Those Who Trespass: A Novel of Television and Murder Page 29

  When Shannon Michaels failed to emerge from the breezeway, Jackson Davis knew he had been duped, and he was out of the Mercedes in less than ten seconds. He ran quickly across the street. He recognized instantly that he was in trouble.

  Shannon was frantic. He knew he had only seconds to get away. At the far end of the fence, he saw a metal dumpster nestled in the corner. He ran as fast as he could, leaped onto the green cover, threw his bag over the fence and pulled himself over the top of the wooden barrier. He landed hard in somebody’s backyard. Immediately, a dog began to bark.

  Jackson Davis heard the dog as he rounded the corner into the motel alleyway. Shannon Michaels was gone and Jackson quickly saw how he had made his escape. The odds of running Michaels down now were slim, Jackson thought. Cursing to himself, he decided to return to the car and radio in. He hoped a quick police response could contain Michaels within a small radius. In South Florida, unlike New York, taxicabs do not cruise the streets, and Jackson figured Michaels could not get very far on foot.

  Shannon Michaels was sweating heavily. The humid night air was sucking the wind out of his lungs like an ocean whirlpool. His chest heaved as he climbed still another fence and finally found himself on a small street in the middle of a lower middle class neighborhood. Wiping the sweat from his eyes, Shannon walked quickly south, looking back over his shoulder for any sign of a tracker. His destination was just blocks away. Once there, he thought, he would look for an escape opportunity. If he didn’t find one, it was no big deal. He hadn’t broken any laws in Florida.

  “Tommy, I lost him.” Jackson Davis did not add another word. He knew it was damage control time.

  O’Malley, instantly frowning, said into the cellular phone, “Is he still in the area?”

  “Yeah, he slipped over the fence behind the motel just a couple of minutes ago. He knows we’re on to him. He’s still nearby.”

  “Okay, I’ll call Julio and we’ll flood the area. Don’t worry about it, Jack. This stuff happens.”

  “Not to me it doesn’t. I’ll find this guy. I’ll tell you later how he made the slip. It was super slick.”

  “Okay, Jack.” With Ashley Van Buren looking on, their dinner nearly complete, Tommy hung up the phone and savagely punched the digits on his phone to reach Julio Lopez.

  “Julio. Tommy. He slipped Jack. Yeah, it’s a bitch, but we think he’s still in the area. Can you call out the militia? Good. We’ve gotta get him sighted again. I’m goin’ over to the motel, find out what happened. Good. I’ll see you there in fifteen minutes.”

  Five blocks away from the Sinbad Motel was a country music dance club called Midnight Cowboy. Shannon had been to this Lauderdale institution before. And he knew the place was usually full on Sunday nights, which were always set aside as “Ladies’ Night.” Ladies drank for free, and, for obvious reasons, that attracted men.

  It took Shannon less than three minutes to reach the saloon. He stood in the shadows of the packed parking lot for a few moments, cooling down. He did not want to raise any attention, but he needed to get out of the area fast. He figured the police would be pouring in momentarily.

  Two young men in khaki shorts were sprinting around the Midnight Cowboy parking lot. Cars were backed up outside the club entrance and these valets couldn’t keep up. Shannon watched the scene for just a few seconds. It was obviously chaotic. The parking guys were doing their best, but they were heavily outnumbered by trendy new cars.

  As Shannon moved toward the valet shack, he spotted a white Ford Explorer. The valet had just hopped out of it and run back to the shack, hanging the vehicle’s keys on a hook with the number 405. Shannon moved quickly but smoothly, walking up and removing the keys to the Explorer in one deft motion. Keeping his eyes on the frantic kid who had parked the Explorer, he waited until the valet was occupied with another car. Within thirty seconds, Shannon had the Explorer on the road heading north.

  The vehicle wouldn’t be missed, he thought, until its owner came out of the club, and that would probably be much later.

  Jackson Davis was embarrassed as he explained to Tommy O’Malley and Julio Lopez how Shannon Michaels had eluded him. Tommy felt sorry for his partner. He knew that what had happened to Jackson could have happened to any cop. Shannon Michaels was sly, smart, and quick. What bothered Tommy was how Michaels figured out he was under surveillance.

