Octopus Alibi (23 page)

“Where does he get that kind of money?” I said.

“Man lives out of his freezer and doesn’t drink. He does his own washing and uses coupons at Publix. He’s got the secret to being a millionaire in this town.”

“I’m amazed by the idea that Cootie might put that much thought into any endeavor.”

“For the first time today, I agree with you.”

“Thanks. Can I ask two more things?”

“It’s not in my self-interest to consent,” said Hayes. “You’ll ask anyway, so let me ask my question first.”

I knew what it was. “The photos were my work,” I said. “I didn’t trash them, and I hadn’t argued with her, or pissed her off. I hadn’t seen her in two weeks. I can’t believe she would have dumped them. If foul play’s confirmed, they could be a big clue.”

“Oh, yeah. It’s confirmed. Larry Riley got the toxicology results. He told law enforcement, but not the press. She died of an Oxycodone overdose. It’s a megawatt painkiller. We’re trying to find her personal doctor, ask him if he prescribed it.”

“His name’s Lysak. I already checked. There was no pain medication. At least not recently. It may have been an outdated prescription.”

“Wonderful. Does Dick Tracy need to be put on retainer?”

“Did he say anything about Gomez?”

“He said there wasn’t enough left of his head to fill a size-ten shoe.”

“But, what time did he die?” I said.

Dexter stared at the windshield.

How many times do you drop the ball before you forfeit the big game?

I said, “If your aunt didn’t discover the body and call the city, who did?”

His jaw tightened. “I don’t know,” he said. “That’s the single reason I’m being patient with you and your notions.”

“Have you told Teresa that Randolph’s under surveillance?”

Dexter looked skyward. “When’s your next moment of genius?”

“Why do you ask?” I said. “You need to borrow one?”

“Did I remember that you wanted to find the housekeeper? Did you learn anything in the past half hour?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Do I have an obligation to reveal anything to a civilian?”

“No.”

“So you don’t know how much I know or don’t. I could be a slug or a genius.”

“I suppose that’s correct.”

“Did I get this job by being a dunce?” he said.

“Probably not.”

“You’re more productive, Rutledge, when you’re asking good questions and being less of a wise ass.”

“Aren’t we all?”

“Naomi Douglas left everything to her brother, Ernest Bramblett.”

“That’s right,” I said.

“Why nothing to her foster son?”

20

A
LL WE NEEDED WAS
the FDLE, the Coast Guard, the ATF, and the DIA. We could have had a quorum on Dredgers Lane. We already had a traffic jam.

I was so inside myself, thinking about Naomi and Gomez, their mother-son relationship, that I’d ignored Dexter Hayes’s route. I had wanted to go to the airport to retrieve my cameras and duffel, but forgot to ask. I zoned out during our eastbound run on Truman and didn’t notice he’d gone north on White. As he swung onto Dredgers Lane, I remembered that my bike was still locked outside the Green Parrot. My belongings were as scattered as my brain.

The sheriff’s SUV that Lewis drove was next to Marnie’s Jeep. The Jeep’s tire had not fixed itself. Chicken Neck Liska had wedged his Lexus against the Ayusas’ hedge. A red Mustang convertible was angled in near Carmen’s house, which meant that Monty Aghajanian, my FBI friend, had hit town. A shindig was being forced on me. I suspected someone was about to hand me my ass. At least I would know where my ass was.

Dexter stopped behind the SUV and shut off his car. “Party time, bubba,” he said. “I just invited myself.”

City and county law officers mix like ditch water and kerosene. “Talk to them about it,” I said.

I had spoken too few times in the past year with Monty Aghajanian. He had been a longtime friend and, not long ago, in my backyard, had shot a man about to shoot me. Any other day I would be happy to see him.

Monty had spent eight weeks of the past year in Quantico, Virginia, surviving the FBI’s basic-training course. The bureau had posted him to New Jersey to track down stolen Harleys and road-building vehicles, but his job description changed monthly. Now he was back, dressed like a tourist in a luau shirt, milk-white Bermudas, and leather sandals. I sensed distance when we shook hands, as if he wanted to stand away from trouble. I wanted to say that I wasn’t trouble, but I felt like a trouble magnet and he was wise to keep a shield in place. Bobbi Lewis was back in her polo-style uniform shirt. Liska, whom I hadn’t seen in church, wore a suit and tie. His new gig at the county must be weighing on him. I had never seen him wear conservative clothing. He chewed a plastic straw, looked pensive, nodded hello, but said nothing.

