Detective Fiction

by William Wells

  “An Early Times with a draft Bud back,” the portly guy said.

  “Same for me,” the thin guy said, which could be the basis for a fast friendship.

  Marisa and I finished our drinks. After I greeted some of the regulars, we left. As we did, the two guys were chatting amiably.

  “I’d say all three of them are better off, and that Sam has a future as a marriage counselor,” Marisa told me as we got in my car.

  “A marriage counselor with a shotgun can be very persuasive,” I said.

  20.

  THE EAGLE HAS LANDED

  I returned from my morning run on the beach and was heading upstairs for a shower when Ash found me and said, “Wade Hansen called and told me to give you a message: The eagle has landed. Whatever that means.”

  More specifically, ten million eagles had landed in Frank Chance’s TD Ameritrade account. Funny how that amount of wealth can change a person’s outlook on life, even if it’s fake wealth for a fake identity. I thought about Margie Lewin, the girl who’d broken my heart in junior high school. If only Margie could see me now.

  As I showered, I thought about my next move. I’d call Vasily and tell him I was ready to make my initial investment in The Atocha Fund. My account statement, if I was in the fund long enough to get one, would surely show substantial investment gains, which would probably not be real.

  But I wouldn’t be in The Atocha Fund long enough to get an account statement. I’d let my money ride for a few weeks, and then call Vasily and say that, because of changing circumstances of some kind, I needed to withdraw my $10 million. If I was right about him, he’d send one of his soldiers instead of a wire transfer. While I was waiting for the assassin, Ash would go on a trip to be out of harm’s way, and Joe would be at Marisa’s house so he wouldn’t get caught in the line of fire. Of course all of this would be a fool’s errand if Vasily was running an honest business. If he was, the investigation was back to square one.

  In sting operations conducted by the Chicago Police Department, an effort is made to plan for every contingency. The undercover officer wears a wire so that the transaction can be monitored. SWAT teams are waiting in vans, and snipers are watching from rooftops.

  I’d have to go it alone. If things went my way, I’d subdue the assassin and hold him for Chief Hansen and his troops. He’d be arrested, and an effort would be made to get him to rat out his employer in return for a reduced sentence. Or I’d kill him but maybe his tie to Vasily would be enough to get a judge to issue a warrant to delve into Vasily’s finances. If things didn’t go my way the City of Chicago would have one less police pension and disability payment to make.

  Or, if no assassin showed up, I could order a pizza delivery and watch whatever sporting event was on TV—anything but soccer, which was actually more boring than watching paint dry.

  I called Vasily the next morning and told him I was ready to do the paperwork. He said he’d clear his schedule to meet with me whenever I wanted. I’d clear my schedule, too, for an appointment with $10 million. I said that I was free that afternoon at three o’clock.

  LENA GREETED me when I walked into the office by saying, “It’s so nice to see you again, Mr. Chance.”

  “Please, call me Frank,” I told her. “Or call me Czar Nicholas, if you prefer.”

  I’d read an article in Men’s Journal about the traits women find most attractive in a man. The article had men guess what they were. The majority of answers involved high net worth, good looks, and a big Glock. Those would have been my answers too. But for the women, a sense of humor was at the top of the list, followed by intelligence, and “sensitivity to a woman’s needs”—which were, presumably, high net worth, good looks, and a big Glock. I guess Lena had not read the article, because she didn’t laugh at my clever quip. “Mr. Petrovich said you should go right to his office when you arrive,” she said.

  I bet Lena called him Vasily, and not Mr. Petrovich, when they were alone. Or maybe Count Honey Bunny.

  “So, Frank, we have some business to transact,” Vasily said, rising from his desk and indicating that I join him at a small round table. We both sat, and he withdrew some papers from a manila file folder he’d taken from his desktop.

  “Unless you have changed your mind about investing with me, there are just a few documents for you to sign,” he said. “Of course if you would prefer to have your attorney review them first, that would be fine.”

  “That won’t be necessary. I’ll look them over right now.” As if reviewing complex financial agreements was just another day at the beach for me.