  Meantime, the Lauderdale police remained on full alert. Shannon’s description had been broadcast city wide, and units cruised the area where he had last been seen. In addition, plainclothes cops on foot canvassed the area around the Sinbad Motel. The hunt was low key, without sirens or flashing lights, but intense. The cops were told not to confront the fugitive, but not to let him out of their sight either. It was clear to all involved that some major heat was on this tall guy with the mustache.

  As it turned out, the mustache was gone. And so was the baseball cap. Shannon had thrown them into a dumpster. All that remained from his original disguise were the brown contact lenses. Shannon pulled the Explorer onto I-95 heading north. He didn’t leave the interstate until the Pompano Beach exit, far away from any police check of Lauderdale motels. He spotted a flea bag motel just off the highway and checked in, carefully keeping his head down and avoiding eye contact with the Cuban clerk.

  After receiving his key, he got back into the Explorer and headed toward the ocean. It took him almost twenty minutes to reach the upscale Coral Reef Hotel and Spa. He parked the Explorer in the huge lot and hailed a taxi to take him back toward I-95. The cab dropped him six blocks from his new motel.

  Ashley Van Buren was waiting for Tommy O’Malley’s call. She lay on top of her bed wearing only a T-shirt and panties, watching the late edition of Eyewitness News on South Florida’s “One and Only TV Ten.” The Dolphin victory over the Browns took up half the newscast. Various Miami players were interviewed. All of them said virtually the same thing: “We were fortunate, you know, to win. Just very fortunate, you know?”

  Ashley yawned and thought back to the day’s events. Her confidence remained severely shaken. Bad judgment is bad judgment, and that’s what she had demonstrated in dealing with the devious Shannon Michaels. She should have been much more cautious. That she had given her body to a killer made her shudder every time she thought about it.

  The phone rang. It was Tommy O’Malley. “Bad news. We lost the guy. It’s over for tonight. Tomorrow we’ll stake out the convention hotel.”

  “Maybe he’ll go back to New York now,” Ashley said.

  “Possible, but I don’t think so. I get the feeling that our boy Shannon is addicted to the game, and that he’d like to embarrass us.”

  “You mean he’d like to embarrass you.”

  Tommy sighed. “Yeah, I guess that’s right. This is a personal thing, isn’t it?”

  “Tommy, I can’t imagine it being any more personal. Just be careful. I think he’s dangerous. I don’t think Shannon Michaels is going to allow anyone to arrest him for murder.”

  “Quite a change of heart, Ash.”

  “Yes, I’m very aware of that,” said Ashley, sounding very sad. Tommy didn’t push it.

  “Anyway, I’ll call you in the morning and you can ride with me,” Tommy said. “He knows both of us so we’ll have to stay in the background. But we’ll have people all over the hotel. If he tries for Worthington, we’ll get him.”

  “I appreciate you letting me come along, Tommy.” Ashley’s voice was low. Tommy thought she sounded like a little girl.

  “Hey, you gave us the big break.”

  “Yeah, but I didn’t even know what I was doing.”

  “Ash.”

  “Yes?”

  “Don’t tell anybody that, okay? I’m sayin’ you got this guy down cold and that’s why you’re here.”

  Ashley laughed softly. “Okay, I am a super-sleuth. See you tomorrow.” And she hung up.

  * * *

  27

  FORT LAUDERDALE

  DECEMBER 1994


  The next day, the temperature outside the Marriott Marina Hotel hit a scorching eighty degrees early—at 11:48 a.m. Inside, as 1994’s Radio and Television News Directors Association Convention got under way, six policemen, including Jackson Davis, were working undercover. The four men and two women had assumed a variety of hotel jobs—from parking valet to bellman. Jackson played bartender in the lobby lounge, where he could observe everyone who entered or left the hotel.

  Lauderdale’s Marriott Marina was located on the 17th Street Causeway, directly on the Intracoastal Waterway. In the back of the main building was a large pool where many of the guests congregated. The hotel itself was nice but not luxurious. It stood fifteen floors high and featured the usual two restaurants and a nightclub. By noon the whole place was swarming with news executives, many of whom were severely hungover from the night before.

