“Also employed by Bullock Industries. Also lived in Atlanta. Hence the Georgia license plates on the Lexus. Now your Mr. Stone, he was mighty confused when I called him. Seems he’s a retired businessman, dying of cancer, who hired you to find his daughter. He has no idea what the hell you’re doing down in Florida. Says the last time he talked with you was five days ago. He thought, frankly, that you’d skipped town with the money he paid you. As for Mr. Clifton, or Mr. Cushing, Mr. Stone says he never heard of them.”
“Inspector Jefferson,” I said, “did you check out the owner of record of Bullock Industries?”
“What do you think, Mr. Kenzie?”
“Of course you did.”
He nodded and looked down at his folder. “Of course I did. The owner of Bullock Industries is Moore and Wessner Limited, a British holding company.”
“And the owner of the holding company?”
He looked at his notes. “Sir Alfred Llewyn, a British earl, supposedly hangs out with the Windsor family, shoots pool with Prince Charles, plays poker with the queen, what have you.”
“Not Trevor Stone,” I said.
He shook his head. “Unless he’s also a British earl. He’s not, is he? To the best of your knowledge?”
“And Jay Becker,” I said. “What did Mr. Stone have to say about him?”
“Same thing he said about you. Mr. Becker skipped town with Mr. Stone’s money.”
I closed my eyes against the burning white fluorescent overhead, tried to quell the banging in my head with sheer willpower. It didn’t work.
“Inspector,” I said.
“Hmm?”
“What do you think happened on that bridge last night?”
He leaned back in his chair. “Glad you asked me, Mr. Kenzie. Glad you asked me.” He pulled a pack of gum from his shirt pocket, proffered it to me. When I shook my head, he shrugged and unwrapped a piece, popped it in his mouth, and chewed for about thirty seconds.
“You and your partner found Jay Becker somehow and didn’t tell anyone. You decided to steal Trevor Stone’s money and skip town, but the two hundred thousand he gave you wasn’t enough.”
“The two hundred thousand,” I said. “That’s what he told you he paid us?”
He nodded. “So you find Jay Becker, but he gets suspicious and tries to get away from you. You chase him on the Skyway, and you’re both jockeying back and forth when this innocent pair of businessmen get in your way. It’s raining, it’s dark, the plan goes awry. All three of you crash. Becker’s car goes off the bridge. No problem there, but now you’ve got the matter of two bystanders to take care of. So you shoot them, plant guns on them, shoot out their back window so it looks like they fired from the car, and that’s it. You’re done.”
“You don’t believe that theory,” I said.
“Why not?”
“Because it’s the stupidest theory I ever heard. And you’re not stupid.”
“Oh, flatter me some more, Mr. Kenzie. Please.”
“We want Jay Becker’s money, right?”
“The hundred grand we found in the trunk of the Celica with his fingerprints all over it, yeah, that’s the money I’m talking about.”
“But the hundred grand we used to bail him out of jail,” I said. “Why’d we do that? So we could trade one stack of hundred thousand dollar bills for another?”
He watched me with his shark’s eyes, didn’t say anything.
“If we planted the guns on Cushing and Clifton, why did Clifton have powder burns on his hands? I mean, he did, didn’t he?”
No response. He watched me, waiting.
“If we drove Jay Becker off the bridge, how come all the collision damage to his car was done by the Lexus?”
“Go on,” he said.
“You know what I charge for a missing persons case?”
He shook his head.
I told him. “Now that’s dramatically less than two hundred grand, wouldn’t you say?”
“I would.”
“Why would Trevor Stone shell out a combined four hundred thousand dollars, at least, to two separate private investigators to find his daughter?”
“Man’s desperate. He’s dying. He wants his daughter home.”
“Almost half a million dollars, though? That’s a lot.”
He turned his right hand, palm up, in my direction. “Please,” he said, “continue.”
“Fuck that,” I said.
