by AJ Basinski
“How much is that?” I asked.
“Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. And if she doesn’t pay it then, the house will go into foreclosure and she could lose the place completely.”
As I listened to this, I realized that’s a very powerful incentive to get the money and maybe a powerful incentive for murder.
“Anything else?” I asked.
“Yeah, we also were able to determine that Ms Pierce travels to Las Vegas almost every month. Although we are still learning information, we think she may have run up quite a large tab at several casinos on the Las Vegas strip, Bellagio, MGM, Paris, Paris, you name it. She really seemed to spread the wealth around as far as we can tell. She is quite the gambler. Favors craps, of all things. Unusual for a woman, I think. And apparently quite unlucky from what we have learned so far.”
Of course, this information was consistent with what Elsa had told Shipley and me, that she had just returned from Vegas.
“Do you know how much she owes the casinos in Vegas?”
“No, they are pretty tight-lipped about stuff like that. But we surmised it was probably a lot.”
“Makes sense.”
“One other thing,” the agent continued, “the company has been receiving numerous phone calls from Ms Pierce.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yes, she seems to be very anxious to get her hands on the money. “
“Now, is that unusual for a beneficiary to be calling like that?” I asked.
“No, except for one thing. She must have called ninety or a hundred times. Somedays she would call 10 times or more. Now that is unusual.”
“I see,” I said. “Did she give a reason why seemed so anxious to get the money?”
“All she said was ‘I have some bills to pay off and I really could use the money.’”
I thanked the claims agent and decided that my next stop would be Las Vegas to try to get a handle on Elsa’s debt out there.
Chapter 35
Before I traveled all the way across country to Las Vegas to track down information on Elsa’s debts to the casinos, I thought I would see what I could find out by phone first. I had some contacts in Vegas who might be helpful. One of them was Charlie Wilson. Charlie had once been a very good friend of mine when we both worked together on the LAPD. He had retired from the force several years before I did. We had kept in touch on occasion and so I knew he had taken a job as head of security at the Bellagio Hotel in Vegas. I was hoping that he could clue me in on how much debt Elsa had run up at the casinos. I called him the next morning.
When he answered, I said, “Hello, Charlie, this is Mario Morales.”
“Mario, you old sonofabitch. Why in the hell are you calling me so damn early? Must be real important.”
I looked at my watch and saw that it was nine a.m. here in Florida but I forgot that Charlie was three hours behind in Las Vegas.
“Sorry to bother you this early, Charlie, but I forgot about the time difference and it is kind of important.”
“Just let me go into the other room, Mario. The wife is still sleeping. I don’t want to wake her up. She has one helluva temper if she gets wakened up too early. And I gottta bear the brunt of it. ”
A few seconds later Wilson came back on the line. “Okay, I’m in the den where she can’t hear me. Shoot, Buddy.”
I got right to the point: “Charlie, I’m calling about a double homicide down here in Florida that I’m investigating.”
“Whoa,” Wilson said. “ What do you mean ‘investigating,’ I thought you retired a couple of years ago and somebody said you were working security aboard some damn cruise ship out of Florida.”
“Yeah, that’s all true, but I’ve been asked by a DA down here to help out with this investigation. A man and a woman were shot and killed. Then the killer dismembered the bodies and threw them in the ocean stuffed into ice coolers. The bodies eventually surfaced a few days later.”
“Sounds pretty damn gruesome. How can I help you out here?”
“The case was originally being handled by Ed Shipley…”
“Wait a second. That’s not the same lousy bastard who used to work homicide on the LAPD?”
“One and the same,” I had to admit. “He’s now the chief of police down here on Palm Island.”
“Ed Shipley. That no good sonofabitch is so lazy, he couldn’t solve the USA Today crossword puzzle if his life depended upon it, yet alone handle a murder investigation. I’ll bet the whole damn thing is all fucked up.”
“Pretty much, Charlie.”
“I don’t envy you, working with Shipley.”
“Actually I’m not working with him any longer. The DA pulled the homicides from him. I’m working for the DA now.”
“Good. What do you need?”
“Well, Charlie, here’s the kicker. It seems one of the suspects is a woman, a good friend of one of the victims, another woman. I’m trying to find out if she had run up some high debts in Vegas. That’s the rumor but I need to confirm it, if I can. There’s an insurance policy worth a million dollars at stake, so that could be a major incentive for murder.”
“I get the picture. What’s the woman’s name?”
“Elsa Pierce.”
“No shit. I’ve certainly heard of her. They brought her in for questioning just a couple of weeks ago because she ran up a pretty heavy tab at the Bellagio. A couple of the execs got a little panicky because of her. She seemed like a nice old lady, but she had terrible luck with the dice. Terrible. The hotel took a note back from her and some sort of mortgage on a bed and breakfast she owned down in South Florida. I don’t know all the details of the paperwork, the lawyers would. But I know that the casino was really squeezing her to make sure they got their money back one way or the other.”
“Any idea how much she owes?”
“If I remember correctly, a couple hundred grand. She was a big loser at craps.”
“Charlie, thanks. I owe you one.”
