“It was a hard lesson to learn. I was 22. Just out of college. I was an American and everyone seemed to like Americans. Especially those pretty, hot little bar girls. You’d go into a bar and spend the night drinking and usually you’d get one of the waitresses or hostesses to take you outside to a cab or a nearby room and they’d blow you or fuck you. You were pretty safe as long as you made sure to carry condoms. They were always friendly and smiling, the bar girls, and the old men who’d thank you for a tip or the little boys and girls that would crowd around asking for coins or candy.
“My best friend and I were in this joint about three months after hitting Saigon. There was this really, really pretty little thing. I don’t think she came up more than about to my waist, but damn, she was definitely a woman. And she spoke pretty good English. We found out she was the daughter of a dead South Vietnamese soldier. She was working in the bars to help support three younger brothers and sisters. She had been in college, in her junior year, when she’d had to drop out to work.”
He took another sip and his eyes showed he was back there.
“It sounds stupid now, but I think we were both smitten with her. Gorgeous, intelligent, not your typical bar girl. We talked to her and bought drinks from her all night and she stayed with us even when the old woman that ran the place warned her to see to other customers. But my buddy and I spread enough cash around that we were able to keep her.
“It got late and we started talking about making a date of it, going home with her or to one of the cheap rooms nearby. She surprised us when she said no, got angry and walked away from us. Well, we were young and very horny and we worked on her and got her to come back and talk to us.
“She said she wasn’t a whore. She might meet with one of us later that night, for drinks and whatever, but it was only because she liked us and we weren’t the typical American assholes she usually served. But she wouldn’t do both of us. She’d go- but only with one. Only cheap sluts went with two or more Americans.”
“My buddy – I’d met him the first day in Nam – was named Roger. We looked at each other and I pulled a silver half dollar out of my pocket. I told him I’d flip him for her. We’d let chance decide which one of us was going to enjoy a little piece of heaven, and which one was going to go home alone and probably jerk off.
“He called heads. And heads came up. He was walking out the door of the bar with her when he laughed and said, “Buck up, Dallas. There will be other nights.”
He finished the last of the bourbon.
“Except there weren’t. They found him the next morning in a cheap room. His throat was cut, his ears and balls were taken, and somebody had tortured him for a long time after they cut his tongue out so he couldn’t scream for help. The MPs called me in to question me and they let me see him.”
He took a deep breath.
“I looked for her – she said her name was Lilly – for the rest of the two years I was in Nam. Every town, every tour of Saigon. I looked. But I never saw her. The MPs said it wasn’t just robbery. Whoever did that to Roger was making a political statement. There hadn’t been a lot of Viet Cong stuff like that early on, although there was more of it later. And I never forgot that if Roger had called tails, it would have been my body they found.”
He looked up from his empty glass to stare at me.
“I never relaxed another minute I was in that fucking country. I didn’t breath right until my flight set down in Los Angeles in ’66. And I had nightmares for a long time. I’d pretty much forgotten all about that, until I worked in Satsuma. It wasn’t Vietnam. But you got that same feeling. You never knew who you could trust, and I honestly never thought there was anybody there we COULD trust.”
He buzzed Myra and told her to bring in the bottle. After he’d poured another drink, he said, “they were too closely related and too poor and too afraid of Bludwurth and there were too many secrets. We tried. I tried. The investigators we brought in tried. But it was like trying to grab smoke. Witnesses would change their minds, would vanish. We tried to build a case against Bludwurth, against his deputies to play them against each other, but nothing. And Bludwurth brought in some of the best attorneys, some of the biggest name attorneys and investigators in the country.
“We couldn’t believe it. How the hell could he afford them? Turns out his family had been very frugal for a long time and they’d salted away a lot of money. And some attorneys were there because they owed long-time favors to the Bludwurth family. And they hit us with motions and appeals, and they hit us and they hit us. It was like being in fucking Vietnam again. They hit us from every direction. Three of our investigators were charged with the rape of a 16-year-old high school girl, one with driving under the influence in an accident that killed a child, two FDLE acting deputies with selling drugs. Drugs that were found in the apartments where they were staying. A secretary that had worked with me for ten years was caught in a motel with a local. Her husband filed for divorce and she killed herself with an overdose of pills and booze.”
He shook his head.
“Everybody thought – I thought –that Bludworth would be sent to prison, his organization crushed and Satsuma turned back into a normal county. We didn’t think he had a chance. He was never even brought to trial. And at the end of that year, when the state held an election to fill his empty seat, he won it with 96 percent of the vote. 96 –FUCKING – percent of the vote. There were communist dictators in Eastern Europe that didn’t roll up that big a vote.”
Dallas leaned back again and put his hands on the desk in front of him.
“He’s been winning elections like clockwork ever since. No one even runs against him anymore. The feds never gave up and in 1998 they made another effort to go in, but after a two-year investigation, they just gave up.”
“You ever wonder how he does it?”
