“You’re full of shit,” he says, trying to get tough but his voice cracks. They almost feel sorry for him. “You can’t do this.”

  Frost says, “Oh, we do it all the time, Adam. If you’re indicted, it’ll take two years to get you to trial, more if the U.S. Attorney so chooses. He doesn’t care if you’re guilty or innocent, he just wants to ruin you if you don’t cooperate.”

  Adam’s head jerks back as his eyes grow big. “Cooperate?”

  Frost and Thagard exchange grave looks as if they’re not sure they should proceed. Thagard leans in and says, “You’re a small fish, Adam. Always have been, always will be. The U.S. Attorney couldn’t care less about you and your dipshit little bribery scheme. He wants the Deacons, and he wants to know who paid for the hit on Quincy Miller. You play ball with us, we play ball with you.”

  “You want me to snitch?”

  “No. We want you to inform. Big difference. Gather information from your buddies, pass it along to us. You find out who ordered the hit and we’ll forget about an indictment.”

  “They’ll kill me,” he says, and finally bursts into tears. He sobs loudly into his hands as Frost and Thagard look around. Cars pass on the county road but no one bothers to look.

  After a few minutes, he pulls himself together. Thagard says, “They will not kill you, Adam, because they will not know what you’re doing. We handle informants all the time, we know the game.”

  Frost says, “And, if things get too dangerous, Adam, we’ll get you out and get you a job in a federal joint. Twice the pay, twice the benefits.”

  Adam looks at them with red eyes and asks, “Can we keep this quiet? I mean, no one can know about this, not even my wife.”

  With the word “we” a deal is struck. Frost says, “Of course, Adam. You think we tell folks about our confidential informants? Come on, man. We wrote the book on handling informants.”

  For a long time nothing is said as Adam stares at the gravel and occasionally wipes fluids from his face. They watch him and are almost sympathetic. He says, “Can I think about this? Gimme some time.”

  “No,” Frost says. “We don’t have time. Things are moving fast, Adam. If Quincy dies then you’ll be on the hook for capital murder, federal style.”

  “What’s the charge now?”

  “Attempted murder. Conspiracy. Thirty years max, and the U.S. Attorney will go for every last day of it.”

  He shakes his head and appears ready for more tears. His voice breaks as he says, “And if I play ball, as you like to say?”

  “No indictment. You walk, Adam. Don’t be a fool.”

  Frost closes the deal with “This is one of those life-altering moments, Adam. You make the right decision right now and your life goes on. The bad one, and you’re gonna be locked up with the same savages you’ve been guarding.”

  Adam stands and bends at the waist, belches. “Excuse me,” he says and walks to the edge of the old playground where he begins retching. Frost and Thagard turn and look toward the road. Adam kneels behind a large bush and vomits loudly for a spell. When he’s finished he shuffles back and sits at the picnic table. His shirt is soaked with sweat, and his cheap brown tie is specked with his lunch.

  “Okay,” he says hoarsely. “What’s the first order of business?”

  Frost doesn’t hesitate. “Do either Lane or Drummik have a cell phone?”

  “I know Drummik does. I took it to him.”

  “Where did you get it?”

  Adam hesitates before plunging in. When he says what he’s about to say, there is no turning back. “There’s a man named Mayhall, don’t know his first name, don’t know if Mayhall is real or fake, don’t know where he lives or where he comes from. I see him once or twice a month. He comes here with the goodies for his boys inside Garvin. Cell phones and dope, usually pills and meth, cheap drugs. I take the stuff in and deliver to the right people. He pays me a thousand bucks a month in cash, plus a little stash of dope to sell on my own. I’m not the only guard who does this. When you earn twelve an hour it’s hard to survive.”

  Thagard says, “We get that. How many Aryan Deacons in Garvin?”

  “Twenty-five or thirty. The Brotherhood has more.”

  “How many guards service the Deacons?”

  “I’m the only one I know of. Certain guards take care of certain groups. I doubt if Mayhall would want anyone else involved. He gets what he wants with me.”

