“But it’s not the same if I tell them that I heard this from somebody. They are going to want to know who said what, and who saw what. They’ll want to talk to you.”
“Un-uhn. No cops.”
The constant low hum of the outboard traffic on the Intracoastal Waterway was interrupted by the deep rumbling of a larger ship’s engines. LaShon had been sitting with her back to the port, but now she turned as she saw the look on my face. The TropiCruz IV was about a thousand yards from us, using her bow thrusters to pivot the ship in front of the hotel’s marina. The way the ship was angled now, beam on to the Seventeenth Street Bridge, I could see the captain through the open door to the bridge. The big head with its crown of tightly curled hair was unmistakable.
LaShon whipped around and ducked her head into her hands. She slid sideways so one of the concrete pillars that held up the gazebo would shield her from the ship’s view. “This can’t be happening,” she said. “Do you think they can see us?”
I didn’t see any reason why I should hide, so I watched the boat as she turned. “I don’t see anybody looking this way,” I said. The keyboard man on the upper deck was talking to the crowd, but I couldn’t quite make out the words. He was probably telling them about the new facility Pontus Enterprises planned to build on the site, and that someday the ship would be docking there. “I think we’re okay. They’re looking at the site of the new TropiCruz docks—not at us.”
The ship had made her turn and was lined up to head back toward the harbor entrance, her stern facing us. LaShon slid sideways and peered around the concrete column, and at that moment, a familiar figure stepped out onto the wing deck and lifted binoculars to his eyes. The glasses were pointed aft, trained on us.
She didn’t notice him right away. “LaShon, I think I spoke too soon. Look up at the bridge deck.”
She slid back behind her column with a soft moan and leaned her head back against the concrete, eyes closed.
Richard Hunter had stepped back to the helm, and the water at the stern of the ship began to foam and churn as her screws bit hard. Within a couple of minutes, during which we did not speak, the TropiCruz IV disappeared around the corner, out the harbor entrance, cruising to her post at the three-mile limit, where the casino would open.
LaShon was the first to speak. “It was good while it lasted.”
“What do you mean?”
“I can’t go back to the ship. Not now.”
“You’re sure he saw you?”
“No, but I can’t take a chance. Not with these guys— these new owners. They don’t play well with others.”
“But the captain, he’s Nick’s brother-in-law. Are you sure he’d tell them?”
“ ’Bout the only thing I am sure of concerning Captain Hunter is that the man’d do just about anything for cash. He has this crazy idea that he’s gonna cut a CD with those wack country songs of his and get famous. If he thinks this information can be sold, he’ll do it. In a heartbeat.”
“If that’s the case, you may not even be safe back in your room. Captain Hunter could be on his cell phone right now.”
LaShon peeled off her backpack purse, unzipped the top, and pulled out her own cell phone. Her hands were shaking as she started to dial a number.
I put my hand on hers to stop her dialing. “These guys really scare you, don’t they?”
“I haven’t told you the half of it,” she said.
“Who are you calling?”
“My sister. I figure I can stay there for a few days till I figure out what to do next.”
“And how hard would it be to find you there? Do you really want to put her in danger?”
She snapped the phone closed and looked away from me. A large catamaran with a tall mast was circling on the south side, waiting for the bridge to open on the hour. “I grew up in a kinda’ rough neighborhood,” she said. “But nobody I ever met back home was near as cold-hearted as these guys. There isn’t much that scares me.” She lifted her head and met my eyes. “But these guys do.”
I took the phone from her hands and dug around in the side pocket of my shoulder bag for the card Detective Amoretti had given to me. “Like it or not, LaShon, we’re calling the cops.”
Amoretti pulled up in his red Corvette, parked in one of the metered spots, but didn’t put any money into the machine. I revised my mental list of cop characteristics— cops speed and they park illegally. Today his outfit looked more like yachts than golf—navy Dockers, crisp white linen shirt, and soft Timberland boat shoes.
