by Moulton, CD
Clint had seen the type in those movies. No talent, just another prop for background.
Frank caught two snapper. He said this was a good idea because each one of them could catch their own supper. He didn’t delude himself into thinking they were going anywhere soon. They wouldn’t have made it out of the country and would just make themselves look guilty. He wasn’t bothered by the murder much. He never did like Lesterinn. They didn’t have much in common.
“What do you have on Napoli?” Clint asked. Lucerne looked shocked for a second, then grinned. “Nothing he can stop. It’s all up to him if it stays with me.”
“How did the bunch of you get together? Screw Napoli club?”
“Sort of. He was a little worried because we all had something and didn’t even know each other. He said we could find a place somewhere where he could keep tabs on us and he would give us each a million dollars. He named a few places he said were like paradise and we went to a place in Mexico, then Nicaragua, then here. He knew we all liked fishing and just sent us where the fishing was good and the place was really nice. We really like it here, but we don’t fit. Henry and Danny are the worst. I can get along anywhere, but he started it so the people don’t like us and I can’t change their ideas. Frieda and I can get along. The others are what we call rednecks and think they can order anyone around they like because they’re millionaires. It don’t work here. Catherine has an attitude and tries to flirt with the guys, but that won’t cut it. They as much as tell her to fuck herself if she wants to fuck.”
“That’s about what I figured.” Clint went back and picked up Frieda. Much the same. She had audio CDs and memory sticks. The way they kept the information made it really bad for Napoli if anything happened to her.
She caught a black sea bass. She agreed with Frank that they could all catch their own supper. They didn’t cook for each other except sometimes her and Frank, who wasn’t a bad guy.
She cleaned the fish right there and threw the guts, bones and fins overboard. She was fast and made very good filets with minimal waste.
The Dickersons wanted to come together. Clint agreed and said he knew they had their story worked out together so nothing would be lost. He wasn’t going to put up with the arrogant asshole act.
They were subdued and scared. They were afraid Napoli had sent someone to kill them off one at the time. He’d seen a man who he saw with Napoli in LA walking around right there in Bocas Town.
“Franconi? I know him. I talked with him.”
“He told you about us and Napoli?”
“No. He doesn’t talk about that kind of thing. Ever. Anywhere. Under any conditions.”
“What the hell did he carve Danny up like that for?!” Catherine wailed. “If he was just supposed to kill him, why do that?”
“He didn’t kill him. He’s professional. It would be fast and clean.” Clint said.
“Oh, dear god! Then there’s someone else?” Catherine cried, wide-eyed.
“Someone who’s not professional? Maybe it really was some nigger,” Dickerson said. “Maybe we got our shorts in knots over nothin’! I’ll be dog-damned!”
“Well, if you’re going to demean people like that I suppose you have to expect that some day you’ll insult the wrong one,” Clint replied.
“I hate nights here,” Catherine wailed. “Henry drinks a few beers and can sleep through an atomic attack. I need a quart of tequila and still can’t sleep long. Oh, I hate this place!”
“C’est la vie,” Clint replied.
They didn’t catch anything. Clint gave them a large yellow snapper he caught for their supper. Dickerson asked if he could arrange for them to go to David for a few days. Catherine said there wasn’t any point. It wasn’t from Napoli. She never really thought it was. He had too much to lose. They never carried much cash because these people would murder them all for fifty dollars. They could get the cash from any ATM. They could get enough for the plane at the airport or they could stop at the national bank. It had a Clave machine and was on the way.
Clint explained that there weren’t flights to Bocas Town from David anymore. There wasn’t really a reason to run.
“It might hit the fan because somebody else snuffed him, though,” Dickerson suggested. “It still means the stuff he had gets out.”
“What do you have?” Clint asked.
“No comment!” he fired back. Clint grinned. He dropped them off at the dock and talked to the officer stationed there to say they couldn’t go anywhere with luggage for more than a night or two.
“But they’re millionaires. They can buy all that stuff anywhere,” he replied.
“That leaves a paper trail others can follow. They don’t have cash. They use the ATMs.”
Clint went back home. He had hoped to get some kind of clue about Lesterinni, but they all were expert with a fileting knife. He did get confirmation that he knew what was going on. He just didn’t have a clue as to why. He wondered greatly why Danny Lesterinni was dead.
Revelations
Manny had reached a dead end with Napoli. He said that would have worried him a couple of years ago, but he didn’t care. He didn’t need to try to keep up with those stateside mobsters. He had enough in untraceable accounts that he could totally disappear from the world. Marko Boccini was dead and gone so far as the world knew. He was a totally different person. He was a family man with a beautiful wife and two great kids. His kids could wear the name “Mathews” that would get true respect for their father, not fear.
“Okay. What happened?” Clint asked.
“Nothing, really, and everything. I woke up this morning when the baby gave its five thirty wake-up call and Sylvia made me some coffee made from beans from right here with a little chocolate mixed in that was also from this place and some natural brown sugar grown right here. There were those fishcakes Judi taught her to make from fish I caught off my own dock right here and some patacones from plantains from right here. The sunrise would blow your mind.
