by Moulton, CD
“Dick-head-son said it was smarter to conserve some of that money for emergencies. Sylvia said they kept a special account for that. Manny said, `No, we don’t. I kept five million in gold in the vault. You probably do the same.’
“He almost fainted on the table, then I said I only kept fifty thousand around the house. I couldn’t picture needing any more than that and it wouldn’t be the end of the world if it was stolen or the house burned down or something.
“He said we sounded like we’re all millionaires. Manny said we just happened to get together here, that it was a strange place that way – the people you meet here.
“People came by all the time and I think Flora told them to say big hellos. Dickerson and his wife gave her trouble every time they came in. We had six or eight come over and ask all about you and us. We hugged them all. They acted like big super-mogul Henry wasn’t even there.”
“What does he do – other than be obnoxious?” Clint asked, giggling.
“That’s about it, I guess. He says he owned some company in New York. I acted like the last thing I wanted to hear was how some silly two-bit egomaniac got his pitiful little stash. Manny will know.”
They chatted about more pleasant things for an hour or so. Clint was caught up on all the local happenings, then he went back to his place and caught up with his e-mail and such, then called Manny.
“He was a stockbroker with his own company. He liquified before he came here, according to the information. Something over six million dollars.
“He’s terribly impressed with money. Judi got us started and we all ended up worth several hundred billion cash. She said she only kept fifty grand or so around the house for emergencies. That wouldn’t be enough to notice if somebody took it.”
“According to the information?”
“He didn’t own that company. It closed because Harold Didrickson was dying of cancer.”
“WP?”
“That’s the strangest part of it. Definitely and positively no. He was in on some things at the fringes with some big families in York. There was nothing that would put him onto witness protection. He was just a puppet they used in several ways. He probably cleared about thirty grand a year and some expenses. Now he’s here with six million in the bank?”
“Well, so long as he keeps it to himself, who cares,” Clint said. “Why was he with you at the Lemon Grass at all?”
“His wife, Cathy-dear, had met Judi and they happened to come in as we did. They inserted themselves. We got rid of them when Judi said she had to go. They didn’t have much choice. They left, too.”
“Contrived?”
“Obviously. Judi said she ran into her at the garden club. There’re not ten people in the world less interested in gardening than Cathy-honey.”
They talked a bit, then Clint rang off. The Dickersons were probably just pain-in-the-asses with delusions who were trying to find a place they’d fit. They’d inherited – or stole – a lot of money.
Clint’s nutty botanist/musician friend, Dave, came by and asked why Xavier Franconi was in town asking about new people in the area. Did he think no one here would know who he was?
“Who is he?” Clint asked.
“Oh, right. The music. He was a sort of front man for some of those formula bands the mobs put together in the mid-eighties. Sort of a muscle/security chief.”
“Which mob? Not California, surely!”
“Somebody operating out of Motown. That’s where that kind of crap started. One or two made it pretty big, most flopped out after a year or so.”
They talked about the comarca and their mutual Indio friends. Dave got along with the Indios as well as Clint.
Later Clint went over to the Rip Tide for talk and a couple of draft beers, then went into town for awhile, met a girl from New Zealand and had a very pleasant night.
“Clint? Sergio here.”
“Yo?” Clint answered the phone while laying on his hammock on the deck drinking coffee. Laura had just left to get back to her group before they woke up so they wouldn’t know she wasn’t at the hotel last night.
“Remember those Dickerson, er, people on Bastimentos?”
“I’d like to forget. What’s up?”
“A cousin, Danny Lesterinni, is dead. It looks like their neighbors have had enough of them. I’m going out. Care to come along?”
Clint considered, decided he couldn’t care less, remembered what Dave said about possible mob connections and what Manny said about him not being anybody important to any mob.
“I’ll come over. We can take my boat.”
“I already sent the big boat. I’ll be on the dock.”
Clint threw on some clothes (he didn’t wear anything until he decided what he was going to do on a given day) and headed for the police dock. Sergio was waiting and they headed for Bastimentos.
“It seems this Lesterinni was as popular among the people out here as the rest of them. He was chopped up pretty well. I think maybe, from what they told me on the phone, he was tortured with a machete until he bled to death. We won’t know until Doc gives a verdict.”
Clint nodded and maneuvered into the overdone dock with it’s nispero, teak and cedar gear house on the end. Sergio looked at it and shook his head. He hadn’t been closer than in the bay out a distance where very little could be seen of the house. He shook his head again at the view from the dock of the overdone ostentation.
“Loads of class,” he remarked. “Too bad it’s all mud-bottom low.” Clint grinned.
Victor met them at the dock and said he had some serious questions about that body.
“What kind of questions?” Sergio asked of his sergeant.
“How some of those cuts were supposed to be made with a machete, not a fileting knife. How he got those burns all over his body from any machete. Mainly, why anybody would report that it was done with a machete.”
“The person who called, a Julia Bianco, said it looked like he was chopped to pieces with a machete. She probably wouldn’t know the difference and she was hysterical,” Sergio replied.
