Casino? The Seminole Casino Gabelli used to frequent? “Maybe. What do you know about it?”
“Not much. I was dealing blackjack in the back by the baccarat section when it happened.”
“You work at the Seminole Casino in Immokalee, right?”
He nodded. “For about seven years now. I thought that was why you’re here.”
“I’m here about Phil Gabelli.” Blake blinked but other than that there wasn’t a tell. “You know him?”
“Gabelli? Can’t say it rings a bell.”
What was this guy, a lawyer? “You were observed in the early morning of May first at Clam Pass. Can you tell me what you were doing there?”
He pulled his chin in. “Observed? You had someone watching me back in May?”
“Security cameras at Clam Pass filmed you. What were you doing there?”
“Who remembers that far back? But it’s a public park. I have every right to be there.”
“Look, we can do this the easy way, or I can drag you to the station and we can talk there. Either way you want to do it is fine by me.”
“I didn’t do anything wrong. I’m sure I just went out for a sail.”
It was a boat. “Sailing before dawn?”
“I work the night shift, and a lot of times I can’t sleep.”
“So, you drag your little Sunfish out and go sailing in the dark?”
“If you knew how beautiful it was when you’re on the water when the sun comes up, you wouldn’t be so smug.”
“How long do you go out for?”
“Depends, but usually two, three hours.”
“You take a lot of things out with you?”
Blake stared at me. Did I hit a nerve?
“What are you talking about?”
“What do you take out on the water with you?”
“Not much, something to eat.”
“You just sit there in the dark?”
“It's peaceful out there. I just think. It’s a form of meditating.”
“I guess you might need it after working in a casino all night.”
He nodded. “It can be chaotic.”
“You’ve always been a blackjack dealer?”
“The last five years or so.”
“Lots of regulars, I bet.”
He shook his head. “Too many, if you ask me.”
“So, you must know Phil Gabelli then.”
“What does he look like?”
I pulled out a picture and handed it to Blake.
“Maybe.”
Another hedge. “Is that a yes or a no?”
“You know how many people play each day?”
“Surely you must know I can get a court order and check the casino’s surveillance.”
“But the casino is on Seminole territory. They have their own police.”
So that was his angle. “Let’s say we have a memorandum of understanding. Now, how well do you know Phil Gabelli?”
“If it’s the same guy I’m thinking, he came in about once a week or so.”
“Once a week, over five years, you’d get to know a guy.”
“You know how many tables of blackjack we have?”
I did. It wasn’t many. “Was he a good player?”
“I don’t remember.”
Blake kept dancing around for fifteen minutes. I knew he was hiding something, but I moved on.
“You know, I always wanted to learn how to sail.”
“You should try it. It’s very relaxing.”
“Is the Sunfish a good boat?”
“It’s pretty nice, but the best thing about it is it’s mobile.”
“Sounds perfect. Hey, would you mind showing me yours?”
“I’d love to, but I sold it.”
“Interesting. When was that?”
“What’s so interesting about that?”
“You just said it was a good little boat, and here you go and sell it.”
“I’m getting something bigger, if that’s all right with you.”
“When did you get rid of it?”
“I sold it about ten days ago.”
“Like I said, I’m interested in learning to sail. Who’d you sell it to?”
Chapter 36
Luca
It was only five-forty, but I got out of bed knowing I’d never fall back to sleep after an unsettling dream about Vargas. Well, at least it wasn’t another Barrow-case nightmare. I was anxious to follow up on Blake and his boat, but I was due in court at nine. The Russian car theft ring trial had been postponed, waiting on my testimony, and was finally on the calendar. With almost two hours to kill, I decided to take a walk on the beach to get some physical and mental exercise in.
As my feet hit the sand by the Turtle Club, the day I met Kayla hit me with mixed emotions. I’d had Kayla’s number for two weeks now and hadn’t called her yet. I didn’t know what was fueling the procrastination, my lingering, male plumbing issue, or the fear she wouldn’t prove to be as interested as I seemed to be. It was getting stupid, I thought, and right there and then I resolved to call her that night.
***
Blake’s story on the Sunfish checked out. The guy down at Lowe’s Marina confirmed he bought Blake’s boat two weeks ago. It was still on his lot, and I asked him to take it off the market and move it indoors. He objected, but when I told him it would only be for a week or so, he agreed and took me to see the craft.
I walked around the white fiberglass skiff. Peering into a kayak-like opening, I noted it accommodated a sailor’s legs. There weren’t any signs of blood, but I wasn’t expecting any. I spied a back support that covered a small storage area. When it was removed it increased the size of the cavity. It’d be a tight fit to sneak a man the size of Gabelli into it, but it wasn’t impossible.
Staring at the boat, I tried to visualize how it looked now versus the night Blake was at Clam Pass. After a minute of imagining, I took some pictures and made sure the sales guy removed the For Sale sign before heading to Immokalee.
