Longboat Blues

by H. Terrell Griffin

  I arrived at the ground floor restaurant overlooking the waterway right at five o’clock and took a seat at the bar. There were several tired looking men in suits sitting at a nearby table, drinking dark whiskey and discussing their business day. Three more men sat at the bar, quietly nursing mixed drinks, musing to themselves I guess. They were not talking to each other, and only glanced at me when I came in. The bartender was about thirty, with a bored look about him. He politely took my order, calling me sir. The Miller Lite was much needed.

  About ten minutes after I arrived, a woman in her late twenties came in, looked quickly at me, and took a seat at the other end of the bar. She was dressed in a dark green skirt, a pastel blouse, and high heel shoes. Her black hair was cut short. Her face was pretty, her eyes dark and intelligent. She was tanned, with an athelete’s body. One of the new breed of traveling businesswomen, I thought. She seemed so sure of herself in a place where only a few years ago a woman would never have ventured alone, unless she was what was known euphemistically as a working lady, a woman of easy virtue or a lady of the night. There are so many ways to describe a whore. This lady was certainly not one of those.

  The men in the bar all looked quickly at her, each gaze lingering longer than it did on me. Then they went back to their drinks and their conversations. They appreciated a lovely woman, but they would not do anything more about it.

  There was a time when I would have tried to strike up a conversation with any woman alone in a bar. My motives were certainly not pure, but then I could be reasonably certain that a woman alone in a bar was not exactly pure herself. No more. You see the businesswomen where ever you see businessmen. Including bars. And they are there for the same reason as the businessmen. To relax after a hard day. Nothing more. She’ll have one or two drinks, dinner in the hotel restaurant, and up to her room to prepare for the customer she’ll call on the next day. Typical business trip.

  I had about decided that the lady lawyer Dubose had decided not to come, and was signaling for a check when one of south Florida’s Latin cowboys sauntered in. He was about five ten, two hundred pounds, with biceps that attested to the number of hours he spent every day pumping iron. He wore black skin tight pants, black silk socks, black shoes with pointed toes, and a white silk shirt opened to his navel. He had masses of black hair on his chest into which snuggled four heavy gold chains. His hair was black, longish, and combed straight back. His head looked like it needed a lube job.

  The great Latin lover surveyed the bar, spotted the businesswoman, and headed for her like a tiger after a staked goat. “Hi there, baby,” he said.

  “Buzz off,” she said.

  “Ah come on baby, you look like you need somebody to show you the town.”

  “No thank you. I’ve seen the town.”

  “Well, maybe you’d like to see what else I’ve got for you,” he said, playing to the bar now, trying to salvage something out of an embarrassing situation.

  She turned on her bar stool to face him squarely, one leg crossed over the other, swinging her foot slightly. She looked straight into his eyes, smiled, and said sweetly, “I told you I’m not interested. If you don’t leave now, you’re going to be singing tenor.”

  I think he got the message. He looked around and saw the bartender and me grinning, and the other patrons looking at him as if he had committed some terrible faux pas at an afternoon garden party. He gathered all the dignity he could find, muttered “bitch” and left. I didn’t suppose he’d be down on Calle Oche later that evening, bragging about this encounter.

  “Sorry,” she said. “I don’t usually talk like that. Bartender, have you had any messages from a lawyer named Royal? I was supposed to meet him here.”

  “Excuse me,” I said. “I’m Matt Royal.”

  “You’re Matt Royal? I was looking for an older gentleman.”

  “I’m feeling pretty old about now.”

  “But you said your were retired. People don’t retire until they’re actually old.”

  “I did. Look, lets get a table. I think we’ve got a lot to talk about.”

  Chapter 18

  She was twenty-nine years old and a real estate lawyer in the Ft. Lauderdale office of one of Miami’s big factory style law firms. She had graduated from the University of Miami Law School four years before, at the top of her class. While women lawyers were no longer a rarity, students ranked first in their class were rare enough that the big boys lost plenty of sleep trying to figure out how to lure them into their firms.

