by David Bishop
“So, you dated Lennox before his wife died, after he became a widower, and before and after he became governor of Florida. That right?”
Ann grinned.
“That explains why he kept an eye on you while you worked for the state police, and why he designated you to help Sergeant Wilmer on these cases.
“I checked and Sheriff Jackson was in office when Lennox was first elected, and Jackson never endorsed the governor’s candidacy. Bottom line, the governor trusted you to keep him informed more than he trusted the loyalty of Sheriff Jackson.”
“About finding who murdered his sister, yeah. He needs this solved and clean before he announces.”
“That sounds like he’s going to run. Is your relationship with him one of the things Lennox needs to clean up before the political cauldron begins to boil?”
“He’s been a widower for a few years. So, not really. The point is, for now, I’m more effective as an investigator if our relationship is behind the scenes. My resourcefulness as his ears inside FDLE will be diminished if the lowdown on us gets out. I don’t want to be treated differently at work—no one does. … I’d decided to trust you with this detail of my personal life, rather than lie to you. Politics can be such a real pain, can’t it?”
“So, you two are still—the American phrase is—an item?”
“We continue to meet quietly in his office or in town, but mostly, for now, we’re pretty much cooling it.”
Okay. That explains how the governor’s secretary knew the way you took your coffee and that you were left handed.
“While we’re on the subject of leveling with each other, I figure you’ve known all along that Mary Alice Phelps was the sister of Governor Lennox.”
“Yes. The governor treated you and me very much the same. He wanted me to understand why the Phelps’ death was so important to him. He had me swear not to tell anyone else. I didn’t like deceiving you on that.”
“Just how close is your relationship with Governor Lennox?”
Ann leaned in. “He wants us to get married—pushes for it. We were close to bringing our relationship out of the closet when his sister was found dead.”
“How does he feel about you … getting all lovey dovey with other men?”
“You mean with you?”
“Me. CC. Whomever. It’s not my business to know who else.”
Ann’s voice fell to a whisper. “The good governor’s a real debonair guy in public, but, to say it plainly, when he takes his pants off, he’s just a guy. He’s okay with me seeing other men. When he’s feeling randy, he pushes me to film myself with other men. Thinks it’ll turn him on to watch me and another guy. … How do you feel about that kinda stuff?”
Jack waved his hand back and forth between himself and Ann. “About the two of us making a film together to entertain the governor?”
“Yeah. It could be fun. I’ve never seen myself on film with a man. We could discover little things to improve our techniques. Interested? Curious?”
“Sorry to rain on your parade, but that’s not my thing. No one enjoys great sex more than me, but I see it as private.”
“Old fashioned, eh?”
“Something like that. But, thanks, I’m flattered you think of me as a prospective costar.”
Ann took a bite, shrugged, and used her tongue to regain control over an escaping wodge of syrupy waffle.”
“Okay. Let’s focus on Walker and Greene. Just how criminal are the services they provide their clients? In Mary Alice’s file on being the bookkeeper for the movie house, I found a note that the developer was being represented by Walker and Greene.”
“Listen, I’m choosing to be totally open with you. Airing my laundry, so to speak. You started off with a question about the shady reputation of Walker and Greene. But, equally, your questions touched on how shady is Trey Lennox. I’ve admitted to being the governor’s shady lady.” Ann grinned. “Once you get past Mother Theresa, there just aren’t a whole hell of a lot of folks who don’t spend a good hunk of their lives in the shade. But shady doesn’t mean criminal. It’s just people being … people. Everybody has their not-for-public consumption side—fetishes, whatever.”
“Why did you leave your well-paid position at Walker and Greene?”
“I always wanted to work in law enforcement, not in a law firm. I took the job with Walker and Greene because, frankly, when I first got here I needed a job. Their reputation for being the big fee criminal lawyers in Tallahassee might segue into some kind of Florida law enforcement position. I figured it might get me started and it did.”
