The Milk Wagon Page 6

  “I didn’t buy you that damn truck so you could leave it outside in the front of the house like white trash.” It sounded like he would go hoarse if he kept going at that volume. “You might as well park that piece of shit in the yard. Are you in here, son? Can you hear me?”

  Nate set his stick down and turned his body toward the hall. His eyes had gone from vibrant and alive to flat and lifeless within a matter of seconds. Me, Hop, and Mark just stood there, and when the shrieking commenced, I suddenly wasn’t so hungry anymore.

  “Are you retarded or something? Answer me, boy. I want to know why your damn truck is not where it is supposed to be.”

  A man who appeared to be in his mid-40s turned the corner into the game room, shadowed by a woman at least ten years his junior. Both were moving fast, clearly intent on engaging their prey – both hostile, their expressions deformed with anger, and looking for a beat down. That is, until they saw us.

  They were expecting Nate – gunning for him even – but our presence threw them for a loop. I couldn’t tell who was more surprised, although if I had to put odds on it, probably the man.

  Either way, it was a terribly uncomfortable scene.

  Chapter 14

  “Why, I didn’t know you were having friends over tonight, son.” The bottom half of his face started to show friendly, but his eyes were still rimmed with fury, and he reminded me of the Heat Miser. He managed to work up a fake smile, and was trying so hard to keep it, his lips barely moved when he talked. “Nate, why don’t you introduce us to these – these gentlemen?” I could tell he had put this mask on before; it came too easy and too fast. On the other hand, the bitch standing next to him did not seem too worried about first impressions. She held the same look of contempt the whole time – like we had ruined her evening somehow.

  “Y-yes, yes sir.” Nate became a robot, suddenly stiff-armed and barely able to move his head as he did his best to make our acquaintance. “This is Hop – J-Jason Hopkins.”

  “Jason, you say?”

  “Yes, sir. Uh, nice to meet you.” Hop was nervous.

  “An- and this is M-Mark Ragone.”

  “Mark, how are you?”

  “Good, I guess.” Mark was looking down at the floor. He was getting angry but didn’t know where to channel it.

  I watched his father size us up as Nate made the introductions. He wasn’t paying his son a lick of attention – he just parroted our names as Nate did his dead-level best to disperse the heat. His dad was assessing what we were wearing, our haircuts, what kind of shoes we had on – basically trying to figure out whether we fit his preconceived idea of what one of his son’s friends should look like. I am sure we failed on every level, but I didn’t give a damn. He didn’t measure up to my preconceived notion of what a parent should look like, either, so I guess we were even. Since I was behind the pool table, I had some ground to cover, and I made my way to the center of the room before Nate had to stammer through another introduction. I spoke as I walked, and I was soon standing front and center.

  “I’m Matt Frazier,” I said, and held out my hand.

  He gripped and bent my fingers so hard it felt like two of them might break. I tried not to flinch but fluttered for a second, and when I looked him in the eye, I picked up a gloat.

  “I’m Ford Mayes. Nate’s father. But you can call me ‘Doc’.”

  Governor. Captain. Mayor. Esquire. Principal. Doc. I have heard them all, and as a rule, I don’t like anyone who asks to be referred to by their title. Apparently, some feel their lot in life bestows on them an expectation of what amounts to a modern-day kissing of the ring, and this man was no exception. I, however, am neither a kisser of rings nor a kisser of asses. I get that some might enjoy having their ego stroked every time they’re addressed, but they won’t get that satisfaction from me. Not now. Not ever.

  “Nice to meet you, Mr. Mayes.” Then he blinked. Back on even ground.

  Now that I saw him up close, he didn’t seem as intimidating as he did at first. He was a guy who was used to getting what he wanted, sure, and I suspected there were more than a handful of terrified people left bruised and battered in his wake. But he also looked like he was halfway through his second midlife crisis, and the effects of years of trying to remain relevant were starting to show. His pants were a little too tight and his Chiclet teeth a little too bright. He had wavy hair that he probably teased out back in his college days, and whatever goop he applied made his curls look wet and crunchy at the same time. He had on too much cologne and wore pointy-toed shoes I am sure his wife purchased. I turned my back to him and looked her way.