  Tommy O’Malley and Ashley Van Buren were parked in the lot directly in front of the hotel. Tommy had positioned his Mercedes so that it was well back from the main entrance, but facing the hotel’s facade. From his vantage point, he could see all movement in front of the hotel.

  Tommy had the windows rolled down and the car radio on low. His police radio lay on the floor and a portable phone was clipped to his belt. Ashley sat next to him reading Fort Lauderdale’s Sun-Sentinel. She had five other newspapers with her as well. Both Tommy and Ashley knew it could very well be a long, hot day.

  After eating a light breakfast at a little pancake house a few blocks from his motel, Shannon Michaels called a cab and was dropped on the ocean side road, A-1-A, in the small town of Lauderdale-by-the-Sea, just north of Fort Lauderdale. He continued on foot, walking a half-mile along A-1-A to the Dingle Pub. There, two tough-looking men were waiting for him with a brown paper bag containing the false beard Shannon had requested. The men eagerly accepted the five one-hundred-dollar bills Shannon produced for the driver’s license, and another crisp fifty for the whiskers. The men did not bother with any small talk, simply telling Shannon to come back when he had the photo for the license. “By the way,” one of the men said, “your new name’ll be George McCoy.”

  Shannon’s next move was to begin extensive intelligence gathering. Weeks before, he had laid the groundwork for Lance Worthington’s demise by calling the Marriott Marina, pretending to be Worthington, and requesting a room with a northern view—one that faced the Intracoastal Waterway. Over the phone, he had been assigned Room 615. With any luck, Lance Worthington would accept that room without question.

  Knowing Worthington’s room number and location initially gave Shannon a slight advantage over the police. But now that they were looking for him, he knew that Tommy O’Malley and his gang would double their close watch of Worthington. All of this meant that Shannon could not go to the hotel until he was ready to act. Even in disguise, he could not risk it. So he designed his plan for simplicity and speed. If things went smoothly, he could dispatch Worthington in seconds and be out of the hotel and on his way in less than five minutes.

  It was now early afternoon in south Florida. Shannon, dressed in white shorts and a blue Toronto Blue Jays T-shirt, and wearing his new beard and old sunglasses, strolled down the main boulevard that separates the wide sandy beach of Fort Lauderdale from the seaside shops and apartments.

  After getting his photograph taken, Shannon returned to the Dingle Pub, waited an hour, and was finally handed his new license. He then walked south for two miles and now was in the heart of Lauderdale. Traffic was heavy as driving tourists slowed, gawking at the ocean and chic stores and hotels. Shannon, tired and wet from all his walking, turned left down a side street and into the office of Dune Rent-a-Car.

  Ten minutes later, Shannon was driving an almost new 1995 Cadillac El Dorado. Eight cylinder engine, plenty of power. Shannon gave the car rental manager ten one-hundred dollar bills—a week’s rental and deposit—paid in cash because, as Mr. McCoy put it, “I don’t believe in credit cards.”

  Driving the Caddy south on A-1-A, Shannon came to the end of the Lauderdale beach strip and began traveling west as the road veered in that direction. He passed over the large drawbridge spanning the Intracoastal Waterway and lightly hit the brakes as he passed the Marriott on his right. There was just one road leading in and out of the hotel. If anything were to go wrong with his plan, where he parked his car would be vitally important. Attached to the west end of the hotel was a two-story concrete parking lot. The second tier was exposed to the sun and elements, and was reserved for drivers who parked themselves. The ground level, for cars using the valet service, was covered. Neither seemed right for his future purposes.

  But just west of the Marriott Marina was a small, rectangular single-story office building. A short row of hedges separated the building’s tiny parking area from the huge hotel parking lot. When the time came to confront Worthington, he would park his car in front of the office building, slice easily through the hedges, and walk from there onto the hotel property.

  Shannon continued driving west until he reached Route One. There he turned left and headed for the airport. Minutes later he was driving around the airport on Perimeter Road, a small, lightly traveled service road located directly underneath the brand new highway extension, 595. His purpose was to closely check the various gates along the road that kept pedestrians from entering the airport grounds. He had plenty of time to do so.