“Oh. Well, he’s over there (pointing to a little gazebo. It seemed they didn’t build a gazebo, after all. They built three).”
They walked over to check out the scene. It was gory. Clint noticed the blood spatter patterns and smirked at Sergio and Victor.
“Yeah,” Sergio suggested. “He was dead before he was tortured. It would thus appear someone wants us to think he was tortured.” Clint nodded his agreement.
“There’s a lot strange about this one,” Victor said. “This looks like something set up on a movie lot. Someone wants us to think the Indios did it, or the blacks. The Indios wouldn’t do anything like that and the blacks would have done a lot of different things, but not like that.”
“It’s like a stage setting,” Sergio replied.
Clint remembered what Bob said at the Golden Grill. “That’s for dead certain,” he remarked.
They went on to the house when Doc came over in the hospital boat. He’d taken one look and said, “They think we don’t know anything about CSI? Surely they don’t really think we’ll fall for something this obvious!”
“They would in New York,” Clint replied. “If they paid the right person it would already be marked as an unsolvable case because it was racially motivated and a hate crime with fifty thousand suspects in the area and no clues that would point in any particular direction.”
“But there are only about two thousand here,” Sergio pointed out. Clint gave him the finger.
Dickerson and his wife were sitting with three people in the large overdone salon. The women were huddled in one area and the men in another. The room was like a big dance hall, complete with a wet bar on one side.
“Casino elegance,” Victor mumbled to Clint, who nodded. “They’re casino-type people,” he answered.
Sergio got the names and passport copies and such from each of them, asked a few questions and said he’d be back later when the ME finish
ed his CSI.
“You have a ME and CSI team?” Catherine, the wife, asked, looking a bit nervous and scared.
“Certainly!” Victor said. “We’re not really in the eighteen fifties here. We have to send a lot of things to Panamá City for analysis, but we have as modern a lab as anyone.”
They moved around the house and asked very few questions. Clint was cornered by Dickerson and asked how long the investigation would take. He had to go to the states for three days soon.
“It takes as long as it takes,” Clint answered. “They’re efficient.”
“I can’t believe they’d actually do anything like that!” he cried. “I know they hate us, but I didn’t think they’d do anything like that!”
“They who?” Clint asked innocently.
“The Indios or those niggers, of course! Who else would do anything like that?”
“Who else indeed?” Clint agreed. “Trouble is, it’s plain as the overdone house here that none of them did it. One glance told us that.”
“Oh? You’re an expert at that, too?” he spat.
“Yup! Full qualifications from Florida, the US, here ... it’s my business.”
“Er! I didn’t ever ask what your business is?”
“Investigator. Private and official.”
“They never told ... I mean, you must have an interesting ... I mean, it’s, er, good to know they have somebody here who knows his ass from a cowflop with this kind of thing.”
Clint had to turn away to hide that he was trying not to laugh out loud. Dickerson was definitely not prepared to meet anyone who knew anything whatever about murder investigation.
“We’ll have some questions later,” he said. “We have to know what to ask you and we have to get background information on all of you. Routine to know everything you can about suspects.”
“Er.”
Clint went back to Sergio. He said he wanted information about this bunch of rich thugs, bimbos and trailer trash.
Mobs?
“Manny, there’s something to do with some mob connections here,” Clint said. “These people wouldn’t fit with anyone else. They’re trying to put on a face like they’ve been around the world and are high class sophisticated and elite. They’ve probably never been outside of ... Dave said Motown.”
“I have a contact there. Jefferson. Used to be mob, went legit the last few ... Wait! That’s Cleveland. Greco’s in Motown.”
“Mo Jefferson? I met him in South Florida. I think I met Greco ... Miklocaras there, too. I kind of liked Greco. I was totally neutral about Mo.”
“I can get some info from them if they have it. Sylvia says she thinks she’s seen one of those women. Women who hang around their mansion in Carmel.
“What’s going on? I heard that somebody got butchered by the Indios.”
“It was supposed to look like that.”
“I see.”
Clint remembered what Dave said. “What do you know about a Xavier Franconi?”
“Cheap wannabe hanging around the music business, then into art and jewelry theft. Not worth troubling about.”
“Even if he’s here in Bocas?”
There was a long pause. “I think I want to know some things. I’ll keep you informed.”
Clint thanked him and hung up.
What could it be? If Manny said they weren’t witness protection what were they? If they were trying to hide why the ostentation?
Clint decided to go fishing. It was the last thing those people would expect of him.
Clint was tying to his deck when he heard his phone buzz. He’d forgotten it. Again.
It quit before he got to it. There was a notation that he had 23 missed calls. He checked his incoming and found that Judi, Sergio and Manny had called him. Repeatedly.
Manny first: “Clint, there’s some weird kind of complete silence in an area there never is. I can’t find out what’s going on here. Mention Xavier Franconi in passing or something when they’re around.”
“This is somehow connected with the mobs, then?”
“Yeah, Clint. I just can’t get a hint as to how.”
