by Moulton, CD
Napoli had a string of parking tickets in several parts of the San Francisco area. It seemed he would park his fancy car somewhere and not get back before the meter expired or such. There was definitely a connection with something. Napoli was going to the poorer sections of a lot of places for some reason.
Clint checked with Mapquest on the exact locations the tickets were issued. Near parks, movie theaters, bus stations – that rang a bell! Was Napoli gay?
Not that he could find, but this guy was trying hard for whatever it was not to be known. In California, who would make a stink if he was? They were far too liberal about that too ever make it a problem. Unless maybe...?
Unless there was more to it than that. He didn’t have AIDS. He was far too public a person to hide it in his own community.
Okay. Into pornography, which was why he was so adamant about it ever coming into his own community? He was the type, to look at, who would appear in those things.
No. Those things were made for money. He didn’t need money.
That left ... what?
So!
Porno?
“Manny, I think I know what they have on him, but there’s no way I can check that I know about. I know your family was never into porno, but this isn’t really that. You had women. Did you have gay contacts?”
“If there was a market for it we had a thumb or two in. Porno works if you have the right women – or men for the gay trade. Anything we did there was because they came to us for financing. We never trapped anybody into that kind of thing. You knew Pops. You can’t begin to picture him into ... Christ! He’s into young girls or boys?”
“I don’t know. It’s all I’m left with.”
“That wouldn’t make too much of a splash in California. He could buy out of that. It would do it to his reputation, though. There are male and female hustlers there that are barely old enough to get it up. We refused to use anyone underage.”
“I found where he had a traffic ticket in 1997 with an eleven year old boy in the car. It’s not his kid, there’s nothing I can find that would make him an uncle or such, so why the kid was there at all wasn’t ever mentioned.”
There was a silence. “Pedophile?”
“I just don’t know! I sure as all the levels of hell don’t want to start any rumors or accusations because I can’t find anything else likely. He could be some kind of spy or something.”
“I’ll try to get some kind of information. There are people in almost any town in California who we can use. Gimme names and dates and so forth. If there’s anything there we’ll find it.”
Clint gave him the list. He then went back to the computer to try other searches. Almost any kind of porno was on the net. Very little kiddie porn. He didn’t want that kind of site on his hard drive.
An hour for nothing. He went into town for a good meal at the Rip Tide, then met Dave, Judi, Earl and Ben. they went around town to all the places they usually visited. It was a good night, particularly when Marianne, a girl he’d met a year before when she was there on vacation, called him and asked if he was busy tonight. she was back for three days, then was headed for San Blas. He said he’d meet her at Toro Loco.
“Clint? Sergio here,” greeted him at about ten o’clock in the morning. “It looks like another of our lovely Bastimentos residents has found her way to the morgue. “Julia Bianco.”
“Same MO?”
“Yes and no. Different cause of death, torture employed. Some of it was while she was still alive. She was hit over the head with something. I’d say a piece of that rerod that’s laying around. The first blow only stunned her, then she was worked over a little, killed and beaten some more. I’d say an amateur who didn’t know if it was enough so kept on. Messy.”
“She hadn’t been anywhere else but the finca?”
“She went into Bocas Town late yesterday afternoon for groceries. She went to the internet café next door to the big China. She went to the wine shop. She had dinner at Nine Degrees. She went back. She wasn’t any worse than usual, but she wasn’t any better, either.”
“Franconi in town?”
“I don’t think so. I’m having my men check him out.”
“What the hell is with those people? There’s no way ... I’ll be damned!”
“What?”
“I have to check on some things. I’ll call you back.”
Clint called Manny and asked if there was a way that Napoli would know they were checking into his past. It was possible they asked someone some questions who had contact with him. That was always a risk in the business.
He called Sergio back and said he wanted to go out there to talk to them. Sergio said he was there. Come on out.
He got in his boat and made a quick trip to the island. He tied up at the dock and went to the house to find the bunch of them sitting around the great room.
“I think something I’ve done resulted in Bianco getting murdered,” he announced. “Whichever one of you is the plant, nobody here had anything to do with my investigation into his past. It was just something that happens a lot in international cases. You have to check out everyone’s past. I can tell each of you a lot about yourself. Knocking off Bianco was immensely stupid. My investigation was coming up empty, but this tells me I’m dead on target. If you got orders from Napoli for this you can tell him it gave me a direction. I’ll find it now. I never give up.”
“What the hell?! You meddle around in his affairs and get us all killed and it’s all just so sad?!” Catherine cried. “Oh, my god! If it’s coming out anyhow we’re all as good as dead!”
“Part of the blackmail business. You places your bet and takes your chances,” Clint replied. “Lesterinni and Bianco didn’t hedge their bets enough. I don’t give a hoot in hell about any of you. Just no more killing. It’s too late to hide it now.”
They mumbled at each other. They didn’t have a clue as to which one was the plant. Clint had one very strong possibility in mind.