  He handed one of the documents to me. “This one is required by the Securities and Exchange Commission. It states that The Atocha Fund is a high-risk investment, and that the past performance is no guarantee of future profits. If it’s acceptable, please sign at the bottom.”

  I looked it over as if understanding it and almost signed my real name, but caught myself.

  “And this one is our client agreement,” he said, handing me a second form. “It gives me the authority to invest your funds as I see fit, in return for a management fee of 2 percent of the account total, plus 20 percent of the annual profits from your portfolio. It explains that we will provide you with quarterly reports, an annual report, and a form 1099 at the end of the year for income tax purposes.”

  The only investment terms I was familiar with were for my checking and savings accounts at First Chicago Bank. When I opened them, they gave me a choice between a stadium blanket and a toaster. I took the toaster because it would be better than my old one for making Pop-Tarts due to the wider slots. If I wrote a check with insufficient funds, they could repossess my car, or something like that. When I opened an account at Sunshine Bank and Trust in Fort Myers Beach, the highflying days of consumer banking had ended and there was no gift. Sunshine’s attitude seemed to be that I should consider myself fortunate that the bank would serve such a small fry.

  I pretended to read the complex legalese, and signed as Frank Chance. Vasily handed me the third document.

  “Finally, this certifies that you are a qualified investor, meaning that you have a net worth of at least $1 million, or an annual income of at least $200,000. As you know, the government requires this because it indicates you have a sufficient degree of financial sophistication to judge the appropriateness of a high-risk investment.”

  “Of course,” I said.

  In fact, my total financial sophistication came from browsing through Investing For Dummies, which I bought upon retiring from the police force, and flipped through before dozing off. I recall that “buy low, sell high,” is something an investor should do. I didn’t pick up how to do that.

  “Very good,” Vasily said when I’d signed the last form. He returned them to the file folder, then moved to his desk and took another piece of paper from a desk drawer.

  “Assuming that you wish to wire your funds to us, here are the instructions,” he told me. He winked. “We also take cash, checks, and credit cards, except for American Express.”

  Just a little humor among us sophisticated investors. I took the wire transfer instructions and said, “I’m not carrying that much cash today. I’ll have my people wire the funds ASAP.”

  I figured that a guy like Frank Chance had people to take care of things like that.

  THE $10 million was wired into The Atocha Fund’s account at the Grand Cayman International Bank the next day. My people (actually, the mayor’s people) were very efficient.

  Hansen called and asked me to meet him for lunch at a Hooters restaurant on Pine Ridge Road, next to the Harley-Davidson dealership.

  Boobs and bikes. Excellent marketing concept. I’d once been in a Hooters in Chicago for a bachelor party for one of the guys on the force. This was during my drinking days; I remember being mildly titillated by the waitresses, and leaving a very large tip, which was obviously the point of the skimpy outfits.

  Apparently the Hooters corporate marketing strategy had been refocuse
d, because there were some motorcycle guys drinking and dining there, but most of the customers were families eating chicken wings and burgers. Maybe Disney had acquired the chain. I found Hansen sitting in a booth and joined him.

  “Let’s order,” he said. “Then I’ll give you some interesting information about our Russian count.”

  We both ordered bacon cheeseburgers with fries. Our waitress, who was a nice lady in her fifties, seemed a bit uncomfortable to be dressed like a Hooters babe. While we waited for our food, Hansen said, “We got the FBI report on Vasily. Turns out he’s really from Brighton Beach, which is a big Russian neighborhood in Brooklyn. His father was a top boss in the Russian Mafia. Vasily graduated from City College of New York with a degree in finance. His name is Boris Ivanovich. He worked on Wall Street for a penny stock brokerage firm that the SEC shut down for fraud. The owners went to prison, and young Boris lost his brokerage license. He has an elaborate set of identity papers in the name of Vasily Petrovich, no doubt supplied by his mob connections. Passport, driver’s license, the works, including the SEC and state licenses required to operate his investment firm.”

