Walking Money Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY ONE

  TWENTY TWO

  TWENTY THREE

  TWENTY FOUR

  TWENTY FIVE

  TWENTY SIX

  TWENTY SEVEN

  TWENTY EIGHT

  PRAISE FOR WALKING MONEY

  “Jim Born is the real thing: a South Florida lawman with an authentic sound that puts you at the scene. Walking Money is a winner.”—Elmore Leonard

  “Both enormously entertaining and enormously authentic.” —John Sandford

  “Briskly paced . . . a first-rate hero . . . Walking Money soars as Born mixes believable characters, a fast-moving story, crisp dialogue, and a nice blend of humor. Walking Money strides confidently into Donald Westlake and Elmore Leonard territory as Born creates a novel that works as a police procedural and caper.”

  —Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel

  “Born knows how the tropical heavies and Caribbean bad boys operate, and proves it in Walking Money.”

  —Randy Wayne White

  “Swirling suspicion and startling plot twists keep readers’ heads spinning as Born’s direct, no-nonsense prose (complete with plenty of off-color remarks) propel this novel to its bullet-ridden conclusion. This is a terrific debut.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “This is the kind of book that, to be credible, needs to be written by someone familiar with scam artists on both sides of the law. Born, a seventeen-year law-enforcement veteran, is now a special agent supervisor with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, overseeing investigations into organized crime, economic crimes, drug cartels, violent crimes, and public corruption. This background lends authority not only to the plot but also to the dialogue, the edgy cop humor, and the glitzy-grotesque South Florida setting . . . A sleek and slick caper.” —Booklist

  “Walking Money could have been written only by someone with years of South Florida law enforcement experience. Jim Born is the genuine article. He talks the talk because he’s walked the walk. His lean, fast-moving style captures the unique atmosphere of crime-fighting in our region. The events in Walking Money may seem strange—but in South Florida, they’re just another day in the office.”

  —James A. Cobb, deputy assistant statewide prosecutor, South Florida office

  “James O. Born uses his experience to capture the attitude and flow of investigations and puts it together in a funny and exciting package. This is not your ordinary police story. Once I started reading, I couldn’t put it down.”

  —Lloyd “Bud” Wilson, inspector (ret.), New York State Police

  “An amusing comic crime novel . . . An enjoyable and entertaining read; fans of Randy Wayne White, Carl Hiaasen, and other Florida crime writers will snap it up.”

  —Library Journal

  “A writer who knows police work . . . a riveting plot . . . He drives the story forward with sharp dialogue, strong detective work, great plot twists, and lots of action.”

  —The Vancouver Sun

  “He knows Miami: the neighborhoods, the language, the culture of the diverse population. And [he] knows cops—their gallows humor, their politically incorrect statements, and their sometimes gruff manner.” —The Miami Herald

  “Only a cop could know this stuff—only a natural writer could put it down in a novel that’s so smart and suspenseful. Jim Born is a new star.”—W.E.B. Griffin

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

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  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  WALKING MONEY

  A Berkley Book / published by arrangement with the author

  Copyright © 2004 by James O. Born.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form

  without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials

  in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  eISBN : 978-0-425-19961-9

  BERKLEY®

  Berkley Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  BERKLEY is a registered trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  The “B” design is a trademark belonging to Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  FOR DONNA, JOHN, AND EMILY

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Several people made this book possible:

  Thanks to Dutch for his guidance and critiques. Gregg Sutter for his unending support. Neil Nyren and Peter Rubie for seeing the value in this effort. James O. Wade for everything.

  I want to thank Tom Colgan, my editor at Berkley for his fine effort in creating the paperback version of Walking Money.

  This is a work of fiction. It is the type of thing a cop thinks about on surveillance late at night. I am proud of the profession I have chosen and particularly proud of my agency, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. No events or characters in this book are real.

  ONE

  BILL Tasker massaged the cramp in his thigh as he peered out the small rectangular window cut into the door of the walk-in freezer. His leg pain took his mind off the black eye he’d gotten a few hours before. His breath formed clouds on the thick, pockmarked glass that looked out on the main floor of Remy’s Quick Stop. The thirty-degree air kept the others quiet, waiting for the FBI’s information to pan out. Tasker thought, Some big-time task force on robbery. Four grown men spending the past two hours waiting for someone to rob a convenience store. This sucked. As the only state cop on the task force, he fell somewhere in the middle of the natural friction between the locals and the Feds.
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  “Tell us about your eye, Billy,” said Tom Dooley, the FBI representative on the task force.

