sutter thought that once inside the house, it didn’t look all that different from a house in Liberty City. A cheesy felt painting of a matador hung on the living room wall, an old TV with rabbit-ear antennas sat in front of an old sofa. People were people.

They crept down the hall to the closed door. At the door, Tasker tried the handle quietly. When he was about to go in, they heard a toilet flush and looked at each other. It didn’t sound like it came from inside the room. Behind them a wide man with dark hair, wearing only a pair of gym shorts, opened a bathroom door and stepped into the hallway. His eyes were half closed and hair stuck out in wild designs, even the thick hair on his back. He looked up, opened his bloodshot eyes and without warning darted down the hallway toward the rear door. On his way, he hopped up and yanked on a string hanging from the ceiling. A set of attic stairs swung to the floor, blocking the entire hallway.

Too late, Tasker yelled, “Police! Don’t move!” The two cops rushed down the hallway, Sutter throwing his weight into the stairs to get them up and Tasker scrambling below them. By the time they reached the kitchen, Mule was out the back and streaking across the sandy yard to a detached garage.

Tasker repeated, “Police! Don’t move!”

Sutter added, “You’re dead meat, redneck.”

Instinctively they both paused at the garage, not wanting to rush into a waiting gun. As they stood on either side of the door with pistols drawn, Sutter reached over and shoved it hard so it would swing open, giving them a clear view of the interior. When the door reached the end of its arc, Sutter heard a click, and then his world became a confused tapestry of sound and dirt.

The single window blew out with an orange haze of fire behind it and the door swung closed so hard it splintered. Tasker flew back into the yard and Sutter was knocked off his feet. It took five seconds of clearing smoke and settling debris for him to realize they had set off an explosive booby trap.

Tasker was up quick. “You okay? You okay?”

Sutter nodded, pushing himself up slowly. Tasker was off around the back. When Sutter slowly made it to the side of the garage, his ears ringing, he could see his partner chasing the still-shirtless Mule across the wide-open field. Trees lined the end of the field where the next road cut in. Tasker was going to have to pick it up if he expected to catch that guy.

Bill Tasker gasped for breath as he closed the gap on the fleeing fugitive. He always seemed to get winded in a foot chase, no matter how much he trained, but this time he attributed a lot of it to the fact that the explosion had scared the living shit out of him. Making matters worse was the uneven ground on the weed-ridden field. He yelled at Mule a couple of times and even thought about firing a shot into the ground to scare him, but then decided to rely on his own aerobic ability to wear the fugitive down.

Tasker was careful as he closed the gap, because he saw that Mule now had an army green bag with a shoulder strap slung over his hairy shoulder. Had this moron picked up a gun? The question was answered when Mule, without breaking stride, pulled something from the bag, fiddled with it and threw it straight up in the air. Tasker slowed and watched the small cylinder hit the ground. A loud, gut-jarring explosion blew up weeds and sand where the object had hit.

“Holy shit,” Tasker said aloud, dropping to the ground. He watched as the running man headed for the tree line. Now Tasker was mad enough to take a potshot at this asshole. He got up and started to sprint when another explosion cracked behind the running man. The guy didn’t even know if anyone was chasing him, that one was just a precaution.

As Mule made the trees, Tasker was fifty yards behind him with his ears stuffed from the explosions. He tried shouting, but it just reverberated in his head. The man darted through the trees and out of sight.

Before Tasker reached the trees, he heard a thump and three of the loud explosions almost simultaneously. He paused at the trees, taking cover as he looked onto the road. He was surprised at the sight of his car-stopped, Mule on the ground in front of it, his bag torn to shreds and smoking on the ground. Sutter leaned on the hood with his arms folded. “I don’t like snakes. Hope you don’t mind me borrowing your car?”

“I had the keys. How…” Tasker stopped when he saw the look Sutter gave him. He hoped his friend hadn’t damaged the steering column too much.

…

It took about ten minutes to clean up the slightly dinged fugitive. Sutter claimed he had run him down by accident and intended to stick with that story. Tasker noted the lack of skid marks and the satisfied tone in Sutter’s voice, but decided to let the matter rest.

Tasker sat in the backseat next to the handcuffed man. The pot smell even emanated from his pores. Mule had cuts above his eyes, his upper lip was still bleeding and he had road rash on his left arm, back and hip. He had a dazed look that had as much to do with the “accident” as it did with the fact that three explosive devices had gone off within ten feet of his head and he had smoked an ounce of marijuana the night before.

Tasker said, “What were those things?”

“Huh?” asked Mule.

Tasker raised his voice. “The bomb things, what were they?”

“Oh those. Little nonfragmenting hand grenades I made. Pretty cool, huh?”

Tasker noted the lack of twang and asked, “Where you from?”

“New Smyrna Beach.”

A surfer. That explained it. Tasker knew the Central Florida town because his ex-wife’s family still lived there. This guy must have been some kind of genetic freak to be from the small beach town and still smart enough to put these things together.

“You ever know Donna Andrus?”

“Yeah, I did her once.”

Tasker narrowed his eyes at the slightly younger man. “I married her once.”

