PEDESTAL (JAKE SCARNE THRILLERS Book 5)

by Lawrence de Maria

  But until then, he had proved very useful, not only for the violence he was capable of, but also for the verve he exhibited in his accomplishing his assignments.

  Desiderio sat down at the table and nodded at the assassin, who gave him a chilly smile.

  “Nice to see you again, Loc Moi,” Desiderio said nervously.

  “I sincerely doubt that,” Loc Moi replied. “Any more break-ins in your neighborhood?”

  “No.”

  Six months earlier, Stupachi had sent Scorfano to Naples after Desiderio had complained that a rash of home invasions in wealthy enclaves near Port Royal had terrified many of the families in those neighborhoods. A slick gang was circumventing security systems, tying up residents, cleaning out their homes and driving loot away in the residents’ own luxury vehicles, which usually wound up in a canal. The police had no clues. Everyone, Desiderio included, assumed it was only a matter of time before Port Royal was targeted. He wasn’t particularly concerned with the security of his own home. There was usually one of his men in residence, armed.

  But letting the gang run free was bad for both his real estate business and his yacht scam. He didn’t want anyone else preying on his hedge fund victims.

  It didn’t take Loc Moi long to accomplish what the police couldn’t. Using underworld contacts and a unique brand of persuasion on one guard at a gated community that had seen too many home invasions, Loc Moi identified the five men in the crew responsible for the burglaries. They were former migrant workers who all lived in Calusakee. As a measure of respect for their professional expertise, he told their leader, a man named Lopez, that he would not inform the police but in return he expected them to immediately stop their activities. Lopez told him he would discuss the offer with his crew.

  They would meet Scorfano later that night with an answer. At a deserted warehouse just outside of town.

  Scorfano knew what the answer would be. Which was why he rented a van. Three hours after the meeting, which was even briefer than the burglars envisaged, their bullet-riddled bodies were wrapped in anchor chains and put aboard the Vaso di Miele. Desiderio’s yacht then headed far out into the Gulf of Mexico, where they were dropped overboard in five-mile intervals. While happy with the result, Desiderio nevertheless hoped he’d seen the last of Scorfano.

  “I’m sending Loc Moi to Naples,” Stupachi now said.

  Desiderio shuddered.

  “To do what?”

  “Find out what the reporter is after. Who her source is. To do what you haven’t done.”

  Desiderio thought it best not to argue. He looked at Loc Moi. The Scorfano just smiled.

  “What about Scarne, Cosimo?” Desiderio asked carefully.

  “He’s a problem,” Stupachi said. “Maybe bigger than the reporter. She’s not a real reporter. What did you say she was, a stringer? Not even on staff. We can take care of her. Him? I called some people. He’s got a reputation and he’s well-connected. Pal of the New York Police Commissioner. Made a name on some big cases.” He looked at the Vietnamese. “You ever hear of him?”

  “My cousin in Seattle says he went up against the Bruttis and the Boykos and came out on top. That should tell us something.” Loc Moi’s smile widened. “I’d like to meet him. Professionally.”

  “No. At least for now. I need you in Florida but I don’t want anything to happen to him there while he’s looking into whatever he’s looking into. Be too obvious.”

  He looked at both men.

  “A man like that has made a lot of enemies. I’ll figure something out.”

  CHAPTER 13 - LABOR RELATIONS

  Scarne thought he could hear his arteries clogging as he dug into a huge platter of huevos rancheros in the breakfast cafe at the casino. He was debating whether to take off his blazer, since he was almost certain some of the classic Mexican breakfast of fried eggs served on hot corn tortillas and smothered in cooked salsa would soon wind up on it. But then he remembered the automatic in his holster. Not the look one wanted in a casino. He once again decided that the trade-off between higher dry-cleaning bills and being shot to death while eating was one he was willing to make, at least in air-conditioning.

  It was just after 8 AM when Amy Adams slipped into the booth across from him and plunked a huge shoulder bag next to her.