“I want to know where each one of you was and with whom since early last night until the body was discovered this morning.”
“Well, I was with Henry all night! He’s my husband, after all!” Catherine said.
“We were together all afternoon and all last night,” Dickerson said.
Doc came in and said she was dead for six to seven hours. He could get it much closer at the morgue. Clint thanked him.
“It’s ten forty five. She was killed around three o’clock,” Clint said. “That’s the time you have to tell me about.”
“Nothing to tell,” Frieda Herman said. “I spent the night with Frank. We were together until about five thirty.”
“Neither of you left the room, even for ten minutes?”
“Not for any minutes,” Lucerne agreed. “That’s a particular time I would have very damned well remembered if she wasn’t there, you can bet!”
“It had to be Franconi!” Catherine wailed. “You said it wasn’t him, but it has to be! I was asleep at that hour!”
“Napoli can hire fifty Franconis. He wouldn’t blink,” Dickerson said. “I think it must have been him or some other thug he hired. He messes with me he’ll wish he was never born!”
“If it comes out from another source you don’t have anything to bargain with anymore,” Clint said. “I will get you!”
They looked at each other. They were mutually suspicious now. It was a very unpleasant feeling.
Clint went out and talked with Sergio a few minutes, then headed back home. His main suspect might have an alibi. Crap!
“Who do you think it is?” Judi asked. She’d brought over some sticky buns she made.
“Did think,” Clint answered. “Lucerne. He was only around a couple of weeks before they came here.”
“Oh. Right. Logical. How will you find out who it is?”
“I think I have to come from the angle of who it isn’t.”
“Chop off everything that doesn’t look like part of an elephant and you end up with a sta
tue of an elephant.”
“Only if you get the parts in the right places.” She gave him the finger.
He spent the afternoon around his house, then went into town. Franconi was getting off the water taxi when he passed so he asked where he’d been before Sergio could get to him.
“Santa Marta, Colombia. I had a quick job there. Why?”
“Bianco got offed.”
“Why? Now it doesn’t make sense to me.”
“Because I was investigating Napoli, I suppose. Someone added two and two and got thirteen point five.”
“You’re investigating him?”
“Certainly! They’re blackmailing him to the tune of six million dollars.”
“Could be, but I think I’d know about anyone else here. Anyone in the trade. Professional job?”
“No. Messy. Any idea which one’s the plant?”
“Would he do that? I guess so. I haven’t paid that much attention. I just watch them.”
“Dickerson says he could hire fifty like you. He could be right.”
“As amateur as it is, he might have hired the wrong one. I doubt it was from him, but it could be. I don’t think he ever met them before the meeting that brought them here. Not to notice, anyhow.”
“He has to notice. It’s his only security. He’s in this because he tends to not notice things that can be traced.”
“Such as?”
“Parking tickets.”
“Ah! And you started wondering why he was where he got those tickets?”
“More or less.”
“I think maybe I’d better get paid pretty fast or I might not get paid at all.”
“Is he fool enough to try to stiff his hit man?”
Franconi laughed. Clint waved and went on.
Now he was going to have to decide where his next step laid. He wasn’t going to get anything from that bunch on Bastimentos. He would try to get something through Manny, but that was more and more doubtful. Napoli knew he was under close investigation and was covering. That he knew meant some pretty powerful connections in California. Manny not knowing about him at all showed he had one hell of an organization.
He was going to have to go to California. Crap!
He had a good disguise or two. He could pull it off. The only problem was getting to California without Napoli knowing.
He got an idea and went to call on Judi. It might work if he timed it right. There were places he went when he wanted to relax or think for a day or two. He hoped he wouldn’t have to be in the states more than that.
Judi said she’d go along with it. She could tell them he was close by letting things slip. She was an expert at that and at getting information from the locals they didn’t know they gave her.
He took the bus to the comarca. Clint Faraday got off the bus. An hour later Peter Bushnell, who had a slight resemblance to him, but who walked and talked different, caught a bus to Panamá City. He got off in Santiago and caught a hopper plane to San Jose’, Costa Rica, where his flight was booked to LA as of two weeks ago.
Manny could arrange that kind of thing.
California
Clint got off the company plane at the private field and took a taxi to the Royal Palm Hotel. He was a bit stooped and had a barely noticeable hitch when he walked. He kept poking his glasses up on his nose. The expensive wig was just off-color enough that it was noticeable, but was of excellent quality. That hid the fact he had a thick mop of his own hair and people would picture him as balding. His eyes were an odd green color. He tended to look at his expensive wristwatch every two or three minutes.
He booked in, then went to his room to rest from the trip. He would go to a little place near Carmel later to give a report on some medicinal plants found in Panamá (true facts. Dave was a botanist and studied that kind of thing and had given him a report to give to some friends in Carmel) to try to get financing to research the truth about them. His reports were necessarily mostly anecdotal, though there were lists of some of the compounds found in the plants. People interested in promoting natural medicines and cures were invited from all the nearby areas. This was the kind of thing Napoli wouldn’t miss.
