5 A Sporting Murder (5 page)

“It looks like we’re back to basic
detective work,” I said.

Jill opened her handbag, took out a
small notebook and began jotting notes on it. “We’ll need full backgrounds on
Howard Hays and Fred Ricketts,” she said. “In addition to Louie Aregis.”

“I have a good contact in Metro
Homicide who should be able to provide some help with the murder of Arnold
Wechsel. Which brings up the point of confidentiality. Is it necessary that our
relationship to Protect Our Preds remain private?”

Smotherman frowned. “We’d prefer
the other side didn’t know we’re looking into their operation. Total secrecy is
impossible, of course. Just avoid connecting us with your investigation.”

“Okay,” I said. “We’ll work as
quietly as possible.”

Back at the office, Jill got out our large travel cups,
heated water, and shoveled in spoonfuls of cappuccino mix, our favorite
beverage. McKenzie Investigations occupied a small nook in the strip center,
its broad front window artfully painted with a scene from the Gardens at Versailles. The yellow, white and purple blossoms contrasted sharply with the reds and
greens of Christmas decorations that dominated the stores on either side of us.

Before we huddled around my desk
for a strategy session, I called Colonel Grigsby at Andrews Air Force Base. I
asked him if Lieutenant Isabell had been released from prison.

“He’s one of those I’m supposed to
be informed about,” the colonel said, “but I haven’t heard anything. I’ll check
into it and give you a call.”

When I got off the phone, Jill sat
at the table with our cappuccino cups.

“Grigsby doesn’t know anything,” I
said. “He’ll let me know. Got your notes ready?”

“Who do we start with?”

“Let’s start at the top.”

“That would be Mr. Louie Aregis,
the investment fellow. His company is Coastal Capital Ventures. Since the Cumberland River provides the closest thing we have to a coast, maybe he should change it
to Riverfront Capital Ventures.”

“I think Brad Smotherman would be
happy to see him go back to the Gulf Coast. Let’s check him out with a database
search. Why don’t you get onto that? I’ll see if I can track down Red
Tarkington.”

“The NCIS agent in Pensacola who helped us down there last year?” Jill asked.

“Right. Last time I talked to Ted
Kennerly, he said Red spoke of getting out of the Navy and taking a shot at the
PI business in Florida.”

Ted was a former OSI protégé currently the Special Agent in Charge at Arnold Air Force Base south of Nashville. We had kept in touch over the years. I’d used him on occasion to get info from
places he had privy to but I didn’t. Tarkington worked with us some years back
on a joint-service case at Pearl Harbor and became close friends with Ted. They
communicated frequently by phone and email.

I reached Ted at his office. “Have
you heard anything more from Red Tarkington about going the PI route?” I asked.

“Sure have, Boss. He’s already out
of the service.”

Ted still used the “Boss” nickname
I had when I was his Special Agent in Charge. “When did it happen?”

“About a month ago. He was working
on getting a private investigator license. I understood he plans to set up shop
in Pensacola. The way things are down there, I imagine there’s lots of
opportunity for fraud in reconstruction. Probably a good climate for an
investigator. What’s going on? Jill hasn’t resigned as your partner, has she?”

Ted and Jill had a special
relationship after she flew him to Boston to be with his dying mother when he
couldn’t get there by commercial air.

“Nothing like that,” I said. “We
have a new case that involves a man who recently moved his business here from
the Panhandle.”

“I bet Red could help you out. Hold
a sec and I’ll get you his phone number.”

I wrote down the number, sent
regards to Ted’s wife, Karen, and hung up. Jill was still digging around on the
Internet.

“Come up with anything yet?” I
asked.

“I’m checking a couple of sources.
Looks like there’s no shortage of info on Aregis out there.”

I went back to the phone and
punched in Red Tarkington’s number.

“This is Greg McKenzie,” I said
when he answered.

“Hi, Colonel. I was asking Ted
about you recently. He said you folks had solved another murder up there. Are
you branching out into homicide?”

“Hardly,” I said with a chuckle.
“Right now we’re doing an investigation that’s linked to a guy who moved his firm
here from Pensacola a few months ago. Ted said you planned to get into the PI
business. That true?”

“I’m working on getting set up. Got
my license. Ready to rent an office and line up some clients.”

“We’d like to be your first, Red.
We need you to look around down there for anything that might appear
questionable about one Louie Aregis or his company, Coastal Capital Ventures.”

After getting Red onboard, I recalled
that he had been a civilian cop before joining the military, serving in the Louisville, Kentucky Police Department. I told him about Izzy Isabell.

