The Quick Adios (Times Six) (31 page)

“Where was Caldwell getting all these checks?” I said.

“The Mounties have narrowed it down to a dozen possibilities, seven post offices in Ottawa and another five in Montreal. They think the inside bad guys have found a way to detect the magnetic ink on checks inside envelopes. They haven’t figured out where the checks go when they leave their post offices, or how they’re crossing the border back this way, but they think they’re close, too. We still need to find the black hole. No one knows where the cash went once it was delivered to Caldwell.”

“Did Ocilla bring Greg Pulver into the scam?” said Beth. “Is that why he’s dead now?”

“Nope, that’s not it. When we discovered her part in the check scam, he was already working for her, cleaning houses. He had no part in the check scam. With Monroe County’s help, however, we enlisted his assistance.”

“You set him up,” I said.

“Brought it on himself,” said Max.

Beth looked disgusted. “What was he arrested for?”

“Trying to score two pounds of weed on Ramrod Key.”

She said, “Liska oversaw the bust and the flip?”

Max shrugged and nodded. “We requested that he monitor things.”

“You turned Greg Pulver so he could report back on Ocilla,” I said, “and he was murdered. Did no one on your team foresee the possibility?”

“We warned him,” said Saunders. “He didn’t see any danger and he wanted the dope distribution charge to fly away.”

“Except you knew more about the potential danger than he did,” I said.

“What was he supposed to watch?”said Beth, calming the dialogue.

“They started a new pattern. Ocilla began opening new accounts, depositing the checks she got from Caldwell, then pulling the money out in cash either inside the banks or at ATMs. That one has the FBI baffled, but we began to wonder if she wasn’t turning the scam into her own venture. Maybe she was going to build a nest egg and boogie to Bolivia herself. Anyway, he was helping us keep track of the banks and her daily schedule, near as he could tell and when he wasn’t occupied elsewhere. He held another job as well, at some restaurant.”

I looked at Sam, we locked eyes, then he looked down at the table, focusing on nothing. I read his passive reaction as distrust with a touch of loathing.

“How often did Caldwell visit and leave Key West?” I said to Max. “Did you track his air flights for the past few months?”

“His schedule was so random, it could’ve been generated by a computer,” said Saunders. “He came and he went, but never back to Canada.”

“What got Greg Pulver killed?”

“We have no idea. For all we know, he broke into Emerson Caldwell’s computer. Or spilled his guts to Ocilla. We know they became lovers, though his track record in that regard was right up there with the rock stars. He could put Tiger Woods in the minor leagues. We certainly wouldn’t put him in place to be murdered.”

“Why are we being made privy to this information,” I said, “aside from the fact that Liska hasn’t found the courage to include us?”

“Two reasons,” said Max. “One, Ocilla Ramirez came to your home twenty-four hours ago.”

“Right,” I said. “She followed Detective Watkins so she could plead her innocence in the deaths of Pulver and Caldwell.”

“She told me that she had been followed and observed,” added Beth.

“Yes,” said Saunders, “we figured she was onto us when she dropped out of sight two days ago. At the time she also was being shadowed by two private investigators dressed as street people.” He looked at me. “We assumed they were working for the individuals who engineered the scam.”

“They weren’t,” I said.

“Thank you for being forthright,” said Max.

“Does that mean you’re happy that I didn’t bullshit you?”

Max nodded. “Liska has explained the men he calls the Bumsnoops, which gave us a little relief. And that brings up our second reason to invite your help.” He faced Watkins. “We need to separate Sheriff Liska from the Caldwell case. It’s time to arrest Ocilla. For that, Beth, we need you.”

“Now you’re setting up Fred Liska?” I said. “If you don’t already know, I’ll tell you that he’s not just an associate of mine, he’s a personal friend.”

Sam, without looking up at anyone, dropped his clenched fist on the table. A well-controlled exclamation point.

Max hesitated then said, “We know that, Alex, and we respect Detective Watkins’s allegiance to both you and Sheriff Liska. We’re not trying to sully his name, but we need, for prosecutorial reasons, to distance him from Emerson Caldwell. Liska has been aware of this from the moment the bodies were identified.”

Just then, no one had a comeback for Max.

