“So what do you think?”
“I know the company, of course. They have some interests in Jersey and here in Florida. Word is they want more action, but authorities are, shall we say, wary of firms with New York family connections.”
“There are family connections?”
“There are always connections.”
“What about Vegas casinos? Elroy Hoskin is really pushing his project in Palm Beach.”
Sally gave a phlegmy laugh. “I’ll say Tom Brady is better than Joe Namath before the Palm Beach elites agree to a casino. The Vegas boys might bring big numbers to rival the Seminole, but the best the state can get then is what they get now, but from double the number of casinos. Where’s the logic in that?”
“So New York can’t get in, and Vegas can’t get in. So why is everyone trying so hard? Help me out here, Sal.”
Sally scratched his stubble and nodded to himself. “Your girl at the casino might think killing the jai alai strengthens her case,” he said. “The logic is that if they can show that the jai alai or ponies are killing jobs or driving the casinos out of business, the state might waive the pari-mutuel requirement. But her logic would be faulty. Not having the sports only helps if they use that space for more gaming, and the state isn’t going to approve more gambling sites, and they aren’t going to walk away from the Indian money. Game, set, match Seminoles.”
“I’m going around in circles here, Sal. I see what you’re saying about the Jenny and New York connection, but I don’t get why Vegas is getting so heavy if there’s no chance of more licenses. Hoskin must know that.”
Sally folded his bottom lip over his top, in thought. “When you played ball, you ever have a day where the ball didn’t come out so good, but you got out with no runs, anyway?”
“Sure.”
“You ever ask yourself why?”
“Nope. That would be tempting the gods.”
Sal nodded.
“You’re saying I should close the case and take my paycheck.”
“Sometimes you don’t get to know why.”
“That’s what Danielle said.”
“She’s a smart girl. You should hang on to her.”
I nodded and thanked Sally for his counsel. He said he had tickets to the Polo fields that he would send me, to take my girl.
“Thanks Sal.”
I was going to tell him I owed him one, but he always hated hearing that, so I just wished his football team good luck that afternoon.
“Don’t need it,” he said, dropping his attention back to the gemstone.
If I knew one thing, it was that Max Stubbs would not work weekends unless a huge wad of cash was waved in front of his pudgy face, so there was no point in hitting up his office on a Sunday. Instead, I headed toward the coast and around Palm Beach International. I drove past the spot where Lucas and I had left the three guys from the bookie’s van lying by the side of the road, and on autopilot I cruised around past the casino. I had nothing to do there and didn’t plan on showing my face until I had to. I had called the security office from a pay phone at a gas station on Okeechobee Boulevard and left a message for Finau to find his cousins. I knew that was telling them that we knew, but I didn’t want those guys developing gangrene or something in their burns. Besides, their failure to return should have told Finau all he needed to know. It was now time to turn the screws.
I slowed by the casino and almost swerved onto the wrong side of the road when I saw the red van parked on the gravel behind the fronton. There were two Mexican-looking guys standing by it. The faces were different, but the play was the same. They shook hands, and everyone climbed into the van and it took off. I pulled off the road, picked up my phone and called, but got voicemail.
“Lucas, I thought you’d want to know. The bookie’s van is back in operation at the casino. Catch you soon.”
I edged back into traffic and headed to Longboard’s for a fish sandwich and a few hours of football. Then it was off home to clean several days worth of dishes in the kitchen so the place didn’t look like a barnyard when Danielle got home. Ah, domestic bliss.
Chapter Thirty-Six
MAX STUBBS WAS also not an early riser, and I had been sitting in the lot for an hour by the time he dragged his carcass into the office. He was pushing open his door when I reached him, so I helped him out and shoved him through. He fell and landed on the worn carpet with a squishy thud. I had brushed his sides as I pushed to confirm he wasn’t armed. He rolled over with the grace of a Galapagos tortoise and spluttered at me.
“What the hell?” he said.
