The Dollar-a-Year Detective Page 14

  Which it was.

  A few days later, Stoney walked down to the Galleon Marina in search of a charter fishing boat with room for another passenger. He walked along the dock until he came upon a boat named E-Z-Livin’ with a sign on the dock saying it was available for half-day and day-long charters.

  E-Z Livin’ was just one of a long line of charter boats, but among the passengers who were already aboard this one were pretty twenty-something girls wearing bikinis that were obviously not sold by the pound.

  Stoney spotted a weathered man pouring a bucket of bait into a live well, the captain, obviously, and said to him, “Ahoy there, captain, got room for one more?”

  The captain looked at Stoney and said, “Only if you promise to never say ‘ahoy’ again on my boat.”

  By now it was time to get ready for my dinner with Lucy. I changed the bartender Louise to Barb in the manuscript because, pre-Marisa, I had spent some time with a bartender in Key West named Louise. Even though the time we spent together was entirely consensual, it was possible that Louise would read the book, conveniently forget the part about her consent, and hire a lawyer to go after a share of Bill’s royalty payments.

  Sloppy Joe’s occupies a two-story white-stucco building with redbrick pillars. The name of the establishment is painted in big lettering on the top story, front and side. Inside, the flags of many countries hang from the ceiling. The walls are covered with memorabilia from the bar’s long history, most prominently a display of photos of Sloppy Joe’s most famous patron, Ernest Hemingway, whose presence looms large all around Key West. Hanging near the Hemingway gallery is a mounted blue marlin similar to the one suspended from the hoist at the marina where I had lunch.

  It’s the heart of tourist season, so Sloppy Joe’s is crowded when I arrive ten minutes before the appointed time of six thirty. A large group of people is waiting for a table, so I’m glad I made a reservation. I give my name to the hostess, a young lady with blonde hair down to her waist and a mahogany tan. She is wearing a black tank top, Daisy Dukes, and pink rubber flip-flops.

  “I’m sorry, sir, but your entire party must be here in order to be seated,” she informs me. “But you can wait at the bar.”

  “I’ve never understood the reason for that rule,” I tell her. “Why can’t I wait for my party at my table?”

  She gives me a look that seems to say, “Hey, gramps, I don’t make the rules, so wait at the bar or go fuck yourself, makes no difference to me.”

  I locate the one vacant seat at the bar. The bartender asks, “What’s your poison, pal?”

  He is a heavyset man in his late fifties or early sixties, with a ruddy complexion, full, bushy white beard, and thinning white hair. He’s wearing a green, short-sleeved shirt of the kind fishermen wear and tan canvas shorts. He is, in fact, the spitting image of the bar’s most famous patron, Papa Hemingway himself.

  “I’ll have a diet root beer,” I tell him.

  He has Barq’s, not Berghoff’s, and serves it to me in a frosted mug. During my drinking days, I had a firm rule: no drinks with more than two ingredients or that came with fruit or paper umbrellas. The coolest drink order ever was spoken by Paul Newman in The Hustler. Taking a break from his pool game with Jackie Gleason as Minnesota Fats, Newman’s character, Fast Eddie Felson, told the bartender he wanted “J.T.S. Brown (a Kentucky bourbon), no ice, no glass.” Now that’s a man’s drink.

  Lucy Gates arrives, dressed almost identically to the hostess, but with a pink tank top. Must be the Key West uniform for young women. I give her a hug and tell the hostess, “This is the rest of my party. Now can we get a table?”

  “He giving you a hard time, Sherry?” Lucy asks the hostess.

  “No more’n any other asshat who comes in.” She picks up two menus and says, “Follow me.”

  Sherry has a brilliant future ahead of her, just not one that involves interacting with the public.

  We follow her to a booth near the back corner of the room and slide in.

  “You look good, Lucy,” I tell her. “Freedom becomes you.”

  Sherry hands us the menus and a waitress comes over to take our drink orders. Lucy wants a dirty martini and I ask for another diet root beer.

  “They don’t know how to make a proper martini in federal prison,” Lucy says. “They use milk instead of vodka and spit in place of vermouth if someone in the kitchen doesn’t like you.”

