We took Chick back to Hooters, cut the flex cuffs, and left him standing next to his black Mercedes.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
“So, we’ve ruled out the stalker,” J.D. said.
“Guy’s a nut job,” said Jock.
We were having lunch at Rotten Ralph’s on the Bradenton Beach Pier. A few tourists were seated at the outside tables, but we were cheerfully ensconced in the air-conditioned area. The sun was high and brutal, the heat index worse than usual. The humidity had followed the storms of the day before and descended on us like a layer of sweat.
We’d driven back to Longboat Key after leaving Chick in the parking lot. I’d typed up my notes that morning and mailed them to J.D. For now, I was keeping them from Chaz Desmond. If he was involved in this thing in some way, I couldn’t figure it out. And until I did, I wanted to keep him out of the information loop.
“Jock,” J.D. said, “did your people come through with any information on the bank in Vietnam?”
Jock looked pained. “No. I got a call from the director this morning. He was very apologetic, but whatever is going on up there is real big and he just can’t spare the manpower to handle our problem. He said he’d get to it as soon as he could, but he couldn’t tell me when that’d be.”
“Is Clyde Bates still in the county lockup?” I asked J.D.
“Yeah. He’s being held on two attempted murder charges. The bail is a lot more than he can make. Why?”
“I’m curious,” I said. “Why would John Nguyen hire that numbnut to hit somebody? For that matter, why did he even go to O’Reilly’s in the first place? That isn’t exactly the kind of place I’d go looking for a hitman.”
“I’ve been thinking about that myself,” said J.D. “Maybe there’s more to O’Reilly’s than we know.”
“I bet David Sims would know,” said Jock.
Sims was a Manatee County detective who had helped us in the past. He was a former Secret Service agent who had been on the county force for almost thirty years. He knew just about everything that went on in Manatee County.
“J.D.,” I said, “do you want to call him?”
“Why don’t the three of us go see him,” she said.
“It’s Saturday. He’s probably off fishing somewhere.”
“Try him,” said Jock. “You’ve got his cell number.”
I called Sims and caught him as he was putting his boat in the water at the ramp next to Annie’s. I told him that Jock was in town and we needed to see him.
“If you can meet me at Annie’s in the next thirty minutes,” he said. “After that I’m going to be sitting on my boat out next to those grass flats on the east side of the Sister Keys.”
Thirty minutes later, we were at Annie’s, a small wooden structure built on pilings over the bay at the mainland foot of the Cortez Bridge. It housed a combination bait shop, bar, restaurant, and fishing supply store. It had a fuel dock and some of the best hamburgers on the west coast.
We sat at a small table on the deck overlooking two long piers, one of which held the fuel pumps and the other various commercial boats, a Jet Ski rental concession, and a parasail boat that pulled tourists on a parachute attached to a long line.
“This can’t be good,” Sims said, shaking his head. “Every time you guys show up, something is about to go off the rails.”
“We’re just looking for a little information,” I said. I pointed to J.D. “You can see we’re on the law’s side here.”
He laughed. “Either that or Detective Duncan has gone over to the dark side. What can I help you with?”
“Are you familiar with O’Reilly’s bar in Palmetto?” I asked.
“Yeah. Big Tony DeMarco owns the place.”
“Any crime going on there that you know about?” J.D. asked.
“There’s always some penny-ante stuff happening, but nothing serious.”
“Like what?” asked J.D.
“Card games, betting. Big Tony fronts for a bookie, but it’s all smalltime stuff.”
“You’ve never busted him?” I asked.
“No. We keep an eye on the place and if anything got serious we’d move in. But Big Tony knows that and stays mostly clean.”
“What about running a clearinghouse for hitmen?” I asked.
Sims laughed. “You’re kidding.”
I told him about Bates and John Nguyen and how Big Tony arranged for them to get together.
Sims laughed some more. “Clyde Bates? Cleans boats over at the marina? That’s precious.”
