Palm Beach Bones

by Tom Turner

  “I called him up, asked him to come on the boat. So he comes on board like nothing ever happened. Proceeds to go through half a bottle of Jack Daniels. Then tells me I was a bitchy little brat who never appreciated anything he ever did for me.”

  “You’re kidding,” Carlino said. “What an asshole.”

  “So I brought up the whole incident that night of the poker game and he pretends he doesn’t even remember it. Says that if that really happened with the judge, it must have been that I was flirting with him and deserved it.”

  Carlino shook his head, incredulous. “Are you kidding?”

  “So I politely excused myself while he’s making another Jack, went back to my stateroom, and got the Glock with the silencer—same one I used on the judge three years back—and without a word put one in the fat bastard’s chest.”

  “Atta girl,” then Carlino had an afterthought. “What about the crew?”

  “They’re a bunch of very loyal boys who I pay very, very well,” Jastrow said. “But just to make sure, I wrote out a check to each one of them that night for five thousand dollars, then we left the dock and went out into the ocean. They dumped the body about a mile off shore, figuring the fish would have their way with dear old grandpa,” she laughed and shook her head, “but apparently they wanted no part of him.”

  Carlino leaned forward and kissed her. “Good fucking riddance.”

  He sat back and flagged the waiter down. “We’re ready now.” He turned back to Beth. “So while you’re coming clean, what really happened to Emile?”

  Emile was Emile Troy, Beth’s short-lived husband.

  “My dear Emile,” Jastrow said, with a laugh. “So you didn’t believe the first story I told you?”

  Carlino shook his head. “Kind of sounded like a sanitized version. Older man meets younger woman in a bar. They get married, go to New Orleans for their honeymoon. Older man dies of unexplained illness three weeks later.”

  “Yeah, that’s more or less what happened,” Jastrow said. “Mostly less.”

  “Come on, tell me. I can’t get enough of love stories like this.”

  Jastrow thought for a second then sighed. “Okay, because your childhood wasn’t so lily-white,” she said, “I guess I can tell you about mine.”

  “I’m all ears.”

  She put her hand on his. “So when I was seventeen, I met men hitchhiking around in the central part of Florida. And because I was strapped for cash, some of them paid me for a session in the back seat.”

  “Lucky them,” Carlino said.

  “Yeah, well, let me tell you, it was not how I planned to spend my teenage years. But a girl’s gotta eat…”

  “Where were you living?”

  Jastrow twirled a strand of hair. “Well, let’s see, there was this room behind a bar in Daytona, a fleabag motel in New Smyrna Beach in exchange for doing the owner.”

  “Bet he was a dreamboat.”

  “Oh, yeah, Brad Pitt,” Jastrow said. “Then one day I got picked up by Emile Troy in a little dump of a town called Keystone Heights. Emile was basically a traveling salesman for a knife-sharpening business.”

  “You can make money doing that?” Carlino asked.

  “Emile seemed to do all right for himself, but the main thing was he had a Caddy. A shiny, new El Dorado,” Jastrow said. “So I thought, hmm, might as well marry the old fuck.”

  “How old was he?”

  “Sixty-four,” Jastrow said. “But he didn’t look a day over eighty. So I put the idea in his head and, sure enough, we got married. I saw some show about Mardi Gras, so we decided to go to New Orleans for the honeymoon.”

  Carlino took a sip of his drink and put it down. “There are worse places you could have chosen.”

  “Yeah, except when we got there I found out he had no money to speak of. All he had was the goddamn Caddy. He suggested I go out on Bourbon Street and hook so we could pay for the hotel.”

  Carlino leaned back in his chair. “You’re kidding,” he said. “So’d you do it?”

  “No way. I’ve got my standards,” Jastrow said. “I got him to sell the Caddy instead.”

  “Good move,” Carlino said. “Then what?

  “That night we went to bed—it was our honeymoon after all—and rather than do the old bastard, I smothered him with a pillow instead,” Jastrow said matter-of-factly. “Took me a while to finish him off.”

  Carlino held up a fist. Jastrow bumped it with hers.

  “Told the medical examiner he had a heart attack when we were doin’ it,” Jastrow said. “Guy bought it.”

