Palm Beach Taboo (Charlie Crawford Palm Beach Mysteries Book 10)

by Tom Turner

  “Charlie a friend of yours?” Scarsiola asked.

  “Never met the man. But he called and asked for a meet.”

  Scarsiola nodded and got him his drinks.

  Kopinski knocked back the shot of Jack Daniels in one pull and the beer in three.

  “Re-load,” he told Scarsiola.

  Scarsiola looked at him skeptically. “Charlie good with you runnin’ up a tab?”

  He nodded at the owner. “Hey, man, I don’t come cheap.”

  From behind Kopinski a voice rang out. “Is that you, Kopinski, you lowlife motherfucker?”

  Kopinski turned to see a bald undercover cop with a bushy mustache eyeing him with something decidedly less than love.

  “Who the hell are you?”

  “Buddy Bridges,” the man said. “You accused me and my partner of police brutality in that ass-wipe birdcage liner of yours.”

  Kopinski had to think for a second what Bridges meant by “ass-wipe birdcage liner.” Then he got it, a reference to his newspaper, the august Palm Beach Post.

  He got to his feet, using his above-average height to fend off the angry cop. “Speaking of ass-wipes,” he started, but before he could get anything more out, Bridges reared back and threw a round house right to his head.

  Kopinski pulled back a few inches and the punch grazed his chin. “That’s all you got?” he said, putting his fists up.

  “I got this too,” Bridges said, and his knee came out of nowhere and smashed Kopinski squarely in the nuts.

  As Kopinski lurched forward, Bridges took a hard uppercut swing, catching the much bigger man directly on the nose. Kopinski crashed sideways, breaking a barstool on his way down to the sticky oak floor.

  He was out cold.

  “What the fuck, Bridges?” growled Scarsiola from behind the bar.

  Bridges shrugged. “Big assholes like him can’t take a punch,” he said. He took a long victory sip of his beer and poured the rest of it on Kopinski’s face. “Well, say good-bye to him for me,” Bridges said and put twenty bucks down on the bar. “For that piece-of-shit bar stool.”

  Crawford and Ott had just arrived and were walking in as Bridges strolled out of Mookie’s.

  “Hey, boys,” he greeted Crawford and Ott.

  “Hey, Buddy, what’s goin’ on?” Ott said.

  Bridges stopped. “Gotta warn ya, you’re gonna need to step over a big mook lyin’ on the floor.”

  “He have one too many?” Ott asked.

  “I gave him one too many,” Bridges said with a proud smile and headed to his car as Crawford and Ott stepped inside Mookie’s.

  Kopinski was, in fact, on his feet. He was standing shakily, supported by a bar stool, with blood trickling out of his nose.

  He matched the description Vega had given Crawford: he stood at least six-five and had a paunch that made Ott look like a beanpole. He was in his late 40s and sported a comb-over that was more like a comb-around. Meaning it started on the right side of his head and went around in almost a full three-hundred-sixty-degree circle.

  “Jerry?” Crawford asked.

  “Yup?” he said with a slow nod. “Crawford?”

  Crawford nodded back, then flicked his head in Ott’s direction. “And my partner, Mort Ott.”

  Ott nodded a hello and handed the reporter a napkin for his nose. “What happened to you?”

  “Got sucker-punched,” Kopinski said. “I’ll get that scumbag. The pen’s mightier than the sword.”

  “So they say,” Crawford said.

  “How ’bout getting me another drink?” Kopinski asked Scarsiola.

  “Another?” Crawford inquired.

  Scarsiola shrugged. “He’s already had four… on you.”

  Aw, what the hell, Crawford thought, it’s Chief Rutledge’s money.

  Crawford, Ott, and Kopinski got drinks and went over to a table.

  “So, what the hell happened?” Crawford asked.

  “One of your… cop buddies didn’t like a story I wrote.”

  Ott shrugged. “Guess he doesn’t know about freedom of the press.”

  “Yeah, guy’s a douchebag.”

  “Just for the record, you’re not the first to mix it up at Mookie’s,” Ott said.