“He came after Jock and me,” I said.
“That shows you how stupid he really is,” said Sims. “Coming after you two.”
“What do you know about Bates?” J.D. asked.
“He’s kind of a joke around Palmetto. He works at the marina on the north side of the river. Been there for a couple of years. He’s a local boy. Dropped out of high school and worked at the marina ever since. He lives on an old houseboat that the marina owner keeps back in the work area on chocks. Boat hasn’t been in the water in years.”
“So, you’re telling me he’s not really a hitman,” said J.D.
“Not even close. I heard he goes down to O’Reilly’s most nights. Gets a little buzz on and tells the bikers he’s a tough guy who kills people for a living. Nobody believes him, of course, but he’s harmless so they put up with him. Treat him sort of like a mascot.”
“Doesn’t sound like anybody with good sense would hire him to kill somebody,” said J.D.
“Maybe,” said Sims, “this Nguyen guy was just trying to send a message.”
“How would that work?”
“Hire the unlikeliest hitman in the area. Nguyen would know Bates couldn’t pull it off, but it might just be enough to scare you off, Matt. He apparently doesn’t know Jock is in the picture, so he points Bates at you, and Bates screws it up, and you’ve gotten the word that you should back off of whatever you’re doing or a real hitman might just be coming your way.”
“That has a certain logic to it,” said Jock.
“Yeah,” I said, “but the guy with the knife made a real effort. He wasn’t fooling around.”
“Are there any Asian gangs operating in this area?” Jock asked.
“No,” said Sims. “We’ve got Mexican gangs, Russian gangs, a number of others, but no Asian gangs that I know of.”
“Then,” I said, “who the hell are these people?”
“Let me know if you find out,” said Sims.
We were crossing the Cortez Bridge when Jock’s cell phone beeped. He pulled it out of his pocket, opened it, and said, “Text from the director. The information on Desmond was just e-mailed to my computer.”
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
The documents were spread over my kitchen table. They held rows of figures and names, indicating checks written from the account and to whom they were written. The names of the recipients were written in the Vietnamese writing system known as quoc-ngu. The English equivalent of each name was typed in an adjacent column. One U.S. dollar was equal to ten thousand Vietnamese dong, which made the amounts in dong dispersed from the account seem huge. Fortunately, the U.S. equivalent was also typed in an adjacent column. I assumed the translations were part of the computer program the agency used when deciphering foreign documents.
Each year, in April, two hundred thousand dollars was deposited in the account, except for this year. There was no deposit in April, but a three hundred thousand dollar one was made in July. The deposits came from the Evermore Foundation and were the only deposits ever made to the account.
“I wonder what these checks were for,” said J.D. “There seem to be a lot of smaller checks to different people, a lot of them companies. The same people and companies appear over and over.”
I looked at the list of payees. “Most of the ones to individuals are for the same amount and are paid each month.”
Jock riffled through a stack of documents. “We have copies of the checks, but they don’t say wh
at they were written in payment of.”
“Wouldn’t our Internal Revenue Service want to make sure that the money going out of Evermore was for a charitable purpose?” I asked. “Wouldn’t Evermore have to provide proof to the government that it wasn’t just laundering money somehow?”
“I’d think so,” said J.D.
“They seem pretty lax about charitable organizations,” said Jock. “I can probably get the IRS records, but it’ll be the first of the week. Not much is going to get done by our agency geeks on the weekend unless it’s an emergency. Even when we get the records, there probably won’t be much in them.”
“Maybe the best thing to do,” I said, “is to talk face-to-face with Chaz Desmond.”
“You going to Atlanta?” asked J.D.
“No. I’d like to have him come here. I’d also like to have our old first sergeant Jimbo Merryman with me. He’s a good judge of men and maybe if it’s just three old soldiers talking, Chaz will come clean.”
“Can you do that this weekend?”