“What happened to you?” he asked when he saw the lump on my head.
“On the TropiCruz boat last night—I took the phrase ‘hit the deck’ a little too seriously.”
LaShon stood up to shake his hand when I introduced her to the detective. With her back defiantly straight and her impressive breasts thrust forward, Amoretti was flashing his too-perfect teeth and stammering incoherently as he pumped her hand. What was it about short men that they were always attracted to tall women? Was it something about nipples at eye level? Wanting to bury their heads at their mothers’ breasts?
“Detective Amoretti,” I said, interrupting him, trying to save him from making an idiot of himself, but as usual I was too late. “We want to talk to you about the TropiCruz gambling boats.”
He swung his head around and fixed those pale blue eyes on me. “I’m listening.”
“LaShon here works on the TropiCruz IV. Blackjack dealer.”
He nodded. “Hey, look. There’s nothing I would like more than to figure out a way to nail those bastards for something. But we can’t touch them. We don’t license or regulate them. The Coast Guard inspects the boats for safety, and they have to tell the Feds how much money they make—they’re supposed to report any cash over ten thousand dollars they bring back into our waters—and that’s it.” He laughed. “It’s the fucking honor system.”
“What if we could come up with the details about how they’re rigging the slots,” I said.
“It still does me no good, sweetheart. I’m not allowed to investigate what goes on offshore in international waters.”
“But you are allowed to investigate a local murder, right?”
He nodded.
“And what if we could show you that it was this particular scheme that got Nick Pontus killed?”
“Now you’ve got my attention.”
As LaShon started explaining what I found to be mind-numbing details about chips and random number generators, Detective Amoretti sat down on the stone bench next to her and asked her pointed questions, as though he understood what the hell she was talking about. I stood, walked to the far side of the gazebo, and watched the boat traffic on the Intracoastal. Sitting too long had made my body stiffen up. I pressed the knot on my head to see if it still hurt. It did. Then I raised my arms over my head and tried to swing from side to side, stretching all those knotted, hurting places. I might not have broken any ribs, but bruised ribs hurt almost as much.
The more I tried to help, the more I seemed to screw things up. What had I done to LaShon? I’d asked her help and ended up causing her to lose her job at the very least. Worse, I may have put her life in danger. What could I do to salvage this situation?
In spite of the noise from the various engines, I could make out the sound of shouting and chanting coming from the direction of the Pontus offices. I figured Kathleen and her cohorts must be at it again. I looked back at Amoretti and LaShon. It was as though they were foreigners, people who spoke a rare language, and they had each just found a new compatriot.
“Hey, guys, seeing as I really don’t have anything to add to this conversation at this point, I think I’m going to take off. Detective Amoretti, there’s something you need to know. The captain of the TropiCruz IV saw us talking here earlier. I guess he brought the ship up here to show the location of their planned new docks and condo towers to his passengers. Anyway, the guy’s a ratbag, and while I don’t really think he’s dangerous, he would sell his
grandmother for cash if he could. I don’t think she should go back to her place alone.”
“Don’t worry. It sounds like this could be a break in the Pontus case. We don’t want anything to happen to our new witness here. She’ll be safe in my hands,” he said.
Now, I expected the leer on Amoretti’s face, but I hadn’t expected to see LaShon return the look.
XIX
Before heading back to the dock where I’d tied up the Whaler, I walked over to check out the group making the racket in front of Pontus Enterprises. I needed to see a woman about a car. As I crossed the asphalt parking lot, I pulled a baseball cap out of my shoulder bag. I was tired of the questions about my head. I scanned the crowd, looking for her white hair. The protesters looked as though they were better organized this morning. Their signs were no longer hand-painted, but rather printed, and they were marching around in a circle chanting singsong rhymes about the evil developers. Something was missing, though. They lacked enthusiasm. As I approached, I noticed Kathleen standing off to one side, one foot slightly ahead of the other her arms crossed over her chest. She leaned back and watched the group through slitted eyes.
