Clint Faraday Collection C: Murder in Motion Collector's Edition (11 page)

“
People
came by all the time and I think Flora told them to say big hellos.
Dickerson and his wife gave her trouble every time they came in. We
had six or eight come over and ask all about you and us. We hugged
them all. They acted like big super-mogul Henry wasn’t even
there.”

“
What
does he do – other than be obnoxious?” Clint asked,
giggling.

“
That’s
about it, I guess. He says he owned some company in New York. I
acted like the last thing I wanted to hear was how some silly
two-bit egomaniac got his pitiful little stash. Manny will
know.”

They chatted about more pleasant things for
an hour or so. Clint was caught up on all the local happenings,
then he went back to his place and caught up with his e-mail and
such, then called Manny.

“
He was a
stockbroker with his own company. He liquified before he came here,
according to the information. Something over six million
dollars.

“
He’s
terribly impressed with money. Judi got us started and we all ended
up worth several hundred billion cash. She said she only kept fifty
grand or so around the house for emergencies. That wouldn’t be
enough to notice if somebody took it.”

“
According to the information?”

“
He
didn’t own that company. It closed because Harold Didrickson was
dying of cancer.”

“
WP?”

“
That’s
the strangest part of it. Definitely and positively no. He was in
on some things at the fringes with some big families in York. There
was nothing that would put him onto witness protection. He was just
a puppet they used in several ways. He probably cleared about
thirty grand a year and some expenses. Now he’s here with six
million in the bank?”

“
Well, so
long as he keeps it to himself, who cares,” Clint said. “Why was he
with you at the Lemon Grass at all?”

“
His
wife, Cathy-dear, had met Judi and they happened to come in as we
did. They inserted themselves. We got rid of them when Judi said
she had to go. They didn’t have much choice. They left,
too.”

“
Contrived?”

“
Obviously. Judi said she ran into her at the garden club.
There’re not ten people in the world less interested in gardening
than Cathy-honey.”

They talked a bit, then Clint rang off. The
Dickersons were probably just pain-in-the-asses with delusions who
were trying to find a place they’d fit. They’d inherited – or stole
– a lot of money.

Clint’s nutty botanist/musician friend, Dave,
came by and asked why Xavier Franconi was in town asking about new
people in the area. Did he think no one here would know who he
was?

“
Who is
he?” Clint asked.

“
Oh,
right. The music. He was a sort of front man for some of those
formula bands the mobs put together in the mid-eighties. Sort of a
muscle/security chief.”

“
Which
mob? Not California, surely!”

“
Somebody
operating out of Motown. That’s where that kind of crap started.
One or two made it pretty big, most flopped out after a year or
so.”

They talked about the comarca and their
mutual Indio friends. Dave got along with the Indios as well as
Clint.

Later Clint went over to the Rip Tide for
talk and a couple of draft beers, then went into town for awhile,
met a girl from New Zealand and had a very pleasant night.

“
Clint?
Sergio here.”

“
Yo?”
Clint answered the phone while laying on his hammock on the deck
drinking coffee. Laura had just left to get back to her group
before they woke up so they wouldn’t know she wasn’t at the hotel
last night.

“
Remember
those Dickerson, er, people on Bastimentos?”

“
I’d like
to forget. What’s up?”

“
A
cousin, Danny Lesterinni, is dead. It looks like their neighbors
have had enough of them. I’m going out. Care to come
along?”

Clint considered, decided he couldn’t care
less, remembered what Dave said about possible mob connections and
what Manny said about him not being anybody important to any
mob.

“
I’ll
come over. We can take my boat.”

“
I
already sent the big boat. I’ll be on the dock.”

Clint threw on some clothes (he didn’t wear
anything until he decided what he was going to do on a given day)
and headed for the police dock. Sergio was waiting and they headed
for Bastimentos.

“
It seems
this Lesterinni was as popular among the people out here as the
rest of them. He was chopped up pretty well. I think maybe, from
what they told me on the phone, he was tortured with a machete
until he bled to death. We won’t know until Doc gives a
verdict.”

Clint nodded and maneuvered into the overdone
dock with it’s nispero, teak and cedar gear house on the end.
Sergio looked at it and shook his head. He hadn’t been closer than
in the bay out a distance where very little could be seen of the
house. He shook his head again at the view from the dock of the
overdone ostentation.

“
Loads of
class,” he remarked. “Too bad it’s all mud-bottom low.” Clint
grinned.

Victor met them at the dock and said he had
some serious questions about that body.

“
What
kind of questions?” Sergio asked of his sergeant.

“
How some
of those cuts were supposed to be made with a machete, not a
fileting knife. How he got those burns all over his body from any
machete. Mainly, why anybody would report that it was done with a
machete.”

“
The
person who called, a Julia Bianco, said it looked like he was
chopped to pieces with a machete. She probably wouldn’t know the
difference and she was hysterical,” Sergio replied.

“
Oh.
Well, he’s over there (pointing to a little gazebo. It seemed they
didn’t build a gazebo, after all. They built three).”

They walked over to check out the scene. It
was gory. Clint noticed the blood spatter patterns and smirked at
Sergio and Victor.

“
Yeah,”
Sergio suggested. “He was dead before he was tortured. It would
thus appear someone wants us to think he was tortured.” Clint
nodded his agreement.

“
There’s
a lot strange about this one,” Victor said. “This looks like
something set up on a movie lot. Someone wants us to think the
Indios did it, or the blacks. The Indios wouldn’t do anything like
that and the blacks would have done a lot of different things, but
not like that.”

“
It’s
like a stage setting,” Sergio replied.