  “So the man’s an impostor,” I said. “And Boris Ivanovich from Brighton Beach now has somebody’s $10 million, along with his other investors’ money.”

  Hansen nodded. “We haven’t been able to penetrate his Cayman Islands bank account. They’re very serious about confidentiality. We can assume that The Atocha Fund is as phony as his identity. We can’t prove that yet, and we can’t connect him to the deaths of his three clients, plus Bob Appleby’s girlfriend. But what we do have, using a false identity to operate an investment business, is enough to arrest him. That is, if I wanted to, which I don’t, yet.”

  I understood what he meant. Murder trumps financial fraud every day of the week. So I was still in the detective business.

  21.

  WHO’S ON FIRST?

  Bill Stevens flew in from Chicago for one of his periodic visits. I met him at the Fort Myers airport in my Corvette. It would be way too complicated to explain why I was driving one of Sir Reggie’s Hot Wheels; maybe he’d think I was skimming from our bar’s cash register.

  I’d told Hansen I needed to spend a few days at home, taking care of business, and to call me if anything new happened. Joe was with me, curled up on the passenger seat. Bill, along with Marisa, was on the short list of people Joe liked.

  Bill spotted me waiting at the curb outside baggage claim, waved, and came over carrying a duffel bag slung over his shoulder. He was wearing his usual tropical attire: Ray-Bans, a Cubs hat, a loud Hawaiian shirt, baggy Bulls basketball shorts, and flip-flops.

  “Welcome to paradise,” I told him. “You, as always, are a study in sartorial splendor.”

  “Back atcha,” he said. “And I mean it.”

  I hadn’t thought to change out of Sir Reginald’s clothes. I handed Bill the keys so he could put his duffel bag into the trunk. He did, and then noticed Joe on the seat. Joe looked at him and meowed, which might have meant, “You’re no Hemingway, but you’re all we’ve got.” I lifted Joe onto my lap and Bill got in.

  “So, who’s on first?” he said as we drove away.

  “Yes,” I answered.

  “I mean the fellow’s name.”

  “Who.”

  “The guy on first.”

  “Who.”

  “The first baseman.”

  And as we tooled along the highway toward Fort Myers Beach, we went though the classic Abbott and Costello baseball routine, “Who’s On First?” word for word, as we had many times before.

  Old friends are best friends.

  THE NEXT morning, our aluminum fishing skiff was drifting in the current in the backwaters of Estero Bay as Bill and I were casting flies for bonefish. I’d borrowed the boat from Salty Sam’s.

  Bill and I hung out at The Drunken Parrot last night. I invited Marisa to join us, but she said she’d heard all our stories before and wanted to be home to watch HGTV. Go figure.

  Bill was staying at the Shipwreck Motel on Estero Boulevard, where he always did when in town. I didn’t know how much he actually slept, because a very attractive young woman who was majoring in English literature at Florida Gulf Coast University was in the bar with friends. Bill spotted her in the crowd, walked over, and handed her a copy of Stoney’s Revenge, flipped to the back cover showing his photo. In the photo, taken by a Chicago Tribune photographer, he was wearing jeans and a leather bomber jacket and was leaning against a lamppost on Michigan Avenue. His ironic yet lady-killer smile was something he practiced in the mirror.

  The young lady seemed thrilled to meet a famous author. Bill, in turn, seemed thrilled to be met. Before long, they left the bar together for a private autograph session.

  Bill noticed a fish rising to the surface near a mangrove island and dropped his Black Gnat Red-Tail lure right on it. In a glint of sunlight on the water, the fish nosed the fly, then languidly swam away in search of breakfast without a hook. Bonefish are smart. Once they’ve been caught (and released, they are a game fish and not good eating), they’re not likely to be fooled again.

  We’d been at it for nearly two hours, starting at seven. We’d each had a few nibbles, but had put nothing in the boat. It was time to open the cooler Marisa packed for us that morning before leaving the Phoenix for work. In it, we found two of the best breakfast burritos money couldn’t buy, some fresh fruit, and OJ she’d squeezed by hand because I didn’t own one of the fancy machines she had at home.