“Morning,” I said.
She glanced at me and bobbed her head in reply.
“They just don’t seem very threatening,” I said. This morning’s group was made up of a majority of elderly women.
Kathleen opened her mouth, held her hands up in front of her face, then dropped them, crossed her arms, and closed her mouth.
“I don’t know what it is, either” I said.
“I do.”
“What is it?”
“It’s Mrs. Wheeler.”
“What do you mean?”
“See that blue minivan over there? She’s sitting in a beach chair on the other side, in the shade of that little tree, resting. When she’s here with them, she pumps them up, she makes them care. Walter,” she said, pointing to an elderly man wearing white pants, a pink golf shirt, and white shoes and walking around the perimeter with the aid of a wood-and-brass cane, “is doing the best he can, but he yells at them. They’re afraid of him. He’s got a bit of a temper problem.”
I looked at the man, his body bent in the shape of a letter C, and tried to imagine how anyone could be afraid of him. “What happened to Mrs. Wheeler?”
“This morning she was here, getting them all worked up, then she stumbled. I caught her before she hit the ground, thank God. The woman’s almost ninety. We’re all worried about her.”
“I really need to speak to her.”
She bit her lower lip. “Be careful. Please. She’s an incredibly tough old bird, but,” she paused, “well, just watch her. We need her, too.”
When I came around the back end of the minivan, I saw her sitting upright, eyes closed, in a beach chair set up on a small patch of weedy grass. Her hair was pulled back in a bun, as usual, and she was wearing her white blouse and red shawl. The outline of her bony knees showed through the dark fabric of her skirt, and I noticed that what I once thought was dirt on her ankles was really skin darkened by masses of spidery blue veins beneath the thin, papery surface.
Just as I was about to speak, her eyes opened. “It’s you,” she said.
I sat on the curb next to her chair. “Hi. Are you feeling all right?”
She raised a hand and waved it in the air as though she were shooing away mosquitoes. “Child, do you know how old I am?”
“Not exactly.”
“I was born in Lemon City in 1915.” She closed her eyes and her whole body seemed to soften like melting butter as she looked at whatever she was seeing behind those lidded eyes. “Daddy brought us up here to Fort Lauderdale in ’20.” Her eyelids slid up slowly, and she looked past me out toward the Intracoastal, where the rumbling engines of several big Cigarette-style speedboats echoed beneath the concrete ramparts of the Seventeenth Street Bridge. One corner of her mouth turned up a little. “Wish you could have seen our river back then, dear. My best friend and I would sometimes swim in the evenings, then sit outside on the porch and watch the manatees.”
I could picture them in my mind, two little girls playing on the river. That wasn’t much of a stretch for me. It was something I could easily dredge up out of my own memories.
“I been through hurricanes, floods, drought, buried a husband, and lost a daughter. A little stumble isn’t going to hurt me.”
“Yes, ma’am, I can see that. I really came over here because I wanted to ask you about what you said the other night, by the boat. You told me you saw a car that morning, down by the river.”
She nodded and rubbed a heavily veined hand across her forehead as though erasing the old pictures of the river and making room for the new scene called up from more recent times.
“Front of the courthouse and jail,” she said, “on that road runs along the river. Black car. A man just sitting there with his automobile engine running. Then that fishing boat come round the bend and he took off, passed right by me.”
“You saw him? The driver?”
She closed her eyes again and bobbed her head once in assent. “I saw him, but I was mostly watching you. I’ve been watching you on that river for years. Since you worked with your daddy. You always reminded me of her.”
I opened my mouth to say something, but nothing came out. What was she saying?
That was when all hell broke loose. I heard the shouting first. Standing to try to see beyond the minivan, I was nearly bowled over when Kathleen Ginestra came careening around the vehicle.
“Come on. I need help,” she said between panting breaths.
I followed her around the van and was surprised to see the white-haired ladies now in a tight knot, like kids round a schoolyard fight. We shoved our way through the cheering crowd and there in the middle were Walter and Leon Quinn. Leon was doubled over at the waist, taking quite a beating from the brass-tipped end of the old guy’s cane.