  “Has he served time?”

  “I’m sure he has. You can’t join the Deacons unless you’re in prison.”

  Frost asks, “Can you get Drummik’s cell phone?”

  Adam shrugs and smiles as if he’s quite clever. “Sure. Cell phones are prized possessions and sometimes they get stolen. I’ll go to Drummik’s cell when he’s out on the yard, make it look like a theft.”

  “How soon?” Thagard asks.

  “Tomorrow.”

  “Okay, do it. We’ll track his calls and we’ll give you a replacement.”

  Frost asks, “Will this Mayhall character get suspicious if Drummik finds another phone?”

  Adam thinks for a moment. Things are still not quite clear. He shakes his head and says, “I doubt it. These guys buy, sell, trade, steal, barter, you name it.”

  Thagard leans down and sticks out a hand. “Okay, Adam, we got a deal, right?”

  Adam reluctantly shakes his hand.

  Frost says, “And your phones are tapped too, Adam. We’re monitoring everything, so no stupid moves, okay?”

  They left him at the picnic table, staring into the distance and wondering how his life could change so fast.

  34

  With the FBI throwing its weight around, Quincy is moved to a corner room that is more secure. Two surveillance cameras are mounted prominently above his door. The hospital staff is on high alert and its guards are more of a presence. The prison sends one over each day for a few hours of hallway monitoring, and Orlando police officers enjoy stopping by to flirt with the nurses.

  Quincy’s condition improves each day and we slowly begin to believe that he will not die. I’m on a first-name basis with his doctors and staff by now and everybody is pulling for my client. He is as secure as possible, so I decide to hit the road. The place is driving me crazy. Who doesn’t hate sitting around a hospital? Savannah is five hours away and I’ve never been so homesick.

  Somewhere around St. Augustine, Susan Ashley calls with the news that old Judge Jerry Plank has entered an order denying our petition for post-conviction relief. His decision is expected; the surprise is that he woke up long enough to do something. We were anticipating a wait of at least a year, but he disposed of it in two months. This is actually good news because it speeds along our appeal to the state supreme court. I don’t want to pull over and read his opinion, Susan Ashley says it’s very brief. A two-page order in which Plank says we provided no new evidence, in spite of the recantations from Zeke Huffey and Carrie Holland. Whatever. We were expecting to lose at the circuit court level. I cuss for a few minutes in traffic then settle down. There are times, many times, when I despise judges, especially blind ones and old ones and white ones, almost all of whom cut their teeth in prosecutors’ offices and have no sympathy for anyone accused of a crime. To them, everybody who is charged is guilty and needs time in jail. The system works beautifully and justice always prevails.

  When my rant is over, I call Mazy as she’s reading the order. We discuss the appeal and she will drop everything and get it ready. When I arrive at the office late in the afternoon, she has a first draft prepared. We discuss it over coffee with Vicki and I tell stories about the events in Orlando.

  * * *

  —

  ADAM STONE MADE a clean swap with Jon Drummik’s phone. He took the old one as he ransacked the cell, and the following day handed a new one to Drummik. The FBI is scrambling to track old calls and listening to the new ones. They are confident that their targets will walk into the trap. They have no information on Mayhall, or at least none they can share with me, but they plan to watch him closely the next time he meets with Adam.

  For three straight days before the attack on Quincy, Drummik called a cell phone in Delray Beach, north of Boca Raton. The day after the attack, he made only one call, to the same number. However, the trail ended when the number fizzled. It was a burner, a disposable phone with a thirty-day plan that was paid for by cash at a Best Buy store. Its owner is being very careful.

  Adam does not have Mayhall’s phone number; has never had it. There is nothing to track until Mayhall calls, and he finally does. The FBI grabs the incoming number from Adam’s phone and follows it to another cell phone, also in Delray Beach. The puzzle is coming together. Monitoring the phone signal, the FBI picks up Mayhall’s scent as he buzzes along Interstate 95 headed north. The car he’s driving is registered to one Skip DiLuca of Delray Beach. White male, age fifty-one, four-time felon with manslaughter his worst sin, paroled three years earlier from a Florida prison, currently managing a shop selling used motorcycles.