“I may need to talk to somebody up
there,” I said. “Do you still have any contacts?”

“Call Lt. Bob Dobyns.” He spelled the
name for me. “Bob is in the Criminal Intelligence Unit.”

I had just gotten off the phone
when a visitor arrived. We didn’t get a lot of walk-ins in our out-of-the-way
location, and this one hardly bore the look of a prospective client. After
stepping through the door, he hesitated, shifted his bleary eyes about, and
approached my desk. Beneath a brown fedora that looked like it had been twisted
into a cylinder a few times, he wore a gray sweat shirt, over that a long black
coat. The tail of the coat had evidently been snagged on a nail. From his
appearance, he might have been a down-and-out PI from an old pulp novel. He had
a bristly beard and his hands showed no sign of having been introduced to soap
lately.

“You Greg McKenzie?” he asked.

I nodded. “What can I do for you?”

“I have some information you need.”
His voice was scratchy, like a well-worn 78 rpm record.

“What makes you think I need it?”

“It’ll cost you to find out.”

I had been exposed to enough
pseudo-snitch winos to be a confirmed skeptic. I stood and faced him. He was a
couple of inches shorter than me. “You’ll have to do better than that if you
want any of our money.”

“It’s about that shootin’ Saturday
night.”

Now he had my attention. “How does
it involve the shooting?”

“How?”

“Yeah, what do you know that’s
worth my giving you any cash to find out? Do you know who fired the shot?”

“Maybe.”

“Did you see the shooter?”

“I heard him shoot and saw him run
out to his car.”

“What kind of car did he drive?”

“Now we’re talking cash.” He
grinned, showing a couple of missing teeth.

“Tell me the make of the car and a
license number and I’ll give you twenty bucks.”

His reddened eyes flared like Roman
candles about to fire. He jammed his fists against spindly hips. “Twenty! You
think I’m some idgit asshole? You know how much it cost me to ride a bus out
here? Make it a hunnert.”

I checked him out a little more
closely. He was nobody’s fool. “Why did you come here instead of to the cops?”

“I don’t like cops. They’re nothin’
but trouble.”

“How do I know you aren’t just
making this up?”

“Gimme fifty now and the other
fifty when you check it out.”

I had to admire his tenacity, but I
wasn’t about to put out that kind of money on faith alone. “How would I find
you if I came looking?”

“I hang out around Dickerson Pike
and Trinity Lane. Just ask for Fingers.”

I wondered if that nickname had come
from a habit of picking pockets or doing a little shoplifting. “Tell me
somebody out there who’d know you.”

He looked down, obviously scratching
about for an answer. “Tommy at A and R Café. He gives me a cup of coffee now
and then.”

I reached down and flipped through
my phone book to the café’s listing. I called the number and asked for Tommy.

“You’re talking to him,” a lively
voice said.

“I have a guy here who goes by the
name of Fingers,” I said. “He tells me you know him.”

“Afraid so. He’s harmless, though.
Always hanging around the area. He trying to talk you out of some money?”

“A little business deal. He wants
to sell me some information. Is he believable?”

Tommy paused a moment. “My caller
ID shows McKenzie Investigations. Are you the man who found that body over here
Saturday night?”

I looked across at Fingers and
wondered what was coming. “Right.”

“I guess I’m responsible. I gave
him your name.”

“How’d that happen?”

“He asked me if there was something
in the newspaper Sunday about a shooting around here the night before. I read
the story to him—he’s not too good at reading. He wanted to know where your
office was. I had no idea he’d go out there.”

“He rode the bus,” I said. “Sounds
like he might be legitimate, doesn’t it. Do you think I could find him over
there if I came looking?”

“Long as you don’t plan to make him
rich. I know where he sleeps when it doesn’t get too far below freezing.”

I thanked him and hung up. I pulled
out my billfold and counted out two twenties and a ten. I laid them on the desk
but kept my hand on them.

“The information, please,” I said.

He took a scrap of paper from his
coat pocket and tossed it on my desk. It had the three-letter, three-number
combination found on Tennessee license plates.

“What kind of car?” I asked.

“One of them big sport utility
trucks. Black. Not sure what make. It was too dark.”

“Where were you when you saw it?”

“In front of the building next to
the repair shop. His truck was parked on the street.”

“Could you identify the man?”

“Naw. I didn’t get a good look at
him. Didn’t look too big, though, even bundled up in that wind.”

“But you’re sure of this number?”

“Sure as my name’s Fingers
O’Malley.”