  As he cruised the north side of the Fort Lauderdale Airport, Shannon noticed a sign that read, “Restricted Area—No Trespassing.” He turned the Cadillac left and slowly proceeded down a narrow road to a locked metal gate. To the right was a small building housing an export company based in the Turks and Caicos Islands, or so the sign said. To the left was a Federal Express office. Shannon parked his car in front of the gate, which stood between him and the airport runways. The fence housing the gate was twelve feet high and topped with razor wire. The lock on the gate was old and rusted. Very rusted.

  Shannon looked out over the compact airport. It had three active runways, and air traffic was relatively light. Security was nowhere to be seen.

  Fort Lauderdale International Airport had an interesting history, and Shannon Michaels knew it well. The first story he had ever filed for GNN was about this very airport. During World War II, the Lauderdale airport had been a small but important naval air station. American torpedo bomber crews trained here. The most famous graduate of the Lauderdale naval flight school was George Bush. On December 5, 1945, five U.S. Navy Avenger planes took off from Lauderdale on a routine training mission. They never returned.

  That was the beginning of the infamous “Bermuda Triangle” legend. The planes were dubbed “The Lost Patrol,” and the mystery was never really solved to anyone’s satisfaction. Shannon’s report focused on the Bermuda Triangle theory well before it had been exploited to the hilt by the rest of the media.

  As Shannon stared at the airport control tower on the south side of the field, he reminded himself that, for his last mission, he might need an especially well-honed escape plan. This time, he had lost the element of surprise. If he had to escape pursuers, Shannon thought, the airport was where he would go. If he was being chased in the dark, the inside of the airfield offered his best chance of vanishing. It was an obstacle course, full of junked planes and debris, and was illuminated only by small lights flanking the runways.

  Shannon studied the terrain carefully, noting the small paved road, the ditches, the standing hazards. If he could get inside the airport grounds ahead of the posse, and drive quickly across the field, he had a good chance of disappearing. He seriously doubted that the chase would ever happen, but he decided to prepare himself, in a disciplined way, for every eventuality.

  Sweating now, Shannon got back into his car and drove to the other side of the airport. There he found another gate, with the number 152 written on it. Again the lock was rusted. In fact, this gate looked as if it hadn’t been used in decades. Three burnt out planes stood yards away on the inside of the airport property.
Probably used for fire training. Perfect, Shannon thought.

  Continuing his private tour, Shannon drove west to a fork in the road. He bore left, crossing a small overpass that took him above the primary highway in Florida: I-95. On the other side of the overpass, approximately a two hundred yard run from Gate 152, was a restaurant called Something Fishy. Shannon stopped the car and got out. The sun was blazing hot. He looked around. Not a soul in sight. Apparently Something Fishy was open only for dinner, although there were a half dozen cars in its parking lot.

  Shannon thought hard. Now that he had carefully examined the airport and its environs, he believed he could pull off the sanction of Lance Worthington without complication but, if all hell did break loose, he needed every advantage he could get.

  Shannon again felt moisture on his forehead and an itching on his chin. He hated the damn beard. Swearing to himself, he got back into the air-conditioned Cadillac and drove east. He had some shopping to do.

  The buzz on his belt told Tommy O’Malley that he was wanted on his portable phone. It was Julio Lopez calling from Lauderdale police headquarters. At three in the afternoon, Tommy was actually pleased to be talking on the phone, something he ordinarily despised. Sitting in the car for hours at a time was getting to him, although Ashley Van Buren was dealing with it better. She was asleep.

  “That Worthington is really a prick. You know that, Tommy?”

  “No doubt, Julio. What happened?”

  “Well, I finally reached the bastard. Of course, he didn’t return my calls. Said he was busy in meetings all day. So I told him we had a tip that he might be in some danger and the guy went off on you and Jackson. Said you’re overreacting, blah, blah, blah. I couldn’t get a word in. Finally, I told him to give it a rest. I then asked him to unlock the door between his room and the one next to it because two of my guys were in there. He said he’d think about it. Can you believe this clown?