Black Friday (or Black Market) - James Patterson [28]
“Don’t move, Alvarez. Don’t move an inch,” an FBI man screamed. “I said don’t mover
Carroll grunted, then he pushed himself painfully out of the wrecked Pontiac. He roared out Diego Alvarez’s name at the top of his voice, surprised by his own intensity.
He was still yelling when he grabbed the shirtless drug dealer out of the hands of the FBI agents.
“Arch Carroll, State Department Special Terrorist Force! You have no rights! You hear me? … How did you know about Green Band? Who talked to you? You look at me!”
Diego Alvarez said, “Fuck you!” He spat into Carroll’s face.
Carroll shuffled a little to his left, then hit the drug dealer with a sharp-looking right hand delivered to the mouth. Alvarez fell to the ground, already out cold.
“Yeah, fuck you, too!” said the former Bronx street-kid still lurking somewhere inside Carroll. He wiped the dope dealer’s saliva from his cheek.
Clark Sommers’ mouth fell open, creating a surprised O at the center of his face. A few other Florida FBI studs just shook their heads.
At the FBI office on Collins Avenue in Miami, Diego Alvarez was taken inside a small interrogation room where he told Carroll everything he knew.
“I don’t know who they are, honest, man. Somebody jus’ want you down here to Florida,” he said with almost believable sincerity. Because he had been busted with three hundred and fifty thousand dollars’ worth of cocaine, and because his prospects of freedom looked grim, he didn’t have much to gain by lying. Carroll studied the man as he spoke.
“I swear it. I don’t know nothin’ more, man. But I got a feelin’ somebody playin’ some kind of games with you. They set me up, my big mouth. But somebody playin’ wit’ you…. Somebody jus’ want you come here ‘stead of someplace else. They playin’ wit’ you, man. They playin’ wit’ you real good.”
Carroll suddenly wanted to put his head down on the interrogation table in front of him. He’d been used, and he had no idea why. All he knew was that whoever was doing it was smart. They were telling him: See, we can manipulate you—any which way we like.
Carroll eventually wandered outside the Miami FBI building and leaned against the warm-baked white stucco wall.
He tried to let the Florida sun soothe his weary brain. He thought that Miami might be a better climate for playing Crusader Rabbit than New York.
He was relatively certain about a couple of disturbing things.… The Green Band group, whoever they were, knew who he was, and that he would be assigned to the investigation. How did they know? What should that tell him about who they might be? … They seemed to want him to know how superior, how well organized they were. They wanted him to be a little in awe—and frankly, right now anyway, he was.
On the plane home, Eastern—the wings of man—Arch Carroll had two beers, then two Irish whiskeys. He could have gone for another two Irish, but he’d promised his rabbi Walter Trentkamp—promised Uncle Walter something he couldn’t quite remember. Finally, he slept the rest of the way home to New York.
He had a real nice dream on the flight, too. Carroll dreamed that he quit his job with the DIA’s antiterrorist division. He and the kids and Nora went to live on the nicest, sugar-white beach in Florida.
Chapter 21
BEFORE THE BREAK of dawn on Sunday morning, Caitlin Dillon waded through a river of ice and slush that rose four inches above her ankles.
Once she successfully emerged on Fifth Avenue, the Director of Enforcement for the SEC’s Division of Trading and Exchange hailed a cab which reluctantly ferried her down to the 14th Street Police and National Guard Barricades.
From 14th Street, Caitlin was transferred by a snazzy police blue and white down into the smoldering chaos and confusion of the financial district itself.
The thirty-block ride went by amazingly fast. There were no working traffic lights below 14th Street. There was almost no other traffic on any of the downtown streets.
The sergeant driving the police car was as good looking as an actor in a Hollywood cop show. He had long blue-black hair curling over his uniform