Dennis screamed and let go of me. By then I was back on my feet. I swung around to my left, bringing my elbow up and catching him high on the cheek. I felt the bone under his eye shatter. He was falling backward when I brought my right boot-clad foot into his nuts. He was done.
I turned to Banchori, grabbed him by the tie, and slapped his face. I backhanded him and slapped him again. “No more,” he cried, fear and pain and humiliation tingeing his words.
“I thought you liked this slapping stuff,” I said, drawing my hand back again.
“No, please. I’m sorry I hit you. I’m an old man.”
I let him slide back onto the sofa, and reached into my pocket for my .38. Dennis was lying on the floor, moaning, and locked into a fetal position. I pointed the gun at the old man.
“Who paid you to have Laurence Wyatt killed?”
“I don’t know.”
I raised my hand to hit him again.
“Don’t,” he said, his voice tight, little more than a whisper.
“I ought to kill you.”
“Don’t hit me again. I don’t know anything.” He was pleading. The bastard could dish it out, but he didn’t like being on the receiving end.
“You hired Chardone.” It was a statement.
“Yes. He took care of things for me in Central and Northern Florida.”
“How long?”
“He’s worked with me for ten years or so.”
“You’ve got about two minutes to tell me everything you know about Wyatt’s murder.”
“I’m telling the truth. I don’t know who hired me.”
“I’m about to plug you in the ankle, you piece of shit. Just like I did Rupert, or Chardone, or whatever you call him.”
“No. Honestly. I don’t know. It was all done by e-mail. A man I never saw again brought the cash.”
I sensed Dennis stirring. I turned. He was coming off the floor, a crazed look on his face. He stood, weaving, blood dripping from his face. I pointed the gun at him. “Don’t do it, Dennis,” I said. “You don’t want to die for this used up old bastard.”
Dennis screamed. “Dad.”
He came at me. I didn’t have a silencer, and I knew the report of the pistol would be heard in the hallway. I stepped back and to the side, and chopped him in the neck with the side of my hand. He went down, holding his throat, gurgling. He was struggling for breath, his face turning blue. I’d hit something vital in his neck.
The old man ran to Dennis. It was too late. Dennis died. The old man cradled him in his arms. “You killed my only son.” He was sobbing, tears running down his cheeks, a look of infinite sadness suffusing his face. “My only son. How am I going to tell his mother?”
“Maybe,” I said, “the same way other fathers told their wives about the sons you killed.” I was all out of sympathy for this animal. I put the muzzle of the gun to his head. “I can save you the trouble. I’ll just kill you here.”
“No.”
“Who paid you to kill Wyatt?”
“I only heard one name.”
“What?”
“Robert Brasillach.”
“Spell it.”
He did.
“Who’s that?” I asked.
“He’s the young man who came with the money.”
“Who did he work for?”
“I don’t know. We talked for a little while, but he was pretty drunk when he got here. He told me he came from Odessa.”
“The city in Ukraine?”
“I think so. He had a foreign accent.”
“Anything else?”
“He said he was rolling up ratlines when he got here. I think he was a sailor maybe.”
“Why?”
“Because ratlines are what they call the steps on the rope ladders attached to the shrouds on sailboats.”
I pointed the gun at him again. “You’re holding out on me.”
“No. I promise. I’ve told you everything I know.”
I cocked the pistol, stepped forward and put the muzzle to his temple. Suddenly, he grabbed his chest, threw his head back, vomited, and died. Damn. The man had suffered a heart attack. That saved me from having to shoot him.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
I stood there for a moment, looking down at the bodies. I was calm. The blood lust had come unbidden, taking over with such suddenness and with such overwhelming force that I was carried along, like a leaf in a raging current of anger. And then it was gone. Just as suddenly. I, Matt Royal, good guy, had just scared an old man to death. A mean, nasty piece of crap who had been responsible for more grief than I could imagine, but an old man, nevertheless.