  “And you are?”

  “Vicky.”

  She looked like a Vicky. My guess was that she, too, probably turned some heads back in the day, but years of too much time in the sun coupled with an affinity for the bottle were starting to take their toll. Crow’s feet around the eyes, sallow cheeks, and a chin that made me wonder how she changed pillowcases.

  “Nice to meet you as well, Vicky.” She didn’t say it was nice to meet me. But she did snort and put her hand in the crook of her husband’s arm. I was about to say something else, but Nate misjudged the temperature of the room and jumped back in.

  “Dad, I thought y’all were going out to eat, which is why –”

  “Well you thought wrong, son. We had to come by here so Vic could change out of her work clothes.”

  “Yeah –”

  “Don’t interrupt me. You should try to think more about others and not so much about yourself.”

  I appreciated Nate trying to let off some of the steam; I get it. But there was no way this asshole was going to stop humiliating him. Not at that moment. I certainly wasn’t going to let it continue.

  “It was time for us to go anyway, Mr. Mayes, so please forgive us if we have delayed your evening.” His fake smile had withered to where it looked as if he smelled something bad. “You have a beautiful house – and a beautiful wife.” I gave her a wink and I thought she might explode. “Hop, Mark, y’all ready?” They were dang near through the door before the words spilled out of my mouth. I turned to Nate. “You okay giving us a ride?”

  Nate cut his eyes at his dad, then back at me, not quite sure what to do. There must have been some unspoken direction I missed, because without a word, he walked over to the bar and grabbed his keys.

  “Yeah, I’ll take you. Let’s go.”

  The drive back was completely silent, so I turned the radio on. The Cars were playing. How Rick Ocasek scored Paulina Porizkova remains a mystery to me even today. I tried to engage them on this very topic but got nothing but crickets. Hop and Mark were glad to be out of the line of fire, and they sat in the back not making a peep. Nate just looked ahead and drove.

  It felt like one of those nights during basketball season when our team came up short at a grueling away game, and we had to suffer the silence of a two-hour bus ride home in the dark. We were frustrated, exhausted, and confused, and for what might have been the first time ever, no one – not even Mark – had anything to say.

  Chapter 15

  The old saying in the Bureau was if you don’t close a case within the first week, then you don’t close a case. It was well over a month since Tom Chrestman was murdered, and despite Kathryn’s initial burst of optimism, neither the FBI nor the Gulfport PD were any closer to identifying a suspect than they were on the day he was shot. Kathryn was at her desk, going through her morning routine of perusing through the day’s paper. She still had not given a statement, and as Rick had predicted, a stack of messages and requests from reporters – local and national – were starting to pile up. She swore she would not talk to the press until she had a valid lead or some progress to report, and she was starting to feel the heat of inactivity, so she turned to her partner, Agent Ethan Davis, as she was prone to do when brainstorming.

  “Someone knew he was coming.
”

  “Who?” Ethan was stirring artificial creamer into his coffee. He liked it flavored a certain way and he prided himself on being able to pour in just the right amount based solely upon the tint.

  “What do you mean, who? Tom Chrestman, that’s who. Do you think someone knew he was coming here?”

  Ethan closed one eye like he tended to do when he was working an idea through his head. “Of course someone knew he was coming.” He took a sip and swished it around. “Dammit.”

  Ethan was a recent hire at the agency, having worked as both a compliance officer for the Department of Justice and as a cop before joining the FBI. He was in on some of the early pharmacy busts in and around Hattiesburg, and when he showed some promise, Kathryn had him transferred to the Coast after her raid on Tom Chrestman produced more documents than she could handle. Ethan was a few years her junior and a bit green – having come from compliance – but he did well at Quantico; his supervisors gave him good reviews, and she was glad to have a helping hand. She could have pulled worse, for sure.

