Found: A Matt Royal Mystery (28 page)

“I’ll pay you for the pictures,” he said. “But this is extortion. You could go to jail, too.”

“Mr. Evans,” I said, “the pictures aren’t for sale. What I want is for you to explain to me why you’re the personal representative of Jim Fredrickson’s estate, why you haven’t completed probate yet, why you sold the grove property for such a pittance, what your relationship is to Robert Hammond, the man who bought the property, what you’ve done with the ten million dollars in cash that should be in the estate, and what you do at the grove house over in Avon Park when you and a bunch of your buddies get together.”

“Who do you represent?” he asked.

“Nobody right now,” I said. “But I think you’re screwing with the Fredrickson estate and are probably involved in a bunch of other activities that the police will want to know about.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.

I grabbed him by the tie with one hand and used the other to open the rear door of the Explorer. I threw him into the backseat and said, “If you move, dickhead, I’m going to shoot you.”

“What’re you doing? Where are you taking me?” Panic had crept into his voice, but he didn’t move from the seat.

I stood there for a moment, reality sinking in. I was about to kidnap this little moron and that could result in me losing my law license and the next several years of my life. I crawled in beside him on the back seat. “I just want to get you out of the sun, Mr. Evans.”

“Let me out of here.”

“You’re free to go.”

“What about the pictures?”

“I think I’ll sit on them for now. Give you time to think things over a little.”

“What do you want from me?” he asked.

“I just told you. Information.”

“How do I know that you’ve really got those pictures?”

“You don’t.”

“Why should I believe you?”

“You can trust me, Mr. Evans. I’m a lawyer.”

“Right,” he said with a hint of incredulity.

“Are you going to get out of my car?” I asked.

He looked at me a bit sheepishly and got out without another word. I got in the front seat and drove out of the parking lot and toward Longboat Key. Other than rattling that arrogant little piece of dog droppings, I hadn’t accomplished a damn thing.

I crossed the John Ringling Bridge just before noon. I called Jock and got his voice mail. “It’s almost lunchtime,” I said, “and I’m going to the Old Salty Dog. Meet me there if you’re hungry.”

I drove a quarter way around St. Armands Circle and headed south, crossing the causeway to Lido Key. I turned right on Ken Thompson Parkway just before the New Pass Bridge, crossed onto City Island and found a parking spot about a block from the restaurant. I wasn’t surprised. It was, after all,
the season
, and half the people in the Midwest had come to the Suncoast for the winter.

The Old Salty Dog is a throwback to a time when waterside restaurants flourished in coastal Florida. It sits on the edge of New Pass, which separates City Island from Longboat Key. The view is of green water and the flora of the Quick Point Nature Preserve that takes up the south end of Longboat. The pass is always heavy with boat traffic, fishermen heading for the man-made reefs, and people just out enjoying the weather. The restaurant’s deck is open on all sides and the gentle February breeze off the water was cool enough to make me glad I was wearing a sweatshirt. I had to wait for a table and was standing near the bar watching the boat traffic and sipping from a bottle of Miller Lite when Jock strode up.

“Hey, podna. Got your message. How long do we have to wait?”

“They said about ten minutes, but who knows,” I said. “You got anywhere you’re supposed to be?”

“Nope. Just asking.”

“Where were you?”

“I was in a meeting with one of our agents at a Starbucks in Sarasota.
I’d turned my phone off and got your message just as I was getting back into my car.”

“What is the world coming to?” I said. “Secret agents meeting in Starbucks.”

“You might be interested in our conversation.”

“Oh?”

“I called my director last night to see if the agency had anything on this Bonino ghost.”

“Why would your agency be interested in a bunch of Mafia thugs?”

“We keep tabs on all kind of career criminals. They have a tendency sometimes to get tied up with terrorists. Usually in the drug trade. It’s a way for the jihadists to make a lot of money and move it around.”

“Was there anything on Bonino?”

“No. But the director called me this morning and said an agent from Tampa was coming to Sarasota to meet with me. He had some information he wanted to pass on.”

“Not about Bonino.”