I winked.
“You. Who the hell do you think you are? I ought to—”
“Shut up and listen, Stubbs.”
He tried to get up and I pushed him back down with my foot.
“I want your full attention,” I said. “Here’s the deal. I know that it was Jenny Almondson and Finau who hired you to frame Julio.”
Stubbs opened his purple lips to protest.
“Don’t talk, Stubbs. Just listen. I know all this, so don’t waste my time denying it. What I want now is for you to fix it.”
Stubbs blinked hard, looking like the animatronic Abraham Lincoln at Disney World. He hesitated, not sure if he should speak.
“You are out of your freakin’ mind,” were the words he chose.
“Not so, Stubbs. I am perfectly lucid. You, on the other hand, are in deeper doo-doo than the pilgrims in winter.”
Stubbs edged up onto his elbows and I let him, but he couldn’t support the weight, so he fell back.
“Get up. Sit,” I said.
He rolled onto his knees and worked his way into a standing position, then made for his desk.
“No, the sofa,” I said. I didn’t know if he had a piece in his desk drawer or just bags of Doritos. Either way, he wasn’t getting off of that sofa in short order. He flopped down and sank into the worn cushions.
“Stubbs, do you enjoy being a PI?”
He pouted. “It’s all right.”
“So why do you insist on being so bad at it?”
“Screw you, Jones. You think you’re so much better than me.”
“Everyone thinks that, Stubbs. But my point is, you’re a slob, you’re a crook, and you’re the reason I can’t tell people at parties what I do for a living with a straight face. And now it’s time for penance.”
“You gonna tie me to a cross?”
“Not without a crane, I’m not. No, you’re going to help me make it better.”
“Why the hell am I going to do that?”
“Because I know you doctored the audio that was used to frame Julio. I know you got an engineer to create a fake conversation, and you conspired with Mr. Finau and Ms. Almondson to commit fraud.”
His jaw dropped lower the more I spoke. By the time I’d finished the thought, he looked like the entrance to the Batcave.
“And if I happen to pass on that audio to the cops, you will definitely lose your PI license, and you’ll probably do jail time.”
He smacked his lips together several times, like a man walking out of the Sahara. “You can’t do this,” he said.
“On the contrary, Stubbs. I can.”
“I’ll never get another client if it gets out that I sold someone out.”
“No, you’ll never get another crooked client. And being as that is the majority of your client base, I can see how that would be of concern. So you’ll just have to drum up more paying Peeping Tom work. After all, man cannot live on blowjobs alone.”
He frowned at me, his jaw falling open again as the penny dropped. “You. It was you hiding in my office the other night.”
I raised my eyebrows, and Stubbs smiled.
“I’ll have you for breaking and entering,” he said, way too sure of himself.
“Can’t be breaking and entering if nothing is broken.”
“Well entering, then,” he said, a little less sure.
“Not sure that’s actually a charge.
Entering? Hmm, no.”
“Burglary, that’s what it is,” he said, pointing at me, like he’d just outsmarted a Jeopardy champion.
“Anything missing in your office? No, I didn’t think so. Besides, I was at a party in Palm Beach. Lots of people can vouch for me. Lots of important people.”
“I didn’t say which night it was.”
“Doesn’t matter, Max. I was at a party. Whatever night.”
Max deflated back into the sofa. He’d played his hand and lost. I gave him a minute. He wasn’t the brightest spark, but he did have a partially functioning brain, and I wanted him to get there by himself. I watched his cogs ticking over, working the angles, trying to find a loophole. Hope, despair, hope. Then he settled on despair. He looked up at me, forlorn.
“What do I have to do?”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
THE GOOD NEWS was that I knew Stubbs had all the right equipment. We rigged him up with his secret little microphone, which transmitted the signal to a recorder attached to a hard drive. Apparently the system could email the audio to my Cloud, but I had no idea what that entailed. It was a more sophisticated setup than I’d given Stubbs credit for, but then I saw him in my mind’s eyes walking into Best Buy for a tape recorder and getting upsold by a kid with pimples.