  “But how?” Kathryn asked. “Tom was highly motivated to keep our meeting private.”

  “In theory, yes,” Ethan said, adding another splash of creamer and taking a follow-up sip. “There we go. What was I saying? Oh yeah, he may have been motivated to keep it quiet, but I bet he told a friend, his wife – maybe someone else – and the word got around. It’s hard to sit on a secret. Especially one this big.”

  Ethan was right. Tom Chrestman had been running quite the racket, and his role in the scam was as simple as it was profitable. The more prescriptions written, the more Tom could bill, and the more bills he submitted, the more money he made. There was no overhead, no loss of inventory, and no out of pocket on Tom’s front because the prescriptions were never filled. At one point Cat Island Compounding was turning over hundreds of claims per month – to the tune of up to $8,000 per claim – and the government was paying them without any audits or background checks.

  When the checks came in, Tom took 60% off the top and shuttled the remaining 40% to his doctor friends in return for repeat business. He ran the cash through Cat Island, and Kathryn calculated Chrestman laundered anywhere from $1 million to $4 million in cycles every six months. She was able to link most of the kickbacks to a physician’s group out of the Hattiesburg area, and due to Ethan’s snooping and Kat’s bulldogging, those physicians were now either doing time or seeking a new line of business, as their licenses to practice medicine had been revoked.

  When one of the doctors she had busted asked her why she was chasing just the small players Kathryn realized that, she, too, had been sloppy. He told her that Tom, as part of his recruitment pitch, often referenced one particular doctor who had made millions and millions working the system. Although Tom never mentioned the doctor by name, word on the street was that he practiced in Hattiesburg.

  So Kat brought Agent Davis in to dig. He went through the mountains of documents, one by one. He coordinated with the comptrollers at the departments of Medicare and Tricare and detailed every transaction that could have possibly been related to Tom’s business. He looked through haystack after haystack and came up empty handed time and time again – and while he was not able to identify the doctor by name, he did find a needle.

  Turned out Tom kept a separate, offshore private account, under a shell company – Cape Island Compounding – that shared a remarkably similar name to his brick and mortar store, Cat Island Compounding. When Kathryn looked through the Cape Island records, she learned nearly $20 million had been paid directly to the company. While this number was significant, the discovery that $6 million of the $20 million in payments never made it to the bank was what turned her head.

  “Six million dollars. How did I miss that?”

  Ethan didn’t want to say anything. Kathryn’s modus operandi when she ran out of ideas was to start from the beginning. He had already personally swept the file twice and was not excited about the prospect of one more round.

  “Look, Kathryn, Tom snowed you that first time. You can’t blame yourself.” She didn’t say anything. “Maybe it’s best we set this aside for a bit before you kill yourself trying to check every box. Let our minds rest and regroup. We’ve been going a hundred miles an hour since the murder. Sometimes those pieces come together better when you let them breathe.”

  “You could be right,” she said, pushing her glasses back on top of her head and squeezing the bridge of her nose. “But before we table the whole thing, there may be one more lead we should check out.”

  Ethan walked his chair to the edge of the rug pad. “Another lead?”

  “Yeah.” Kathryn thumped her pen on the desk and then clicked it closed. She tossed him a folder. “I’m not sure it will bear much fruit, but I think it’s worth a shot. See if you can find Charlotte Gutherz.”

  Ethan opened it and looked at the picture paper-clipped to the inside flap. “The sales rep? I thought we didn’t have anything to pin on her.”

  “We don’t.”

  “Plus, didn’t she say she would never speak to you?”

  “She did.”

  “So?”

