The Dollar-a-Year Detective

by William Wells

  He is silent, then says, “I have no reason to kill anybody.”

  His tone has gone from surprise to anger to subdued. I continue: “How’s your son’s Little League team doing? The Marlins.”

  After a moment, he says, “Tell me what you want, asshole.”

  “I’d really like a nice fishing boat, just like your Whaler. What’d that cost? Twenty, thirty thou, fully rigged?”

  “Maybe we can work something out,” he says.

  Which an innocent man would never say. Kramer is thinking maybe I’m stupid enough to meet him somewhere secluded for a cash handoff so he can kill me.

  Which is just what I have in mind, without the killing part.

  “Let’s do thirty grand,” Kramer says. “They’ll throw in a trailer for that.”

  42.

  Showdown at the Fruit Stand

  Florida is one of eleven states that require two-party consent to record a phone call. Illinois is another. Otherwise I could have pressed Kramer more and maybe have his recorded confession to the Henderson murders. Even without a direct confession, his agreeing to pay me thirty grand in hush money would have been enough to get a search warrant to look for evidence, such as the .22-caliber pistol he used for the killings. And I know where I would have told them to look.

  Absent a recording, I instructed him to meet me at eight o’clock at a secluded location off Immokalee Road at a fruit stand in front of an orange grove. Marisa and I have been there a number of times to buy oranges. The stand also sells homemade fruit pies. I haven’t had one of those excellent pies in a while, so, if I was meeting anyone but a suspected killer, I would have set the get-together for daytime, when the stand is open.

  I’m having lunch with Marisa at Mama Gina’s, an Italian restaurant we like on Bonita Beach Road. During the course of the meal, I casually mention that I’m meeting Alex Kramer in a few hours, and why.

  She puts her fork down in midbite and gives me a look that could melt the varnish off a century-old church pew.

  “So this is maybe a farewell lunch?” she asks.

  “No, no, nothing like that. I’m just keeping you up to date on the case. As a courtesy.”

  “And courteously letting me know that you might be killed so I can take care of Joe, notify your family and business associates, make the final arrangements … By the way, do you prefer burial or cremation?”

  In an attempt to lighten things up, I say, “I have claustrophobia so I’d go with cremation.”

  “That’s not funny, Jack. Honestly, if you survive, I might just kill you myself and be done with it.”

  “Fair enough,” I say, which is obviously not the response she is looking for because there is not a lot of conversation during the rest of the meal, or on the drive home, and there is no dessert at her house either.

  Back on my boat, I call Cubby at home to tell him what’s going on. He already knows what I do about Alex Kramer and the Little League situation.

  “Pick up a Kevlar vest at the station,” he says. “But if you get a hole in it, I’ll have to charge you for it.”

  “Sure, no problem, Cubby. Collect the cost from my estate.”

  “I can do that,” he tells me. “By the way, are you leaving that cherry Vette to anyone in particular?”

  This is the usual before-action cop banter, but Cubby does like my car, so it’s not impossible he really wants to know.

  “My will says that the car is to be sold and the proceeds donated to the Lee County Humane Society.”

  “That’s a real shame, Jack. Good luck. And I was kidding about the vest.”

  But not about the car?

  I get to the fruit stand at seven thirty to check out the location. Immokalee Road runs east of US 41 in Naples into farm country, with orange groves and fields of wheat, alfalfa, hay, potatoes, and soybeans. It is a very poor area, with tracts of run-down migrant worker housing.

  The fruit stand is located about ten miles south of the town of Immokalee, with a dirt road running through the orange grove to a barn. The owner of the grove and his wife, both of whom I’ve met, live in a house about ten miles away from the property, so no one will be around except the occasional passing car.

  Not for the first time, I’m operating out of my jurisdiction. Wade Hansen was the Naples police chief when I solved his serial killer case. Now he’s the mayor. I called to tell him what I was up to within his city limits. He said, “That’s fine, Jack. Just clean up your mess.”