“Jimbo’s out in the woods killing Yankees. I can probably get him to come here on Monday, and that’ll give Doc time to get here as well. Plus, I want to look through these documents some more.”
“Sounds like a plan,” said Jock.
I called Chaz Desmond early in the afternoon. “Doc, I need to see you. Can you come to Longboat on Monday?”
“What’s up, Matt? Have you got some leads?”
“Yeah. We’ve learned quite a bit, but I don’t want to talk about it on the phone. We need to meet.”
“I’ll be there. What time?”
“Can you make it to my house by late morning, say eleven o’clock?”
“See you then.”
I called Molly Merryman, Jimbo’s wife, and asked her to have Jimbo call me when he got in on Sunday afternoon. She’d explained to me the first time I’d called that Confederate soldiers didn’t carry cell phones. They did have one for emergencies, but it was considered less than authentic to use it for anything short of a life-threatening event.
We spent the rest of the day pouring through the bank documents. Nothing really jumped out at us, but we did get a list of the regular recipients of checks out of the account and a time line for the disbursal of the money. All the checks were payable to names we’d never heard, except for the ones that the accountant Tuan Nguyen wrote to himself each month for an amount equal to about a thousand dollars.
J.D., Jock, and I drove to the Sandbar Restaurant on the north end of Anna Maria Island, sat on the deck overlooking the beach, and ate a late dinner and watched the sunset. A bright and beautiful display as always. It was almost as eye-catching as the detective sitting across the table from me.
Sunday was a quiet day, a time to catch up with the energy expended over the past two weeks, to contemplate the next few days, and wonder if my buddy Doc was mixed up in some dark scheme that had somehow led to the murder of his son and two strangers on a dinner boat.
I was convinced that the deaths on Dulcimer were tied to Jim Desmond’s murder, but I didn’t understand why. What was the connection between Jim on the one hand and the dead people on Dulcimer on the other? There had to be one, but what was it? And was there a connection between the lawyer Garrison and the Hooters waitress Katherine Brewster? Was one of them just collateral damage?
I was beginning to suspect that Katherine was the target, and somehow Peter Garrison got in the way. Maybe he tried to protect Katherine. If Garrison had been the target, I doubted that Katherine would have intervened, and if she had, the murderer could probably have overpowered her without killing her.
We now knew that Katherine’s boyfriend was not the killer and we were pretty sure that her stalker wasn’t either. That left us with the Asians. The only connection to them was Doc’s annual payments to a guy in Ho Chi Minh City. But that left us without an explanation for Katherine’s death. It was a conundrum and it gave me a headache.
It was almost noon. Jock had curled up on the sofa with a book and fallen asleep. I didn’t bother him. I was hungry and decided to drive down to St. Armands Circle for lunch at Lynches Pub and Grub. The sisters who owned the place had been friends of mine since I first came to the island. In those days they’d owned a popular bar and restaurant at mid-key on Longboat. The building was now gone to the wrecker’s ball, and the Lynch girls were in business on St. Armands.
I called J.D. to see if she wanted to join me. She declined. Said she was catching up on some stuff, reviewing the paper work in our file, enjoying a down day. She’d see me on Monday.
The day was clear and hot and humid. The cerulean sky was devoid of even a wisp of cloud. The Gulf lay flat and still, its aqua color soothing. Far out, near the horizon, a boat cruised south, its sails full, catching the wind and moving at a good clip. A day like this chased away the dark concerns about murder and Asian assassins and other hobgoblins of the mind.
Our island was a lush tropical paradise. The condo complexes and mansions that lined the key’s main road were hidden behind flowering plants and shrubs. The commercial areas were rare and well maintained. Yet the island was changing. A number of the bars and restaurants had died because they could not survive the summer doldrums when tourists didn’t visit. There just weren’t enough year-rounders to keep them in business.