I introduced Monty to Hayes, explained to each the other’s job. I could tell by Monty’s face that the name threw him off. He knew all about Dexter’s father, Big Dex Hayes, and his unsavory reputation. To Monty’s credit, he took the introduction at face value, without comment.

Bobbi Lewis sipped a can of Mountain Dew. “Your phone’s been ringing.”

Sam, I thought. Certainly not Teresa.

No one said a thing. We stood on the porch and stared at one another. I assumed that Liska and Lewis were trying to make Hayes uncomfortable, silently urge him to leave. My ceiling fan spun slowly. Its blades reflected light muted by the screening. I hadn’t left the fan on, and I had locked the house.

Lewis followed my gaze. “The air was stifling,” she said. “The door was open so I took the liberty.”

I shrugged. Teresa had been back, again had left the place unlocked.

“You people want to step inside?” I said. “Cool off?”

“We’re fine out here,” said Lewis.

Aghajanian looked through the screens. “Nice day, great weather. Sure beats Jersey. We don’t see many palm trees up there.”

“Real nice,” said Dexter Hayes Jr.

Liska looked at the lane, chewed his Burger King coffee straw. He had gone cold turkey, told me in February that quitting cigarettes would save him three grand a year. A deputy at work tipped him to plastic stir sticks, so he fiddled with them like cigarettes, chewed nicotine gum between sticks, and ignored stares.

“I’ve been away too long,” said Monty. “I heard Earl Duncan on the radio, trying to sell Tye-otas and a Mitsu-bitchy. I couldn’t understand a word he said, like he had a washrag in his mouth. The man reinvented the Southern accent. Time was, I could decipher it. Hell, I used to work for him.”

“Earl’s ads have been running since World War One,” I said. “He’ll be on the air after we’re all dead.”

“He got me to buy a car,” said Hayes.

“Okay,” said Bobbi Lewis. “Let’s cut the crap.”

“Agreed,” said Liska.

I braced myself for incoming. They were about to play Pin the Shit on the Scapegoat.

Liska continued. “Monty filled us in on your nosy-business, Rutledge. He told us we’d find a prize when we searched the NCIC. Officially, he can’t do it, but he did it anyway, at great risk to his career. So none of this leaves the porch. We all together, here?”

Each of us agreed, but Liska asked again. He looked directly at Dexter Hayes.

“It’s your play,” said Hayes. “I’m in the balcony.”

“All this for Ernest Bramblett?” I said.

“Him too.” Monty brushed off a space on my porcelain-top table, boosted himself up, and sat. In his silence, he took command of the porch. I assumed he had learned that move with the Bureau, their basic lesson in dealing with municipal personnel. Liska stood back from the circle, arms crossed and the stir stick wiggling. I wondered how he felt about Aghajanian, once a subordinate at the city, now a federal agent with leverage, resources, and confidence. Maybe he wasn’t jealous at all. Maybe he was happy that he could peak his career and not have to leave the Keys.

“First off, Naomi’s brother,” said Monty. “I found an old ag assault charge on Ernest Bramblett, from South Dakota. He caught a guy humping his wife in the back room of a Sherwin-Williams store. This was in ’eighty-four. He put Sir Stud in critical condition. Standard stuff, no big deal. Even in the Midwest they’ve got crimes of passion. I searched another database. In the past four months he’s made credit card purchases in Bedford, Texas. It’s upscale suburbia, between Dallas and Fort Worth. The credit card’s billing address is a post office box. A cell phone account is billed to the same box. He doesn’t show a permanent address or utility bills, but that’s not unusual. Bramblett could be living with a woman or other friends.”

Liska glanced at the phone clipped to his belt. He must have had it set for silent buzz. He checked caller ID, pressed a button, ignored it.

“What sort of stuff does Bramblett buy?” I said.

“Groceries, gasoline, everyday bullshit. Forget about it. He’s legit. Here’s the odd news. When I talked to you, Alex, I wrote notes, which I mixed up. You gave me two names, right? That slick who’s chasing your lady? I wrote his name above Bramblett’s. The next day, I meant to find Bramblett, but I plugged in the wrong guy.”

“Meaning Whitney Randolph?”

“You bet, and talk about a file crammed with data. The National Crime Info Center must have upgraded their computer storage to accommodate him. I thought to myself, I can’t afford a house in Old Town, but this dirtbag Randolph’s going to inherit one. It took me a few minutes to figure that his age didn’t match being the brother of a woman in her sixties. I’d crossed the names, but Randolph looked like too much fun to ignore.