  Crawford knew what he was referring to. Shortly after he and Ott hooked up as partners, they’d had a real donnybrook with two West Palm cops who were drunk and obnoxious. Ott had proven himself to be a man not to be messed with. Crawford had ended up with not one but two goose eggs, one on either side of his head.

  “So, what can I do for you guys, besides drink your booze?” Kopinski asked.

  “You can tell us what you know about Holmes Whitmore, Christian Lalley, Leo Peavy, and ‘Crux,’ the head of SOAR,” Crawford said, then took a sip of his beer.

  “Who?”

  That was not the response Crawford had hoped for. “You don’t know those names?”

  “One of ‘em,” he said. “Christian Lalley. He was the guy who got killed a few days ago? In Palm Beach?”

  “Yeah,” Crawford said. “And we have reason to believe he contacted you.”

  Kopinski scratched his cheek and went into a thousand-yard stare. “Nah, never happened. Who told you that?”

  “A source of ours. Said Lalley spoke to you.”

  “He’s misinformed.”

  “Told us Lalley talked to you about Holmes Whitmore,” Ott said.

  “Hang on a second,” Kopinski said. “Holmes Whitmore? Wasn’t he that pedophile… with the three boys? Like from a year ago?”

  “Yeah, that’s him.”

  “Story broke when I was on vacation. Bad timing for me… that’s the kind of story that’s right up my alley.”

  Ott was staring so hard at Kopinski, it was like he was trying to get a peek into his soul. “You saying you never spoke to Christian Lalley?”

  Kopinski shook his head. “I don’t forget people who get murdered.”

  “Did you ever hear the name Leo Peavy or Crux?”

  “Crux? What the hell kinda name is that?”

  “He’s a guy who’s the leader of a certain… religious group.” Crawford came close to saying cult but didn’t want to open up that can of worms.

  Kopinski shook his head. “Can’t help you, man.”

  Crawford sat back and pointed at his own empty glass. “If we bought you a couple more drinks, would it shake loose anything in that memory of yours?”

  “You don’t want me making stuff up, do you?”

  “No, but we sure as hell don’t want you conveniently forgetting stuff either.”

  Fourteen

  “Son-of-a-bitch was lying through his teeth,” Ott said as they got into their Crown Vic.

  “Yeah, but it was more what he was choosing to forget than lying about.”

  Ott shut his car door. “You thinkin’ someone at SOAR got to him?”

  Crawford nodded. “Yup. That’s exactly what I’m thinking. With an envelope full of cash.”

  “So he wouldn’t write the story?”

  “Exactly.”

  “I agree,” Ott said. “So, what do we do now?”

  Crawford looked at his watch. 7:50 p.m. “Me. I’m going to the movies. Been a long day.”

  “Kind of late for that, isn’t it?”

  “8:25 show,” Crawford said. “Tomorrow we need to go see some of the other guys from SOAR. The ones Petrie mentioned. Xi Kiang, Guy Bemmert and Larry Swain in Boca and Leo Peavy up at Elysium. I’ll call ’em after you drop me at the station. Get their numbers from Vega, hopefully.

  “Think they might have memory lapses like Kopinski?” Ott asked.

  “Oh, I guarantee you they will,” Crawford said with a nod. “But we gotta see what we can get out of ’em anyway.”

  Ott, behind the wheel of the Vic, turned the key in the ignition. “You know, I was just thinking… that’s the first time I’ve ever been to Mookie’s and had less than three drinks.”

  Crawford smiled and shook his head.

&nb
sp; “What?” Ott asked.

  “Got news for you Mort. That’s the first time you’ve ever been to Mookie’s and had less than five.”

  Before Christian Lalley’s murder, Dominica McCarthy, crime-scene tech extraordinaire and Crawford’s FWB, had asked him to go to a movie at the Mandel Library in West Palm Beach. His antennae went up when she said it was a library—his biggest concern being the unlikelihood of popcorn being served amidst stacks of musty books. Then, after he said yes, she told him the name of the movie. It had the world Le in it and, he thought, chien, which he was pretty sure meant either dog or cat in French. One thing was certain, it was a foreign film, but by then it was too late to back out. What he really wanted to see was a race-car movie that had just come out. Ott, a lifelong wannabe Formula One driver, had already seen it three times and raved about it. Dominica had mentioned that Salvador Dali had something to do with the film and Crawford immediately flashed to pocket watches that looked like they were hanging on clotheslines and a lobster claw telephone handset that he remembered from a gut course in art back at Dartmouth.

