“Yeah, but for fourteen million bucks—”
“Know why I’m not upset? Because we’re off the hook. Now we don’t have to make a decision about what to do. Somebody made it for us.”
“But you still got the ticket.”
Amber shook her head. “Not for long. Whoever came for that video knows who really won the lottery. They know, OK?”
“Yeah.” Shiner went into a sulk.
She said, “I’ve never been arrested before. How about you?”
He said nothing.
“You mentioned your mom? Well, I was thinking about my dad,” Amber said. “About what my dad would do if he turned on the TV one night and there’s his little blond princess in handcuffs, busted for trying to cash a stolen Lotto ticket. It’d probably kill him, my dad.”
“The rabbi?”
She laughed softly. “Right.”
Shiner wasn’t sure how to get back to Coconut Grove, so Amber (who needed to pack an overnight bag, check in with Tony and arrange for her friend Gloria to cover her shift at Hooters) told him to stick with U.S. 1, even though there were a jillion stoplights. Shiner didn’t complain. They were stopped in traffic at the Bird Road intersection when the car was approached by an elderly Cuban man selling long-stemmed roses. Impulsively Shiner dug a five-dollar bill from his camos. The old man grinned warmly. Shiner bought three roses and handed them to Amber, who responded with a cool dart of a kiss. It was the first time he ever got flowers for a woman, and also his first experience with a genuine Miami Cuban.
What a day, he thought. And it still ain’t over.
The videotape gave Moffitt a headache. Typical convenience-store setup: cheapo black-and-white with stuttered speed, so the fuzzy images jerked along like Claymation. A digitalized day/date/time flickered in the bottom margin. Impatiently Moffitt fast-forwarded through a blurry conga line of truckers, traveling salesmen, stiff-legged tourists and bingeing teenagers whose unwholesome diets and nicotine addictions made the Grab N’Go a gold mine for the Dutch holding company that owned it.
Finally Moffitt came to JoLayne Lucks, walking through the swinging glass doors. She wore jeans, a baggy sweatshirt and big round sunglasses, probably the peach-tinted ones. The camera’s clock flashed 5:15 p.m. One minute later she was standing at the counter. Moffitt chuckled when he saw the roll of Certs; spearmint, undoubtedly. JoLayne dug into her purse and gave some money to the pudgy teenage clerk. He handed her the change in coins, plus one ticket from the Lotto machine. She said something to the clerk, smiled, and went out the door into the afternoon glare.
Moffitt backed up the tape, to review the smile. It was good enough to make him ache.
He’d left Puerto Rico a day early, after the de la Hoya cousins wisely discarded their original explanation of the three hundred Chinese machine guns found in their beach house at Rincon (to wit: they’d unknowingly rented the place to a band of leftist guerrillas posing as American surfers). Attorneys for the de la Hoyas realized they were in trouble when they noticed jurors smirking (and, in one case, suppressing a giggle) as the surfer alibi was presented during opening statements. After a hasty conference, the de la Hoyas decided to jump on the government’s offer of a plea bargain, thus sparing Moffitt and a half dozen other ATF agents the drudgery of testifying. Once the case was settled, Moffitt’s pals headed straight to San Juan in search of tropical pussy, while Moffitt flew home to help JoLayne.
Who was, naturally, nowhere to be found.
Moffitt had known she wouldn’t take his advice, wouldn’t back off and wait. There was nothing to be done; she was as stubborn as a mule. Always had been.
Finding her, if she was still alive, meant finding the Lotto robbers whom she undoubtedly was tracking. For clues Moffitt returned to the apartment of Bodean James Gazzer, which appeared to have been abandoned in a panic. The food in the kitchen was beginning to rot, and the ketchup message on the walls had dried to a gummy brown crust. Moffitt made another hard pass through the rooms and came up with a crumpled eviction notice for a rented trailer lot in the boonies of Homestead. Scratched in pencil on the back of the paper were six numbers that matched the ones on JoLayne’s stolen lottery ticket.