  “Just an accident,” Tasker said, not turning from the window.

  Dooley laughed. “Yeah, I had an accident like that once. My wife accidentally caught me with my girlfriend.”

  Even Tasker laughed at that one.

  Dooley tapped him on the shoulder and asked, “How old was she?”

  “Ten.”

  “Ten, that’s not right.”

  “It was my daughter.”

  “I guess that’s all right in Florida, but we find it unacceptable.”

  Tasker waited for the other cops to stop laughing and said, “I was showing her how to fast-pitch a softball and she caught on quick.”

  Dooley said, “Or you can’t catch for shit.”

  Tasker nodded, chuckling a little as he kept his watch.

  A minute later, Tasker saw a young white gangbanger, wearing a ripped, hooded sweatshirt, stride in through the front door. Wearing something like this in Miami’s eighty-degree night air meant you were either on a serious weight-loss program or an armed robber hiding your Smith & Wesson ATM card.

  Tasker let a small smile spread across his face as he realized at least they’d make an arrest. The little moments like this were what made him glad he hadn’t followed his dad into the dry-cleaning business. He felt the almost comfortable sensation of his heart picking up a beat.

  “Stand by. We may have a live one,” croaked Tasker, his face plastered to the tiny window.

  The other three men sprang up toward the door, jockeying for position.

  “Look out, Rick, I’m the one who needs to see what the hell is going on,” Dooley said, elbowing past the Metro-Dade cop. He already had his Smith & Wesson model 13 in his hand. Dooley tried to muscle Tasker out of the way, too.

  “Hang on, Tom,” Tasker said, still staring out the window. “I know I’m not a Fed, but I think I’m capable of watching a damn street robber.” A slight shift of his six-foot frame sent the portly FBI man back a step, slipping on a pebble of ice. Turning his attention back to the store, Tasker watched the suspect act like he was looking at a magazine while the last customer paid for her gigantic soda and microwaved burrito. The suspected robber’s sweatshirt had pockets up front and the sleeves whacked off. A tattoo of a pitchfork on his right arm identified him as a member of the Folk Nation of street gangs. No way this jerk-off would be interested in PC Computing. His eyes darted toward the clerk over the top of the magazine. A big lump filled the right pocket of the ratty sweatshirt.

  In a calm, almost sleepy voice, City of Miami Detective Derrick Sutter asked, “What’s it look like, Bill?”

  Tasker’s right hand tightened on the grip of his Beretta, still locked in his leather hip holster. “The clerk even knows this is the one. We’ll wait a second to let him move up to the counter, then give him the shock of his life.” Tasker’s heart raced like it did anytime he had a couple of minutes to think about things like this. “He’s making his move. Get ready.” Tasker made sure he said it slow and steady. He didn’t want these guys too hyper when they popped out of the freezer.

  The robber walked to the counter, dropping his hand to his pocket. Tasker shoved the door wide, shouting, “Police, don’t move.”

  Immediately, three shots echoed in the little store, slugging his eardrum like a fist. What did this guy have, a cannon? Tasker slid to a stop and dove for cover behind a low ice-cream cooler as Rick Bema fell in behind him, unashamed of pushing his face hard into the seat of Tasker’s jeans. Dooley pivoted on the heels of his penny loafers, his girth shifting, giving him momentum, and leaped back into the freezer, his belly jiggling under his button-down oxford shirt and cheap polyester-blend sport coat. He yelled from inside, “The son-of-a-bitch cock-sucker is shooting.”

  Tasker ignored the flustered FBI man. He turned his head, still down low behind the image of a big DoveBar, and barked in a harsh whisper, “Rick, cover the end of the aisle.” He watched the Metro-Dade detective scurry down the aisle, keeping his head well below the top shelf of candy.

  Tasker gripped his Beretta tight in both hands and peeked around the cooler quickly. As he dropped back behind his cover, he analyzed the image he’d just seen. The clerk was still standing and he had the gun. A big gun. “Hold your fire,” yelled Tasker. He looked to make certain Bema had heard him. No one moved in the freezer. Tasker popped out from the cooler again, making sure of what he saw. The dark-skinned clerk had a blue steel .44 Magnum revolver in his hand, pointing at the ceiling, smoke drifting up from the barrel in a light wisp.

  Tasker stayed behind the DoveBar and spoke very precisely. “Put the gun on the counter and step away from it.”

  “No, no. It is okay, Officer. I handle the situation,” said the man in a heavy singsong Pakistani accent.

  “Listen to me. Drop the gun right now,” Tasker said, slowly articulating each syllable.

