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

by Griffin, H. Terrell

  The first thing the officer saw was a crumpled cop, feet pointing toward the door. Then his brain registered a man in scrubs, his back to the comatose patient, a small pistol with silencer attached, pointing at his own chest.

  The cop was a surprise the man in scrubs hadn’t bargained for. Life was about to get complicated. Kill a cop and the heat of the chase became intense. Every cop in Florida would be looking for him. The thought of killing a policeman did not bother him. But cops were notorious for going after those who killed one of their own. It was probably a self-protection mechanism, a way to discourage anyone else from killing a lawman. The hell with it, he thought. It was this guy’s time to go. He raised his pistol and shot the cop in the chest.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Kintz left. The cruisers in front of my house moved on. The neighbors went about their business. It was mid-morning. Quiet had returned, the nasty business of death receding into the past like the outgoing tide. J.D. was standing by the remaining unmarked police car on the street, talking into her cell phone. She closed it up and waved at me.

  “Have you had breakfast?” I called to her.

  She shook her head.

  “We’re headed for the Blue Dolphin if you want to join us.”

  “I’ll meet you there,” she said and climbed into her car.

  I drove to the Market and picked up Logan and Jock. They had not eaten, but Jock had drunk a pot of coffee and Logan had nearly cleaned out the tomato juice stores. He refused to drink coffee.

  We drove to the Blue Dolphin, took a booth, and ordered coffee and water and tomato juice for Logan. I made sure they sat next to each other and the empty seat was next to me. J.D. came through the door, spotted us, walked over, and sat down. Tracy stopped by to take our food orders. I introduced her to J.D.

  “Nice to meet you, Detective,” Tracy said. “I heard you were coming aboard. Welcome to the key.”

  J.D. thanked her. Tracy turned to me. “I heard there were some problems at your house this morning, Matt.”

  There are no secrets on our island. News, good and bad, travels fast, becomes part of the idle gossip found in every small town. The stories build on conjecture and supposition and exaggeration until finally there is little resemblance to truth. There is no animosity in the gossip, just people talking and speculating about their neighbors.

  “No big deal,” I said. “Somebody tried to blow it up.”

  “What? Your house?”

  “Yep. And me too.”

  “Crap, Matt. You’d better be careful.” She looked at Jock. “Good to see you, Jock. You ought to come around more often.”

  Jock laughed. “I would if people didn’t keep trying to blow up Matt.”

  “I know what you mean.” She looked at Logan. “Eggs over hard and tomato juice?”

  He nodded.

  She took our other orders and left for the kitchen.

  I said, “The guy driving that go-fast didn’t look like a biker. Do we have more than one outfit involved in this?”

  “Maybe,” said Logan. “We’ll probably know more when they ID those jerks. If the bald guy was the same one who tried to hire Jube Smith, chances are he’s not part of the biker crowd. I’m willing to bet the shithead with the launcher was a biker. He hadn’t washed his hair in a month.”

  “You’re probably right,” I said. “I’d like to know what the bald guy was doing in Cortez. Could he be one of the out-of-work fishermen?”

  “I don’t think so,” said Logan. “If he were, I think Jube would have known him, or at least recognized him.”

  Logan was right. People drifted through our coastal communities, staying for a short time, and moving on. Some came and found a home and stayed, but others were here for a few days or a few weeks and then they were gone without notice. They’d become regulars in one of the bars, and suddenly they didn’t show up again. They’d gone back to Little Rock, or Indianapolis, or Grand Rapids. No notice of their coming or of their leaving. They were like the flotsam and jetsam found in the sea, floating with the currents, unconcerned about direction, but always moving. Maybe the bald guy was one of those lost souls, but I didn’t think so. I thought he had come to our shores with a specific goal in mind. Murder. Maybe he was just the recruiter for someone else. There were always men in any town ready to kill for the right price. Sometimes that price was ridiculously low.

