Justifiable Homicide: A Political Thriller (Robert Paige Thrillers Book 1) Page 3

“Hello?”

  “Priscilla. It’s Bob Paige.”

  “Yes, I know. I could see your name on my screen.”

  She sounded scared. Her voice trembled.

  “Bob, I can’t talk to you. Please don’t call again.”

  She hung up before he could reply.

  Someone had to be monitoring the case. Everywhere he turned he got shut down. The two men he saw her with that morning were part of it. And their car had government plates.

  He got in his car and started the drive back to his condo in Sunny Isles Beach, discouraged but not beaten.

  ***

  As he pulled away, a dark blue sedan parked a hundred feet away started up behind him. It kept far enough back that Paige wouldn’t observe its presence.

  The driver looked over to his companion. “It looks like he’s going home. We’ll follow him anyway, in case he makes a stop along the way.”

  His associate turned off his iPad and looked straight ahead. He had been reading Hunter by Robert Bidinotto. The driver had already read it, a book about a vigilante who sought to do justice when the criminal justice system failed.

  7

  As soon as he got home, Paige grabbed the newspaper and turned to the Rodriguez article. Written by Leroy Witherspoon. It listed his email address below his name.

  Paige sent him a brief email.

  Dear Mr. Witherspoon:

  My name is Robert Paige. I am an accounting professor at St. Frances University. I was also a friend of Raul Rodriguez. I would like to meet with you briefly at your convenience. Please let me know when and where it would be convenient.

  He hit SEND, then took a brief nap before getting ready for dinner at Sveta’s.

  ***

  When he returned from Sveta’s at about eleven, two email messages from Leroy Witherspoon were waiting for him. The first one said:

  Thank you for your email. I am sorry, but I will not be able to meet with you.

  Leroy

  The second one had arrived fifteen minutes later. It had a different email address.

  Dear Professor Paige,

  Please disregard my earlier email. I can meet with you tomorrow at ten o’clock at the Starbucks down the street from the Miami Herald. I’ll be the black guy with glasses wearing a white shirt.

  Leroy

  Paige sent him an email confirming the meeting, then went to bed.

  The dark blue sedan parked outside his condo building pulled away, replaced by a black van.

  8

  Meeting Leroy

  The Central Intelligence Agency owns anyone of any significance in the major media. William Colby (former Director of the CIA)

  The next morning, Paige awoke at seven, had cereal with strawberries for breakfast, and did some leg and lower back stretching exercises. He practiced his karate forms three times a week, but this morning he wasn’t in the mood.

  He had been studying martial arts, on and off, for more than twenty years. He’d studied judo with Dick Adelman in Erie, Pennsylvania briefly in high school but couldn’t afford the monthly payments. While he worked as a tax attorney in Manhattan, he studied Taekwondo with Henry Cho, and later studied Shukokai, a Japanese karate style, with Shihan Shigeru Kimura in Hackensack, New Jersey, along with his ex-wife and daughters. He’d continued his Taekwondo studies with Masters Brown and Cook in Fayetteville, North Carolina while a visiting professor at Fayetteville State University, and also studied Krav Maga. He still competed in tournaments on a regular basis but wasn’t quite as sharp as he’d been in his thirties.

  He arrived at Starbucks two minutes early. A slender black guy with glasses and a white shirt sat at a corner table facing the front door. He appeared to be in his mid-thirties. Witherspoon stood as Paige approached the table.

  “Hello, professor. Please sit.” He motioned to one of the chairs. “Would you like coffee?”

  “Yeah, I suppose that would be appropriate for this place.”

  “I’ll be here.”

  Paige stepped up to the counter and ordered a medium cappuccino. He usually preferred his coffee with a twist of caramel, either hot or iced, but this morning his taste buds hankered for a cappuccino.

  He returned to the table with his coffee a few minutes later. “Thank you for agreeing to meet with me.”

  “No problem. Now that I don’t have a job, I have time on my hands.” He grinned, exposing a full set of crooked white teeth.

  “Yes, I did have a question about that, if you don’t mind my asking.”

  “I don’t mind. Go ahead and ask.”

  “One day you’re covering the Raul Rodriguez story, and the next day you’re no longer working at the Herald. Is there a connection?”

  “That’s the reason I got fired, actually. John Lasky told me to drop the Rodriguez story and find something else to report on. I continued to interview people in my spare time anyway. I don’t like being told what to do, especially when it comes to my job. I had a feeling there was more to the Rodriguez story, so I kept digging. Everyone I interviewed was afraid to talk about it. Someone must have been threatening them. I wanted to find out who and why.”

  “I guess you have a problem with authority, huh?”

  He snickered. “Yeah, you noticed that?” He took a swig of his coffee and gave Paige another slightly crooked grin. A rebel and proud of it.

  “It all goes back to my days in the army. They gave me a low-level journalist job, probably because they didn’t trust me with a gun. I developed a liking for the work and a disliking for the army. After I left the army, I got a series of junior reporter positions in the Miami area and worked my way through the master’s degree program in journalism at Florida International University. A few months before I graduated, I landed a job at the Miami Herald. I’ve been there ever since, until a few days ago. I didn’t get where I am by backing down like some junior reporter.”

