Bitter Legacy: A Matt Royal Mystery (Matt Royal Mysteries)

by Griffin, H. Terrell

  Charlie hoped that somebody in the bar would know something, and because Charlie was one of them, would tell him things they wouldn’t tell the other deputies. He knew these men, most of them unemployed or underemployed. They picked up odd jobs when they could, working the truck farms and fish camps, crewing on the commercial boats out of Everglades City, sometimes moving on for a few months or years, looking for work out of state, supporting their meager lives, ashamed to be on the dole, not willing to accept the government’s charity. They were hard men, proud in their way, perhaps an anachronism in this day of federal and state largesse. And they were mostly honest, although some of them couldn’t understand why providing a commodity, like marijuana, to people who wanted it could constitute a crime. Some of them had done prison time for hauling the bales in from the Gulf, but they’d not taken to the prison culture. They didn’t consider themselves criminals, although they understood that the law took a dim view of some of their activities. They knew that going in, and figured they’d gambled and lost. They’d pay the price up at Raiford or over at Glades Correctional Institution, and then get on with their lives.

  No matter where they went, prison or to another state for work, they always found their way back to Belleville. They had felt the same magnetic pull home that Charlie Foreman had. Maybe they weren’t that different from the great sea turtles that came year after year to lay their eggs on the same small piece of beach on which they’d hatched. Another deep breath, and he walked through the front door into the fanciful gaiety of a bar with patrons deep into the evening, their brains already pickled to one degree or another.

  “Hey, Charlie,” roared one of the men at the bar. Others turned to look at the deputy and joined the chorus of greetings, smiling, laughing, as if Charlie were the bringer of good cheer.

  SUNDAY

  CHAPTER NINE

  I pulled into the parking lot of a downscale chain hotel next to an off-ramp of I-75, out east of town. I’d driven Jessica to the Tampa airport, hugged her goodbye, and watched her board the plane to Atlanta, the first leg of her trip to Paris. I headed south toward Sarasota, nursing a sense of relief I didn’t want to feel.

  We’d had a quiet evening, dining at a small Italian restaurant near a shopping mall on Tamiami Trail. I told her about the attempts on Logan’s life. She was concerned, but didn’t know what to do or say. Our conversation became awkward, the verbal meanderings of accidental lovers who had shared a fantasy and were now moving inexorably toward reality.

  We’d met in Europe in the fall, and she’d visited her friends Patti and Russ Coit on Longboat Key at Christmas. We’d become lovers, or at least we’d made love, while she was enjoying the holidays. She’d accepted my invitation to come back in the spring. Here we were, our trip finished, and she was off to France, and her actual life. I think we were both a little relieved. It’d been fun, but neither of us was cut out for a long-term relationship, especially an intercontinental one.

  Our last night together was sedate. We made love, but it seemed more like an obligatory denouement after our explosive week on the water. I hoped Bill Lester had removed the bugs from my bedroom. I didn’t want his guys thinking this was my best effort.

  We drove to the airport in the early afternoon, making small talk, interspersed with silences that filled the car. We planned to keep in touch, to see each other again. I think, though, that we both knew that wouldn’t happen. We’d put the past week back into that lockbox of memories that we all have, those bits of joy that we occasionally examine and wonder briefly why we didn’t make more of them.

  I went directly to Logan’s room and knocked. Marie Phillips opened the door. She was wearing shorts, a sleeveless blouse, and was barefoot. She was tall, blonde, and had a ready smile, a rangy body, and a warmth of character that drew men in like the tentacles of a friendly octopus. She was Logan’s girl.

  “I’m glad you’re back,” she said, as she hugged me. I looked over her shoulder to see Logan lying on the bed, eyes glued to a ball game on the flat-screen TV sitting atop a cabinet, his beloved Red Sox playing an exhibition game. He was wearing nothing but shorts and I could see a large bruise in the middle of his chest. He was five feet eight inches tall, gray hair turning to bald, maybe ten pounds overweight, a face that radiated good cheer and friendliness, a smile that reminded you of his Irish genes, a voice that carried the accents of his native Massachusetts.

