CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
I was antsy as I drove onto Longboat Key, out of sorts, confused, and more than a little bit pissed. I was concerned that my friend Doc wasn’t what he seemed to be, or perhaps was more than he seemed. We had odd threads running through the investigation, some leading to a man in Ho Chi Minh City and perhaps a killer in Bradenton, another to a Laotian warlord, a third to a creepy guy named Mantella who now lived in Orlando. And we weren’t even sure the Dulcimer murders were related to the death of Jim Desmond. I was beginning to think that Doc knew more than he was telling me and maybe was using me in a way that played on my moral debt to him. Could he be that callous? It did tend to piss me off.
Jock was at my desk, his head buried in the computer monitor when I walked in. “Any coffee left?” I asked.
“In the pot. Been there a while. Can’t vouch for its taste.”
“I’ll make some more. You want another cup?”
“Yeah, if you don’t mind.”
“What’re you looking at?” I asked.
“Trying to run down some more info on your buddy Doc. Did Jimbo have anything?”
“Not really, but he did tell me that Doc started making the big money at about the same time he started sending those checks to Vietnam.”
“I’ve been thinking about that,” said Jock. “I had the guys in Washington send me the information they got on those transfers. The payments were all made in April. Except for this year. The payment didn’t go out until early July. And that one was for three hundred thousand. An extra hundred grand.”
“I wonder why.”
“Suppose that Doc is being blackmailed and for some reason he decided to stop making the payments. Maybe whoever he was paying off decided that murdering his son would be an object lesson and the money would start flowing again. The extra hundred may be interest.”
“Why kill his son?”
“I don’t know. Maybe the message was that Doc’s wife would be next, or maybe his daughter-in-law, if he didn’t pay up.”
“And add a little vig to the payment,” I said. “Say, a hundred grand.”
“Right.”
“But if they’re blackmailing him, why not just release whatever evidence they have that he had done something crooked or whatever it is they’re holding over his head.”
“Because that would kill the goose that lays the two hundred grand eggs. By killing his son, the bad guys would send a powerful message and keep the money rolling in.”
“We need to bring J.D. up to date,” I said.
I called her cell phone. “You busy?” I asked when she answered.
“On my way to the Village. Another murder investigation.”
“What?”
“Two deaths. Poisoning, I think.”
I was concerned. I knew practically everybody in the village. “Who?”
“A couple of peacocks.”
“Geez, Duncan. That’s cruel.”
“I thought so. Poor birds.”
“Right. Can you have lunch with Jock and me?”
“Sure. I’ll be through with the peacocks by then.”
“Meet us at Moore’s”
“This is one weird investigation,” said J.D.
We were sitting in the dining room at Moore’s Stone Crab Restaurant at a table next to the windows that provided a view twelve miles down the bay to the city of Sarasota. It was usually a breathtaking vista, but today the drizzling rain and low clouds obscured it. I’d filled J.D. in on what we knew, what we suspected, and what we surmised. I told her about my confusion at all the threads of the investigation, none of which seemed to coalesce into any coherent whole.
“Maybe,” she said, “we can start eliminating suspects. The last one standing is probably the culprit.”
“I don’t have any idea how to go about that,” I said.
“We could start with Mantella in Orlando,” said Jock.
“Or,” said J.D., “you could just call your buddy and ask him straight out about the payments to Vietnam.”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “If he suckered me into this in some way, he’s not going to tell me the truth. If he says he’s not dirty, I wouldn’t believe him at this point.”
Jock said, “You’ve been sending him all the memos on what we’re doing, so if he’s up to something, he knows pretty much everything we know.”
“Yeah, one more reason for me not to call him. I think we’d better find out more about his operation. Maybe when Jock’s agency people get back to us with the information on the Ho Chi Minh City bank account, we’ll know more.”
J.D. looked at Jock. “Any idea when that’ll be?”
“No,” he said. “I’ll call the director and see if we can light a fire under somebody. I’d bet they already have a back door into that bank’s computers, so it shouldn’t be too big of a job.”
“Can you call him today?” asked J.D.
“As soon as we get through eating,” Jock said.
“Maybe you could do it while we’re waiting for our food,” she said.
Jock grinned. “Maybe I could.” He got up and left the table.
When he returned, he said, “They’ve got some sort of big emergency going on up there that all the computer geeks are working on. The director assured me he’d e-mail me everything we need by noon tomorrow.”
“Maybe we should go talk to Mantella,” said Jock.
And that’s what we decided to do. As it happened, I relearned the lesson that snap decisions often don’t work out too well.