  I make a sour face. “Yuck. How’s the consulting business?”

  “Keeps me busy. And I like Key West better than Tallahassee, if you catch my drift.”

  I do. Tallahassee is the location of her prison. The waitress returns with our drinks and asks for our dinner order. Lucy wants a taco salad. I get what I always do there, “The Original Sloppy Joe Sandwich,” as tasty as a school lunch, and I liked school lunches.

  As we wait for our meals, Lucy says, “I’ve got your answer to the casino scam. Took me less than an hour.”

  I’m not surprised, given her skills.

  “Tell me.”

  “I was able to track transfers of funds from the casino’s bank account into a Schwab account owned by someone named Chester Kravitz. He turns out to be the majority owner of the Top Hat Casino in Atlantic City. The Top Hat is on the verge of bankruptcy. Kravitz has been outspoken about the unfair advantage Indian casinos have. I’m guessing that the theft of Arrowhead funds is his retribution.”

  “Did you find evidence we can use in court?”

  “Whoever Kravitz hired to hack into the Arrowhead account is a real amateur. There’s a paper trail, which I’ve printed out for you, that is easy to follow. I’m thinking that, with what I found, Sarah can get a court order to look into Kravitz’s financials, and you’ve got your man.”

  I raise my root beer glass in a toast to her: “You’re great, Lucy. Send me an invoice for that work and your check will be in the mail.”

  Our food arrives. Lucy asks, “So where are you with that murder case we worked on—the one you mentioned? Keeping in mind that, if anyone’s going to the Graybar Hotel for chasing it, it’s going to be you.”

  Which is why she’d asked me to bring my laptop computer: my fingers on the keys, and my IP address, not hers. As we eat, I detail my suspicions about Lance Porter, who has replaced Sergey Pavlov and Arthur Wainwright as my top murder suspect, and what I need to find out about him.

  “We can do that,” Lucy says. “How about we meet in your room tomorrow morning, ten-ish?”

  A woman with my own biorhythms. We enjoy our meals, then I walk back to the hotel under a starry sky, a warm breeze wafting in off the Atlantic, feeling content and confident that Lucy can help me put Lance Porter’s family jewels right into the proverbial wringer.

  34.

  Background Check

  At ten-ish the next morning, I’m waiting in my room for Lucy. There is a knock on the door. When I open it, Lucy is there, along with a room service waiter delivering coffee, OJ, and doughnuts. An investigative team travels on its stomach.

  I have the waiter put the food on a table that also holds my laptop and sign the room service check. Lucy pours herself a cup of coffee and says, “Let’s get right to it.”

  I pour coffee for myself, select a powdered sugar doughnut, and sit in front of the laptop as she pulls up a chair beside me.

  “You don’t need to know the technology behind what I’ll tell you to do,” she says. “Just hit the keystrokes and scroll on the trackpad as directed.”

  “I’ll try to make you proud, Lucy.”

  I take a bite of the doughnut; crumbs fall onto the keyboard. When I brush them off, I spill the cup of coffee onto the table, some if it falling onto her lap.

  “Not a promising start, Mr. Monkey,” she says, using cloth napkins to soak up the coffee. “But let’s press ahead.”

  I follow her instructions for the next four hours, with a break for room service sandwiches, taking a dizzying tour of personal, corporate, and governmental websites, scribbling notes
on a hotel pad along the way.

  Two hours later, I know a whole lot more about Lance Porter: I have his driver’s license, tax returns, credit card and bank statements. He graduated from Lincoln High School in Tallahassee with an A average and was on the cross-country team. He attended the University of South Florida in Tampa on an ROTC scholarship, majoring in psychology, rowing on the crew for four years, and graduating with a B average. After graduation, he was commissioned a second lieutenant in the army, served in a number of postings, and became a Ranger, earning medals, including a Bronze Star with a Combat V and a Purple Heart for service in Afghanistan.

  After leaving active duty, he went to work in a Tampa bank’s management training program. While there, he volunteered for the campaign of a candidate for mayor of Tampa and joined the mayor’s staff when his candidate won. When the mayor, a man named Lester Grimes, was elected to the Florida State Senate, Porter followed him to Tallahassee in a series of staff jobs, ending up as executive assistant.