  “That’s a heartwarming story,” Carlino said. “It’s got it all. Love, sex, and death by pillow.”

  “I’m not done,” Jastrow said. “After I did it, I took his wad of hundreds from the Caddy sale down to the casino and blew half of it in forty-five minutes. Absolutely no clue what I was doing.”

  Carlino gave her another light fist bump. “So from there you made your meteoric rise up the corporate ladder at Harrah’s?”

  “Yeah, screwing everybody I could,” she laughed. “In both senses of the word. But after a while I figured out I was pretty damn good at the casino business. Plus, I was gonna out-work and out-hustle everybody. Then when Harrah’s was thinking about putting Caesar’s on the block and the Yao brothers came sniffing around, I had a meeting with them.”

  “Love at first sight?”

  “Lust at first sight,” Jastrow said. “Ming and I had a thing, then he offered me the Macau job.”

  “And the rest is history,” Carlino said. “But going back to Emile, why’d you take his name? I mean, it only last five minutes.”

  “Well, Troy was a way better name than Loadholt,” Jastrow said. “But mainly, I didn’t want to be reminded I was related to any of those fucked up people.”

  “So then along came Mr. Jastrow?” Carlino said. “In Macau, I’m assuming?”

  Jastrow laughed. “Oh, no, there was no Mr. Jastrow in Macau or anywhere else.”

  “Wait, you didn’t get married again?”

  Jastrow shook her head. “No, I just needed a different last name so I could negotiate the purchase of the Vegas casinos without my old boss knowing it was me. That would have violated my non-compete, could have put the kibosh on the deal. So at Starworld and in Macau people knew me as both Lisa Troy and Beth Jastrow. A little confusing, I admit, but it worked.”

  Carlino smiled his admiration. “So of all the names you could have picked, why Jastrow?”

  “That was the name of the lawyer who got me off when I held up a liquor store way back when,” Jastrow said. “After that, I started turning my life around.” She burst out laughing, “Well, sort of.”

  Fifty-Two

  Crawford and Ott had just crossed the bridge from Charleston to Mount Pleasant.

  “I’ve been thinking about what happens if I show up at Jastrow’s boat and ask for her,” Crawford said. “The captain or whoever says she’s gone out to dinner. I ask him where? He says he doesn’t know. Or he tells me, then the second I leave he calls Jastrow and tells her I was there. Then we go to the restaurant or wherever they went and she’s long gone.”

  “You raise a good point,” Ott said. “So what are you thinking about doing instead?”

  “Glad you asked.”

  Crawford and Ott parked in a corner of the marina parking lot that was far away from the boats. Crawford walked across the lot and up onto the dock. The Revenge was the biggest boat there by far.

  He walked up to it, then, without hesitating, walked up the gangway.

  “Hello,” he shouted, when he got on board. “Beth! Hey, Beth! Where are you, honey?”

  A young guy in a uniform walked up to him. “Yes, sir, can I help you?”

  Crawford gave him his biggest smile. “I’m looking for Beth. Ms. Jastrow.”

  “Sorry, sir, she’s not here. Was she expecting you?”

  “No,” Crawford said, folding his arms over his chest, and smiling broadly. “I’m
an old friend. She called me a few days ago and said she was coming to town. I was just hoping to take her out to dinner.”

  “Sorry, she left a little while ago for dinner,” the crewman said.

  “By herself? Maybe I can catch up,” Crawford said.

  “Sorry, with another man,” the crewman said.

  Crawford laughed and shifted to his other foot. “Well, that two-timing…just kidding. Know where they went? Maybe I’ll have a night cap with ‘em.”

  The crewman thought for a moment, then smiled. “A place called Fig.”

  “Refresh my memory,” he said. “King Street, right?”

  “Nah, pretty sure it’s Meeting,” the crewman said.

  “Great, well, thanks for your help,” Crawford said, putting out his hand. “If she checks in, don’t tell her I stopped by. I want to surprise her.”

  Crawford opened the passenger-side door. “Place called Fig, on Meeting Street.”

  “Good work. How’d it go?”

  Crawford smiled. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d think I was Beth Jastrow’s best friend.”

