Mortal Dilemma Page 15

  “In the guest room, I guess. He walked out when I hit Shaheed with my gun. Your gun.”

  “Keep it. Let’s check on my houseguest.”

  We walked into the guest room. Jock was on the bed, sound asleep.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 1

  YOUSSEF AL BASHAR and Saif Jabbar sat on the sand of Smathers Beach in Key West. It was late in the day and the crowd would be gathering at Mallory Square on the other side of the island to watch the street performers and the sunset. Each of the Arabs was wearing shorts, a t-shirt, and boat shoes. It was their attempt to blend in with the local tourist population, and it worked because Key West drew people from all over the world. Even their beards were not out of place in an island city that drew more than its share of latter-day hippies.

  “I’m worried,” Youssef said. “I haven’t heard from any of the others and they don’t answer their phones.”

  “What do you think happened?”

  “They’ve either been taken or they’re dead.”

  “Four men in one day?” Jabbar asked. “How could that happen?”

  “I don’t know, but Jock Algren is a very dangerous man.”

  “Is he good enough to take out four good men?”

  “Three good men. The cab driver is a planner, not a fighter. But he was the only one we could get at the time. He was already in Miami for some reason. I was told to use him.”

  “What do we do now, Youssef?”

  “We must assume the others are dead. My source tells me the woman called Duncan has gone back to Longboat Key, but that Royal is still here. Abdullah was supposed to have killed him today, but both he and the cab driver have disappeared. Royal may still be alive.”

  “Do you think he killed Abdullah and the cab driver?”

  “No. Royal’s a lawyer who likes to fish. He would be no match for our men. It has to be Algren who took them.”

  “Do we go to Longboat Key?” Jabbar asked.

  “Not yet. I want to get Royal and I think he’s still here. The woman will not be a problem. There is a man, an American, who is my source on Longboat Key. He will take care of her. I do not trust this man. He is not one of us. He is not a believer. But he will kill her for money, and she won’t be expecting a Westerner to come after her.”

  “Do you think Algren knows we came to kill his friends?”

  “Probably. Our source told us that Royal and the woman came to Key West. He also told me that they flew in a private plane. Algren is smart and he probably knows we planted that card in his wallet and the only reason we’d do that is to lure Royal and the woman here.”

  “How do you know Royal is still in Key West?” Jabbar asked. “He could have left today.”

  “I know he was here this afternoon because the cab driver called me and I ordered Abdullah to set up an ambush and kill him. The cab driver called me when he let Abdullah off at the Marina and said everything was set. That was the last I heard from him.”

  “It’s a six- or seven-hour drive to Longboat Key. If he’s going, maybe he’ll fly,” Jabbar said.

  “Yes. I want you to go to the airport and watch for him at the private terminal. The only scheduled flights out tonight would actually take him longer than driving. If you get the chance, kill him.”

  “What if he’s already gone?”

  “Then we’ll hear about it when he gets to Longboat Key.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 1

  I STOOD IN the gathering dusk in front of the ramshackle building that served as the sky dive office and operations center. I watched the Coit Airways’ flagship, a single engine Beech Bonanza, line up on the runway on final approach. Russ to the rescue.

  He was his usual jovial self and didn’t ask me anything about Key West. He talked about his days as a young Navy fighter pilot stationed at the Key West Naval Air Station, and the good times to be had on Duval Street before the tourists began to come in swarms. It was the days when an unknown singer named Jimmy Buffet performed in the Chart Room Bar at the Pier House hotel, and an aspiring writer who was called Taco Tom tended bar and grew into the popular mystery writer and spinner of Key West tales, Tom Corcoran. It was a magical time, Russ said, and a place where young men’s dreams came true. At least for a while.

  When we landed at Sarasota, I called J.D. “Patti’s going to meet Russ and me at Tiny’s. Want to join us?”

  “Sure. When?”

  “It’ll take us some time to get the plane gassed and cleaned, and drive to Tiny’s.” I looked at my watch. “Eight o’clock?”