“Anyhow, I was in the kitchen washing up my own dishes and thinking like I talk now. I understood right at that moment that the cheap two-bit gringo hood, Marko Boccini, was dead and gone and that the not-so-bad Panamanian, Manny Mathews, was alive and kicking.
“God! What a feeling! I never knew before how true what you said when we met was. I’m free! Nobody owns me and I don’t answer to anybody. Nobody and no money can own me anymore. No matter how much money I got, I was still that cheap two-bit hood.
“Clint, I was never responsible for anything before. Now I’m responsible for my family and friends – and, most of all, for me!
“See, it didn’t matter what I did before. It wasn’t my fault. It was the way of the world or Joe Blow or sex on TV or whatever. I was a damned slave to that life and didn’t know it. The song Dave sang the other night said what it really is. The line, ‘the freedom of my chains’ is a fact!”
“Your first religious experience and you’re not religious.”
“That’s just another form of slavery. Anyhow, I don’t care about that stuff anymore. For real. Anytime I use those old connections it’ll be to help the normal Joe.
“What made me see it was looking for that Napoli character. I just all-at-once saw how he’s a slave on the run from himself. I’m like your – our – Indio friends. I pity him. Probably a billion dollars cash and still a slave with no way out.
“I found a way out. All it took was one true friend. Thanks for being that friend.”
They chatted. Clint had watched the change from one of the world’s most powerful and feared mobsters to Manny Mathews, the regular nice guy living over on San Cristobal. He saw it in him when he first came to Panamá. He’d known his father in the states, had done a favor for him (he still didn’t know what that favor was) and had a vow that anything Clint ever needed was his for a word. That promise carried to his son. Clint saw the longing for a decent life in Marko’s eyes when he was here and helped him establish the new identity.
&n
bsp; That still left him with a wonder of why any of this happened.
“Manny, what has he done that makes him so afraid of being found? Do you even have an idea? Anything at all?”
“That life. He feels like he had it made. He’s worth millions or billions and nobody ever knew it was crooked. He now feels like he’s been more clever than anyone else in the whole damned country and managed to screw all of them in one way or another and never got caught at it. Now there’s someone or something that can bring it all out. Probably everyone around him thinks he’s a great person who beat the odds.
“It’s about reputation and respect. He did it all for respect, same as I did. The difference is that nobody actually respected me, they were all scared shitless of me. I didn’t have real respect to lose. He does, but it’s a lie and he knows it. The most important thing in the world is that no one ever knows.
“I’ll bet another thing. He probably has kids by a couple of women, but never loved anyone in his life. That means no one ever loved him, which means it’s all for nothing. Respect is the only thing he has and he’d lose everything else in the world to keep that respect.”
“That’s a cold psychological argument that’s probably right on the money. Depending on what he’s done I might try to arrange that he doesn’t lose the respect if I can find out what it’s about.”
“He’d be smarter to blow his brains out before it comes out, probably. He will if it comes out.”
“Maybe he deserves that, too. I pity the type. That’s real.”
A few minutes later they said their “Good lucks!” and hung up. Clint wanted to know what Napoli was hiding. When it came to killing even such as Lesterinni it had gone too far. That he had arranged that was pretty clear. The look of torture about it was a warning to the rest of them. “Shut up and stay shut up or....”
Clint also wanted to know which one was so coldblooded he or she could continue the act so easily. That was going to take some digging. He had three suspects. There was something ... there always was.
Now that he had a complete name and the company name he could use the computer to trace a lot about him. There was simply no way to keep everything off the net. Sometimes it seemed like there was no way to keep anything off the net. You don’t have to worry about Big Brother watching you, you have to worry about everyone and his dog watching you.
Clint sat at the computer and brought up Google Search. He tagged everywhere he wanted to go on that one, then brought up Yahoo! Search. He repeated it with lesser-known search engines. Four hours later he had a starting point so perked a large pot of coffee and started on it. He would take Napoli Diversified (that had grown to A. Napoli Diversified Investments and Services, Ltd/SA).
The company mostly made recommendations for investments. It seemed to have a good streak of luck after being in business for four years when it found a client who wanted to invest in international development of business and real estate. It suddenly showed a profit of four point two million dollars in the last five months of 1986, nine million for 1987, twenty one million for 1988, etc. There was some question of one client who seemed to be selling a lot of things more than he could hope to account for. He was investigated for fraud, but nothing was found. The investments were in other countries and the money sent to the states after being banked in other countries for a certain period. When the accounts reached a certain point the money was transferred to LA banks. In 1989 the accounts were consolidated into an international bank account so that fees were cut in half or more. The records were then open to the proper agencies and investigations showed it was legitimate when sent to the US branches.
Clint spent seven hours tracing money for that client and found that once the international bank was used and the accounts simply transferred to other branches the source of the money wasn’t watched much at all.
