The Devil's Syndicate Read online

  “Did you know that Dottie had a diary?” Hawk asked and sat down on the bed beside Wagner looking through it. The diary had a tiny lock to secure it but the lock had been broken long ago and no longer fastened the book's front and back covers together.

  “No I wasn't aware,” Wagner said looking curiously at the small book in Hawk's hands. “Is there anything in it?”

  Hawk stopped on a random page. “Yes it looks that way. Should I read some of it?”

  Wagner nodded. “Yes please.”

  Hawk cleared his throat then read an entry from page 16 out loud.

  February 14th 2017

  My friend Tracy and I had a cigarette today in the bathroom at school. I'd never tried one before and my lungs felt like they were caving in. I liked it though. I'm going to have her buy me my own pack and then I can smoke them at night outside after my dad's asleep. If he caught me he would probably throw me out of the house but I don't care. I hate being in that house all of the time. Sometimes it seems like my entire life is just one school assignment after another. Someday I'm going to show everyone that I can be a lot cooler than what they think I can be.

  April 2nd 2017

  My dad is such an ass. I asked him if I could go out to the end of year school party at Brody's house but he said no and gave me some lecture about partying, drinking and doing drugs. I really hate him sometimes. He can be so controlling and stubborn. Sometimes I wish I could just run away and start a new life somewhere else. Maybe be a completely different person, dress different, meet new people...lose this ‘nerdy’ image people have of me. Underneath these glasses I can be just as pretty as Meghan or Caroline or anyone else. I would meet a great guy, get married, have kids and provide for myself. People always think I'm this spoiled rich girl who never had to work a day in her life but it's not like I asked for it. I think I would be a good waitress...maybe I could get a job somewhere exciting like Paris or London then come back all rich and successful...

  Hawk began to shut the book but Wagner stopped him. “No, please just a few more. I feel this is a side of Dottie I haven't known about until this moment.”

  Hawk nodded then continued reading. He read an entry from the last page of the diary.

  May 2nd 2017

  I've made my decision. I can't take it any longer...I need to get out and live my life which is the opposite of what I'm doing here. Everyday is exactly the same. I get up, go to class, come home, eat supper alone then do school work for the rest of the night. Even Tracey seems busy now with her new boyfriend Chad. I swear if I have to spend one more day in this place I'm gonna scream! It seems my entire life is just work and more work. There's no way I'm going to spend my summer in this prison! I need to experience life, meet new people, have new relationships. My dad is so controlling he would just tell me that I'm young and naive. He's so out of touch with anything though besides those stupid medical machines of his. It's like after mom died he married his job. Sometimes I feel like I have to live my mom's life for her, since it was my birth that took her life away. I've never told anyone this though...if I did they'd probably commit me to the looney bin. Or maybe I already am in the looney bin and need to escape. God knows I can't take another day of this torture. I'll show my dad and everyone else that they can't get their hooks in me any longer.

  Hawk finished reading the final entry then closed the book and looked over at Wagner who was staring sullenly at the floor.

  “I had no idea this was how she felt about me.” He said through pursed lips.

  “Pardon me for saying this Mr. Wagner but it seems like you didn't know Dottie as well as you thought.”

  “Yes, it seems that way doesn't it?”

  Hawk got up and gave Wagner the book then sat down behind her computer. He turned it on and noticed it was still logged in. Dottie must have forgotten to log off all those months ago. He opened up a web browser and noticed it signed in to her email account without him touching a thing. Was she trying to leave hints for someone to find her?

  Hawk took a closer look though and saw that the inbox was empty. He checked the trash folder and there was nothing in there either. Wagner was still reading a few of Dottie's diary entries and stood up, came behind Hawk and looked over his shoulder. Hawk said, “Looks like she deleted a bunch of her e-mails before leaving.” He clicked around a bit then remembered about the sent folder.

  He opened it and dozens of Dottie's final e-mails populated the screen.