  When Grimes was murdered, the governor appointed Grimes’s widow to fill his seat and Porter joined Russell Tolliver’s staff. The murder of Lester Grimes was never solved. He was found in his car parked in a capital garage, shot once in the head with a .22-caliber bullet. Was that Porter’s first kill? Did he hope that the governor would appoint him to fill the vacancy? Did he try that tactic again with Tolliver, this time successfully?

  I ask Lucy to help me examine Porter’s financial records for the past five years. They show a person living on a state salary, with the usual living expenses. However, beginning several weeks after Russell Tolliver died, Porter began making deposits of ten thousand a month into his bank account.

  I have an idea. I ask Lucy to take me into the records of Tolliver Motors. Sure enough, that company is paying Porter ten thousand a month as a “consulting fee.” Porter mentioned that he was helping Vivian Tolliver, who now owns the company, with some “personal matters.” But he has no auto dealer experience, so ten thou a month seems like a lot to pay him.

  We surf through other websites, finding nothing noteworthy, and then Lucy pushes back her chair, sighs, and says, “Obviously, you can’t use any of the stuff we just found in court.”

  “That’s right, Lucy. But I’ve got an idea that just might boat that fish.”

  I return to Fort Myers Beach, check in with Cubby and Marisa, telling her what I’ve learned about the casino caper and about Lance Porter, and Cubby about the Porter case only.

  My next move on the murder case needs to be one that has worked for law-enforcement people since the Stone Age, assuming that there were cops and robbers back then: surveillance. Follow the suspect until the suspect makes an incriminating move, which, soon or later, he or she always seems to do.

  I need to be on Lance Porter like holy on the Pope.

  35.

  The Merry Widow

  Compared to a stakeout, watching a turtle race at the state fair seems downright thrilling.

  For the next three days, I follow Porter around Fort Myers and on a drive to Tallahassee, using one of Cubby’s unmarked cars for the tail. Easier to notice a classic red Corvette convertible is following you than a brown Crown Vic. If I worked for the federal government, I could sit in an air-conditioned room and use a drone or a satellite to do the job. Lucy Gates might actually be able to make that happen. Or I could buy a mini drone, attach a GoPro camera to it, and hire Lucy Gates to operate it. For now, though, it’s me in a car, watching and waiting.

  While I’m tailing him, Porter never goes to the headquarters of Tolliver Motors, which is located in a Toyota dealership on Lee Boulevard, east of downtown Fort Myers, among a line of other auto dealerships. Where he does go, every night, is to the late Russell Tolliver’s house. One of those nights, he takes the Merry Widow, who is maybe twenty years older than he is, to dinner at Veranda, a romantic restaurant located in a two-story cottage-style building on Second Street near the corner of Broadway. Interesting location for a business meeting. Marisa and I have dined there a number of times, always for special occasions: for example, to celebrate the fact that it was a Wednesday.

  While the happy couple is enjoying the Veranda’s haute cuisine, I’m parked on the street outside, eating a plastic-wrapped tuna sandwich purchased at a 7-Eleven. The label of the sandwich says it was made on the day of the week I bought it, but it doesn’t specify which month or year.

  After dinner, they drive to the Tolliver homestead in Porter’s black Lexus. He leaves at one a.m. The previous two nights, he arrived at the house at dinnertime and left after midnight. Maybe Vivian Tolliver and Lance Porter were really having business meetings, planning tent sales for the dealerships with hot air balloon rides and free hot dogs.

  Or maybe they were playing hide the salami.

  Vivian Tolliver is an attractive woman, but I don’t imagine that Porter is in love with her. More likely, he wants her husband’s inventory of Lexuses, Toyota, Hondas, and Acuras.

  I recall from Porter’s military and medical records that, for the first two years after leaving the army, he was an outpatient at a VA Hospital in Tampa where he was treated for PTSD. That condition is not uncommon. When your body leaves a war zone, your mind can remain there. That happened to some former marines I knew. All but one successfully treated with medication, counseling, and support groups. The other vet killed his girlfriend, a policeman called to the scene, and then himself.