He played it close to the line until he shifted the attention to movements, not sources. It was laundered, probably from drugs.
Napoli had cut himself into it all with the origination of the scheme: very likely. He then handled the accounts of more and more such sources and ended up with a cut of a major part of the drug supply business. He was known as a very liberal spender for causes and was helping several hundred people with scholarships and medical and so forth. It was all in his community not far from Carmel, California. He was known as a person who was “No tolerance!” with drug dealers and for spending excessively large sums for rehabilitation. He was strong against sexual abuse situations, particularly rape and pedophilia. He was strong for the “Three strikes and you’re out!” police policies where violence was a part of it. He was dead-set against pornography. Period. Not in his community.
Trying to atone? It still didn’t quite connect. This stuff wasn’t handled anywhere near the place. It wasn’t at all likely that he was seen and recorded with some known drug dealers or such. That could be explained away with the, “I didn’t have any idea!” line. He was at a party, they were there, he spoke to other people at parties. He didn’t invite anyone like that to his parties. They came with someone else.
It was going to take a lot of digging, that was sure. There was something other than laundering that was behind it. Maybe they had recordings of him using drugs?
No. He wouldn’t be at any parties with that bunch on Bastimentos. They moved in entirely different circles. It was strange that they ever were in the same place at the same time for them to make any recordings.
Maybe a brothel? He was so adamant about sexual matters. Maybe they would meet him by chance in a whorehouse somewhere. That would mean Bianco or Herman having a connection. The men, it was obvious why they would see him. They might well be clients of such places, but the women wouldn’t be connected there except as madams or working girls. That was a line to investigate. Look at it from the other side.
He worked on Julia Bianco. She seemed to be a girl from a small town in Alabama, had left the state to go to college in Houston, Texas, had never finished for a degree, dropping out in her third semester when her grades made it plain she wasn’t going to get any degree there. She went to Southern California to a small college where she finished her degree in Agriculture and was a registered veterinarian there for two years before moving to LA. Little was known of her since. She communicated with people she knew from college and back home with letters or phone calls until three years ago when she started using the net and Skype. She had a blog for awhile. It was actually very dull. She didn’t say very much and communicated with people she met at her trade. She mentioned pets now and then on it, giving advice on cures and training. She liked rodeo and stock car racing and was somewhat into country music, trying to play the piano, but hadn’t gotten anywhere with it. She admitted she couldn’t sing and wasn’t very good as a pianist. She hung around a place near where she lived for awhile in Santa Clara called the Streetcorner Bar. She dated a man once in awhile and seemed to keep her relationships to one at the time for a minimum of several months.
Unless she was good at fantasy writing she never worked a brothel or even the streets or bar stools.
Frieda Anne Herman was born near Bakersfield, California. She was raised on a small farm. She had been married to a man who she caught in another man’s bed. He was bi and she loved him, but she wouldn’t take the chances that brought to a relationship, what with AIDS being so bad, especially in California. They used the computer to stay in touch about once a month. She didn’t use it much more than that. There wasn’t much about her to be found. She had stayed in a rented apartment in the poorer section of San Mateo for two years before coming to Panamá.
Okay. The brothel idea wasn’t behind it.
He looked up Lucerne while he was at it. Not much. Raised in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, went to LSU for two years and finished at UCLA. Had a bit of trouble when he slept with a sixteen year old girl, but she admitted she had convinced him she was nineteen in court. The state dropped the charges her parents had brought against her when she had claimed
that he had molested her when she was thirteen until she was almost fifteen. She wouldn’t testify that he had direct relations with her, only that he was always feeling her up. He was a party animal to an extent, but didn’t care for the regular upper class parties. He liked the more countrified places and stayed in a semi-barrio town called Carnivalitas.
Sick bastard!
That left Clint about where he was when he started. It wasn’t from recording a drug use or in a brothel.
Clint went back to Napoli and studied a picture. He was a semi-handsome man. He probably had very little trouble getting dates.
Police records were his main hope. He could use the connection with the Policia Nacionál to get information about him..
There was nothing in Carmel or the immediate area except parking tickets and a careless driving ticket six years ago. He was carrying a young boy somewhere and swerved off the road when the kid spilled grape juice all over his new Mercede’s hand-tooled leather seat. 1997.
Maybe the record was elsewhere. Santa Clara?
He had two parking tickets there a year and a month apart. By a fireplug once and another yellow curb violation at the central park.
Carnivalitas? He had to go to Mapquest to even find where it was located. It was three-quarters Mexicans. Lucerne spoke fair Spanish and could communicate fairly well. Napoli had lodged a complaint there because two of his hubcaps had been stolen.
So. He had been to all those places for some reason.
What about Danny Lesterinni?
A hour and a half and Clint knew he was born in Denver, Colorado, but had moved to Phoenix Arizona when his father’s job moved there. He was four years four monhs old. At nine he was living in Oregon, then Washington state, then down to San Francisco until he went to LA a month before he moved to Panamá.