CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
Jock and I were at the airport a little after three. We’d picked up some sandwiches at Harry’s Continental Kitchens Deli and drove directly to the airport. We were standing on the tarmac just outside the small terminal when Desmond’s jet taxied up. A window opened on the pilot’s side of the aircraft and Fred Cassidy, the same pilot who’d flown me to Jacksonville and Charlotte a few days earlier, stuck his head out.
“I’ll let the stair down, Matt. Come on aboard.”
Jock and I climbed the steps to the cabin and belted ourselves in. Fred stuck his head into the cabin and said, “We’re ready to go. Should be in Macon in about an hour. There’re some soft drinks in the refrigerator.”
We took off to the northwest, out over the bay and the barrier islands that defined its outer boundaries. We flew up the coast for a short time and then turned back to the northeast on a track for Macon, Georgia. I reached for my cell phone to call ahead and reserve a rental car. No phone. I’d left it sitting on the coffee table in my living room. I mentally kicked myself and borrowed Jock’s phone. When we landed in Macon an hour later, a car was waiting for us.
By five, we were sitting in the parking lot of the strip center on Riverside Drive that housed the offices of the Otto Foundation. Two women came out and one turned to lock the door. We sat and waited.
“Maybe he’s already gone,” said Jock.
“One way to find out.” I used Jock’s cell phone to dial the number of the foundation. Bud Stanley answered on the third ring. I hung up.
“He’s in there,” I said.
“Unless he forwarded the phone to someplace else.”
“No. I saw some movement behind the big window. Probably Stanley moving across the room to answer the phone.”
“Okay.”
We sat some more. At five thirty, Stanley came out of the front door, locked it, and walked to a gray Toyota Camry parked in front of the building. He pulled out of the lot and drove southeast on Riverside Drive. We followed, Jock driving. He let two cars get behind Stanley before he entered the southbound traffic. We didn’t have far to go. Stanley took a right onto College Street and drove a couple of miles before turning onto a residential street lined by renovated Victorian homes. He pulled into the driveway of one in the middle of the block and parked in the detached garage. Jock drove by slowly. I saw Stanley leave the garage and walk into the house.
Jock parked the rental on the street three houses down from Stan-ley’s. We stayed on the sidewalk on the opposite side of the street. We were walking through a neighborhood that had been there for a hundred years or more. The houses all had been lovingly restored, and it was obvious that these weren’t just modern knockoffs.
“Looks like a pretty expensive neighborhood,” Jock said.
“Yeah. Pretty high on the hog for a charitable foundation administrator.”
“What’s your plan?”
“Don’t have one. Put on your ugly face and let’s see what happens.”
He scowled at me, grimacing, his lips tight, his nose a bit flared. I said, “You look like you’re constipated. Try something else.”
We mounted the steps onto a large porch that wrapped around the house. I knocked on the door and we waited. In a minute, Bud Stanley opened it and looked at me. Recognition dawned.
“Mr. Royal, this is a pleasant surprise.” He made no move to invite us inside.
“May we come in?”
“I’m sorry, but I’m off to a function. I don’t mean to be rude, but your timing is bad.”
“We need to talk,” I said.
Stanley looked from me to Jock. “Who’s your friend?”
“He’s not a friend. Let’s just say he’s an associate.”
“Well,” Stanley said, “I wish I had time to be hospitable, but as I said, I have to go.”
He started to close the door. I reached out and stopped it. He glared at me.
“We just want to talk,” I said.
“Do I have to call the police?”
“I don’t think you want to do that, Mr. Bracewell.”
Stanley looked at me for a moment. I could see his resolve drying up, but he wasn’t going to give it up easily. “Who the hell is Bracewell?”
“Robert Charles Bracewell, late of Lompoc Prison.”
“I don’t know who you’re talking about.”
“Okay. Call the police. Maybe we can get them to run your fingerprints. The very least that’s going to do is really f*ck up your evening.”
He gave it up then. His face seemed to sag, deflate a little, his shoulders slumped almost imperceptibly, and he backed up pulling the door open. “Come in,” he said.
