Collateral Damage (31 page)

“Do you think that had anything to do with Jim's murder?” asked Jock.

“Probably not, but we ran into a Vietnamese speaker, another guy with a Vietnamese name, the Evermore Foundation, and the fact that Doc was in Vietnam and is probably being blackmailed.”

“You think Desmond's service in Vietnam is tied to the murder of his son in some way?”

“I don't know, but it occurs to me that Brewster was a Marine sniper who was in Force Recon and Fleming was Special Forces, just like Doc.”

“That's pretty thin,” said Jock.

“I know. There were a lot of men in all those units, but I'd like to check them out just to be sure.”

“How big was Operation Thanatos?”

“I don't have any idea, but I'd think it'd have to be fairly small because of the secrecy.”

“I'll see what I can get.” He unfolded his encrypted cell phone and touched a speed-dial number. He told somebody on the other end of the conversation what he needed and hung up. “He says if they exist he can get them, but it may take a day or two. He'll send the documents to my laptop.”

“Who were you talking to?”

“The director.”

“Can you get him back on the phone, see if his geeks can run down anything on Nigella Morrissey?”

I was dead tired. My watch told me it was five o'clock, but it seemed much later. I had been pushing myself all day on less than four hours of sleep, and we were no closer to finding J.D. Jock did not seem to be affected by the lack of sleep.

I put a pot of coffee on and sat at my computer to check e-mail. Among the usual spam and mundane notes were e-mails from two addresses I didn't recognize. I opened the first one. The time stamp said it had been delivered at 2:12 that afternoon. It said, “Trust me. J.D.”

I hit the reply button and typed, “Where are you?” I waited for a minute, two, hoping that I'd get a response. Any response. I did. It was from something called mail delivery subsystem with the message “Delivery to the following recipient failed permanently” with the address J.D. had e-mailed from. Dead end.

I opened the next message that had arrived at 4:17. It said, “Look at Marsh LLC, a Florida limited liability company.” That was all. Again I hit reply and wrote, “Who are you?” I got the same message from the mail delivery subsystem. No such address.

I got a cup of coffee and sat thinking about the messages. I knew that you could set up an e-mail account through one of the free service providers without much hassle. You'd get an e-mail address and the right to use the account. You didn't have to give a real name or address. However, the service that set up the account would have the electronic address of the computer from which the account originated. With the cooperation of the service provider you could find out where the message came from.

If you set up an e-mail account, sent one message, and then closed the account, a person replying to you would get the same message I got from
the mail delivery subsystem. I didn't know what the Marsh LLC message was all about, but either J.D. was trying to reach me or somebody was playing a stupid game. I didn't think it was the latter.

Jock came out of the bathroom wearing a pair of shorts and a T-shirt with the logo of the Houston Astros. He poured himself a cup of coffee and joined me in the living room. I showed him the messages and the replies.

“I'll get my techies on this. They should be able to run down the locations of the computers that sent the e-mails without much trouble.”

“Let me call Bill Lester. See if he's had any developments.”

“You ready to tell him about the bank accounts?”

“Not yet.”

Within the hour we had some information that didn't make a lot of sense. Lester hadn't heard anything. All their lines of inquiries into J.D.'s disappearance had hit dead ends. She had no family since her mother had died the year before, so there was no one to call with bad news.

Jock's people had quickly run down the electronic addresses of the computers that sent the two e-mails. The one about Marsh LLC was sent from a computer in a public library in Decatur, Georgia. The one from J.D. could not be found. The message had bounced around the ether through a number of servers, some in Eastern Europe. It was just impossible to track it.

I called Debbie's cell phone. “You at work?”

“No. My night off.”

“You alone?”

“Not that it's any of your business, but what if I am?”

“You are alone.”

“Sadly, yes.”

“Good. I need a little favor.”

“Here we go again.”

“I need you to take a look at the Florida Secretary of State's online records and see if you can find out anything on a limited liability company named Marsh LLC. I'd be surprised if the names on the paperwork are real, but see if you can follow it back to its source. I'd like to know who's behind it.”

“You need this when?”

“Now.”

“Geez. I'll see what I can do.” She hung up.

“You think Marsh is connected to this in some way?” Jock asked.

“Don't know, but I can't think of another reason why anyone would be sending me that message from a library computer.”

Jock had checked his e-mail on his laptop while we sipped coffee. There had been nothing, but he'd left the computer open on the dinette table. It pinged to let him know he had an e-mail coming in. He went to the computer and opened the e-mail. “The director came through. Nigella Morrissey is alive and well and living in Tampa. I've got her address and phone number and a whole lot more information. She's a lawyer. The ten thousand bucks that was going to her account at the Macon bank was being sent on to an account in Nigella's name in a Tampa bank.”

“I think we need to pay her a visit. Tonight.”

He was peering at his computer screen. “I agree. Listen to this. They've tracked a lot of the money from the Otto Foundation bank account that went to other corporations and foundations. Those accounts are in banks all over the country, but they have one thing in common. The money that comes in is almost immediately transferred out to a single account.”

“Let me guess,” I said. “It goes to Nigella's account in Tampa.”

“Right. And that account is her law firm trust account.”

“So that's money that is not going to be reported on tax returns because it's theoretically not her money. It belongs to her clients.”

“Right. And those clients are all corporations that have never filed a tax return.”

“That's slick,” I said. “The Otto Foundation simply files its tax returns showing expenses paid out to other foundations and businesses. I'll bet that none of those entities really exist or if they do they're just shells.”

“Right.”

“And the money is transferred from the corporate accounts into a lawyer's trust account and then to other corporations that are probably just shells.”

“Okay.”

“Nigella doesn't file any kind of a tax return on the trust account, because she's not required to, and if the Florida Bar ever audits the trust account, it'll balance perfectly.”