  Bill took a bite of burrito, looked out across the water at a shrimp boat that had been beached and abandoned because Asian frozen shrimp had killed the domestic fishery, and said, “If this ain’t living, then I’m not missing anything by not.”

  “Good thing you write better than you speak,” I said. “But I know what you mean.”

  “That’s what counts.”

  “I’m almost done going through the manuscript of Stoney’s Last Stand,” I told him. “Are you into the next one yet?”

  “I am. The working title is Stoney’s Dick Is Bigger Than Yours, but I expect the publisher will change it.”

  “Pity.”

  “Last night at the bar, Sam briefed you on the business,” Bill said. “Why?”

  “I’ve been doing some consulting work for the City of Naples, so I haven’t been around much for the last few weeks.”

  “Doing what?”

  “I’m working with the police chief on a case I can’t discuss.”

  “That’s the best kind,” Bill said. “I wish I’d brought my notebook.”

  “No, really, I can’t. Maybe someday. Hell of a thing is happening there . . .”

  “And they’re able to keep a lid on it?”

  “So far.”

  “If I used the story for a novel, it wouldn’t come out for a year or more.”

  “I need to see this thing through, and then maybe I can get permission to tell you about it.”

  “Not a problem,” Bill said.

  A school of bonefish were sunning themselves just off that mangrove island. They must have known we were on a breakfast break. My cell phone rang and the fish bolted. I found it at the bottom of my canvas boat bag. The caller ID said it was Wade Hansen.

  “I’ve got to take this,” I told Bill.

  “Are you going to finish your burrito?” Bill responded.

  I answered and Hansen said, “Am I interrupting anything?”

  “No, a friend and I are busy not catching fish. What’s up?”

  “It’s Ashley Howe,” he said.

  “Is she all right?” I asked him.

  “No, she’s not all right. She’s dead.”

  A homicide detective gets hardened to murders. If you get too personally involved, you can’t do your job properly. Emotion gets in the way of deductive thinking. But this news shocked me to the core. I wanted to hang Vasily upside down and use a bullwhip to get the truth out of him. If it turned out he was innocent, I’d say sorry about th
at and offer to buy him dinner.

  We ended the call and I told Bill I had to attend to some business that couldn’t wait.

  “Your case,” he said. “Knowing you, that means someone’s dead.”

  “I can’t confirm or deny that.”

  “Meaning it’s true. This isn’t my first rodeo, partner.”

  I powered up the skiff, returned to Salty Sam’s, and drove Bill back to his hotel. He was staying for three more days and said he could amuse himself for the rest of his visit. I wondered if that English lit major had classes that day.

  “WHAT DO they know?” Marisa asked when I called her. “About what happened to Ash?”

  “Her butler found her in bed this morning when he delivered coffee to her room, as he does every morning,” I told her. “An empty prescription bottle was on the bedside table. When he couldn’t awaken her, he checked for a pulse and called 9-1-1. Hansen said they haven’t been able to contact any of her family yet, but there will be an autopsy because a crime might have been involved. Of course if she was murdered, the autopsy report will have to be kept quiet.”

  “So what happens now?” Marisa asked.

  “The first thing is to look for any connections between Ash and the three other victims. I know one thing for certain. They were all investors in Vasily Petrovich’s hedge fund.”

  “And now you are too.”

  “And now I am too.”

  WHEN I turned into the driveway at Ash’s house, everything appeared completely normal. No crime scene tape, no police vehicles, no news crews. It wasn’t officially a crime scene, but to me it was. I had told Marisa I’d keep her informed. She had told me to “Be safe.” I assured her that I would be.

  Martin met me at the front door. He looked stricken. I told him that I was sorry for his loss, as if he was a relative, which is how Ash seemed to treat him. He thanked me and led me to the patio, where Charles Beaumont and Wade Hansen were waiting at the table. I took a chair and asked, “So what’ve you got?”