  DiLuca, aka Mayhall, arranges to meet Adam after work at a bar in Orange City, forty-five minutes from the prison. Adam says they always meet at the same place and have a quick beer as they talk shop. To avoid suspicion, Adam changes into street clothes. His handlers tape a small wire to his chest. He arrives first, selects a table, does a mike check, all bugs are working. An FBI crew is listening in the back of a van parked in the street behind the bar.

  After a few curt pleasantries, the real conversation begins:

  DILUCA: They didn’t kill Miller. What happened?

  ADAM: Well, several things went wrong. First, Miller knows how to fight and went crazy. Robert Earl Lane has a busted nose. Took a few minutes to subdue him, too much time. Once they had him down they couldn’t finish him off before another guard saw them. They didn’t cut him enough.

  DILUCA: Where were you?

  ADAM: I was there, man, right where I was supposed to be. I know my turf. The ambush worked perfectly, just couldn’t get the guy down.

  DILUCA: Well, he ain’t dead, and that’s a problem. We got paid for a job that’s not finished. The gentlemen I’m dealing with are not happy.

  ADAM: Not my fault. I did what I was supposed to do. Can’t you get him at the hospital?

  DILUCA: Maybe. We’ve had a look, lots of uniforms in the way. His condition improves each day so our end of the deal stinks more and more. We were supposed to take him out, plain and simple. You tell Drummik and Lane that I’m really pissed about their lousy job. They promised me they could do it.

  ADAM: How much heat are you taking?

  DILUCA: I’ll deal with it.

  Their conversation is brief, and when they finish their beers, they step outside. DiLuca hands Adam a brown paper grocery bag with $1,000 in cash, two new cell phones, and a supply of drugs. He leaves without saying goodbye and hurries away. Adam waits until he is out of sight, then tells his handlers DiLuca is gone. He drives around the block and meets them on a side street.

  Technically, legally, the FBI has the goods for an indictment against DiLuca, Adam, Drummik, and Lane for a contract killing, or an attempted one. But the two inmates are already locked up. Adam is too valuable as an informant. And DiLuca can lead them to the real catch.

  Twenty minutes down the road, DiLuca sees blue lights in his mirror. He checks his speedometer and knows damned well he is not violating the law. He is on parole and treasures his freedom; thus, he sticks to the rules, or at least the rules of the road. A county officer takes his license and registration, and spends half an hour calling it in. DiLuca begins to squirm. When the officer returns, he asks, rudely, “You been drinking?”

  “One beer,” DiLuca answers truthfully.

  “That’s what they all say.”

  Another county car with flashing lights arrives, and parks in front of DiLuca’s car. Two officers get out and glare at him as if he has just murdered some children. The three huddle and kill more time as DiLuca fumes. Finally, he is ordered out of the car.

  “What the hell for?” he demands as he closes his door. He should not have. Two officers grab him and force him across the hood of his car while another slaps on handcuffs.

  “You were swerving recklessly,” the first officer says.

  “The hell I was,” DiLuca snaps.

  “Just shut up.”

  They search his pockets, take his phone and wallet, and toss him rather roughly into the back seat of the first patrol car. As he is taken away, an officer calls a wrecker, then calls the FBI. At the station, DiLuca is placed in a holding room where he is forced to pose for a mug shot, then left to sit for the next four hours.

  A federal magistrate on standby in Orlando quickly approves two search warrants; one for DiLuca’s apartment, the other for his car. FBI agents enter the apartment in Delray Beach and go to work. It is a one-bedroom apartment with sparse, cheap furnishings and no evidence whatsoever of a woman. The kitchen counters are covered with dirty dishes. Laundry is piled in the hallway. The refrigerator has nothing more than beer, water, and cold cuts. The coffee table in the den is littered with hardcore porn magazines. A laptop is found in a tiny office and carried outside to a van where a technician copies the hard drive. Two burners are found, opened, analyzed, tapped, and put back on the desk. Listening devices are hidden throughout the apartment. After two hours the team is finished, and while normally it would be fastidious in rearranging things, DiLuca is such a slob it would be impossible for him or anyone else to notice that a surveillance team had spent the evening rummaging through his apartment.