  Crawford dialed his phone.

  A man answered. “Birkenheuer.”

  “Hey, John, it’s Charlie Crawford again,” he said. “I just got word that Beth Jastrow is at Fig restaurant on Meeting Street having dinner now.”

  “How far from there are you now, Charlie?” Birkenheuer asked.

  Crawford turned to Ott. “How far—”

  “Ten, twelve minutes,” Ott said.

  “Ten to twelve minutes,” Crawford repeated. “How about you?”

  “Maybe twenty,” Birkenheuer said. “I’ll meet you there.”

  “Copy that,” Crawford said.

  Ned Carlino had just finished his fifth scotch and was starting to slur a little. Beth Jastrow had stopped after three—the champagne on the boat and the one vodka at Fig. Carlino had just flagged down the waiter and made an air scribble—check, please—and almost fallen out of his chair doing it.

  “Okay, Ned,” Jastrow said, “I’m officially relieving you of your driving duties. Where are your keys?”

  Carlino cocked his head “Huh, whaddaya talkin’ about, honeeee?”

  “You’re going to be co-pilot on the ride back to the boat,” Jastrow said.

  “Whaddaya mean? I’m fine,” Carlino said.

  “Yes, and you’re going to be a very fine co-pilot,” Jastrow said. “Giving me good directions…come on, Ned, keys, please.”

  Carlino shook his head, gave her a long dramatic exhale, reached in his pocket, and handed her the keys. “Okay, be careful, though, the thing’s a goddamn rocket ship.”

  “What do you mean?” Jastrow said, taking them.

  “I mean, it goes about three hundred miles an hour!”

  “Not really?” Jastrow said.

  “No, but just about,” Carlino said, as the waiter handed him the check.

  He pulled out his license and put it on the check.

  “Ah, sir,” the waiter said. “That’s not a credit card.”

  Jastrow burst out laughing as Carlino, red-faced, picked it up and replaced it with an Amex card.

  “I rest my case,” she said.

  Fifty-Three

  Crawford and Ott turned from South Bay Street onto Hasell Street, watching the GPS.

  “Looks like it’s about three blocks from here,” Crawford said.

  “And the SLED guys are right behind us?”

  “Yeah,” Crawford said, pointing to the restaurant a block and a half away. “There it is. Fig.”

  Two people came out the front door. Beth Jastrow and Ned Carlino.

  “Jesus, that’s her,” Crawford said as Ott hit the accelerator. “We gotta do it without SLED.”

  Crawford hit the button that rolled down his window and reached for a bullhorn that he had ready at his feet. He picked it up and clicked it on.

  “Beth Jastrow,” he said into the bullhorn. “This is the police. Stop where you are and raise your hands.”

  Beth Jastrow did just the opposite. She started running down Meeting Street, leaving her dinner date in her dust. Just as the Caprice skidded around the corner of Hasell and Meeting, Jastrow slipped quickly into the parked Tesla and hunched over the wheel to start the car. Crawford’s hand went to the Sig Sauer in his shoulder holster, but the sidewalks were packed with people. No way was he going to risk an errant shot, and no way was he going to shoot Beth Jastrow in the back either.

  “Get out of the car now,” Crawford said as they neared the rear of the Tesla.

  Jastrow floored the car and it shot away from them. In an instant, she was half a block away, the sports car’s engine noiselessly leaving them behind.

  “Come on, Mort,” Crawford exhorted, “catch up.”

  But the Tesla was putting more and more distance between them, now only a block from where Meeting Street dead-ended into Broad Street. Crawford and Ott were a block and a half behind as Jastrow took a skidding right onto Broad Street, heading west.

  Ott had the siren and lights going now. No sign of the SLED team. Ott skidded around the turn onto Broad as Crawford dialed his phone. The Tesla blew past a few cars like they were standing still then hung a sudden, hard right onto King Street.

  John Birkenheuer picked up on the first ring.

  “John, we’re in pursuit of suspect’s black Tesla. She just went right from Broad onto King.”

  Ott turned onto King, narrowly missing a car coming straight at him.

  “Jesus,” Birkenheuer said loud enough for Ott to hear, “that’s a one-way street.”