***
Leaving the casino, I was feeling good about my persistence on Blake and his job. Rather than giving up when his fellow dealers gave me nothing, I moved on to a couple of cocktail waitresses and hit pay dirt with one of them. In all honesty, it was the natural angle, given the playboy Gabelli was, but it still provided a needed boost to my confidence.
Nancy, a big-boned server, never would have made it past the first interview in the old days. According to an unspoken code, that also guided stewardesses, Nancy didn’t have it in the looks department. The brunette, who served drinks in the blackjack section, had so many piercings she looked like she’d fallen into a tackle box.
The one that got me was the tongue piercing. Every time she opened her mouth I wondered if the ornamentation was painful. No matter how much anyone drank, you had to be deranged to think it was sexy. Anyway, she knew Gabelli right off the bat and said he was hot. I refrained from telling her more because I don’t like to talk about the dead.
I asked her what she could tell me about Gabelli, but other than being a flirt and a big tipper there was nothing revealing. That is until I asked about Blake and him, then gold flowed out of her ornamented mouth. I was so excited I almost forgot to ask about Stewart. The cocktail waitress said he rarely came in with Stewart, which I found surprising.
A ton of traffic crawled on Immokalee, and I was tempted to use my siren to speed the ride to see Blake.
***
“He was a jerk, okay? A big mouth.”
Blake’s anger flush took on a weird hue over his deep tan. No doubt Gabelli riled him up, the question begging to be answered was whether the riling moved to irrationality.
I said, “You’re not the first person to tell me that. He was a piece of work, huh?”
“I know it’s not all of them, but these pretty boys, they think everyone’s got to kiss their ass. You know what I mean?”
As a quasi-member of that club, I didn’t agree but wanted the venom to flow. “And how. What kinda things did he do?”
“He was a medium player, not a real high roller, but he always called over to the pit bosses and talked like he owned half the place. He was always asking for something.”
“You mean like a break or something?”
“No, little penny-ante things, like lozenges, aspirin, a cookie, you name it, he asked for it, and got it. It’s like he wanted to show everybody that he was being catered to.”
“He really got under your skin, didn’t he?”
“Yeah, I hated when he sat at my table. And you know, he knew I didn’t like him, and he’d push my buttons and keep pushing all night.”
“So that night you lost it?”
“He kept holding the cards when the hand was over. You can’t do that. I had to call the pit boss over twice, and he tried to make it like I was picking on him. Then he did it again and I yelled at him to give me the cards. And that scumbag Perez, he sided with Gabelli. It was embarrassing.”
“Customer’s always right.”
“No, that’s bullshit. I can’t tell you how many times people are thrown out of the casino. We’re trained to death about maintaining order.”
“But they let Gabelli off the hook?”
“Like I said, the bastard had a way about him.”
“What a weasel. I heard you confronted him later.”
“They took me off the floor, and I spent the rest of my shift at the cashier’s window. When I left to go home, he was outside hanging around. It was like, what, is this guy stalking me? I walked past him to the employee garage, and he just kept busting my balls. So, I got in his face, and another dealer had to separate us.”
“Wow. He must’ve been going nuts.”
“I’m not proud of it. I nearly lost my job, had to beg my manager because of that shithead.”
“So, you got back at him by putting him in Clam Pass?”
“Oh no, man. I had nothing to do with any of that.”
“Yeah, well you were at Clam Pass the night he went missing, and his body was found weighed down in the water there.”
“I told you I went sailing. I swear that’s all. I don’t know nothing about what happened to this guy.”
“How come you never told me you had a fight with Gabelli?”
“Look, I hated the guy, but that doesn’t mean I’d kill him. What kinda guy you think I am?”
“That’s what I’m trying to figure out.”
Chapter 37
Luca
On the way back, I called Vargas. She asked, “How’d it go?”
“This guy is either an incredible actor or he’s telling the truth.”
“What happened with the boat?”
“That’s why I’m calling. Get Finley to authorize a seizure notice and get that Sunfish to the lab.”
“You saw something?”
“Nah, it was clean, but unless Blake bleached it, forensics will get something if it’s there.”
“It’s at Lowe’s, right?”
“Yeah, the guy’s name is Sammy. I gotta run.”
“Hold on a sec.”
“What’s up?”
“I just got a call from the sex crimes unit. Last week they picked up this guy Steven Foster. Seems he was a Boy Scout scoutmaster or something, and a kid, well, he’s not a kid anymore, came forward and filed a complaint against him for sexual assaults that happened more than ten years ago.”
“Poor kid, but what’s that got to do with us?”
“This pervert Foster, well, he said it wasn’t him, but he fingered Phil Gabelli as the guy who did it.”
My wheels bounced off the curb. “What?”
“I had the same reaction, but I checked with the Boy Scout local, and guess what?”
“Come on, Vargas!”
“Gabelli was Foster’s assistant when the assaults took place. I checked with the Boy Scouts, and Gabelli was there when Foster was.”
“Holy shit! That could be the reason he took off.”
“Thought the same thing. Maybe he knew this was coming out.”
“I’m coming straight in. We need to talk to this Foster guy.”