Clint remembered what Bob said at the Golden
Grill. “That’s for dead certain,” he remarked.

They went on to the house when Doc came over
in the hospital boat. He’d taken one look and said, “They think we
don’t know anything about CSI? Surely they don’t really think we’ll
fall for something this obvious!”

“
They
would in New York,” Clint replied. “If they paid the right person
it would already be marked as an unsolvable case because it was
racially motivated and a hate crime with fifty thousand suspects in
the area and no clues that would point in any particular
direction.”

“
But
there are only about two thousand here,” Sergio pointed out. Clint
gave him the finger.

Dickerson and his wife were sitting with
three people in the large overdone salon. The women were huddled in
one area and the men in another. The room was like a big dance
hall, complete with a wet bar on one side.

“
Casino
elegance,” Victor mumbled to Clint, who nodded. “They’re
casino-type people,” he answered.

Sergio got the names and passport copies and
such from each of them, asked a few questions and said he’d be back
later when the ME finished his CSI.

“
You have
a ME and CSI team?” Catherine, the wife, asked, looking a bit
nervous and scared.

“
Certainly!” Victor said. “We’re not really in the eighteen
fifties here. We have to send a lot of things to Panamá City for
analysis, but we have as modern a lab as anyone.”

They moved around the house and asked very
few questions. Clint was cornered by Dickerson and asked how long
the investigation would take. He had to go to the states for three
days soon.

“
It takes
as long as it takes,” Clint answered. “They’re
efficient.”

“
I can’t
believe they’d actually do anything like that!” he cried. “I know
they hate us, but I didn’t think they’d do anything like
that
!”

“
They
who?” Clint asked innocently.

“
The
Indios or those niggers, of course! Who else would do anything like
that?”

“
Who else
indeed?” Clint agreed. “Trouble is, it’s plain as the overdone
house here that none of them did it. One glance told us
that.”

“
Oh?
You’re an expert at that, too?” he spat.

“
Yup!
Full qualifications from Florida, the US, here ... it’s my
business.”

“
Er! I
didn’t ever ask what your business is?”

“
Investigator. Private and official.”

“
They
never told ... I mean, you must have an interesting ... I mean,
it’s, er, good to know they have somebody here who knows his ass
from a cowflop with this kind of thing.”

Clint had to turn away to hide that he was
trying not to laugh out loud. Dickerson was definitely not prepared
to meet anyone who knew anything whatever about murder
investigation.

“
We’ll
have some questions later,” he said. “We have to know what to ask
you and we have to get background information on all of you.
Routine to know everything you can about suspects.”

“
Er.”

Clint went back to Sergio. He said he wanted
information about this bunch of rich thugs, bimbos and trailer
trash.

Mobs?

“
Manny,
there’s something to do with some mob connections here,” Clint
said. “These people wouldn’t fit with anyone else. They’re trying
to put on a face like they’ve been around the world and are high
class sophisticated and elite. They’ve probably never been outside
of ... Dave said Motown.”

“
I have a
contact there. Jefferson. Used to be mob, went legit the last few
... Wait! That’s Cleveland. Greco’s in Motown.”

“
Mo
Jefferson? I met him in South Florida. I think I met Greco ...
Miklocaras there, too. I kind of liked Greco. I was totally neutral
about Mo.”

“
I can
get some info from them if they have it. Sylvia says she thinks
she’s seen one of those women. Women who hang around their mansion
in Carmel.

“
What’s
going on? I heard that somebody got butchered by the
Indios.”

“
It was
supposed to look like that.”

“
I
see.”

Clint remembered what Dave said. “What do you
know about a Xavier Franconi?”

“
Cheap
wannabe hanging around the music business, then into art and
jewelry theft. Not worth troubling about.”

“
Even if
he’s here in Bocas?”

There was a long pause. “I think I want to
know some things. I’ll keep you informed.”

Clint thanked him and hung up.

What could it be? If Manny said they weren’t
witness protection what were they? If they were trying to hide why
the ostentation?

Clint decided to go fishing. It was the last
thing those people would expect of him.

Clint was tying to his deck when he heard his
phone buzz. He’d forgotten it. Again.

It quit before he got to it. There was a
notation that he had 23 missed calls. He checked his incoming and
found that Judi, Sergio and Manny had called him. Repeatedly.

Manny first: “Clint, there’s some weird kind
of complete silence in an area there never is. I can’t find out
what’s going on here. Mention Xavier Franconi in passing or
something when they’re around.”

“
This is
somehow connected with the mobs, then?”

“
Yeah,
Clint. I just can’t get a hint as to how.”

They talked, then Clint called Judi, who said
Manny and Sergio were trying to contact him. She didn’t know why,
but it was urgent.

Sergio said he was in the police boat headed
for Bastimentos. There was a lot about those people that didn’t
click – such as that Lesterinni had had extensive plastic surgery.
Such as at least one of them had a phony passport. Such as the
business Dickerson was supposed to have sold was never his to
sell.

Clint said he’d get over as fast as he could,
which was fast with his boat. He hung up and headed for
Bastimentos. Sergio was standing on the dock talking with Victor
when Clint pulled up a few minutes later. They waited. Clint said
he wanted to try something to see if they could get a reaction.
Victor said that Cathy-sweetheart hinted about bribing him, but he
let her know there wasn’t a chance.

“
Sergio,
get DNA samples from all of them.”

“
They’ll
refuse.”

“
They
don’t know the law here. Just tell them Doc is going to take
samples, so line up.”

Sergio grinned. He said that might light a
fire or two!

They went to the house. They did know that
about the law. Sergio raised an eyebrow.