Aaron Elkins - Gideon Oliver 09 - Twenty Blue Devils

by Twenty Blue Devils

  He certainly hadn't done it with force of personality. Dyspeptic, notoriously caustic, with a sharp tongue that was too quick for its own good, his all-too-ready wit had made him more enemies than friends. Once, for example, he had had a celebrated verbal skirmish with a Seattle Times food critic at a cocktail party for the opening of a new restaurant. That was bad enough, but when questioned about it later that evening on live television, he had said, with mock wonderment: “But I don't understand why she's so upset. I certainly didn't mean to say anything unkind about her. I merely mentioned that she was dim-witted, undiscerning, fatuous, and uninformed. All perfectly verifiable."

  His hangdog appearance didn't help either. Balding, stoop-shouldered, and naturally woebegone-looking, with dark, droopy bags under his eyes, he was nobody's idea of the driving force behind a burgeoning and aggressive coffee empire. The fact was, amazingly enough, that he didn't even like coffee and wouldn't have been able to drink it if he did because the acidity gave him gas, or so he claimed.

  Rudy's father—Nick's much-loved, long-dead kid brother, Jack—had been a vintner in California, and Rudy had grown up at his father's small winery in the Simi Valley. From the beginning, wine had been his passion, or the closest thing to a passion that he'd ever had. He had majored in enology at the University of California's Davis campus and returned to manage the winery's production process, expecting to take over the business eventually. But his father, drowning in debt, had sold out to one of the conglomerates that were then gobbling up the vineyards of the Pacific coast.

  Shattered, Ruby had fled California for Tahiti, seeking a job with his uncle. The always-generous Nick had come through, putting him to work on the plantation (and, by the by, bailing his father out of his not inconsiderable remaining debts). Hardworking and intelligent, Rudy had learned the coffee business and had eventually taken over management of day-to-day operations. Later, when Brian Scott had arrived on the scene with a sackful of ideas for improvement and expansion and a knack for implementing them, Nick had asked Rudy to return to the States to see if he could turn the struggling Caffe Paradiso enterprise into something worthwhile. And here he had been ever since, successful beyond Nick's dreams, let alone his own, but in his heart of hearts never ceasing to regard coffee as a poor substitute for his beloved wines.

  But no one had ever said he didn't know everything there was to know about the coffee business.

  His office was still here in this eighty-year-old white frame building, a onetime feed store near Coupeville on rural Whidbey Island, two hours from Seattle by car and ferry. Now, however, there was a spanking-new twenty-thousand-square-foot warehouse and processing plant a few hundred feet up the highway, with eighteen employees and a big, shiny, three-bag roaster that held 335 pounds of beans and was fired up and roasting eight hours a day, five days a week.

  In short, things were going like gangbusters. From what they'd told John earlier, they were now selling more than half a million pounds a year. There were sales to gourmet shops and restaurants, there was a thriving mail-order business, and now there were two Caffe Paradiso coffee bars in downtown Seattle department stores, one at the airport, and another two about to open in Portland, every one of them upscale and pricey. Only twenty percent of the beans that went into their numerous varieties came from the plantation in Tahiti these days; the rest were bought from other coffee growers around the world, mostly on Rudy's say-so. It was Rudy too who supervised the roasting, created the blends, and ran what Nick approvingly referred to as a highly innovative marketing program.

  It seemed pretty innovative to John too. Who would have thought you could make money with slogans like “Paradiso—The World's Most Expensive Coffees” and “Pure Tahitian Blue Devil, the Highest-Priced Coffee in the World...Bar None.” But make money they did. Blue Devil, not a blend but solely their own plantation's product, was Paradiso's chief claim to fame.

  They were always leaving a few pounds of it with John and Marti when they came. It wasn't bad, John thought, but at $38 a pound? At $4.50 a cup in the coffee bars? You'd have to be out of your mind. Which showed how much he knew about it.

  "Look, people,” he said, “about these accidents—"

  "Johnny, will you shut up?” Nick said amiably. “What else is there, Rudy?"

  "One more, from the Celebes. This is a first issue from a Rantepao plantation that was revived four or five years ago."