They talked, then Clint called Judi, who said Manny and Sergio were trying to contact him. She didn’t know why, but it was urgent.
Sergio said he was in the police boat headed for Bastimentos. There was a lot about those people that didn’t click – such as that Lesterinni had had extensive plastic surgery. Such as at least one of them had a phony passport. Such as the business Dickerson was supposed to have sold was never his to sell.
Clint said he’d get over as fast as he could, which was fast with his boat. He hung up and headed for Bastimentos. Sergio was standing on the dock talking with Victor when Clint pulled up a few minutes later. They waited. Clint said he wanted to try something to see if they could get a reaction. Victor said that Cathy-sweetheart hinted about bribing him, but he let her know there wasn’t a chance.
“Sergio, get DNA samples from all of them.”
“They’ll refuse.”
“They don’t know the law here. Just tell them Doc is going to take samples, so line up.”
Sergio grinned. He said that might light a fire or two!
They went to the house. They did know that about the law. Sergio raised an eyebrow.
“Well, I suppose that means you can take them all to the lock-up,” Clint suggested. “The law says they don’t have to volunteer, but that not volunteering shows they have something to hide so you can hold them for investigation for as long as six months. I’m sure they’ll leave a sample or two around in that amount of time.”
“Er, can I speak with you privately, Faraday?” Dickerson asked.
Clint went out on the verandah with him and his wife.
“We can’t allow this!” he cried. “My god! This is impossible! We can’t let these people dig around in our past! We have to have privacy. We came here because we heard there was no place in the world where you could have as much privacy as here!”
“Up to a point. Murder suspects don’t get privacy anywhere when they refuse to cooperate.”
“But ... I swear, we didn’t have anything to do with any murder here!” Cathy cried.
“Here? Then why go through all this crap?”
“I guess we don’t have a choice,” Cathy said. “No, dear. We have to do it.
“You see, Mr. Faraday, we’re on the witness protection plan in the states, in Oklahoma. We’re witnesses in a big trial about stock fraud where we were threatened and two people were already killed by those people. We don’t know what to do. We didn’t know how much trouble we would get into or we wouldn’t have ever agreed to anything. I think they’ve found us. I think we’ll all end up dead if we can’t get away from here!”
“Plus these damned people will kill us in a blink!” Dickerson said. “They hate us because we’re more, er, civilized. They’re jealous and violent. I don’t think the people in Kansas, er, Oklahoma have found us. It was the niggers here.”
“If you go to any place and act like asshole snobs you’ll be resented. The Indios don’t hate you, they pity you. Your lives are nothing but fear, greed and false fronts. The blacks won’t do anything other than try to make life here so miserable you’ll leave. That’s what happened to Flannery, the one here before you.”
“They are certainly not our kind of people,” Cathy complained. “They have no breeding. They’re savages!”
“Shit! They have a hell of a lot more breeding than any of you. They couldn’t care less how much money you stole somewhere else. They’re exactly what you see. You are, too. You just don’t realize that it’s so obvious to them that you’re what they call `trailer trash’ in the states. You’ve never been anywhere and never made an honest buck in your lives, now you pay the price.
“I think one or more of you killed Lesterinni and tried to make it look like a hate killing. Either that or someone like Franconi.”
“WHA..!! What do you know about Franconi?!” Dickerson almost sc
reamed. Cathy-darlin’ looked like she’d been slapped in the puss with a rotten fish. She said, “How do you even know about ... the name, Franconi? He’s a cheap hood in, er, Arkansas. He was going to tell the ... go to ... someplace. Some people.”
“He’s a cheap hood right here in Bocas Town at the moment. We checked on his type first thing.”
“He’s in BOCAS TOWN?! Oh, god! We’re dead! All of us! He’s a professional killer for the mob in Chicago!”
“Make up your mind. He’s a second-rate thug from Motown, not from Oklahoma or Kansas or Arkansas,” Clint replied. “Why do you think this is eighteen hundred and these are hick yokels from Podunk investigating your little murder? These guys are more efficient than most places in the states.
“You can give me a straight story or I can dig it up. It’s what I do. Each one of you who ends up dead tells me a little more.”
Sergio came out and asked Clint if he should arrest the lot of them for questioning or would they cooperate. Clint replied that they weren’t legal. They were hiding from somebody who, apparently, found them.
“Well, I don’t think more than eighty percent of the gringos living here are legal. I don’t care so long as they stay out of trouble and don’t bring this kind of thing here. I can’t protect anybody who doesn’t even tell me what they have to be protected from. That’s asking far too much.
“Clint, you’ve always come through for the Policia Nacionál here. You’ve donated millions of dollars, billions (Judi told him about that), to the Indios and everybody else. We deeply respect you for being a true caring person. I will act on your advice here.”
“Okay. Let it ride for now. I have to check on a thing or two. One person in Bocas Town seems connected and may be our killer, but he may not be.”
“Fair enough. If you wish to return to Bocas I will cadge a ride with you. The investigation boat will be here for another hour or so.”
