CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE
“Do come in, Mr. Stanley,” I said, opening the door wider.
He stood there, stunned, not sure what to do.
“If you run,” I said, my voice hard, “I’ll shoot you in the back. Get your ass in here. Keep your hands where I can see them.”
He walked in, his hands in front, palms turned outward. He saw Nigella. “Are you okay?” he asked her.
“Yes.”
“What’s going on?”
“You left in a hurry up in Macon,” I said. “We weren’t finished with our visit. Sit down.”
He sat at one end of the sofa, Nigella at the other. Jock had a nine-millimeter pistol trained on him. “Where’s J. D. Duncan?” asked Jock.
“I don’t know. I didn’t know she was missing.”
“Look, dickhead,” said Jock, “I don’t have time to fool around. If you don’t tell me what I need to know, I’m going to shoot you. First in the foot, then the other foot, then the knee and so on until you decide to talk to me.”
Stanley blanched. “Look,” he said, “if I knew where she was, I’d tell you.”
“You know who she is,” Jock said, a statement, not a question.
“Yes. She’s the Longboat Key cop who was investigating the Desmond killing.”
“Tell me about the money going into her account,” I said.
“What money?”
“Shoot him, Jock,” I said.
“No. Wait. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
I stared at him for a moment. “You sent three payments of ten grand each to a bank account in Sarasota in the name of Nigella Morrissey but with J.D.’s Social Security number. It shows up in your records as payroll.”
“That’s not possible.”
“Believe me, a*shole, it’s in the records.”
“I swear to you, I had nothing to do with that.”
“Who besides you had access to the Otto Foundation bank accounts?” I asked.
“Nobody other than Maude Lane.”
“Tell me about your connection to Souphanouvong Phomvihana.”
“I told you in the office that day. I don’t have a connection with him.”
“You and your dad worked with Soupy’s dad.”
“Yes, but I gave that up when I got out of prison.”
“You’re still dealing drugs,” I said.
He was quiet for a beat, then exhaled, and said, “Yes.”
“Where do they come from?”
“From the same area of Laos. But not from Soupy.”
“Look,” I said, “I’m not really interested in the drugs. I’ll let the Drug Enforcement Administration deal with that. Right now I want to find J. D. Duncan. That’s my only interest.”
“I don’t know anything about that. I’d tell you if I did.”
In the end, we didn’t get any more information. I tended to believe Stanley when he said he didn’t know anything about J.D.’s disappearance. He and Nigella were too scared not to tell us the truth.
I called the DEA office in Tampa. It was late now, after ten, so I got a duty officer. “This is Matt Royal,” I said. “I need to talk to Special Agent Dan Delgado.”
“He’s gone for the day, sir.”
“Can you reach him?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Tell him to call me on an urgent matter. He knows who I am.” I gave him my cell number.
“I’ll call him, sir.”
Dan Delgado had worked with Jock and me on another problem we’d run into a few months back. He was the special agent in charge of the Tampa office of the DEA.
My cell phone rang. “Matt, you running drugs or something?”
“Not exactly, Dan. Jock Algren and I are holding some people at gun-point who I think you’d love to talk to.”
“If Jock’s there, we probably have a huge mess. Where are you?”
I gave him the address.
Twenty minutes later Delgado showed up with two other agents. They were wearing windbreakers with police printed across the back in block yellow letters. Below that was the agency name. Dan shook hands with Jock and me and we explained who we had and what kind of evidence we’d accumulated. We asked him to hold them separately and incommunicado until we were able to dig further into J.D.’s disappearance. Dan knew J.D. and was most willing to help out. Nigella and Stanley were carted off in handcuffs.
“What now?” asked Jock as we got back into the car.
“I don’t think there’s anything else we can do tonight. I need sleep. We’ll start fresh in the morning.”