  We finished our breakfast, talking without direction, three old friends catching up. Jock had been in Europe on some business for his agency. His golf game was getting better. Logan was glad to be back among the living. Several people stopped by to speak to Logan, all relieved at his survival. We introduced J.D. to them and she was welcomed again and again.

  “Tell me, Jock,” J.D. asked at one point, “what is this agency you work for?”

  “It’s just one of those alphabet agencies that Washington has too many of. Not a very important one.”

  “Hmmm,” she said. “I wonder.”

  Jock grinned. “How did you come to be the new guy on the key?”

  “My mom died and left me her condo and I was tired of Miami. This seemed like a quieter place. I might have been wrong.”

  “Don’t let this mess fool you,” I said. “We’re usually a very quiet little piece of paradise.”

  “I’ve got to go,” she said. “Day two on the job. I hope nobody else gets killed today.”

  We paid our check and were walking to my Explorer. I’d have to take it to the body shop later. My insurance company was not going to be happy with me. My cell phone rang.

  “Matt, this is David Sims.”

  “How are you, Detective?”

  “I was doing pretty good until Bill Lester called to tell me you and your buddies were armed and dangerous again.”

  I laughed. “We’re trying to keep it all on the island this time.”

  We’d had a huge mess on our hands last spring and Sims had been a big help. He was a senior detective on the Manatee County Sheriff’s department. He told me that he’d heard about the problems in both Sarasota and Sarasota County and hoped it wasn’t going to intrude into his jurisdiction.

  “I hope not, too, David,” I said. “We just need a little help from your department.”

  “Lester filled me in. I was surprised that he knew anything about this op. It was a closely held secret. I’m the only one in our department who knows anything about it. The feds seem to trust me since I used to be in the Secret Service.”

  “I think Bill just figured that if you could take down a number of the bikers you must have had somebody on the inside. I don’t think he knew anything.”

  “That’s a relief. I can’t go into the details, but I did talk to the Drug Enforcement Agency, which talked to Jock’s people. Since he’s involved, they’re willing to help. The undercover guy was a DEA agent. If y’all will go to the DEA office in Tampa, they’ll set up a secure video link so that you can talk to whom you need to. You gotta go this afternoon. Two o’clock.”

  “Thanks, David. We’ll get moving. Any problem with Logan joining us?”

  “No. I told them you guys were joined at the hip.”

  “Thanks.” I hung up and told the others what Sims had said.

  “I need to go to that meeting,” J.D. said.

  I looked at Jock. He nodded. “I’ll square it,” he said.

  “You’ll square it, Jock?” asked J.D. “What the hell kind of agency do you work for?”

  “Talk to Bill Lester, J.D.,” Jock said. “He’ll tell you what he thinks you need to know.”

  “He’d better think I need to know it all.”

  “He probably will,” I said. “I think he’s scared of you.”

  She laughed and waved goodbye as she walked to her car. She looked over her shoulder. “Pick me up at the station when you’re ready to go to Tampa.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  We went to Logan’s condo to pick up some much-needed clothes. Jock and I waited in the rental car. Logan was gon
e for about three minutes and came back with several changes of clothes in a large laundry bag and a bottle of Dewars in his hand. He also had a nine-millimeter semiautomatic Beretta strapped to his belt.

  “Whiskey and a gun,” he said, as he climbed into the car. “We’re ready for war.”

  “You expecting war?” I asked

  “Somebody ransacked my condo.”

  That got my attention. “What do you mean? Searched it?”

  “Yeah. And they weren’t subtle about it. It’s a mess.”

  “Anything missing?”

  “Nothing that I could see offhand. They might have taken my bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue, but then again, I may have drunk it. My gun was in plain sight on the top shelf of my closet. They searched the closet, but either they weren’t interested in the gun or somehow they missed it.”

  “They didn’t take my M-1 when they went through my place,” I said. “They weren’t just there to steal something. They were looking for something specific. We need to call the police.”

