by Tom Turner
Ott eyed Crawford quizzically. “Wait? George Figueroa?”
“Yes, exactly. And this one gossip queen is yapping away about how his wife spends like she’s got Robert Polk money. Goes on shopping jags to Paris and London.”
Crawford sat up a little straighter. “Keep going.”
“Well, that’s about it. I just thought you boys would find that interesting.”
“Yes, we sure do,” Crawford said. “Anything else, Rose?”
“Isn’t that enough?”
‘It sure is,” Crawford said. “Thank you very much.”
“For all that intel, I’d say you both owe me dinner,” Rose said.
“In a heartbeat, Rose,” Ott said.
“But…you have a girlfriend, Mort?”
“I do?”
“Funny boy,” Rose said. “All right, that’s all for now.”
“It’s plenty,” Ott said.
“Bye, Rose,” Crawford said, clicking off.
He tapped his desk. “Isn’t that interesting.”
“Damn right,” Ott said. “So is Polk still your lock for first place?”
Crawford thought for a second. “I don’t know. We gotta take another good hard look at George and Janice.”
“I still say it’s Polk,” Ott said. “He gets humiliated at the wedding and maybe Carla turns him down for the seventeenth time. So, he’s had a bunch of drinks and goes from cranky to homicidal.”
“But where’d he get a gun? I doubt he shows up at the wedding packing.”
“I don’t know…his car maybe.”
Crawford shook his head slowly. “I’ll call him. Tell him I need to have another meeting with him and this time it’s going to last as long as I damn well want it to.”
Ott nodded. “And Janice and George?”
“Right after we meet with Polk,” Crawford said. “I have a couple of math questions for those two.”
Twenty-Nine
Jared was a huge source of information and, without question, not the murderer of Xavier Duke. He was a 26-year-old senior at Palm Beach Atlantic College, and his parents lived in Palm Beach but had kicked him out of their house the year before. That was after he came limping back home with a bad coke habit after an abortive attempt to make it as an actor in Hollywood. He said he had a walk-on part in the Amazon series Bosch and claimed to have had a bunch of bad breaks, but planned to head back out and give it another shot after he finished up at Palm Beach Atlantic.
Ott gave Crawford a quizzical look right after Jared said that, wondering whether he thought a sheepskin from PBA would somehow be the key to landing big parts in Hollywood. Jared had been living at Xavier Duke’s house for the last five months. Duke had been paying him three thousand dollars a month, which Jared said he was more than satisfied with, along with free room and board. Duke had also agreed to help him out and paid half of his college tuition. Jared was fully aware of the cameras in Duke’s bedroom that he’d lured women into and had good recall about which women had been recorded on them.
He remembered Stephanie, Natalie, Jennifer, and Olivia and was starting to get specific about them when Crawford and Ott cut him off. When they asked Jared if he knew what Duke did with the films, Jared shrugged, looked blank and said no. They believed him but had to wonder why he wasn’t more curious.
Then they hit him with the question they’d been saving up: Ott showed him the pictures of the boy and young girl and asked him who they were. Jared claimed to have no idea. They pressed him. And aside from appearing more nervous, he again said he didn’t know. When Crawford said they’d need to administer a lie-detector test, Jared squirmed some more but became even more adamant that he didn’t know who they were. He even agreed to take the test.
Out of options and now convinced that Jared really didn’t know who the two were, they asked him if he knew anyone whose intials were AC. He thought for a while and, finally, said no.
All they had left was the mysterious “Danny” to ask about. They asked Jared if he knew the man whom Duke had called multiple times per day. He did. He gave them Danny’s last name and said he was a trainer at a gym in either Palm Beach or West Palm.
They thanked him and headed back to the station. When they got back to Crawford’s office, they shifted the conversation to Janice and George Figeuroa.
“See, here’s what I think,” Crawford started out. “George has to be getting at least one percent for managing his father-in-law’s account. That’s five hundred thousand. That gives him a lot of money to lose, plus still have some left over for Janice’s expensive tastes in jewelry and clothes.”
