Chapter 8:
When Rita pulled into the parking lot at the credit union, she found Chris and Devon leaning against the passenger side of their PBPD Ford Interceptor, heads bent over a shared iPad they seemed to be scanning for information. As the heat index was closing in on 100 degrees, Rita wasn't surprised to see them outside the car, jackets off, Chris's tie loose. Despite her focus on the case, Rita found herself noting somewhere in the back of her mind just how well Chris filled out his canary yellow, button-down shirt. This fact, and her noticing it, wasn't terribly surprising. She and Chris had always been friends with a clear appreciation of each other's considerable physical assets. What did surprise her was the slight twinge of something resembling possessiveness—possibly even jealousy?—that slipped through her as she observed Chris with Devon, heads almost touching, an easy rapport and only two inches, at most, between their bodies.
The sensation passed quickly as Devon and Chris both looked up at her eagerly as she jumped out of her car to join them.
Chris's eyes were dancing but his jaw was set; it was his fully focused "in the zone" look that pulled Rita in like a magnet. "We got an address, Sammy. Carlos has been staying in the 'winter mansion' that belongs to friends of the family." Chris couldn't help rolling his eyes at the extravagance.
Rita tilted her head and half-smiled. "A drug dealer with a house-sitting gig on the side. How sweet."
"Well, in this economy, it's good to diversify your skills," Chris mimicked the slick tones of a self-help guru as he winked at her.
Devon cut through the flirty banner. "And it's also good to network. The son of mommy's friend who owns the house is on the DEA watch-list. An up and comer, apparently. Juan Vargas. Making a name for himself up and down the East Coast. A real charmer."
Chris looked at Devon, then at Rita. Spreading his palms wide he asked, "Should we go see if Vermosse and Ortega are home?" in a tone that in other circumstances would suggest that they might opt to head out for pizza instead.
Rita tilted her head toward the two other detectives as she started to turn to her car, "Well, we're in the neighborhood. The least we can do is drop by."
They caravanned the short trip up to Juno Beach, no sirens, Rita leading the way. Chris called it into Cap who wanted to alert dispatch to send back-up, but Chris and Devon decided it would be too risky. If Carlos was home, they didn't want to chance anything tipping him off to their arrival. By the time Devon and Chris pulled into the driveway of the sprawling, gaudy, Pepto-Bismol pink Vargas mansion, Rita was already on her way to the front door. The other two rushed to catch up.
"Easy, Sammy. Let's do this smart."
"I want cuffs on this animal, Chris."
Devon was mostly listening, but also shaking her head as she scanned the exterior of the house. Chris looked at her to see if she'd spotted something important. What she'd spotted was something Chris had long ago stopped noticing. "Uh, interesting color choice… no accounting for taste, I guess."
"Hah! Money and taste rarely go hand in hand. Especially in this town." He took a quick second look at the paint job. Eh. Pretty standard for Palm Beach he decided.
Rita had knocked hard and loud, but hadn't given the usual "Palm Beach Police. Open up" warning because she didn't want anyone slipping out the back before they could have a chat.
A young blonde woman dressed only in a string bikini and see-through beach robe answered the door with all of the enthusiasm of a frat boy facing an physics midterm. As her eyes drifted over the three detectives in front of her, she leaned against the door frame, raised her eyebrows and managed to utter "yeah?"
"Sergeant Rita Lance, Palm Beach Police. Is Carlos Ortega here?" Rita flashed her badge.
"Nope."
"Has he been here at all today?"
Blondie shrugged.
As Rita was preparing to up the assertiveness of her questioning, they heard a man's voice coming from the back of the house. Rather than ask the helpful young lady whom it might be, they simply pushed past her and let themselves into the house, drawing their guns as they walked.
They crossed the living room with it's floor-to-ceiling windows providing an unobstructed view of the patio, pool, and gardens that made up the back side of the property, and Chris and Rita exited through the open sliding glass doors onto the concrete entertainment area poolside. Lounging decadently in a chaise was a man in his late twenties. But it wasn't Ortega. It was Vermosse, talking to a woman who appeared to be the maid, demanding more whisky.
He looked derisively over at the two cops, who were re-holstering their weapons.
"What the hell do you want?" he barked like someone much more important than he actually was.
