Bob Morris_Zack Chasteen 02 (20 page)

“Second guy says: ‘I got fifty bucks says you can’t play my trumpet.’ He puts his money down, pulls out a trumpet, and seconds later the squid is playing hell out of it, like Louis Fuckin’ Armstrong. Squid collects another fifty bucks.

“Then the bartender looks at the squid and says: ‘I got something for you.’ Bartender goes into a back room, comes out a few minutes later, and he’s carrying a bagpipe. Bartender puts his money down and hands the bagpipe to the squid. The squid looks at the bagpipe. He turns it over and inspects it from every possible position.

“Bartender says: ‘What’s a matter? Aren’t you gonna play it?’

“‘Play it, hell,’ says the squid. ‘I’m gonna fuck the damn thing soon as I can figure out how to take off its pajamas.’”

The guy grinned at me.

“Pretty good one, huh?”

“First time I heard it, it was an octopus.”

“Yeah, I guess that’d work, too. What you think looks more like a bagpipe, an octopus or a squid?”

“I’d have to go with the octopus.”

“Yeah, maybe you’re right. Next time I tell it, I’ll change it around.”

The sushi chef arrived with my main course and set it down in front of me. I’d asked him to surprise me and he’d outdone
himself. There were sweet shrimp, three big ones with the heads still on, perched up on their tails like little pink crustacean puppies begging for a treat. There was marbled tuna belly—two thick blood-red pieces—and pink albacore, sliced paper thin and reassembled to look like a rosebud. The centerpiece was a small mound of yellowtail dappled with salmon roe and displayed between two generous slices of smoked freshwater eel, glazed with fermented molasses, which were meant to be dessert.

“Ah,
arigatu gozaimasu,
” I said, and offered a little bow.

“
Doita shimashite,
” said the chef, with a bow of his own.

“Exactly odo, Quasimodo,” said the guy.

“That Japanese?” I asked him.

“No, it’s a line from a song by John Prine. Kinda like ‘No shit, Sherlock.’ Alliterative, ya know?” said the guy. “I just said it to hold up my end of the conversation.”

I picked up my chopsticks and went to work, starting in on the yellowtail. The guy rested an elbow on the counter, put his head on his hand, watching me. I was attacking the sweet shrimp when he said: “So let me ask you, Zack, you eat much sushi down in Jamaica?”

I stopped eating. The guy was grinning big-time now.

“You’re sitting there wondering, who the fuck is this guy, how does he know me, and how the fuck does he know I just flew in from Jamaica. Am I right, Zack?”

“Yeah,” I said. “That’s exactly what I’m wondering.”

He opened his wallet, got out a business card, and put it on the counter in front of me. I read it without picking it up. The gold embossed logo said: “United States Drug Enforcement Agency.” Under that it said: “Lanny Cumbaa, Special Agent.”

The guy stood, grabbed his briefcase, and slapped my shoulder.

“They got a bar on the top floor, Zack. I’ll be up there when you’re done,” he said. “I sit here watching you eat, I’m gonna toss my guts.”

Lanny Cumbaa was saying, “You know how tough it is to make money running a resort in the Caribbean, anywhere for that matter?”

“Not my field of expertise,” I said.

“Well, it’s mine,” said Lanny Cumbaa. “And you can’t fucking make a dime, that’s how tough it is. The overhead those places have? Shit, they bleed money. That’s why so many of ’em get set on spin-dry.”

“Spin-dry?”

“Laundered money, Zack. Got all kinds of dirty dollars going through those resorts. It’s a royal bitch to keep track of it all.”

“Thought the DEA just worried about drugs.”

“Shit’s all connected, Zack. Follow the money, find the drugs. Delivery and dispersal, two sides of the same operation.”

A waitress brought our second round. Another beer for me. Bourbon and seven for Cumbaa. We were sitting in highback chairs in a darkish corner of the Top of Port lounge, looking out on the twinkly lights that lined the runway, every now and then a big jet touching down or taking off.

“So, what you’re saying is, Darcy Whitehall, he’s laundering money through Libido,” I said.

“No, I’m not saying that,” said Cumbaa. “What I’m saying
is, he used to. Twenty years ago, when he built that first fuck-palace of his, the one you’re staying at, that was all his money, on the legit, money he’d made in the music business.

“But the resort biz, it was more than he bargained for, way more. Inside of a year and Whitehall was ready to go belly-up. Enter Freddie Arzghanian.”