  Another team goes through his car and finds nothing important but another burner. Evidently, DiLuca has no permanent cell phone number. Digging through the cheap phone, the technician hits pay dirt in the Contacts file. DiLuca has only ten numbers in memory, and one is for Mickey Mercado, the operative who showed up in court to eavesdrop on our motion for post-conviction relief. In the Recents file, there are twenty-two incoming and outgoing calls from and to Mercado in the past two weeks.

  A GPS monitor is attached to the inside of his rear bumper so the car cannot escape surveillance. At 10:00 p.m., the county sheriff enters the holding room and apologizes to DiLuca. He explains that there was a bank robbery near Naples earlier in the day and the getaway car matched DiLuca’s. They suspected him, but now realize they were wrong. He is free to go.

  DiLuca is not gracious and forgiving, and leaves as quickly as possible. He is suspicious and decides not to return to Delray Beach. He is also wary of using his burner so he makes no calls. He drives two hours to Sarasota and checks into a budget motel.

  The next morning, the same federal magistrate issues a warrant authorizing the search of the apartment of Mercado and the electronic surveillance of his telephones. Another warrant directs his cell phone provider to open its records. However, before the bugging is complete, DiLuca calls Mercado from a pay phone. He is then tracked from Sarasota to Coral Gables where his trail is picked up by a team of FBI agents. He finally parks at an Afghan kebob restaurant on Dolphin Avenue and goes inside. Fifteen minutes later, a young female agent saunters inside for a bite and identifies DiLuca eating with Mickey Mercado.

  * * *

  —

  DILUCA’S CHILLING COMMENT to Adam that they had “had a look” at Quincy in the hospital ratchets up the security there. Quincy is moved again, to another corner room, and he is never left unwatched.

  * * *

  —

  AGENT AGNES NOLTON keeps me abreast of these developments, though I do not know everything. I caution her against using our phones, and we use encrypted e-mails. She is confident that (1) Quincy will be protected, and (2) they will soon ensnare Mercado in their conspiracy. One source of concern is that he has dual citizenship and can come and go as he pleases. If he becomes suspicious, he might simply run home and never be seen again. Nolton believes that nailing Mercado will be our ultimate prize. The conspirators above him, the real criminals, are probably not in the U.S. and virtually immune from prosecution.

  With the FBI fully on board, and with our client still alive, we can return our attention to exonerating him.

  35

  The sangria is calling. Glenn Colacurci is thirsty and wants to meet again at The Bull in Gainesville. After two days of trying to rest in Savannah, I head south again and the adventure continues. Quincy has been eased out of his coma and is fairly alert. His vitals improve each day and his doctors are talking about moving him out of ICU and into a private room where they can begin planning the surgeries to mend his bones. They repeatedly assure me that security is tight, so I’m not compelled to hustle down for more hours of sitting in the hall and staring at my feet.

  I get to The Bull minutes after 4:00 p.m. and Glenn’s tall glass is already half empty. His large fleshy nose is turning pink, a shade that almost matches the drink. I order the same and look around for his cute little secretary who I catch myself thinking about more than I should. I don’t see Bea.

  Glenn has read about Quincy’s problems and wants the inside scoop. Since I’ve known a hundred small-town windbag lawyers like him, I reveal nothing new. As with most prison beatings, details are sparse and sketchy. In a grave conspiratorial whisper he informs me that the local weekly newspaper in Ruiz County is now following Quincy’s case and our efforts to exonerate him. I absorb this in rapt attention and pass on the opportunity to tell him that Vicki is monitoring half the newspapers—weekly and daily—in the State of Florida. She keeps a running record of every word printed about the case. We live on the Internet. Glenn stumbles across it once a week.