B006JIBKIS EBOK (13 page)

Dick had been a Navy fighter pilot in his youth, and then spent many years as an airline pilot. He woke up one morning and simply decided that he was finished with flying. He called his supervisor at the airline and quit. That day he loosed the lines from the mooring where he kept the sailboat on which he lived, and headed south. He spent a year traveling the Carribean, and then washed ashore at Pirate’s Cove. When he heard the management was looking for a dockmaster, he took the job. Somewhere along the line he got rid of the sailboat and bought the tug. I was worried that Dick seemed to be slipping deeper into a bottle of vodka, but he had shrugged off my concern the one time I had voiced it.

Dick’s small office looked out over the pool to the marina. This time of the week one could always find a number of the local women taking the sun by the pool. Dick was usually behind his darkened windows enjoying the fleshy view. At five he would move his portable radio to the bar for a few drinks of straight vodka with the regulars who always frequent any bar in any town.

The air conditioning in the tiny office puffed cold air, providing a respite from the June heat. Dick was on the phone taking a reservation from a boater who wanted to spend Independence day in the marina. He had his ever present filtered low tar cigarette burning in the ashtray. He looked up at me, grinned, and waived me to the only visitor’s chair in the room. I remained standing and coughed a couple of times for emphasis. I had been telling him for years that his bad habits were going to kill him some day.

He hung up the phone. “Silly bastard. Thinks he can make a reservation this late for July 4
^th
. I gotta get out of this business.” Dick always groused, but he loved the Key and enjoyed his job. I had used Dick during my case with Jason to do some basic research on medical products, and to take telephone statements from some of the witnesses. He got himself qualified by the Circuit Court to serve subpoenas, and he took care of that for me when we needed depositions in Southwest Florida.

“I need some help, Dick. I’m looking into a guy named Hale Rundel. Molly O’Sullivan told me you might know him.”

“Oh, I know him, but not well. A buddy of his brought a boat in here for a month winter before last, and Rundel spent a lot of time here in the marina. That was during the time you were so caught up in the doc’s case that you didn’t get over here for a time. I had a few drinks with him, and he invited me over to his condo for a party. Great party, but Rundel’s a big sack of shit.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, Matt, you know I like to party. And I do love the girls. Rundel had these parties every now and then and would invite a very select crowd. Mostly folks from the mainland who had lots of money. The one I went to had a lot of drugs around. There was actually a dish of white powder on the coffee table, and people were sucking it up their noses with straws. If it wasn’t cocaine there were sure a lot of people acting very satisfied with whatever it was. There were other kinds of pills and stuff to smoke and plenty of booze. Booze was being served by waitresses, who were all nude.”

“Naked?” I asked rather stupidly.

“Buck-ass naked,” said Dick. “Rundel told me that when he invited me. I figured I could get drunk and get laid without too much trouble. But the drugs scared me. You know how I feel about that, Matt.” Dick’s younger sister died from an overdose after she had put the family through years of hell. “I don’t mess with them, and I won’t stay around where they’re used. I had one drink and left.”

“Is Rundel in the drug business?”

“I don’t think so, but who knows. He had a lot of money, and he didn’t seem hesitant to spend it. I saw him after the party and told him I had left because I was not comfortable with the drugs. He told me he didn’t do any drugs himself, but had to have them available for his business associates. He said he brokered airplanes, and that he suspected that many of his buyers were drug runners. He apparently hired a few of the girls from that topless place over in Sarasota to come over and walk around nude to kind of get things moving. He said that when everybody is standing around sucking coke and looking at nude chicks, there ain’t no pretension and he can do business better. We got pretty drunk over at the bar the last time I saw him, and he was telling me that he had cameras hidden around the apartment. He said that it was amazing how cooperative some of his disgruntled customers would become once he showed them pictures of them and their wives or girlfriends standing around in a crowd of nudes snorting coke. Like I said, a sack of shit.”

“Do you know why he left?” I asked.

