Found

by H. Terrell Griffin

  J.D. sat quietly, her eyes downcast, thinking. It reminded me of the many times I’d sat in a courtroom waiting for a jury to return with a verdict that would change the life of my client, either for good or ill. If the trial was on criminal charges, a jury decision one way would send my client to jail, while a different decision would free him. There’s an old saying that no matter what the jury decides, the lawyer goes home. I might not be going home from this one. J.D. literally held my life in her hands. If she decided that we were done, my life would be done. There was no way to start over again. Self-pity is not a desirable trait in a man, but there you have it.

  “One question, Matt.”

  “Yes?”

  “If this involves Jock, was he protecting his family?”

  I thought about that for a minute. “I’m not saying that Jock is involved at all, but if he were, the answer would be yes. He would have been protecting his family. In the only way he knows how. Direct confrontation.”

  “Okay, Counselor,” she said. “You’ve made your case. You win. We have a deal.”

  “J.D., it will never be a win-lose proposition with us. We both win. We still have us. And that’s the most important thing in my life.”

  “And in mine,” she said.

  “You want all the details?”

  She nodded, and I told her about Jock’s evening. When I finished, she asked, “What about Peters? I haven’t seen anything about his arrest.”

  “Sims is keeping that under wraps. Jock talked to him this morning. Sims is pretty sure that Jock took those guys out, but he thinks Jock did society a favor. He wants to wring Peters dry before anything comes out about his arrest. And it turns out that Peters is not the big boss. Bonino is still out there. Peters says he doesn’t know who Bonino is and Sims believes him. So does Jock.”

  “If it wasn’t Peters who sent the thugs after us, who was it?”

  “That’s an interesting question,” I said. “Maybe the real Bonino just bypassed Peters and came after us. Sims had a heart-to-heart with Caster and all he knows is that King hired him to find Bud Jamison. And Peters says he never heard of King.”

  “Is Sims pretty sure he got everything out of Caster?”

  “Yeah. David’s been at this a long time. I won’t say there wasn’t some coercion applied to that little snake Caster, but I think he gave it all up.”

  “Matt, I feel lousy about this. I know Jock did what he did to protect us, but it’s still murder.”

  “I don’t think so. I could make a hell of an argument to a jury that it was self-defense. If he hadn’t taken the gunmen out, they’d have killed him.”

  “They probably would have,” said J.D., “but Jock set the whole thing in motion. The dead guys wouldn’t have been after him if he hadn’t confronted Peters.”

  “Call it a preemptive strike. Based on all the facts Jock had, Peters was Bonino and Bonino was trying to kill you and me. And remember, those facts all led to the reasonable conclusion that Jock reached, that Peters and Bonino were the same person. Besides, Jock did not commit a crime by confronting Peters, and when the bad guys came after him, guns drawn, mind you, he had a right under Florida law to kill them. He would have been immune from prosecution.”

  “What about the first guy?” she asked. “He was standing next to his car not bothering anybody.”

  “But he had threatened Jock in the restaurant, and Peters had told Jock that the man was waiting in the parking lot to kill him. If Jock had just walked out of the restaurant without a weapon, he’d have been the one lying dead on the driveway.”

  “He could have taken the facts to law enforcement instead of going all vigilante.”

  “Put yourself in the position of the cops who Jock would have gone to see. He couldn’t tell them how he came upon the information he had without compromising DeLuca and probably getting him killed. Even if he could tell them what DeLuca said, Jock had no way to prove it. What would you have done in those cops’ position?”

  She sat quietly staring at me, biting her lower lip. “I would have started an investigation,” she said.

  “And by the time the investigation was finished, you and I would be dead, and Peters would be untouchable because the police would never have been able to prove anything.”

  She nodded. “You’re probably right. I bet you were hell on wheels in front of a jury.”