  The clerk tossed the gun on the countertop and moved toward the register. “You don’t need to be nasty. I am not the criminal.”

  Tasker stood up, seeing Sutter and Dooley at the freezer opening and Bema coming up the other aisle. The young guy in the sweat suit lay on the floor with blood gushing from what was left of the top of his head. Tasker kicked the small revolver from the dead man’s hand and watched it spin across the floor as he thought about the other three times he had taken a gun from a dead man’s hand.

  “Fuck me,” Sutter said quietly from behind him.

  Rick Bema crossed himself with the barrel of his gun.

  Tasker felt something on his neck and looked up at the clumps of flesh and blood stuck to the ceiling, dripping down in swirling little wads. This hadn’t worked out like they had planned.

  “What the fuck you do that for, Hadji?” Dooley asked, stepping toward the tall, thin clerk.

  “I was thinking I would be of assistance and save you the trouble of shooting this boil of a man.” The clerk smiled.

  “You should have waited for us.” Tasker didn’t want to get into it right now, but he had given the clerk explicit instructions. This would cause him some stomach trouble when he sat down to explain it.

  “I do not even get a thanks for my civic duty?”

  “You might get a foot up your damn ass is what you might get,” said Derrick Sutter, slamming his Glock with silver-painted grips into his holster.

  Tasker heard the sirens coming toward them. The get-away car was long gone. The outside surveillance had missed them altogether. A crowd gathered at the front door.

  Tom Dooley looked up from the corpse to his partners. “On the bright side, it’s an early night.”

  TWO

  TASKER cut across two lanes of traffic, then punched the brand new Buick Century into the lot. The first year after being transferred from the West Palm Beach field office of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to the Miami Regional Operations Center, he’d been continually stuck in the slow lane or missing turns. Now, after four years of experience and some tutoring from the Cuban agents he could drive anywhere. Anywhere but Hialeah. No one who didn’t live there ever drove there. A suburb of Miami, Hialeah had no established traffic laws, or at least that was the general perception. You never hit your brakes; it was a sign of weakness.

  “Where’d you get the wheels?” asked another agent as Tasker hopped out of the car in the parking lot of the Miami FDLE office.

  “Rental. FBI gave it to me for the robbery task force. We all got white Centuries. Great for surveillance, huh.”

  “I forgot you’re on that task force. Nice job last night.” The older man smiled.

  “I claimed the arrest even though the dipshit died.” Tasker held up the arrest sheet in his hand.

  “A stat’s a stat.” The other man nodded and headed on his way.

  Miami was the largest of the seven operations centers. Tallahassee, Tampa, Orlando and Jacksonville claimed the other major offices, but Tasker liked Miami. Things moved faster
in South Florida, crime was more spectacular and no other office would take him now. Not since his “severe lack of judgment,” as the internal investigation report had said. In his opinion, they had been kind. Severe lack of judgment was buying Lucent at eighty bucks. Getting a cop killed was a fuck-up, plain and simple.

  The operations center sat west of the Miami International Airport just off the turnpike, a twenty-five-minute drive from Tasker’s town house in Kendall. One of the few good areas left in Dade County. He felt safe leaving his daughters there while he cleared up his paperwork. By this afternoon, their mother would be down from West Palm to pick them up and he’d have to wait anxiously for another two weeks to see them. He’d pretty much given up winning Donna back, but he still got a thrill out of seeing her every few weeks. At least living ninety minutes away he didn’t have to see her dating. Even though the girls let out a hint now and then.

  Physically this office bore no resemblance to the old West Palm Beach police department where Tasker had spent the first seven years of his career. At thirty-four, he was approaching the age when a cop talked a lot about how things used to be. His squad bay looked out at a mall from the third floor, and as he walked through the door, he froze. Tasker had expected it, but not so soon. Someone had used a computer to print “Informant Recruiter” and hung the banner over his desk. He tried not to smile. You couldn’t encourage these smart-asses. The other agents never looked up. Only the secretary let out a little snicker.

  “Funny,” Tasker said, sifting through the paperwork on his desk. In addition to the usual reports and forms, he found a Circle K convenience store employment application. The job title of “Clerk” had been marked out and “Firearms Instructor” typed in its place.

  Tasker smiled, said, “That’s two.” Then he saw the Miami Herald article on the shooting with the clerk’s comments highlighted in green: “The police told me to shoot him dead if I was in danger.” The picture next to it showed Tasker talking to the clerk. “Great,” he mumbled. His partners may think it’s funny, but Tallahassee wasn’t going to see the humor.