“Yeah, but what if he was really a huge whale?” Ott said scrolling down on his iPhone. “I’ve heard about some of these guys losing a million at a casino in a couple of days.” He pointed at his iPhone. “Okay, here you go, listen to this: ‘A media tycoon by the name of Robert Maxwell lost close to two million dollars in a minute and a half at Ambassadeurs casino in England.’”
“Come on, how the hell is that possible?”
“Says he was playing multiple roulette wheels at once. Wait, that’s nothing, listen to this one: “Terence Watanabe was said to have bet more than $825 million and lost nearly $127 million of it in Caesar’s Palace and the Rio casinos in 2007, which is believed to be the biggest losing streak in Vegas history.”
“$127 million?”
“Yup,” Ott said, “and, whoa, get this: Watanabe claimed that ‘the casino was responsible for fueling his stunning streak by providing him with free drinks and intoxicants and allowing him to gamble when he was clearly intoxicated.’”
“That’s not hard to believe,” Crawford said. “Why don’t you Google George and see if you find anything.”
Ott was scrolling. “I’m one step ahead of you,” he said and suddenly his eyes got big. “Oh…my…God.”
“You got something?” Crawford asked, leaning across his desk to see.
“Do I ever.” Ott handed his iPhone to Crawford.
It was a photo of George Figueroa. His face was colorless and he seemed to have a three-day growth. Beside him in the photo was a particularly grim-looking Janice Figueroa.
Crawford started to read the short article. “Holy shit.”
“What’s it say?” Ott asked.
“High-rolling American financier, George Figueroa, has been charged with refusing to pay 950,000 pounds in a line of credit at the Grosvenor Casino in London. Figueroa lost a total of two million pounds at the baccarat table over the course of two days and claimed he was unable to cover the line of credit he had established with the casino.”
“Financier, huh?” Ott said, looking up at Crawford. “‘Ol’ George is hardly some penny-ante player. What’s the rest of it say?”
“That’s it. That’s the end of the article.”
“Well, we know he’s not wasting away in some London debtors’ prison—”
“Which means he must have scraped up the 950,000 pounds somewhere,” Crawford said.
“You don’t suppose…”
Crawford nodded. “The guy dipped into his father-in-law’s account?” he said. “Yeah, now I do. We’ve got to find out how much is in that account.”
“But your guess is something less than fifty million?”
“Yeah, has to be,” Crawford said. “And there’s Janice’s English thing again.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“The Bentley. The shopping in London.”
“While George is dropping a couple mil on baccarat.”
Crawford was nodding. “Want to know what I think?”
“I’m all ears.”
“It’s like Janice has a fantasy about wanting to be an English aristocrat. You know, like a baroness or—”
“A duchess.”
Crawford nodded. “Yeah, instead of plain old Janice Pawlichuk, football coach’s daughter or Mrs. George Figueroa, bean-counter’s wife.”
“Hey, don’t forget: George is a ‘financier’ these days.”
&n
bsp; Crawford nodded. “Oh, right. I can just hear Janice telling the British reporter that.”
“And what about that stage name?”
“Professional name, you mean,” Crawford said. “Bartholomew. Lady Janice Bartholomew.” Crawford slapped Ott on the shoulder. “Let’s go.”
“Where?”
“Pay our respects to the lord and the lady.”
“And don’t forget your old congressman.”
“Yeah, him too,” Crawford said. “So, you’ll find this interesting: I looked him up and found out Gorman lives five houses down from Xavier Duke’s house on North Lake Way.”
“Isn’t that convenient?” Ott said. “So that lot on Reef Road—”
“Would have been a short hike for both of them.”
Thirty
Crawford and Ott requisitioned six “bags,” Palm Beach PD lingo for uniform cops, giving them instructions to go to all the local high schools with the pictures of the unidentified young girl and boy from what they called the “AC” tape to see if a teacher, principal, or student recognized either one.