  Kathryn picked up the Sun-Herald. The press had been a thorn in her side since the investigation began. The reporters had been relentless, and every single mistake she or the agency had made since day one had been magnified, editorialized, and exploited for the public’s consumption. For once the paper may have run with a headline that could actually play in her favor. “You think she’s been following this?” It read: Pharmacist Murder Suspect Still at Large.

  “Probably.”

  “They’re not letting this story go.”

  “I still don’t see what this has to do with Charlotte Gutherz.”

  “Don’t you think if she even got an inkling that her name may be publicly associated with this it would scare the crap out of her?”

  Ethan shook his head. “I would agree – if she was a suspect – but she’s not.”

  “Says who?” Kathryn leaned forward in her chair.

  Ethan set his coffee down. “Special Agent Kathryn Cooper, you are not thinking about doing what I think you are thinking about doing, are you?”

  “Special Agent Davis, that’s exactly what I am thinking about doing. A little misdirection never hurt anyone.” She pointed at Ethan and then past him. “Phone.”

  He blinked, and a smile crept across his face. Then he scooted back to his desk and started dialing.

  Chapter 16

  “Do you know what a smurf is?” Kathryn asked the witness.

  “Excuse me? A smurf?”

  “A smurf.”

  As suspected, it did not take much arm-wringing to get Charlotte Gutherz back in for another interview. She was a bit huffy on the phone, but when Kathryn reminded her that two of her former employers were now dead, it got her attention. She showed up dressed to the nines, wearing a blouse that left little to the imagination. She didn’t even bring a lawyer. Cocky one, Kathryn thought, and sure enough, now a half hour into the interview, the only thing she and Ethan had gotten out of Charlotte was attitude.

  “Are you serious? Do you mean those blue guys?”

  “There was a girl smurf, too,” Ethan said. He grabbed a chair across from her and straddled it, crossing his arms over the back “But no, we’re talking about something else.”

  Charlotte put her chin on her hand and leaned forward, undeterred. “Do tell.”

  “A ‘smurf’,” he said, “in the parlance of our current investigation, is best described as a money runner. Ring a bell?”

  “No.”

  “Okay, because banks have regulations, and because large transactions are flagged, the bad guys like to break their big hauls into smaller deposits and spread them over multiple banks or accounts to avoid scrutiny. But the man behind the money can’t – and wouldn’t – do this himself. So he h
ires someone to do the running for him. A smurf.”

  “Fascinating. Really.”

  “The smurf takes the cash, makes the rounds to all the banks and makes deposits, one small piece at a time.”

  “He – or she – gets his cut after the deposits are confirmed,” Kathryn said, “and the boss stays happy, rich – and anonymous.”

  “I bet you’re wondering why they’re called smurfs.” Ethan said.

  “Nope. Not even a little bit.”

  “The bag men back in the heyday of the Colombian cartels weren’t men at all. They were Grandmothers. Old blue-haired ladies.” Ethan slapped the desk, and Charlotte jumped. “Smurfs. Get it?”

  Charlotte looked from Ethan to Kathryn then back to Ethan and clicked her fingernails on the desk. “Thank you for the history lesson, Agent . . .” She squinted at the nameplate on his desk across the room. “Davis, is it? Now are you going to tell me why you called me in?”

  “Because,” Kathryn said, “I have looked through every single document produced in this investigation, and having done so, I have developed a pretty solid appreciation for the amount of money your former employer, Tom Chrestman – God rest his soul – generated over the years. And try though I might, I can’t shake the fact that your name is all over the place here.”

  Charlotte rolled her eyes. “Of course it is. I was a contract sales representative. Compounding medications, even now, is still a bit of a novelty to some in the medical field. My job was to generate business, and I was paid for my services, fair and square.”

  “That you were,” Kathryn said, “but I think your services were more than just sales and marketing.”

  “Oh yeah?” Charlotte said.

  “Yeah. I think you were receiving kickbacks in addition to your salary.”

  “Really?”

  “He made millions.”

  “Good for him.”