  He offered to pick Dominica up for the movie— film, as she called it—but she said she was going to be near the library beforehand and would meet him there.

  At 8:23 he walked into the library and immediately saw Dominica across the room in a clingy black skirt waving at him—not quite frantically, but more than eagerly. He recognized it from past dates as her, Where the hell have you been? look. On more than one occasion she had referred to him as Last-minute Charlie. She and Rose had lots of nicknames for him.

  He picked up the pace and hoofed it up to her. She grabbed his hand and tugged him toward a door. “Jeez, where you been?”

  “Sorry, I was at Mookie’s.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Oh, great.”

  “On business.”

  “Yeah, I know… monkey business.”

  “Hey, I figured they’d have previews first.”

  “Come on, Charlie, this isn’t AMC.”

  They walked into the darkened room, sat on metal chairs, and a few minutes later the film started rolling. It was bizarre from the get-go, with actors playing around with razors, a woman lying on a beach with abundant armpit hair, and a disembodied hand covered with a swarm of ants, but, Crawford was happy to find out, it was a mercifully short film. Like twenty minutes or so.

  At the end, he started to stand, but Dominica grabbed his hand and pulled him back down. “There are two more.”

  Swell, he thought, but smiled dutifully.

  The next one at least seemed to have something of a plot, but far from an interesting one. It was about double the length of the dog movie (Dominica confirmed that chien did, in fact, mean dog in French.) The third flick could best be described as violently surrealistic, with macho Crawford averting his eyes from the screen several times to look down at the top of his shoes. After a while, the violence died down and it became flat-out boring. To the point where Crawford’s eyes got heavy several times until, finally, he nodded off. He was in the first few frames of a nice dream when he felt a sudden pain in his side. It was the sharp elbow of Dominica. “You were snoring,” she hissed. (Movies… er, films, were about the only places where Dominica hissed.)

  Fifteen minutes later, the third “short” ended. With the exception of the first one, the shorts had been way too long for Crawford.

  Dominica nodded at a few people she knew on the way out and thanked a man who Crawford thought looked French. The man had long hair in a ponytail with glasses that had a slight dark tint to them and sandals with a lot of mileage.

  “Was he the guy who put the thing together?” Crawford asked when they were out of earshot of the pony-tailed man.

  “Yes, his name is Jean-Paul”—of course, it was—“a very nice guy.”

  Crawford was tempted to show off his knowledge of famous French men and ask, “Belmondo or Sartre?” but held his tongue.

  “Can you explain something about the dog movie?” Crawford asked Dominica as they walked out of the library.

  Dominica laughed. “Dog movie? You’re so cultured, Charlie.”

  “Thank you,” he said. “So, when the cop places the severed hand in the box and gives it to the woman, who then gets run over by a car as the couple watches from the apartment window… what does that all mean?”

  Dominica laughed again. “For God’s sake, Charlie, they’re all a bunch of dreams,” she explained. “They mean whatever you want them to.”

  “I think I liked my own dream better,” Crawford said.

  “Your own dream?”

  “Yeah, when I nodded off halfway through the third one and you jabbed me in the ribs.”

  “You’re terrible.”

  “I’ll take that as a compliment,” he said as he held the library door for her. “Hey, how ’bout I come over to your place?”

  She grabbed his hand as they went down the library steps. “Didn’t I tell you, my mother’s staying with me for a few days.”

  That wasn’t part of the plan that he had drawn up in his head earlier that night. “Then… why don’t you come over to my place?”

  “Come on, Charlie. I don’t want my mother thinking I’m a tramp.”

  Crawford thought for a second. “Well, how ’bout just staying for a little while then?”

  Dominica shook her head. “You mean, for as long as it takes us to make love.”

  “I was thinking as long as it takes us to make love twice.”