After that, Crawford called Xavier Duke’s friend, Danny, whose last name turned out to Waller. He was a trainer at a boutique gym in Palm Beach, just like Jared said.
When Crawford visited him, Danny seemed genuinely broken up about the death of Xavier Duke and in the dark about what Xavier did for a living. He said they had been friends for about a year, played croquet almost every day at the Royal & Alien Club and went out on Xavier’s boat a lot. Crawford asked if he knew who Xavier had gone to see the night he was killed and Danny said he had no idea. Crawford asked him if Xavier had ever mentioned the names Samantha Kramer, Jennifer Sullivan, Natalie Drummond, Olivia Gorman or someone whose initials were AC. He said no. Crawford thought about asking Danny about the nature of his relationship with Duke, but didn’t know how that knowledge would advance the case.
In both cases thus far, he and Ott had encountered a lot of non-starters. Danny Waller seemed to be yet another one.
* * *
Crawford had left three messages for Robert Polk and four for Ellis Gorman.
He had decided to pay another visit to Mindy Pawlichuk, who had moved from Mar-a-Lago to the Breakers. She had explained to Crawford on the phone that she was staying in Palm Beach to resolve some issues related to her husband’s death but didn’t specify what they were. Crawford was surprised that Mindy hadn’t simply gone to stay at her daughter’s house up in Jupiter.
He drove to The Breakers, where he and Mindy had agreed to meet in an area in front of the receptionist’s desk.
She was reading a magazine when Crawford approached.
“Hello, Mrs. Pawlichuk,” he said and she looked up.
“Hello, Detective, please have a seat,” she pointed to the chair next to her.
“Thank you,” he said and sat.
He got right to it. “Mrs. Pawlichuk, I want to talk to you about your daughter and son-in-law.”
The faint trace of a frown appeared on her face. “Okay,” she said, “What about them?”
Crawford put his hand on his chin. “Well, it’s come to my attention that George ran up large gambling debts on at least one occasion when he and Janice were in London in the past year.”
Mindy sighed and moved the magazine from her lap to a table in front of her. “I’m not sure what that has to do with the death of my husband.”
“Well, I’m not sure either, except that it was a substantial amount of money that he lost,” Crawford said. “When we spoke to you the second time, you knew approximately what was in your account with Stoller Financial”—Mindy nodded—“so I was wondering: Do you know how much is in your account with George?”
“I’m sure we received statements,” Mindy said.
“I’m sure you did too, and did you look at them?”
Mindy shook her head.
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t remember Paul ever letting me see them.”
Crawford paused while an older couple walked past them. “Why do you think Paul let you see the Stoller Financial statements but not the ones from George?”
Mindy shrugged. “I’m afraid I don’t know the answer to that.”
Crawford put his hand down on the end table next to him and thrummed his fingers. “Did Paul ever complain about how George was doing with the account?”
Mindy shook her head. “No.”
“Did he ever talk about it at all?”
“No.”
“Did he ever bring it up in a conversation with Janice maybe?”
“Not that I know of.”
Mindy’s breathing seemed to have become more labored.
“Did he ever talk about finances at all with Janice?”
Now Crawford noticed a slight tremble in Mindy’s hands.
“No. Well, maybe a few times,” she said, them lowering her voice to a near-whisper. “What Paul talked about mostly with Janice was about her spending. He thought she spent too much.”
“On what kinds of things?”
Mindy laughed. “On every kind of thing imaginable. And he was right. But she wouldn’t listen—” she put a hand on her forehead— “then he got on her about that whole Bartholomew thing.”
“You mean, her professional name?”
“Is that what she told you it was?” Mindy shook her head. “She just seemed embarrassed her name was Pawlichuk. Ever since she was a little girl she was always making up these fancy-sounding WASP-y names for herself. I have no idea why.”