“Boy, you sure do. The old lady’s up now and there will be hell to pay for getting her up this early. Usually she isn’t up to ten or eleven at the earliest.”
Chapter 36
After I hung up the phone with Charlie Wilson, it occurred to me that maybe Elsa’s actions were a little too obvious. If she had murdered Amanda and Sullivan, wouldn’t she try to keep a lower profile until things settled down rather than hound the insurance company for the insurance proceeds? By doing that, it certainly put her in the spotlight. I also still doubted that she could physically lift both of them and dump their bodies in Palm Island Sound after dismembering them.
Later that day, I went into Janosz’ office to give him a report on what I had learned so far.
“Let me ask you this,” I said to Janosz as soon as I entered his office. “Do you really think that Elsa is capable of murdering two people, including her best friend, for the money? And even if she were able to shoot them both, I can’t believe that she is capable of taking care of the bodies after the shooting. She can’t be more than 5 foot 4 inches tall. And I doubt she weighs more than 135 pounds. Physically, I’m just not sure that she could stuff both of them in ice coolers and toss them into the Gulf of Mexico.”
“I’ve thought of that, of course” said Janosz. “I believe she may have had some outside help.”
“Like who?” I asked. “That dumb ass maintenance man at the B&B, Mike Schafer?” Of course, I had previously told Janosz about the very unsatisfactory meeting Shipley and I had with him.
“Possibly,” said Janosz, rubbing his chin. “I’m having a background check done on him to see if he has any type of criminal record. Also, I’m thinking about bringing him in for questioning. The other alternative is Zeke Chandler.”
Of course, I had my own reasons to suspect Zeke. That odd conversation with him about Sun Li’s letters was the prime reason I had to suspect he had some involvement in what was going on. But I just couldn’t understand why he would go along with something like that.
I was beginning to wonder if Elsa might still be the prime suspect, after all. Maybe I had been too quick to dismiss her.
But what about the Cuban gold? How did that all fit into this? And the CIA, where they really involved in this investigation as Shipley had said? And could that gold have been the motive for the murders and not the insurance proceeds?
Chapter 37
There was one more person I needed to talk to who just might be able to clear up some of these remaining questions. As it happened, I knew a retired CIA agent, who lived in the Tampa area, about 90 miles or so north of Palm Island. If anybody would know whether the CIA was involved and suspected someone had found the Cuban gold, it was Jimmy Longstreet. I was sure that even though he had been retired for some time he had kept his hand in the old boy, spy network. Guys like him never really quit. Like General MacArthur, they just fade away.
Longstreet’s great, great grandfather or something like that, had been a Civil War general on the rebel side. His whole family since then had been involved in various forms of military and government service.
The next day, I drove up to Tampa on I-75. I had called ahead and left him a message on his answering machine that I would like to come and see him with some questions, but I didn’t hear back from him. So this whole trip might turn out to be another wild goose chase. But I thought I would just go up and see if I could meet with him. I had somehow obtained his address, which was a rural delivery number. His small bungalow was located near a large trailer park just off the Interstate.
There was no doorbell so I had to bang on the wooden screen door. After about ten knocks, the door opened. I could see that Longstreet was very surprised to see me when he opened the door. He looked rather disheveled with his gray hair all messed up and a few even more unruly strands hanging down into his eyes. He had a four, maybe five day salt and pepper stubble. He couldn’t be more than 70, but he looked at least ten years older.
“Can I help you,” Longstreet said very calmly. I was sure he did not recognize me. Apparently, retirement had taken its toll on him. I’m sure carrying around all those secrets for 40 years at the CIA didn’t help either.
“Jimmy, don’t you remember me? It’s Mario Morales.”
“Am I supposed to know you?” he said.
This really seemed like this was going to be another wild goose chase. But I thought I would give it a try to help jog his memory.
“Jimmy, remember when you were a station manager in Mexico City for the CIA, we had worked together on a couple of homicides of Mexican nationals in LA. I was a lieutenant then with the LAPD homicide division.”
Without batting an eye, Longstreet rubbed the stubble on his chin and said, “Come on in.”
It was as though a light had turned on suddenly in his head or maybe this whole appearance thing was just an act. I never did find out for sure.
Chapter 38
“My eyesight’s not as good as it used to be,” Longstreet said. “Have a seat,” he said and motioned towards the kitchen table.
I sat down at the table which was covered in yellow Formica and was sitting in the middle of the kitchen. It reminded me of my grandmother’s old table back in Salinas where I grew up. Every Sunday, after Mass, we would go to her house and have roast beef for dinner at noon.
I looked around Longstreet’s kitchen and saw that the kitchen sink was filled with at least a week’s worth of unwashed, dirty dishes. A gray cat was sitting on top of the pile of those dishes, blissfully asleep.
Longstreet sat down on the chair opposite me and said, “What do you want to know?” Jimmy was not the kind of guy who wanted to sit around and chit chat.
I explained to him that I was working for the DA in Pine County on the investigation of the murders of Sullivan and Amanda Blakely. I could see his eyes glaze over as I went over the details of the murders. I should have known better. He was a big picture kind of guy. I was sure that I had lost him again. That is, until I mentioned that Ed Shipley had also been involved in the investigation of the murders.
