Free Fallen Mangrove (Jesse McDermitt Series Book 5) by Wayne Stinnett Page B

signs over the few stores that were occupied. Around the grocery store was an eclectic assortment of bail bondsmen, pawn shops, and Cuban restaurants, with heavy bars over the windows and doors.
    Finding the right office, he pulled into a parking spot and shut off the engine, which chugged a couple of times in the stifling heat before finally wheezing to a stop. He got out and looked around. The man he was meeting, Chase Conner, had once worked for the Florida Department of Revenue. He’d been fired just a few months earlier for accepting a bribe from an undercover Florida Department of Law Enforcement agent and now ran a small accounting business. It was shortly before he was fired that Conner had approached him about bugging the boat of another man they were both going to meet, concerning the sale of Confederate gold bars to the Florida Historical Society. Conner represented both the state and the IRS. He hadn’t wanted to go along, but Conner had been persuasive, suggesting that if the man on the boat got wind of another treasure find, they might be able to get to it first and get rich selling the treasure on the black market. People all over Florida were getting rich doing a lot less , Owen Bradbury thought. Looking at the eleven gold bars which the Society had purchased from the man on the boat every day didn’t make it any easier to resist.
    Bradbury, Assistant Curator of the Florida Historical Society in Orlando, Florida, tried the glass door to the office and found it locked. There was a button on the door frame, so he pushed it and heard a bonging sound from somewhere inside. He waited and could barely see movement through the heavily-tinted glass of the door. The lock clicked and the door opened, releasing a blast of cold air and revealing a tall, sandy-haired man of average weight in a blue three-piece suit.
    “Mister Bradbury,” Chase Conner said as he pushed the door wider. “So nice to see you again. Hope the drive down wasn’t too bad. Come in, there’s some people who have already arrived that I’d like you to meet.”
    The inside of the office was darker. As Bradbury’s eyes adjusted from the white hot sunlight of south Florida, he made out the four people sitting in the office. A woman sat in a comfortable-looking chair in front of a desk, along with a man in a suit. A third chair to the woman’s left was empty, as was the chair behind the desk.
    There were two other men sitting on a sofa against the wall. These men caught Bradbury’s attention immediately. Both were large men; he could tell they were tall even sitting down. Their light sports jackets didn’t conceal the fact that both men were heavily muscled, with broad shoulders, thick, corded necks, and barrel chests. The men had serious-looking faces and wore nearly identical crew cuts. Heavy brass bookends , Bradbury thought. The man sitting with the woman stood up and came across the room, extending his hand.
    “Mister Bradbury, my name is Valentin Madic. I’m pleased to finally meet the brains behind this endeavor.”
    Bradbury took the man’s hand, which nearly crushed his own. Madic was only slightly taller than Bradbury, who stood at five feet eight inches. A first guess would put him in his late thirties, but looking closer, Bradbury could tell he was older, probably in his fifties. He was trim and looked like he took great care in his appearance, though his cheeks were pocked with acne scars. His eyes drew Bradbury instantly. They looked like two vacant ice-blue orbs, never moving, showing no emotion. They fixed Bradbury with a steady, appraising gaze.
    What Bradbury now had in his briefcase gave him the confidence his appearance didn’t otherwise show. He felt the confidence of knowledge grow inside him. The fact that Madic had called him the ‘brains behind this endeavor’ confirmed it in his mind. Finding what he’d found earlier in the day on his computer, Bradbury actually felt more confident than he’d ever felt before.