Jack, who had finished his Panini, extended his arm and forked a slice of banana and a strawberry Ann had left on her plate. “Let’s summarize: big payoffs and big fees, Walker and Greene got it done. Their clients prospered, and the law firm prospered. Their fees kept getting bigger as the years passed. Ah, the American way is alive and well.”
“Yeah. That about sums it up, Mr. McCall.”
29
The temperature was still mild when Jack got on the road at seven; his destination, Ocala, Florida. It wasn’t a long drive, but it was more than just up the road. He wanted to talk with Morgan Howard, the governor’s ex-chauffeur, and he wanted to be facing him when he did.
While driving, Jack re-ground the beans Max had gathered about the Walker and Greene Law Group. After talking to his contacts, Max called them the Teflon lawyers. Nora’s inquiries got similar results: Primarily, Walker and Greene were fixers. Their main weapons were cash and influence. They’d get someone to do a favor for someone else, arrange a loan, get someone a job, or have someone fired. In short, they used bucks the way Al Capone used bullets. All within the limits of the law. At least the part that showed.
What was suspected, but lacked evidence, was that when a situation called for strong-arm work Walker and Greene used outside contractors who ranked high in street smarts and low in scruples. One of Max’s contacts said the barroom talk claimed Walker and Greene used off-duty cops when muscle could not be avoided. However, that accusation came straight out of the box labeled things somebody said they were told by a friend.
Before leaving, Jack had contacted a high-up source inside British Intelligence, a fellow whose life he saved when they were both in Afghanistan. After some shared stories and personal catching up, Jack’s friend told him what he knew.
“Ann Reynolds was a very effective operative for MI6 under the unwritten Doctrine of Authorized Criminality. She took it too far, too often, and her overzealous behavior came before the Director General at the same time as a fellow operative named Oscar MacHugh, whose behavior was even more egregious than Ann’s. Some years later, in early 2018, the Prime Minister signed a secret order legalizing Authorized Criminality. To this day, the specifics of which criminal offenses British spies may commit, and how far they can go has not seen the light of day. As for Oscar MacHugh, there’s talk he was assassinated under that secret order. A different rumor has him doing security work for an African despot. Ann Reynolds had a better fate. She negotiated an honorable resignation rather than face disciplinary process. Her file was sealed. A few years ago, I heard what you just told me, Ann Reynolds is in America.”
The diner owned by the governor’s former chauffeur, Morgan Howard, was on the main street of Ocala, two blocks from city center. Jack found a parking spot on the street around the corner and walked back. By the look of it, it was a place for good food at reasonable prices, if you didn’t want fancy. The lunch counter faced the grill. The wall behind was lined with booths for four. The layout left room for an aisle down the center so customers could get to the restrooms in the back.
He sat on the only open stool at the counter beside a man with a two-pillow belly, and a face that only his mother could love and then only because she was supposed to.
The live entertainment was the grill where patrons could watch the food move from menu to meal. The grill center was crowded with eggs over or scrambled. To their right was a row of o
melets nesting in individual pans. The left side of the grill was blanketed with white hash browns gaining color the way snowbirds do wintering in Florida.
From the description he was given, Jack figured Morg was the guy with the tall, white, cloth chef’s hat who was conducting the grill. A second man in a short, white, paper hat was buttering toast, carefully enough to hit the corners and not just the centers of each slice.
I like toast brushed with melted butter.
One of the waitresses stopped in front of Jack’s stool. Her skin was stolen from the night sky. She had green eyes for which most women would trade the password to their bank account. She accessorized one hip with one fist and added a smile developed to encourage tips—equal parts innocence and seduction. Her other hand grasped the handle of a full pot of coffee. He nodded. She turned over the clean cup on a small paper coaster and filled it. He ordered an omelet with hash browns and buttered raisin toast. Then he motioned toward the grill. “Tell Morg, Jack McCall’s here.”