His front chair legs came back to the floor. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me. Fuck that, and fuck you. Your theory’s a crock a shit. We both know it. And we both know it’ll never stand up in court. A grand jury would laugh it out.”
“That so?”
“That’s so.” I looked at him, then back at the two-way mirror over his shoulder, let his superiors or whoever was back there see my eyes, too. “You have three dead bodies and a wounded bridge and front-page headlines, I’m assuming. And the only story that makes sense is the one me and my partner have been telling you for the last twelve hours. But you can’t corroborate it.” I locked his eyes with mine. “Or so you say.”
“So I say? What’s that mean, Mr. Kenzie? Now, don’t be coy.”
“There was a guy on the other side of the bridge. Looked like a surfer dude. I saw cops interviewing him after you got there. He saw what happened. At least some of it.”
He smiled. A broad one. Full of teeth.
“The gentleman in question,” he said, looking at his notes, “has seven priors for, among other things, driving under the influence, possession of marijuana, possession of cocaine, possession of pharmaceutical Ecstasy, possession—”
“What you’re telling me is he’s a possessor of things, Inspector. I get it. What does that have to do with what he saw on the bridge?”
“Your mama ever tell you it’s impolite to interrupt?” He wagged his finger at me. “The gentleman in question was driving with a suspended license, failed a Breathalyzer, and was found with cannabis on his person. Your ‘witness,’ if that’s what you think he was, Mr. Kenzie, was under the influence of at least two mind-altering substances. He was arrested a few minutes after we left the bridge.” He leaned forward. “So, tell me what happened on that bridge.”
I leaned forward. Into the twin beams of his studied glare. And it wasn’t easy, believe me. “You got nothing but me and my partner holding smoking guns, and a witness you refuse to believe. So you’re not letting us walk. Are you, Inspector?”
“You got that right,” he said. “So run the story by me again.”
“Nope.”
He folded his arms across his chest and smiled. “‘Nope’? Did you just say ‘nope’?”
“That’s what I said.”
He stood up and lifted his chair, brought it around the table beside my own. He sat down and his lips touched my ear as he whispered into it, “You’re all I got, Kenzie. Get it? And you’re a cocky, white, Irish motherfucker, which means I hated you on sight. So, tell me what you’re going to do.”
“Send in my lawyer,” I said.
“I didn’t hear you,” he whispered.
I ignored him and slapped the tabletop. “Send in my lawyer,” I called to the people behind the mirror.
27
My lawyer, Cheswick Hartman, had caught a flight from Boston an hour after my phone call at six in the morning.
When he arrived at St. Petersburg Police Headquarters on First Avenue North at noon, they played dumb. Because the entire incident on the bridge had happened in a no-man’s-land between Pinellas County and Manatee County, they sent him to Manatee County and the Bradenton PD, feigning ignorance over our whereabouts.
In Bradenton, they took one look at Cheswick’s two-thousand-dollar suit and the Louis of Boston garment bag in his hand, and dicked around with him some more. By the time he got back to St. Pete, it was three. It was also boiling hot, and so was Cheswick.
There are three people I know who should never, and I mean never, be messed with. On
e is Bubba, for obvious reasons. The other is Devin Amronklin, a Boston homicide cop. The third, however, is Cheswick Hartman, and he may be more dangerous than either Bubba or Devin, because he has so many more weapons in his arsenal.
One of the top criminal lawyers not only in Boston but in the country, he charges something in the neighborhood of eight hundred dollars an hour for his services, and he’s always in demand. He has homes on Beacon Hill and the Outer Banks of North Carolina, and a summer villa on the island of Majorca. He also has a sister, Elise, whom I extricated from a dangerous situation a few years back. Since then, Cheswick refuses to accept money from me, and he’ll fly fourteen hundred miles for me on an hour’s notice.
But it screws up his life to do so, and when his time gets wasted even further by yokel cops with bad attitudes, his briefcase and Montblanc pen turn into a nuclear weapon and an ignition switch.