“So what about the corporations that get the money from Nigella's trust account?”

“Those accounts are probably controlled by Bud Stanley, or more likely, his alter ego, Robert Charles Bracewell.”

“I love the way your mind works. You're either a hell of a lawyer or a crook at heart.”

“Logan would say they're one and the same,” I said. “Can you get your geeks to see what they can find out about the corporations that Nigella is sending the money to?”

“Sure.” He typed for a bit and then waited, watching his monitor, and then peering more closely. “Done. They'll have the data for us by this time tomorrow. Logan needs to see this stuff. You're sure he's due in tomorrow?”

“Yeah, but he may not be at his best. A week on the cruise with all that food and booze would be way too much temptation for Logan.”

“Let's go find out what makes our girl Nigella tick,” Jock said.

That turned out to be easier said than done.

We were driving across the Sunshine Skyway Bridge that spans lower Tampa Bay and connects Manatee and Pinellas Counties. The sun was low on the horizon, but it still had a couple of hours before its daily descent into the Gulf of Mexico. A large ship, probably a phosphate carrier, was inbound, riding high, its Plimsoll Line showing far above the surface. It would load at the Port of Tampa and return to sea heavy with phosphate that would be turned into fertilizer for use around the world.

Few of the people who wintered on the gilded coasts of Florida knew that just a few miles inland a very different world existed, one of working men and women who mined the earth for phosphate, ran cattle, harvested citrus and vegetable crops, hunted deer, and fished the fresh-water lakes and rivers for food. A land of large Indian reservations and scrub and swamp and sinkholes and alligators and panthers, a land where man was an intruder and where life was cheap and dismal and desperate.

In the center of the state, near Orlando, the top tourist destination in the world, home of Disney and Universal Studios and SeaWorld and numerous other attractions, lay a single working cattle ranch that comprised three hundred thousand acres. Florida was a working state as well as a retirement mecca. And like every other state, we had our share of crooks and scam artists and other assorted criminals. Ours were just flashier and sometimes funnier than those of most any other place.

I'd called Nigella's home phone just before we left my house. She answered and I apologized for calling a wrong number. She was home, and hopefully would still be there when we arrived.

I had also logged onto the Florida Bar website to see what I could find on her. Not much. She'd graduated from the University of Tennessee
and Vanderbilt Law School. She'd been admitted to the Bar five years before. Her office address was listed as a post office box in Tampa. She had no ethical grievances filed against her.

Nigella lived in a large house on Bayshore Drive near Hyde Park with an expansive view of Tampa Bay. The house was long and slender, built on a narrow lot in the style of Charleston, with the front door on the side. It was still daylight when we knocked. It was opened by a woman with a definite Asian appearance, but the softening of the epicanthic folds and the lighter skin tones told me that Caucasian blood flowed through her veins. A Eurasian. She was about thirty, tall and slim and beautiful, her black hair pulled back into a tight bun, diamond studs in her earlobes. She was wearing a white shirt, white shorts and shoes, and held a tennis racket in her hand.

“Can I help you?” she asked.

“I'm Jock Algren, Ms. Morrissey. I wonder if we could talk to you for a few minutes.”

“Make it quick. I'm on my way to play tennis.” Her voice was edgy, suspicious.

“May we come in?” asked Jock.

“We don't have time for that. What are you selling?”

Jock put his hand on the tennis racket and wrenched it from her grip. He used his other hand to push her back into the house, holding onto her arm with one hand, with the racket in the other. I followed. We were in a foyer with a living room opening to our left. Jock continued pushing Nigella, until she backed into a sofa and sat down.

“What the hell do you think you're doing?” she asked, her voice loud and strained, pissed.

“We're here about Bud Stanley,” said Jock.

“Who?”

“Bud Stanley. You know, the one who sends you all that money.”

She sat perfectly still, staring at us. Silent.

“Matt,” Jock said, “check out the house. I don't want another surprise with a shotgun.”

I pulled out my thirty-eight-caliber police special and went to search the house. Most of the downstairs was taken up by a kitchen, formal dining
room, living room, and foyer with a staircase leading to the second floor. There were four bedrooms, each with its own bath. Only one of the rooms looked as if it had been used. The beds were all made, there were no clothes or suitcases or any indication of life in other than the master bedroom.

I came back downstairs. Jock and Nigella were sitting still, staring at each other. “All clear,” I said.

“Ms. Morrissey,” Jock said, “you're going to answer some questions for us. We can do this the hard way or the easy way, but sooner or later you're going to tell us what we need to know.”

“Go to hell.”

The movement was so fast I wasn't sure I saw it. Jock lashed out and slapped her face with his open hand. It didn't appear to have much power behind it, but Nigella was thrown back against the sofa. Tears welled in her eyes, but she just stared at us. No sound, no words, not even a sigh.

“Lady,” Jock said, “my friend here gets a little queasy when I get rough and I'd hate for him to start throwing up on these beautiful rugs. But we're about to get serious here.”

“Go to hell.”

Jock sighed. “Take off your clothes.”

“What?”

“You heard me. Get naked.”

“You sick bastard. No fucking way.”

Jock pulled a large knife from a scabbard at his ankle, one that had been covered by his trousers. “If you don't take them off, I'm going to cut them off, and I might get a little careless. You know, cut some of that beautiful skin, maybe your face.”

“What do you want to know?”

“Where is Bud Stanley?”

“I don't know.”

Jock brandished the knife. “That's not very helpful.”

“I really don't know. He left Macon yesterday. He called and said he'd be in touch with me.”

“Did he say when?”

She hesitated. Jock moved quickly and put the tip of the knife under
her chin. Nigella paled and backed away from the weapon. The back of the sofa restricted her moves. She wasn't able to go far.