Bitter Legacy: A Matt Royal Mystery (Matt Royal Mysteries) (31 page)

The radio reports from the deputies and crime-scene techs were confusing, disjointed, snatches of information flowing through the circuits, adding to the chaotic situation. The witnesses all saw something different, but they were unanimous in their conclusion that the whole thing was the result of a kidnapping of a biker leader named Dirtbag.

A passerby, an elderly man who lived a couple of blocks away and walked his dog late at night, had heard the shots and called 911. A deputy on patrol was nearby and had responded within minutes. Another deputy rolled up right behind him, and together they had staunched the outflow of bikers in a frenzy to get away from a place they knew would draw cops.

Within minutes of the first deputy’s arrival, several more cruisers from the area had appeared, along with a couple of Highway Patrol troopers who’d been loitering on the nearby Interstate watching for speeders. As the night wore on, more deputies arrived and the bus from Corrections had shown up. Before it was over, two more buses were needed.

The majority of arrests were based on concealed weapons, mostly knives and brass knuckles and homemade saps. A few had pistols, and
some were drunk enough to take a swing at a cop. It was going to be a long night in booking.

Morton sat in the command car, watching the evening unfold. He hadn’t been too concerned when he heard about the fight in the bar. It was not an uncommon occurrence, not when bikers fueled with booze and testosterone gathered. But when the report came in that somebody had kidnapped James Baggett, he started to worry. Who in the hell had the balls to walk into the mob assembled in the Snake Dance and waltz out with the head guy? From the accounts coming in, it appeared that a small army of men had been involved in the take-down, but nobody had ever seen any of them before. They did not appear to be bikers. That was the only thing everyone seemed to agree on.

He got out of the car and walked toward the small knot of lieutenants and sergeants standing beside one of the buses, talking quietly. He was in uniform, and the captain’s bars on the epaulets of his chocolate-colored shirt dimly reflected the revolving blue and red lights that lit the street. The men stiffened as he approached, quieted in anticipation of their commander’s questions.

“What’ve we got?” Morton asked as he reached the men.

They gave him what they had, theories, pieces of statements given by witnesses, what physical evidence they found. It all amounted to nothing, or not much of anything. The only theory that made any sense to the officers was that a rival biker gang had invaded the Snake Dance and snatched Dirtbag. Morton was pretty sure that wasn’t the case. The men who’d taken Baggett weren’t bikers. Had they been sent by the cartel? Had Baggett been skimming profits, stealing drugs? Morton was sure it wasn’t a law enforcement operation. He’d have been informed of something like that going down in his sector of the county. Besides, cops didn’t knife people in the back and leave them. He’d have to check on the cartel connection. That had to be who organized it, but why? And why hadn’t he been informed?

He went back to the command cruiser, deep in thought. He’d make some calls, but they’d have to wait until morning. Could this thing be coming apart? He didn’t think he was vulnerable. He never showed his face, except at his meetings with Baggett and then he wore a disguise. No one knew him, and of course, his name wasn’t Morton.

The Hacker sat at his computer, the alcohol coursing through his body giving him the energy he needed to find out what the hell was going on. He’d stroke the keyboard, look closely at the monitor, jot a note on a pad on the table, and move on. The information flowing through the ether was disturbing. There had been some kind of incident at the Snake Dance Inn and James Baggett was missing.

He’d tried to call the old man, but there was no answer. The Hillsborough County sheriff’s computers were lagging behind the action. The last entry had been an hour before, around midnight. Surely they now knew more. The sheriff’s people did not know who could have snatched the leader of the Marauders. Somebody with balls, that was for sure. The law enforcement intelligence units had heard nothing of a pending raid by anybody, good guys or bad.