  “I’m Cassie Mulloy,” she said. “Who the hell are you?”

  “Are you here to shoot me?”

  “I asked you a question.”

  Scarne wiped his mouth.

  “Did anyone ever tell you that you look like Amy Adams?”

  A smile crossed the girl’s face but quickly disappeared.

  “All the time. Now answer my question.”

  Cassie Mulloy did look like the famous actress. A little shorter, perhaps; the hair cut closer and more blond than red. But the wide-set blue eyes, slightly turned up nose and pointy chin were all there. All in all, a very pretty young woman.

  “My name is Jake Scarne. I’m a private detective hired by the Times to find out if they should risk a lawsuit and national humiliation on your say so.”

  “Let me see some identification.”

  Scarne took out his license. Mulloy put it on the table in front of her and pulled an iPad out of her bag, which came with a stand and a small keyboard. She started typing. After a moment she turned the iPad around to show him what her search turned up.

  “You’re better looking than your pictures, Mr. Scarne,” she said. “You get a lot of press for a private detective. And that’s only one page of stories. Does that bother you?”

  “It can be good for business.”

  “But bad for your health.”

  “Speaking of which, my eyes are also bigger than my stomach. Can I get you a plate so you can help me out with these huevos rancheros? They deserve their own ZIP code.”

  Cassie Mulloy stared at him. Then she smiled.

  “I am hungry. I could also use some coffee.”

  Scarne liked her. He signaled a waitress and told her they needed coffee and a new breakfast set-up. When she returned, he shoveled half his food on to the new plate.

  “Let’s eat,” he said. “Then we can chat.”

  Cassie Mulloy was a small girl, almost petite, but she ate with gusto. They were on their second round of coffee when she said, “I guess they are pretty nervous in New York.”

  “They are gun shy,” Scarne replied. “Everyone in the media is after the debacle with the Duke lacrosse case. And I don’t think the Times has gotten over Jayson Blair, either.”

  In 2003 the Times discovered that Blair, one of its young stars, had fabricated dozens of articles. The resulting scandal ended Blair’s career and also cost the paper’s two top editors their jobs. Huber had told Scarne that the paper had not been the same since. (“Why do you think there has been so much turnover at the top in the past decade,” Huber told him. “It’s like the goddamn Italian Government.”)

  “I’m not Jayson Blair,” Cassie Mulloy said, her eyes flashing. “I don’t make stuff up.”

  “No one is saying you do,” Scarne said evenly. “But I’m taking their money, so I’m asking a lot of questions. And so far I haven’t found anything to contradict the official version of Alva Delgado’s death. And he did take a plea.”

  “I’m sure you saw the evidence against him,” Mulloy said. “Can you blame him? Why take a chance on a first-degree murder rap with 12 people too dumb to get out of jury duty? But I know when someone is lying to me. Manny isn’t. He didn’t kill Alva.”

  Scarne knew that Cassie Mulloy, for all her righteous indignation and good intentions, was not old enough, and jaded enough, to know when someone was lying to her. But he didn’t want to ruin her illusions about life; illusions he once harbored. Not just yet.

  “I’m not sure Herrera did, either,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean those boys did. It seems to me that you may have a good story here, about a man wrongly convicted of killing a woman he loves. But you are a long way from proving who actually
did it. And unless you have more proof implicating anyone else, let alone two of the biggest sports icons in the nation, no respectable media outlet will publish your speculation.”

  The cafe was filling up with people who were either bright-eyed, having just arrived at the casino and fueling up for the gambling, or bleary-eyed, having been there all night and now struggling to stay awake. Their waitress approached Scarne’s table with a pot of coffee.

  “Fresh?” he asked, as she filled their cups without asking.

  “Honey, it’s always fresh around here. We sell it by the gallon.”

  “It’s not speculation,” Cassie Mulloy said when the waitress moved away.

  Scarne sipped his coffee and smiled encouragingly.