  I park back near the barn, check my Smith & Wesson, and sit watching for headlights. In addition to the Kevlar vest, I’m wearing a wire from Fort Myers Beach PD, hoping to record Kramer’s confession. That kind of recording does not require his consent. Obviously he does not intend to give me thirty thousand dollars. It’s unlikely a fishing guide has that kind of cash on hand. If he’s guilty, he intends to kill me. If not, we’ll have an interesting conversation about Little League baseball.

  By eight o’clock, Kramer has not shown up. By eight thirty, still no Kramer. I’m about to pack it in when I see the headlights of a truck coming up Immokalee Road. The truck is moving slowly. It passes the fruit stand, slows, backs up, turns onto the dirt road, and stops.

  I see Kramer get out of the truck and look around. I turn on my headlights, get out of my car, and shout, “Walk toward me and bring the cash. No gun.”

  He gets out of the truck holding a white canvas boat bag. It doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes to conclude that the bag contains a gun, not cash. I’m holding my S&W along my right leg.

  He starts walking toward me. He’s taking a big chance here, but he probably assumes I’m some jamoke trying for a big score who he can handle easily.

  When he’s twenty yards away I say, “Far enough.”

  He stops and says, “So what’s the next move?”

  “You’re going to put that bag on the ground and drive away. If it contains thirty thousand dollars, you’ll never hear from me again. If not, expect the police to come calling.”

  “How do I know you won’t keep asking for more?”

  “Because I know you’re a killer and it’s never a good idea to get on a killer’s bad side.”

  “Got that right,” he says, smiling in the headlight beams.

  “First tell me, was it worth it, killing the Hendersons, just so your son could get more playing time?”

  “It wasn’t just the baseball thing. That fuckstick Larry Henderson thought he was hot shit, being a bank president. When I tried to talk to him about my son, he blew me off like I was a nobody. To guys like him, people like me don’t exist.”

  “Well, you sure taught him a lesson. Too bad about his wife though.”

  “Collateral damage,” he says.

  I’ve now got enough on tape to convict him. But I’m making the mistake of thinking about that and not watching him closely enough as he reaches into the boat bag, comes out with a gun, and says, “Here’s your cash, dipshit,” as he fires a round right at me.

  The bullet hits me center mass, a pretty good shot with the headlights in his eyes. The impact on my vest knocks me over backward. I roll to my left and as I am about to shoot, his head explodes in a red mist. He sinks to his knees, then topples to the ground.

  I look behind me, where the shot came from. A man is standing at a door on the second floor of the barn, the place where hay bales are loaded into the loft. He’s holding a rifle.

  He waves and I wave back. I hear sirens coming down the road and see Cubby Cullen’s SUV turn into the dirt road, followed by two cruisers. Cubby drives around Kramer’s truck, parks near my car, gets out, and says, “I hope no one hit that Vette.”

  “Your sniper’s a pretty good shot, Cubby.”

  He looks at the barn. “That’s what, maybe fifty yards? Piece of cake for Tony. He wins the Florida Law Enforcement sharpshooter tournament every year.”

  “I had him myself,” I say. “But thanks for setting up your man.”

  “Of course you had him, Jack. Not that i
t matters now, but did you get a confession on tape?”

  “I did.”

  He comes over, taps me on the chest, and says, “I told you about damaging my vest.”

  It hurts. I’ll have a major bruise there. “Take it out of my pay,” I tell Cubby.

  Police reports are public records. When a story about Alex Kramer killing the Hendersons appears in the Fort Myers News-Press, the national news media instantly goes into a viral feeding frenzy, equating the Little League angle to the Texas cheerleading moms.

  I want no part of that, so Cubby agrees to do all the interviews. He looks pretty spiffy in his dress uniform while appearing remotely on all of the cable and network news shows. Cubby cites the excellent detective work done by his department, with the assistance of an unnamed “consultant.” He’s redacted my name from my report.

  I’m fifty-one dollars to the good for my work with Fort Myers Beach PD—my one-dollar salary plus the fifty-dollar chip the slot-machine woman gave me in the Immokalee Casino. I spend the money wisely, by taking Marisa to dinner at the Veranda, that nice restaurant in Fort Myers favored by Lance Porter and Vivian Tolliver. I don’t tell her that Alex Kramer shot me. Why spoil such a pleasant evening?