He led us to a living room just off the entrance foyer, told us to take a seat. He sat in a recliner that was situated so that its occupant had a direct view of a large flat-screen TV sitting in an entertainment center against the opposite wall.
“Get up, Mr. Stanley,” Jock said.
“What?”
“Get your ass out of that chair. Now. And keep your hands where I can see them.” Jock was holding a .38-caliber pistol, pointed at Stanley’s chest.
“What is this?” A note of indignation rode the rising voice.
“Now,” said Jock. “I’m not asking again.”
The man stood, hands in front of him, palms out, a sign of peace or of surrender. Maybe both.
“Matt,” said Jock, “check the cushions on the sofa. I don’t want to find any weapons there.”
I pulled the cushions and checked down the sides of the sofa. “Nothing,” I said.
“Okay, Stanley,” said Jock. “You sit there. I’ll take the recliner.”
“I don’t have any weapons,” said Stanley. “Who are you people?”
He made himself comfortable on the sofa. I took a chair across from the sofa and Jock sat in the recliner, his pistol pointed at Stanley.
“I’m looking for some friends,” I said, “and I’m hoping you know where they are.”
“Who?”
“Chaz Desmond and a Longboat Key detective named J.D. Duncan.”
“How am I supposed to know where they are?”
“They’ve disappeared. You’re a bad guy. Maybe you had something to do with it.”
“I’m not the same guy who was in Lompoc. I’ve turned my life around.”
“Maybe.”
“I know Desmond, but I have no idea who Duncan is. Besides, what does any of this have to do with me?”
“We think your friend Soupy was responsible for the murder of Jim Desmond. Now Chaz has disappeared and so has the detective who was investigating the murder.”
“I told you before, I don’t know anything about that. I doubt that Soupy would be involved.”
“Are you still running drugs for him?” I asked.
Stanley’s face changed, suddenly, like a light going off, or maybe on. I thought I saw a trace of fear cross his eyes, a subtle tell that a good poker play would never allow. I’d hit a weak spot, a punch that he hadn’t seen coming.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, blustering.
“I know that you and your dad were in the drug business with Soupy’s dad. It isn’t much of a stretch to think that you’re still involved. You just happen to have a nice little charitable organization that sends kids to Laos where Soupy is one of the biggest growers of poppies. I’m thinking that somehow you use the kids to bring the drugs into this country.”
“Nice try, Mr. Royal.” The voice came from the entry foyer, a deep rumble with a southern accent. I looked to my left and saw an Asian man, a stranger, standing in the doorway, a double-barreled twelve-gauge shotgun pointed in my direction. “Tell your friend to drop his pistol or I’ll blow your head off.”
I glanced at Jock. He was looking at the Asian, but his pistol was pointed directly at Stanley. “If you pull that trigger,” said Jock, “Stanley dies.”
“So does Royal,” said the man with the shotgun.
“If I put the pistol down what assurance do I have that you won’t kill us?”
“This blunderbuss will be heard in the next block if I fire. I don’t want the trouble. You let Stanley go and we’ll leave quietly. No fuss, no blood.”
Jock thought about it for a beat and then laid the pistol on the floor.
“Use your foot to push the pistol to Stanley,” the Asian man said.
Jock did so, the pistol sliding easily on the hardwood floor. Stanley picked it up, pointed it at us, and smiled.
The Asian man spoke to Stanley in a foreign language. Stanley responded in the same language, rose from the sofa, and went past the Asian into the back of the house. We sat still as stone, no one moving. I heard the car in the garage start and come down the driveway. The horn beeped and the Asian backed out of the foyer, his shotgun pointed our way. He reached the front door, turned the knob, and rushed outside. Jock and I moved quickly to the window, just in time to see the Camry disappear down the street, two heads showing in the front seats.
We ran to the rental, but by the time we got it moving, Stanley and his friend were gone. There was no chance of following them.
Jock looked a bit perplexed. “I didn’t think to check out the rest of the house. I must be slipping. It never occurred to me that Stanley would have a Laotian houseguest.”
“He didn’t,” I said. “The guest was speaking Vietnamese.”