The Hacker was worried. Baggett was his man, the guy he called when rough stuff was needed. If Baggett were taken out of the picture, the Hacker could not complete the task assigned by the old man and he would lose the last half of his fee. He was cloaked in anonymity, hidden behind layers of secure servers and dummy addresses. He’d never used a phone other than the prepaids. That had been tough. He’d had to leave his cocoon, his refuge in the grove, and visit stores all over southwest Florida. He couldn’t buy more than two at each place, because he didn’t want some clerk to remember the man who bought more phones than usual. He stuck with large discount stores, the kind of places that do a lot of business in prepaid phones and where it was unlikely that a clerk would remember a man purchasing two phones some weeks before. He bought the minimum number of minutes for each phone, and he knew that he’d lose those
minutes if he didn’t use them within an allotted time, usually ninety days. He was cheap by nature and only bought those that he would need for an operation. A new one for each day. New phone, new number. Untraceable.

The Hacker scanned the Sarasota and Manatee sheriffs’ office computers. Nothing. He moved on to the city police departments and came up empty. He hacked into the newspapers and TV stations, picking up the bits and pieces of information that would form a story in a few hours.
Nada
.

He thought about calling Baggett, but if somebody had kidnapped him, and it looked as if somebody had, he didn’t think it wise to talk to the captors. Who could benefit by taking Baggett out of the picture? The people for whom he sold drugs? Had he run afoul of the Mexicans in some way? No way to tell.

He looked at his watch. After one. He’d try the old man again in the morning. Time to go to bed. He shut down his computer, finished his whiskey, and shuffled off to bed.

On the first day of April, I was on Logan’s balcony at sunup, sipping coffee and reading the St. Petersburg
Times
, one of several newspapers Logan had delivered daily. We’d decided that Logan’s condo was probably a safer place for us to bed down the night before, because it was on the fifth floor and only had one entrance. We weren’t sure what to expect after the night we’d had at the Snake Dance.

We’d stopped at Pattigeorge’s for a couple of drinks, bleeding off the stress of the evening, and then dropped Sam at the Haye Loft. Eric or one of the other bartenders would take him home, and we didn’t need any more alcohol.

I’d spent some time on Logan’s computer before going to bed. Florida’s secretary of state’s office has a lot of information on its Web site, including most of what you need to know about corporations. ConFla was a Florida corporation and appeared to be wholly owned by a man named Walter Driggers. The main office was in Sarasota.

I was thinking that there might be a connection between the killings and ConFla because Turk’s brother worked for ConFla and Turk had told him about the claim that Abraham wanted to bring against the phosphate industry. Maybe the brother sent the message up the chain of command and somebody got nervous. I could see how the amount of money involved in something like this could bring out the attack dogs.

I scanned through some other Web sites including the Securities and Exchange Commission’s, but found nothing much on either ConFla or Driggers. When a company’s stock is not traded on the exchanges, there is little information required by the various oversight agencies.

I Googled Driggers and found some interesting news items about
him, but not much more. He was in his eighties and had never married. He had no living relatives and had become somewhat of a recluse. He lived in the most expensive home on Longboat Key, which was saying a lot. I knew the house. He had pretty much disengaged from his business, leaving its day-to-day running to some very well-paid managers. Maybe someone in top management had taken things into his own hands and was trying to suppress any documentation that Abraham had that could affect the industry. If they couldn’t get their hands on the papers, perhaps they’d decided to kill anyone with any connection to Abraham. That would include Blakemoore, Logan, and me.

I moved to the archives of our local newspaper and came across an article written the year before by a young reporter with whom I occasionally shared a beer at Tiny’s, Robin Hartill. She’d scored an interview with Driggers and deftly pried him out of his shell. He’d told her of his rise to immense wealth, his exploitation of the land, the mines he’d dug for phosphate. He had no apologies for the environmentalists, and to the contrary, talked of his disdain for the tree huggers, as he called them. He had no living relatives, but would not divulge his intentions for his empire upon his death.

It was late, but I knew Robin was a bit of a night owl. I called her at home.

“Hey, Matt. I’ve heard you’re playing cops and robbers again.”

I laughed. “Not my fault. Hope I’m not calling too late. How’re you doing?”

“I’m fine. And you’re not calling too late. I’m hoping you’re ready to give me an exclusive on what’s been going on around here. You know, you getting shot at and all.”