  “Her girlfriends, the ones she went to the party with, saw her go on the boat with three men. They knew one of them was Anthony Desiderio. They didn’t know the other two until I showed them photos of Landon and Weatherly. They are positive it was them.”

  “The yearbook was inspired. Any idea why the cops didn’t think of that?”

  Mulloy hesitated.

  “At least one of them did. But he was told not to pursue it.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “He told me.”

  “Who is it?’

  “Sorry. I can’t reveal the source.”

  “Even to your bosses at the Times?”

  “They’re not my bosses. Yet. I’m just a lowly stringer. And even if they were my bosses I wouldn’t tell them.”

  “We seem to be at loggerheads.”

  “But the huevos rancheros are good.”

  “Well, that’s something,” Scarne said. “This source is solid?”

  “As a rock.”

  Scarne thought about it.

  “There’s always the girls.”

  Mulloy looked miserable.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “They told me I couldn’t use their names, and now they are gone. Back to Mexico. Someone got to them.”

  “Were they illegal?”

  “No. Just petrified. They had all the right papers. You can’t get a casino job without them. They left so fast they hardly packed. I presume they were paid off. I tried to find them, but I really don’t know how to do that. I don’t have the resources.”

  “Maybe I do. But even if I find them, that doesn’t prove Landon and Weatherly attacked the girl.”

  “They lied. They denied even knowing her!”

  “You spoke to them?”

  “Yeah. One of the sports guys at a local paper is a pal of mine. He snuck me in to one of their practices. Had five minutes with them before their turd of a coach ran me off.”

  “Virgil Cusp?”

  “Yeah. A real prick.”

  “By all accounts he’s a great coach, though. And I’m not surprised he didn’t want you harassing his star players.”

  “He’s a jerk. They treat him like God down here. He makes, like, $5 million a year, has his own TV show.”

  “And his winning team probably brings in ten times that for the university,” Scarne said. “Listen, Cassie, I could spend all morning talking about the corruption of college athletics, but I’m more interested in what the Touchdown Twins told you.”

  “Like I said, they claimed they never saw Alva Delgado at the party.”

  Scarne shook his head.

  “I don’t know how much you remember from your last college party, Cassie, but my recollections of those days are a bit vague. I seem to recall there was a lot of drinking involved and I woke up in a couple of bathtubs. Landon and Weatherly could claim they don’t know who they were with, and they might be telling the truth. No one is saying they are saints. But without more proof, you are a long way from saying they are rapists and killers.”

  Some silverware jumped as Mulloy pounded the table.

  “They didn’t say that they didn’t remember her. They said she wasn’t at the party when I showed them her photo. I wonder how they can be so sure. Don’t you?”

  Before Scarne could answer, Mulloy’s cell phone beeped.

  “Excuse me,” she said, and got up and walked a few feet away. Scarne watched her. Her short blue dress revealed that she had very good legs. Her conversation on the call soon became animated. At one point she exclaimed, “those sons of bitches,” drawing a few looks from nearby tables. She finally came back to the table and picked up her bag.

  “I have to go.”

  “Is there a problem?”

  “Some of the farm workers are being threatened by goons working for one of the growers.”

  Scarne was surprised.

  “I thought that kind of stuff didn’t go on anymore and conditions have improved. Aren’t some of the big retailers such as Wal-Mart backing the C.C.W.?”

  Mulloy smiled grimly.

  “Conditions have improved, especially at the large growers who can’t afford to get on the wrong side of the big national players. But some of the small operators haven’t gotten the message. We have instances of some growers not providing food and water, or charging the workers exorbitant prices for what they do provide. Then they deduct the amount from their wages. Some of these bastards even charge the workers $5 or $10 a day for transportation to the fields.”

  “Mind if I tag along?”

  “It might get pretty hairy,” Mulloy said. “These guys can get rough.”

  Scarne smiled at the reporter, who barely reached his chin when he stood up.

  “I’ll count on you to protect me, Cassie. Besides, they can’t be as tough as these huevos rancheros.”