  “I already did. They’re on the way. I also called Joy. Left her a message to get her butt over here in the morning and clean the place up.”

  “We’ll wait for the police,” I said.

  “We don’t have to,” said Logan. “I talked to Bill Lester and he said to go on. The manager will let him in, and he’ll get a statement from me later.”

  “What the hell is going on?” Jock asked.

  “Beats me,” said Logan, “but if I find the son of a bitch who did this, I’m going to string him up by the balls.”

  I hoped it wouldn’t come to that.

  We stopped by the police station to pick up J.D. and then drove to my house to get the banged up Explorer. We were going to drop it at the body shop on Cortez Road on our way to Tampa. I was alone, driving across the Cortez Bridge, Jock, Logan, and J.D. following me in Jock’s rental. My phone rang. Bill Lester.

  “Matt, I just got a call from the Sarasota police chief. Somebody tried to take out Osceola this morning. At the hospital. He’s okay.”

  “What happened?”

  “A guy dressed as a doctor knocked the cop at the door unconscious and dragged him into the room. It was during the hospital shift change and nobody noticed. The officer’s relief showed up, saw that the first guy wasn’t at his post, and went into the room, weapon drawn. The bad guy took a shot at him, but it was a small-caliber pistol and the slug lodged in the cop’s Kevlar vest. It knocked him off his feet, but he got a shot off as he was going down. Plugged the intruder right through the heart.”

  “Shit. Any ID on the shooter?”

  “Not yet. I’ll let you know when we get something.”

  “How about those two from this morning?”

  “Not yet, but the coroner will run the prints this afternoon. We should get a hit. I can’t believe these guys haven’t been in trouble before. Where are you?”

  “On my way to Tampa, to the DEA office. Sims came through.”

  “Right. J.D. filled me in. She asked about Jock, too.”

  “What did you tell her?”

  “That he was one tough son of a bitch, a good guy who had lots of pull in Washington. And that he’d die before he let anything happen to you.”

  “Sounds about right. Let me know if anything turns up.”

  “I’ll call you as soon as we get IDs on these guys.”

  I pulled into the body shop, filled out the paperwork, left my insurance info, and climbed into the backseat of Jock’s Pontiac. We pulled out onto Cortez Road, heading for Highway 41, I-275, and Tampa. The DEA was housed in a high-rise on Zack Street in downtown, a couple of blocks from the federal courthouse.

  Shortly after noon, we crossed the Sunshine Skyway Bridge, suspended almost two hundred feet above Tampa Bay. A tug was pushing a large barge seaward, passing slowly under the span, the barge riding high and empty. It looked like a toy from our vantage point. Men were working on the bridge’s superstructure, applying a coat of paint to the golden-colored support cables that gave the bridge its identity. I always get a queasy feeling when I cross this marvel of engineering. What if it gave way, fell into the abyss, taking me with it? Its predecessor had done that in 1980 when a ship ran into one of its supports. The span dropped, taking several cars and a bus with it. A lot of people died that day and I always thought of their horror when I crossed the new span.

  We drove through St. Petersburg and into downtown Tampa. Jock found a parking lot, and we walked the two blocks back to the building where we’d find the DEA office. We left our weapons in the rental’s trunk.

  J.D. seemed a little surprised at all the hardware we’d tucked away. “I hope you’ve got permits. It wouldn’t do my reputation any good to be caught with a bunch of gun-toting lawbreakers.”

  We were greeted by a pretty receptionist and taken immediately back to a conference room. A large video screen took up a wall at one end, hooked by wires to various computer stations. “Agent Delgado will be with you in a moment,” she said. “Can I get you anything to drink?”

  We declined and she left. The door had hardly closed before a swarthy man opened it and entered the room. He was wearing navy slacks, a white button-down dress shirt, crimson tie. A pistol was on his hip and a badge and ID card hung from his neck. He wasn’t tall, but was muscular, like a guy who lifts weights regularly. He was smiling a toothy smile, his mouth framed by a mustache and goatee.