  Anne Dubose had been offered $75,000 per year to start and promised that she would be considered for a partnership in eight years. At the end of five years she would become a senior associate, and in addition to a six figure salary, she would be provided with an automobile and a membership in any club she chose. They didn’t tell her that she would spend all her time on the same minute point of law; doing it over and over again, while other young lawyers handled the other minute points of the same deal.

  Anne was a child who had arrived unexpectedly during her parents’ middle years. Her only sibling, her brother Bud, was eighteen years her senior and, her parents thought, an only child. Anne was welcomed into that family of middle class south Floridians as only a long despaired of dream can be. When she was two, her parents were killed by a drunk driver on the Palmetto Expressway. Bud dropped out of college to raise Anne. Three years later he married a young woman with the courage to take on the rearing of a five year old child. Bud and Marge had children of their own, and Anne was always treated as one of them. Bud had sacrificed his education to keep Anne out of foster homes, and he ended up as a construction worker. He insisted that Anne get an education, and he worked overtime to pay for her to attend Florida International University in Miami. She did well enough to earn a scholarship to law school at the University of Miami. Not surprisingly, she worshiped her brother.

  Shortly after Bud and Marge married, they bought ten acres of land west of Miami, hard against the Everglades, and built a modest house. A year ago the city’s growth reached their acreage, and the Duboses sold to a developer for one million dollars. Bud retired, and seeking a quiter lifestyle than could be found in Miami, moved north and rented a house near the beach in Ware County.

  Somewhere along the line, he had met Rundel, who convinced him to invest in an airplane. Probably because the million dollars was the only asset Bud had, he was told by Rundel that if he put up the million dollars to make a down payment on the airplane, Rendel would lease it out to an air carrier, and Bud would get a twelve percent return on his money, plus a number of business tax deductions. This was substantially better than the banks were paying on certificates of deposit, and banks do not provide tax shelters on the interest they pay. He would be given a security interest in the airplane, so that if the deal ever went sour, he could simply repossess the plane and sell it for more money than he had in it. Bud did not tell Anne about this great deal, because he wanted to suprise her with what an astute businessman he was.

  “So,” I said, “Bud got one interest payment and nothing more. Neither Rundel nor the plane are anywhere to be found.”

  “Right,” she said. “How did you know?”

  “It’s a variation on an old scam worked on trusting people.” I explained the entire case concerning Logan, and told her what we knew so far about Rundel and James. “What makes you think your brother’s death wasn’t an accident?”

  “After Rundel wouldn’t answer his phone calls, Bud went to Longboat Key, and confronted Rundel. Bud told him that if he didn’t get his money back, he was going to the police. Rundel told him that might end up being a very bad move, and that it could put his life in danger. He then told him that the plane had been stolen, and that there was an insurance policy that should pay off if the plane could not be found.

  “My brother told him to go to hell, and left. He called me on his way home and told me about the conversation. The next day the house he was renting blew up.”

  “Did you
ever hear anything about the insurance?”

  “Oh, yeah. It turned out that the plane was on list of stolen aircraft kept by the Drug Enforcement Agency. They gave me the name of the insurance company.” She had called the company and identified herself as a lawyer for her brother’s estate. The claims people had been cooperative and sent her the documents showing that the company had paid the one million dollar loss benefit to Rundel, who was listed as the owner of the plane. She got the name of the agent who wrote the policy and called him. The agent had all the documents showing Rundel as the owner. There was no mention of Bud Dubose anywhere in the paperwork.

  “What was the agent’s name?” I asked.

  “Noblin. He has an agency in Tallahassee.”

  The fog was lifting a little now, and I could begin to see the players a little more clearly. Obviously, Noblin was in on the plot to separate Bud from his money. It was a neat scam. They got the money from Bud, laundered it to some extent through the lawyer Jones, bought the plane, insured it, and then probably sold the plane to a drug dealer and claimed it stolen for the insurance money. We would never prove who bought the plane, and it would probably never be seen again. But Rundel made money twice, once on the sale of the plane, and then on the insurance payout. I told Anne my suspicions.

