within the Bureau expects him to talk or cooperate.
DiLuca is kept in jail, in solitary, under surveillance, and far from any form of communication. He’s still a career criminal who cannot be trusted. No one would be surprised if he contacted Mercado if given the chance. And he would certainly make sure Jon Drummik and Robert Earl Lane knew that Adam Stone is a rat.
Agnes Nolton makes the decision to arrest Mercado, and to get Adam Stone away from Garvin. Plans are immediately made to move him and his family to another town, one near a federal prison where a better job is waiting. Plans are also in the works to send DiLuca to a camp where surgeons will alter his looks and give him a new name.
* * *
—
ONCE AGAIN, PATIENCE pays dividends. Using a Honduran passport and the name “Alberto Gomez,” Mercado books a flight from Miami to San Juan, and from there he rides an Air Caribbean commuter to the island of Martinique, French West Indies. The locals scramble to pick up his trail in Fort-de-France, the capital, and he is watched as he takes a cab to the Oriole Bay Resort, a lush and secluded getaway on the side of a mountain. Two hours later, a government jet lands at the same airport and FBI agents hustle to waiting cars. The resort, though, is booked. It has only twenty-five quite expensive rooms and they’re all taken. The agents check in to the nearest hotel, three miles away.
* * *
—
MERCADO MOVES SLOWLY around the resort. He has lunch alone by the pool and drinks in the corner of a tiki bar with a view of the foot traffic. The other guests are high-end Europeans with their mix of languages, and none raise suspicions. Late in the afternoon, he walks along a narrow path fifty yards up the mountain to a sprawling bungalow where a porter serves him a drink on the terrace. The sparkling blue Caribbean stretches for miles below him. He lights a Cuban cigar and enjoys the view.
The man of the house is Ramon Vasquez and he eventually wanders onto the terrace. The woman of the house is Diana, his longtime mate, though Mercado has never met nor seen her. Diana waits and watches from a bedroom window.
Ramon pulls up a chair. They do not shake hands. “What happened?”
Mercado shrugs as if there are no problems. “Not sure. The job wasn’t finished on the inside.” They speak in soft, rapid Spanish.
“Obviously. Is there a plan to complete the deal?”
“Is that what you want?”
“Very much so. Our boys are not happy at all and they want this problem to go away. They, we, thought you could be trusted for something this simple. You said it would be easy. You were wrong, and we want the deal closed.”
“Okay. I’ll work on a plan, but it most certainly will not be easy. Not this time.”
The porter brings Ramon a glass of ice water. He waves off a cigar. They chat for half an hour before Mercado is excused. He eases back to the resort, suns by the pool, entertains a young lady during the evening, and has dinner alone in the elegant dining room.
The following day, Mercado uses a Bolivian passport and returns to San Juan.
37
There are only two incorporated municipalities in Ruiz County: Seabrook, population 11,000, and the much smaller village of Dillon, population 2,300. Dillon is to the north and farther inland, rather remote and seemingly forgotten by time. There are few decent jobs in Dillon and not much in the way of commerce. Most of the young people leave out of necessity and a desire to survive. Prospering is rarely thought of. Those left behind, young and old, muddle along, living off whatever meager wages they can find and checks from the government.
While the county is 80 percent white, Dillon is half and half. Last year its small high school graduated sixty-one seniors, thirty of whom were black. Kenny Taft finished there, in 1981, as had his two older siblings. The family lived a few miles out from Dillon in an old farmhouse Kenny’s father bought at a foreclosure before he was born.
Vicki has put together a spotty history of the Tafts, and they have seen more than their share of suffering. From old obituaries, we know that Kenny’s father died at fifty-eight, cause unknown. Next in line was Kenny, who was murdered at the age of twenty-seven. A year later, his older