  "I vote no,” Maggie said.

  Nick laughed. “We haven't tasted it yet"

  "We don't have to taste it. If it comes from the Celebes, it was processed with slave labor."

  "Oh, for God's sake, Maggie, they don't have slave labor in the Celebes,” Nelson said disgustedly.

  "Well, they don't pay them a living wage. It's the same thing."

  "It's not the same thing."

  "And what's more, they don't go in for organic processing on the Rantepao plantations. They use chemical nitrogen replacement."

  "So? So do we. What do you suggest, bee pollination?’ Nelson screwed up his face in case she couldn't tell he was being sarcastic.

  Maggie screwed her face right back at him. “Yes, as a matter of fact. Bee pollination—"

  "People?” Nick said with a sigh. It was enough to quiet them down. “What do you say we just taste the stuff, okay?"

  "The master speaks,” said Rudy.

  Happily, it didn't take long. The coffee was variously dismissed as “misty,” “grassy,” and “hidey.” The grower, Nelson suggested indignantly, was trying to palm off last year's crop. The others agreed. No sale.

  John had thought it was just fine.

  "Well, that's that, then,” Nick said. “Good job, gang."

  "About these accidents,” John said.

  Nick clapped him on the shoulder. “We can talk on the way to your place.” He smacked his lips. “Hey, Rudy, pour us a cup of Blue Devil for the road."

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  Chapter 5

  * * * *

  Nick ran his hand over the pebble-grained dashboard. “So what's this, a Honda?” At half an inch less than John's six feet two inches, but with longer, looser arms and legs, Nick had had to scrunch himself up a bit to get into the front passenger seat. Maggie and Nelson sat behind, with Rudy between them.

  "Right,” John said as they moved out of the little parking lot and south onto Highway 525, which ran down the center of Whidbey's long, snaky length. He flicked on the wipers against the half-mist, half-rain that was standard November weather. “'Eighty-nine Civic."

  "I'll tell you what you ought to get next. An Infiniti J30."

  "Why's that, Unc?"

  "Why? Because it's got the best coffee-holder in the civilized world. Out of sight until you push a button, and then it rolls out of the console right where you can reach it. That's what I drive, an Infiniti. Holds two big cups."

  That was Nick for you. When you bought a new car you didn't kick the tires, you checked out the coffee-holder. He really loved the stuff, you had to say that for him. “What's the price tag?"

  "In the States? Around forty thousand, I think. A lot more than that in Tahiti, I can tell you."

  John laughed. “I think I'll just buy one of those stick-to-the-dashboard things for two-ninety-five and keep the Honda for a couple more years. I work for the government, remember, not Paradise Coffee."

  Nick smiled and squeezed his arm. “Just say the word, kid. There's always a place for another one of Pearl's boys."

  He meant it too, John thought. Nick was a genuinely nice guy, easygoing and good-natured. John had always liked him; respected him too. Nick had convictions, decent ones, and when the chips were down he put his money where his mouth was. That was what had gotten him in trouble with the West Coast Mafia to begin with. It had been a dozen years ago, before John had joined the FBI; he had just started with the Honolulu PD then and what he knew about organized crime had come mostly from the newspapers.

  At that time, Nick had been in the coffee bus
iness for about five years, but on a much smaller scale. He had managed to break into the American market, which was just beginning to show signs of life, but there were no Caffe Paradiso coffee bars yet, no whopping mail-order sales. And the Whidbey Island mastery wasn't even a gleam in his eye. Like other Pacific growers who shipped to this part of the country, Nick sold his green coffee beans through a small group of West Coast coffee brokers who dealt with restaurants, grocery stores, and the big commercial roasters. Things had gone well for a while. Paradise beans were building enough of a reputation to let Nick charge the higher prices that the sky-high Tahitian wages required, and his sales had been going up for four years in a row.

  And then events on the East Coast intervened. Not long before, there had been a successful crimebusting campaign in Massachusetts and Rhode Island. Mafia and Mafia-connected rings that had controlled everything from booze to bagels to knife-grinding were run out of business. A few gangsters from the Gasparone crime family went to prison. Others just dropped out of the limelight, lay low for a while, and then started showing up in other places and businesses around the country.