“Our associates have been watching the man in Bartow,” said Max. “Watching him cash checks and meet with Caldwell. He’s been acting normally this week, so he may not know about these deaths. I plan to make him a guest of that county tonight.”

“Under what statute do I arrest Ms. Ramirez?” said Beth.

“Charge her with too many hangnails, whatever,” said Max. “This is to save her life, not harass her. She’s our last link to a resolution, at least from the American end. If the people at the top understand this, and they ordered the whack on Greg Pulver, Ocilla’s walking under a very dark cloud.”

“Okay,” said Beth, “I arrest her. She bonds out in forty-five minutes, you lose your witness, she takes a bullet. What have we accomplished?”

“You hold her for a warrant check,” said Saunders. “We already have her on video cashing one of those checks and accepting fifties with random serial numbers. We’ve got the bills photocopied, you compare them to money she’s carrying and continue to hold her at our request.”

Beth said, “What if someone shows up at our cop shop, wants to see her?”

“She moves to the county at the city’s request. Visiting hours prevail. If shit goes wrong, I can bring in our equivalent of a Seal Team.”

“That’ll play poorly in Key West,” I said.

“What?” said Max. “Will someone accuse us of cheating?”

“How will I find this woman?” said Beth. “Look under every bush in the Lower Keys?”

“You’ll fly back in the morning, right? We’ll know where she is by noon. Let’s talk around eleven-thirty. Please let me know before then if you decide not to help us.” Saunders pulled a business card from his shirt pocket, handed it to Beth, stood and crossed his arms to signal that our discussion was over.

Beth remained seated. “This will backfire if you arrest the man in Bartow before I find Ocilla. If he calls his handlers, they might find a way to take him out and Ocilla, too.”

“Excellent point, detective,” said Saunders. “We will wait for your move.”

I stood to leave, and Max turned toward me, a solemn expression on his face.

“Hemingway survived two air accidents in one week in 1954, in Africa,” he said. “The residual pain fueled his alcoholism and led to his suicide.”

“I guess I’m just lucky,” I said. “I have a friend who is a one-woman pain clinic. It’s drug-free, and she gives me discounts.”

He patted me on the shoulder, an attempt to be my pal. “Of course,” he said, “the old buzzard might have driven himself nuts figuring out who fucked with the planes and tried to kill him twice in one year.”

“That’s perceptive, Max,” I said, stepping away. “Where did I get the stupid idea that Ernest took himself out because J. Edgar Hoover’s shadowing tactics drove him crazy?”

We walked out of Starbucks and stood beneath the mist-shrouded streetlights of downtown Fort Myers. The meeting with Max had aged me more than the airplane crash.

Sam said, “Company man, vaguely unclear.”

“You stayed two steps ahead,” I said.

Beth pulled her coat tighter. “You gents talking in code here?”

“Why did we just hear an FBI agent admit that their only success came through luck? Since when does the FBI cut civilians into their operation, their confidence? They don’t even let local cops know what they’re doing.”

“Thank you, Alex,” said Beth. “That last idea was raising its hand in my brain, trying to get attention the last five minutes we were in there.”

“Finally, call me a wussy, but I don’t want to stay in a hotel room that a detective has arranged for me. He may have visited the room to make sure it was suitable. May have left small devices in place to listen to my praise of the accommodations, my TV selections, and my snoring.”

“Our pilot should be okay to fly,” said Sam, checking his watch. “I asked him to get a room anywhere he wanted, chill out for the afternoon. He said he’d be happy to leave anytime before ten o’clock.”

Beth looked at me, my eyes and face.

I felt a distinct need to head south. I looked up again at the streetlights, noticed that even trees sway differently with a cold wind. I nodded.

“Excellent,” she said. “We’ll stop at a Wendy’s for six fish sandwiches then sleep in Key West and wake up in our own beds.”

“Food,” said Sam. “The detective reads minds.”

The rental car courtesy van dropped us at the flight service center. I could tell how cold it was by the sound of its tires on the pavement. Our pilot was ready to fly. Sam and Beth had chartered a Cessna 340A, a plane similar to but smaller than the King Air now quarantined in a hangar in Cape Coral.

As we walked to the aircraft, a phone in Beth’s handbag rang a familiar tone. She extracted the Ziploc bag that held my wallet, house keys and cell. My phone had survived the crash and the water. Beth handed it to me. Its touch screen told me the call was from Glenn Steffey.

