“If he finds the cigarette butt, I’ll eat my own dick,” Cardiff murmurs.
“I’ll find you a teaspoon,” I mumble before putting the regulator in my mouth and letting it vent.
Cardiff blinks, trying to figure out what I said. Swanson turns red.
Solar stops a third of the way across the causeway and shouts back to me. “McPherson, can you do a three-foot-wide sweep from here to about twenty feet out?”
I give him a thumbs-up. “Swanson, you got the line?”
I plunge back into the water, curious to see what Solar thinks he’s found.
Over the years I’ve heard stories from other cops about the man. His ability to find evidence seemed almost supernatural. From the trial, I know for a fact that Uncle Karl went to great effort to conceal his cargo, but Solar somehow knew exactly where to tell the DEA search team to look.
Some said he’s simply got a knack. Others said he had informants and might have been dirty himself.
Up until now I’ve chosen to believe the latter, because it makes Uncle Karl’s conviction look more like a miscarriage of justice, but damned if I’m not curious to find out if it’s the former.
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE KNACK
I find the gun four feet from the edge of my first search band. Right where Solar told me to look. It could have taken me ten hours to get this far, if at all. Instead, it only took four minutes.
I slide the gun into a pouch and place a weighted ribbon in the spot where I found it, then swim to the surface. Solar is leaning over the edge of the railing, still staring down at me.
Cardiff and Swanson look surprised.
“The cigarette butt,” Cardiff blurts out. “I said I’d eat my dick if he found that.”
Solar does a slow turn toward him with an expression I can only describe as contempt. Well, at least he hates everyone. That’s good to know.
“How the hell?” asks Swanson as he lets the line go slack and the raft begins to drift.
Solar catches it. “Let’s let Officer McPherson dry off first.”
Officer McPherson? Did I just get a promotion from white-trash drug smuggler to possible human being?
I hate myself for how much this grudging nod of respect means to me. But it does mean something . . . How do assholes make us care what they think?
I swim over to the seawall, and Swanson gives me a hand up. After putting my gear back in the truck, I unzip my wet suit, causing a moment of panic as the cop doesn’t know whether to keep staring or look away.
I’m wearing shorts and a Lauderdale Shores Police Department T-shirt underneath. When he realizes I’m not about to strip down to a G-string, he relaxes.
Shorts and a T-shirt are a lot warmer underwater than the bikini I wear for recreational diving, but it puts my male colleagues at ease when they realize I’m not about to parade around a crime scene like a French model in South Beach. Maybe it disappoints them too. Who knows?
I towel off and slip my aqua shoes back on. Solar and the others are standing by Cardiff’s truck as he photographs the gun.
Even in the water, I could see that the serial number had been filed off. A clear sign that this gun belonged to a bad guy who was up to no good. I’m sure they already have a suspect in mind.
Cardiff sees that I’m all packed up. “All right, let’s have the amazing Solar tell us how he pulled this out of his ass.”
From out of nowhere I blurt, “Maybe he was the one driving the car.”
Cardiff blinks, and Swanson’s jaw drops. Solar stares at me and makes a slight nod.
“I’d say that would be the obvious answer,” he replies. “But I have an alternative explanation for you.” He looks at me, ignoring the others. “This way.”
I follow him onto the causeway with Cardiff and Swanson behind me.
“Did you time it?” asks Cardiff. “From when the driver saw the bridge and decided to toss the gun?”
Solar says nothing and keeps walking.
Swanson puts a hand over his eyes and squints at the water. “Is it the way the light reflects this time of day?”
I keep my theory to myself, because it doesn’t sound any better than theirs.
We reach the point where Solar told me to look, and he comes to a stop. “The cigarette.”
Swanson stares at the ground around his feet. “I see a lot of them.”
Solar doesn’t even acknowledge the man. “Page six of the forensic report on the car.”
“What about it?” asks Cardiff.
“Residues. You recall?”
“There weren’t any. The steering wheel had been wiped too.”
“And in the Carolina parking lot where they think the car was first parked?”
Cardiff shrugs. “Nada. I’m not following.”
Solar turns to me. “Are you getting it?”
I think I am. “Ash. There were no ashes.”
“None in the car. None where the car was parked,” replies Solar.
“So the guy owned a fucking vape pen,” Cardiff interjects, clearly pissed that this is going over his head.
“Or there was no cigarette,” replies Solar.
“But I saw the sparks,” Swanson insists.
I see it before Solar has to point it out to the others.
Jesus, this guy is clever.
It’s obvious when you look for it. Right on top of the railing, there’s a metal scuff mark where the gun struck, created a spark, then bounced into the water.
I tap the rail. It’s steel. Most of them are aluminum and wouldn’t make a spark when hit by the frame of a gun. This was an exception, the outlier.
Cardiff holds the gun next to the scrape on the railing.
“I’m surprised it didn’t go off,” Swanson says under his breath.
“So, you think this is Rodrigo’s type of gun?” Cardiff asks Solar.
“Rodrigo?” I ask.
Cardiff realizes this is the first time he’s mentioned the name in front of me. “Just a name.”
Solar replies to me, ignoring Cardiff’s attempt to downplay the name. “Rodrigo Mustano. He’s the brother of a man I was after. Carmine Mustano, aka Mustang.”
I get a chill. I’ve heard that name before. I think I even overheard my uncle mention it to my father when talking about the trial. Mustano was an enforcer for the cartels. He’s probably killed dozens in the US and god knows how many in Bolivia and Colombia.
“Aren’t there like a hundred warrants out for that guy?” I ask. “What’s he doing back in South Florida?”
Cardiff stares at me for a long moment. “Right.”
I turn to Swanson, trying to figure out what that’s supposed to mean. He avoids eye contact. This has something to do with the conversation I overheard back on the bridge.
“Lately there have been a lot of undesirables spotted in South Florida,” says Cardiff.
“Why?” I ask.
“That’s the question,” says Cardiff, echoing Solar. “Why indeed?”
There’s a long silence, like when you’re waiting for someone to confess. Cardiff is clearly under the delusion that I know something. Meanwhile, Solar is studying us.
“We might be able to get some prints off the shell casings in the magazine,” Swanson suggests hopefully.