“I think I know, Bill. No one ever thinks about this, but the Bludwurths have run that county for a hundred years. They’ve been crooked bastards the whole time. They’ve squeezed that county of every dime they could make. And none of them were stupid, or loose with money. I think they’ve been squirreling away money for generations in off shore and Swiss accounts, buying properties with no connection back to them.
“I think that today, Bludwurth is sitting on an unbelievable mountain of money. I think he’s been able to buy feds, to buy witnesses, to buy judges and juries and Department of Justice types. I’ll always have the suspicion that he bought those Panthers, or at least some of them, and they killed the others and then vanished. I think that, besides the brainwashing he’s done to the people in the county, explains why he can get anything he wants there. He buys it.”
“He’s got that much money, and he lives in Satsuma and plays Sheriff?”
“Oh, he could live like a King, I think. But, there’s nowhere else he could play God like he does in Satsuma. Or be God.”
“So he can do anything he wants and get away with it?”
“In his county, pretty much. But he’s not immortal. Doesn’t have kids. There’s nobody we know of groomed to succeed him and I doubt there is anybody smart or mean enough to do it. In a few years, he’ll be gone.”
It was my turn to shake my head.
“I can’t believe that story, Dallas.”
“Believe it. A lot of people have tried to bring him down. No one has done it. I don’t want you to try. I don’t want you to even think about it.”
“But he came after us, Dallas. It’s one thing to let him sit down there like a big spider running his county. But the son of a bitch sent his men up here to kill one of our witnesses, to screw up one of our trials. You’re going to let him get away with that?”
“You didn’t let him get away with it. You did a pretty good job of stopping him.”
“For now. But from what you said, he’s not used to being stopped. What’s to prevent him from trying it again?”
“He’s not stupid, Bill. Far from it. He’s done what he had to do when we went
after him. And we know he’s running drugs. We think with South Americans, but we think they handle the transport. By and large, he stays in Satsuma. He obviously thought this would be a slam dunk and we wouldn’t be expecting him. Now we are expecting him”
“I don’t like it. I understand what you’re saying, but it galls me to let that son of bitch get away with this.”
“It galls me, too, and I’ve seen a hell of a lot worse than you. But, he’s out of our reach. Just accept that, work on putting up protection around Bell and prosecuting Sutton.”
I got up and started toward the door.
“Bill.”
“What?”
“I want your promise you won’t go after him. In any way. I know you’re hard headed. But he’s too dangerous, He’s like a big rattler, coiled up and waiting for you. But he’s worse, because he’s one of those rattlers that doesn’t rattle before he strikes. He won’t give you a warning. He’ll just kill you.”
I just looked at the man who ran my office and a man I’d thought seriously had never feared any man.
“How can you live with the knowledge that that son of a bitch is still alive and running that hell hole within a few hours drive of here?”
“Castro’s Cuba is only a few hours away. Papa Doc Duvalier was less a half day’s flight from where you’re standing. There are scum bags that don’t deserve to live eight hours from here in Miami. The world is full of bad men that we can’t touch. You can’t clean up the whole world, Bill. Concentrate on doing what we can do about the bad ones we can touch.”
I thought about it for a moment. He was right, of course. That’s why they paid him the big bucks.
“You’re right. Dallas. I give you my word. I won’t go after him.”
As I turned away, I said under my breath, “As long as he doesn’t give me a reason to.”
CHAPTER TWELVE: THE HARD PART IS GETTING OUT OF THE OFFICE FRIDAY NIGHT
November 12, 2005
Friday, 6 P.M.
When I stepped out of the Big Man’s office Myra was waiting. Putting her arms around me and molding her curves into me, she gave me a long kiss and then whispered into the side of my neck, “My hero.”
When I laughed she kissed me again.
“You can’t stop saving people, can you? I heard about you standing off those cowboys at St. Vincent’s.”
‘It was more Deputy Deel and McConnell and a half dozen JSO guys than me. All I did was try to talk sense to the head cowboy. I’m not a hero. I’m just a lawyer,”
She molded herself to me again and nuzzled me.
“You can’t help yourself, Mr. Maitland. You know, everybody sees that except you. Back when you were – not as nice looking and a lot more married – you were still the same man. I thought then that – if – you – tried just a little bit to spruce yourself up, and showed even a little bit of interest in another woman, you would have attracted the ladies. But you never cared about anybody – but Debbie. And I kind of thought that that was a waste because too many people noticed how unhappy you were.”
“That was my fault, not Debbie’s.”
“You wouldn’t have been that unhappy if Debbie had felt the same way about you.”
“Chicken or egg. The important thing is that we are going to spend some quality time together tonight. Right?”
“I’m looking forward to it. What do you want to do tonight, other than the most important thing?”
“Let’s play it by ear, Myra. Maybe we can head for the Landing, grab a drink or a bite and watch the boats parade up and down.”
“That sounds good. I’ll see you at my place – when?”
“It’s close to 5:30. I’ve got a few things to wrap. How about 7?”
“I’ll be waiting for you with bells on – or maybe nothing at all? How about that?”
“Yeah, how about that.”