"Jack Vermosse?" Chris clipped in his bad-cop voice, his eyes boring holes into Vermosse's face.
"Who wants to know?" Vermosse made clear just how unimpressed he was.
"Sergeants Lorenzo and Lance, Palm Beach Police. Your friend Carlos here?"
"Carlos who?" Vermosse sipped the last drops of whisky from the not-yet-refilled tumbler in his hand, not budging from the chaise.
"Carlos who?" Chris's voice rose. "Carlos Ortega. The guy you've been palling around with? Or suddenly you don't remember him?"
"Yeah, I know him. So what? That doesn't make me his babysitter."
Rita took a step closer to the chaise. "Well from what we hear, you and Carlos have been pretty chummy these days. Spending lots of time together."
Vermosse just looked at her.
Rita stared him down.
"And?" Vermosse finally emitted, trying to sound bored.
"And so we figure you might know where he is." Rita spoke the words slowly to emphasize her contempt.
"Nope. Like I said, not my day to babysit him."
Chris decided to play along, if only because he didn't have a lot of other options. "So when did you last see him?"
"Haven't seen him in days."
"Really?" Rita's voice dripped sarcasm.
"Yeah. Really." Vermosse seemed to be enjoying getting a rise out of her.
"You haven't seen him in days, but you just happen to be staying at his friend's house?" Now it was Chris's turn to step closer to the sunbathing man.
Vermosse remained impassive. "Who, Juan? He's my friend, too."
Chris and Rita stood in silence, just looking at Vermosse.
"What, a man can't have friends?" Vermosse shrugged.
"Not someone as ugly as you," Chris goaded.
Before he could even finish the insult, Rita, losing patience, spat, "Where's Ortgea?"
"I told you. I. Don't. Know." Vermosse had dropped into a sing-song voice.
"Listen smartass…" Chris's voice was getting tight and he took another step closer to Vermosse.
At this, Vermosse sat up straight and got angry. "No, you listen. If you had a warrant, you'd have flashed it already. Which means you don't. Which means you need to leave. Now."
Instead of leaving, Rita shouted, "What about the girls, Vermosse?"
Vermosse was taken aback by the sudden change in the conversation. "What girls?" He seemed genuinely perplexed.
Rita flashed him a picture of Liz as they'd found her on the beach, holding it six inches from his nose.
"What the fuck?" Vermosse batted the picture away. "I don't know anything about any girls. And unless the next thing you pull out of your little bag of tricks there is a warrant, you're leaving. And I'm calling my lawyer," he added for good measure as he settled back into his lounge chair. He tried to reclaim his carefree posture, but he was clearly shaken.
Chris's nostrils flared. Legally, they were going to have to leave. And they were no closer to Ortega than before they got here. "We're watching you, Vermosse."
"Oh good, a stalker. I always wanted one." Vermosse put his sunglasses back on and pretended to ignore them. Chris and Rita waited a beat before looking at each other and turned to head back through the sliding glass doors.
While Chris and Rita had been outside getting nowhere with Vermosse, Devon had been in the kitchen talking to his girlfriend, the apathetic blonde who'd answered the door. Whatever her normal state of unfriendliness may have been, it soon became clear that her aloofness was aided at least in part by having recently taken some likely significant quantity of drugs, and not the energizing, happy-making kind. This meant it had taken a maddeningly long time to extract the very little useful information she had to offer.
As Chris and Rita reached Devon, she filled them in on the few details she'd gleaned. Gesturing toward the young woman who was leaning against the kitchen counter, staring at her nails, Devon said in a tone that hid none of her irritation, "Amber here says that another guy was staying here, but he left. You'll be shocked to hear that she can't remember when he left, but I'm guessing sometime around when Blondie here was knocking back her morning cocktail of drugs and 'I don't give a fuck.'" Devon had neither patience nor sympathy for drug users. What could she say? She wasn't the nurturing, maternal type. Amber shot her a dirty look and turned to get a bottle of water from the fridge.
Devon turned back to Chris and Rita. "Anyway she says he might have left this morning. Or it might have been last night." Devon sighed. "It might have been Carlos. Or Enrique."