  I laughed, relief pouring over me. “I had my moments,” I said. “And, Peters is in custody and spilling his guts to David Sims. A lot of mangy heads are going to roll before this is over, a lot of bad guys are going to be guests of the state for a very long time.”

  “I’m glad you told me. Maybe I overreacted. I’m sorry.”

  I felt like I’d dodged a bullet. You never know when a heap of trouble is going to drop in on you. It always comes as a shock. Sometimes you can fix it and sometimes you can’t. I thought I’d fixed this one. For now, at least. “Nothing to be sorry about,” I said. “I didn’t expect anything less of you.”

  “This was our first fight.”

  “I didn’t like it.”

  “Do you think you’d like a little makeup sex?” she asked.

  “That seems a bit shallow, but if it’ll make you feel better, I’m game.”

  She laughed, that big one that turns me into Silly Putty, and then she led me into the bedroom.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  I was running hard, the packed sand squeaking beneath my shoes. Tuesday morning was enveloping the key, the early light gentle and the air cool as I raced south on the beach. I pulled up at my usual turnaround point and began to walk back north. I was perspiring heavily under the sweatshirt I wore, breathing hard, trying to slow it down, catch my breath.

  J.D. was sleeping in, drained, I thought, from the rigors of the day before. She had a lot on her mind, and I hadn’t helped with the revelation about Jock’s part in the deaths in Lakewood Ranch. We still had no idea where Bud Jamison was and, a week after Ken Goodlow’s murder, we were no closer to a solution.

  I decided to spend the day looking into the ownership of the property in Avon Park. I wasn’t sure what significance that had to anything, but a cabin full of weapons on property owned by a man in Orlando, who may or may not exist, raised a number of interesting questions. When I added in the fact that Wayne Evans, the personal representative of Jim Fredrickson’s estate, was also involved in some manner with the owner of the property, a bevy of questions began to swirl around in my prefrontal cortex.

  I was troubled by the fight J.D. and I’d had the night before. The problem was that we were both right and somebody had to give in. It was the kind of situation where compromise was impossible, the positions of each of us too important and entrenched. One of us had to surrender, and I felt strongly that it couldn’t be me. I wouldn’t put Jock in danger. At the same time, J.D. had a job to do. She was a cop and knowing about a crime and not reporting it went against everything she believed about her role in law enforcement.

  I thought I’d convinced her that Jock probably could not have been prosecuted under the circumstances, but I knew J.D. was never at ease with Jock’s methods. They came from different worlds. J.D.’s had rules and procedures and protocols and statutes and constitutions and it was the one to which every civilized society aspired. Jock’s world was a jungle where only the fittest and wiliest survived, a place that J.D. saw as an alternative universe, a murky and deadly and lawless realm. Sadly, Jock’s world was the necessary counterweight to J.D.’s, a place where good people did bad things to ensure that a society governed by the rule of law could survive and flourish. It was hard to reconcile the two worlds, but each was indispensable to the other. Jock and J.D. understood the dichotomy, but only Jock had accepted the essentiality of both. I wasn’t sure that J.D. would ever be able to reconcile herself to a world where the law was meaningless and death was a cheap commodity.

  I picked up the pace, settling into an easy jog, and headed for home. J.D. was puttering around in the kitc
hen making coffee. “Good run?” she asked.

  “Yeah. It’s going to be a beautiful day.”

  We ate bowls of cereal and finished our coffee, and J.D. left for the police station. I showered and as soon as nine o’clock rolled around, I called Evans’s law firm and asked to make an appointment to see him as soon as possible.

  “I’m sorry,” said the overly officious secretary, “but Mr. Evans is tied up the rest of this week.”

  “I’m a lawyer,” I said, “and I think Mr. Evans would want to meet with me. Can you see if he can squeeze me in today for about fifteen minutes?”

  “May I tell him what this is in reference to?”

  “No.”

  “I’m sorry, sir. He’ll need to know why you want to see him.”

  “Put him on the line and I’ll tell him.”

  “Sorry, sir. I can’t do that.”

