The Whistler (The Whistler #1)(9)
In a quiet voice, Verna said, “Hugo says Geismar has given the two of you a big case.”
Lacy was surprised because Hugo was a firm believer in leaving his work at the office. That, plus the BJC stressed confidentiality for obvious reasons. Occasionally, after a few beers late at night, the three of them would laugh at the outrageous behavior of some judge they were investigating, but they never used a real name.
Lacy said, “It could be big, or it could turn into nothing.”
“He hasn’t told me much, he never does, but he seems to be a little worried. What’s odd is that I’ve never considered your jobs to be dangerous.”
“Neither do we. We’re not cops with guns. We’re lawyers with subpoenas.”
“He said he wished he could carry a gun. That really bothers me, Lacy. You gotta promise me you guys are not getting into something dangerous.”
“Verna, I’ll make you a promise. If I ever feel the need to carry a gun, I’ll quit and find another job. I’ve never fired a gun in my life.”
“Well, in my world, our world, there are too many guns and too many bad things happen because of them.”
Pippin, asleep for all of fifteen minutes, suddenly erupted with a screech. Verna reached for her and said, “That child, that child.” Lacy handed her over and went to check on the burgers.
4
When Myers finally made contact, he told Lacy to meet him at the same marina in St. Augustine. Everything was the same—same sweltering heat and humidity, same slip at the end of the dock; Myers even wore the same floral-print shirt. As they sat at the same wooden table under the shade on his boat, he drank the same brand of beer from a bottle and began talking.
—
His Omar character was in real life a man named Vonn Dubose, the descendant of one of the original gangsters who did indeed begin their mischief in the rear room of a catfish restaurant near Forrest City, Arkansas. His maternal grandfather owned the restaurant, and years later died in a police ambush. His father hanged himself in prison, or at least the official report said they found him hanging. Numerous and various uncles and cousins met similar fates, and the gang had pretty much thinned out until Vonn discovered the allure of cocaine trafficking in south Florida. A few good years there provided the means to resolidify his little syndicate. He was now approaching the age of seventy, lived somewhere along the coast, and did not maintain a legitimate address, bank account, driver’s license, Social Security number, or passport. Once Vonn struck gold with the casino, he whittled his gang down to just a handful of cousins so there would be fewer hands in the till. He operated with complete anonymity and hid behind a wall of offshore companies, all of which were overseen by a certain law firm in Biloxi. By all accounts, and there were not many, he was quite wealthy but lived modestly.
“Have you ever met him?” Lacy asked.
Myers scoffed at the question. “Don’t be silly. No one meets this guy, okay? He lives in the shadows, sort of like me, I guess. You can’t find three people in the Pensacola area who’ll admit to knowing Vonn Dubose. I lived there for forty years and never heard of him until a few years ago. He comes and goes.”
“But he has no passport,” Hugo said.
“Valid passport. If they ever nail him, they’ll find half a dozen fake ones.”
In 1936, the Bureau of Indian Affairs granted a charter to the Tappacola Nation, a small tribe of about four hundred scattered along the Panhandle, with most living in small homes in the swampy outback of Brunswick County. The tribe maintained a headquarters of sorts there, on a three-hundred-acre reservation ceded by the federal government eighty years earlier. By 1990, the mighty Seminole Nation of south Florida was discovering the bright lights of the casino trade, as were tribes across the country. Coincidentally, Vonn and his gang began buying cheap land adjacent to the Tappacola reservation. At some point in the early 1990s—no one would ever know for sure because the conversations had long since been buried—Dubose approached the Tappacola with a deal too good to be true.
“Treasure Key,” Hugo mumbled.
“You got it. The only casino in north Florida, conveniently located just ten miles south of Interstate 10 and ten miles north of the beaches. Full-service casino, open twenty-four/seven, Disney-style amusement fun for the entire family, largest water park in the state, condos for sale, lease, or time-share, take your pick. A veritable mecca for those who want to gamble and those who want to play in the sun, and it’s perfectly situated within two hundred miles of five million people. Don’t know the numbers, because the Indians who run the casinos report to no one, but it’s believed Treasure Key is easily in the half-billion-dollar-a-year range.”
“We were there last summer,” Hugo admitted, as if he’d done something wrong. “One of those last-minute weekend junkets for a buck-fifty. It wasn’t bad.”
“Bad? It’s fabulous. That’s why the place is packed and the Tappacola are printing money.”
“And sharing it with Vonn and his boys?” Hugo asked.
“Among others, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”
Lacy said, “That’s in Brunswick County, which is in the Twenty-Fourth Judicial District. There are two circuit judges in the Twenty-Fourth, one male, one female. Am I getting warm?”