The Whistler (The Whistler #1)(6)
Myers grunted with a smile, as if he couldn’t wait to spin a yarn. “You want the story, huh?”
“You brought it up.”
“I did.” The waitress placed their drinks on the table and disappeared. Myers took a sip and began: “It goes back fifty years or so. Kind of a loose gang of bad boys who misbehaved in various parts of Arkansas, Mississippi, and Louisiana, anywhere they could bribe a sheriff. Mainly bootleg booze, prostitution, gambling, sort of the old-fashioned sins, I guess, but with a lot of muscle and no shortage of dead bodies. They would pick a wet county near a Baptist desert, preferably on a state line, and set up their operations. Invariably, the locals would get fed up, elect a new sheriff, and the thugs would leave town. Over time, they settled along the Mississippi coast, around Biloxi and Gulfport. The ones who didn’t get shot were indicted and sent to prison. Almost all of the original gangsters were gone by the early 1980s, but there were a few leftovers from a younger generation. When gambling was legalized in Biloxi, it really knocked a hole in their business. They moved to Florida and discovered the allure of bogus land deals, along with the astonishing margins in cocaine trafficking. They made a lot of money, reorganized, and morphed into an outfit known as the Coast Mafia.”
Hugo was shaking his head. “I grew up in north Florida, went to college here, and law school, lived here my whole life, and for the past ten years I’ve investigated judicial corruption, and I’ve never heard of the Coast Mafia.”
“They don’t advertise, and their names are never in the papers. I doubt if a member has been arrested in the past ten years. It’s a small network, very tight and disciplined. I suspect most members are blood kin. It probably would have been infiltrated, busted, and everyone sent to prison but for the rise of a guy I’ll call Omar for the moment. A bad dude but a very smart man. In the mid-1980s, Omar led the gang to south Florida, which at the time was ground zero for cocaine trafficking. They had a few good years, then things went to hell when they crossed up some Colombians. Omar got shot. His brother got shot too, except he didn’t survive and his body was never found. They fled Miami but not Florida. Omar has a brilliant criminal mind, and about twenty years ago he became infatuated with the idea of casinos on Indian land.”
“Why am I not surprised?” Lacy mumbled.
“You got it. As you probably know, there are now nine Indian casinos in Florida, seven of which are owned by the Seminoles, which is by far the largest tribe, and one of only three recognized by the federal government. As a whole, the Seminole casinos are grossing four billion a year. Omar and his boys found the opportunity irresistible.”
Lacy said, “So, your story involves organized criminals, Indians who own casinos, and a crooked judge, all in bed together?”
“That’s a fair summary.”
“But the FBI has jurisdiction over Indian matters,” Hugo said.
“Yes, and the FBI has never shown much enthusiasm for going after Indians for any type of wrongdoing. Plus, Mr. Hatch, and please listen as I repeat myself, I’m not dealing with the FBI. They don’t have the facts. I do, and I’m talking to you.”
“When do we get the whole story?” Lacy asked.
“As soon as your boss, Mr. Geismar, gives the green light. You talk to him, relay what I’ve said, make sure he understands the dangers involved, and when he tells me, on the phone, that the Board on Judicial Conduct will take my formal complaint seriously and investigate it fully, then I’ll fill in as many blanks as possible.”
Hugo tapped his knuckles on the table and thought about his family. Lacy watched another shrimp boat inch through the harbor and wondered how Geismar would react. Myers watched them and almost felt sorry for them.
3
The Board on Judicial Conduct’s home was one-half of the third floor in a four-story state office building in downtown Tallahassee, two blocks from the Capitol. Every aspect of its “suite”—from the worn, fraying carpet, to the narrow, prisonlike windows that somehow managed to deflect most sunlight, to the paneled ceiling squares still stained by decades of cigarette smoke, to the walls covered by cheap shelving that swayed and bent under the weight of thick briefs and forgotten memorandums—all of it reeked of straining and declining budgets, not to mention the obvious fact that the agency’s work was not exactly a pressing priority with the Governor and the legislature. Each January, Michael Geismar, BJC’s longtime director, was forced to walk over to the Capitol, hat in hand, and watch as the house and senate committees split the revenue pie. Groveling was required. He always asked for a few more bucks, and he always received a few less. Such was the life of the director of an agency that most lawmakers did not even know existed.
The Board was comprised of five political appointees, usually retired judges and lawyers who found favor with the Governor. They met six times a year to review complaints, conduct hearings that resembled trials, and get updates from Geismar and his staff. He needed more staff but there was no money. His six investigators—four in Tallahassee and two in Fort Lauderdale—were working an average of fifty hours a week, and almost all were secretly looking for other jobs.
From Geismar’s corner office, he had the view, if he chose to take it, which he rarely did, of another bunker-type edifice even taller than his, and beyond that a hodgepodge of government office buildings. His office was large because he’d knocked out walls and added a long table, the only one in the maze of cubbyholes and cubicles BJC called home. When the Board met for official business, it borrowed a conference room in the Florida Supreme Court building.