  “I’ll see you then. How will I recognize you?”

  “I’ll be the guy whose bones you’ll immediately want to jump.”

  “Other than Russ, you mean.”

  “Well, yeah. I guess. Of course, I’ll probably be too tired to be of much use to you.”

  She laughed. “We’ll see.”

  * * *

  Tiny’s was crowded with the usual cocktail-hour folks who were still hanging around. Some would be there until closing time, and some had been there since Susie opened the doors at one in the afternoon. Patti Coit was sitting at a high-top table in the corner. I waved and Russ went to join her. Susie, the owner and bartender, was right behind him with the vodka and cranberry he always drank.

  My buddy Logan Hamilton was one of those who came early and stayed late. He was sitting at the bar kibitzing with Cracker Dix and Sam Lastinger, his voice slurred by the scotch he’d been drinking all afternoon.

  “Been here long?” I asked him.

  “My philosophy is that if you’re going to drink all day, you have to start early.”

  “I think I saw that on a t-shirt in Key West.”

  “Those bastards. Plagiarism is a sin. You’d think they’d know that.”

  “Heard you were in the Keys,” Sam said, “and J.D. kind of stranded you there.” Sam was a bartender at the Haye Loft, an upscale bar on the key. He knew everybody and usually knew everything that was going on in our little slice of paradise. He was the central node on the island’s information highway, whose sole purpose was to carry island gossip. Sammy was in his mid-forties, looked younger, and apparently appealed to women of every description.

  “Yeah,” I said, “I thought she might have been sneaking around with you, so I came back.”

  “I understand your concern, Matt, but you don’t have to worry about J.D. and me. She seems well preserved, but she’s what, late thirties? Anybody over twenty-five has already aged out of my dating parameters.”

  “What’s the younger end of that rather short spectrum? Eighteen?”

  “Usually,” he said, enigmatically, and went back to his drink.

  “Matt,” Cracker said in a low voice, almost a whisper. “You remember a couple of days ago I told you that some guy was at Mar Vista looking for you?”

  “Yeah. Has he been back?”

  Cracker pointed to the end of the bar. “That’s him.”

  The word “unkempt” didn’t quite do justice to the man I saw on the last of the six stools at the short bar, his back to the wall that ran at right angles to the counter. He was glaring at us, sipping his beer from a bottle. He was wearing a white muscle shirt, and even in the dim recesses of Tiny’s, I could see stains of various descriptions. Mustard, ketchup—which I surmised might really be blood, probably from fish, but who knew—engine grease, coffee, and several other smudges that I did not recognize. His denim shorts had been cut from a pair of jeans, one leg shorter than the other, both legs frayed, no hems. His ball cap might have once been green and it sported a generic fish embroidered on the crown. His feet were stuffed into ancient boat shoes. He wore a scraggly, anemic beard, gray and sparse, like a man who was incapable of growing a full beard, or maybe one who had contracted mange from a decrepit dog. Patches of reddened skin showed in random blotches in places where hair didn’t grow.

  I walked over to him, and was hit by a scent that transcended body odo
r. He smelled like three-day-old roadkill. I had a sudden vision of buzzards following him around and attacking like the birds that went after Tippi Hedren in Hitchcock’s movie, The Birds. I was a bit surprised that he wasn’t as old as he appeared from a distance. He was a guy who kept in shape. Except for regular baths. I held out my hand, and said, “I’m Matt Royal. I understand you were looking for me.”

  He grinned, showing big yellow teeth not unlike those of predators that show up in nightmares. He spit in his right hand and held it out to me. I quickly withdrew my hand. “Look,” I said, “I used to be a lawyer and I dealt with assholes on a daily basis. You don’t even come close to some of the ones I tried cases against. What did you want with me?”

  “Go fuck yourself.”

  “Maybe you could demonstrate that maneuver to me.”

  “What?”

  “I would like for you to show me how to fuck myself. I think it’s an anatomical impossibility.”