  43.

  A (Relatively) Happy Ending

  A story that begins with two dead bodies found on a sailboat drifting in Pine Island Sound cannot have a completely happy ending. All I can do is report where things stand at the end of this story and let you decide if the taxpayers of Fort Myers Beach got their money’s worth from this retired homicide detective.

  I’m not Sherlock Holmes or Jack Stoney, both of whom solve cases by brilliant detective work, and both of whom are fictional characters. In the real world, most cases are solved using informants, or, when the perp confesses, which does happen, sometimes.

  Oil Patch is nearing completion of its deep-water drilling platform in the gulf, due east of Fort Myers and right at the new fifty-mile coastal limit. News coverage of the project is mostly positive, given that two hundred jobs have been created and that a number of Florida construction companies are making sizable revenues building the rig. Sergey Pavlov’s ownership of Oil Patch has not been discovered, and I see no reason to out him. Why make an enemy of a friend of Vladimir Putin?

  Citizens for a Sane Environment is alleging that Oil Patch plans to use fracking to extract the gulf oil. The company denies that. I hear that the controversy is good for the Citizens fund-raising effort.

  Lance Porter is still serving his time in the Union Correctional Institution. If I wanted him to, Cubby Cullen could use his law enforcement connections to check up on how Porter is doing, including what job he’s been given and who his cellmate is. But I’d rather imagine the worst for that scumbag.

  Lawrence and Marion Henderson’s children, Nathan and Elise, were adopted by Larry’s brother, Tom, and his wife, Lynette. I attended Nathan’s ninth birthday party, held at one of those bounce houses in Fort Myers. After a trip to my chiropractor the next day I felt just fine.

  Dr. Mitchell Gordon is expected to be elected and there’s talk he’ll be appointed to several key committees in the Florida House of Representatives when he is. He has a high approval rating, is respected by legislative members on both sides of the aisle, and everyone says he has a bright future in politics.

  Chester Kravitz, principal owner of the Top Hat Casino in Atlantic City, was arrested by the FBI and charged with the theft of the Arrowhead Casino’s money. All of Arrowhead’s funds have been returned to the casino’s account. Sarah Caldwell was able to get a search warrant, and the money trail led right to him.

  Stoney’s Dilemma, the Bill Stevens novel I edited, debuted at number one on the New York Times best-seller list, as have all the books in the series.

  The son who said that the Manatee National Bank would regret repossessing his father’s fishing boat, because the father was killed a few years ago by a sheriff’s deputy during a gunfight, made good on his promise. He walked into a branch bank with a gun and got away with five thousand dollars from the teller drawers, making no effort to hide his identity from the security cameras. Then he robbed four more branches throughout the region over the next several months while hiding out. The robberies stopped. The son was never apprehended. In the old days, he might also have taken armloads of clock radios and stadium blankets.

  Business is good at The Drunken Parrot and at the Arrowhead Casino. I knew a guy in Chicago who owned a grocery store. He always said that, whether times are good or times are bad, people gotta eat. It seems that the same is true about drinking and gambling.

  Happiness is relative. You find it wherever you can, whenever you can, and enjoy it while you can. That’s all any of us can do and, if we’re lucky, it’s enough.

  44.

  Eileen

  Eileen was no lady.

  It was September. By the time Marisa, who was a lady, and I decided to gather up a few irreplaceable possessions, including my cat, Joe, and evacuate from our homes in Fort Myers Beach, a small town on a barrier island off Florida’s Southwest Gulf Coast, it was too late.

  I blame the National Hurricane Center in Miami for misleading us. Gotta blame someone other than my own stupidity.

  Eileen began as a tropical depression in the Caribbean and quickly spun up into a named tropical storm and then upped the ante into a Category 1, then a 2, and 3, and then a 4, and finally a killer 5 as it headed on a northwesterly track, causing catastrophic devastation to the Virgin Islands, Hispaniola, and the southern coast of Puerto Rico before it was predicted to jog northeast toward Florida’s east coast, and then straight north toward coastal Georgia and the Carolinas.

