CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO
We were driving across the Sunshine Skyway Bridge that spans lower Tampa Bay and connects Manatee and Pinellas Counties. The sun was low on the horizon, but it still had a couple of hours before its daily descent into the Gulf of Mexico. A large ship, probably a phosphate carrier, was inbound, riding high, its Plimsoll Line showing far above the surface. It would load at the Port of Tampa and return to sea heavy with phosphate that would be turned into fertilizer for use around the world.
Few of the people who wintered on the gilded coasts of Florida knew that just a few miles inland a very different world existed, one of working men and women who mined the earth for phosphate, ran cattle, harvested citrus and vegetable crops, hunted deer, and fished the fresh-water lakes and rivers for food. A land of large Indian reservations and scrub and swamp and sinkholes and alligators and panthers, a land where man was an intruder and where life was cheap and dismal and desperate.
In the center of the state, near Orlando, the top tourist destination in the world, home of Disney and Universal Studios and SeaWorld and numerous other attractions, lay a single working cattle ranch that comprised three hundred thousand acres. Florida was a working state as well as a retirement mecca. And like every other state, we had our share of crooks and scam artists and other assorted criminals. Ours were just flashier and sometimes funnier than those of most any other place.
I’d called Nigella’s home phone just before we left my house. She answered and I apologized for calling a wrong number. She was home, and hopefully would still be there when we arrived.
I had also logged onto the Florida Bar website to see what I could find on her. Not much. She’d graduated from the University of Tennessee and Vanderbilt Law School. She’d been admitted to the Bar five years before. Her office address was listed as a post office box in Tampa. She had no ethical grievances filed against her.
Nigella lived in a large house on Bayshore Drive near Hyde Park with an expansive view of Tampa Bay. The house was long and slender, built on a narrow lot in the style of Charleston, with the front door on the side. It was still daylight when we knocked. It was opened by a woman with a definite Asian appearance, but the softening of the epicanthic folds and the lighter skin tones told me that Caucasian blood flowed through her veins. A Eurasian. She was about thirty, tall and slim and beautiful, her black hair pulled back into a tight bun, diamond studs in her earlobes. She was wearing a white shirt, white shorts and shoes, and held a tennis racket in her hand.
“Can I help you?” she asked.
“I’m Jock Algren, Ms. Morrissey. I wonder if we could talk to you for a few minutes.”
“Make it quick. I’m on my way to play tennis.” Her voice was edgy, suspicious.
“May we come in?” asked Jock.
“We don’t have time for that. What are you selling?”
Jock put his hand on the tennis racket and wrenched it from her grip. He used his other hand to push her back into the house, holding onto her arm with one hand, with the racket in the other. I followed. We were in a foyer with a living room opening to our left. Jock continued pushing Nigella, until she backed into a sofa and sat down.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she asked, her voice loud and strained, pissed.
“We’re here about Bud Stanley,” said Jock.
“Who?”
“Bud Stanley. You know, the one who sends you all that money.”
She sat perfectly still, staring at us. Silent.
“Matt,” Jock said, “check out the house. I don’t want another surprise with a shotgun.”
I pulled out my thirty-eight-caliber police special and went to search the house. Most of the downstairs was taken up by a kitchen, formal dining room, living room, and foyer with a staircase leading to the second floor. There were four bedrooms, each with its own bath. Only one of the rooms looked as if it had been used. The beds were all made, there were no clothes or suitcases or any indication of life in other than the master bedroom.
I came back downstairs. Jock and Nigella were sitting still, staring at each other. “All clear,” I said.
“Ms. Morrissey,” Jock said, “you’re going to answer some questions for us. We can do this the hard way or the easy way, but sooner or later you’re going to tell us what we need to know.”
“Go to hell.”
The movement was so fast I wasn’t sure I saw it. Jock lashed out and slapped her face with his open hand. It didn’t appear to have much power behind it, but Nigella was thrown back against the sofa. Tears welled in her eyes, but she just stared at us. No sound, no words, not even a sigh.
“Lady,” Jock said, “my friend here gets a little queasy when I get rough and I’d hate for him to start throwing up on these beautiful rugs. But we’re about to get serious here.”
“Go to hell.”
Jock sighed. “Take off your clothes.”
“What?”
“You heard me. Get naked.”
“You sick bastard. No f*cking way.”
Jock pulled a large knife from a scabbard at his ankle, one that had been covered by his trousers. “If you don’t take them off, I’m going to cut them off, and I might get a little careless. You know, cut some of that beautiful skin, maybe your face.”
“What do you want to know?”
“Where is Bud Stanley?”
“I don’t know.”
Jock brandished the knife. “That’s not very helpful.”
“I really don’t know. He left Macon yesterday. He called and said he’d be in touch with me.”
“Did he say when?”
She hesitated. Jock moved quickly and put the tip of the knife under her chin. Nigella paled and backed away from the weapon. The back of the sofa restricted her moves. She wasn’t able to go far.
“Yes,” she said. “Tonight. He’s supposed to be here before midnight.”
Jock pulled back on the knife. “That’s better. Where’s J. D. Duncan?”
“I don’t know.”
Jock waved the knife in the air near her face.
“Really,” she said. “I don’t know.” Her voice carried a pleading tone.
“Do you know J.D.?” I asked.
“I know she’s a cop down on Longboat Key. That’s all.”
“Does she somehow work with you and Stanley?” I asked.
“I don’t know, but I think so.”
“What’s her job?” I asked.
“I don’t know anything about that, either.”
“Do you know how your name ended up with her Social Security number at a bank in Sarasota?” I asked.
“I don’t know anything about that.”
“Nigella,” said Jock, “we’re going to be here with you until Stanley shows up. If I find out tonight or later that you’ve lied to us, I’m going to carve you into little pieces and feed you to the fish out there in the bay. It won’t matter where you go. I will find you. Just like I did today.”
“I’m not lying. I just don’t know.”
“Tell us about the Otto Foundation,” I said.
“What about it?”
“Are they in the drug business?”
“Yes. Of course. That’s where the money comes from.”
“Where do the drugs come from?”
“I don’t know. My job is simply to launder their money.”
Fear of Jock had loosened her tongue. She was talking rapidly, taking shallow breaths, glancing at him every few seconds. He was sitting quietly in a chair he’d pulled up to the sofa, his knees almost touching hers, the knife still in his hand, a scowl on his face.
“Do you know how the drugs get into the country?” I asked.
“No.”
“Are you familiar with the name Souphanouvong Phomvihana?”
“Sounds Laotian, but I’ve never heard that name.”
“What is your ethnic background?”
“Irish dad and Vietnamese mother.”
“Where are your parents?”
“I have no idea about my father. His name was Nigel Morrissey, but he disappeared when I was an infant. He left me his name, nothing else. My mom lives in Chattanooga, Tennessee.”
We talked for another hour, sporadically asking her questions, getting no answers. I thought she was too frightened of Jock to lie to us. Maybe we’d gotten all we were going to get out of her. She didn’t seem to have a lot of knowledge about the drug business, insisting only that she was used for laundry and was paid very well to do so.
Shortly after dark, I heard footsteps coming up the walkway that led to the front door. I pulled my pistol from my pocket and stood by the door. A key was inserted into the lock from outside. Before the key turned, I swung the door open, my gun pointing right into the very surprised face of Bud Stanley.