“No. I didn’t see him that regularly, and I guess he had been gone for some time before I heard about it. I ran into Sally, the manager down at Gulf Breakers, over at the Holiday Inn one night and she was bitching about him stiffing her on the rent. I figured maybe somebody caught up with him and he either ran, or somebody dumped him out in the Gulf one dark night.”

“Did he ever say anything about where he came from or what he did before he landed on the island?” I asked.

“Nah. Like I said, I didn’t know him well, and I really didn’t care to. Sorry.”

We chatted for a few more minutes about mutual friends, and I took my leave and headed home.

Chapter 16 

Gulfview is a typical old Florida town, sitting on a part of the Gulf coast that has not yet been discovered by the developers and despoilers. It is home to a paper mill, which employs most of the men of the area. Inland, there is a little farming, and a few people still make their living fishing for mullet or taking oysters from the shallow bay. It is the county seat of Ware county. With a population of under twenty thousand, it is the smallest county in Florida. It is the kind of place that the northerners never see in the brochures put out by the tourist industry. It is also the kind of place where the sheriff knows everybody and everything that is going on.

I drove up from Longboat Key through St. Petersburg and Clearwater, and on up Highway 27. I had decided to see what I could find out about John James. If he were in fact involved in shady or illegal dealings, it was likely that a number of his fellow citizens would be aware of it. These people are very protective of their own.

As in many southern towns the courthouse sat on a square, with most of the stores and shops on the streets surrounding it. On the front lawn there was the usual statute of a Confederate soldier, facing his enemy to the north.

I parked on the street in front of the courthouse and went into the sheriff’s office. I identified myself to the deputy at the desk, gave him my business card, and asked to speak to the sheriff. He was out but was expected back any moment, and I was welcome to wait. I had barely sat down on the hard bench when a small man in a suit walked in.

“Sheriff,” said the deputy, “Mr. Royal here is a lawyer from Longboat Key. Wants to see you.” He handed the sheriff my card.

“I’m Dave Tuten,” said the sheriff, sticking out his hand. “I’ll be right with you.” He disappeared into his office shutting the door. A few minutes later the door opened and he invited me in.

Sheriff Tuten was not at all what I had expected. He was about five foot seven, one hundred forty pounds, with dark hair graying at the temples. He was dressed in a navy blue suit, white shirt, burgundy tie, and had a Phi Beta Kappa key pinned in his lapel. He was in his mid-forties.

“I appreciate your taking some time for me, Sheriff.” I said. “I’m looking for a man named John James. He’s not listed in the phone book, and the operator says his number is unlisted. I was hoping you might be able to help us.”

“Why are you looking for James?”

“He was involved in a business deal that went sour, and I’m hoping he can give me some information I need about the company.”

“I know who you are Mr. Royal, and that’s the only reason I don’t run you out of this office. I called Bill Lester, and he vouched for you. This county is clean. There was a time when it wasn’t. You must have been surprised that the sheriff was not some good ole boy about seven feet tall with a pot belly and a six shooter. I grew up here.” He went on to explain that his dad had been a shrimper. Tuten had played football at the high school and had made all-state his senior year. He was what they called a scatback in those days. He had been too small for college ball, but he had gotten an academic scholarship to Florida State. He earned a degree in Criminology and a commission in the Army Military Police. After the Army, he joined the Jacksonville police department and eventually became chief of detectives. He told me that his county had always been corrupt in small ways, but about five years before, some of the locals had gotten into the import business. They had been bringing in bales of marijuana in their fishing boats. The previous sheriff had been getting a nice percentage of the gross to look the other way. The governor sent in a special prosecutor who convicted the sheriff and about half a dozen others on drug charges.

Tuten came home and ran for sheriff. He always thought James was deeply involved in the local importing operation, but the only thing anybody had ever gotten on him was a vote buying charge. He had been giving five dollars and a fifth of liquor to anybody who would agree to vote for the old sheriff in the last election before the whole thing fell apart. It was a misdemeanor, and James pled guilty. The judge gave him ninety days probation. He was still in Ware County, running his motel.

“Now if I didn’t know who you were I would think you were here to start up the import business again. Are you?”