“Not directly,” Jock said. “The agent I met with spends a lot of time looking into organized crime in this part of Florida. He’s the agency’s resident expert, I guess. He told me that he’d heard about Bonino, but he wasn’t sure he really existed.”

A waitress came out of the covered deck area and called my name. Jock and I followed her to a table overlooking the pass. She took our drink orders, left us menus, and walked off, promising to return quickly.

The wind had picked up a little, and I could see small waves breaking on the shoal that lay outside the inlet and just north of the channel markers. Boats were making their way through the chop and into the calmer waters of the pass. Several had anchored on the sandbar just seaward of the bridge and a few hardier souls were standing in waist-deep water drinking beer.

“Did the agent have anything useful?” I asked.

“He did. He has a mole in the group that runs most of the rackets in the entire state of Florida. The mole’s a trusted member of the inner circle and he’s been a part of the mob for a long time. About five years ago, this mole was in love with a woman who was feeding information to a Tampa police detective. Nobody knew that our mole was in a relationship with
the woman. The big boss found out that the woman was talking to the cops and he put a hit on her. He later bragged to the mole that he’d personally overseen her murder.”

“So,” I said, “the mole becomes the mole.”

“Yeah, in a roundabout way. See, and this is the good part, the mole’s sister is married to the big boss.”

“Wait a minute,” I said. “The mole is the big boss’s brother-in-law?”

“Yep. And he’s also the second in command of the operation.”

“Wow. Talk about an insider.”

“The mole plays things very close. He only gives us information that he wants us to have. There’s a lot we don’t know.”

“Why don’t you squeeze the guy?”

“We’ve come to an agreement. We won’t disrupt his organization as long as he keeps us apprised of what’s going on in the other groups he deals with.”

“I’m not sure I understand,” I said.

“We made a deal with the devil. The mole didn’t know his girlfriend was dealing with the Tampa detective until after she was killed. It seems that the detective was on the organization’s payroll and he was the one who fingered the woman to the big boss.”

The waitress returned and I ordered the Old Salty Dog, a beer-battered deep-fried foot-long wiener on a bun with cheese and bacon. I only allowed myself one of those per month. Jock grinned and ordered a salad and looked smug.

“What happened to the detective?”

“That’s where things got interesting. The mole figured that if the boss was telling him about having the woman killed, the boss didn’t know about the mole’s relationship with her. If the boss didn’t know, then he was pretty sure the cop didn’t know. But the mole knew the cop from some past dealings, so the mole invited the cop on a fishing trip. Told the cop the boss would be along and that the cop shouldn’t say anything to anybody about where he was going.”

“I take it the detective never made it back from the trip.”

“Right. The mole had a big sportfisherman at a marina in Clearwater. When the cop showed up, the mole told him the boss was below in the
cabin nursing a hangover and didn’t want to be bothered. They went out about fifty miles into the Gulf and the mole pulled a pistol and told the detective about his relationship to the woman. Then he tied him up, attached an anchor to him and threw him overboard.”

“The big boss wasn’t involved.”

“No.”

“How did your agency get the mole?”

“He wanted to get back at his brother-in-law without completely ruining his operation. He didn’t trust the cops and didn’t like the FBI, so he went to the CIA.”

“How does one
go
to the CIA?”

“He walked into the CIA headquarters in Virginia and told a security guard he had some very sensitive information that he was sure the CIA would like to have. The guard sent him up the line until some guy met with him. When he realized the information was about Mafia activities in the U.S., he called us in. The CIA takes itself very seriously and doesn’t like to step outside its charter and operate inside the U.S. The mole’s been working with our guy in Tampa ever since and thinks he’s dealing with the CIA. He doesn’t know that we’re working with the FBI.”

“So what’s your deal?”

“We’re squeezing his organization. Revenues are down and some of the underlings are getting restless. The mole thinks it’s just a matter of time before somebody stages a palace coup. He figures his brother-in-law is a real short-timer in this world. When the boss is dead, the mole will take his sister and disappear into the witness protection program and the FBI will dismantle the organization.”

“Why wait? Why not just take the whole organization down?”