  “’Bout time you got here,” he said, never taking his eyes off the game.

  “I’ve missed you, too, buddy.”

  Two double beds took up most of the room. There was an easy chair in the corner with an ottoman tucked in front. An open suitcase lay on a stand under the window overlooking the interstate.

  “Palatial outpost you have here,” I said.

  “I asked for a suite at the Ritz-Carlton and Sarasota PD offered me a cell at the county lockup. We compromised on this.”

  “What happened?”

  “I got shot.”

  “Yeah. Who’d you piss off?”

  “Nobody that I can think of. Except Ham Jones. I told him the Gators are going to suck this year.”

  Ham was a mutual friend, a local restaurateur who loved his wife, Lorraine, his dog, Gator, and the University of Florida football team, not necessarily in that order. He wouldn’t hurt a fly, but I made it a point to never say anything negative about Gator football. Logan had no such restraints after a few Dewars.

  I laughed. “Tell me what happened.”

  “I don’t know, Kemo Sabe. Somebody’s taking shots at me. I don’t know who or why. You got any ideas?”

  A knock on the door interrupted us. Marie went to the door, opened it to the length of the security chain and said, “Yes?”

  “Maintenance, ma’am. We’ve got a leak in the bathroom above you. I need to check your bathroom for any problems.”

  Marie shut the door and undid the security chain, opened it wide and said, “Come in.”

  A man entered the room. He looked around, holding his tool kit at his side, his eyes scanning the room. He had an equipment belt around his waist, a leather one that maintenance men wear, screwdrivers and wrenches sticking out of the pouches. He reached into it and pulled out a pistol. He pointed it at my chest, and said, “Hello, Mr. Royal.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  The man was not tall, about five feet eight, and slender. He had the wiry look of a runner, or of someone who doesn’t get enough to eat. His skin was dark, tanned to almost brown by the relentless sun bouncing off water. His hands were scarred, thick with calluses, nails bitten into the quick, some yellowed by nicotine. He had a shock of sandy hair falling toward a face that seemed a little off center. His nose, broken sometime in the past, leaned to the right, his mouth, when he spoke, curled on the left showing large yellow teeth, his lips cracked by the sun, his eyes, one smaller than the other, were the deep blue of frozen seawater, and as cold. A small dollop of spittle collected at the ends of his lips.

  “I didn’t get your name,” I said.

  He grunted. “Didn’t give it.”

  Snappy comeback, I thought. “What do you want?”

  “You need to come with me, Mr. Royal.”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “Because I’ll shoot you if you don’t.”

  “Okay. Where do you want me to go with you?”

  “Some guys I know want to talk to you.”

  “About what?”

  “They didn’t tell me.”

  “How did you find me?”

  “Wasn’t hard. I followed you when you left your house. Didn’t know you were going to take me on a ride through Tampa.”

  “What about these other people?” I gestured toward Logan and Marie.

  “Don’t know them and don’t care. They just told me to bring you.”

  I knew the pistol he was holding on me. I had one just like it. Unfortunately, mine was in my house. The gun was a Walther PPK .380 ACP that weighed little more than a pound. He was holding it
in his right hand, and I could see the safety lever on the left side of the gun just above the trigger. The safety was still on. Either he didn’t know much about guns, or in his excitement he’d simply forgotten to take the safety off.

  I took a step toward him. He backed up, raising the gun. I took another step. He backed into the closed door, his gun pointed at me. I took another step and he tried to squeeze the trigger. I reached out, grabbed his wrist, twisted it hard while grasping the pistol with my other hand. He let go, crumpled to the floor, put his head in his hands and sobbed.

  I was stunned. I sat on the bed, the gun pointed at the sandy-haired man, the safety off. Logan and Marie were quiet. I said, “He forgot to take the safety off.”

  I leaned down to the assailant. “This isn’t your regular job, is it?”

  “No.”

  “Who are you?”

  “Jube Smith.”

  “You’re a commercial fisherman.” It wasn’t a question.