  I now believe that Lance Porter, my very own state representative, taught to kill by the army, was driven by political ambition and the desire for financial gain and that his troubled mind made it possible for him to murder five people who stood in his way. If Porter is now in Vivian’s will, she’s next.

  I’m reading the Fort Myers News-Press while parked near Porter’s house on the fifth morning of my surveillance when I come upon a story on page 3A reporting on a televised debate between Porter and his Republican opponent, Mitchell Gordon.

  The story reports that Gordon clearly won the debate by calling Porter unqualified for the position and pointing out that offshore oil and gas drilling, which Porter opposed, was predicted to produce jobs and substantial revenues for the state. Overnight polling had Gordon, the Republican, moving up five points, now trailing Porter by only eight points in the heavily Democratic district. Maybe that is enough for Porter to view him as a threat.

  I once used myself as bait to try to draw out the killer. Maybe Mitchell Gordon is about to play that role on this case.

  Mitchell Gordon is a heart surgeon in private practice. Maybe he sees himself as another Ben Carson, a successful African American doctor with a desire to give back. I decide that it wouldn’t be right to use Gordon as chum for a shark without getting his permission, so I call his office for an appointment.

  “Will you be a new patient?” the receptionist wants to know.

  I tell her that I’m a detective and I have a private matter to discuss with the doctor.

  “His first opening is three weeks from now,” she says.

  In three weeks, the doc might be a stiff in the morgue. I consider telling her that but settle on something more subtle: “M’am, I have urgent police business to talk to the doctor about and I’m certain he’ll want to meet with me.”

  She thinks about that and fits me into the schedule.

  I arrive at Dr. Gordon’s office on time, report to the reception desk, and identify myself by showing my badge. The woman, the same one I spoke with on the phone, I can tell from her voice, shows me to an examining room, where I cool my heels for twenty minutes. Apparently, “urgent” here is defined as a heart attack. “Police business” is somewhere down the list.

  Finally there is a knock on the door and a tall man, in his forties, I guess, with the lean physique of a runner, comes in and says, “Detective Starkey, I’m Mitchell Gordon. We’re very busy today. How can I help you?”

  He sits at a narrow desk against a wall. I take a side chair and I give him the executive summary of the Lan
ce Porter story, asking him to keep everything I’m telling him confidential. He agrees.

  When I’m finished, he says, “So you have reason to believe I might be in danger.”

  “Yes. I’m proposing that we work together to see if Lance Porter makes an attempt on your life.”

  “Which, ideally, you would prevent.”

  “I’m good at my job, Doctor, just like you are at yours. But neither of us can guarantee a positive outcome.”

  He nods.

  “Just so, Detective. Just so.”

  He thinks for a moment, perhaps calculating the odds as he would for a surgery, then says, “I’m in.”

  36.

  The Witching Hour

  For the next two weeks, I shadow Gordon during his campaign events, just as I did with Lance Porter for his public appearances after announcing his opposition to the oil and gas drilling bill. The doc does a town hall meeting at a firehouse, a lunch with the Rotary Club, speeches to various civic groups, and a ribbon cutting at a new Chick-fil-A restaurant.

  He is a skillful campaigner. I learn that he captained the debate team at Dartmouth before attending medical school at Harvard. I asked how he’d “ended up” in Fort Myers, given those credentials. He said, “Two reasons. My wife is from here, and this town is full of weak hearts.”

  As the campaigns continued, Gordon had closed the gap to three percentage points. If Porter is going to strike, now is the time. There is a third candidate in the race, a woman representing the Libertarian Party, polling at 4 percent, so no threat.

  Three a.m. is known in law enforcement circles as “the witching hour.” It is the time of deepest REM (rapid eye movement) sleep, when SWAT teams batter down doors to arrest sleeping perps before they know they’ve been had. And when burglars like to enter houses they know are occupied. And when assassins strike.

  It is three a.m. Dr. Gordon, his wife, Laureen, and their black lab Martin, named for Dr. King, are staying in a Residence Inn near Fort Myers International Airport. I’m positioned in the second-floor bedroom of their two-story yellow Colonial on Belle Meade Drive, located in an upscale neighborhood of Fort Myers, playing blackjack on my iPad.