“The FBI is stockpiling evidence that will put the whole gang in jail. In the meantime, we’re also learning a lot about the inner workings of some of the other groups, and we’re taking them down one at a time.”

The waitress came back with our meals, and I dug in. That dog probably wasn’t doing my arteries any good, but my taste buds were in heaven.

“What about Bonino?”

“Apparently, Bonino doesn’t have anything to do with the Mafia. He’s a relatively small-time operator, and since he’s not infringing on the real
organization’s territory, they leave him alone. They’re aware of him, but don’t know who he is. They’re not even sure he’s real.”

I was disappointed. “So we didn’t really learn anything,” I said.

“Maybe we did. The Mafia crowd used a lawyer in Sarasota from time to time to represent one of their people who got arrested. He was killed about a year ago. The word the mole hears is that he was killed by Bonino because he got too greedy.”

“Fredrickson?”

“Yes. The mole’s group has kept pretty close tabs on Bonino’s people to make sure they don’t start encroaching into Mafia business. They’re pretty sure that Fredrickson and Bonino were in business together. They’d stopped using Fredrickson as a lawyer because of that connection.”

“I’ll be damned,” I said. “That changes a lot of things.”

“Yep. If Fredrickson was in bed with Bonino, we have to think that maybe Bonino had him killed.”

“Why would Bonino do that?” I asked.

“Maybe Fredrickson got greedy or had a change of heart and was going to expose the operation. Who knows? The criminal mind works in mysterious ways.”

“Did the mole know anything about Katie?”

“No. He assumes she’s dead.”

“Well, your morning was a lot more productive than mine. I went to see Wayne Evans.”

“And?”

“And nothing. He’s obviously been to the Avon Park house, but he wouldn’t tell me anything.”

“How do you know he was at the house?”

“I implied that I had pictures that were taken there of him naked. He was pretty worried about that.”

Jock laughed. “Where do we go from here?”

“I don’t know. I think Evans may be the key to finding out who killed Fredrickson and is looking for Katie. I almost kidnapped him today, but common sense got the better of me.”

“Maybe,” said Jock, “I ought to have a go at him. I’m pretty much under the radar.”

“I don’t know, Jock. Evans may be a snake, but he’s a prominent lawyer in this town and you can’t just go after him like you would some lowlife.”

“Why not?”

He had me there. “No reason, I guess, except that he’ll put up a huge squawk about it. I’m thinking I might hear something about my meeting with him this morning.”

“That’s not likely, if he’s engaged in something illegal. You’re pretty sure he’s dirty, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Suppose I arrange a little meeting with him tonight.”

“Okay, but stay out of trouble with the law.”

Jock looked at me as if I’d lost my mind. I laughed. “Sorry,” I said. “Didn’t mean to insult you.”

It was almost noon and J.D. was on her fifth cup of coffee. She’d been going back over the file on Goodlow’s murder, trying to find some tidbit she’d overlooked, some tiny fact that might send her in another direction. It was a frustrating exercise and one that wasn’t bearing any fruit. The phone on her desk rang. Bert Hawkins, the medical examiner for the three-county Twelfth Judicial Circuit.

“J.D.,” the deep voice rumbled. “It’s Bert Hawkins.”

“Good morning, Bert.”

“I’ve got some disturbing news for you, I’m afraid.”

“Bert, my day’s already so lousy that a little more bad news isn’t going to make much difference.”

“A couple of hunters found some human remains over in DeSoto County a couple of weeks ago.”

“That’s in your jurisdiction, isn’t it?”

“Yes. There wasn’t much left of the body. Scavengers had gotten to it and only a few bones and the skull were left. There was a bullet hole in the skull, which is probably the cause of death. There wasn’t enough of the body left to find any other cause, but there was enough to tell that the body was female. We were able to extract some DNA for comparison purposes in hopes of identifying the body. I just got the DNA results back from the state crime lab in Tampa.”

“We don’t have any missing persons out here on the key,” J.D. said.

“A femur was among the bones recovered. That told us that the woman stood about five feet three inches tall.”

“Okay,” said J.D. She was confused. Why would Bert call her about this?