Black Friday (or Black Market) - James Patterson [25]
How would a South Florida drug dealer know anything about Green Band? What possible connection could there be?
Like everything so far, it didn’t make much sense yet. It didn’t seem to lead anywhere Arch Carroll particularly wanted to go. Certainly, he didn’t want to be in southern Florida at this hour of the morning.
He rubbed his eyes, splashed more cold water on his face and looked back at his reflection. Death warmed over, he thought. It was like one of the photographs on wanted posters inside Post’ Office buildings, the kind that seem always to have been taken in dim lighting.
Carroll turned away from the mirror. It would soon be time to come down in the fantasy land of orange juice, Disney World, multimillionaire dope dealers, and hopefully Green Band.
Chapter 18
THE LOCAL FBI CHIEF, Clark Sommers, accompanied by an assistant, was there to meet Carroll at the arrival gate. As usual, Miami International Airport was experiencing an electrical brownout.
“Mr. Carroll, I’m Clark Sommers of the Bureau. This is my associate, Mr. Lewis Sitts.”
Carroll nodded. His head ached from the flight and the effects of the upper he’d swallowed, which was just kicking in now, buzzing through his bloodstream.
“Walk and talk?” Sommers suggested. “We’ve got an awful lot of ground to cover this morning.”
“Yeah, sure. Tell me something, though. Every time I come through this airport the lights are half out Am I just imagining that?”
“I know what you mean. It can seem that way. Dope dealers claim the bright lights hurt their eyes.” Clark Sommers flashed a very low key, cynical smile. He was definitely FBI all the way.
Sommers’ assistant, Mr. Sitts, was wearing a lightweight blue sweater, tan golfing slacks and a matching Banlon shirt. The only thing missing were some espadrilles. Probably getting a promotional fee from Jantzen, Carroll thought. He tried to picture himself as a successful Florida police officer, but he couldn’t make the right visual or emotional connection.
As they walked down the corridor, Carroll glanced at the cheery posters depicting surf and sun. They seemed to assault him personally. The sea was a shade too blue, the sun a touch too garish, the people having fun in the photographs a little too all-American beautiful for Carroll’s taste. He yearned for New York, where at least there was a sense of reality to the gray, wintry half-tones of the familiar streets.
Sommers, fidgeting with a pair of sunglasses, spoke in a quietly assured voice.
“Mr. Carroll, one thing you probably should understand about this territory down here. For reasons of morale, in order to keep my men fully efficient and organized, this bust has to be mine. I have to make the calls. These are my men. You can understand that, I hope?”
Carroll didn’t break stride. His face showed nothing. Almost all policemen were fiercely, irrationally territorial— something he knew from personal experience.
“Sure thing,” he nodded. “This is your bust All I want to do is talk to our drug dealer friend afterward. Ask him how he likes the nice Florida weather.”
Chapter 19
THE SOUTH OCEAN BOULEVARD neighborhood was pretty much 1930s Spanish and Mediterranean in style: it was a six-block cluster of pastel blue and pink million-dollar estates. Carroll had the impression of everyone and everything lying dormant around him. People still sleeping peacefully at twenty past eight flagstone patios sleeping, red clay courts sleeping at the Bath and Tennis Club, putting-green lawns and candy-striped cabanas and swimming pools—all sleeping, as if everything had been placed under a pleasant narcoleptic spell.
Clark Sommers spoke in a steady drone as they rode alongside the glittering, bluish-green ocean. “Real estate dealings on South Ocean here aren’t exactly handled by Century Twenty-One. Most sales are actually arranged by Sotheby’s, the big antiques outfit. Owners in Palm Beach, they think of their homes as valuable works of art.”
“Reminds me of