The Butterfly Forest

NINETY-NINE

A week passed as the hunt for Pablo Gonzales intensified. Federal agents shadowed me from a distance. They tried to blend in, but were as obvious as clouds floating overhead. I swam in the ocean at night, my arm healing well. Elizabeth spent her days reading and sequestered on the sailboat in Cedar Key. I called her daily.

I took a seat at a corner table in the Tiki Bar and waited to have breakfast with Dave. Under the paddle fans, two fishermen sat at the bar. A noisy family of tourists ordered breakfast a half dozen tables away from me. At the far side of the restaurant, a man dressed in a long sleeve denim shirt and shorts, sat alone, read the paper and tried his federal best to remain innocuous.

Dave pulled up a chair, and I told him about Palmer’s letter. He asked, “Are you going back in the forest to hunt for it?”

“Not now, not yet.” I looked in the direction of the agent. “Too many shadows trying to follow me.”

“They’re trying to catch some of Gonzales’ dogs, seize them and hope to be lead back to Pablo.”

“Their presence is having the opposite effect. Do me a favor and call whomever you still know at Langley or Quantico. Tell them to pull back their surveillance. They want to catch Gonzales’ dogs, but the pack won’t come around if there’s a constant federal presence.”

“I’ll do what I can. Not many of my colleagues left there anymore. There’s one, and he’s the guy you need now. Cal Thorpe.”

“Thorpe is good, but at this point he would get in the way. I have a plan and for the first step at least, I can’t include him.”

Kim Davis, her face tanned and radiant, stepped up to the table to take our breakfast orders. After we ordered, she folded her arms across her breasts and said, “Nick told me they almost sank his boat with a rifle shot through his bilge. The whole marina’s been upside down talking about this. Did they catch that Mexican drug lord?”

Dave said, “He’s actually Argentinean, he moved his operation to Mexico years ago. Far as we know, he’s still at large.”

“Sean, does this mean you’re not safe?”

“I’ll be fine.”

She looked up as a family entered and took seats at a table. Her eyes dropped back to mine. “You need to go wherever Joe Billie goes. Apparently, nobody can ever find him unless he wants to be found.”

I smiled. “You have a good point.”

“I’ll turn in your orders.”

When she left, Dave said, “Word I hear is they believe Gonzales is deep in Mexico City. They’re not sure if he managed to smuggle his nephew’s body out of the country. For all we know, it could be iced down on a container ship bound for Cozumel or stored in some refrigerated unit around Tampa Bay.”

“It’s amazing that no one knows anything. These people can’t just vanish into thin air.”

“I do know there’s a directive from the White House to bring in Gonzales, no matter what it takes. We have some of our best moving through Mexico right now, turning over rocks, kicking in doors and generally using the same tactics Gonzales has used as we hunt him down.”

“They won’t find him that way. His money buys the best protection — silence.”

“Somebody will talk, they always do.”

“I’ll try to draw out Gonzales.”

“What are you going to do, Sean?”

“We talked about using me as bait. Now, I think I know how to set the hook.”