Chris and Rita gave a questioning look at the mention of this new name coming out of the blue, but Devon just shrugged. "Who knows? She can't remember. She says she doesn't know Vermosse well. She just met him a few days ago" continuing to talk about the girl as though she wasn't standing just three feet away from her, "but he's cool because he has all her favorite drugs." Devon paused half a second before adding, just to be mean, "herpes, too, from what I hear."
Rita snorted. Amber just rolled her eyes and walked away. Devon shook her head in disgust as she and Chris and Rita made their way to the front door. Dumb blondes were her least favorite demographic. Dumb, drug addicted blondes in particular.
They were all so focused on trying to get their anger under control as they walked out the door that they almost failed to notice the maid standing outside at the corner of the house. Even though she gave the appearance of working on the windows in some vague way, she more accurately seemed to be trying to get their attention, looking at them like she was hoping they'd notice her. Rita must have felt the woman's eyes on her because she took a second glance back to the house and walked over to the somewhat plump, and definitely nervous, middle-aged Salvadorian woman.
"Hi," Rita said gently. "Do you work here regularly?"
The woman nodded, glancing nervously over her shoulder toward the house.
Rita pulled out the photo of Carlos she had taken to Tina's motel room. "Have you seen this man here at the house?"
The woman had only to glance at it before nodding yes again, and again she looked around to make sure no one was observing her talking to Rita. She seemed to decide she was safe for the moment because she said quietly, in accented but easily understood Spanglish, "Si. Yes. Señor Carlos. He was here. But he got a phone call. It made him enujado." She gestured toward her face, which was scrunching up. "Furioso."
Rita nodded, "Angry. He got a phone call that made him angry?"
The maid nodded vehemently. "Si. He left right away."
"When was this?" Rita touched the woman's arm lightly, trying to make her feel safe, and anxious to get the information quickly.
"No sé. Maybe 45 minutes ago. An hour?" The woman shrugged and held up her palms indicating it could have been even longer than that. But clearly, they hadn't missed him by much.
"Do you know who the call was from," Rita asked quickly.
"No, Detective." The woman shook her head.
"Do you know where he was going when he left here?" Rita asked hopefully.
"No. Lo siento." The woman looked a bit pained, and she was glancing around nervously again.
Chris and Devon had walked closer to hear the conversation. "Someone tipped Ortega off," Rita said over her shoulder to them.
"Vermosse's ex?" Devon threw out the first possibility that came to her.
"It's worth checking out," Rita nodded.
"Detective?"
"Yes," Rita turned back to the maid who was pulling something from the front pocket of her uniform.
"This fell out of his jacket when he left." She held her hand palm up and extended it to Rita. Cupped in the center of her hand was a key. Rita picked it up and examined it, turning it front to back. Devon and Chris were at either shoulder now, looking at the object with her.
"Not a house key," Rita mused.
"Looks like a bike lock or storage unit key," Chris said thoughtfully.
Rita could have hugged the woman. "Thank you," she beamed, but the maid was already hustling off, afraid of getting caught by Vermosse.
Rita turned toward the other two cops and dangled the key in front of them. "A clue, my friends." They had a spring back in their steps as they made their way to their cars.
Devon was on the phone before they'd covered half the distance to the vehicles. She was getting herself handed up the chain of FBI command as quickly as possible—which was to say exasperatingly slowly thanks to the sluggish pace of government bureaucracy at work—in order to get Ortega's passport frozen. She didn't want him to be able to leave the country, at least not through any port that required him to show i.d.
By the time she'd finished getting the order put through, the three of them had already gotten back in their cars and driven a mile down the road to a public parking lot where they could pull over and work. While she had been navigating the FBI's phone tree, Chris and Rita had been quickly checking out storage unit rental facilities in the area, calling down the list they'd put together to try to match the code embossed on the key to the types of keys issued at each place. Twenty-five minutes later, they had called every storage unit business in a 15-mile radius and narrowed it down to eight possible places, and three probable ones, assuming Carlos was keeping his stuff close to the house-sitting gig. They would have to do a whole new list if he was keeping his goods closer to his parent's house, but they'd cross that bridge if they came to it. They split the list, with Rita and Devon taking the first place on the list, Chris the second. After they struck out at both of those facilities, they met up at their third best bet.
Paydirt.