The spirit gum had done its job. The mustache was still firmly attached to my lip. I hadn’t touched anything, so my fingerprints wouldn’t be in the room when the cops came. A careful search would probably turn up my DNA in the spit that had been knocked out of my mouth by the old man, but my DNA was not on file anywhere, and the only way I could be tied to the room was if I were arrested and the cops were trying to pin the deaths on me.
I picked up the hat and glasses, put them on, and left the suite, walking purposefully toward the elevator. I was sure there were security cameras somewhere, and I didn’t want to look like the furtive Longboat Key lawyer that I was.
I went through the lobby, looking straight ahead, and out the door. I worked my way back to the rental Chevy and threw the windbreaker, pillow, and belt into the backseat. I exchanged the cowboy boots for running shoes. I sat in the car and used the spirit gum remover to get the mustache off my face. I drove south to 5th Street, headed west on the MacArthur Causeway to I-95, and drove north.
I left the Interstate in Hollywood, and rode through town looking for supermarkets that were still open. Every supermarket has a Dumpster outside, and they are emptied daily, usually the first thing in the morning before the store opens. I dropped each item of the disguise in a different Dumpster, and went back to I-95. I found a Holiday Inn Express and checked in, paying cash.
I didn’t sleep well. I kept wondering if I would have shot Banchori if he hadn’t had the heart attack. I’d wanted him dead, but I was still feeling the effects of killing Chardone. They weren’t pleasant. I was a little more concerned about Dennis. I didn’t know if he had been involved in his father’s business, but he certainly knew about it. But I’d killed Dennis in self-defense. In fact, I hadn’t meant to kill him at all. Just an unlucky, for him, blow to the neck. I’d probably crushed his larynx and caused him to choke to death. I could live with that.
I didn’t understand a man like Banchori. He dealt in death like sane people deal in widgets. Bought and sold. No thought of the life he was taking. Yet, he was genuinely devastated by the death of his son. Could he not make the connection? Not understand that other people would love and grieve just as he did? Or, did he just not care?
I drifted off to sleep, and was awakened by the chime of my cell phone. I opened my eyes. Sunlight was drifting in under the drapes that covered the windows. I looked at my watch. Nine a.m. I rolled over and answered. It was Carl Merritt.
“Did you see Banchori last night?”
“No. I haven’t gotten out of Sarasota yet.” Another lie to a friend. “I’m headed your way today.”
“I called you at home and got your answering machine.”
“I’m not at home, Carl,” I said pointedly. “I’m with a friend.”
“Oh. Sorry. Well, you can save yourself a trip.”
“Why?”
“Banchori died last night.”
“Died?”
“Yeah. It looks like a heart attack, but we won’t know for sure until the medical examiner gets finished. His scumbag son was in the room with him, and it looks like somebody beat him to death.”
“I’ll be damned.”
“No great loss. The son was a stone-cold killer. He worked South Florida for the old man, but we could never get the proof to arrest him.”
“Well, Banchori probably wouldn’t have been muc
h help anyway.”
“Matt. Tell me why you wanted to see the guy.”
“I wish I could, Carl. I can tell you it has to do with a civil case. It involved an investment that Banchori made. Nothing criminal. I just wanted to get his take on how my client handled the investment. I’d heard Banchori was a bad guy, and I couldn’t find him the usual way, so I called you.”
“Okay, Matt. Good talking to you.” He hung up.
I got out of bed, showered, shaved, and drove back across the peninsula to Longboat Key.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Logan and I were on his balcony eating Chinese food. The sun had dropped into the Gulf of Mexico and a quarter moon was rising over the bay. The night was quiet. Now and then we heard the cry of a seabird that nested on the mangrove islands dotting the near edge of the bay.
