checks his speedometer and knows damned well he is not violating the law. He is on parole and treasures his freedom; thus, he sticks to the rules, or at least the rules of the road. A county officer takes his license and registration, and spends half an hour calling it in. DiLuca begins to squirm. When the officer returns, he asks, rudely, “You been drinking?”
“One beer,” DiLuca answers truthfully.
“That’s what they all say.”
Another county car with flashing lights arrives, and parks in front of DiLuca’s car. Two officers get out and glare at him as if he has just murdered some children. The three huddle and kill more time as DiLuca fumes. Finally, he is ordered out of the car.
“What the hell for?” he demands as he closes his door. He should not have. Two officers grab him and force him across the hood of his car while another slaps on handcuffs.
“You were swerving recklessly,” the first officer says.
“The hell I was,” DiLuca snaps.
“Just shut up.”
They search his pockets, take his phone and wallet, and toss him rather roughly into the back seat of the first patrol car. As he is taken away, an officer calls a wrecker, then calls the FBI. At the station, DiLuca is placed in a holding room where he is forced to pose for a mug shot, then left to sit for the next four hours.
A federal magistrate on standby in Orlando quickly approves two search warrants; one for DiLuca’s apartment, the other for his car. FBI agents enter the apartment in Delray Beach and go to work. It is a one-bedroom apartment with sparse, cheap furnishings and no evidence whatsoever of a woman. The kitchen counters are covered with dirty dishes. Laundry is piled in the hallway. The refrigerator has nothing more than beer, water, and cold cuts. The coffee table in the den is littered with hardcore porn magazines. A laptop is found in a tiny office and carried outside to a van where a technician copies the hard drive. Two burners are found, opened, analyzed, tapped, and put back on the desk. Listening devices are hidden throughout the apartment. After two hours the team is finished, and while normally it would be fastidious in rearranging things, DiLuca is such a slob it would be impossible for him or anyone else to notice that a surveillance team had spent the evening rummaging through his apartment.
Another team goes through his car and finds nothing important but another burner. Evidently, DiLuca has no permanent cell phone number. Digging through the cheap phone, the technician hits pay dirt in the Contacts file. DiLuca has only ten numbers in memory, and one is for Mickey Mercado, the operative who showed up in court to eavesdrop on our motion for post-conviction relief. In the Recents file, there are twenty-two incoming and outgoing calls from and to Mercado in the past two weeks.
A GPS monitor is attached to the inside of his rear bumper so the car cannot escape surveillance. At 10:00 p.m., the county sheriff enters the holding room and apologizes to DiLuca. He explains that there was a bank robbery near Naples earlier in the day and the getaway car matched DiLuca’s. They suspected him, but now realize they were wrong. He is free to go.
DiLuca is not gracious and forgiving, and leaves as quickly as possible. He is suspicious and decides not to return to Delray Beach. He is also wary of using his burner so he makes no calls. He drives two hours to Sarasota and checks into a budget motel.
The next morning, the same federal magistrate issues a warrant authorizing the search of the apartment of Mercado and the electronic surveillance of his telephones. Another warrant directs his cell phone provider to open its records. However, before the bugging is complete, DiLuca calls Mercado from a pay phone. He is then tracked from Sarasota to Coral Gables where his trail is picked up by a team of FBI agents. He finally parks at an Afghan kebob restaurant on Dolphin Avenue and goes inside. Fifteen minutes later, a young female agent saunters inside for a bite and identifies DiLuca eating with Mickey Mercado.
DiLuca’s chilling comment to Adam that they had “had a look” at Quincy in the hospital ratchets up the security there. Quincy is moved again, to another corner room, and he is never left unwatched.
Agent Agnes Nolton keeps me abreast of these developments, though I do not know everything. I caution her against