He took his boat up to Naples-it was a long haul, but he was in the mood for a challenge. Including a couple of half-hour breaks, he made it in a shade under nineteen hours, bay to bay: five A.M. departure from his Conch Bay mooring and an arrival one hour shy of midnight at the fueling pier near downtown Naples. He’d made an average speed of forty-eight knots.
Double-parking against a lengthy yacht that looked something like Po Keeler’s Seahawk, he kicked the bumpers off the edge, tied the two boats front to rear, then strolled through the rear cabin of the other boat on his way to the dock. He knew it was unlikely anybody would be using the big yacht anytime soon-with these kinds of boats, people liked having them more than using them. He took a cab to the single-building television station on the outskirts of Fort Myers.
In the lobby of the television studio, Cooper told the receptionist he had a story their evening news anchor would want to hear about. He told her it was about a film that had been made of a famous celebrity without the celebrity’s permission, and that competing media outlets would leap into a frenzy to cover the story if Ricardo Medvez didn’t come out and capture the scoop while he had the chance.
At 11:23-Cooper watching the weather segment begin on the eleven o’clock news on the monitor in the lobby-Medvez barged into the lobby in the suit Cooper had just seen him wearing on television. The contrast between the dark fabric of the suit and the white shirt he wore made the anchor’s Latino skin tone appear even darker than Cooper’s island tan-though Cooper could see pale orange smudges of pancake makeup on the edge of the man’s shirt collar.
Medvez saw it was Cooper who’d made the thinly veiled threat and grinned. He nodded to the receptionist that all was cool, saw Cooper had been watching the monitor, and opened the door to the newsroom.
“Wanna watch the rest from back here?” he said. “We’re just wrapping up.”
“Why not,” Cooper said, and followed Medvez into the newsroom.
Medvez was good-very good. Cooper watched the last segment of the news from a folding chair four feet behind the assistant director. The AD gave Medvez his cues; besides the weather girl and sports guy, Medvez anchored alone. Seated in there watching the studio lights banging off of Medvez’s glistening hair, it wasn’t much of a stretch for Cooper to grasp the man’s appeal-old ladies and blue-collar men’s men would relate to the guy equally. Red state, blue state, displaced Cubans, blue hairs fresh off the links-no matter who you were, there was something in Medvez for you.
Including the denizens of the narcotics, gay porn, and gambling industries.
When they wrapped, Medvez offered Cooper a seat in the cubicle he inhabited in the center of the newsroom. Even after the last newscast of the day, there was a restrained but constant swirl of activity buzzing around them in a way that made Cooper think of a police precinct house. Medvez kept his jacket and makeup on but loosened his tie.
“So to what,” he said, “do I owe the honor?”
“I actually have a story for you,” Cooper said. “One with considerable sex appeal, in fact. Though not as much sex appeal as that tape of yours.”
Medvez’s eyes went hard and shifty and Cooper could see most of the on-air aura drain from the newsman’s olive-orange skin.
Cooper got on with it.
“There’s an antiquities smuggling ring,” he said, “part of which is operating out of Naples. May even be a good old-fashioned curse involved, since a string of somewhat upstanding citizens have recently met their demise in connection with the smuggling operation.”
Medvez leaned back in his chair.
“Florida’s got plenty of murders to go around,” he said.
“Well, you can scoop the competition on this one,” Cooper said, “help yourself hold on to that anchor seat and keep getting babes-or whatever. Either way, I’ve got something you’re going to do for me, so you may as well mix in a story along the way.”
Medvez glared at him, his crumpled-up chin looking as though he’d just bitten into a lemon. Cooper pushed across the desk the complete stack of data related to the Polar Bear’s Naples-based fence.
“The man described in these credit reports,” he said, “is the broker for the U.S.-based buyers of the pillaged artifacts. The reason I’m giving you his papers is I want you to find him. What’s in there should be enough for an ace reporter like you to track the guy down.”
Cooper checked his watch.
“I’ll give you until tomorrow afternoon. By then I’ll need to know exactly where I can find him. I’ll come by after the six o’clock news, and once you wipe that fucking makeup off, you’ll take me there and we’ll have a talk with the man. I’ll get you back by eleven and you can stay famous for another night.”
Medvez lifted the stack of papers, Cooper thinking maybe to clock the guy’s name, then dropped the stack back on the desk.
“What the hell you need me for?” he said. “I’m no reporter. I sit behind the desk wearing my ‘fucking makeup’ and say what other people tell me to say. I even wear shorts most of the time I’m on the air-the cameras can’t see below your waist.”
Cooper stretched and yawned.
“I’ve been looking forward to a nice, long run on the beach,” he said. “The kind you don’t get living on an island with only a quarter-mile stretch of sand. I’m sleeping in, tracking down some huevos rancheros, then scooting out for as long a run as I can handle. Presuming my mostly broken-down legs can take it, I’m taking a shot at seven miles out, seven back. When I’m done, I’ll shower off at my hotel, load up on seafood fettuccini at Vergina on Fifth, then stroll over to the Tommy Bahama store and re-stock my wardrobe with the latest in tropical silk fashions.” Cooper stood. “With all that on my plate, it just seems counterproductive, spending my brief stateside time doing something like scrounging up a current address on some black market art smuggler.”
Medvez shook his head, expression still puckered and nasty. The anchor was well aware of the fact he didn’t have any choice in the matter.
Cooper smiled, then mimicked the words Medvez had used to sign off from the news.
“You take care, now,” he said. “See ya tomorrow at six.”
24
Sore from the run, and full after a Polar Bear-size helping of seafood pasta, Cooper rode in the passenger seat of the news anchor’s S500 AMG sedan. Medvez, unmasked, had the wheel. With his deep bronze skin he didn’t look much different without the makeup-Cooper thinking maybe a decade older, provided you were examining him from as close a place as the passenger seat.
“You can see his place from here,” the anchor said.
He pulled into a parking lot serving a set of shops and restaurants called Tin City and parked in a slot that faced the main drag, so that when he tugged the emergency brake they were staring out the front windshield at the condominium tower across the street. The Tin City parking lot was nearly empty; Cooper could see the roof of a tour boat parked in the channel beside the parking lot. He knew the inland-most edge of Naples Bay to reach past Tin City and under Highway 41, where it squeezed down to the size of a creek and dissolved into salty marsh. It was long since dark, and rush hour, what little downtown Naples had of it, had just about wound down for the night.
Medvez handed him a pair of binoculars.
“Second story, corner unit, right side of the building,” he said. “Pretty easy to see most of his place with those curtains pulled.”
Cooper adjusted the lenses and had a look.
“Left his lights on,” he said.
“Place looked that way at six A.M. and again at noon when I came back,” Medvez said. “Unless he gets up real early, I don’t think anybody’s been home since last night.”