  “I heard you were a wiseass.”

  “Some would call me humorous.”

  “I’d call you an asshole.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Some call me that, too. Now what did you want with me?”

  He laughed, a guttural sound that was as much growl as anything. “I came to tell you that I’m going to kick your ass and then I’m going to fuck that girl cop you hang out with.”

  My first instinct was to punch him in the face, to beat him until I got tired, or just pull out my pistol and shoot him, maybe in the balls. I swallowed my anger, reasoning that I couldn’t bust up Susie’s bar, and if I shot the guy, I’d probably go to jail, no matter the provocation. I said, “That might be harder to do than you think.”

  “How do you figure that?”

  “First of all, I might be a lot harder to whip than you think, and even if you were able to take me, you’d still have to deal with J.D. She’d kick your ass all the way back to whatever swamp you crawled out of.”

  He laughed again, or growled. “You look like some dandified pussy to me.”

  I saw it coming, but was almost too slow to stop it. His right hand was wrapped around a beer bottle and it was coming off the bar, headed directly to my precious face. I put up my left arm in a blocking motion and took most of the force with it. At the same time, I punched him on the side of his face with my right fist, driving through and pushing his head into the wall. I followed him in and pushed my forearm into his neck, under his chin, trapping him against the wall. I heard the beer bottle shatter as it hit the floor.

  I reached around with my left hand and pulled the pistol Paul Galis had given me out of the waistband at the small of my back. I put it up under his chin. I got close to his face and whispered, “I ought to kill you, you worthless son of a bitch, and I will if I ever see you within a mile of my girl. You got that?”

  “Fuck you, lawyer man,” he hissed. “You shoot me here and you’ll spend the rest of your life in jail. Go ahead. I dare you.”

  I didn’t take my eyes off him. I called out. “Does anybody see a gun around here?”

  A chorus of “no’s” filled the small space. “Maybe not,” I said and brought my knee up forcefully into his crotch.

  He slumped to his knees and then began to struggle to stand, his face suffused with anger and pain and what I can only describe as meanness so pure that it sent a shiver of dread through my system.

  I was backing off, my gun still pointed at him. The whole action had taken no more than a minute or so. The front entrance was only three or four feet from where I was standing, separated from the bar by a permanently affixed narrow high-top table and four stools. I sensed the front door opening, and then J.D.’s voice, controlled and menacing. “What’s going on, Matt?” She’d taken in the scene as she entered, processed it, and was ready to take action if needed.

  “Not much,” I said. “This man is just leaving, but I want you to take a good look at him. He says he’s going to rape you.”

  “I didn’t say ‘rape,’ asshole. She’ll be begging for it.”

  I had to give it to him. He still had some fight left. J.D. came up beside me, held out her badge and said, “I’m Detective Duncan. Let me see some identification.”

  “I don’t have any on me and I’m not required by the United States Constitution to carry any.”

  “Then I’ll have to arrest you.”

  Again, the laugh/growl. “On what grounds?”

  “Public brawling.”

  “Look at this situation. I’ve been hit in the face, choked and kneed in the balls by a man with a gun. How long do you think it’ll take my lawyer to get me out and sue the shit out of your department?”

  The man did have a point. “Let it go, J.D.,” I said. “But next time you see him, plug him. Call it self-defense.”

  “Get out of here,” she said to the man. “Stay off my island.”

  He grinned. “I’ll leave, but you can’t make me stay off the island. I’m a United States citizen. I got lots of rights you don’t want to fuck with.”

  I backed up and he walked out, bent a little as he favored his testicles. Just as he pushed open the door to the outside, he said, “We’re not done, Royal.” He winked at J.D., grinned, said, “Later, babe,” and was gone.

  “Nobody touch the beer bottle,” J.D. said. “I’ll be right back.” She walked out the door.

  “You might have underreacted there, buddy,” Logan said. “Probably should have shot him.”

  “You’re probably right,” I said. “I get the feeling that I’ll have to deal with him again.”

