At 8:45, as always, he returned to the apartment, quickly showered and changed into his daily seersucker, and at nine sharp turned on the lights and opened the front door. Two clerks arrived first and Bruce set them to work. Thirty minutes later, he went to the basement and unlocked the metal door leading to Noelle’s storage area. Jake was already there, tapping small nails into the back of an ancient chaise. Mercer’s writing table was finished and off to one side.

After the pleasantries, Bruce said, “Our friend Ms. Mann will not be buying the table after all. Noelle wants it shipped to an address in Fort Lauderdale. Knock off the legs and find a crate.”

“Sure,” Jake said. “Today?”

“Yes, it’s a rush job. Hop on it.”

“Yes, sir.”

18.

At 11:06, a chartered jet took off from Dulles International. On board were Elaine Shelby and two of her associates, and Lamar Bradshaw and four special agents. En route, Bradshaw spoke again to the U.S. Attorney in Florida, and Elaine called Mercer, who was holed up in a local library trying to write. She said she was finding it impossible to be creative at the bed-and-breakfast. Elaine thought it best if she stayed away from the bookstore for a couple of days, and Mercer assured her she had no plans to go near it. She had seen enough of Bruce for a while and needed a break.

At 11:20, an unmarked cargo van parked on Santa Rosa’s Main Street across from the bookstore. Inside were three field agents from the Jacksonville office. They aimed a video camera at the front door of Bay Books, and began filming every person who entered and left. Another van, with two more field agents, parked on Third Street and began surveillance. Their job was to film and monitor every shipment in and out of the store.

At 11:40, an agent dressed in shorts and sandals entered the front door and browsed for a few minutes. He did not see Cable. With cash, he bought an audio version of Lonesome Dove and left the store. In the first van, a technician opened the case, removed the eight CDs, and installed a tiny video camera and a battery.

At 12:15, Cable left with an unknown person and walked down the street to lunch. Five minutes later, another agent, a woman also in shorts and sandals, entered the store with the Lonesome Dove audio case. She bought coffee upstairs, killed some time, returned to the ground floor, and selected two paperbacks. When the clerk went to the rear, the agent deftly returned the Lonesome Dove case to the audio rack and took the one next to it, The Last Picture Show. She eventually paid for the paperbacks and the audio and asked the clerk about a good place for lunch. In the first van, the agents stared at a laptop. From the inside, they now had a perfect frontal view of everyone entering the store. They could only hope that no one would want to listen to Lonesome Dove anytime soon.