No Rules, Ridge King [the snowy day read aloud TXT] 📗

“Yeah.”

“I already told Adele that we’ll be paying our surveillance people in cash. We have all that money from the sub—might as well get rid of some of it this way.”

“Sure. No 1099s this year for these guys.”

“I’m sure they’ll appreciate it,” said Jack.

“Oh, for sure.”

“Your bonus this year will be a little bigger than last year’s,” Jack said with a smile.

“Yeah?” Sean’s face lit up.

“Yeah—also in cash. You won’t be declaring it.”

“Thanks for the tax advice,” Sean smirked.

“I’m heading back to Washington this afternoon. Norwalk has called Dad into a meeting at Camp David and he wants me to go up with him.”

“Putting a lot of miles on the plane, huh?”

“Every second day it’s back and forth with me. Babe thought it was fun at first. Now she’s getting”—Jack searched for the right word—“cranky.”

“I bet,” said Sean carefully. He knew as well as anyone how volatile those Fuentes sisters could be—not just Raven, but all of them.

“I can’t wait for January to come—we get a new President and more important, we get all this shit behind us,” said Jack.

“Yeah.”

Jack thought this made a pretty picture: the son of a future President telling his staff not to declare their bonuses derived from the $65 million he’d recovered from a narco-sub and now had stashed in a bunker below his house on St. Clair Island. If any of this ever got out, his dad would be ruined.

As he took another sip of coffee and admired the stunning view of downtown Miami across the Bay, he reaffirmed that he’d make sure none of this business had any type of adverse effect on his dad’s situation.

He wanted to wrap up plans for the Christmas trip to Miami. He’d already heard from Bedelia Vaughan that she wanted to bring Lord Ellsworth along. It would be good for Gargrave to spend time with his uncle. He reminded himself to have Gargrave call and order a bigger plane for his party.

* * *

Pozo watched as Aricela drove away in her lackluster Ford Escape, just the kind of modest car he wanted his people driving. As a habit, he scanned the area with his practiced eye as she drove into the distance. Traffic came and went. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary.

Aricela had given him some unwelcome news about one of their operatives, Julio Aponte, the lawyer / accountant they used to create fake identities, false passports, identity cards, etc.

She’d dropped him a half block from the front of his store. He didn’t want anyone seeing her drop him off. He walked the short distance to his store and went through the front door.

There was a retail shop in the front and a small factory in the back where the furniture line was made. It was all very mom and pop.

A couple of sales clerks greeted him.

“Have a nice trip, Señor Gonzalez?” asked one.

“Si.”

Other people nodded.

He made a beeline for the office toward the rear where he found the office manager, Frangina Soto, working behind her desk. She smiled when he came into the small office and sat at his desk.

“Señor?” she said. “Everything is good?”

“Everything is very good, Frannie.”

They went through the usual motions a largely absentee owner would go through when visiting one of his businesses. After a quick cup of coffee and some catching-up, they went together through the wide sliding door that led to the manufacturing shop that took up the larger back end of the warehouse style building the company used. He made a show of talking to the workers.

Frangina Soto was the only one at Gonzalez Patio Furniture who knew Pozo’s true identity. She was married and had a family in Hialeah and had been recruited many years ago into the Dirección de Inteligencia. She had some distant relatives in Cuba, but for all intents and purposes was just as “Cuban-American” as any number of other “exiles,” as they styled themselves, thought Pozo.

They returned to the office where Pozo collected some car keys, keys to his house, some cash, the cellphone he used. On second thought, he went to the safe near the back of the office and, quickly remembering the combination, opened it. He pulled out a .38, checked the ammo, and stuffed it into his pocket.

“I’ll be back around five,” he said to Frannie. “I have dinner with the Oyebanjos on some business. Ought to be here four or five days.”

Frannie nodded.

He left through the warehouse loading dock. He walked the two blocks down the alley to a cottage where he stayed. Here he got into the Chevy Malibu that he drove when he was in Miami. Nothing too flashy. He made a call.

“Aponte? Good, you’re there. Stay there. I’ll be over in ten minutes.”

He drove about ten blocks away where he found a little storefront office (rents were cheap in Hialeah) with a badly painted stenciled sign in the window: Aponte Servicios Financieros.

He went into the front office and nodded to the clerk sitting there. A male customer in his late 20s sat patiently—nervously, thought Pozo—in a chair against the wall.

“Gonzalez for Aponte.”

But he heard a rustle in the office behind and Julio Aponte came rushing out, eagerly shaking his hand. Aponte had a potbelly and Pozo noticed the shirt button above his beltline was unbuttoned. Unsightly stray black hairs protruded from this little opening. Aponte wore glasses that did not fit and he combed his hair from the right side to cover what had over the years become an increasingly bald head.

“Jorge, Jorge! So good to see you again!”

Pozo turned to the customer as he shook Aponte’s hand.

“One of the best in Hialeah, my friend.”

The customer just nodded agreeably, smiling, revealing a mouth full of teeth that needed work.

“You