Free The Victim by Eric Matheny Page B

now. Twelve hundred Brickell? Morton’s Steakhouse is on the first floor?”
    “ That’s the one.”
    “ Fabulous. I live right down the street so I should be there within fifteen minutes or so, depending on traffic. Well, Mr. Mackey, I can’t thank you enough. The past couple of hours have been absolute hell. I feel better just having spoken to you.”
    “ You’re welcome, and I look forward to helping you and your husband. I’m afraid I never caught your name?”
    “ Oh, it’s Daniella. Daniella Avery.”
     
     
     

CHAPTER 12

     
    Anton shot off a quick text to Mandy down the hall. Armando Guerrero Investigations occupied a suite on the other end of the floor. Due to the fact that over a third of Mandy’s business came from Jack Savarese’s cases, he rented out an office that put him in close proximity.
    Mandy walked in to Anton’s office and stood in the corner. He never sat. He was tall with broad, rolling shoulders. He wore dark jeans and a patterned dress shirt with the cuffs folded back to his mid forearms, revealing, in part, his full-sleeve tats—a bright array of orange koi fish, elaborate detail and shading in their scales. A fire-breathing dragon wrapped around his right arm, its tail spiraling all the way down to his wrist. Mandy had been a Miami Beach police officer for seventeen years before retiring under circumstances that still remained unclear.
    Mandy folded his arms across his chest. Anton could see the outline of his concealed Glock 30 underneath his shirt. He was bald and wore a trimmed salt-and-pepper goatee. Seventeen years of police work were etched into his dark Cuban-American skin like erosion on a canyon wall.
    “ A DV victim’s coming in,” Anton said from behind his desk. His eyes reflected the light of the computer screen. He clicked on a Word document—his Agreement for Legal Services template. “You didn’t need to arm yourself. I keep mine in the car.”
    “ Oye , you should never go anywhere unarmed. I get up at night to take a piss, I go to the bathroom armed.”
    Anton shook his head. “You were a cop way too damn long.”
    “ Yeah I was.”
    Seven years as a private investigator had earned him more than he had made during his seventeen years in law enforcement. Unmarried, he lived on South Beach, frequenting the clubs and doing the bachelor thing in a fifteenth-story ocean-view apartment at the Flamingo.
    “ How’s that girl you were dating? What was her name? Katya?”
    Mandy grimaced. “Nah, that was like last month, bro.”
    “ What happened to her?”
    “ Eh, modeling jobs dried up. Visa expired; she went back to Ukraine. Pero that ain’t nothing. Got this new girl, met her at Mansion.”
    Anton nodded, following along as he put the finishing touches on the Agreement. He would charge $15,000 for the case with an additional $5,000 for Mandy’s investigative services.
    “ She old enough to drink?”
    “ Her international driver’s license says she’s twenty-one. Been seeing her for like three weeks now. She likes the BMW.”
    “ You drive a Three Series.”
    Mandy threw up his hands. “She’s from Kazakhstan, like she knows the difference.”
    “ So you’re tapping the Central Asian market now? South Beach run out of Russian mail-order brides?”
    Mandy scoffed and reached into his pocket, pulling out his iPhone. He slid his thumb, unlocking the touch screen, and showed Anton a photo of a naked young woman snapping a photo of herself in her bathroom mirror.
    “ She’s from Kazakhstan?”
    “ Yeah,” he slipped the phone back in his pocket. “Blonde hair, blue eyes. What’d you think, she was some gypsy washwoman?”
    “ With you, you never know. You’re hit or miss.”
    Anton’s intercom came alive. “Mr. Mackey, I have Ms. Avery here to see you.”
    Anton punched the intercom button. “Alright, please send her in.” He turned to Mandy. “You okay with five? At least to start?”
    “ What’s the charge?”
    “ Burg-batt, of