I could see the fire in his half -closed eyes as he thundered, “Shipley, that no good sonofabitch. Is he still posing as a goddam CIA spook? If he is, he ought to be wiped right off the face of the earth.” I decided that it was best if I just sat there and listened to his blistering attack on Shipley. As a practical matter there was nothing else I could do anyways.
After he had settled down a little, Longstreet explained that Shipley had been claiming to be a CIA agent for at least ten years. Longstreet said that he thought he had unfrocked him years ago as a complete and utter sham.
“But I guess bastards like that never give up. Once they start, they can’t seem to give up the masquerade. Hell, the bastard probably even believes he was an agent. I’ll tell you this. If I saw the sonofabitch now I would shoot him myself. Is that all you needed?” he said rather abruptly.
I could clearly see that he was getting impatient with me. But before I left, I said I had one more question that I needed to ask him.
“Jimmy,” I said, “What can you tell me about the gold that was given to the Cuban Bay of Pigs refugees? Someone said it was like 7 million in US dollars way back in 1961.”
“Ha ha,” Longstreet laughed loudly. “That old urban myth. I thought it was long dead. Did that sonofabitch Shipley tell you that?”
I nodded my head.
“There is no frigging gold! There never was any. We made up the whole damn thing ourselves. It was all about misinformation. We wanted to undermine the Castro regime.” Jimmy laughed even louder than before. With that he unceremoniously ushered me out of the house. As I walked to my car, I could still hear him laughing. “Gold! Christ, what will they think of next.”
Chapter 39
As I drove back to Palm Island, I mulled over the conversation with Longstreet. I wasn’t sure that his memory was very trustworthy. But still, two sources had now confirmed that there was no gold, both Longstreet and my Cuban friend back in the refugee club in Miami. And that CIA horseshit. Why was Shipley playing at being a CIA agent and feeding me this line of crap about hidden Cuban gold?
I knew I had to report back to Janosz what I had learned. So I called his office and asked for a meeting. I drove into Fort Myers and went to his office.
“Look, Tom, I haven’t exactly been leveling with you.”
“What do you mean?” he said.
“Well, I was told some information that might be pertinent to the case that I couldn’t tell you.”
“Oh, yeah. What’s that?”
I could see that Janosz was annoyed that I had held some information back from him.
“When I first came on the island and decided to help Shipley out with the murder investigation of Mark Sullivan, I met with Shipley who told me this story about the Cuban refugees who had participated in the Bay of Pigs invasion and who supposedly had hidden a ton of gold on Palm Island after the failure of the invasion. He also referred to a CIA agent named Bill Simpson who was involved in the investigation.”
Janosz was nodding his head as I was speaking and a small smile seemed to creep over his face.
“Go ahead, tell me more,” Janosz said.
“Shipley swore me to secrecy and I was afraid to maybe blow the cover of this CIA agent, Simpson.”
“Stop right there, Mario,” Janosz said. “I know all about the so called hidden gold.”
I was shocked when I heard this.
“You’re kidding me?” I managed to say.
“Yeah, that story about the hidden gold, that’s one of those crazy urban myths that had been disproved years ago. Shortly after the invasion, the CIA was all over Palm Island looking for the so-called gold. Bottom line: there is none. Neither here nor anywhere else. The CIA never gave the refugees any gold and neither did the US government. So there is nothing to find.”
“That’s interesting,” I said, still a little befuddled as to how everyone but me seemed to know that this whole gold thing was just some ela
borate hoax. “This confirms what two other people had told me. Why would Shipley tell me that story then?”
“Mario, I hate to tell you this, but I think that Shipley was using you. He used the gold as a diversion to keep you away from the reality of what was going on here.”
Chapter 40
After I had checked out of the Bonita Inn, I had rented a small cottage along Palm Island Road facing the bay. It was not as nice as my room the Inn, but it would have to do for now. Janosz had told me that the County would pay for the cottage while I was working for him. I had moved out of the Bonita Inn and I had carried my bag into the lime green cottage, on the bay side of Palm Island Road, not too far from the seafood restaurant where I had met with Shipley and where we had been shot at. It was only days ago but now it seemed like months.
The cottage consisted of two rooms, a small living/dining area, and a bedroom with a lumpy single bed and a short dresser with a mirror on top. A small kitchen, if you can call it that, was tucked into one corner of the living area. The kitchen was furnished with a sink, a stove top and a very small refrigerator, the type you see in college dorm rooms everywhere. Just big enough to hold a six pack of Coors Light, which I had picked up at the Publix just across the bridge on Cape Coral. It would have to do as my home for the next few weeks or so. I, of course, was used to tight spaces because I had been living most of the time on the cruise ship for the last couple of years. And this cottage was certainly bigger than my stateroom aboard the Mardi Gras.
Later that same day, I was sitting and eating a turkey breast sandwich at the small table that doubled as both my desk and dining table when my cell phone rang. It was Janosz I could see from the caller ID on my phone. I assumed that he was calling to discuss those developments further that we had just talked about in our meeting earlier that day. I was wrong. Very wrong, unfortunately.