I had just made it back to my office, where Cheryl had already left for the day, when my phone rang.
“Bill, are you alright?”
“I’m fine, Debbie. You heard about the cowboys?”
“Yeah, people are talking about it. They actually tried to take him at gunpoint? “
“It was a little more complicated than that. There was just a misunderstanding about them serving a warrant on Bell.”
It occurred to me for just a moment to wonder why I was bothering to lie to her. I wouldn’t have lied to Myra, or anybody else. Just habit. I had spent 10 years trying as best as I could to shield her from the realities of my job, of my world. It had probably worked better than I ever expected. It had had the result of shutting her out of my life completely. But, it was too late to change things now.
“Oh, well, it sounded pretty dramatic. Look, I’m sorry to have bothered you. I know you must be trying to get out of the office. You must have plans – with – Myra. I didn’t mean to keep you tied up on the phone.”
“No problem, Deb. I had some work to finish up. You….uh…have plans? You have the kids tonight?”
No to everything. No plans. I…I’m just staying home tonight. BJ is spending the night over at friends. And Mom and Dad, believe it or not, are going to a concert with Kelly. A Christian Rock concert, again believe it or not. Mom said these guys are really hot right now with teens. I don’t think Kelly is getting ready to become a nun, but it’s good to see her spending time with Mom and Dad.”
“Are the kids doing all right? I haven’t talked to them in a couple of weeks. I keep intending to, but-“
“Things are better, Bill. Don’t beat yourself up about the kids. Mom gets more out of them than I do. Kelly is pulling straight ‘A’s and could be the Valedictorian if she could keep this pace up. BJ is a solid B student, which considering last year is a vast improvement.”
“I’m glad – they’re doing good. I’m just surprised that you-“
And then I made myself shut my mouth. I was about to wander into territory I had no right to be in.
“Why not say it, Bill? Don’t be so polite. You were going to say you were surprised I wasn’t out screwing around, weren’t you?”
I read anger, which I deserved, but muted. There was a time not long ago when she would have been down my throat. She sounded…tired.
“I wasn’t going to say that, Deb. Honestly. It’s just that – with both kids gone- there’s no reason why you couldn’t go out. That’s all. Don’t take offense. I didn’t mean any. Are you alright? Is everything okay? You don’t sound like yourself.”
“It’s just been…a long week. And tonight…well, never mind. I felt like staying in.”
“Okay. I appreciate you letting me know how the kids are doing. You’re doing a good job of being mother and father.”
The minute the words came out of me I prepared myself for the fiery rejoinder that was coming, her reminder that nothing had changed. She been their mother and father for a long time.
But she surprised me.
“Thank you, Bill. I hope you have a good night.”
And then she hung up.
It shouldn’t have surprised me, I guess. Anger and rage on both sides can only run hot for so long. Maybe we were finally settling into a calmer relationship. Something about the conversation bothered me. I couldn’t put my finger on it. But it was there. I forced it out of my mind. I should just be grateful that things were finally settling down.
I sat down and punched on the desktop. About 50 emails were waiting. I ran through most of them quickly
One of them was from New York City and the tag line – The Money Man - made it stand out. I opened it, read it and punched in a number. A man answered the phone with a short ‘yes.’
“Your secretaries obviously don’t stay after 5 p.m. up there, or have you guys gone to male secretaries now?”
“We’re as politically correct as anybody in the western world, but our secretaries still inhabit the pink ghetto. This sounds to me like a brother barrister, and probably one of our Southern brethren from that accent. It’s not too strong so
you’re probably – what – Florida?”
“Good ear, and you’re obviously from County Cork?”
“Close. The Bronx. Now that the pleasantries are out of the way, I do have a wife and two little ones I’d like to see someday. So what can I do you for?”
“This is Bill Maitland from the Jacksonville State Attorney’s Office. I got an email from an Assistant New York DA named Ryan Murphy. Would that be you?”
“Correct, and I have the pleasure of addressing The Angel of Death?”
“Also correct. Your email said you had some questions for me regarding the upcoming trial of Bobby Malone, better known as The Money Man. What kind of questions? I don’t have anything to do with the trial and didn’t even know one had been scheduled. I thought he was still in a hospital, or something.”
“He was in the Central New York Psychiatric Center. He was transferred out two weeks ago to a private clinic, the Borland Retreat in Plattsburgh north of New York City.”
“Private clinic”
“It’s a fancy asylum. Very fancy and very, very expensive. High paid docs, but they have tight security, cameras, 24-7 surveillance. Malone tried to kill himself in Central and his doctors are afraid he’ll do it again.”
“I thought New York had money woes. You can afford to put a murder suspect in that kind of high prized nuthouse?”
“No, but his wife is loaded. His money of course. She was screwing her ass off with another guy, got her husband nearly killed, going to prison for the rest of his life and generally royally fucked, but there’s no divorce in the works so his money is her money. And she was willing to pay to keep him out of the public eye and pay for top dollar private security with a few NYC cops in charge.”
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