Reaching into the mess, I tried to grab the cane, but the old guy was quick, and I took a good blow across the back of my knuckles. It stung like hell, and I wasn’t about to get any more bruises on my poor body.
Walter must have been in his eighties, but the filthy language coming out of his mouth was enough to make a sailor like me blush.
“Hold it!” I shouted with all the lung power I could muster, and I took another glancing blow across my forearm. This guy was really making me mad.
Leon Quinn was twice the man’s size and half his age. I could see from the look in his eyes that the big Greek was afraid of hurting the older man if he did anything more than just defend himself. Clearly he was thinking what the headlines would look like if he gave the old geezer what he deserved.
I heard the swoop, swoop sound of a siren as two FLPD squad cars pulled into the parking lot. Roma must have called 911 when she saw her boss getting caned by one of the protesters. When I heard the screech of tires and the sound of the doors popping open on the cars, I started to back out of the crowd.
Leon escaped Walter’s grasp and hurried to my side. “What is wrong with these Americans? They get old and they go crazy! Did you see him? He was trying to kill me.”
“Leon, what Pontus wants to do here is threatening their homes. They don’t want to see Fort Lauderdale change.”
“It is going to change,” he said.
“I know.”
“Youth! That is the future. Like Zale. I need to speak to Zale. His mother is in jail—we need to appoint a guardian. Where is the boy?”
“He’s staying at his great-grandmother’s now. His mom is going to get out. I’m sure of that. He won’t need a guardian.”
A uniformed Fort Lauderdale police officer walked up to Leon and asked to speak to him. “Excuse me,” Leon said. “We will talk again, yes?”
“Okay,” I said, and then I hurried back around the minivan.
The chair was empty. I spun around, checking out the crowd, the waterfront park where I’d sat with LaShon, the street leading up to the bridge.
She was nowhere.
Once again, it was like she had just vanished. If she had been watching me on Monday, why was she avoiding me now?
Back in the Whaler, heading upriver, I thought about what Mrs. Wheeler had said. The old woman couldn’t seem to stay on topic for more than ten seconds before wandering off—literally. I reminded her of someone? Probably her childhood friend, I thought. The important thing was that she saw the face of the person driving the black car that was waiting for Nick’s boat to show on his trip upriver. And it was a man. I’d need to pass that on to Detective Amoretti as soon as possible. Maybe they could get Mrs. Wheeler to go down to the police station and work with a sketch artist to get a drawing of what the driver might look like. And maybe, once she said it was a guy, maybe they would let Molly go.
Molly. I had no idea what she was going through there in the county jail. I told LaShon I was going to go visit her. I’d better make good on that promise, I thought, as I motored alongside Gorda and tied up my dink at the dock.
Jeannie answered her phone on the second ring, and I told her about the night Mike and I had had aboard the TropiCruz IV.
“They wouldn’t have worried about you if they didn’t think you were getting close to something,” she said. “The fact that they tried to make you go for a midnight swim is a good sign.”
“Yeah, well, it didn’t feel all that good hanging out there in the freezing wind knowing that if I dropped I’d be ground fish food.”
“Thankfully that didn’t happen. So move on. Why do you think they feel threatened enough to want to kill you?”
“I don’t know, Jeannie. I don’t feel like I’ve done enough or learned enough to threaten anybody. Maybe they just don’t like people snooping around. There is something funny going on, but I didn’t discover what it is until this morning. I met again with Thompson,” I told her, and went on to explain about LaShon’s theory that a slot machine rip-off scheme was in place. “According to LaShon, she thinks they’ve netted over a million, maybe several. I guess there’s no regulation of this offshore gambling stuff, and the boats are run so sloppy they don’t know what they should be making. We did have a little problem with our meeting this morning, though.”
Bitter End (Seychelle Sullivan #3) Page 19