“I found histories under four aliases, two of them now ‘deceased.’ Your boy was a child prodigy, a con man, a jack of all trades, and a one-man gypsy band. He’s a legend in the world of scams and ripoffs. A summary from the West Coast called him the Tiger Woods of grift. Whatever you think you know about him, throw it away. Including his name.”

Aghajanian paused. He looked to the other officers for a reaction.

No one said a thing, but my mind raced. Why had Randolph stuck a Post-it note next to Yvonne Gomez’s name in the phone book?

“Keep going,” said Liska, but an odd look wrinkled his face. He checked his cell phone, which must have vibrated again. “Go ahead without me.” He went outside, found a shady spot, this time took the call.

“One of the old beefs was up in Miami,” said Monty. “I saw an old friend’s name on the read-out and gave him a call. He said they ran him out of town five years ago. The kid started as a bellhop in a couple of different hotels. Ripping off rooms was minor. His big deal was hooking up with older women, especially married ones looking for strange. He’d take a roll in the sack, then slide out in the wee hours, and a piece of jewelry or a watch would go with him. Married women can’t exactly report that kind of theft. After the detectives put out the word in hotels, he got jobs in nursing homes. He was ripping off uppers, downers, and mood pills from the fuzzy brains. They ran him off the Gold Coast, told him that their creep quota was filled. The twit pled poverty, hit up my friend for bus fare to Atlanta.”

“Out of your friend’s pocket?” I said.

Monty looked at me, eyebrows raised. “There isn’t a force in the country that doesn’t have a slush fund, Alex. Confiscated cash, for the most part. We cops know that. Randolph knew that. One more little scam.”

“If we tried it in Monroe County,” said Lewis, “we’d drain the budget to bedrock.”

Monty slid off the table. “Can I start my vacation now?”

“You can sure as hell go inside and get a beer,” I said.

Monty left the door open while he went to the kitchen.

“This puts a new scope on two of our investigations,” said Bobbi Lewis.

“One of mine, as well.” Dex Hayes called after Monty. “It’s developing into mail fraud, so it could become yours.”

Lewis handed me her empty soft drink can. “You recycle?”

“I always obey the law,” I said.

“I don’t know if you saw,” said Lewis to me. “Randolph got his picture in the paper, laughing it up with the mayor.”

“I saw.”

“You see the man in the background?”

I nodded. “Our old friend Frank Polan, from Cudjoe Key. The guy whose house you might confuse with a Club Med.”

“Polan filed a complaint three days ago,” said Lewis. “He claimed he was being set up for an investment scam. He said he wasn’t born last night. He’d been around the block a few times, and knew a Ponzi scheme a mile away. He paddled his kayak up a canal to the Freeman Substation at Mile Marker 21. He caused quite a stir up there. He walked in wearing a Speedo, a silk tank top, rubber shoes, and a mesh pith helmet. He was smeared with sunblock, and had earphones around his neck, and a cell phone clipped to his bathing suit. I guess he stays connected while he communes with nature.”

“It’s a lifestyle we all should hope for,” I said.

“Now that you mention it…” Lewis smiled and shook her head. “Maybe I should check into his hotel. Anyway, Polan gave us Randolph’s name, license number, phone number, and a sheet of typewriter paper. It was covered with handwritten six-figure numbers and percentages.”

“That was Randolph’s prospectus?” I said.

“What’s a hundred grand among millionaires?” said Lewis. “Polan must be quite the gentleman. He asked us not to tie him into anything by name. He said that bad publicity might ruin his chances to meet women.”

“Was his complaint the reason ‘No Jokes’ Bohner was following Randolph on Monday night?”

Bobbi Lewis raised her eyebrows. “Not bad, Rutledge. I’ll have to inform Billy that his techniques have slipped.”

“The slip happened years ago, when the county hired him.”

“His report included your name,” she said. “You’re in the computer for the ATM problem, and now you’re a ‘known associate.’”

Dexter Hayes coughed softly.

I ignored him. “Teresa’s the associate. I’m another scam victim.”

Both Aghajanian and Liska rejoined us on the porch. The sheriff had a look on his face. He was full of fresh information.

“You’ll like this, Monty,” said Bobbi Lewis. “We ID’d two calls on Naomi’s message service. The second was from a pay phone, and the caller also phoned his own message service in Redmond, Washington. Sure as hell, Whitney Randolph.”