Drunk Driving

by Zane Mitchell

  I pursed my lips. “I find out you shared any of this information and…”

  Ralph narrowed his eyes and leaned closer to me. “And what?”

  I lifted a brow. Did I really wanna threaten a former mobster? “And… well… let’s just say Al won’t let you win at miniature golf anymore.”

  Ralph sat back in his chair and laughed, letting his arms fall down by his sides. “Oh, please. Al doesn’t have to let me win. I win all on my own merit.”

  “You just keep telling yourself that, Ralph,” said Al.

  “I do!”

  “Anyway, you swear you won’t tell, Weaz?”

  “Yeah, yeah, kid. Your secret is my secret.”

  “Fine. Gibson pulled me over because Steve Dillon and Joseph Ayala told him I was harassing them in their places of business.”

  Al frowned. “Get outta here?”

  “I’m serious. Dillon told Gibson he practically had to have security toss me out.”

  “Well, that’s a downright lie.”

  “That’s what I told Gibson.”

  “He believe you?”

  “He didn’t seem to. I don’t think he cared, actually. Anything to get me off his island.”

  Al shook his head. “Where’s he get off thinking it’s his island anyway?”

  “Fuck if I know.” I sighed. “How’s it coming on that picture, Eddie?”

  He shook his head. “Google’s software didn’t pull anything up. I’m gonna send it to my contact in the States.”

  “Ugh,” I groaned, letting my head fall backwards. “How long is that gonna take?”

  Eddie shrugged his skinny shoulders. “Depends on how busy he is. I couldn’t tell you. Could be a couple hours. Could be a couple days.”

  “How about you convince him to make it the former rather than the later?”

  “I’ll do my best, Drunk.”

  “Thanks, Eddie. Thanks, Weaz.”

  “No problem, kid. You always bring the excitement.”

  27

  With little else to do until Big Eddie’s contact in the US got back to us, I decided to go back to my office and catch up on some resort work. I spent a couple hours buried in purchase orders and safety inspections before Al shuffled into my office looking rather salty.

  “Make any money down there?” I asked, looking up from my work.

  He frowned and swatted the air with one gnarled hand. “Nah. Today wasn’t my day.”

  “They can’t all be.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “Eddie hear anything back from his friend?”

  “Not yet.” He lowered himself slowly into one of the chairs in front of my desk. “So, you gonna fill me in on what you learned from that interview, or do I gotta buy you dinner and drinks first?”

  “Dinner and drinks? What, no flowers?” I asked, dropping my pen to my desk.

  “Come on, kid. What’s the story?”

  I sighed. Al was never in a very good mood after losing money at cards. I leaned back in my seat and steepled my fingers over my chest. “Well, the short version is the girl that we interviewed went through the same thing that Jordan did. She took the same blacked-out limo from Club Cobalt. Was taken to the same house and asked to do the same things. Except she decided to stay for a few months. And when she decided she’d had enough and wanted to go home, they threatened her so she’d stay.”

  “How’d she get away, then?”

  “The butler. A guy she called Fernando.”

  “So did she know where the house was?”

  “No. He dropped her off downtown and she took a bus home.”

  Al swatted the chair’s armrest with the palm of his hand. “Dang it. So is that all the info you got out of her?”

  “No, that’s not everything.” I ran a hand against the back of my neck. “She was scared to talk, especially at first. They told her if she went to the cops or told anyone else where she’d been, they’d find her. But she’s got a little sister she didn’t want to see get involved in this eventually. So in the end, she gave us the boss’s name.”

  Al’s eyes lit up. “Did she? What’s the name?”

  I smiled. “Harvey.”

  “No last name?”

  I shook my head.

  “A first name’s better than nothing.”

  “Oh, absolutely. You know, I came straight back here to get some work done. I haven’t even taken any time to do a search on Harveys on the island.” I sat up straighter and rolled my chair up closer to my computer. Giving my mouse a wiggle, I woke it up and opened my internet browser.

  “Has Francesca ever heard of this Harvey fellow?”