  “Now you fuckin’ tell me,” Ott muttered.

  Crawford saw the Tesla two blocks up King Steet, slaloming between cars coming down the one-way street.

  “Gotta pull over, Mort,” Crawford said. “Too damn dangerous.”

  Ott pulled into a street perpendicular to King.

  Crawford opened the door and ran out to King Street. He looked up it just in time to see the Tesla—facing two cars in both lanes coming toward it—fishtail across the sidewalk and slam into a four-story brick building.

  Crawford started running up King Street as he saw Beth Jastrow climb out of the smoking Tesla. She shot him a glance, then disappeared down a side street.

  Ott was just behind Crawford, both dodging pedestrians on the sidewalk.

  A few minutes later they got to the Tesla and ran down the side street. Moments later they were back on Meeting. They looked in all directions, but no Beth Jastrow.

  Crawford dialed his cell. John Birkenheuer answered. “We’re at Meeting and Society,” Crawford said. “We lost her.”

  Fifty-Four

  Beth Jastrow had run three long blocks and her feet were killing her. She was in the parking lot of a Harris Teeter supermarket on Bay Street, looking for a car the owners had left the keys in but having no luck. She had covered half of the parking lot already.

  She saw an old lady hit her clicker and heard the whoop of the door unlocking her car. Looking around and seeing no one, Jastrow walked quickly toward the woman and shoved her as hard as she could. The women fell to the ground, keys in hand.

  Jastrow reached down and yanked the keys out of her hand.

  “What are you—”

  Jastrow backhanded her across the mouth before the woman could finish her question. Jastrow stood, turned, flung open the car door, and got in.

  Another older woman was in the passenger seat, holding her hand over her mouth, her eyes bulging.

  “Get out,” Jastrow hissed.

  The woman reached for the door.

  Jastrow reached across and grabbed her arm. “On second thought,” she said. “Stay here.”

  The woman looked to be in her eighties with round glasses, gray wispy hair, and a slight build. She had a terrified look on her face and her lips were trembling.

  “Just sit there and don’t say a goddamn thing,” Jastrow commanded. Then calmly, “You might want to put on your seat belt.”

&nb
sp; Jastrow started the car up and drove out of the parking lot. She reached in her pocket, pulled out her cell phone and dialed.

  Her captain, Jerry Remar, answered.

  “It’s Beth,” she said. “I want you to cast off and meet me at that marina in Edisto.”

  “Okay,” Remar said.

  “How long will it take you to get there?”

  “An hour and a half, max.”

  “Okay, I’m probably going to get there before you,” Jastrow said. “I’m gonna get on route 17. See you in a while.”

  “Sounds good. Where are we going after that?”

  Jastrow sighed deeply. “I don’t really know yet.”

  “Just got a report of a woman boosting a car at the Harris Teeter on Bay Street.” John Birkenheuer had just called Crawford.

  “Where’s that?” Crawford asked, his cell on speaker.

  “About three blocks east of where you last saw Jastrow,” Birkenheuer said. “She knocked down an old woman in the parking lot and her sister was in the car.”

  “Jesus,” Crawford said, glancing at Ott and shaking his head. “Thanks, John, I’ll get back to you.”

  “Copy that,” Birkenheuer said. “In the meantime, we’ve got an APB out for the car. It’s a burgundy 2015 Buick Regal, South Carolina plate AR1221.”

  “Copy that,” Crawford said, clicking off.

  He and Ott were sitting in the Caprice on the side of Broad Street.

  “So where would she go?” Crawford asked.

  “Back to the boat?” Ott said.

  Crawford thought for a second. “Nah, that might be her first instinct. But then she’d figure we found out she was at Fig from someone on the boat. So we’d know the boat was at the marina and go there.”

  “So she’d call the boat and tell it to meet her somewhere else?” Ott said.

  “That’s what I’m thinking,” Crawford said. “I’ve got an idea.”

  Crawford dialed his cell phone again. Birkenheuer answered. “Yeah, John, you got a helicopter at your disposal?”

  “Not in the Charleston area,” he said. “Up in Columbia. But I can maybe borrow one from CPD.” Charleston Police Department.