  “I'd say it looks like she isn't using this e-mail anymore. The last message was sent more than 3 months ago.” He opened up the first e-mail in the sent folder and saw they were all about apartments in various cities across the U.S. with most of them enquiring about apartments in Miami, Florida. “Looks like she was trying to find her own place.” Hawk said. “How much money did you say she stole from you again?”

  Wagner ran a hand through his hair. “Roughly $400 I believe.”

  “So with that $400, plus the money from her credit card, plus any other money she might have stashed away gives her around $1200-1400 give or take.” Hawk said. “That wouldn't be enough to live on for very long which leads me to believe she might have found a place somewhere and possibly a job.”

  He went through a few more of the sent messages which were all e-mails to cousins or messages about apartments or jobs then he decided to check her search history online. He mostly found links to celebrity sites and her high school student portal but also found internet searches such as 'how to start a new life' and '100 best things to do in your teens' as well as 'jobs you don't need a college education for'. After looking a bit more he closed the browser and went through a few folders on her desktop, found nothing, then turned off the screen. His cellphone vibrated in his pocket and he picked it up.

  “Simon Hawk here.”

  He heard a frail woman's voice on the other end of the line and recognized it immediately as the woman from the answering machine message he'd tried calling in Miami.

  “Hello...hello? Did you call me and leave a message?”

  “Hi yes,” Simon turned the volume up on his phone and cradled the phone between his shoulder and ear with his notepad in the other hand. “I'm an investigator searching for a teenage girl and I believe she might have contacted you a few months ago. You're number is 315-737-8383 correct?”

  The woman paused for a second and he could hear her heavy breathing into the receiver, then she spoke again and her voice sounded like she was slightly out of breath, “Pardon? Could you please speak a little slower? My hearing isn't so good these days.”

  Hawk smiled then repeated what he had said again. “Yes that's my number. How did you get it?”

  Hawk explained how he'd found her number and how he was searching for Dottie Wagner.

  “Oh yes, I remember Dottie. My son posted an ad for a room we had available a few months ago and she sent him an e-mail about the place. I called her back and she moved in a few weeks later after sending me a deposit for the room.”

  “Do you know where she is now?”

  “No she is overdue for her last month's rent and I haven't seen her in weeks. If I don't hear from her by the end of this month I'm going to call the police.”

  Hawk scribbled a note in his pad. “Do you know where she might have went?”

  “No but I know she was working closeby, I think at some Shark restaurant or something. Dottie kept to herself and I didn't see her much.”

  Hawk recalled the name 'Shark' on the last transaction of Dottie's credit card history. “Okay. Could this place have been called the Shark Club?”

  “Yes I think that was it.”

  “Okay thank you, you've been very helpful. May I contact you again if I need too?”

  “Yes you may and if you find her tell he she owes me $400 in back rent!”

  They disconnected and Hawk wrote a few more pieces of information down on his pad. Wagner was standing near him looking at him imploringly.

  “I take it that was about my daughter?”r />
  “Yeah one of her phone statements said she called a number in Miami,” Hawk said. “That was the landlady getting back to me saying that Dottie had been living there in a room but hasn't been seen in a few weeks and still owes a month's rent.”

  “Dear God...”

  “Judging from what I'm finding out I'd be willing to bet that she might be in Miami or somewhere near there. I think we should focus our search for her in that area.”

  “I agree and I think it would be best if you go there to search for her directly.” Wagner said. “I can arrange a flight there for you tomorrow morning. Do you need anything else?”

  “No I think I have enough to go on. If I think of anything I'll give you a call.”

  Wagner walked him back downstairs to the frontdoor and when Hawk was leaving, put a hand on his shoulder.

  “Good luck Simon. I'm not sure what you might find in Miami but whatever it is I hope it will bring Dottie back to me.”

  “So do I.” Hawk said and added, “Take care.”

  Hawk went back to his truck and made his way down the hill to the Wharf to drop off his fish. By the time he was done it was getting late and he went back home. Hawk hadn't mentioned to Wagner what the woman on the phone had said about the Shark Club as he didn't want to cause him additional worry. Wagner seemed like the worrying type and he didn't need him budding into the search for Dottie. The last thing Hawk needed was for him to find out his daughter had been working at a strip club.