  “I’m Dan Delgado, the special agent-in-charge of this office,” he said, reaching out to shake our hands. “Which one of you is Mr. Algren?”

  “That’d be me,” said Jock, raising his hand. “Call me Jock.”

  “I’m embarrassed about this,” Delgado said, “but I must ask for some ID.”

  “Not a problem.” Jock handed him a small case holding an official looking document.

  Delgado studied it, looked at us. “Gentlemen and lady, if you don’t mind?” He made a gimme movement with his hand.

  Logan and I handed over our driver’s licenses. J.D. showed him her I.D. and badge.

  “Thank you. I apologize for that, but I had to check.” He looked at Jock. “I’m told that you carry a lot of weight in Washington, and I’m supposed to give you all the cooperation within my power.”

  “I appreciate that, Dan. Were you told why we’re here?”

  “Only that you have an interest in the West Coast Marauders.”

  “What can you tell me about them?”

  “Not much. We have a deep cover agent in the gang. That’s about all I know, and I’m the only one in this office who even knows that. The undercover agent reports directly to Washington. I’m about to hook you up with the man he answers to, and he’ll tell you anything you want to know. However, I must caution you, nothing leaves this room. We could jeopardize the agent’s life.”

  “We understand,” said Jock. “I appreciate your help.”

  Dan got up and went to the console under the video screen. He made a few adjustments, stroked some keys on the keyboard, and the screen came to life. It showed a room not unlike the one we were in. There was a table with a chair at the end. It was empty.

  Dan stroked again, looked at the monitor attached to his screen, looked up at us. “The supervisor will be here in a minute.”

  We sat, watching the empty screen. In a few moments, a man came into view. He was wearing a fake beard and had a ball cap pulled low on his forehead. He looked at the screen, grinned, and said in a southern accent, “I know. I look like an idiot. But I have to maintain anonymity. Sorry I can’t introduce myself, but you can call me Bubba.”

  Jock laughed. “I understand Bubba. What can you tell us about the Marauders?”

  “Pretty much anything you want to know.”

  “Let’s start simply,” I said. “Bubba, I’m Matt Royal, this is Logan Hamilton, and Detective J. D. Duncan of the Longboat Key Police. I get the idea that you know Mr. Algren.”

  “I do indeed. We’ve met, although Jock won’t remember me.”
r />   “Actually, I do,” said Jock. “Columbia, about two years ago.”

  Bubba laughed. “Busted. I still have to keep the disguise on.”

  I said, “I appreciate your taking the time to talk to us.”

  “You’re welcome, but I have to tell you the only reason I’m talking to you at all is that Jock’s director called my boss and asked for a favor. When that particular director asks for anything, we fall all over ourselves to give it to him. The agency is a big help to us all over the world. Jock has vouched for you guys.”

  “I understand,” I said. “Bubba, we have reason to believe that some members of the Marauders are trying to kill Logan and me and a guy named Abraham Osceola. I would think it’s a contract thing, as I can’t imagine why they would be involved directly in anything to do with us. Do you know if they get into this kind of thing?”

  “They do. They’re a bunch of murderous thugs. They make most of their money in the drug business. They import it and distribute it throughout the southeastern United States, using affiliate gangs in areas other than southwest Florida. If the money’s right, they’ll do contract murders. If you want somebody kidnapped, they’re the go-to guys in your part of Florida.”

  I asked, “Who’s their leader?”

  “A guy names James Baggett. His biker name is Dirtbag. It fits.”

  “Is he in Tampa?”

  “Yes. They have a clubhouse out in the country between Brandon and Plant City. You can’t get in there unless you’re a made member of the club. Even the wannabes have to wait until they’re full-fledged members.”

  “How would we make contact with Baggett?” I asked.

  “I wouldn’t.”

  “But if it were necessary?”

  “Mr. Royal, this is a very dangerous man. I don’t think a lawyer from Longboat Key would want to tangle with him.”