  I remembered a time when lawyers weren’t such stuffed shirts that you couldn’t get through to them on the phone. I think the ones who hide behind a phalanx of receptionists and secretaries and paralegals are insecure little weasels who think their law degrees confer some special aura on them and they’re not sure anyone else sees it. Thus, they surround themselves with sycophants who limit access to those who are used to paying their outrageous fees, those poor fools who equate their lawyer’s ability with the amount of money he is able to extort from his clients. Guys like that just piss me off.

  “Please tell Mr. Evans that I will be in his office in one hour. I have some pictures of him taken over in Avon Park. He probably looks better in clothes than he does in these pictures. If he won’t see me, I’ll give them to an enterprising reporter at the Herald-Tribune.” I hung up. I didn’t have any such pictures, of course, but I was betting that Evans had been in that old house in the grove and that he’d been naked at least part of the time while the women were visiting.

  The law firm was housed in a new building designed by an architect with no vision. It was essentially a three-story cube set in an expanse of asphalt parking lot just off Main Street in downtown Sarasota. Inside, the furnishings were plush and homey. A beautiful woman, probably in her early thirties, manned the receptionist desk. “May I help you, sir?”

  “I’m Matt Royal to see Mr. Evans.”

  She smiled. “He’s expecting you. Have a seat, and I’ll let him know you’re here.”

  I sat in a brocaded wing chair while the receptionist dialed a number and murmured into the phone. “It’ll be just a few minutes, Mr. Royal.”

  Geez. This guy wanted to play games. Make me wait for a while. It would show me who was in charge. “Never mind,” I said. “Please tell Mr. Evans that I have an appointment with a newspaper reporter and I can’t wait.” I turned and walked out the door. I stopped at the edge of the parking lot. I was pretty sure someone would be coming out the door shortly.

  Sure enough, the front door opened and a harried middle-aged woman came trotting out. “Mr. Royal?” she called to me. “I’m Joyce, Mr. Evans’s secretary. He can see you now.”

  I walked over to her. “Joyce,” I said, “I want you to give your boss an exact message. Do you need to write it down?”

  “Oh, dear. I don’t have anything to write on.”

  I tore a sheet of paper from the yellow legal pad I was carrying and gave it to her. I pulled a ballpoint pen from my pocket, handed it to her. “Write this, please. ‘Evans, you’ve got two minutes to get your sorry ass down to the parking lot. Get a move on.’ You got that, Joyce?”

  “Yes, sir.” She was smiling. “I got it down verbatim.”

  “He’s a bit of an ass, huh?”

  She smiled some more. “More than a bit,” she said, “but he pays well.” She turned and walked back toward the building.

  In less than two minutes, a diminutive man came hurrying out of the door. He was wearing a white dress shirt, red patterned tie, and beige trousers held up by suspenders. He stood about five feet six and didn’t weigh one hundred-thirty pounds. He had bright brownish-orange hair that was going quickly to gray, dark bags under his eyes, and a scowl on his face. He looked a bit like an aging Pekingese dog. He stormed up to where I was leaning on my Explorer. “What’s the meaning of this?” he asked, waving the yellow sheet of paper in my face.

  “The meaning of this is that you’d better not ever keep me waiting again. I’m used to dealing with assholes, so I take people like you in stride. But you try to fuck with me again and I’m going to take you down. You got that?”

  “Take me down?” His voice was rising. He wasn’t used to being confronted by anybody, much less in a parking lot by a guy wearing cargo shorts, boat shoes, and a ratty sweatshirt with a picture of a boat on it. “What the hell do you mean, take me down? You said you were a lawyer.”

  “I am a lawyer.”

  “You don’t look like one.”

  “Neither do you,” I said. “You look like a little boy playing dress up.”

  “Do you really think insulting me is going to get you anywhere?”