  “Did you ever hear the names Sam or Maria Cox?” I asked.

  “No. Who are they?”

  “They’re both affiliated with Rundel in some manner, and Sam Cox was the guy asking about Logan just before Connie was killed. I was heading for Miami to see what I could find out about the Coxes.”

  “How do you plan to do that?” she asked.

  “I got their address from the documents in the Secretary of State’s office. I thought I’d start there.”

  “You’re just going to walk up and tell them you’re looking for Rundel?”

  “No. I think I’ve done about as much as I can without a little subterfuge. I have to come up with some sort of scam to get close to them. I have to know more about the operation before I can move at all.”

  “How do we start?”

  “We? I think I’d better do this alone. It might get dangerous.”

  “I want a part of this. I know South Florida better than you do, and I’ve got some contacts around that you won’t have. I’ve lived here all my life, you know. Besides, sometimes a couple is less menacing than a man alone.”

  “Let’s have dinner and talk about it.”

  She drove us to an Italian seafood place overlooking the beach.

  I was aware that Anne Dubose was beautiful the moment I saw her walk into the bar at the Marriott. Her law school academic record proved that she was very smart. Her sense of humor came bubbling out over dinner as she regaled me with tales of office politics in her law firm.

  “Your stories make me glad I’m out of it,” I told her over a dessert of canoli. “I’d forgotten how silly and petty a bunch of grown up lawyers can be.”

  “How are you able to get out of it? Did you hit the magic case and get lots of big bucks?”

  “Something like that.”

  “You don’t want to tell me. Listen, I don’t care how you got the money as long as it was legal. If it wasn’t legal, I could be opening myself up to a bad time with what we’re about to get into. I’ve lived in South Florida long enough to know that everyone around can be at risk in drug deals.”

  “No, nothing like that.” I really didn’t have to explain, but I wanted this woman to like me. “I represented a guy on a big case and made a large fee. I was tired of the rat race and decided it could move on without me I’m dropping out, as the kids say.”

  “Then why are you helping Mr. Hamilton? You’ve dropped out.”

  “Because he’s my friend.”

  “That’s it?” she asked, a tone of incredulity slipping into her voice. “Because he’s your friend?”

  “Yes.”

  “Would he do the same for you?”

  “I think so,” I said. “I once told him that he was one of the few friends I had who would come get me if I ran out of gas in Hahira, Georgia. He said, ‘Yeah, well, I’d probably send a limousine.’”

  She laughed. “At least he’d take some action.”

  “Yep. That’s Logan.”

  “Look,” she said, “I really want to work with you on this deal. I want to find Rundel and ruin him. My brother worked hard all his life and got lucky once. When he sold his land. To think that some greedy con man can just take it away from him infuriates me. I really want to be there when Rundel gets his.”

  “It’s late Anne. Why don’t we think about this overnight and meet for lunch tommorrow. We need a plan.”

  She dropped me at the Marriott and headed home. I stopped in the bar for a nightcap of good ole Miller Lite, and a meeting with an old friend. Jimmy Greene was at the bar. I had called him on my way to Ft. Lauderdale, and asked him to meet me late for a drink.

  I had met James B. Greene, Jr. on my very first day at the University of Florida while standing in the registration line. “Hi,” he had said. “I’m Jimmy Greene, and I’ve only got one leg. What you see hanging below my right knee is the world’s best prosthesis. We don’t call them wooden legs anymore, and its not considered polite to call me a cripple. I’m from New Smyrna.”

  Jimmy and I pledged the same fraternity and became good friends and occasional drinking buddies. He majored in building construction and went to work for a large firm of home builders while I went on to law school. I had not seen him in several years, but we kept up with each other through mutual friends. He was sitting alone at the end of the bar nursing a tall glass of something amber. He had put on a few pounds, but he certainly wasn’t fat. His hair was still blond and still covered most of his head.