I pretended like the name didn’t mean anything to me. It didn’t take a whole lot of pretending.

“This Arzghanian, he’s in the drug business?”

“No, he’s in the money business. Works out of Mo Bay, but he has what you might call a global enterprise. Drug guys come to him with their money and he invests it for them so that it comes back smelling fresh and clean. So anyway, Arzghanian offers to partner up with Darcy Whitehall and suddenly everything is beautiful. All the bills are paid. Rooms are filled, guests are happy, everyone’s getting laid. Meanwhile, money’s going out the back door, sixty cents on the dollar, boomeranging back to Freddie Arzghanian, and for him that’s better than getting laid.

“A few years later, Whitehall decides he wants to expand, and Freddie he is way into that because he’s got money coming at him from every direction and needs somewhere to wash it. Build a Libido in the Bahamas? No problem. Build another one in St. Lucia? Love it. It’s like little money-laundering franchises set up all through the Caribbean.”

“So Arzghanian, he’s pretty big as far as money launderers go?”

“No, Zack, he’s not big. He’s fucking giant. He’s King Shit, man. Baddest of the bad and all that. Sooner or later everything goes through Freddie Arzghanian.” Cumbaa stopped talking and looked past me. His face dropped. He leaned toward me and lowered his voice. “You see that bartender over there, Zack, the one watching us?”

I turned around. The bartender turned away, started washing some glasses.

“He works for Freddie Arzghanian. I’m keeping an eye on him, making sure he doesn’t pull a gun and pop us.”

Cumbaa studied my expression. Then he reached over and gave my cheek a friendly pat.

“I’m fucking with you, Zack. Fucking with you.” He sipped his bourbon. “But Freddie Arzghanian, he’s got guys like that all over the place, and they’ll do shit, major shit, no questions asked.”

“Like plant a fake bomb in a skybox?”

Cumbaa nodded.

“Just to get Darcy Whitehall’s attention,” he said.

“Or blow up a car in an airport parking lot.”

“To make him shit his pants.”

“But why? If Arzghanian already has Darcy Whitehall in his pocket, why does he need to do all that?”

“Oh-oh-oh, I forgot to tell you,” Cumbaa said. “Sorry, but I left out some important shit. I drink a couple bourbons and my brain goes soft. Vodka, gin, it doesn’t affect me like that. Bourbon though . . .”

Cumbaa drained his drink. He signaled the waitress, and she brought refills. The lights kept twinkling out on the runway.

“See, four or five years ago, something funny happens,” said Cumbaa. “Darcy Whitehall gets religion.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, suddenly, out of the blue, Darcy Whitehall decides he doesn’t want to do business anymore with Freddie Arzghanian. He wants to go clean.”

“Which isn’t so easy.”

“Which is im-fucking-possible. Except, for some reason, maybe because they been pals so long, Arzghanian cuts Whitehall some slack. Maybe thinks he’ll hang himself with it and come crawling back and he’ll get into him even deeper. But a funny thing happens: Whitehall makes it work. He’s borrowed a shitload of money from legitimate sources, and he’s mortgaged to the proverbial hilt, but he’s turning a profit on the up-and-up. Not a giant profit, but respectable. Turns out, he’s a decent goddam businessman and he really doesn’t need Freddie Arzghanian.”

Cumbaa sipped bourbon and smacked his lips. I looked at
my glass of beer. I didn’t want any more of it. I was all beered out. I was trying to decide if I should move to rum.

Cumbaa said, “But suddenly the worm turns. Suddenly something is up with Darcy Whitehall. Suddenly he needs money and he needs it bad and he is cozying up to Freddie Arzghanian. It looks like they’re in business again.”

“How do you know all this?”

“Hey, we know. We know all kinds of shit.” Cumbaa sat back in his chair, stretched out his legs. “We know, for instance, that a U.S. citizen by the name of Zachary Taylor Chasteen came into possession of one hundred forty pounds of gold bullion last year, sold it to a dealer in Miami, and has yet to pay taxes on the profit, which was somewhere near two million dollars.”

I didn’t say anything. Cumbaa smiled.

“Hey, don’t go dark on me, Zack. I’m prepared to work with you here. You brought in a creep, you’re entitled to a little something.”

“That creep cost me two years in prison for something I didn’t do.”

“Yeah, yeah. You got screwed, it sucked, life’s unfair. But like I said, I’m willing to work with you here. Tit for tat. You help me, I help you.”

I didn’t say anything.