Feeling like I’d been shot up with three cups of espresso, I hit the siren and popped the light on my roof.
***
I asked, “What’s this guy do that he can afford to live in Tiburon?”
My partner said, “Teacher at Baron Collier High.”
“Just great, this clown’s around kids all the time.”
“I thought there were all price points in Tiburon.”
“It’s the fees, Vargas. The fees are sky-high,” I said as I turned into the development.
The entrance to Tiburon was one of my favorites: a long driveway lined with majestic royal palm trees that reached into a cloudless, blue sky. The community was anchored by the Ritz Carlton Golf Resort, making Naples the only place with two Ritz Carltons. Tiburon had two world-class golf courses, a good location, and homes ranging from five million down to five hundred thousand.
Steven Foster lived on the second floor of a cluster of coach homes called Castillo. If I remembered correctly, they were trading in the seven hundred thousand range. Still a lot of dough on a teacher’s salary. When I saw the tiny size of the elevator, I told Vargas we’d have to take the stairs.
I know better than to think I can tell who’s a pedophile by looking at him, but a barefooted Foster fit the bill. He was balding, and whatever hair he had left was dyed shoe-polish black. His eyes were definitely beady and he had a flabby belly. But unless the victim was blind, he’d never confuse Gabelli and this cretin.
Foster grabbed the doorframe when we announced ourselves and said, “Homicide?”
“Yes, we’d like to ask you a couple of questions.”
“Uh, sure, but I don’t know anything about any murders. Please don’t tell me they’re also saying I killed someone.”
He stepped to the side and we entered. The whole place was floored in white tiles that were too small and laid in a diagonal pattern. It’s supposed to make a room look bigger, but I could never figure out how. It was a bright place that I didn’t think a sleazebag like Foster would like living in. A trio of sliders leading to a lanai let the light and golf course view in.
As soon as we sat around a glass-topped kitchen table, I said, “I’m going to get right to it, Mr. Foster. The charges against you are about as serious as they get. I understand you claimed the accuser had made a mistake and that this was a case of mistaken identity.”
“That’s the truth, I swear.”
Vargas said, “You claimed that the true perpetrator was a man named Phil Gabelli.”
He shook his head. “Yes, that’s right, it was Phil. He did whatever that kid said happened.”
I said, “I understand you and Mr. Gabelli knew each other through the Boy Scouts.”
“We led the same troop. I was the scoutmaster and he was the assistant. He seemed like a good guy, but I guess he deserved what happened to him.”
I said, “And what was that?”
“I read the papers. I saw that they found him in Clam Pass. He was murdered.”
Vargas said, “Who do you think would murder Mr. Gabelli?”
“I don’t know exactly, but I guess anyone he, uh, messed around with would have good reason.”
Vargas said, “Do you know anybody in particular?”
“I didn’t really know him that well.”
I said, “But you worked together for, what, three years?”
“Something like that.”
I said, “So how did you know that it was Mr. Gabelli who did it then?”
He tilted his head. “I just got this feeling, you know, he was kinda off. You know what I mean?”
Vargas said, “No, tell us.”
“I couldn’t put my finger on it, but, I don’t know, it was the
way he looked at the boys. Something wasn’t right.”
Vargas said, “Yet you let him work for three years with the boys you were responsible for.”
“I, I, believe me, I feel a heavy burden of responsibility for what happened.”
I had no worries about how this guy felt, and said, “You don’t look anything like Phil Gabelli, who was a fit, good-looking guy.”
Foster sucked his gut in and said, “Maybe I haven’t aged as good as the next guy, but I’m telling you, we were almost look-alikes.”
With an obvious smirk, I said, “If you say so.”
Foster rose, “Hold on a sec.”
Vargas and I exchanged glances as Foster rummaged through a whitewashed credenza.
“Here, see, what did I tell you?”
I took the picture he held and did a double take. It was Foster, maybe ten, fifteen years ago in his Boy Scout uniform. He looked totally different, but I didn’t see much resemblance to the pictures I’d seen of Gabelli. I tried to read into the photo. The silly, yellow ascot thing he had on didn’t help. Anybody wearing that would look strange.
“When was this taken?”
“Not sure exactly, but I’d say a dozen years ago. So, you believe me now?”
“Can we have the picture?”
“Sure, if it helps to clear me.”
Chapter 38
Luca
Two weeks after the autopsy, a chime announcing an e-mail sounded. It was from the crime lab. Opening it, I read the Gabelli toxicology report. I couldn’t believe my eyes. There was nothing found but an alcohol reading. I didn’t understand some of the medical lingo, so I dialed Bosco’s number.
“Doc, it’s Frank. I got the Gabelli toxicology. He’s the one we pulled out of Clam Pass.”
“Yes. I’m familiar with the case. What about it?”
“It says there was no evidence of any illicit drugs in his system.”
“Yes, that’s correct.”
“That’s impossible. You said so yourself.”
“Not quite. What I said was that drugs may have played a role as the victim had no evidence of heart disease.”
Vanished: A Luca Mystery - Book 2 Page 12