“No, Sheriff,” I said. “To be perfectly honest with you, I’m not sure exactly why I’m here. I just want to talk to James and see if he can help me find a man named Hale Rundel.”

I told him everything I knew so far about the Rundel Enterprises deal and James’ part in it. When I finished the sheriff shook his head and said, “There’s no way in this world John James could get hold of a million dollars legally. Let’s go talk to him.”

We drove out of town on the main highway, which meandered southeast until it ran into U.S. 19. We turned into the dirt driveway of something called the James Motel. There were four separate tin roofed concrete block buildings, each of which held two rooms. The paint was peeling from the red doors of each room. A fifth building, with a sign in front announcing it to be the office, appeared to be the living quarters of whomever ran the operation. A rural mail box and a round newspaper box with a faded
Tallahassee Democrat
painted on its sides were attached to posts in front of the office. .

The sheriff said, “James’ mother owns this dump. She used to make a small living out of it, but I doubt she’s had an overnight guest in years. She had a stroke about five years ago, and John pretty much takes care of her and the place. He lives out back in a trailer. Once in a while, some politician from Tallahassee will drive down with his secretary and rent a room for a couple of hours. That’s about all.”

“How does he make a living?” I asked.

“He worked at the local Ford dealer’s body shop until it went out of business. Now he teaches body work in the shop at the high school and runs the motel.”

Behind the main building was an extra long mobile home set up on stacked concrete blocks. It was painted in alternating horizontal stripes of orange, white and brown. Each stripe was about two feet wide. There was a set of handmade wooden steps leading to the front door. There were gracious old oak trees surrounding the place, but grass only sparsely covered the ground.

We parked in the yard and got out of the car. The door to the trailer home opened to reveal a man wearing a sleeveless undershirt, khaki trousers and a pair of white socks without shoes. He had a beer belly, sparse brown hair going to gray, and a face that had lost its teenage bout with acne.

“Hello, John,” said the sheriff. “We need to talk to you about an airplane.”

“Hidy, Sheriff,” said James. “Don’t know much ‘bout planes. I ain’t never had to fix one.”

“We want to talk about the one you bought, John,” said the sheriff.

“You got to be kiddin’, Sheriff. I hardly got the money to pay the light bill this month. Florida Power’s already threatened to shut it off. ‘Sides, what would I do with an airplane anyway?”

“John, this is Mr. Royal. He’s a lawyer from Longboat Key. We have good evidence that you put up a million dollars for Rundel Enterprises to buy an airplane. You can tell us what you know about this, or I can get an affidavit from a lawyer in Sarasota named Jones and come back and arrest you. I don’t think you really want to screw around with me.”

“Now Sheriff, you know damn well I ain’t never had a million dollars, or anything close to it. But y’all come on in and sit, and I’ll tell you all I know.”

The trailer looked, as my mother used to say, as if a cyclone had struck it. The sink was overflowing with dirty dishes, glasses, pots and pans. Several days worth of old newspapers had been discarded at random in the living room. There was a sour smell pervading the place, and I began to wonder if he had hidden the legendary Big Foot in a closet. There was an overstuffed sofa and two chairs in the room, each covered with a cloth cover that can be bought at Sears. Even the covers were old and worn. James sat in one chair, the sheriff in the other, and I took the sofa.

“Tell me about Rundel,” I said.

“Look,” he said, “All I did was to do a favor for a friend. He gave me the money, and I wrote a check for the whole thing. He gave me five hundred dollars for my trouble. If there was anything illegal going on, I didn’t know about it, Sheriff. I don’t want no trouble.”

“Tell Mr. Royal about Rundel,” said Sheriff Tuten. “If you didn’t do anything wrong, and it checks out, you’ve got nothing to worry about from me.”

James was obviously nervous. It was a testament to the power the sheriff held in this county. That is not always a good thing, but I thought this sheriff would use the power wisely.