Ron and I sat in the car in the lot, just below the window of Jenny Almondson’s office, listening to Stubbs huff and puff his way up the elevator. We heard the ding of the elevator, then Finau met him as he got out.
“You shouldn’t be here,” said Finau.
“We need to talk. About Jones,” said Stubbs.
“Not now. I’m on it. He’s deader than dead. But you need to lie low.”
“I will, right after I speak to Almondson,” said Stubbs. He was pretty convincing for a guy who was sweating bullets.
There was nothing but Stubbs’s heavy breathing for a while, then the sound of a door opening.
“Hello, Max,” said Jenny. Evidently they were in Jenny’s office. “What are you doing here?”
“He knows,” said Stubbs.
“Who knows what?” she said. She was a cool customer.
“Jones. He knows about the setup. How you, Ms. Almondson, and you, Mr. Finau, set Julio up for illegal betting.”
I froze in the car. Stubbs was overdoing it. Getting their names was useful in an audio recording, but no one spoke like that. He was going to get found out.
“Are you all right, Max?”
“I told you, no. He knows.”
“He knows what, Max? That you set up Julio for your own reasons and brought fraudulent information to us to ensure you got paid?” said Jenny.
“I did no such thing,” said Stubbs.
“That’s how it looks, so if I were you, I’d keep quiet,” said Jenny.
“It’s your people who can’t keep quiet,” said Stubbs. “They told him what we did.”
This must have been directed at Finau, because he replied.
“Settle down, Max. Jones doesn’t have any proof we were involved.”
“He has the tapes. Aren’t you listening?”
“Max, calm down,” said Jenny. “What Mr. Jones says can be refuted. You can say that he, not you, doctored the audio so he got paid by Julio.”
“No, that won’t work,” said Stubbs. “The tapes won’t pass expert analysis. My guy said so. And you told me this wouldn’t go to court. Nowhere near a courthouse, were your exact words, Ms. Almondson.”
“Yes, Max, that’s right. It isn’t going anywhere near a courtroom. We have gotten rid of Julio, and we will make a plan for Mr. Jones.”
The audio got louder as I assumed Jenny moved close to Stubbs.
“You just need to keep your pants on, Max.”
Suddenly the air was filled with Max’s heavy breathing and a muffled groan.
“Can you do that, Max?” said Jenny, all breathy and seductive.
A grunt in the affirmative.
I looked at Ron and he lifted his eyebrows.
“Good boy. My people in New York won’t forget you, Max. Nor will Mr. Hoskin.”
I spun to look at Ron, and he made his how the hell would I know face.
“Now we have work to do, Max. You can see yourself out.”
“Sure,” said Max. “Sure.”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
I PLAYED THE whole thing back again before Stubbs got to the car. That Jenny and Finau were behind things I knew, but the mention of Hoskin had me flummoxed. How did a Vegas competitor have anything to do with them? I transferred a copy of the audio file onto my phone, then got out of the car. Heavy clouds played above and the air smelled wet. Ron and I were leaning on the fenders when Stubbs came around the corner, sweating like a swamp cooler.
“That’s it,” said Stubbs. He was almost elated, but why I wasn’t sure.
“You’re done, Stubbs,” I said. “You can go.”
He frowned. “I don’t got a car here. You need to give me a lift.”
“Get a cab, Stubbs.”
He looked at Ron for support and found none, so he turned back to me. “All right, but now we’re equal.”
I looked him in the eye. It was my stare-down-the-batter face, and he took a step back.
“We will never, in any way imaginable, be equal. Now get out of my face.” It wasn’t an act. I really wanted to kick his lardy ass to the gravel.
He took a couple steps back, then looked at Ron.
“I want those tapes back,” he said.
Ron nodded and smiled.
“We’ll be in touch.”