Cumbaa drained his bourbon, set the glass down on the table.

“You got a card?” he said.

“No card.”

“So what’s your cell-phone number?”

“No cell phone.”

“You’re shitting me.”

I shrugged.

“OK, jeez, here’s what I’m gonna do.” He opened the briefcase, rummaged around, and pulled out a cell phone. He handed it to me. “It’s old-school Nokia but it works. Got it on an international plan, courtesy of Uncle Sam. Here, got this, too.”

Cumbaa pulled an AC adapter and a charger from his briefcase.

“Now you don’t got no fucking excuse if I call you and you
say the fucking phone lost its juice, know what I mean? I’m on the last flight to San Juan, then I’ll be in Mo Bay day after tomorrow. We’ll talk, OK?”

He got up, grabbed his briefcase, gave me a slap on the back.

He said, “And all the money you got, Chasteen? I’m letting you pick up the tab.”

It was a pretty good turnout for Monk’s memorial service, maybe a hundred of us in the chapel at the Florida National Cemetery in Bushnell. I sat beside Rina Murray, who had driven up from Tampa with Monk’s wife, Annie, and the two children. The little boy, Donnie, named after his dad, was four; the little girl, Taylor, three. Both cute as could be.

We sang a couple of hymns, and the chaplain said some prayers and made a few generic remarks about Monk and how he was such a fine man who had served his country well. While the chaplain was talking, little Donnie blurted out: “My daddy played football!” It got laughs out of everyone, and drew more than a few tears.

A few of Monk’s friends got up and told stories on him, but I wasn’t one of them. When the service was over, we all filed outside and walked down a path to the “Veterans Memory Garden.” There was a nice breeze moving through the pine trees, as pleasant as a day like that could be. The chaplain said a few more prayers, then Annie took the metal canister and placed it inside a vault that already had a brass plaque with Monk’s name on it.

An army bugler played taps, and a representative from the AmVets presented Annie with an American flag. As he was
handing it to her, Donnie raised a hand to his forehead in a salute. Little Taylor copied her big brother. People were misting up like crazy, and I was one of them.

Some of Monk’s army buddies had reserved a room at the AmVets post, with a buffet and a bar. Most everyone dropped by for a while.

I stood around talking with a guy named Clint who had driven down from Toccoa, Georgia. He and Monk had known each other when they were stationed together at Fort Sill, Oklahoma.

“Home of the 61st Ordnance Division,” Clint said. “We were a wild bunch, I’ll tell you. Had to relieve all that pressure somehow, blow off the steam, you know? Hell, one time, me and Monk and this fellow named Scotty Connigan . . .” He stopped. “You know Connigan?”

“No, sure don’t.”

Clint looked around the crowd.

“I’m surprised Scotty Connigan isn’t here. He and Monk were pretty tight, although they were opposite as day and night, Monk so big and outgoing, Scotty Connigan this skinny little guy, hardly ever said two words. Anyway, this one time, a bunch us . . .”

I half listened as Clint told a long story that involved stealing a jeep from Fort Sill and then driving around the nearby town of Lawton trying to pick up girls.

Clint said, “You ask me, the prettiest girls in the world, they come from Lawton, Oklahoma.”

When he was done I moved across the room and talked a bit with Annie and the kids. She was a shy, pretty woman who’d been through her share of hell in the last couple of years. She’d met Monk in Sarasota and been dazzled by his big personality, his house on the bay, his big plans for the future.

“He had this idea for selling time-shares in a fleet of fancy yachts at marinas all over the world. He was getting investors and buying boats, and then everything just kind of fizzled out,” Annie said.

They’d sold the house on the bay and moved to a smaller place outside of Brandon. There was a bankruptcy, which staved off creditors for a little while, but then Monk began racking up other debts and everything just kept piling up on them.

“I knew Monk had done some work for the government in the past, but he didn’t like to discuss it. Joked that it was one of those ‘if-I-tell-you-then-I-gotta-kill-you’ kind of things. But he started talking about getting in touch with some people he used to work with, and I had a feeling that’s what it was all about,” Annie said. “Then he came home one day, said he had a lead on a good job and was flying out that afternoon. Said he couldn’t tell me all the details, but that it was going to be something good. That was four months ago, the last I heard from him. I didn’t even know he was in Jamaica, until I got the call that, well, you know.”

The children were getting antsy. The little girl started to cry.

Annie said: “They’re ready for their naps. I need to see if there’s a place where they can lay down for a while.”