“Detective,” I said.

“Just wondering what time you were going to check in to the hotel,” he said. “I still haven’t left town and I had two or three more questions for you.”

“Sam and Beth wanted to leave so they wouldn’t have to pay for their pilot to stay in a hotel, and I wanted to be closer to my doctor and my own bed. Sorry if I’m wasting Manatee County’s money, but I’m flying back with them.”

“Gotta say, I wasn’t counting on that,” said Steffey.

“I’m sure we can talk tomorrow, or you can email me the questions, right?”

He didn’t respond.

“But one other thing,” I said. “I can pass along something I’ve just learned, and you may find it helpful.”

“Anything, please.”

“Amanda was Beeson’s second wife,” I said. “His first wife was murdered many years ago, somewhere in your part of the state, and it’s still an open case.”

The silence on his end weighed a ton. I was sure that he knew the case and knew that his father had been removed from the investigation. Sounding exasperated, he said, “You came up here this week just to take pictures of Beeson’s building?”

“That was the job description, detective.”

“One guy is barfing, Rutledge, the other man is screaming with grief, and you’re taking pictures like a walk in the garden? Do you ever worry about yourself?”

“Good night, detective.”

I switched off my phone and looked at the January sky, blacker and colder than the tarmac. Orion’s Belt looked back down from ten o’clock in the east-southeast. It was the constellation that had guided my night sails in the Bahamas years ago, in the days when I really got to know myself, when the elements tested my judgment and strength, when I pledged never to stop being curious and to quit worrying about me and to get on with my life, full speed ahead.

I
woke on the twin-engine Cessna with no idea how long I had napped. I could see a band of lights in the distance and guessed I was looking at Big Pine and a few islands to its west. The sooner we reached the island the better. I needed sand in my shorts and beer in my shoes, and a year’s worth of second thoughts about returning to the mainland.

After our departure from Page Field in Fort Myers, fatigued, not wanting to fight the engines’ hum, we had escaped into silence. Sam sat next to the pilot, a fishing client he had known for years. Beth leaned back in her seat, staring out, studying the darkness, the back of her head illuminated by the instrument panel’s pastel glow.

Over the years I had been fortunate to find photo jobs that paid well and lucky to work for low-stress repeat clients. In the past few months, however, I had felt jealous of Beth Watkins’s regular paycheck. Every fifteen days her checking account caught a deposit, minus a lump for insurance and the state retirement flim-flam. It wasn’t so much the amount of her salary as its regularity.

Then I would think again. If all she had to do was show up at work, put in her hours and leave, that would be glorious. But the job came home with her each day without fail—much as mine had haunted me for the past six days. Early in our love affair I had chosen not to pester Beth about moments when she would drift off in thought, distracted by cases in progress, the workload and the legal finesse it took to secure an arrest, then a conviction. A relative newcomer to Key West, she was not bogged down by local politics, not impressed by big money and the established families of the island. She wanted only to be effective, to do her job and make a difference.

Not that she wasn’t effective at home, in every room. Early in our relationship, realizing that we could practically read each other’s mind, we promised ourselves that we wouldn’t let that limit our talking, our interaction. She was my fourth lover in twelve years, though I hadn’t broken up with any of them. The women had moved off the island or become restless and strange. While I knew that nothing was certain and everything changed in big or small ways, I wanted this one to work. She pleased me more than any of the others, I trusted her completely—and I didn’t want to be on the hunt for the next twenty years, if I lasted that long.

She had great taste in motorcycles. And dimples on her bottom.

Beth turned her head, saw my eyes open, and smiled.

“You didn’t get a chance to tell me,” I said. “What did Wiley Fecko have for you?”

“A mid-level criminal named Bobby Fuck No.”

It took me about ten seconds, but she waited me out.

“Robert Fonteneau?”

“The Aristocrats did some very good work on the Internet,” she said. “They found his former address in a gated community on the outskirts of Toronto, Ontario. Ten years ago, when he lived there and got his nickname, it was called Mimico Detention Centre. It was recently expanded to include a maximum security building constructed of stackable prefab concrete cells. It’s now the Toronto South Detention Centre.”