Clint arrived at the community center half an hour before he was due to speak. He mingled with the people and learned a few things that might help him with this project. If he got a grant Dave would use it to augment his teaching of students from Universidad de Panamá.
Napoli came in with a bit of an entourage to sit near stage front and center. Clint recognized him immediately from the photos on the net. He seemed to be an affable type. He was definitely popular.
Clint spent two hours on the presentation, mostly answering questions. He kept telling them that a friend did the actual work. He just kept the records and took pictures (which he brought along on a CD to show). Dave taught him all he knew about the plants.
After the meeting Napoli said he should come by his office in the suburbs tomorrow to discuss the grant. It was important and useful work. This was the kind of thing that those people with the resources should finance for the good of all. He had friends in Panamá and had heard there were several groups in the country who were doing such research. If this Dave character he kept referring to was doing this at his own expense and was not financed by some drug company that would curtail research if some cheap and easily available cure were to be found for a problem he would fund him all the way. That would be the agreement, no sales or gift of his research to a greedy commercial enterprise. If a patent could be attained for any process he developed it would be in the name of Napoli Diversified and would be free to the world.
He got instructions to Fallendale Heights and went back to the hotel. He couldn’t agree with Napoli on that part more. Clint couldn’t picture him in any sordid or perverted situation.
The office was impressive and understated. It was impressive because it was understated. As Clint went into the receptionist’s stand Napoli was coming out of a hallway toward the rear. He was with a slightly younger man who resembled him. He waved to Clint and spoke intensely to the younger man as Clint approached. The man started walking away as Clint got to them. Napoli said, “My brother, Gino. Peter Bushnell.” Clint got a dead fish handshake and Gino walked away.
“Come into my office, Peter. I only have about five minutes of work to do, then we can discuss your friend’s project. There’s coffee and donuts on the desk. Help yourself.”
Clint went into the plush office, which was a comfortable-bordering-on-penthouse-suite room. He grabbed a pecan Danish and poured a large mug of rich gourmet coffee. Napoil returned five minutes later and sat in an armchair next to Clint. He said the desk was for business. This was more a chat about personal projects so would be informal.
“I checked on your friend in Panamá. He is a popular local character who was once a mid-profile musician and writer. He’s still a writer of fiction and research into orchids, has been all over the world and is overly-loud and stubborn about the natives.
“I mean the Indios, not the imports.
“He is friends with a Taiwanese woman, a gay man, a detective, locals and the Indios. He is considered a bit of a nutcase by many.
“He also does the research you spoke of and he does fund as many poor students as his very limited funds will allow in the universities on the condition they remain in the top percent of their classes. All of them have done so, one becoming top student in the university in the chosen field.
“Many think he is gay. He does not deny nor confirm it, saying always that it is no one’s business who is gay or who isn’t so long as he is not involved personally. He only goes so far as to say perhaps he is bi to one extent or another.
“I am interested in that only so far as it would affect his work and only so far as it does not, in any way, ever, affect children. I have known a pedophile and am adamantly opposed to placing such people in any situation that would involve or encourage their activities.
“Is he gay, which does not matter, and i
s there any least hint of pedophilia?”
“He is probably bi. He has a ladyfriends, as he calls them, in several places. He also is close friends with some gay people. He has a son and grandkids in another Central American country. When it comes to pedophilia, he believes and states very clearly that those people should get a bullet between the eyes. It’s the only way they’ll stop.
“He also often states a child is different ages in different places. In Panamá, most thirteen year old kids know more about sex that I do. In the states here they are children until they’re in their late teens in some cases. He thinks, as I do, that it’s a matter where the knowledge and experience makes the adult.
“There’s no way an undeveloped pre-pubescent child is not a child. In Panamá, as a place where he knows the details of life, he says he considers them children until about thirteen, though some places the age of consent, the local feelings, is twelve. That’s much too young for his or my acceptance. They just think they know what it’s all about. They know shit!
“He wouldn’t consider doing anything with a girl under the legal age, seventeen, and he doesn’t date anyone nearly that young. He dated one who was twenty three in Bocas, but not often. He likes a woman in her late twenties or early thirties.
“Is this about your brother?”
“What makes you think that?”
“Mainly because I shook his hand out there. It was a very unpleasant experience.”
He studied Clint a moment, sighed and said he at least had fears about such things with Gino.
“Peter, why haven’t anyone but a Judi Lum, a Manny Mathews, a Ben Longstreet and Dave ever heard of you?”
“I met them when I was with Dave in David and, once, in Almirante. I worked with Dave in the field and was staying in San Felix with the Indios. They are my favorite people, too. I wasn’t around the people he associates with except when we were in town for supplies. Memory sticks and a new camera, in my case. I used the internet in Almirante when I went through one time and met Ben. He’s gay, a friend of Dave’s and the others.