  “Excuse me,” I said, as I climbed onto the stool next to him, “but I assume this to be the handicapped section, since it seems to be filled with cripples.”

  He turned slowly toward me with a look of resignation on his face. “Fucking lawyers,” he grumbled. “I got to start hanging out at a better class place. How the hell are you, Matt?” We shook hands and hugged. It was very good to see an old friend.

  “Couldn’t be better. How about you? I heard you had made it real big in the home building business.”

  “Can’t complain buddy. Can’t complain.”

  As a matter of fact Jimmy Greene had made it very big in the construction business. He was president and only stockholder of Greene Constructors, one of the largest companies of its kind in the southeast. He had divisions that built houses, office buildings and roads. He had built his business on the basis that his customers got exactly what they contracted for, on time and within budget. He was an honest and competent builder.

  “It’s been too long, Jimmy.”

  “It has. It’s a terrible thing to get so busy that you never see those who meant the most to you in times past. I’ve kept up with you though. Hot shot lawyer. I’m proud of you. What brings you to Lauderdale?”

  “Trying to help an old buddy who’s in a lot of trouble.”

  I told him that I was looking for Rundel, and also told him about Bud Dubose and the scam he was caught up in. “I don’t guess you ever heard of Hale Rundel, did you?” I asked.

  “No, can’t say that I have. But if he’s really been in the airplane business anywhere in South Florida, I’d bet Paul Jensen would know.”

  Jimmy explained that his business had grown to the extent that he had to have a small fleet of airplanes to ferry him and his executives around the country. Jensen was his chief pilot and had been flying in and around South Florida for forty years.

  “Why don’t we meet for breakfast in the morning, and I’ll take you out to the Executive airport to meet him. It can’t hurt to ask.”

  We agreed to meet in the hotel coffee shop at eight the next morning. We spent the next hour reminiscing about college friends and laughing at the memories.

  Chapter 19

  TUESDAY

 
; Jensen was one of those beefy guys in his early sixties who had always had to fight to keep his weight down. He was losing the battle now, but hadn’t completely gone to fat. There was a lot of muscle still there, but it was inexorably being replaced by lard. He was sweating in the hot hangar and wiping grease off his hands as he came toward us. His right arm had the scars of a long ago burn running from the elbow up into the sleeve of his yellow golf shirt. He was wearing dirty jeans held up by a wide leather belt with a large metal buckle onto which had been etched the outlines of a P 38 fighter plane in flight. Wispy gray hair tried without much success to cover his scalp.

  “Hello, Mr. G. Flying today?” he asked Jimmy.

  “Afraid not, Paul. I want you to meet an old friend of mine, Matt Royal. Matt, Paul Jensen, our chief pilot. Matt would like to ask you some flying questions.”

  His handshake was strong. “Nice to meet you, Mr. Royal.” His voice was deep, and an accent of the deep South rumbled my way. “Come on into the office. Don’t let the title fool you. I don’t do a lot of flying anymore. I’m sort of a jack of all trades these days.”

  Jimmy had told me that Jensen had failed his flight physical two years before, and he couldn’t fly passengers anymore. It had something to do with his heart. Greene kept him on to oversee the other pilots and mechanics, and to take care of scheduling the aircraft.

  There were several planes in various stages of repair, scattered like toys over the hangar floor. The office sat to one side, with the only door opening into the hangar. There was a window to the outside taken up almost entirely by a groaning air conditioner pushing a swath of cold air into the tiny room. A rusty metal desk sat in the corner completely covered with parts manuals and old aviation magazines. A metal swivel chair covered in cracked green vinyl was in front of the desk and an old wooden straight chair that had probably once graced someone’s dining room was placed to the side. The current Sports Illustrated swimsuit calendar was tacked to the wall. Miss June was climbing out of a swimming pool showing tits and teeth. “Have a seat, gentleman,” said Jensen.