She slid the work pencil into her apron pocket and spun on her heels. Jack glanced down to watch her maple syrup legs stretch out to reach Morg in two steps.
Maybe I should’ve ordered flapjacks.
She added Jack’s order to the lineup at the grill and leaned close to Morg.
He looked over and gave Jack a smile that could sell ballroom dancing lessons to elderly women. He was an average sized man without outstanding features other than light, wispy hair similar to the hair found on the undercarriage of a collie. After Jack nodded, Morg cracked three eggs into a pan, and added some milk. After shaking in a little pepper, he whisked the mix a few times and parked the pan on the grill at the back of omelet row.
A few minutes later, Jack got his omelet. He added catsup and ate while mindlessly perusing a section of the morning paper left on the counter by pillow-man who had turned sideways to get out the door before disappearing down the boulevard. The pace of the breakfast shift was slowing, and lunch wouldn’t start for more than an hour.
When Jack finished eating, Morg handed his big spatula-baton to the guy with the shorter paper hat who took over conducting the orchestra of eggs. With her section slow, the waitress with the suntan-lotion-label legs took over the part-time job on the butter brush.
The man Jack came to see refilled his coffee and Jack’s before motioning to follow him. They walked side by side, the lunch counter between them, until they got into the hallway. After passing the restrooms, Morg led Jack into a backroom. The chef slid his cloth hat off the side of his head and tossed it on a table that sat below a guitar hanging on the wall. He threw out a hand in greeting. Jack added his to create a shaking of firm hands. Morg sat in a wooden swivel chair and gestured Jack toward a straight-backed sitter along the wall.
“You play?” Jack motioned toward the hanging guitar.
“Lots of jobs in a life of hustle: When coffeehouses were the rage I played and sang a little. After that I competed on the professional horseshoe circuit, but not for long. Been a chauffeur off and on and lots of line cookin’, along with some other stuff I don’t put on my resume.”
“It’s one of your chauffeuring jobs that brought me to you. I understand Eric Dunn ran interference for me.”
“He told me what you wanted. Been a good while since old Morg heard from an uptown dude like Mr. Eric Dunn. He said I should shoot straight with you, so I’ll tell you whatever I know. Let me start off by saying I saw the governor as just another state employee. He wore shiny shoes, but to me he was no more than a meter maid or some honey working in child protective services. I gave him the respect of his office, but he put his pants on one leg at a time just like the rest of us. I didn’t figure he had any more right to cut corners than I did. You know what I mean?”
Jack knew what Morg meant. He just didn’t know why Morg had opened with that little speech.
“How bout we go out back. I’m lusting for a cigarette. I promised my bro I wouldn’t smoke inside, given all the modern-day shit about smoking in public places.”
Jack followed Morg through the door at the far end of the hall. The alley behind had the aroma of alleys everywhere: urine and rotten food in dumpsters that hadn’t been cleaned since they left the factory. Morg contributed to the pollution of the alley by lighting a cigarette. He looked down at the fresh, white-wrapped tube between his fingers, the smoke sliding back over his hand.
One parked car hugged the alley wall beside a sign that read, RESERVED FOR DELIVERIES.
Jack pointed, “Yours?”
Morg grinned. “Yeah. The real honey in my life—1966 Dodge Charger. I call him General Lee after the one used in the Dukes of Hazzard TV show, only that one was the ’69 model, but I matched the paint. Don’t have the time or I’d take you for a spin.”
“Next time. It’s gorgeous. While we’re on the subject of special honeys, what about the governor’s?”
“Dunn said you was a charger just like the General Lee. Always business, always pushing. That’s cool.” Morg’s laugh sent his latest puff out of the corner of his mouth to imitate the steam coming out of a vent at the back of the coin-operated laundromat that shared this block of the alley.
Jack stepped closer. “Eric and I go way back. I understand you and he do too.”
Morg took a long, deep drag on his cigarette, and again looked at it as if it promised something more valuable than an earlier death.