  He spotted Dominica’s car, walked toward it, and went around to open its door. “Or we could always have a quickie in the car.” He held up his hands. “Just kidding.”

  “Yeah, but if I said yes, you probably would.”

  “Probably.”

  She shot him both the eyeroll and the headshake. “So that’s all I am to you… a sex object?”

  “No, you’re a woman who introduces me to culture—you know, like women with hairy armpits and hands covered with ants—and a sex object.” He leaned forward and kissed her on the mouth. “Good night.”

  “You’re not as funny as you think.”

  “I’m not trying to be funny,” he said. “I’m just trying to wrap my head around all that symbolism and dream interpretation.”

  Fifteen

  The one-two punch. First, Dominica, then Rose.

  He called Rose first thing in the morning, aware that he’d already tapped her knowledge of the Lalley case and didn’t want to overdo it.

  She said she had a nine o’clock croquet lesson at the Palm Beach Country Club at the S turn on North Ocean Boulevard. He didn’t realize you needed a lesson on something as basic as how to hammer a wooden ball through a bunch of wickets.

  Rose was dressed in white pants, white Nikes with orange soles, and a snug-fitting Lacoste shirt. The instructor, a skinny man in his fifties, was wearing the exact same thing, except his collar was popped. Not one of Crawford’s favorite looks. The man introduced himself as Edmundo-Ernesto something, and Rose added that he was a former runner-up in the World Croquet Championship in Cairo and number three ranked player in the U.S.

  Nothing but the best for Rose.

  She hit the ball while Edmundo-Ernesto critiqued her technique, although Crawford noticed her instructor paid particularly close attention to her cleavage when she bent over to line up a shot.

  Crawford admired the manicured croquet court. “This looks better groomed than the greens at Augusta,” he commented, referring to the course where the Masters was played.

  Edmundo-Ernesto just nodded. He seemed to have decided a Palm Beach detective was an irritating intrusion on his one-on-one with Rose. But at 9:30 the lesson ended with Edmundo-Ernesto assuring Rose that she surely had championship potential. He walked toward his car with two—no doubt battle-tested and incredibly expensive—croquet mallets slung over his narrow shoulder.

  “Thanks for being so patient, Charlie,” Rose said.

  “No problem. Back in my croquet days, the object was to just
whack the other guys balls as far as you could into the pucker brush.”

  Rose laughed. “What in God’s name is pucker brush?”

  “Something we had up in Connecticut,” he said as they walked over and sat down in two Adirondack chairs facing the croquet court.

  “So, I need your help again,” he said. “Have you ever run across Leo Peavy, Guy Bemmert, Larry Swain, or Xi Kiang?”

  Crawford had called and spoken to Guy Bemmert the night before. The man was not the most cooperative person Crawford had ever come across, but he’d managed to talk Bemmert into meeting with Ott and him at his Boca house at 11:30.

  Rose thought for a few seconds before answering. “Guy Bemmert is the only one. He was head of one of the largest mortgage companies a while back. I heard he was making really big money back then.” She tapped at her lips as she plumbed her memory. “As I remember it, there were charges he defrauded Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac—or maybe both. He got off but from what I heard that was the end of his corporate career. He was the man who I dealt with on the purchase of the last house SOAR bought.”

  That made sense to Crawford, as Bemmert had become the cult’s new treasurer, replacing Lalley. What didn’t make sense was that Crux would hire a man with his history.

  “What was your impression of him?”

  Rose thought for a second. “Slick, with a distinct tinge of slippery,” she said. “Remember how I told you that the Christian Lalley was kind of humorless but at least straightforward?”

  Crawford nodded.

  “Well, Bemmert was the opposite. There was an inspection of the house, then he used the report to try to knock down the price by half a million bucks. But the report only had a few minor things on it. Like the fact that there was a little wood rot. I remember thinking, ‘You’re quibbling over a tiny patch of wood rot and you just got someone to donate a billion dollars to SOAR.’”

  “The Melhados, you mean?”

  “Yes, exactly.”

  “I also wanted to ask you about them. But you’ve never come across the names Leo Peavy, Larry Swain or Xi Kiang?