The Gypsy Queen: A Matt Preston Novel (Matt Preston Series Book 3)

by Paul Shadinger

  I continued, “You know as well as I do there are certain things I cannot disclose to you. And I’m aware there are many things you can’t talk about with me. I know a little about what you and Ilox did back in the Turkey region and that the two of you have kept track of each other. If I can see him, and get the information I need, I’m in a position to offer Ilox a really good deal.”

  Bill looked at me with a frown on his face. “Like what?”

  “Basically, because of the services Ilox provided to our government over the years, the US Government is willing to excuse any of his… ah… misdeeds of the past.” Bill looked thoughtful. “Ilox will no longer be under surveillance by the U.S. government. He will receive a green card. This is all being done on behalf of the admiral. Orchard was able to get several concessions for Ilox and from what the admiral has told me, Bill, please trust me when I tell you this is a talk Ilox will want to have. Now, please tell me where to find him.”

  Bill sat stroking Rascal’s fur as he looked out the window over the river apparently deep in thought. “If the government has Ilox under surveillance why do you need me to tell you where he is? I know, I know you can’t say why. I don’t think this is a wonderful idea, but I know I don’t have long to live and I feel somewhat responsible about Ilox. It would appear this is the best he can expect. You say that Ol’ Apple can protect him?” I agreed. “And if I tell you where to find Ilox, Orchard is going square things with our government?” Again, I agreed. Bill looked over at Nicola and said “Woman, ain’t there some woman things that needs to be done in the back? This young man and I need to have a man talk.”

  Nicky turned and called back over her shoulder, “Whatever!” I was treated to a pair of cute round cheeks peeking out of her short, short shorts as she walked away. I noticed Bill had a wistful smile on his face as he watched her leave.

  When she was gone, Bill turned to me, grinned and shook his head. Pointing at a chair, he lowered his voice. “Sit!” After I was in the chair, he said, “I can’t do anything about sex stuff, but she’s still fun to look at. Damn that child is beautiful.” He cackled and I had to laugh with him.

  His soft voice continued, “Speaking of responsible, like I said, I haven’t got long to go. I know there are a lot of things wrong inside here,” he tapped his chest. “They keep trying to take me away from my house and I keep resisting. I don’t want to drag things out. I’m happy here and it isn’t such a bad place to die. So, listen, what you do is come back here after I’m gone and get that lovely child. She’s got nobody. No family and she don’t do so good on her own. I’m not supposed to know Admiral Apple sent her here, but she is kinda like a broken bird. She’s had some bad deals in her life and she needs lookin’ after. You seem like a nice fella. Come back and get her, and Rascal, and take care of them. That’s your part of this deal. Will ya do that for me?” I smiled. “Promise?” What else was I going to do? I told him I promised I’d come and get her and the dog and take care of them.

  Bill looked back out the window and started to speak, “What ya do young man is this. Go back out Rabbit to the light at Shoreline Drive and take a right. After a while Shoreline will turn into Oak Parkway, streets down here are weird that way. Come to a stoplight and the name changes as you drive through the light. Dumbest damn thing I ever seen.” Bill looked at me to see if I understood.

  “Okay, just stay on Oak until you come to Del Prado and then you turn left on Del Prado. Stay on that forever. I mean forever. No idea how many miles it is, but it seems like it’s forever. Finally, you’ll come to a T in the road and you take a left turn. You’re headed west now. I don’t know the name of the road but it don’t matter, when you get to the T you have to go left or right and you go left. A few miles and all of a sudden you’ll know you’re there.”

  “How?” I was confused.

  His voice rose a little, “’Cause it’s the biggest damn house you ever saw. I mean it looks like that castle out in California up in the hills that there newspaper feller had. This house is all alone. Nothing for miles around. Strangest damn thing I ever saw. And it’s huge, fucking huge. Tell Ilox I sent ya and he’ll talk at you.”

  “Are you sure he’s there?”

  Bill glared at me for a moment and then leaned back and started to holler, “Nicky! God damn it Nicky, get your skinny ass out here.”

  Nicky leaned into the room and said, “Make up your mind old man. One minute you tell me my ass is fat and then next you tell me it’s skinny.” Nicky winked at me. “Now what are you bellowing about anyway?”

  “Get this asshole out of here. He asks me where he can find Ilox and after I gets done telling him, he asks me if I’m sure he’s there. What an idiot. Get him out of here now.” Nicola motioned for me to go. All the way out to my car I could hear him bitching about me. I felt a bit sorry for Nicky, but I assumed the admiral was paying her well and must have good reasons for having her take care of him.

  As for Bill’s request to come and get Nicky when he died, that was something I needed to think about. I can’t explain why I felt this way, but the one thing I was sure about was Nicky was a lot more capable than Bill ever realized.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  I followed Bill’s directions and he was correct about one thing, it was the biggest house I’d ever seen in a setting like that. Actually, the visible part of the house wasn’t very much because the foliage behind the high walls surrounding the estate engulfing the house only allowed two towers to be visible from the street. The land surrounding the compound made it one of the largest manors I’d ever seen in my life. In addition, being out in the middle of nowhere made it seem even more imposing. I would have understood had something this grand been built on some sort of water property, or property with a magnificent view of some sort, but this mini-castle was just sitting in the middle of a huge piece of land with absolutely nothing around it. Other than the massive house with its tall walls and trees and bushes, there was nothing to be seen for miles.