  “Nope,” I said while hunt-and-pecking the letters into my computer. When I’d run the search, I scrolled down the list of options, clicking on a white pages list. “There are at least a dozen Harveys on the island—and another dozen or so with the last name Harvey. Who woulda thunk it?”

  “Anyone look promising?”

  I stared at the screen, randomly clicking links. “I mean—where do I start?”

  “We could get a list of all the Harveys on the island and all their addresses and drive around trying to figure out which one has a limo and a big house?” suggested Al.

  I curled my lip. “Once again, Fred Flintstone, it’s called technology. Ever heard of Google Maps?”

  Al’s arms bounced up off of his lap in an exaggerated shrug. “Technology’s not my go-to, kid. Back in my day, if you wanted to spy on someone, you drove over to their house and peeked through the window like a normal person.”

  I looked at him. “Like a normal person? Fuck, Al.”

  “It was just an idea.” He scooted his chair forward. “Hey, how about you gimme another look at that photo? Maybe we’ll be able to see where it was taken or something.”

  I pulled out my phone, found the picture, and handed it to him while I kept searching on the computer. “There are like three Harvey Smiths alone,” I said in a sigh.

  Al handed me the phone back. “Can you print it and make the picture any bigger or something?”

  I showed him how to use his fingers to blow it up on the touchscreen. He frowned and nodded. “Nice.”

  “Yeah. Maybe if you feel like joining the modern world, you’ll upgrade that flip phone to a smartphone.”

  Patting the phone case attached to his belt, Al shook his head. “Oh no. I’m perfectly satisfied with my flip phone, thank you very much. I’ll just leave that new technology to you youngsters.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  We were both quiet for a few minutes, each lost in thought. Finally, Al leaned forward. “Look at this.” He held the phone across the desk and pointed at one of the men’s zoomed-in hands. “See this?”

  “What? His wrist?”

  “His cufflink.”

  “Oh. Yeah?”

  Al nodded. Then he slid and readjusted the picture to show me another guy’s wrist. “Look. Same cufflinks. As far as I can tell, they all have the exact same cufflinks. But I can’t make out what’s on them.”

  I took the phone from him and held it up closer to my face. And that was when I noticed it. “PGC,” I said, handing the phone back to Al. “I found those same exact cufflinks in Vito’s desk drawer when we were at Club Cobalt fixing their plumbing.”

  Al frowned. “I wonder what it stands for.”

  “I don’t—”

  The phone on Al’s hip rang. Al glanced down at his waistline. “Evie must be ready to go to supper.”

  I looked at the time on my Fitbit. It was only four o’clock.

  Al looked at his phone in surprise. “Oh. It’s not Evie. It’s Eddie. Hey, Eddie. What’s the word?”

  I scooted my chair closer to the desk and stared at Al.

  There was a really long pause and then finally Al nodded. “Oh.… Is that right?… No, no. Thank you.… Yeah, tell him thanks too. Alright then. Hey what time are you and the fellas going to supper?… Yeah, okay. Evie and I will see you then.” He hung up the phone.<
br />
  “Well? Did he hear back from his contact?”

  “He did. He said the guy could only get one facial recognition match. A guy by the name of Ziggy Thomas.”

  “Ziggy Thomas? Now there’s a name.” I turned to look at the computer. “I bet there aren’t a hundred Ziggy Thomases on the island.”

  Al pushed himself up into a standing position and came around my desk to watch my search. “I’d suppose not.”

  “You know, Ziggy sounds like a nickname. Maybe he’s actually this Harvey character. I guess we’ll find out.” I googled the name and got a ton of hits, all for the same guy. Ziggy Thomas, we discovered, was the owner of a helicopter tour company on the island. In picture after picture, we saw a younger guy with dreadlocks and a soul patch, and he wore aviator glasses in most of the pictures. “That’s him alright.”

  “He looks like a hippie.”

  “Kinda.” I scanned the headlines on each of the articles, many of them from the Paradise Isle News. From what I gathered, not only was he rather well known among islanders, but he was also well liked by the female population. Picture after picture featured Ziggy with a different woman on his arm. “He’s a ladies’ man, that’s for sure.”

