Chapter 12
“I saw you talking to Shana George. I thought I told you not to—”
“Del, shut up and listen for a minute.”
“Whoa there, honey. What has you all in a snit tonight?”
“Isn’t the recent murder of my husband enough to have me in a snit?”
There was a pause where they listened to the breeze running through the bushes and Del breathing, sounding like he was lighting up a cigarette.
“I want to know the truth, Del. You said you had something. Tell me everything.”
“I’m still working on it.”
There was a pause in the conversation and the sound of paper rustling.
“What’s this?”
“You tell me.”
“I’m on a boat with someone you shouldn’t know about. That detective chick thinks she’s hot shit but she had no business giving this to you. She tell you who this is?”
“What were you doing with this man?”
“What do you think? My job, for Christ’s sake. Penny, what are you thinking? Don’t let those damn detectives poison you against me. What kind of crap are they telling you?”
“They aren’t telling me anything because you aren’t letting them do their job and you’re not sharing your information.”
“Of course not, damn it. I’m undercover with Beaumont and you and your detectives are spreading this picture around and the next thing you know my cover is blown.”
“Does Beaumont have anything to do with Harvey’s death? I want the truth.”
“I can’t get into details, but that’s the direction I’m going in. Don’t you say a word to anyone. Especially not Captain Lynch or that shitty detective duo.”
“What about Beaumont? What are you going to do about him?”
“You let me worry about that.” They heard Del do some heavy breathing as if he were taking a deep draft of his cigarette.
“Let’s go inside. I need a drink.”
They listened to the sound of the surf and the light breeze for a few seconds and no one spoke.
Acer depressed a barely visible black button on the black box.
“You want to hear it again?” He’d asked Dane, but Cap answered.
“No. The gist was we’re nowhere.”
“That’s about what I figured would happen,” Shana said and scraped her chair back from the table.
“I think it went perfectly,” Dane said.
“How do you figure?” Shana squinted at him.
He couldn’t decide if Shana was skeptical or if she expected him to have something.
Acer looked expectant. Cap looked skeptical.
“We use the one thing Del keeps glossing over, the one technicality that’s out of his control—the fact that Nate Beaumont supposedly offed Harvey, that Beaumont was supposedly the one Harvey was involved with, and the appearance that Harvey blew Del’s cover with Beaumont.”
“Theoretically only Del knows none of it is true,” Cap said. “But we could make it true—the part about blowing his supposed undercover operation.” He smiled at Dane.
“Let’s have a talk with Nate Beaumont.”
“We tell him Del is undercover?” Shana said.
“No. We show him the picture and say Harvey gave it to us—or to Penny, who gave it to us. And that we’re supposed to get it to ATF.
We tell Beau that we know Del’ s not been assigned to work undercover with him.
ATF will know that too and they’ll be surprised to see Del and him hanging around together on his yacht.
Once ATF gets the picture, Beau and Del’s operation is blown.
We let that sink in and then tell Beau we want a piece of the action to keep it quiet. The same cut he’s giving Delbert.”
“Get him to talk about his deal with Del.”
Dane nodded his head.
“Sounds dicey.”
“Oh, it will be. You haven’t heard the best part,” Dane said. “We have Penny or Gable leak it to Del that we’re visiting with Beaumont to cut a deal.”
“What? Why?” Shana stood then.
“Once we set up the meeting we know Beau is going to call him and ask him what’s going on. He’ll find out, so we might as well give Del a chance to plan something.”
“You’re banking on Del being there at the meeting behind the scenes.”
“Exactly. We’ll meet him on the boat where the picture was taken.”
“What makes you so sure Nate Beaumont will meet with you?”
“I’ll send him a copy of the picture to entice his interest. I’ll write on it, ’Undercover double cross?’”
“Play to his paranoia about undercover cops.”
Acer asked, “I don’t get the advantage of having Del there. Don’t you want Beaumont to do your dirty work and off him for you?” Acer said.
“Hell no. Besides, Beau won’t necessarily off Del. He’s not going to take our word for Del being dirty. Beaumont will be more easily enticed to off us.”
“That’s what I was afraid of,” Acer said.
“Never fear, we have Captain Lynch on our side.”
“I’ll be close by with some undercover men in the area,” Cap said. “Del doesn’t know my detectives and I’ll be out of sight. We need to have someone following Del to make sure he gets to the boat ahead of us. If he doesn’t show, I’m calling it off.”
“Why? It could still work without him.” Acer said.
“No. Too dangerous. Del will be in the wind. We lose him, then Beaumont will have his lawyers throw everything out that you got on him and we’ll end up with nothing.”
“Okay. We need Del to be there and we need him to make the first move against us.”
“Preferably you can get him to confess all before he shoots you and throws you overboard.”
“So if they start the boat up and take us for a ride that’s a sign that things are working according to plan.”
“And that’s why we have Captain Vendi on call. We may need the Coast Guard on this.” Cap said.
“I’m betting we will,” Dane said.
“You’re crazy, man,” Acer said. ”You’ll be a goner if they get you out to sea without your backup.”
“Who said we’ll be without backup?”
“I’ll have my men aboard,” Cap said. “And I will personally be on board before Beau’s yacht goes anywhere.”
“So when you said ‘close by’ you meant on board,” Shana said.
Cap nodded. “It’ll be the most fun I’ve had since the last caper—I mean case—you two got me involved with.”
“Then it’s a go.” Dane sealed it.