  No trees.

  No large bushes.

  Just totally flat land. It was like a developer had started to develop lots to sell, built this one structure and for some reason, stopped. When it comes to houses, it was the weirdest thing I’d ever seen.

  The walls surrounding the fortress were over twelve feet high, tan in color with a light brown cap. The coloring looked very Mediterranean, yet the colors didn’t look that out of place for Florida. Once when I glanced up I noticed the glint of glass and sharp metal objects imbedded on the tops of the caps. The place screamed keep out and go away.

  The wall facing the road was well over a quarter of mile long and in the middle was a recessed gate. The gate was a solid piece of black metal that slid on rollers into a pocket to the side and from the size of the gate I assume it was aluminum. The gate was ten feet high, looked formidable and there was no way to look past it and see what was inside of the walls. To the right of the massive gate was a guard shack, also recessed. The entire effect of the massive front said in no uncertain terms, “Go away. You are not welcome!”

  I pulled up to the gate and I saw two men standing guard with their rifle butts on the ground. There was one on each side of the gate and they were standing at parade rest. Both men wore full beards and when I was directly in front of the gate, a third guard came out of the guardhouse. The new guard also was wearing a full beard. All their outfits seemed to be a military cut of some sort, with epaulets on their shoulders and lots of pockets with the flaps buttoned, their shirts were pressed with military creases and they all looked very efficient. The uniforms looked new, very clean and well pressed.

  The guard approaching me had a pistol belt around his waist and a strap going up over his chest and down his back. All three guards wore old style starched fatigue caps. I had to give Ilox credit, not only was his gate impressive but his guards were just as imposing.

  As I put my window down to address the ap
proaching guard, the two guards in front of the gate, in unison, brought their rifles from parade rest to a ‘port arms’ position. As the guard from the guard shack was moving forward, the other two were prepared to defend the front gate should I try and run my vehicle at it.

  With a slight accent, the guard from the shack addressed me. “Good afternoon. May I help you?”

  “Good afternoon. My name is Matt Preston and I would like to see Mr. Ilox.”

  “I am sorry, sir, whom did you wish to see?” the guard asked politely.

  “Mr. Ilox please,” I repeated.

  “I am sorry sir, you must be mistaken. There is nobody here by that name. Please turn your car around and go back the way you came.” The guard stepped back and motioned for me to turn around.

  I took a deep breath and slowly let it out. “Look, let’s not play this game. I’m sorry I don’t know the correct password, or whatever it is I need to say to gain entrance. But it’s too hot for you to stand out here in the sun and play stupid games. Humor me. Go back in your little hut and call in to the house. Tell them Matt Preston is here to see Mr. Ilox and you might want to mention Bill Richardson and Admiral Jonathan Orchard as well.”

  The guard looked at me for a moment and then asked, “Do you have any identification?”

  Finally, we were getting somewhere. “Why couldn’t we have started out this way?” I asked. I fished out the credentials John had given me along with my driver’s license and handed it to the guard. He looked at the front of the driver’s license and then turned it over. Frowning, he asked me, “What’s this?”

  “It’s called a driver’s license.”

  His tone of voice held a bit of exasperation. “I understand that sir, what I mean is where is it from?”

  I thought it was rather obvious since it had the issuing state of the license written across the top. But I took the high road. “That’s a Washington State driver’s license, sir.”

  He looked at the front and back again before he asked, “What are you doing down here?”

  “I’m trying to see Mr. Ilox. It’s very important that he sees me and I really need to chat with him as soon as possible. That’s if you will call the house and get clearance for me to enter.” Because of the full beard, I couldn’t see much of his face, but I noticed a glint in his eyes. He was not happy at the way I was pushing him. Next, he picked up the federal creds I’d handed to him and looked them over. Eventually he seemed to be satisfied and he stepped back into his little house and picked up a phone.

  Waiting for him to check with the main house I looked carefully at the three guards. All of them looked hot and I could see the sweat on their foreheads. I wondered why they would sport full beards a tropical climate. It had to be very uncomfortable, considering. I knew I would have been happy in just a swimsuit and I could just image how prickly the facial hair must have felt. Finally, what I was thinking of as the main gate guard came out and handed me back my license and federal credentials.

  The gate started to slide into its pocket and the two guards did a military turn and marched to stand next to the now open gate. The guard instructed me, “Go down the drive and you will come to a second gate. The guard there will tell you what to do next. Do not get off the main road. If you do, you will be shot. Do you understand?” I nodded my head.

  The drive to the next gate was impressive. Tall palm trees lined the way and from what I observed, the grounds were well manicured. When I got to the next gate I was signaled to stop. The guard looked identical to those at the street gate. I thought to myself this was a lot like a high security prison. I wondered if the layout was designed to keep people out, or people in.