  “Yes.”

  “Cortez?”

  “Yeah. But there ain’t much running out of Cortez these days.”

  Cortez was an old fishing village that sprawled across either side of Cortez Road at the foot of the bridge leading from the mainland to Anna Maria Island. It had once been a prosperous place inhabited by hardworking men and women who made their livings from the sea. Changing times, new fishery regulations, and farm-grown fish were slowly killing off the village. Many of the fish houses had disappeared, victims of a failing economy, and the boats had moved elsewhere or were simply left to rot at their anchorages, their usefulness ended with the demise of the ancient fishing culture that had sustained this part of Florida for generations.

  “Who hired you?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. Some guy in a bar gave me a hundred bucks and told me there was nine hundred more if I brought you to him. Never said his name.”

  “What bar?”

  “Lil’s. The one what used to be called Hutch’s.”

  “On Cortez Road?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I thought that was closed.”

  “The county took the property from some guy who got busted and then sold it to Lil.”

  “Describe the guy.”

  “Lil? She’s a woman.”

  “I mean the guy who hired you to come after me.”

  “I dunno. Tall, taller than you, early thirties maybe, shaved head, two hundred pounds or so.”

  “Have you ever seen him before?”

  “No.”

  “Why did he pick you to do his job?”

  “I dunno. We talked at the bar for a while. I told him I was looking for work.”

  “Where were you supposed to take me?”

  “To my house. He said he’d come by this evening to see if I had you.”

  “How were you to contact this guy?”

  “I wasn’t. He’d come to me.”

  “Where’d you get the gun?”

  “He gave it to me.”

  “What in the world would make you do something like this?” I asked.

  “I haven’t worked in six months, and my wife’s got cancer. I need the money.”

  “Do you know Captain Cobol, runs the Mary T out of Cortez?”

  “I know who he is.”

  “All right. Get your sorry ass out of here,” I said. “You tell whoever sent you to come himself next time. I’d like to meet him. I’ll hold onto his gun for him.”

  “You’re letting me go?”

  “Go see Captain Cobol. Tell him I sent you. He may have some work for you.”

  The man rose slowly, his feet under him, sliding his back up the wall where he had been huddling, his hands in front, palms up.

  “Don’t let me see you again,” I said.

  “No, sir. Thank you, Mr. Royal. I won’t forget this.”

  He turned, opened the door, and was gone.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Charlie Foreman sat at the desk in Jason Blakemoore’s office, a stack of files on either side of the scarred blotter. He’d been going over them, one by one, looking for a thread, a clue, something to go on. The men and women at the Swamp Rat Bar the night before had nothing to give him. No one saw the shooting. They heard the blast of the shotgun and some of them had run outside to see what the noise was all about. A few of these saw a retreating car, but their description matched those given to the deputies who had canvassed earlier. Everybody had seen something different.

  There’d been a cabinet full of files, some of them going back five or six years. The file drawers were open, the files dumped haphazardly. The desk drawers had been pulled out, emptied into the growing pile of litter spreading across the floor.

  He’d been in Jason’s office all morning, a space adorned with an ancient shag carpet, the color faded into an indeterminate mess of spilled coffee, sodas, and God knows what else. The walls were covered with a walnut veneer that had been fashionable thirty years before. His diplomas from the University of Florida hung from nails, their heads rusty. Pictures of Jason in the football uniform of the local high school and the university were hung from the other walls. The single window that looked over the Dumpster in back by the small parking lot was filthy, dust and bird droppings partially obscuring the view, such as it was. Hot air and the smell of garbage wafted through a broken pane in the window.

  Charlie had checked the office the day before, soon after he’d identified the dead man across the street from the Swamp Rat Bar as Jason. He’d called for the coroner and his meat wagon. He’d retrieved a rain slicker from the trunk of his car and covered the body, taking only Jason’s key ring from the pocket of his trousers. As soon as one of the road deputies arrived, Charlie walked over to the office. Everything was in order. He looked around quickly, locked the door and returned to await the coroner and the crime-scene technicians.