  One of the places was the Northwest, and one of the businesses was coffee-wholesaling. Suddenly, the coffee brokers were whispering to the growers that things had changed, that if they expected the chain grocery stores and big roasters to handle their beans they'd better be prepared to deliver kickbacks. These illegal payments, running anywhere from two percent to ten percent of the price of the beans, were made directly to the brokers themselves, who then (supposedly) passed them on to the roasters and retailers. Without them, the brokers were now saying, they couldn't promise that they'd have much success in moving anybody's coffee. They were sorry about it, it wasn't their doing, it was just too bad, but their hands were tied and that's the way it was.

  Whether it was actually kickback money or protection money was hard to say, because if you didn't pay it you didn't merely suffer from disappointing sales; bad things happened to you. Caffe Paradiso, operating on a tiny profit margin as it was, was one of the companies that dug in its heels and resisted, and three months after their second refusal to pay ten percent they found out that two hundred bags—ten tons—of choice Blue Devil had “accidentally” been sitting in a Portland warehouse for four weeks in half a foot of filthy water from a broken drainpipe. It had had to be written off because the insurance wouldn't cover negligence. A little later, a truck with another ton was hijacked fifteen minutes after leaving the Tacoma docks. The robbers were never identified, but the trucker got a friendly warning to the effect that he'd be better off not doing business with Paradise in the future. A friendly warning and two broken hands.

  Nick went to the police but nobody was able to do anything about the new racket until one of the creeps in the thick of it, a shyster-accountant named Tony “Klingo” Bozzuto, suddenly changed his spots, working with the FBI for months to gather evidence (which wasn't difficult to come by inasmuch as Bozzuto handled the gang's books) and then testifying against his cronies in court. At that time, two dozen coffee growers were asked by federal prosecutors to submit depositions about the kickbacks and to appear in court if necessary. Only three had the nerve to do it, and one of them was Nick. He'd prepared an eight-page affidavit and shown up in court in Seattle, ready and willing to testify. In the end, the prosecution hadn't had to call him, although his deposition figured strongly. Guilty verdicts came in, the racket was smashed, and a fair number of the men involved went to prison.

  All of this John had known before and still he hadn't gone along with Brenda's notion that gangland retaliation was behind the incidents in Tahiti. But the computer search he'd done at her insistence had made him rest less easily. What Brenda had suggested was true: while most of the convicted mobsters had gotten out of jail a long time ago, three of the big ones—"the three G-Men,” Tony “Zorro” Gasparone, Dominick “Nutso” Guardo, and Nate “The Schlepper” Grossman—had made the mistake of appealing their convictions on technical grounds. They had won a retrial a few years later, only to wind up with stiffer sentences than they'd started with. The three of them had been released in the last couple of years and were supposed to be living in Los Angeles, Queens, and Orlando and keeping clean, but who knew?

  And there was something else John hadn't known.

  "Nick, I was looking through some old newspaper reports. When they hauled off Tony Gasparone at the end of the trial he turned around and pointed at you. You and some others.” John demonstrated, pointing with his right hand at Nick's temple, forefinger extended, thumb cocked.

  "Did he? I don't remember."

  "Yes, he did."

  Nick shrugged and waved a dismissive hand. “Aaahh, what can you do? The guy was a big talker, that's all."

  "Nick—"

  But they had pulled up to the ferry-loading dock in Clinton and were waved by the crew aboard one of the old, green-and-white ferries for the brief trip to Mukilteo and the mainland. As the engines started up and the ship slid smoothly over the ruffled gray expanse of Puget Sound, Nick looked placidly at his nephew.

  "John, I know what you're driving at, and I appreciate your concern. But forget about Gasparone; the guy was showing off. Look, sometimes we go for years up at the farm without any accidents, and other times they gang up on us. Okay, we've had a string of problems lately. It's just things averaging out, that's all. Believe me, there's no vendetta going on. Even if there was, Tony Gasparone's got bigger fish to fry than me, take my word for it."