It’s still there, pal.
“My chats with Mr. Dunn ain’t so frequent nowadays. I was a resource back in the days when I had information to sell. Nowadays I sell omelets and this burg’s best deli sandwiches. Mr. Dunn isn’t about to pay to learn who had the pastrami. I get it. That’s all cool.” Morg left his cigarette in his mouth, his head down, his fingers interlocked behind his head. “What can I do you for, Mr. McCall?” He looked up. “If you ask it plain I’ll get the questions right and you’ll get the answers right.”
Jack offered a small, tight smile. “I want the full story of Governor Lennox and the ladies or lads he got together with when he wanted action away from the glare of the camera.”
Morg smirked. “I used to drive for a few big-time boxers, another time for a guy who, well, let’s just say if he’d have done the same things in Dodge City a hundred or so years ago, Wyatt Earp would’a been in his face. Those other mofos I drove for were all rougher than the politicians, but their private appetites were not all that different. Comparatively speaking, Governor Trey Lennox was as straight as the Florida Turnpike, only none of ‘em could sub in for a legit preacher. I just wish all of them assholes would work as hard at doing their job as they work at getting elected to it.”
An alleyway philosopher, and a good one.
Morg extended his cigarette-holding hand as if he were offering Jack the last soggy inch.
Jack ignored the possible offer. “Tell me about the governor’s secret get-togethers. I’ll listen and ask questions.”
“Weren’t all that much of that.” Morg’s cig stub, now too short to hold in his fingers, danced across his lips while he spoke. “If he went places he shouldn’t have, he did so after I dropped him.”
Morg’s smoke went up his nose into some kind of personal recycling system. When the rising heat became uncomfortable, he twisted to the side and let the stub fall to the pavement. After crushing it out with his toe he continued his story.
“Mostly the governor would have me drive him right to where he was going. I’d settle back in the cushy car and wait until he’d have me take him back. If I dozed off, he had no problem with it. He’d rap his Phi Beta ring on the driver’s window. I’d jump… not really I was in the car, but I’d get startled for damn sure. Lennox would put on a got-cha smile and get in the back seat. When I wasn’t napping I’d hop out and open the door for him. But when I was, he’d just open it hisself. Like I said, he ain’t no mothah.”
“He’d never get pissed? I mean, hell, I’ve seen Lennox torqued myself.”
“Weren’t all that ofte
n, really. The last six months—maybe a year—I was with him, most weeks he’d have me drop him at a corner in Tallahassee. Usually on Tuesday or Wednesday night, now and again on a Thursday, but always mid-week, you know. Never on weekends.”
“What was that about?”
“Don’t know. I tried a few questions, easy like, but he’d just look at me and say nothing. A blank stare like, ‘butt out, Morg.’ I might’ve been born at night, but it wasn’t last night. I figured it was a woman and I quit asking.”
“What told ya it was a woman?”
“Just living. You know, man. That’s what it’s about, mostly. People rationalizing their rendezvous. I mean, I didn’t leave ‘im at a hospital so I figured he wasn’t volunteering as one of them candy-stripers.”
“How long were these stops?”
“Don’t know. He’d have me leave. ‘I’ll find my way home,’ he’d say. ‘Pick me up in the morning. Good night, Morg.’ I asked some of the guys I got to know in the state police. I think formally it’s the Florida Department of Law Enforcement or some tight-ass name. His security detail was headed up by a lady. A real looker with a body like a brick shithouse. Never knew her name. The guys I knew said she’d give the officers watching him that night off. Story was, one of ‘em asked the governor about it and he said, ‘If she says you’re off that night, hey, enjoy it.’ Apparently, she knew the scoop on those midweek drop-offs, but if she ever told the story it never came around my way. The last thing I heard was that the governor had a personal bodyguard who was provided by some donor or somethin’, but not by the government. On that I got nothing larger than the rumor.”
“Wasn’t that unusual to leave the governor without Florida security?”