People died or ran out of money and moved back North or tired of the island’s lack of excitement and moved to the mainland. It was a continuous loss to those of us who would live nowhere else, but new people moved in and new friends were made and the cycle began all over again. I think most communities are this way. We mourn the loss of what we had once been while looking forward to what we will become. The human condition. It always amazes me.
Lunch was quick, chicken wings and French fries washed down by Miller Lite. I stopped at the Chinese restaurant next door and got several kinds of take-out for Jock. The owners were always glad to see him and Logan come in. They never could make up their minds about what to eat, so they ordered one of everything. The proprietors loved it and always asked me about my friends when I came in alone.
Jimbo Merryman called me late in the afternoon. I told him what we’d found in the documents, and that I was going to confront Doc about the Evermore Foundation. I thought it would go a lot easier if Jimbo were part of the conversation. He said he’d be at my place before eleven the next morning.
CHAPTER FIFTY
Jimbo Merryman knocked on my front door a little before ten on Monday morning. Jock had left a few minutes earlier, bound for the Starbucks on St. Armands Circle. He said he’d sit and drink coffee and read a book until I called.
Jimbo and I sat and sipped our coffee. I was filling him in some more on what we’d turned up in our investigation and my suspicions about Doc. “I don’t like to feel this way, Top. I owe the man my life.”
“Matt, I think there’s got to be some explanation. A man like Doc doesn’t just decide one day to get dirty.”
“Money is a powerful magnet, Jimbo, and sometimes good men cave at the thought of a lot of it.”
“Doc and I’ve kept up with each other for a long time. He was doing pretty well, making a lot of money, and living the good life for most of that time. I’m not saying it was huge money, but it was enough that he had pretty much everything he wanted. Then he decided to expand. Part of that was the timing. He was in the right place at the right time. He bought up a couple of small firms and then kept adding to the business. Sometimes he’d open a new office in another city and other times he’d buy an existing firm. It was an orderly progression and the big money started to flow.”
“What about the businesses he bought? Was there any animosity between him and the people he bought out?”
“I don’t think so. He paid a fair price and then turned the offices very profitable by getting rid of the deadwood. Some of the employees had been there for years and weren’t producing. Doc changed the culture of those businesses.”
“If he fired a bunch
of people, there’d be some mad folks.”
“I don’t think so. He gave them great severance packages and helped them find work in different fields where they would do better.”
“What about the change in management? Did that create problems with the staffs?”
“Not that I’m aware of. He brought in a lot of vets to take over management. Most of them were Corps of Engineer officers who’d commanded troops in the field. He said if a guy could manage under fire, he could sure as hell manage in a civilian environment. He gave them each a bonus structure based on results and worked that kind of system into all the employees pay packages. The results are a lot of happy workers and an awful lot of money for Doc.”
Eleven o’clock came and went. We sipped more coffee. At noon I called Doc’s cell phone. No answer. Not even voice mail. I called his office in Atlanta, identified myself, and asked to speak to Charles Desmond.
“I’m sorry, sir,” said the receptionist, “but Mr. Desmond is on vacation.”
“Do you know where he is?”
“No, sir.”
“Do you know how I can reach him? It’s vitally important.”
“I’m sorry, sir, but I don’t have that information.”
“Who’s in charge when Mr. Desmond is out of the office?”
“That would be Mr. Macomber, the vice president.”
“May I speak to him?”
“He’s in conference, I’m afraid.”
“Tell you what,” I said, a bit of frustration creeping into my voice, “interrupt Mr. Macomber and tell him that Mr. Desmond’s personal lawyer Matt Royal is on the phone and needs to speak to him about an urgent matter.”
“I’ll see what I can do, sir.”
In a moment a deep voice came on the line. “Mr. Royal? This is Paul Macomber.”
“Mr. Macomber, I’m an old friend of Chaz’s and I’m handling a legal matter for him. I really need to get in touch.”
“I know who you are, Mr. Royal, and I know what you’re doing for Chaz, but I don’t have any idea where he is.”
“Isn’t that odd?”
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