“You’re going to get us in trouble, aren’t you?”
“Bob: you gotta relax, man. They’re just a bunch of feds.”
* * *
Weaver was sitting at the hotel bar, talking to the bartender when they showed up. He tipped his gin-and-tonic glass at them and said, “Tonic water and lime, no gin.”
Bob: “That sounds good.” He asked the bartender for the same thing; Lucas ordered a Diet Coke.
“You boys ain’t gonna bring Lauderdale to its knees, are you?” the bartender asked, as he went to get the drinks. When they came, the three of them took the drinks to a table and Weaver asked, “Anything new? I’m praying you’ll say yes.”
Lucas said, “No new information, but some new thoughts, maybe.”
“I’ll take anything.”
“Where’s the stuff recovered from the yacht? I understand you found a wet suit.”
“Locked up in an evidence room down in Miami,” Weaver said. “But the wet suit . . . it’s a lump of melted neoprene. No way to get anything from it.”
“Did anyone weigh it?”
Weaver hunched his shoulders. “I don’t know, honestly. I doubt it. I could ask.”
“Could you ask, and if they haven’t, get them to do it?” Lucas asked. “Quick as they can?”
“Sure, I can do that.”
Lucas: “Another thing. When Barney Hall shot the guy, you immediately went around and jacked up a couple of dozen people based on their relationships with the dead man. Were any of those guys dealing dope?”
Weaver shook his head: “Not as far as we know. I’m sure some were users, but it wasn’t their big thing. Most of them worked in bars or marinas, or lifting heavy stuff. We’re not talking about business geniuses. Dealing? Nothing big-time, if they did it at all.”
“What about the meeting with the narcs?” Lucas asked.
“You’re set to go at three o’clock.”
“That’s great.”
“No problem. It’s nice to have you guys hustling,” Weaver said. “The rest of us have slacked off, I’m afraid. Been a frustrating investigation, banging our heads against brick walls.”
“Concrete block walls,” Bob said.
Weaver nodded: “Okay.”
“What happened with the idea of offering a reward for the dope buckets?” Lucas asked.
Weaver brightened. “I talked to my boss, he thinks it’s going to fly. Not a done deal yet, but I’ll know before the end of the day. They’re hot to get something. Anything.”
* * *
After talking with Weaver, Bob and Lucas went back to their rooms, collected their separate files of FBI reports, carried them down to the now-empty conference room and began pulling the interviews with a variety of crime-connected street operators in Miami and Fort Lauderdale, looking for drug hustlers, and found none.
They were still at it when they got a call from a crime scene tech in Miami. Lucas put it on speakerphone. “I pulled that wet suit and weighed it,” the tech said. “It came in a tich under six pounds.”
“Did much of it get burned up?” Lucas asked.
“No. It’s melted, but intact. It’s all stuck together, which is why we couldn’t get anything out of it,” she said. “We could tell it’s a seven millimeter, which probably means the diver was going deep and cold. It was somewhat protected from the fire because that boat has a head . . . a toilet . . . and that’s where we found the wet suit.”
Bob: “Wait—there’s a cabin? We thought it was an open fishing boat.”
“No cabin, just a head under the center console. Big enough to stand up in, there’s a toilet and even a tiny sink, but it’s tight.”
Lucas: “The wet suit was where? On the floor?”
“Yes. The diver had peeled it off and left it. We assume he was changing when the chase started and he was in a hurry.”
“Now. That is interesting,” Bob said, when they were off the phone.
They spent a half hour calling wet suit manufacturers and talking to the owner of a Lauderdale dive shop. When they were done, Bob said, “It all fits with the wet suit in the toilet stall.”
“The head,” Lucas said.
“Yeah, the head.”
* * *
Weaver had looked in on them a couple of times, to see if they’d actually learned anything. He showed up again as Bob made his comment about it all fitting with the toilet stall.
“What fits?” He looked from Lucas to Bob and back to Lucas.
Lucas said, “We got the weight on that wet suit—a little under six pounds, which is consistent with a size small in a seven-millimeter suit. We called a dive shop and asked how much trouble it was to get out of a dive suit. Turns out, they’re made to fit really tight and it’s a struggle to get both in and out of one. The suit was found in the head, where it would have been even more of a struggle, because the head on that boat is tiny. Hardly room to turn around.”
“All right, I believe you. So what?” Weaver asked.
“Hall says the diver was short and thin . . . quite short. About five-six, or even shorter, we think. The diver went into the head to change. Why was that?”
Weaver shook his head. “I don’t know. You tell me.”
“Because she wanted some privacy, away from the men on the boat.”
Weaver stared, then then put up both hands to fend them off: “Oh, no. No, nope, you’re shitting me now.”
Lucas said, “We’re not a hundred percent on it, of course. But that suit was right for an average-sized athletic woman.”
“Fuck me.”
Bob to Weaver: “Did you look at any women divers?”
“I don’t think so. It never occurred to anyone that . . . aw, hell.” Weaver agreed that the FBI task force agents would try to track down an average-sized, athletic, professional or semipro female diver.
Lucas asked, “Where would they get their tanks refilled?”
“We checked all those, but we’ll recheck, asking about women,” Weaver said. “The thing is, you can buy a scuba compressor for two or three grand. If you’re willing to torch a quarter-million-dollar boat, you’re probably willing to spend three grand on your own compressor. We did check compressor shipments into the three-county area here and tracked them down. Nothing happening there.”