Chapter39
BACK AT HIS HOTEL ROOMDecker sat down on the bed and opened the file Kasimira Roe had provided him on her father.
There was a photo of Kanak Roe included. He looked to be about sixty at the time the picture was taken. His face appeared like it was cast in marble with steel accents. A formidable, perhaps indomitable man. He had come to this country with nothing and built an impressive business. To do that you had to be tough and resilient and maybe ruthless, too.
He learned about the man’s stint with the Secret Service, his guarding of multiple presidents. And then, instead of pulling his full time with the Service and locking in his pension, Roe had left and come down to Miami to start the protection business that would eventually become Gamma.
From the file Decker learned that the business had grown rapidly, and Gamma had a long list of impressive clients. And Kasimira had taken it to ever higher levels.
He then turned to the day that Roe had vanished. The man had left his boat slip in Key West for what apparently was planned as a day cruise.
The boat had sleeping quarters belowdecks and a small kitchen. Kasimira had told him that her father normally would go out in the early morning and return well before dusk to his home in Key West. But that day he hadn’t come back.
He did wonder why a terminally ill, and presumably weakened, man would head out by himself to go deep-sea fishing. Decker had never done any deep-sea fishing, but he had watched people do it on TV. It took a helluva lot of strength and stamina to fight some of the big fish and land them. And to do so by yourself was difficult enough even if you were young and healthy.
But maybe, as his daughter had suggested, he just wanted to take the boat out one last time.
He hadn’t been clear on why Kasimira would allow her father to do that, but in a note in the file she had explained that she only found out about her father’s plans the next day, when he didn’t return to the slip. As she had mentioned during their meeting, apparently the only person who knew what he was planning was an old fishing buddy of Kanak’s, who had not been there that day, and thus didn’t know his friend had failed to return.
There was no information on exactly what terminal illness Kanak had, but Decker wasn’t sure it mattered. The man had been given a death sentence, regardless of the cause.
He briefly imagined Roe setting off in his boat and heading out into the open ocean knowing he only had a few months left.
Will I come to that point, sooner than I want to? And what will I think about when the days grow short?
Decker believed he would think about his wife and daughter. About possibly seeing them again, if there really was life after death.
But Kasimira seemed to have been very close to her father, thus Decker deemed it unlikely that the man would leave her in the lurch like that. So had someone else prevented him from coming back from that trip?
He closed the file, sat back on his bed, and picked up his phone. He punched in a number that had been in the file. It was Kanak Roe’s friend, the one he had told about taking the trip. His name was Daniel Garcia. The men had become friends, not over business, but over their love of fishing. It was late enough that he didn’t expect anyone to answer.
“Hello?”
“Mr. Garcia?”
“Yes?”
Decker explained who he was and why he was calling.
“Yes, Kasi told me you might be phoning. How can I help you?”
“You can tell me what you know about Kanak Roe heading out that day.”
“If I knew he wasn’t coming back I would never have let him go.”
“I understand that. Do you know what his illness was?”
“Pancreatic cancer. Nasty shit. They almost never catch it until it’s too late. You got about a year to live after a stage-four diagnosis. Kanak had about three months left. He was on all sorts of meds and painkillers.”
“Was he in any shape to take the boat out by himself?”
“I mean, the crap he was on, he could function. Yeah, he was in pain, but if you saw him you wouldn’t know he was dying. Look at theJeopardy!guy, Alex Trebek. He was working pretty much right up to the end. One tough dude. Same with Kanak.”
“But did you really think he was going deep-sea fishing? I mean, that’s not easy to do even when you’re healthy and strong.”
“Look, if I really thought he was going fishing on that boat I would have gone with him. That’s at least a two-person job. No, he just wanted to take theKasiout maybe one more time.”
Decker had learned from the file that Kanak Roe had named his boat after the nickname he used for his daughter.