  When he got back to his boat Wagner called him to say he had a flight booked at 8 AM tomorrow for Miami National Airport and that he would e-mail him the details. Hawk started packing what he needed for the trip and made a note to remind himself to ask Larry the next boat over to keep an eye on his place while he was gone. If there was one thing Hawk had learned from being in the vice squad it was to be prepared. The day of the accident that had killed his baby daughter he hadn't been prepared. He had no firearms, nothing to protect himself from the bullets that tore into his sedan like cardboard. He wasn't going to make that mistake again. Hawk took out his Marlin 30/30 lever rifle, a rifle his father had given him, and packed it up in a case with some Winchester ammunition. The rifle was sighted at almost 200 yards in clear weather and Hawk had used it to hunt Cormorants one summer in the Utah wilderness. He also packed a 9mm Beretta that had a 15-round magazine with red dot sights. Finally he remembered to pack a hunting knife he wore in a sheath on his right ankle. He took it out, ran his palm gently against the blade, then placed it back in its sheath. He had been wasting too much time sitting on this boat, thinking about things he couldn't change, getting rusty at his craft. He needed action again, craved the feeling of doing what he was good at. This was where he belonged.

  He'd taken weapons in his luggage through the airport before and had a friend who worked at San Francisco International that was always helpful in transporting such things across the country.

  Hawk checked the weather in Miami and saw it was blisteringly hot. The past week alone had been in the high 90's so he made sure to pack some shorts and summer attire as well. Hawk recalled someone telling him once that Florida had a rainy season this time of year so he was careful to pack a raincoat and boots just in case. He made one last swoop of his apartment packing a few more small items, then confirmed he had everything and shut off the light just after 8:30. He wanted to get a good night's sleep for the journey tomorrow. He didn't know why but something told him this case wasn't going to be as easy as just finding Dottie and bringing her home. There was something else gnawing at him about the case, something indefinable that he couldn't quite put into words, and he hoped the feeling would pass before the morning. Then he shut his eyes and cleared his head of such thoughts and waited for the morning to come.

  3

  Byron Logan had learned many ways to hurt a person. One of his friends, an inmate at Florida State Prison by the name of Anthony 'Butcher' Slade had told him it was simple: Just turn two body parts in opposite directions and the laws of nature would take care of the rest. And Byron had put this into practice many times. Like that one night in late-90's Fort Lauderdale when some white collar asshole didn't pay his debt on time for a month's supply of Quaaludes. Byron had given him several chances to come up with the cash but when 3 months had passed and he saw the guy driving a new Audi, he followed him to the parking lot of an disused strip mall, yanked him out of the convertible by his collar, took his right bicep in one hand and his forearm in the other and told him: “Pay me my money or I'll make you a cripple for life and you'll need a nanny to wipe your ass.” The guy said he didn't have any money, but after Byron started turning his forearm 360 degrees he quickly changed his tune. Byron had felt the adrenaline rush then. That feeling of euphoria that pulsed through his capillaries like a shot of morphine, every nerve exploding and expanding like small nuclear reactions.

  And he was starting to feel the rush again as he drove South on Beacon Street near the Miami waterfront, navigating the darkened streets by instinct as much as by feel. It had been planned out over and over again the past month with the rest of the Devil's Syndicate and he now found himself going over the details in his head. They would pull up to the rear loading dock of the Amarack warehouse where Byron would take out the motion sensor light with his silenced pistol. With the light out they would be able to move under the security camera above the backdoor without being detected. Then Travis Cheung would hack into the security code system that would bypass the alarms and grant them access to the building from the backdoor. Once Travis was done Byron and Randall Morello would move in and tie up the two security guards who worked the night shift while Travis took care of the rest of the security cameras inside. After that they would load up the gear into the van and drive back on the interstate to their hideout deep in the Florida Everglades.