  That's what John thought too, but he wasn't quite as confident of it as he'd been before he'd seen the files, and it made him feel better to hear Nick say it.

  "Well, I'm not so sure,” Nelson proclaimed from the back seat. “I told you twelve years ago that it was a mistake to get involved, and I still say so. You can't go around filing depositions when you're dealing with human scum like—"

  Nick laughed. “Nelson, give it a rest, will you? If I thought there was anything to it, I'd be the first one to ask for some help from J. Edgar Hoover over here, believe me."

  "Yeah, like hell you would,” John said.

  Nick laughed again, which was meant to close the subject, but Nelson, warmed up now, wasn't about to comply.

  "Nick, sometimes I don't understand you at all. You're just sticking your head in the sand. Now, we all know that John has been talking to Brenda about this. Are you going to deny that, John?"

  John glanced at him in the rearview mirror. “Not me."

  "I wouldn't think so. Well, I was against bringing John into this in the first place, you all know that, but now that he is in, I think we should get his help."

  "Oh, hell,” Nick grumbled and slouched down into his seat with his arms folded.

  "John?” Nelson said in the peremptory tone that had been raising the hair on the back of John's neck for over thirty years, since he had been eight and Nelson had been twelve anyway, and probably before then.

  "Nelson?” he replied mildly.

  "Now, then. I want you to find out how we can get in touch with this Gasparone person. With the others too."

  That caught John by surprise. “Get in touch with them?"

  "Exactly, I think it's time to lay things on the table with them. They may be gangsters but they're also businessmen. They may have something in mind, some sort of...remuneration. We're in a sound financial position now. We can afford to negotiate, to work things out."

  "Forget it,” Nick muttered without turning around.

  "It's not a good idea, Nelson,” John said firmly. All the same, in one respect Nelson did have a point. When sleaze-bags like Gasparone got even with people for doing them wrong, they went out and blew their heads off, or maybe just their kneecaps if the original offense wasn't too bad. The point was to make it clear to others that it wouldn't be a good idea to do the same thing. But when they started in on piddly little things like a minor injury or accident here or there— such as the happenings on the plantation—you had to assume that they were aft
er something; some kind of cooperation, or compliance, or kickback.

  That is, if they were involved at all.

  "Nick,” he said, “they haven't been in touch with you, have they?"

  Nick looked sulkily at him. “Are you kidding me?"

  "What about anybody else that might be speaking for them? Somebody in the coffee business that could be backed by them? Anybody, well, suggesting that—I don't know, that you ought to give them special terms, or—"

  "In touch with me? No, give me a break."

  Nelson took up the attack again. “Just because they haven't approached us doesn't mean we can't approach them. I'm only saying that if they feel they have a grievance, the sensible thing—"

  "Lord, don't you love it!” Maggie cried with a laugh. “Nelson the Ethical. God forbid that we file a deposition against these lousy creeps back then when it counted, and now he can't wait to sit down and negotiate with them."

  "I'm only saying—” Nelson began.

  Nick cut him off. “Nelson, will you use your head for once? If these cruds wanted to get back at me for what happened in Seattle, why go all the way to Tahiti to do it? And do what, when it comes down to it? Bribe our employees to lose a few records...to jam the pulper? Hell, no, if they had a score to settle with us, they'd just burn down the building right here on Whidbey Island. It'd be a whole lot easier. That shack would go up like kindling."

  Rudy, who had been minding his own business, sat up with a jerk. “Oh, thank you very much. That'll help me sleep nights."

  "Or blow it up, or something,” Maggie suggested. “That's what I'd do."

  "Wonderful, even better,” said Rudy.

  "Weil, how do all of you explain it then?” Nelson said hotly. “How do—"

  "Hey!" Nick sat up in the front seat and twisted around as the ferry settled squishily against the Mukilteo pilings and John turned on the car's ignition. “Can I just say something? Enough, already Now, we're going to be at John's place in forty minutes. I haven't seen Marti in a long time, and it'd be nice to talk about something else besides all this warmed-over crap. Okay?"