  “I’d say.” Al tapped his chest. “Kinda like me back in the day.”

  I stifled a laugh and looked over my shoulder at him. “I’m sorry. Was that before or after Geico stopped selling horse and buggy insurance?”

  “Funny, kid. One of these days you’re gonna be old too. Then the jokes won’t be so funny.”

  I smiled and went back to the computer. “Yeah. But then I’ll be old, and I won’t care.” I chuckled as I scrolled through all the websites that mentioned Ziggy Thomas’s name. Pretty soon, a trend kind of emerged. His name appeared in numerous results from what appeared to be a celebrity blogger’s website. I clicked on one of the links and was sent promptly to a picture of Ziggy on the arm of a stunning brunette. I read the caption beneath the picture aloud. “Ziggy Thomas spotted out and about with model Harlow Anderson for the third weekend in a row. Ladies, has Paradise Isle’s most eligible bachelor finally been taken off the market?”

  I clicked the blog’s homepage button. Splashed across the top of the screen, a sparkling GIF read Paradise Eyes above a pair of heavily glittered, eye-shadowed eyes. Just beneath the eyes in slightly smaller print, it read Paradise Isle’s most up-to-date celebrity sighting news blog. I scrolled through the most recent month of entries and found Ziggy Thomas’s name mentioned in at least four different articles.

  “I wonder why that guy’s so famous,” said Al.

  I quirked a smile and looked up at Al. “Well, for starters, he owns a helicopter company. So he’s gotta be loaded. And I’m secure enough in my manhood to say that not only is he rich, but he looks like that. I mean, look at the guy. He looks like a freaking Calvin Klein model.” I rubbed the scruff on my chin. “I mean hell, he’s almost as good looking as me.”

  Al put a hand on my shoulder. “Hey, kid. All that stuff about us getting married earlier—that was all just for show, right? You’re not really… you know, sweet on me, are ya?” He chuckled.

  I rolled my eyes and turned back towards my computer. “Well, shit, now I’m curious to find out exactly how Ziggy got his start in the first place. He seems pretty young to own his own helicopter company.”

  I ran a search from within the blog and clicked on the oldest blog entry about Ziggy Thomas that I could find. The article was just over five years old. “A relative newcomer to the island, twenty-four-year-old Ziggy Thomas has purchased the Hidden Beaches Aerial Tours company from previous owner Arlan Jamison. His financial backing to make such a large purchase comes from an unnamed silent partner. Thomas, an Australian native, says he’s always had an affinity for helicopters and looks forward to providing not only tours to those visiting the island but also charter services, aerial photography, and utility and jungle inspections. Ladies, prepare yourself—this sexy Aussie hunk is not only single and ready to mingle, but my prediction is he will quickly become Paradise Isle’s biggest attraction. Where do we sign up?”

  “Why didn’t I get a write-up when I moved to the island?” I grunted, clicking back to the homepage.

  “Maybe because you don’t own a helicopter charter company.”

  “No, but I’m partial owner of a fishing charter company.”

  “You’re gonna milk that for all it’s worth, aren’t you, kid?”

  My head bobbed. “Damn straight. There’s gotta be some perks.” I clicked on one of the blogs from almost a month prior and scrolled down. My jaw dropped. I almost couldn’t believe what I saw. “Al. Get a load of this.”

  Al stood up again and stooped over my shoulder, peering at my computer screen. He adjusted his glasses and then pointed at one of the people in the picture I was looking at. “Is that one of the other guys in that picture you took?”

  I smiled up at him. “Not only is it one of the other guys, but his name happens to be Harvey.”

  “Get out.”

  I nodded. “Harvey Markovitz to be exact.” I pointed at the caption beneath a picture. “It’s splitsville for Ziggy Thomas and Harlow Anderson as Thomas attends one of Harvey Markovitz’s famed beach parties on the arm of socialite Elise Sawyer.”

  Al shook his head. “Well that’s some A-plus detective work, kid. You found our guy!”

  “We found our guy. Without the name Ziggy Thomas, we could’ve spun our wheels for weeks. I didn’t even see the name Harvey Markovitz on that list of Harveys I pulled up earlier. That was all you.”