  Byron had decided on taking the warehouse with just the three of them as they could move faster that way and get in and out more quickly. He needed Travis there because the guy was a computer genius – spent 5 years in prison for hacking into the CIA database and selling the personal information on top judges and politicians to black market thieves and other thugs. He needed Randall there as he had worked at the warehouse as a part-time janitor while doing community service the year before and knew the place better than anyone. He was the one who had brought up the idea of the robbery in the first place and had helped Byron map out the different areas inside the facility.

  Randall had been told when he started the job at Amarack that the steel crates piled in the warehouse only contained sporting goods going out to wholesaler dealers so he never bothered to look inside. Except that one night he had overheard one of the security guards talking on the phone and found out that the warehouse was actually being used as a storage facility for military weapons for the U.S. government and these weapons were being shipped to military training camps across the sunshine state. Randall had confirmed this after prying off the corner lid of one of the crates and discovering a box of C4 explosives inside. Over the next few weeks he checked other boxes and found weapons of the same variety including heavy explosives, pistols and sub machine guns. Byron saw the possibilities immediately. All he had to do was polish off one joint and have enough firepower to take out the competitor gangs and make the Devil's Syndicate the most powerful outfit in Florida. He could wipe out the Hispanic gangs, the Blacks, maybe even the Hell's Angels too if he wanted. Not bad for just a few weeks of planning and a couple nights of reconnaissance on a warehouse.

  Byron crunched the black van to a halt near a traffic light near South Pointe Park and knew they were close when he saw the Miami waterfront rise up in the distance with its dark flank of warehouses. South Pointe Park, which was usually full of stroller moms, kids with iMacs, and hipsters during the day was an urban wasteland at night and looked completely deserted in the still moonlight.

  Byron was a big man with a brooding face and dark eyes that always seemed to be looking at something a little far off i
n the distance. Although not particularly handsome, he had a thick patch of wiry dark brown hair that hung down to his shoulders and a thin scar from a knife wound ran under his right ear which gave him a sort of rugged look like he belonged in some forgotten 80's action movie. When he wore his biker vest one could easily spot the tattoo of a Cobra ready to strike that ran down one of his muscled biceps and seeing him drive was like watching Goliath behind the wheel. He turned up the AC in the van and looked in the rearview mirror at Randall and Travis in the backseat.

  “Get your masks, gloves, hairnets on and have your weapons ready. And no shooting unless they draw first understand? I doubt there'd be anyone around this place at midnight anyway but we can't take the risk.”

  “Man I'm getting goosebumps just thinking about it. Gets me wired up every time we do a job like this.” Travis said checking and rechecking the contents of the duffel bag on his lap. He always did that before they had a big job to do. Had to be sure he had everything ready to impress the boss.

  “Just keep your cool and stick to plan and we'll be out in 30 minutes flat.” Byron said. “We still gotta drive back through the Glades in the dark and remember I'm gonna have to drive slower with all that gear that we're gonna be haulin' back.”

  Byron slowed down and pulled the van into the entrance of a deserted alleyway that led directly to the back of the warehouse. After passing by a few closed garage doors he saw the the Amarack loading dock on the right-side, flicked off the headlights and eased the van into a dark parking spot a few spaces down from the loading entrance.

  The lot was empty besides a Volvo and a minivan which he knew belonged to the two guards inside. During the day you could see that the building was a large frame of steel grey corrugated metal with a sheet of rust covering most of the walls that had been eaten away by sea salt. At night the structure was just a tall black square with a few dimly lit security lights jutting out from the sides and looked like any one of the dozens of other warehouses that littered the Miami waterfront. During the 1980s the economy in Miami had taken a turn for the worst and now the waterfront was littered with these hulking steel eyesores, remnants of glory days long past. Byron cut the engine and opened the window to listen: heard nothing but some gulls calling far off in the harbour and the distant hum of a motorboat's engine. A Bermuda high wind pushed against his face and the oppressive heat worked its way into the van like a sauna. This was the Miami mean season, the peak of tropical storm weather with 80F nights and sweltering afternoons and when that hot air hit your face it was like a dragon breathing fire down your lungs.