No doubt at all about it being dirty. Someone rigged a pipe bomb to the fuel tank, and the whole thing turned into sawdust. Three people died, actually. Old man
Crimmins, his wife, and some Cuban kid they’d hired to captain. They were out marlin fishing. Boom. Shreds of bone, and that’s about it.”
“Did the Crimmins boys build the bombs?”
“Doubtful. We had some theories about that-down here there’s quite a few characters with explosives experience floating around. Mobbed-up types, druggies, Marielitos.
Alibis narrowed it down to half a dozen scrotes; we hauled ’em all in, but no one
talked. And no one’s bank account had suddenly gotten fat. I had my eye on two of them in specific- pair of Dominicans with a dry-cleaning joint as cover. They’d been busted before on a nearly identical explosion in a clothing warehouse, weaseled out on lack of evidence. We pulled in every informant we had, couldn’t shake a rumor loose. That tells me the payoff was big bucks.”
“The boys had money?”
“Big allowances-fifty grand a year, each. Back then you could have someone taken out for a hundred bucks. One to five thousand would get you someone competent, fifteen a stone pro. We scoured the brothers’ bank accounts, found some nice-sized cash withdrawals during the weeks before the explosion, but we couldn’t make anything outa that because that’s the way they lived in general: the old man gave ’em the fifty at the beginning of the year, they took out play money as they needed it-four, five a month. Spent every penny. So there was no change in pattern. They used a smart-mouthed lawyer, he didn’t give us an extra syllable.”
“You focused on them right away ’cause of the inheritance angle?”
“You bet,” said Castro. “First commandment, right? Follow the honey trail. With the stepmother gone, they were the old man’s sole heirs, figured to get millions. Also, their alibis were too damn perfect: both out of town, they made sure to let us know that first thing. It was like one minute of phony grief, then, ‘Oh, by the way, we were in Tampa, riding motorcycles.’ Showing us some admission ticket to a race they’d been in-all ready with it. And smirking-rubbing my face in it. Because we’d had contact before. Back when I was on Bunco. Which is the third thing that nailed them in my mind: they’d been bad boys before. Fraud. Like I said, murder and cons, perfect fit.”
“What was the con?” said Milo.
“Nothing brilliant. They cruised the beach, picked up senile old people, drove them out to some swampland that they pitched as vacation lots. Then they’d head over to the marks’ bank, wait while the marks withdrew cash for a down payment, hand them some bullshit deed of trust, and split. They preyed on real deteriorated old folk.
Most of the time, the marks didn’t even know they’d been fleeced. And the withdrawals weren’t huge-five, six hundred bucks-so the banks didn’t notice. It ended when some old lady’s son got wind of it-local surgeon. He waited with his mom on the beach until she pointed out Derrick.”
“They serve time?”
“Nah,” said Castro angrily. “Never even got charged. Because Daddy hired a lawyer-the same smart-mouth who shielded them on the boat thing. The weakness was the identification angle. The lawyer said he’d have fun with the old people on the stand-show they were too demented to be reliable witnesses. The D.A. didn’t want to risk it. A couple of bank tellers thought they could make an I.D. but they weren’t sure. Because Derrick and Cliff wore disguises-wigs, fake mustaches, glasses. Stupid stuff, amateurish, they coulda dressed up like Fidel for all the marks noticed. We couldn’t trace the phony deeds back to them, either-primitive shit, mimeographed jobs. The whole thing was so low-level it woulda been funny if it hadn’t been so cruel. In the end, the old man made restitution, case closed.”
“How much restitution?”
“I think it was six, seven thou. Not a major con, but remember, we’re talking a one-month period and two kids in their early twenties. That’s what I found scary: so young and so cold. My experience was you got plenty violent kids at any age, but it usually takes a few years to season a frosty con like that. It wasn’t like they were so bright-neither of them went to college, both just bummed around on the beach.