“I don’t really know this Rundel,” James said. “I only saw him a couple of times. He had me open an account over in Palatka and he gave me a check for a million dollars to put into it. He had me set it up so that the only way I could get any money out was to have another friend of his sign on the check too. About two weeks after I opened the account, Rundel and this guy named Cox showed up, and we drove over to Palatka. Cox was the other guy on the checks. We wrote a check to the bank and they gave us a cashier’s check. I didn’t see how it was made out. Rundel handled all the paperwork, and Cox and I signed everything and showed the bank folks our driver’s licenses. We drove on down to Sarasota and met with this lawyer Jones. Rundel told him I was an investor in something or other, but I didn’t pay much attention to what they were talking about. We gave him the check and left. Rundel had me sign my name to some sort of letter and we drove back to Gulfplace. He gave me five one hundred dollar bills, and I ain’t seen hide nor hair of him since. That’s all there is to it, Sheriff. I swear.”

“What did the letter say?” I asked.

“I don’t know. I didn’t read it.”

“That was probably the letter of instruction to Jones,” I said to the Sheriff. “None of this makes a whole lot of sense, unless they were just moving money around in an attempt to launder it or confuse the paper trail. Where did you meet Rundel, Mr. James?”

“My stepson introduced me to him up in Tallahassee. That’s when he asked me to help him out with this little money problem he had. Said something about trying to keep it out of the hands of his ex-wife. I got a couple of those, and I know how it is.”

“Who is your stepson?” Sheriff Tuten asked.

“John Noblin.”

The name meant nothing to me or the sheriff. “He owns an insurance agency up in Tallahassee,” said James. I filed it away for future reference.

We were back at the sheriff’s office. It was spartan. There were no pictures of the sheriff with various dignitaries, such as you usually see in a politician’s office. The desk was basic green metal government issue. There were two straight chairs facing the desk, and a vinyl covered swivel chair for the sheriff.

Tuten had loosened his tie and unbuttoned the top button of his shirt. His shoulder holster, with the nine millimeter semi-automatic pistol, was hung over the hat tree. He was sitting behind his desk with his feet propped up. I was in one of the chairs facing the desk.

“James is probably telling the truth,” said the sheriff. “I think he’s scared enough of me at this point that he couldn’t pull off that big a lie. Besides, if he had a million dollars of his own, I don’t think he’d be hanging around here.”

“I think you’re right,” I said. “But I don’t understand why the money was being moved around like James says it was. If they were trying to launder it, they sure weren’t doing a very professional job. I would think the bank might get suspicious about a guy like James coming in with a million dollars and then taking it out two weeks later.”

“Probably,” said the sheriff. “But there was nothing illegal in what the bank did, and the float, the interest the bank earned while the money was in a checking account, makes for a pretty good chunk of change. The bank officers wouldn’t take any suspicions they had to the law, because they wouldn’t want to disrupt what could become a fairly lucrative pattern.

“There is something that may be of interest to you, Matt,” the Sheriff said. “About 6 months ago, a man named Bud Dubose and his wife died in his place out near the beach. The place burned to the ground after an explosion. I think it was caused by a gas leak they didn’t know they had. But, I got a call from a lawyer down in Lauderdale a couple of months ago, who said she was Bud’s sister, and felt that the deaths were murder. She said that a man named Rundel was responsible. I don’t think there’s anything to it, but it is interesting that the Rundel name comes up twice in two months. It’s not a common name.”

“No, it’s not,” I said. “Do you remember the lawyer’s name?”

He pulled what appeared to be a call log from one of his desk drawers, and flipped through several pages. “Her name is Anne Dubose.” He gave me her phone number.

I thanked the sheriff for all his trouble and headed back to Longboat. I ate a frozen microwave dinner, and collapsed into bed for a good night’s sleep. I noticed that the message light on my phone was blinking, but I ignored it. I was too tired to deal with whoever or whatever the phone call was about.

The next morning was like most mornings in Southwest Florida - beautiful. I did my jog on the beach early, before it got too hot to even think about running in the sun. After my shower and first cup of coffee, I felt good enough to check my phone messages. There were two from people trying to sell me stuff, and one from Elizabeth Ferguson. I checked the time; 7:30. She’d probably be in the office by now. I called.