I’d arrived at my condo a little after noon that day. I’d dropped the Chevy at the Sarasota-Bradenton airport and grabbed a taxi to the key. I spent some time in the afternoon searching the Internet for a sailor named Robert Brasillach. I called Logan, and he asked me over to share the huge amount of Chinese food he’d bought on St. Armand’s Circle. We ate and sipped our beer as I told him what I’d learned and about my visit to Miami.
“So this killer named Rupert was really a New York City cop named Rudy Chardone?” he asked.
“Yeah. And a pervert.”
“How could he get away with being a cop and a killer and a kiddy pornographer?”
“When you think about it, it’s the perfect cover. Cop by day, killer by night. He was Banchori’s Central Florida franchisee, I guess. The Fern Park apartment is probably his branch office. It was a place for him to go to ground when he was working in the area.
Logan chewed thoughtfully for a moment. “Who is Robert Brasillach?”
“I don’t know. I Googled him, but the name only pops up as a French writer who collaborated with the Nazis and was executed by deGaulle at the end of World War II.”
“Could it be his son?”
“I doubt it. I can’t find any mention of Brasillach having children, and even if he had, the kid would be in his fifties now. Banchori said the guy who brought the money was a young man. And he wasn’t French. Banchori said he was from Odessa. Probably Ukrainian, or maybe Russian.”
“If he came in on a sailboat, he might not have been here legally.”
“I thought of that. It doesn’t really matter. There’s no way for me to track anybody coming into the country. Besides, he may live here permanently. I’m afraid I’ve hit a brick wall.”
“There’s got to be a reason why somebody would kill Wyatt. A professional killer doesn’t just take someone out by mistake. Plus, when you talked to him, Chardone knew you were Wyatt’s friend. He hit the right target. But why?”
“That’s what doesn’t make sense. Maybe we’re missing something. I’m going to go back through Wyatt’s condo. See if there’s anything the police missed.”
“Not to change the subject, but I had a date last night,” Logan said.
“A date?”
“Well, more than a date.”
“A sleepover?”
“Yeah.”
“Do I know the lucky lady?”
“Marie Phillips.” He smiled smugly.
“You old dog. The widow Phillips. I’m impressed.”
Marie Phillips was in her thirties, the widow of a man killed in a car wreck. She lived in a large condo on the south end of the key. When we’d met her, she was the administrative assistant to a man who later died as a result of some drug business gone bad. Marie, who had an MBA from the University of Florida, was not aware of the ugly side of her boss’s business. She was cleared of any wrongdoing and now worked in administration at the Sarasota Memorial Hospital. I ran into her occasionally around the island.
“We’ve dated a few times,” Logan said. “I didn’t want to say anything, because I kept thinking she’d break it off. She didn’t. Last night was the clincher. I think we’re a couple.” He grinned some more.
“Good for you both.” I was happy for Logan. He’d been without a steady girlfriend for a long while. He’d date now and then, but he never found anybody he wanted to spend a lot of time with. Maybe things were looking up.
We spent the rest of the evening sitting on the balcony, talking quietly about absent friends, some who had died and others who had moved off the island. Wyatt came up occasionally, and we’d tell a funny story and worry some more with the problem of who ordered him killed, and why.
The wind shifted to the east, and the sound of music and laughter floated across the bay. Far out on the dark water, the brightly lit dinner cruise boat from the Seafood Shack was making its way north, headed back to the restaurant, full of sated diners enjoying their after-dinner drinks. It was a quiet night on the key, an autumn evening marked by good conversation with one of my two best friends.
We switched to good whiskey, Logan to Scotch and I to bourbon, sipping it neat, the evening winding down. Our lives were about to change drastically, but we didn’t know it, couldn’t have guessed it, and couldn’t have altered the course of events if we had known.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
My morning ritual is not complicated, but I’m kind of obsessive about it. I get up, turn on the coffee maker, pick up the daily newspaper from near the front door, and then sit on my sunporch overlooking the bay. I sip my coffee, read my paper, and enjoy the sunrise. It was no different on Thursday, the week after Wyatt’s funeral.
