"No mistake?"
"On a certainty scale from one to ten, I can promise an eight."
"Do you realize how that sounds?"
"Crazy, I would imagine."
"Three men disappear over the Caribbean in ninety-degree weather and freeze to death?" Sweat asked no one in particular. "We'll never make this one stick, Doe. Not without a handy frozen-food truck."
"You've got nothing to stick it to anyway."
"Meaning?"
"The FBI report came in. Jessie LeBaron's ID was on the money. That isn't her husband in the morgue. The other two aren't Buck Caesar or Joseph Cavilla either."
"God, what next," Sweat moaned. "Who are they?"
"There's no record of them in the FBI's fingerprint files. Best guess is they were foreign nationals."
"Did you find anything at all that might give a clue to their identity?"
"I can give you their height and weight. I can show you X rays of their teeth and previous bone fractures. Their livers suggested all three favored generous amounts of hard liquor. The lungs gave away their heavy smoking, teeth and fingertips the fact they smoked unfiltered cigarettes. They were also big eaters. Their last meal consisted of dark bread and various fruits and beets. Two were in their early thirties. One was forty or over. They were in above-average physical condition. Beyond that I can tell you very little that might pin an ID on them."
"It's a start."
"But it still leaves us with LeBaron, Caesar, and Cavilla among the missing."
Before Sweat could reply a female voice rasped out his boat's call sign over the radio speaker. He answered and turned to another channel frequency as instructed.
"Sorry for the interruption," he said to Rooney. "I've got an emergency call over the ship-to-shore phone."
Rooney nodded, went into the forward cabin, and poured himself another drink. A delicious glow coursed through his body. He took a few moments to go to the head. When he returned topside to the wheelhouse, Sweat was hanging up the phone, his face red with anger.
"The rotten bastards!" he hissed.
"What's the problem?" Rooney asked.
"They seized them," Sweat said, pounding the helm with his fist. "The damned Feds walked into the morgue and seized the bodies from the blimp."
"But there are legal procedures to follow," Rooney protested.
"Six men in plainclothes and two federal marshals showed up with the necessary paperwork, stuffed the corpses into three aluminum canisters filled with ice, and took off in a U.S. Navy helicopter."
"When did this happen?"
"Not ten minutes ago. Harry Victor, the lead investigator on the case, says they also rifled his desk in the homicide office when he was in the john and ripped off his files."
"What about my autopsy report?"
"They lifted that too."
The gin had put Rooney in a euphoric mood. "Oh, well, look at it this way. They took you and the department off the hook."
Sweat's anger slowly subsided. "I can't deny they did me a favor, but it's their method that pisses me off."
"There's one small consolation," mumbled Rooney. He was beginning to have trouble standing. "Uncle Sam didn't get everything."
"Like what?"