  I put down my window and the guard asked me for identification. Since it would have been impossible for anybody to get to this point with a vehicle and have the front gate guards not know there was somebody on the property, I wanted to make some smart assed comment, but I held my tongue. I showed him my creds along with my Washington State Driver’s license and he studied them very carefully. Finally, he handed the documents back to me and informed me, “When you get to the front of the house, there will be somebody to meet you and show you where to park. Please do not leave the road. You will be shot if you do not obey. Do you understand?”

  I said I did. I drove in for about a third of a mile and as I came around a bend in the road, I was shocked at the structure before me. The driveway went through a two-story front portico where there were two guards waiting for me.

  When I turned off my car, one of the guards opened the door. As I stepped out, he motioned towards the front door and informed me somebody would be waiting for me just inside.

  A massive door, which must have been twelve feet tall, opened just before I was going to knock and I was invited to step into the vestibule. Beyond this smaller room was a large room with a staircase going up the middle and half way up, splitting into two sections and both sets of the stairs winding up to the upper floor. The entrance room was at least three stories high with a huge chandelier suspended in the middle, and whole thing was stunning.

  Both the vestibule and the large room floors beyond were done in an intricate pattern of marble and I was so enthralled I didn’t even see another guard standing just inside of the large room. The guard behind the door and the new guard looked just like the others I’d seen so far, beards and all, except this one was not armed. The second guard scowled at me and ordered, “Come this way!” I followed.

  We wandered through a couple more rooms which looked like they belonged in a castle. The rooms were all well-appointed and each of them had what I thought looked like expensive oriental carpets covering floors of intricately laid tile.

  Finally, we stepped through a set of double doors and into an enormous screened area with a swimming pool in the middle. When I looked at the pool my first thought was I was looking at a small white whale of some kind floating there, but when I looked closer I saw it was actually a naked man. A very fat and very naked man.

  The man in the pool had no hair on his head or anywhere else on his body that I could tell. I know there’s a disease that destroys all of the hair on a person’s body but I forget what it’s called. I assumed this was Ilox and I wondered if he might be suffering from that disease.

  When he spotted me standing inside of the pool enclosure, he swam to one end and settled himself in a harness. The harness was connected to a hoist that could lift him from the pool. There were two women next to the pool clad in mini bikinis and one of them stepped over to the hoist to operate it. Slowly the lift ground the obese man up and once he was clear of the edge of the pool, he was swung over to the pool deck. The lift gradually set the man down until the two women could unfasten the seat on the harness and he was standing on his own. One of the two women had a robe in her hands and as she draped it over his flabby shoulders the other woman handed him a towel. The man nodded his approval and the women disappeared as he slowly started to waddle towards me. When he was standing in front of me he didn’t extend his hand and I didn’t either. His voice was high pitched, light and feathery. “Are you Preston?” I admitted it. “Pray tell me why I should allow you to leave my home alive today.”

  Damn! That was not what I expected to hear. After going through the experience of the two gates, I was starting to wonder if I was going to leave this place alive. I took a deep breath.

  “John Orchard asked me to come and have a chat with you,” I said.

  “And how did you find my home? Who told you I lived here?” His face was totally impassive.

  Since I knew Bill didn’t have much longer to live, I doubted if telling Ilox the truth would cause much trouble for him. “An old friend of yours, Bill Richardson, told me where you lived.”

  The obese man stared at me for a few moments, and then turned and walked over to a table. At the end of the table was a chair quite a bit larger than the others that looked like it might
be able to hold his weight. He went to the chair and as he lowered himself into it, about halfway down he just let his body go and fell back into the chair. The chair groaned from the weight. I was amazed it didn’t give way. He motioned towards one of the extra chairs. After I was sitting, he continued, “That surprises me. Bill seems to be getting careless in his old age. And how is he?”

  I didn’t know Bill well enough to make any sort of informed opinion and I tried to keep my comment neutral. “I thought he looked okay, but today was the first time I’d ever met him. He seems sharp mentally, but he knows he’s dying. He told me that.”

  The fat man looked down at the table for a moment and shook his head. When he looked back at me his face still had no expression on it. “Is he alone? Is Nicola still with him?”

  “Yes, Nicky’s with him. She’s his nurse and is taking good care of him. He seems happy and content, considering he is dying. I’ve been told he could well afford to live in a much nicer place, but he likes the river and he’s with his dog and getting good medical care.”

  Ilox took a deep breath and as he released it, he spoke, “Why would Orchard send you? Are you military?” I shook my head, withdrew my creds and handed them to Ilox. The man carefully looked them over and asked, “What is this? Exactly which agency are you connected with?”

  “I am attached to a special presidential task force which is headed by John Orchard.”

  Ilox tossed my identification on the table and stared at me. Taking a deep breath, he asked, “Then my original question still stands, why should I allow you to leave my home alive?”

  I was still unnerved by the continuing blank look on Ilox’s face. Even when he had asked me about Bill there had been no emotion. I wondered if his face was somehow frozen. His face was an unhealthy white and very round with no hair anywhere. No eyelashes or eyebrows and the lids of his eyes covered over half of his eyeballs. I had no idea what color his eyes were. I was a bit concerned because this conversation was not going quite as planned.