  “Did your boss give you any specifics about why they wanted you to drop the Rodriguez story?”

  “Yeah, he was quite specific. My boss’s boss’s boss got a visit from the FBI. They threatened him as well as the newspaper. They said federal law gave them the authority to shut down the newspaper and arrest anyone they want if national security is involved, and that the Rodriguez case involved national security. They said any further reporting about Rodriguez might give aid and comfort to the enemy, which is treason.”

  “What enemy?”

  “I asked Lasky that same question. He didn’t have an answer. All he said was that I had become a threat to the newspaper and that I had to go.”

  “Didn’t the newspaper raise any First Amendment concerns about free press and free speech?”

  “Maybe they did. I don’t know. I don’t talk to the people that high on the food chain unless I have to. They’re more concerned about the bottom line than they are about free speech or free press. I think most of them never even read the Constitution.”

  “So, what are your plans? What are you going to do about a job?”

  He leaned back in his chair, pondering his response. “I don’t know. If I stay in journalism, I’ll probably have to leave Miami. The Herald is the only game in town. Anything else would be a step down.”

  Paige decided it was time to ease back to a more casual discussion. Right about now each of the others he’d interviewed had handed him his hat. He wanted to keep Witherspoon talking in case the journalist thought of something else to reveal.

  “Are you married?”

  “Yeah. My wife has a good job in one of the offices downtown. If we move, she’d have to quit and find another job that probably pays a lot less. And the kids would have to make new friends in a new school.”

  “Being a journalist with integrity can cause problems.”

  He chuckled again. “Yeah. Maybe I’ll go to work for CNN—the Communist News Network. That way I won’t have to have integrity. I can just report the news the government wants me to report.”

  “Oh, I forgot to ask. Why did you use a d
ifferent email account for your second email?”

  Witherspoon smirked. “You noticed that, huh? I think they’re monitoring my main email account. Just to be on the safe side—I don’t want to be one of those reporters who gets arrested, you know—I went to a local Internet café, created a new account just for you, and sent you the second email.”

  “Just for me? That’s considerate.”

  “You’re welcome. I probably wanted to meet with you more than you wanted to meet with me. Nobody else wants to talk about Raul Rodriguez. By the way, what’s the next step for you? Are you going to keep digging into this case? I exhausted all my leads before I got fired.”

  “It seems I’ve exhausted all of mine too. I don’t know what I’m going to do next. But one thing I do know—I’m not ready to quit. Raul was a friend of mine.”

  They exchanged pleasantries for a few minutes, then got up and walked out, Paige to the left and Witherspoon to the right.

  ***

  The two men parked in the black van across the street watched Paige as he exited Starbucks. Their electronic dish had monitored and recorded their conversation. The driver turned to look at the man operating the equipment.

  “Did you get it all?”

  “Yeah. Let’s go home. I think Paige is done for the day.”

  9

  Sunny Isles Beach

  Paige and Sveta gazed at the Miami sunset from her terrace. He stood behind her, caressing her waist.

  His cell phone rang.

  “Hi, Bob. It’s John Wellington.”

  “John, it’s been a while. How are Sarah and the kids?”

  “Fine, thanks. Bob, I’d like to get together for a little chat. What’s your schedule like for next week?”

  “I’m only teaching on Tuesdays and Saturday mornings this semester, so any other day is fine.”

  “Cushy job, Bob. Are you sure you’re a full-time professor?”

  “The university thinks so. Let’s not tell them any different.”

  “I’ll keep your little secret. How does Wednesday sound? We can meet for lunch.”

  “Sure. Which office will you be at on Wednesday?”

  “Actually, I’d prefer not to meet you at any office. This isn’t exactly going to be a Commerce Department discussion, if you know what I mean. How about the Rusty Pelican on the Rickenbacker Causeway? I like the panorama of Biscayne Bay from there. I’ll make a reservation for noon. Maybe we can get a table with a nice view.”

  “I think all the tables there have a nice view, don’t they?”

  “Yeah, probably. It’s nice to see that you’re helping me spend taxpayer dollars efficiently.”

  “I do what I can. See you Wednesday.”

  Paige slid the phone back in his pocket and gave Sveta his “everything is fine” smile. He behaved normally, as though it were just a regular phone call.

  “Who was that?”

  “John Wellington. You remember him, right? My former MBA student who works for the Commerce Department. He has a consulting assignment for me.”

  “Yes, I remember him. Let’s go to bed, honey. I want to cuddle.”

  Actually, she wanted to do more than cuddle, and so did he. After she had fallen asleep, he lay awake, forearm slung over his forehead, replaying the conversation he’d had with Wellington. Something in the tone of John’s voice told him it wasn’t a regular assignment.

  That bothered him.

  10

  8:30 a.m.

  Saint Frances University

  Paige stood in front of his office door, flipping for the key. He felt tired just thinking about the long day ahead—two morning classes and an MBA class at night, with a lot of paper shuffling and meetings filling up the time in between. He’d work from nine in the morning until nine tonight. Then he’d be off until Saturday.