  “Mr. Evans, I’ll be surprised if you still have your law license by the time we get finished. You’ll probably be in jail, and I assure you those big ole boys in your cell block are going to be, shall we say, intrigued by you.”

  The color drained from his face. One minute it was red with anger and agitation and the next minute it was as pale as a corpse. He looked smaller, deflated, beaten. I’d have felt sorry for him if I didn’t suspect he was hip deep in some illegal activities that may have led to the death of Jim Fredrickson and the disappearance of his wife, Katie.

  “I’ll pay you for the pictures,” he said. “But this is extortion. You could go to jail, too.”

  “Mr. Evans,” I said, “the pictures aren’t for sale. What I want is for you to explain to me why you’re the personal representative of Jim Fredrickson’s estate, why you haven’t completed probate yet, why you sold the grove property for such a pittance, what your relationship is to Robert Hammond, the man who bought the property, what you’ve done with the ten million dollars in cash that should be in the estate, and what you do at the grove house over in Avon Park when you and a bunch of your buddies get together.”

  “Who do you represent?” he asked.

  “Nobody right now,” I said. “But I think you’re screwing with the Fredrickson estate and are probably involved in a bunch of other activities that the police will want to know about.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.

  I grabbed him by the tie with one hand and used the other to open the rear door of the Explorer. I threw him into the backseat and said, “If you move, dickhead, I’m going to shoot you.”

  “What’re you doing? Where are you taking me?” Panic had crept into his voice, but he didn’t move from the seat.

  I stood there for a moment, reality sinking in. I was about to kidnap this little moron and that could result in me losing my law license and the next several years of my life. I crawled in beside him on the back seat. “I just want to get you out of the sun, Mr. Evans.”

  “Let me out of here.”

  “You’re free to go.”

  “What about the pictures?”

  “I think I’ll sit on them for now. Give you time to think things over a little.”

  “What do you want from me?” he asked.

  “I just told you. Information.”

  “How do I know that you’ve really got those pictures?”

  “You don’t.”

  “Why should I believe you?”

  “You can trust me, Mr. Evans. I’m a lawyer.”

  “Right,” he said with a hint of incredulity.

  “Are you going to get out of my car?” I asked.

  He looked at me a bit sheepishly and got out without another word. I got in the front seat and drove out of the parking lot and toward Longboat Key. Other than rattling that arrogant little piece of dog droppings, I hadn’t accomplished a damn thing.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
>
  I crossed the John Ringling Bridge just before noon. I called Jock and got his voice mail. “It’s almost lunchtime,” I said, “and I’m going to the Old Salty Dog. Meet me there if you’re hungry.”

  I drove a quarter way around St. Armands Circle and headed south, crossing the causeway to Lido Key. I turned right on Ken Thompson Parkway just before the New Pass Bridge, crossed onto City Island and found a parking spot about a block from the restaurant. I wasn’t surprised. It was, after all, the season, and half the people in the Midwest had come to the Suncoast for the winter.

  The Old Salty Dog is a throwback to a time when waterside restaurants flourished in coastal Florida. It sits on the edge of New Pass, which separates City Island from Longboat Key. The view is of green water and the flora of the Quick Point Nature Preserve that takes up the south end of Longboat. The pass is always heavy with boat traffic, fishermen heading for the man-made reefs, and people just out enjoying the weather. The restaurant’s deck is open on all sides and the gentle February breeze off the water was cool enough to make me glad I was wearing a sweatshirt. I had to wait for a table and was standing near the bar watching the boat traffic and sipping from a bottle of Miller Lite when Jock strode up.

  “Hey, podna. Got your message. How long do we have to wait?”

  “They said about ten minutes, but who knows,” I said. “You got anywhere you’re supposed to be?”

  “Nope. Just asking.”

  “Where were you?”

  “I was in a meeting with one of our agents at a Starbucks in Sarasota. I’d turned my phone off and got your message just as I was getting back into my car.”

  “What is the world coming to?” I said. “Secret agents meeting in Starbucks.”