“Going back to George’s gambling,” Crawford said. “I’m just going to ask you flat out: Were you ever concerned that maybe he might take money out of your and Paul’s account? To pay a gambling debt, possibly.”
Mindy put her hand on her chest and looked around the room. “Here’s the thing, Detective: We had plenty of money, so what difference did it make, really? I mean, Janice and George were going to end up with half of it anyway.”
Crawford looked around, then his eyes returned to Mindy’s. “Do you think that was Paul’s attitude?”
Her voice got even lower. “No. Definitely not.”
“So, Paul—”
“Let’s just say, Paul was not as casual about the money as I was.”
Crawford nodded. “Well, thank you, Mrs. Pawlichuk. Again, I appreciate your time,” he said, standing. “Have you heard from your son? How it’s going on his honeymoon?”
“Oh, they didn’t go after all. Rich just couldn’t leave after what happened.”
“I certainly understand that,” Crawford said, making a mental note to call Rich.
Then he flashed to Rich’s wife Addison…cranky, no doubt, about not being able to work on her tan on the Riviera.
* * *
Crawford decided the hell with it, he wasn’t going to wait any longer for a call that probably would never be returned. Instead, he’d go straight to Ellis Gorman’s house on North Lake Way. Before heading there, he called Ott, who wouldn’t want to be excluded from something which could be good and explosive.
They were on their way up North Lake Way, Ott at the wheel.
“So that Bentley of Janice Figueroa’s…you ever drive one?”
Ott looked at him like he was nuts. “Oh, yeah, Charlie, my neighbor’s got one. Couple other people on the block too. They let me take ‘em out for spins all the time,” he said. “Are you fuckin’ crazy? You gotta show the Bentley dealer your bank statement before you take a test drive.”
Crawford shrugged. “Just wondering.”
Ott pulled into the driveway that led up to a big gray Mediterranean on the ocean.
“Christ, what are congressmen makin’ these days?” Ott asked.
“You know, like two hundred thousand,” Crawford said. “But Ellis has lots of side businesses.”
“Like what? Bribery, extortion, bid-rigging, shit like that?”
“Yeah, exactly, shakedowns, hush money, palm-greasing and the like.”
Ott snicker
ed. “Beats workin’.”
They parked and walked across the Chattahoochee pebble driveway to the front porch.
Crawford pushed the buzzer. A woman with a thick layer of make-up and fake eyelashes answered the door and gave them a puzzled look.
“Mrs. Gorman?”
“Yes.”
“My name is Detective Crawford, Palm Beach Police Department, and this is Detective Ott—” Ott nodded. “We’d like to see your husband, please.”
“What about?”
Crawford thought he detected a hint of Staten Island in her voice.
“It’s kind of a long story.”
Mrs. Gorman frowned. “Well, he’s down at the pool.”
Crawford nodded. “Okay, great. Is it easier to go through the house or around back?”
“Ah, I guess you can go through the house.” The puzzled look hadn’t left her face.
“Thanks,” Crawford said, walking past her, Ott right behind him. “This way, I assume.”
“Yes, straight through.”
Crawford and Ott went through the living room, a TV room, a room with a pool table, then out the door of a sunroom in back.
The pool and a pool house were fifty feet ahead. A chubby man in a black Speedo sat on a chaise with a drink in his hand.
“Hey, Congressman,” Crawford shouted and waved his hand.
Gorman shot him a perplexed look.
Crawford and Ott walked around the pool and up to Gorman, who had gotten to his feet.
“Who the hell are you?”
Definitely Staten Island. With a detour through Brooklyn maybe.
“Detectives Crawford and Ott. I’m the guy who left you all the messages.”
“Yeah, whaddaya want?”
“We want to ask you some questions about Xavier Duke.”
“Who the hell’s Xavier Duke?”
Ott took a step forward. “Your ex-neighbor, just up the beach,” he said. “You wrote him a check once.”