Mule cringed and added. “Only kidding, man. I knew her in high school, that’s all.”

“Really, you did know her?”

He nodded. “Sure. Blond chick. Nice titties.”

Tasker didn’t acknowledge the description but thought it was pretty accurate.

“I guess I only did her in my imagination.” He wiggled his eyebrows and grinned.

Tasker turned professional and changed the subject, saying, “You’re under arrest on a warrant from Pensacola, and we’ll have to come up with charges on these things, too.”

“Man, can you cut me a break?”

“You almost killed me.”

“No, dude, those things don’t fragment. Just noise and a flash.”

“What’s in ’em?”

“Little black powder, few other things. I make one with pepper that will burn your eyes for a whole day. It’s way cool.”

Tasker had to laugh at the shirtless man. This is the kinda guy that lives at home until he’s thirty-five and then raises kids that live at home until they’re forty. “You got anything else dangerous at the house?”

Mule looked at him. “I don’t want to… what’s the word? Incriminate myself.”

Tasker thought that was fair. “I’ll tell you what. You let us back in and point out the dangerous stuff and we’ll give you a pass on it. We just don’t want kids or somebody stumbling into it. Then you might be hit with serious charges.”

Mule thought about it. “Okay, if you don’t charge me with the poppers I set off today.”

“Poppers? That what you call those things?”

“Yeah, or flashers. Depends on the relative mix of materials.”

“Let’s see how helpful you are, then we’ll decide.”

Mule evaluated him for a few moments. “I don’t know why, but you seem pretty honest. I’ll trust you on this. Besides, I got some stuff that might help me.”

In the house, Tasker flushed the last of the pot they found as Mule pleaded.

“Please, man, not my Mexican tap dance. That shit is the best. You can dump the shit I grew behind the garage, but that Mexican shit cost mucho, man.”

Tasker paused for a minute, playing with Mule for making the comment about Donna, then when his hopes rose, Tasker dumped the rest into the toilet. “You sure you never did her?”

The hairy man shrugged and nodded. “Okay, you owed me.”

Sutter was carefully setting the last package of black powder into an empty Corona twelve-pack box. Mule had pointed out everything he could think of, including a water bottle filled with a liquid he called TATP. He told them it was a little nasty, so the two cops should be careful.

Tasker remembered Camy telling him about the cruise ship bombing and how the bomber had used TATP. Had he stumbled onto the bomber by accident? Stranger things had happened.

Tasker said, “All right, Anthony, you’ve been pretty good about pointing shit out. Got anything to seal the deal?” Maybe he’d slip up and say something.

He smiled, revealing standard surfer’s chipped front teeth. “I got something, but I want some help on the warrant charges, too.”

“Can’t agree to that until we see what you got.”

“Can’t show you what I got until you agree to help.”

With that, Sutter came over to the table where Tasker and Mule were sitting.

He started, “Tell you what, slick. You give us what you got or you can go for a jog in the road again until I catch you in the car. Got it?”

Mule hesitated, then said, “In the drawer under the phone is a three-page list.”

Sutter said, “That’s better. What’s on the list?”

“Everyone I ever sold an explosive to. What kind of explosive. When and how much.”

Tasker was up and to the phone before he finished talking.

Mule continued. “I never heard of nobody doing anything wrong with my shit. Rednecks buy them to scare birds away from the crops. The Miccosukee Indians use it as part of their shows for tourists. Kids buy them for fun, and the Cubans, or at least the Alpha 66, buy them for God knows what. But they pay real good and are easy to deal with.”

Tasker looked over the list. No one had bought a single huge amount of anything, but the intel guys at FDLE might work something up on the list. Then on the last page he brushed over a name and had to go back. Daniel Wells. Thirty ounces of TATP he bought three years ago. Tasker looked up at Mule. “This guy Daniel Wells. You remember him?”

Mule thought and said, “Yeah, sure. The engineer from up in Naranja or the Redlands. What about him?”

“Why would he need an explosive?”

“Didn’t ask.”

“What exactly is TATP?”

“Triacetone triperoxide. Bad shit, man. Especially the way I make it. It could blow a hole in granite.”

Tasker’s stomach continued to tighten as he put it all together. Clues he’d seen and didn’t register. The suitcases he’d knocked over while visiting Wells-he could see them vividly in his mind. They had been red. And they had been Samsonites. No way, it couldn’t be. He gathered his thoughts and looked at Mule. “You got any of this batch of TATP left?”

“Yeah, your buddy just loaded it in the water bottle.”

Tasker wanted to be sure. His stomach was already flip-flopping. “What did Wells look like?”

“Late twenties. Good shape. Dark, short hair. He had a couple of kids with him. Think he was a single father or something.”

Tasker thought about the lovely Alicia for a second.

“How bad is TATP, I mean what will it do?”

“Little unstable, but like I said, has a good punch. He bought enough to blow the shit out of a few things.”

“Could you make a bomb in a suitcase with it?”

“Easy.”

Tasker thought about what this meant and mumbled, “Oh shit, what have I done?”