I pushed the bills toward him. He
grabbed them and hurried out the door. I picked up the phone and called Phil
Adamson.

“You did what?” he said when I told
him about Fingers.

“I paid him fifty bucks for the
license number of Arnold Wechsel’s killer. Sounded like the SUV we saw on the
street last night.”

I read off the tag number.

“Hold on and let me check it out.”
I listened to muffled office noises for a couple of minutes until Phil came
back. “Hang on while I check one more thing.”

After another two or three minutes,
he said, “My friend, you just got snookered. That number is registered to a
yellow Volkswagen Beetle. Hardly what I’d call a big black SUV.”

“Maybe the plate was stolen from
the VW,” I said.

“I called the owner. She’s a
retired schoolteacher who confirmed the plate is still on her Volkswagen.”

When I told Jill what Phil had found, she just shook her
head. I walked over to where she stood beside the printer. It whirred away,
spitting out a succession of sheets from her data search on Louie Aregis.

“I still think Fingers O’Malley saw
something,” I said.

“He sure as heck saw that fifty dollars
on your desk.”

Okay, so I took a gamble and it
appeared that I lost. I’d deal with Mr. O’Malley later. I pointed at the paper
tray. “Find some interesting stuff?”

“You be the judge.”

She handed me the first page.
Aregis was born in 1969 in Orlando, Florida, where his father was employed at
the developing project that would become known as Disney World. He grew up in
the Orlando area. After graduating from Florida State University in Tallahassee with a degree in finance, he took a position with a brokerage firm there and
married his college sweetheart, a Pensacola girl. Three years later, the family
moved to Florida’s westernmost city where Louie went to work for Coastal
Capital Ventures, the firm owned by his wife’s father. Aregis took over the
business four years ago after his father-in-law’s death.

“Looks like he married well,” I
said.

“Reminds me of the way they talked
about Nashville in my younger days,” Jill said. “It was called ‘The Son-in-Law
Town.’ Young Vanderbilt graduates married the daughters of wealthy businessmen,
then moved up to cushy jobs.”

A St. Louis native, I knew little
about Nashville prior to moving here. My only connection had been a tour of
duty at the former Sewart Air Force Base in Smyrna, just south of the city.
That was my first OSI assignment, which provided me the opportunity to meet
Jill, a college student in the aviation program at nearby Middle Tennessee State.

When she spread the sheets from the
data search across her desk, she pulled out one and handed it to me. “This is
something you might want to dig into a little more deeply.”

It included a reference to a Tallahassee newspaper story from Aregis’ college days. Nineteen at the time, he was
involved in a shooting incident at his fraternity house at Florida State. According to the story, he shot a fraternity brother in the arm with a .38
caliber revolver. There were conflicting accounts from witnesses about an
argument, but both he and the victim described it as an accident. Aregis said
they were horsing around with the gun when it discharged. He told police he had
found the weapon in a clump of bushes behind the house. A later story said
authorities traced the revolver to a Miami man who had reported it stolen a few
years earlier. The university disciplined both boys and no charges were filed.

I skimmed through the other pages
Jill had printed but saw nothing that jumped out at me. I decided to save it
for later.

“Let’s split up the other two NBA
investors and do searches on them,” I said.

“Okay, I’ll take the easy one. Everybody
knows Howard Hays. See what you can dig up on Fred Ricketts.”

“I thought the senior investigator
got first choice,” I said.

“If the senior investigator wants
something besides leftovers for dinner, he’d better get busy on Mr. Ricketts.”

I should have known better. In a
battle of wits, I always got the nit. I turned to my computer and fired up a
database search. I soon learned that Ricketts was owner of Physicians and
Surgeons Software, Inc., better known as P&S Software. Originally from Indianapolis, he had been in upper management with one of Nashville’s major hospital
chains before striking out on his own. The firm was headquartered in Brentwood, which bordered Nashville on the south and was home to many medical-related
companies. According to supposedly reliable reports, Ricketts planned to take
P&S public soon, giving him millions to devote to new projects, like an NBA
team. One interesting side item said he was part-owner of an IndyCar racing
team.

I found a magazine article about
him that painted a picture of a young entrepreneur with a fiery determination
to make it big. He had used the knowledge he gained at the hospital firm to
create software programs that made life easier for both hospitals and medical
practices. He hired the right mix of program developers and marketing pros to
quickly build P&S Software into a formidable company.

Jill and I compared notes. Hays, as
we knew, headed the Dollar Deal chain of small retail stores specializing in
“everything for a dollar.” He was big in charitable work, served on several
corporate boards as well as one of the mayor’s commissions, and owned a piece
of a minor league baseball team in another city.