  He used to work like that every day when he was a tax attorney in Manhattan. Paige smirked whenever he thought of his university schedule. Compared to his old Manhattan job, he was practically retired. Mentally, he divided his university salary by the number of hours he worked. On an hourly basis, he made more as a professor than he had as a tax attorney.

  He pushed open the door and pocketed the key. A manila envelope lay at his feet. He picked it up, sat down, and opened it.

  Out fell a folded piece of printer paper … and a photo of him and Sveta from last night, standing on her balcony.

  Warily, he unfolded the paper. “Bad things will happen to you and your Russian slut if you keep asking questions about Raul Rodriguez. We can fill two new coffins if you like. Your choice.”

  A sudden chill ran up his back, causing him to jerk.

  No one had ever threatened him before. He had felt fear as a kid from an occasional schoolyard bully, but his feelings at this moment were far more intense. His life had never been on the line before, and now Sveta’s life also hung in the balance.

  Maybe I should drop the Rodriguez probe. It just wasn’t worth it. I don’t want to put Sveta in harm’s way.

  He looked at the printout and photo again. Then became angry.

  He never walked away from anything in his life before. He wasn’t going to do it now. He decided to get the bastards.

  The only problem was, he didn’t know who they were.

  He could keep asking questions about Rodriguez. If he did, they would come to him for sure. He wouldn’t have to try to find them. But they would probably go after Sveta first. She was an easier target, and he wouldn’t be able to protect her. There was no simple solution.

  He couldn’t warn Sveta. She wouldn’t be able to take the news calmly. It would only make things worse.

  He couldn’t take the note and photo to the FBI. That would put him on their radar screen. They could possibly threaten to arrest him for interfering with a federal investigation, which would mean he would have two threats to deal with instead of one. Ever since 9/11, the FBI and other federal agencies had gone nuts. They saw terrorists behind every blade of grass, and they didn’t mind shredding the Constitution to get them. He couldn’t trust them. They had become as much of a threat to Americans’ individual freedom as the terrorists. Maybe more so.

  He wouldn’t do anything for now. It was Tuesday, and he would be busy all day. He wouldn’t have time to pursue Rodriguez’s murder, and they wouldn’t do anything to him until he started to ask questions again, or at least they wouldn’t if they were men of their word.

  11

  9:30 p.m.

  The Parking Lot

  Class had finished at nine, but a couple of students wanted to ask questions after class, so he hung around for a half hour to answer them. He walked toward his car in the darkened, practically empty parking lot. Most of the evening students had already gone home.

  He’d been distracted all day because of the photo and note. It’s all he could think about. He couldn’t focus on his work because of it.

  He thumbed through his keys as he passed a black van parked two spaces from his car. The side door slid open.

  His head snapped around. Two men stepped down from the van.

  One moved off to Paige’s left. The other walked straight toward him, sliding his hand into his right pocket. “You really need to stop asking questions about Raul Rodriguez. People could get hurt.”

  He pulled his hand from his pocket. There was just enough light in the parking lot to see that he had brass knuckles. The man picked up speed as he got closer.

  Paige tensed up. Then he recalled the words Sensei Kimura had told him when he hesitated to attack. “Take a chance.” Attack first.

  Paige unleashed a powerful front kick to the guy’s groin, followed immediately by a punch to the face, stepping forward as he launched it, putting all 180 pounds of his weight into it and letting out a blood curdling yell. Paige felt the guy’s nose cartilage snap. As the attacker flew back from the impact of the punch, Paige gave him a round kick to the head with all he had, slamming the heel of his foot into the guy’s temple.

  The a
ttacker dropped. His head hit the concrete like a coconut. He was out cold.

  Paige spun around. A row of beefy knuckles flew at his face, grazing his chin. Paige slammed a side kick into his attacker’s solar plexus, but couldn’t fully extend his leg because he was too close. Paige was off balance. The guy’s forward movement nearly knocked him to the ground.

  This second guy was larger than the first. Paige moved to the side and regained his balance. The big guy just kept coming. Luckily for Paige, he was fairly slow on his feet.

  Paige didn’t want to spar with him. That would take time. The first guy might wake up any moment. It would be two against one. Time to do something he had never done in karate class, an illegal move that would have gotten him disqualified in a tournament.

  He let loose with a kick to the stomach. The guy’s hands dropped. Paige delivered a flurry of punches to his unprotected face. It wasn’t enough to knock him down, but it was enough to disorient him long enough to set up a kick to the kneecap.

  As the attacker raised his arms to protect his face from the punches, Paige let out a yell and slammed his heel into the guy’s kneecap, causing the man’s leg to snap backward.

  His target screamed and dropped to the ground. He clutched his knee and rolled to one side. But he was still conscious. If he had a gun, he could still be dangerous. Even deadly. Paige had to knock him out, which meant kicking him in the head. Paige jumped to the side, positioning himself. He delivered it football style. If his head were a football, Paige would have just kicked a fifty-yard field goal.

  Both of the aggressors were out cold, but they wouldn’t stay that way for long. The parking lot was deserted. No witnesses. Paige could hear some cicadas chirping away, but other than that, the night was quiet. A light breeze wafted across his sweaty face.