  ***

  It was a 15-minute drive from the casino to the site of the confrontation, a small clearing off a rural dirt road. Mulloy had insisted on taking her own car, so Scarne pulled his rental behind her beat-up Honda Accord next to a small trailer and a dusty yellow flatbed truck with wooden side slats. Three men holding baseball bats stood facing perhaps a dozen men and women who were wearing rough clothes and hats with cowls to protect their necks from the sun. Another man was leaning lazily against the hood of the truck, smoking a cigarette.

  One of the farm workers was kneeling and holding his arm in obvious pain. It wasn’t yet 9 A.M. but it was hot. There was the pungent smell of tomato in the air. Fields of the plants, broken only occasionally by solitary trees, surrounded the ominous tableau.

  Cassie Mulloy jumped out of her car and walked toward the biggest of the bat holders.

  “What the hell do you think you are doing?”

  “Well, well, if it isn’t the reporter cunt,” the man said.

  The other men snickered. He was the leader. Mulloy ignored him and knelt by the injured worker, who was moaning. She said something in Spanish and the man replied. She stood.

  “I think his arm is broken.”

  “And I’ll break his other arm if he talks back to me again.”

  “Excuse me,” Scarne said.

  The big man looked at him.

  “Who’s this muthafucker?”

  “I’m with the D.P.M.”

  “The D.P.M.? What the fuck is that?”

  “Department of Potty Mouths. We’re dedicated to cleaning up bad language in the tomato fields.”

  “You fuckin’ with me?”

  “The fines are adding up. But I’ll let them slide if you will kindly drop your bats.”

  The man grabbed his crotch.

  “Suck my dick, gringo.”

  “How did you know my name?”

  “Huh?”

  “Richard Gringo.”

  It was obvious that Scarne wasn’t afraid of the goons. And that bothered them. From the corner of his eye Scarne saw the man who had been leaning against the truck reach into the cab and start to pull out a shotgun. Scarne quickly drew his automatic and calmly fired a round into the door next to him. The boom of the Hechler-Koch froze everyone.

  “Drop the cannon,” Scarne said.

  The man let the shotgun fall back into the cab. Scarne walked over and club
bed him in the face with his gun. The man dropped to the ground, holding his bloody and now-broken nose. Scarne reached into the cab and took out the shotgun. Holding it in the crook of his arm, he walked over to the small group.

  “The bats,” he said.

  The three men dropped them in the dirt. He walked up to the leader.

  “Now, what seems to be the problem?”

  Bat-less, and facing a man with a gun who apparently had no compunction to use it, the man tried for dignity.

  “These people stopped working. Owner sent us out to get them back to work.”

  “You dropped them off here at 5 A.M.,” Cassie said. “All they wanted was a rest period and some food and water.”

  “Don’t know nothin’ about that,” the man said.

  “Sure you don’t,” Scarne said. “Why did you break the guy’s arm?”

  “Didn’t mean to. He came at me. I guess I hit him too hard.”

  “Just an accident, then?”

  “Sure. That’s what it was.”

  “Keys.”

  “Huh?”

  “Do me a favor. Say ‘what’ instead of ‘huh’ occasionally, just to break the monotony.”

  “Huh?”

  “Never mind. Give me the keys to the truck.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, that’s a start.” Scarne put his gun under the man’s nose, bending his head back. “Give me the keys.”

  The man’s eyes darted from the gun under his nose to one of the other thugs.

  “Arnado,” he croaked.

  One of the men reached into his pocket and threw a set of keys onto the ground near Scarne, who pushed the leader back roughly toward his men and then bent down and picked them up. He tossed them to Cassie.

  “You’d better get that guy to a hospital. Can one of the other workers drive the truck? I don’t think they should stick around.”

  “I can drive,” one of the younger women said.

  “You’re a big man with a gun,” the goon’s leader said.

  “For Christ sake,” Scarne replied, “you guys pulled a shotgun first. And I won’t even bring up the Louisville Sluggers.”