“Looks like these two are pretty reputable
business types,” Jill said. “I’d say we need to concentrate first on Mr.
Aregis.”

“Agreed. We can’t hit him head-on,
though. We’ll have to nibble around the edges.”

“Do you want to try the magazine
gimmick?”

It was something we’d used before.
I would pose as a magazine writer and interview the subject for a background
piece. “Might work. He’s fairly new in town. He won’t likely know me.”

“What about that picture of you Wes
Knight put in the paper after the Marathon case?”

Notoriety wasn’t always a good
thing. “You have a point. I guess that leaves it up to you, babe. Think you can
handle it?”

She gave me a few bars from
Annie
Get Your Gun
. “Anything you can do I can do better.”

“Okay, it’s all yours.”

She called Coastal Capital Ventures
on her cell phone, which didn’t show her name, and identified herself as a
contributing writer for
Sporting World Magazine
. It sounded close enough
to the real thing to fool most people. She gave me the high sign, meaning they
were putting her through to Louie Aregis.

I got on the office phone and
called Channel 4, the local NBC affiliate, asked to speak to the sports
director, Rod Jenson. On hearing the mellow voice I associated with a
square-jawed smiling face on the nightly news, I introduced myself and asked if
we might get an appointment to chat with him for a few minutes.

“We have a client with an interest
in the professional sports scene,” I said. “I hoped you might be able to give
us a little background on how things work.”

“Sure. Be happy to help anyway I
can.”

He wouldn’t have time for us today
but agreed to a meeting tomorrow.

Jill looked across from her desk as
I put down the phone. “Worked like a charm,” she said. “I’m interviewing Aregis
at nine o’clock in the morning.”

“We need to craft some questions
that sound innocuous but might give us an insight into what’s going on with
this deal,” I said.

“You’re the interrogator. Tell me
what to ask and I’ll make notes.”

“Let’s save that for tonight. I
need to run over to the spy shop and pick up our surveillance gear. Sarge said
he’d have it all ready this morning.”

We had a tricky surveillance job
coming up next week, and I had ordered a bunch of new equipment the fee would
pay for. The store was located on Lebanon Road not far from our office.

“Don’t tarry,” Jill said. “We need
to leave soon for our interview with Gordon Franklin.”

I cut through Andrew Jackson
Parkway and made it in no more than five minutes. The sign over the door of
the narrow shop said Covert Security. I had run across the place a few months
back while looking for a small, unobtrusive camera. The owner, a retired Special
Forces master sergeant, looked up when I walked in.

“Hey, Colonel. Got all your stuff
right here,” he said, showing his usual lop-sided grin. He was a little shorter
than me but with bulging, muscular arms. He wore a baseball cap with SOX across
the front.

“Morning, Sarge,” I said. “I didn’t
know you were a Chicago fan.”

“Just trying out my newest gadget.”
He pulled off the cap and turned it upside down. “This little jewel is a camera
and video recorder. Holds up to four hours. The lens looks out through the O in
SOX. Neat, huh?”

I looked it over. “They get stuff
any smaller and you can hide it in your eye teeth.”

He chuckled. “I think the CIA already does that.”

He spread the McKenzie
Investigations equipment on the counter: a keychain voice recorder/transmitter,
a small receiver that would fit in your pocket, a receiver that hooked over
your ear like a Bluetooth phone, and a ballpoint pen voice recorder.

“They’ve all got instructions with
them,” Sarge said. “Let me know if you have any problems.”

I gathered up all our surveillance
goodies and headed back to the office. When I got there, Jill handed me a slip
of paper.

“Colonel Grigsby, wants you to call
him,” she said.

When I reached my old commander, I
got the news I expected.

“You’re still sharp as ever, Greg,”
he said. “That must have been Izzy you saw. They told me he was released last
week, presumably headed back to Louisville.”

“He got fifteen years, didn’t he?”
I couldn’t remember all the crooks I’d sent up, but this was one of those
special cases.

“Right, for transporting and
selling cocaine, assault, conspiracy to commit murder, and a variety of other
charges. And I’m sure you recall how unhappy he was that you nailed him. They
should have notified me the moment they turned him loose.”

“Thanks. Did you get any info about
his prison record?”

“Not good. He was a troublemaker. They
said he associated with other former drug dealers. I suspect he’ll be right
back into it.”

“Too bad,” I said. “He was a smart
operator.”

“Right,” Colonel Grigsby said. “You’d
better watch your backside.”