The big guy on downstairs-lobby duty was in place, so talking my way through was out again. But then, I didn’t plan on chatting to him. Ron and I approached, and he crossed his arms and made himself big, which was actually enormous, and very wide. But not wide enough. He didn’t fill the whole hallway, so as Ron opened his mouth to speak and took the big unit’s attention, I stepped around him and ran for the stairs. The big guy turned like he was part of the Carnival Line, and I was halfway up the stairs before he even reached the door. I ran up, three at a time, and figured I could do four if I got back into the beach running. I hit the door into the vacant top-floor reception and headed for Jenny’s office. The big guy in the lobby must have been using all his energy to chase me up the stairs, because I expected him to call Finau and for the security boss to meet me in the hallway. But it didn’t happen. I pushed open the doors to Jenny’s office. She was standing by the window, Finau on the other side of her desk. Neither looked happy, but it was turning out to be that sort of day.
“What are you doing in here?” said Finau, striding to meet me in the middle of the room. I stopped before he got to me.
“We have business to discuss,” I said, looking at Jenny.
“You have nothing here. Get out,” said Finau. I could see the veins in his throat bulge, and I got the impression that he was about to become very unprofessional. Clearly he wasn’t happy about us setting fire to his cousins. But Jenny stepped in.
“What are you doing here, Miami?” she said gently, like she was glad I had dropped in but wasn’t sure why I had.
“Where do I start?”
“Start with this,” said Ron, who had appeared behind me at the door. Clearly the elevator had gotten up the solitary floor faster than the big Tongan had on the stairs.
“Framing an employee for a crime. Fraud. Attempted murder. All of which runs afoul of the state of Florida’s requirement for holders of gaming licenses to be of high moral character. Among other things.”
It was a pretty good summation of things, all in all. I turned to Jenny.
“What he said.”
Jenny smiled and came around the desk. “What do you think is happening here, Miami?”
Suddenly I didn’t see her looking so great in a burlap sack. More in orange coveralls, and they really weren’t her color.
“You’re in some serious trouble here, Jenny.”
“I don’t think so, Miami. You got
a lot of ideas in your head, from where I don’t know. But no proof of anything. So, as a friend, I caution you to not spread your lies, lest someone sue you into the ground.”
The last three words were a tad unnecessary, and not a bit mean-spirited. I had nothing to say in return, so I said nothing. I just held up my phone and hit the speaker. Jenny’s recorded voice filled the office.
. . . it isn’t going anywhere near a court room. We have gotten rid of Julio, and we will make a plan for Mr. Jones . . .
I tapped the screen with my thumb and let my name hang in the air. For a moment I saw Jenny’s facade crack, but she regrouped fast.
“Miami, you are dealing with things of which you have no understanding.”
“Sorry toots, but I’m not buying it,” I said, doing my best gumshoe impersonation. “You are in it up to your pretty little armpits, and I’m taking you down.” I turned to Finau. “You too.”
Finau snarled. “You might have her, but you got nothing on me.”
Again I lifted my phone and opened the app and hit the button. It was a pretty cool device, and added a good bit of drama. Now Stubbs’ voice came out of the speaker.
. . . We need to talk, about Jones.
Then Finau:
Not now. I’m on it. He’s deader than dead . . .
Finau didn’t lose the snarl, and for a moment I thought he might pick me up and throw me through the window, but he didn’t. He looked at me, he looked at Jenny, he looked at Ron.
Then he ran.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
FINE PLAYED RUGBY as a younger man. I could see it in the burst of speed, I could see it in the way he ran, I could see it in the way he laid a stiff arm on Ron, driving his meaty paw into Ron’s chest. Ron went flying, literally. His feet left the ground, and his arms flapped at his side, but he didn’t have any upward thrust so it was all for naught, and he dropped onto his back, crashing into the carpet as Finau powered away. I ran forward to Ron.
“You all right?” I said.
High Lie Page 18