  It was truly a monster storm, the largest and most powerful in modern history, growing into “the size of France,” the chief meteorologist at the Weather Channel said. Marisa was worried that the storm would hit Cuba, where she had friends and relatives, but it was the agreement of the American and European tracking models that it would not.

  At my bar, The Drunken Parrot, all of the big-screen TVs remained tuned to CNN and the Weather Channel as we tracked Eileen’s progress. We felt sympathy for those in the way, and relief that we would apparently not be among them.

  Governor Anderson was on TV stating that Eileen would cause “massive devastation” wherever it made landfall and declaring a mandatory evacuation for Florida’s east coast. The wait in lines at gas stations was already three hours long when the evacuation was ordered, with supplies depleting, and I-95, the only highway from Miami to Maine, turning into a parking lot.

  On Wednesday, the Weather Channel told us that Eileen was likely to impact Florida’s east coast on Sunday. No sweat. A day at the beach for Fort Meyers Beach.

  I woke up Friday morning, turned on Mr. Coffee, slid a strawberry Pop-Tart into the toaster, opened a can of tuna for Joe, and punched the power On button on my galley TV’s remote. I was shocked and awed to find that Eileen had altered its course. It was now heading toward Cuba and then projected to impact the Keys and the southwest Gulf Coast late Saturday or early Sunday as a powerful Cat 4.

  Oops.

  As I was finishing my Pop-Tart and pondering my dilemma, I heard a voice cry out, “Somali pirates! Prepare to be boarded!”

  As far as I knew, there were no Somali pirates in Estero Bay. A thud hit the deck and Phoenix tilted to port. It was my pal Cubby Cullen, the town’s porcine police chief. He came through the door into the main cabin and said, “Is the coffee still hot?” Without waiting for an answer, he found a mug in the cupboard.

  “I’d think that ’63 Corvette of yours could outrun the storm, Jack, but you should hit the road post-haste.”

  “Joe and I would go with Marisa in her Range Rover, but I imagine that I-75 is already jammed up and we wouldn’t want Eileen to blow right up our tailpipe.”

  He sat at the galley table with his coffee and said, “Well, then, you all are welcome to shelter at the Lee County Public Safety Center on the mainland. It’s buil
t to withstand a Cat 5.”

  “We’ll take you up on that,” I said. “With my undying gratitude.”

  “Will there be enough gratitude left over to help with another homicide case?” he asked, knowing that, even without his hospitality during the storm, the answer would be yes.

  I refilled my coffee cup, took a seat at the table and asked, “What’ve you got?”

  He looked at his watch. “I’ve got a lot to do before the storm hits, so I’ll give you the executive summary now and more detail later.”

  I had a lot to do too. I had to find a safe place for my car, then go to my bar and to Marisa’s house and office to help her prepare. We had lots of bottled water at the bar and I had enough batteries for my flashlights and lanterns to handle the inevitable power outage and breakdown of other municipal services, post-storm. If the hurricane hit our little island head on as anything more than a Category 2, as it now seemed it would, there wasn’t much chance that my houseboat or waterfront bar would survive the wind and storm surge. But, as they said in the marines, you prepare for the worst and hope for the best. In the corps, it always seemed to be the worst.

  “Ever heard of Henry Wilberforce?” Cubby asked.

  “You mean the rich old guy who lives in Naples?”

  “Henry was probably the richest of the rich,” Cubby said.

  “Was, as in no longer alive, I take it.”

  “Correct.”

  “And, I also assume, he died of other than natural causes, or you wouldn’t be telling me, a former homicide detective, about it.”

  “Also correct.”

  “Naples isn’t in your jurisdiction, Cubby. They have their own police force, with their own detectives.”

  “The Naples police chief is a friend of mine. He called to ask if I knew of anyone with substantial experience in murder investigations because his detectives rarely catch a homicide and, as far as homicides go, this one’s a doozy. I told him about you and volunteered you to take a look at the case file and to give an opinion. Given that we all survive the hurricane, of course.”