Free A Shark in Calle Ocho by Joe Curtis

Ask away,” she said.
    Bob hadn’t thought about any questions except about the crash, and he knew he shouldn’t start with those, or he’d raise suspension.
    “Okay, let’s see,” he said, flipping through the blank pages of his notebook. “Do you mind if I record our conversation?”
    “That’s fine. Wouldn’t want you to mess up any quotes,” she said jokingly.
    “Right. How long have you guys been in business?” he said finally.
    She answered the question with precision, along with ten or fifteen others. Bob was proud of himself. He thought he actually sounded like a journalist. After the initial questions were finished, he knew time was getting short because Lauren was starting to look at the wall clock.
    “Just one or two more questions,” he said.
    “That’s fine.”
    “Care Ambulance Service has been in the news as of late.”
    “Yes, we have,” Lauren said, a serious expression on her face now as she launched into a finely honed PR statement. “We at Care Ambulance Service are saddened by the loss of one of our employees and have taken every step to assure the public and our customers that this kind of incident will not happen again.”
    “Did the driver have any previous traffic violations and arrests? Any past history with drugs?”
    “No,” she said shortly.
    “I read that he committed suicide in jail. Is that true?” Bob asked.
    Lauren reached over the desk to Bob’s recorder and turned it off.
    “I think our time is up, Bob.”
    “By my watch, we have three more minutes.”
    “Our time is up. Would you like to be shown out?”
    “No, I believe I can find my own way,” he said, picking up his recorder and putting his notebook in pocket.
    “You have a nice day, Bob.”
    “It’s south Florida, Lauren. That’s not hard to do,” he said, walking out.
    Bob reached the beauty queen. He sat there for a few minutes, going over in his mind what just happened. She was definitely hiding something , he thought. The queen cranked up after the third try, and he drove out the parking lot. Next stop: the Miami Police Station.
    As Bob pulled out of the parking lot, Lauren was watching from her window . With a rusty old car like that , she thought, the nerd hasn’t published many articles.
    ***
    Mary Catherine, Hector, and three other of Shark’s associates left a rain-soaked Miami International Airport on Tenish 4, an Airbus 300. Hector breathed a breath of relief. They were still on schedule with only a relatively short delay, considering the rain sweeping in from the tropical storm.
    Tenish 4 was a medium range passenger plane converted into a cargo plane. At one time, the 222-inch diameter circular fuselage seated eight passengers across. Now it was mostly gutted and wide enough to hold two LD3 cargo containers side-by-side. The passengers were comfortable in a space right behind the pilot and copilot. The plane used the same basic engines and major systems as the DC-10 and had a cruising speed of nearly mach 1. This would be the longest trip Tenish Packaging had made by far. The exhausting trip with two layovers would not bother Mary Catherine. She’d specifically assigned two of her best and most trusted pilots to this flight.
    “I wish you were younger,” Hector hissed, looking over Mary Catherine. “This is such a long flight, and it could be so much more interesting if the sight of an old woman didn’t sicken my manhood.” His three associates laughed and agreed with Hector, who was now rubbing his bushy mustache and showing his nicotine stained teeth.
    Mary Catherine unbuckled her seatbelt, and with all the feminine wiles she could muster walked seductively to Hector, surprising him and his associates. Their catcalls added to the heat of the moment. She bent down till she was just a few centimeters from his face. That close she noticed his blackheads and oily skin and could smell and taste his stale breath.
    “Hector.”
    “ Si, mi puta, ” he said to muffled laughter in