“If I knew what was going on, I’d call you first. I’m wondering what you can tell me about Walter Driggers. I just read your story on him.”

“He’s not a nice man.”

“How so?”

“He lives in that big house on the bay by himself. Just has a housekeeper slash nurse, but I got the feeling there might be more to that relationship than employer-employee.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. Just a feeling. She’s an albino and just about as reclusive as he is. I’d seen her at the Publix a couple of times when I was grocery shopping late in the evening, but I never made the connection to Driggers until I went to the house.”

“Anything else?” I asked.

“There seemed to be a tenderness between them. I can’t quite explain it, but it struck me as a little odd.”

“Lovers?”

“I don’t think so. It didn’t feel like that. But there were definitely feelings there.”

“Why do you think he isn’t a nice man?”

“He’s consumed with his business,” she said. “He has no heirs and wouldn’t tell me what his plans were for the company after his death. But he was adamant that it would survive. He said something to the effect that he’d kill anybody who got in his way. I don’t think he was speaking metaphorically, either. He’s as hard as flint.”

“Anything else you can tell me?”

“Not offhand. Why are you interested in Driggers?”

“It might have something to do with the shootings. I’m just scratching around at this point.”

She chuckled. “Right, Royal.”

“Thanks. I owe you a beer.”

“And an exclusive,” she said, and hung up.

I went back to the computer, but couldn’t find anything else of interest on Driggers. For one of the richest men on the planet, he was a shadow, walled off from the world by retainers and lawyers. Robin probably had gotten more out of him than anybody else had in years.

When I finished with the computer, Jock uploaded the digital recording of Baggett’s interrogation and the contents of the SIM card in his cell phone onto Logan’s computer and e-mailed it to the man we knew as Bubba at DEA headquarters in Washington. We went to bed.

Nobody came looking for us in the night. I didn’t know what, if anything,
to make of that, but we’d all enjoyed the quiet. Logan and Jock had gone to the Blue Dolphin for breakfast. I needed a little downtime with the newspaper and my coffee. My needs are not great.

My cell rang. Bill Lester. “Matt, I don’t know what kind of ruckus you guys caused last night, but the DEA and Hillsborough County are rolling up the bikers and lots of other folks as well.”

“Ruckus? What ruckus?”

Bill laughed. “It seems that somebody grabbed the biker chief right out from under the noses of his buddies last night. Is that the guy we transported to jail for you?”

“Maybe.”

“It sure sounded like one of those operations our friend Jock is famous for. But I suspect you guys were sleeping the sleep of the innocent last night.”

“That we were, Chief. We hung out with Sammy a bit, but turned in early.”

“I hear you, Counselor. I hear you. I just wanted to let you know what’s going on.”

“You’re a dear man, Chief. I appreciate your concern.”

“Screw you, Royal,” he said and hung up. I heard him snicker just before he clicked off.

I turned on the TV, seeking out the local news channel. Sometimes they had something worthwhile on. I waited out a commercial for nutritious dog food and saw a woman standing in front of the Snake Dance Inn, a microphone in her hand. She didn’t know anything of substance, only that there had been a shooting there the night before and there were two dead, one from a knife wound and the other from a bullet to the brain. Another victim had been shot in the foot. I thought I knew what had happened with the knifing victim. The reporter added that a lot of people had been arrested, but there was no information concerning the charges or the names of either the dead or those in custody.

When Jock and Logan returned, I told them what the chief had said and what I’d seen on TV.

“Who do you think knifed that guy?” asked Logan.

“I don’t know,” I said, “but I’ll bet the dead guy was the bodyguard. Baggett seemed pretty sure that he’d be killed for not keeping his boss out of our hands.”

“You’re probably right,” said Jock. “I doubt it’s any great loss.”

“Did you hear from Debbie?” Logan asked.

I shook my head. “Not yet. She worked late last night, so she’s probably still asleep. She tends to be a night owl.”

“She needs a man,” said Logan.

“Step up,” said Jock.

“I’m taken,” said Logan. “Why don’t you step up?”

Jock laughed. “I’m kind of partial to Asian girls.”