Ocean Prey (A Prey Novel #31) - John Sandford Page 0,44

Florida, chasing down those girls . . .” He glanced at Taylor, caught something in her expression, and amended, “. . . women. And we’ve approved four dive boats to look for the drugs.”

“We got a lower response on the dive boats than we anticipated,” Taylor said. She brushed her hair back in frustration. “One of our officers in Fort Lauderdale asked some of the divers why that was. He was told the chance of recovery was too low, the cost of going after it was too high, and because the drug runners might cut off your head if they caught you doing it. The guys out there now are doing it for the adventure, more than anything else. I kinda don’t think they’ll last long, once the novelty wears off.”

“Fifty thousand dollars ain’t what it used to be,” Bob said. “Sounds like a lot, but after taxes . . .”

“I’ll tell you something else,” Taylor said. “There are a lot of guns on the boats that are out there. Perfectly legal, of course. If some Mafias show up and try to push them off they could get a boat full of bullets. I don’t know what I think about that.”

“Even with all that, we’re moving better than we were a week ago,” Weaver said, to Lucas and Bob. “I appreciate what you guys have done. I’m kinda surprised you didn’t go after these girls, these women, yourselves.”

“You’re better equipped to handle it,” Lucas said. “We’ve got another thing going.”

He told them about Magnus Elliot. “He knows something. At least, he thinks he knows something. If he does, we could get a name. We could even get it this afternoon.”

“That would be off-the-scale good,” Weaver said. “That’d be better than finding the dope.”

“Let us know what happens with the hairdressers,” Lucas said. “We’ll be up in our rooms doing more research, checking with some of the Miami narcs. And we’re waiting for Elliot to make his deal with the U.S. attorney.”

“Anything big happens, I’ll call,” Weaver said.

* * *

Out in the hall, Bob said, “I thought we were going to take naps.”

“That’s what I’m gonna do,” Lucas said. “I just wasn’t going to admit it.”

“Ah. Good work. I knew there was a reason I partnered up with you,” Bob said. “I’ll call you about 5:30. If Elliot hasn’t gotten back to us, we could go get some lobster.”

* * *

Lucas took a short nap, then read through the new reports coming from Weaver’s agents. He found little that was interesting. Bob called a few minutes after five, said, “I couldn’t stand staring at the ceiling anymore. Let’s go eat.”

They were at the Rendezvous, chicken tenders and sea bass, when Magnus Elliot called. They were sitting far enough from the next set of diners that Lucas put the phone on the speaker so Bob could hear what was said, and they both hovered over it. “Okay, we got a deal,” Elliot said.

“What do we get?”

“The one goddamn thing I got,” Elliot said. “A name and a location. Donald Romano. He lives in Coral Gables, but he’s got a lights warehouse store down in Florida City—he sells lights to building contractors down here, and dope up in New York.”

“Spell his name,” Lucas said. “Where’s Coral Gables . . . and Florida City?”

Elliot spelled Romano, and said, “Coral Gables is a town that’s like hung on the side of Miami. Upper-level money. Florida City is south of Miami, right by the top of the Keys, probably one of the poorest towns in the state. The lights store is called Larry and Kay’s Contractor Lighting Warehouse. I think Larry and Kay are his daughter and son-in-law.”

Bob: “Wait a minute. Romano sells lights? And dope?”

“Yeah. The way I hear it, the lighting business is his money laundry,” Elliot explained. “He’s got cash businesses in New York and New Jersey, loan sharking and dope. He buys lights from the manufacturers and sells them at a twenty-five percent markup to condo developers. He kicks the whole markup back, under the table, in cash, so he breaks even on the sale of the lights. But: the contractors now have the dirty cash, and he has a check from the contractors that he puts in the bank, reports the markup as profit on the lights, pays his taxes, and the money is clean. So I’m told.”

“Are all the developers crooks?” Bob asked.

“Yeah, most of them,” Elliot said. “They get those lights at wholesale and a nice pile of invisible