"Oh, really?"
"Oh, really. And my shame and humiliation is tempered only by the fact that you-once you hear it-are going to have to abjectly apologize for all the unkind things you have been saying about the FBI."
"Time will tell, Edgar," Castillo said.
"You can listen to this, Lester," Delchamps went on, "even though it will probably shatter the childlike faith you have in me. And with the caveat, of course, that once you hear this, I shall probably have to kill you to keep you from spreading this among your friends."
"And you are going to make this confession in the next fifteen minutes or so, right?" Castillo said.
"This is very difficult for me, Ace. I seldom make errors of this magnitude. The last time was in 1986, when I erroneously concluded I had made an error."
Bradley giggled.
"Don't encourage him, for God's sake, Lester," Castillo said. "We'll never get to Montevideo."
"My mistake this time was in thinking I had conned Milton Weiss, when the opposite is true," Delchamps said.
He's serious now. This is no joke.
"That whole scenario about how he and Crawford plan to seize cruise ships is pure bullshit," Delchamps said. "And I not only swallowed it hook, line, and sinker, but encouraged you to do the same. Mea culpa, Ace."
"How do you know?" Castillo asked.
"Inspector John J. Doherty of the blessed Federal Bureau of Investigation, those wonderful checkers of fact, told Two-Gun," Delchamps said. "Before Two-Gun could come from Shangri-La to tell me, Doherty-damn his black Irish heart-got on the Gee-Whiz radio himself to break the news to me as gently as a mother telling her child, 'Sorry, there really is no Santa Claus.' He actually was embarrassed to have to tell me what a spectacular ass I'd made of myself."
"You are going to give us the details, right?" Castillo said, softly.
"Not yet. Not until you say something really nice to Two-Gun, who turned over the rock, so to speak."
"Okay," Castillo said, and turned to Yung. "'Something nice,' Two-Gun. Now, what damn rock did you turn over?"
Yung shrugged. "There was something about that ship-seizure plot that smelled, Colonel," he said. "So I got on the radio to Inspector Doherty, went over all the details we knew of it, then asked him what he thought. It smelled to him, too, so he checked it out. He
called me back and said it doesn't work that way. There are fines for companies whose ships do something illegal like moving drugs. But it's not like what the cops can do-seize a car, then have the bad guys go to court and try to get their car back."
Delchamps picked up the story: "According to Doherty, the only way these people could lose their ship is if after a trial-actually, a hearing-there is a fine and they don't pay it. Then the ship could theoretically be sold at auction to pay the fine. According to Doherty, that doesn't often happen-almost never happens-because the fines are never more than a hundred thousand, or two hundred thousand, never anything approaching the value of the ship-"
"And according to Doherty," Yung interrupted, "the only ships that tend to get sold to pay the fine are old battered small coastal freighters, the like of which aren't worth the cost of the fine. The drug people just let them go as a cost of doing business."
"So we was had, Ace," Delchamps said. "Not only was I led down the primrose path, but I held your hand as you skipped innocently along beside me."
"What's their angle?" Castillo asked, almost as if to himself.
"After my admission, I'm surprised you're asking me," Delchamps said.
"Come on, Ed. You made a mistake, that's all."
"I was conned by a guy I knew was a con artist."
"So what's his angle?"
"I have a theory, which of course I can't prove…"
"Let's have it."
"Weiss and Crawford are almost as old as I am. They're close to retirement, and I really don't think they've salted much away for their golden years. Can your imagination soar from that point, Charley?"
"They sold out," Castillo said.