Through the grimy window in the interrogation room, I could see the squad room through even grimier venetian blinds, and twenty minutes after Jefferson left me alone, a commotion erupted as Cheswick burst through the scattered desks with a legion of police brass in tow.
The cops were shouting at Cheswick and each other and calling Jefferson’s name and the name of a Lieutenant Grimes, and by the time Cheswick threw open the door of the interrogation room, Jefferson was in the crowd, too.
Cheswick took one look at me and said, “Get my client some water. Now.”
One of the brass went back out into the squad room as Cheswick and the rest filed in. Cheswick leaned over me and looked at my face.
“This is good.” He looked over his shoulder at a sweaty white-haired man with captain’s bars on his uniform. “At least three of these facial cuts are infected. I understand his shoulder blade might be broken, but all I see is a bandage.”
The captain said, “Well—”
“How long have you been here?” he asked me.
“Since three-forty-six in the morning,” I said.
He looked at his watch. “It’s four o’clock in the afternoon.” He looked at the sweaty captain. “Your department is guilty of violating my client’s civil rights, and that’s a federal crime.”
“Bullshit,” Jefferson said.
Cheswick pulled a handkerchief from his breast pocket as a pitcher of water and a glass were placed on the interrogation table. Cheswick lifted the pitcher and turned to the group. He poured some water onto his handkerchief, and the spillage splashed on Jefferson’s shoes.
“Heard of Rodney King, Patrolman Jefferson?”
“It’s Inspector Jefferson.” He looked at his wet shoes.
“Not once I get through with you.” Cheswick turned back to me and dabbed the handkerchief against several of my cuts. “Let me make this clear,” he said to the group, “you gentlemen are fucked. I don’t know how you do things down here and I don’t care, but you kept my client in an unventilated box for over twelve hours, which makes anything he said inadmissible in court. Anything.”
“It’s ventilated,” a cop said, his eyes on fire.
“Turn on the air conditioner, then,” Cheswick said.
The cop half turned toward the door, and then stopped, shook his head at his own stupidity. When he turned back, Cheswick was smiling at him.
“So the air conditioner in this room was turned off by choice. In a cinder block room on an eighty-six-degree day. Keep it up, gentlemen, because I already have a lawsuit in the mid six figures. And climbing.” He took the handkerchief from my face, handed me a glass of water. “Any other complaints, Patrick?”
I inhaled the entire glass of water in about three seconds. “They spoke to me in a rude fashion.”
He gave me a tight smile and clapped my shoulder just hard enough to make it scream. “Let me do the talking,” he said.
Jefferson stepped up beside Cheswick. “Your client shot a guy three times. His partner blew out the throat of another guy. A third guy was rammed off a bridge in his car and died upon impact with Tampa Bay.”
“I know,” Cheswick said. “I’ve seen the tape.”
“The tape?” Jefferson said.
“The tape?” The sweaty captain said.
“The tape?” I said.
Cheswick reached into his briefcase and tossed a videotape onto the table. “That’s a copy,” he said. “The original is with the offices of Meegan, Feibel, and Ellenburg in Clearwater. The tape was sent to them at nine this morning by private courier.”
Jefferson picked up the tape and a thin drop of sweat slid from his hairline.
“Help yourselves,” Cheswick said. “The tape was recorded by someone heading south on the Skyway at the time of the incident.”
“Who?” Jefferson said.
“A woman named Elizabeth Waterman. I believe you arrested her boyfriend, Peter Moore, on the bridge last night for DUI and a bunch of other things. I believe he gave a statement to your officers corroborating the events on the tape, which you chose to discount because he’d failed a Breathalyzer.”
“This is bullshit,” Jefferson said and looked for support from the rest of his colleagues. When he didn’t get it, he gripped the tape so hard in his hand, I was sure it would shatter.
“The tape is a little blurry because of the rain and the videotaper’s excitement,” Cheswick said, “but most of the incident is on there.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said and laughed.