  When he’d returned to the office early the morning after Jason’s death, Charlie was surprised to find the place in a mess. Somebody had been there during the evening, probably while Charlie was in the bar, drinking beer, schmoozing the locals, looking for a lead. That lead must have come in through the window, waltzed into Jason’s office and turned it upside-down. He was looking for something. That was obvious. But what?

  Charlie set about putting the files in some order. He was sure he hadn’t gotten every piece of paper where it belonged, but he’d look at everything. Most of the paper was tacked into the file with Acco clips, but there were still a lot of loose pages spread around the office.

  The lawyer never discarded anything. It had been a poor practice, and Blakemoore had never hired a secretary. That was clear from the mess in the files, notes without order, pleadings and letters stuffed without thought to chronology, an occasional bill marked paid, many apparently still owing.

  Charlie had taken a break for lunch, ate a hamburger at the small café down the street. It hadn’t set well on his stomach and the onions had given him heartburn. He popped another Rolaids and continued to read. He still had a large pile to dig through. He scanned one and put it in the stack that he’d finished. Most were thin files, a testament to the meanness of a law practice in this one-lawyer town.

  Charlie was tired and had decided to call it a day. It was mid-afternoon and with the exception of the lunch break, he’d been closeted in this dim office all day. He pulled a final file from the stack, glanced at the name. Abraham Osceola. Must be one of the Indians from the reservation, he thought. Another misdemeanor of some sort, traffic stop, public drunkenness, something like that.

  He opened the file. There was one piece of paper, a yellow lined sheet from a legal pad, paper clipped to the edge of the file. The client’s name was written at the top and a date, five days before, a Wednesday. The notes didn’t mean much. They read:

  Moultrie Creek Treaty

  Large Res.

  Black Sem.

  Mineral rights

  Codicil?

  Matt Royal, Longboat Key

  Nothing else. It didn’t
mean anything to Charlie. He had no idea who Matt Royal was and wasn’t even sure where Longboat Key was. Somewhere down in the Keys, he figured, but he could never keep those little islands straight. Maybe Royal would know something. He picked up the phone, dialed 411, and got the information operator for Longboat Key. She gave him a number with a 941 area code. That surprised Charlie. The Keys were in the 305 area code; 941 was up in the Sarasota area. He’d check out the map when he got home and find out just where the hell Longboat Key was. When he had a little more information, he’d call Royal, see if he knew anything.

  Charlie rubbed his face, stretched, felt the need for a beer. He surveyed the office. Still a mess. He’d come back tomorrow. Finish looking at all the paper. He didn’t expect much, but he had to start somewhere.

  He pulled the lone sheet of paper from the Osceola file, folded it, tucked it into his shirt pocket, turned out the lights, locked the office, and walked toward the town’s lone bar.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Logan hadn’t moved. He was still lying on the bed, a quizzical look on his face. “What the hell was that all about?” he asked.

  “Guy looking for a job,” I said.

  “Huh. Messy way to do it. He could’ve gotten killed.”

  Marie, who had sat on the side of the bed when Jube appeared with his gun, was pale and a little shaky. “Matt, that guy could’ve killed you.”

  “Not with the safety on,” I said.

  “Why did you let him go?” Marie asked. “Shouldn’t we call the police?”

  Sometimes a load of crap falls on a guy’s head and no matter what he does he can’t get out from under it. He gets sick for a week and can’t work. He gets fired and can’t find another job. It’s a dreary progression, a downhill spiral. His life is tenuous at best, living from payday to payday. Miss one paycheck and he never catches up. His wife gets sick and the medical bills roll in like a calamitous tide, inexorable in their crushing power. He has no money, can’t pay, so the wife doesn’t get the medicine that takes the edge off the pain. There’s no safety net. No family, friends tapped out. Hopelessness rides his shoulders. Desperation hangs like a miasma, thick, impenetrable, unyielding, and ultimately deadly. So he shows up in a hotel with a borrowed pistol trying to make enough to cover the next pharmacy bill.