Goodnight ring to it.
“Where is she now?” Steve asked.
Nash shrugged. “I tried calling her cell phone from in here. Disconnected.”
That was fast, Steve thought. Either Ms. Passion Conner figured Nash would phone from jail, where calls are monitored, or the lady wanted to cut all ties with him. Smart, either way.
“What can you tell me about her?” Steve said.
“Master’s in Marine Biology from Rosenstiel. Last summer, when everyone else was interning at NOAA, Passion crewed on a tuna boat. Used a hidden camera to get video of dolphins being illegally netted. Hundreds at a time, dragged under and drowned. If the crew had caught her, there’s no telling what they’d have done to her. How could I not love a woman like that?”
“Was she already your girlfriend? Before last summer?”
Nash shook his head. “She looked me up when she got back to Miami. Passion heard about my work. She wanted to join ALM.”
“So the two of you got all hot and bothered about the dolphins in the sea and the hamsters in the labs and decided to do something about it as soon as you fucked each other’s brains out.”
“Don’t make it sound frivolous! It wasn’t. Passion’s more radical than I am.”
“What about the dead guy? Cops found his rental car in a lot at the marina. ID’ed him as one Charles Sanders, Colorado driver’s license.”
“We met about two months ago at a bar in Islamorada. Sanders tracked me down through mutual friends in the Animal Liberation Movement.”
“You seem to meet a lot of people that way.”
“Sanders had done his homework. He knew about me trying to sink that whaling ship. And how I’d torn down those hunting platforms in the Glades and paint-bombed that fur store in New York.”
“You’re a one-man demolition team.”
Nash seemed to take this as a compliment. “Yeah, I got some props in the brotherhood.”
The brotherhood of anarchistic fuckups, Steve figured.
Sanders had claimed credit for some missions of his own, Nash said. Burning down a canine toxicology lab on the West Coast, a place that drugged puppies for pharmaceutical research. That was a pretty big deal in the ALM. But before he’d shown up, Nash and his cronies had never heard of the guy. Smelled cop or FBI informant. Then Sanders proved his worth. They’d broken into the primate research lab in Marathon, freeing the monkeys and setting them loose in the Glades. Except for the unfortunate ones that got turned into roadkill on Overseas Highway.
“Did Passion know Sanders any better than you did?”
Nash shook his head. “We met him at the same time.”
“You mean, that’s what she told you.”
“What are you getting at? You think Passion knew Sanders and lied about it?”
“How should I know? She’s your girlfriend.”
“You’re way off, Solomon. Passion loves me.”
“And she shows that how? By disappearing?”
Nash had no answer, so Steve moved on. “What was Sanders doing when he wasn’t saving the world?”
“Insurance.”
“You’re kidding.”
“He had a card. Chief adjuster for some casualty company.”
“And you believed that?”
“I didn’t care one way or the other. But you’re right. He didn’t look like an insurance adjuster. Rugged guy. Little over six feet. Maybe two hundred pounds. Fit and ripped. A terrific swimmer, like maybe he’d competed at one time.”
“How’d you three decide to knock off Cetacean Park?”
“Not my idea. I’d been looking into this chain of pet stores. Figured we’d maybe crash a pickup through their window, take the animals. But Sanders said, ‘Let’s go bigger.’”
“And Passion agreed with him?”
“Yeah, she did. She wants to make her mark.”
Steve listened as Sanders recounted the attack on Cetacean Park. Sanders had surveilled the place. A lone security guard. Old guy who sat in a shed all night watching telenovelas on a black-and-white TV. Unarmed except for a can of Mace and a cell phone. They had their plan