Red Tide (Billy Knight Thrillers 2)

“Maybe so. How are they?”

“First, you got to understand that there’s nothing definite to go on here. Just a pile of bodies that’s easy to write off as refugees who drowned trying to come across.”

“And nobody is working around the clock to make the connection?”

“Buddy,” Deacon said with a tired shake of his head, “Unless a sworn officer actually stubs his toe on the perpetrator while he’s committing the crime, ain’t nobody ever going to make a connection.”

“Except you.”

He shrugged. “They keep me in between two very narrow lines, Billy. I can’t just put on my cape and fly around looking for wrongs to right.”

“So this just goes on.”

“If it’s happening, it’s happening in international waters. Out in the great dark deep. The State won’t touch it. Everybody in Tallahassee is pissed off at the Feds because we’re going broke paying for all the immigrants, which is a federal problem, but the Feds won’t help. So F.D.L.E. can’t touch it, Metro doesn’t want it, Sheriff says he can’t handle it, and Marine Patrol says they’re not authorized.

“The Feds won’t get involved unless there is a direct threat to U.S. citizens, which they figure at this point won’t happen unless more of these guys make it to shore and start taking jobs away from taxpayers. And since there ain’t so much as one syllable of public protest on anything to do with any immigrant group that isn’t Cuban, nobody is being forced into doing anything.”

“So everybody knows something’s happening,” I said.

“They suspect the hell out of it.”

“But nobody wants to do anything about it.”

He winked. “Too many forms to fill out, buddy. And too many people to file ’em with that don’t want to hear about it.”

“All right,” I said. “What do you know?”

“Not a thing. But I’ll tell you what I think,” he said.

“Tell me.”

He held up a finger. “First, we’re talking about one boat.” Another finger. “Probably one of those old rust-bucket freighters out of the Miami River. And one other thing I guaran-damn-tee you, buddy,” he said, holding up his open hand now and closing it into a fist.

“What’s that?”

“We’ve got a file on this guy somewhere. Because what it looks like to me is, he’s smuggling refugees, and he’s taking their money and loading ’em onto his boat, and then dumping ’em into the ocean, still alive. ’Cause every one of ’em, they died from drowning.” He winked. “You didn’t hear that from me.”

“I didn’t hear a thing.”

“And somebody who can do that is a cold killer, and you don’t come at that from nowhere. You don’t just decide one day you’re gonna murder five or six hundred people.”

“How many?” I couldn’t believe the number. It was worse than even Nicky imagined.

Deacon shrugged, but I could tell it bothered him. “Just a guess they’ve put together, based on some things you don’t want to know about.”

“So I didn’t hear that number from you, either.”

“You got that right, buddy.”

I thought about it for a minute. Then I shook my head; it wasn’t quite tracking. “That’s it? Five hundred dead and that’s all you’ve heard about this?”

“Like I say, Billy, I’m kind of in a tight place right now.” He looked at his watch. “How’d you like a bite to eat?”

I stared at him. He seemed serious. “I didn’t think you got hungry,” I said. “When did this start?”

“Started when I found this great little Haitian place a few miles from here,” he said. “It’s kind of a community center for refugees. Guy who runs it knows everybody in Little Haiti, and everything that’s going on,” he added with a lot of significance.

“I could use a bite to eat,” I said.