  Al nodded like he couldn’t agree more. He pointed at the screen. “Now we have a real name to look up. Why don’t you see what the interwebs think about this Markovitz fella?”

  I googled him and was surprised to see a Wikipedia page pop up. “Harvey Markovitz is an American film producer. He and his close friend Peter Economopoulos cofounded the entertainment company Celestial Body Entertainment.” The article went on to list many of the movies attributed to his and his friend’s production company. I scanned through the article. “His first wife left him in the nineties. His second wife left him in 2002. It says he splits his time between Los Angeles and the Caribbean.”

  “Huh. So he comes out here, has his way with young girls, and then goes back to his day job in California?”

  I nodded. “Sounds about right.”

  “So. How do we nab the guy?”

  “I think for Gibson to believe anything we have to say, we’re gonna need some serious proof.”

  “You think that girl you interviewed would be willing to come forward and tell her story to him?”

  “Definitely not. She was barely willing to tell it to Frankie and me.” I shook my head. “No. We need to come up with some hard evidence to tie him to not only this underage prostitution ring, but also Jordan’s murder.”

  Al nodded and looked down at his watch. “Look, Drunk. I’d love to stay and chat, but I gotta meet Evie and the gang for supper. We’ll come up with a plan after. Alright?”

  “Yeah. Go ahead. I need some time to think anyway.”

  28

  I spent the rest of the afternoon into the early-evening hours in my office working on resort business and thinking about the connection between Harvey Markovitz, Ziggy Thomas, Joseph Ayala, Kip Dalton, Vito, and Steve Dillon—all the guys in the picture we’d found in Steve Dillon’s office. Vito ran Club Cobalt. Kip owned the club. They found these underage girls and shipped them over to Harvey Markovitz’s place, but why? Why would they risk their own necks to help Markovitz satisfy his desire for young girls? And why would Ziggy Thomas, a guy that seemed to have it all, want to hang out with a pedophile like Markovitz? It just didn’t make any sense. And then there was Joseph Ayala, running a lucrative photography studio. Why would he want to take pictures of these young girls, quite possibly jeopardizing his reputation? None of it made much sense. Was it just that they were all perverts like Markovitz?

  One thing did
stand out to me, though: the photograph. It had clearly been taken at some sort of party. And the fact that that celebrity blogger had said that Ziggy was at one of Harvey’s famed parties made me wonder if that wasn’t where the picture had been taken—Harvey’s place.

  I was sure the sun had already begun to set when Artie stuck his head into my office. “You’re sure burning the midnight oil.”

  “Hey, Artie.” I poked my head around my computer.

  “I gotta say, Drunk. I’m impressed with the changes you’ve made to your work ethic.”

  I puffed air out my mouth. “Thanks, Artie, but this place pretty much runs itself. It’s like a well-oiled machine.”

  “I like to think so. But if things are running so smoothly, what’s up with being cooped up in here when you could be keeping an eye on things down at the clubhouse?”

  “Well, I’m actually working on something else more or less personal.”

  “Oh yeah? Anything I can help you with?”

  I shrugged. “I’m really not at liberty to say.”

  Artie lumbered into my office and took a seat on the chair in front of my desk. “Oh, come on, Drunk. Who am I gonna tell? If it involves my resort, don’t you think I should know?”

  “Who said it involved your resort?”

  “Oh, I just assumed.”

  I sighed. Then I pushed myself away from the computer and looked at Artie. “Oh, what the hell. You can’t breathe a word of this to anyone.”

  Artie made a cross against his chest. “I swear on my late wife’s grave.”

  “You know Mari’s daughter, Giselle?”

  Artie’s head rolled forward. He caught it with one hand. “Oh no, Drunk. Tell me you didn’t.”

  “Fuck, Artie. I didn’t. Jeez. What’s with all you guys? I am able to practice a little self-control.”

  Artie let out a breath of relief. “Oh, thank God. Mari would’ve taken your man parts if you’d gone after her daughter.”

  “You don’t think I know that? Hell no, I’d never go there. Not even if it was someone else’s daughter. That’s just too young for me.”