My phone rang. I looked at my watch. Seven a.m. It was Wyatt’s ex-wife Donna, a lawyer in Orlando. She’d spent the night of Wyatt’s funeral in Logan’s guest room, and left for Orlando the next morning, telling me that she would be out of pocket for a few days. Said she was going off somewhere to grieve.
“Hope I’m not calling too early,” she said.
“Not at all, Counselor. How’re you doing?”
“I’m fine. I’ve been in Atlanta with some friends. Trying to come to grips with Wyatt’s death.”
“Is it working?”
“Better than I would have thought. But, that’s not why I’m calling. I just got into my office and in all the mail that’s piled up while I’ve been gone, there was a package from Wyatt.”
“What is it?”
“It’s a data CD with notes on a project he was working on. He put a handwritten memo in it telling me that it was his only copy and that I should take good care of it, because he’d erased the data on his hard drive.”
“What’s the project?” I said.
“What I could retrieve is pretty bizarre. There were several files, but they were all corrupted somehow, except one. I’d like you to look at it and see what you think.”
“Can you e-mail it to me?”
“It’s on its way,” she said, and hung up.
I finished my coffee and the newspaper, did the crossword puzzle, and took a shower. I put on clean clothes and fired up my computer. There was an e-mail from Donna with an attachment. I opened it and read the following:
Dick LaPlante
Rene LaPlante
Richard de Fresne
Professor Paul Sauer-UF
Klaus Blattner
ICRC
Organisation de ehemaligen SS-Angehörigen
CBS – Zurich
Alois Hudal
Ratlines
Genoa
Buenos Aires
Karlo Petranovic
Augustin Barrere
Klarsfeld, Beate & Serge
Vichy
I didn’t recognize anything on the list except the name Dick LaPlante. I’d read about him in the newspapers. He was the richest man in Florida, and lived in the largest house on Casey Key, a nearby island known for its wealthy people and large homes. He was middle aged and had been married three or four times to trophy wives. It seemed that when a wife reached her mid-thirties, he dumped her and acquired another younger version. All the exes lived in lavish homes in the Sarasota area and appeared re
gularly in the society pages of the local newspapers.
LaPlante owned citrus groves, cattle ranches, citrus processing plants, and a fleet of cargo ships based at the Port of Tampa. He supported various politicians and wielded a lot of power in both Tallahassee and Washington.
I called Gwen Mooney. She had been the society editor of our island weekly newspaper for so many years that she knew every socially prominent person in Southwest Florida, and everything about them.
“Do you know Dick LaPlante?” I asked.
“Sure.”
“What can you tell me about him?”
“He’s an asshole.”
“That’s all?”
“That about sums it up.”
“Okay. Why do you think he’s an asshole?”
“He marries and discards wives like most of us do old socks. Never kept one long enough to have children. He’s got more money than God, and got it all from his old man. He always shows up at the charity events during season, but he gives a whole lot less than he should. He sucks up to politicians and gives them lots of money. I hear rumblings that if Senator McKinley is elected president, LaPlante will be offered a cabinet position. That’s enough to make me vote for the senator’s opponent, whoever that is. He’s a leech. If his father hadn’t hired good managers for the businesses, Dick would have run them into the ground by now.”
“What was his dad’s name?”
“His name is René. He’s still alive. Lives in one wing of that mansion Dick built down on Casey Key. He’s probably in his nineties now, but sharp as a tack. I interviewed him a couple of years ago.”
“So he’s the one who made all the money.”
“I’m not sure he made it. He’s of French-Canadian heritage, but was born in Vermont. His parents died when he was a boy, and he doesn’t like to talk about his childhood. His parents had a lot of real old money. They came from two of the richest families in Canada. Rene was an American Army officer in the Pacific during World War II, and he came to this area shortly after the war was over. Married a local girl and settled down. He had a lot of money and invested in lots of thing. He gave a bunch to Jewish causes.”
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