  “Yeah,” Logan said, “and you know what Jock always says: ‘Preventive maintenance.’”

  Susie was standing behind the bar, pouring me a cold draft. She laughed. “I think you mean ‘preemptive strike.’”

  “Well, it was something like that.”

  J.D. returned with an evidence bag and latex gloves from the supply she always kept in her car. She pulled the gloves on, picked up the shards of the bottle, and put them in the bag. “I’ll have the techs run his prints first thing in the morning,” she said.

  “You were very ferocious, Matt,” Cracker said, his voice slurring some. He’d been here awhile, too. He and Logan always found a way to spend an otherwise boring afternoon. Cracker maintained that the more he drank, the less boring his day became. A sentiment to which Logan happily subscribed.

  J.D. hugged him. “Cracker, you’re a hoot, but if you think you saw ferocious just now, you should see Matt when his bacon isn’t crisp enough.”

  “A terrible sight, I’m sure,” Cracker said. “Why do you put up with him?”

  “Probably the same reason you put up with Logan,” she said. “He responds on short notice.”

  “Logan responds to offers of good whiskey. But you’re not talking about scotch, are you?”

  J.D. grinned and turned to me. “Are you okay, Matt?”

  “Yeah. This has been a pisser of a day. Let’s go home and I’ll tell you all about it.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 1

  THE DAY WAS winding down. Night was approaching, and twilight enveloped the island. J.D. and I were snuggling on the sofa, the house lights dim. A commercial mullet boat, its running lights glowing in the dusk, ran north on the Intracoastal, headed for Cortez and home. A gibbous moon was poking its head above the eastern horizon, its beams casting a glow on the darkening surface of the bay.

  “Do you know a lawyer in Orlando named D. Wesley Gilbert?” J.D. asked.

  “Old D. Wesley. I know of him. I’ve never actually met him. We didn’t exactly run in the same circles. Why?”

  “What do you think of him?”

  “He’s a supercilious ass. Why are you asking about that idiot?”

  “He’s turned up in the Fortson case. Could he be dirty?”

  “I’ve never heard anything like that, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he was.”

  “Why do you say that? That you wouldn’t be surprised.”

/>   “I never knew D. Wesley’s dad or grandfather. They were both dead by the time I began practicing in Orlando. Everything I heard about them was good. They were first-rate lawyers and between them, over a period of fifty years, they built one of the largest firms in Florida. D. Wesley’s dad was a decorated infantry officer in Europe during World War II, and he came home and went to work with his father’s firm. D. Wesley was born shortly after the war, went to law school and came back to the firm.”

  “Sounds like quite a family. Why are you so down on D. Wesley?”

  “He’s an ass,” I said.

  “You said that. Give me something more. Why do you think he’s an ass?”

  “He’s one of those guys you meet every now and then who is the apple that fell a long way from the tree. He’s pretty much the antithesis of his father and grandfather. He has a place in the firm, but he’s just there. They don’t let him do any legal work because he doesn’t know how. The firm has continued to grow, but that’s because of the other partners.”

  “Doesn’t he own the firm?”

  “No. The firm grew so much and has so many partners, that no one owns even as much as 1 percent. He inherited a lot of money from his dad, but I doubt he gets paid much by the firm. He has an office there, but I don’t think he even shows up much. He’s rich and he’s lazy, and that’s a dangerous combination. I’ve heard from some of the partners in the firm that they pay him a salary with the stipulation that he stays out of their hair.”

  “So, what does he do?”

  “Plays a lot of golf and marries a new trophy wife every few years. He shows up at big social functions and likes to get his picture in the papers.”

  “Is he rich on the same level that Fortson was?”

  “I doubt it. I’ve heard rumors a few years ago that he might be headed for financial trouble. The law firm wasn’t paying him anywhere near enough to finance his lifestyle. But then the rumors stopped. Maybe he’d come into some money. His grandfather had owned a lot of property in different parts of the country. People figured some of that sold and D. Wesley got the money.”