“Am I the coolest, or what?” Cheswick said.
28
At nine that night, we were released.
In the interim, a doctor had examined me at Bayshore Hospital, a pair of patrolmen standing ten feet away the whole time. He cleaned up my wounds and gave me antiseptic to ward off any further infections. His X ray revealed a clear fissure in my shoulder blade, but not a full break. He applied a fresh set of bandages, gave me a sling, and told me not to play football for at least three months.
When I asked him about the combination of the cracked scapula with the wounds my left hand had received from my battle with Gerry Glynn last year, he looked at the hand.
“Numb?”
“Completely,” I said.
“There’s nerve damage to the hand.”
“Yes,” I said.
He nodded. “Well, we don’t have to amputate the arm.”
“Nice to hear.”
He looked at me through small, icy glasses. “You’re taking a lot of years off the back end of your life, Mr. Kenzie.”
“I’m beginning to realize that.”
“You plan on having kids someday?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Start now,” he told me. “You might live to see them graduate college.”
As we walked down the steps of the police station, Cheswick said, “You messed with the wrong guy this time.”
“No kidding,” Angie said.
“Not only is there no record of Cushing or Clifton working for him, but that jet you told me you took? The only private jet to leave Logan Airport between nine in the morning and noon on the day in question was a Cessna, not a Gulfstream, and it was bound for Dayton, Ohio.”
“How do you silence an entire airport?” Angie said.
“Not just any airport, either,” Cheswick said. “Logan has the tightest, most admired security system in the country. And Trevor Stone has enough pull to bypass it.”
“Shit,” I said.
We stopped at the limousine Cheswick had hired. The chauffeur opened the door, but Cheswick shook his head and turned back to us.
“Come back with me?”
I shook my head and instantly regretted it. The majorettes were still practicing in there.
“We have a few loose ends down here to tie up,” Angie said. “We also have to figure out what to do about Trevor before we return.”
“Want my advice?” Cheswick tossed his briefcase into the back of the limo.
“Sure.”
“Stay away from him. Stay down here until he dies. Maybe he’ll leave you alon
e.”
“Can’t do it,” Angie said.
“I didn’t think so.” Cheswick sighed. “I heard a story once about Trevor Stone. Just a rumor. Gossip. Anyway, supposedly this union organizer was causing trouble down in El Salvador back in the early seventies, threatening Trevor Stone’s banana, pineapple, and coffee interests. So Trevor, according to legend, made a few phone calls. And one day the workers at one of his coffee bean processing plants are sifting through a vat of beans and they find a foot. And then an arm. And then a head.”
“The union organizer,” Angie said.
“No,” Cheswick said. “The union organizer’s six-year-old daughter.”
“Christ,” I said.
Cheswick patted the roof of the limo absently, looked out at the yellow street. “The union organizer and his wife, they never found them. They became part of ‘the disappeared’ down there. And nobody ever talked again about striking at one of Trevor Stone’s plants.”
We shook hands and he climbed into the limo.
“One last thing,” he said before the driver could shut the door.
We leaned in.
“Someone broke into the offices of Hamlyn and Kohl the night before last. They stole all the office equipment. I hear there’s a lot of money in hot fax machines and copiers.”
“Supposedly,” Angie agreed.
“I hope so. Because these thieves had to shoot Everett Hamlyn dead to get what they wanted.”
We stood silently as he climbed into the limo and it snaked up the street and turned right and headed for the expressway.
Angie’s hand found mine. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “About Everett, about Jay.”
I blinked at something in my eyes.
Angie tightened her grip on my hand.
I looked up at the sky, such a rich dark shade of blue it seemed artificial. That was something else I’d been noticing down here: This state—so ripe and lush and colorful—seemed fake in comparison with its uglier counterparts up north.
There’s something ugly about the flawless.
“They were good men,” Angie said softly.
I nodded. “They were beautiful.”