Betrayal At the Carlisle: A Jake Reid Book

By James Crawford

The Carlisle Hotel is being sabotaged. Lost reservations, computer attacks, employees bribed by outsiders, and still more to-be-discovered schemes are driving away business and putting the survival of the Carlisle at risk.

Fiona Powers, the 34 year old owner and operator of the Carlisle, has tried everything to save her hotel, but nothing has worked. So when a trusted friend recommends Jake Reid and Associates Fiona meets Reid and places her trust in his team to save the Carlisle.

Reid and his team need all of their skills in technology, security, investigation, and creative solutions to find who is behind the sabotage. Ultimately, more than just business is at risk at the Carlisle. Fiona's family relationships, and Jake and his teams' safety, become factors in their attempts to save the hotel.

But even so, mistakes happen, and finding the people behind the attempts to destroy Fiona and her hotel, becomes elusive, dangerous, and more complex than anyone could have guessed.

From Ft Myers, FL, diners, dumps, pawn shops, and International implications, Betrayal at the Carlisle weaves readers though a maze that leads to a solution so surprising readers will rush to the last page.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jun 30, 2016
• ISBN: 9781483574240

James Crawford

James Crawford is a writer and broadcaster. His first major book, Fallen Glory: The Lives and Deaths of History’s Greatest Buildings was shortlisted for the Saltire Literary Award for best non-fiction. His other books include Who Built Scotland: 25 Journeys in Search of a Nation, Scotland’s Landscapes and The Edge of the Plain: How Borders Make and Break Our World. His most recent book is Wild History: Journeys into Lost Scotland. In 2019 he was named as the Archive and Records Association’s first-ever 'Explore Your Archives' Ambassador. He lives in Edinburgh.

Book preview

Thirty-Four

Chapter One

In my line of work, I have to deal with some people who just are not very trustworthy.

Barry, this is Jake Reid. Your boss is not taking my calls. Hand him your phone please. Oh, put the plane on auto pilot first, I say to the pilot I blackmailed just in case I had to stop my client from leaving the country without paying for my services.

A moment later Lars answers, Who is this?

This is Jake, asshole, and maybe you don’t know it, but if you land in Columbia before I get paid, the Columbian police will arrest you and take your plane. Do I have your attention now?

Jake, I was going to take care of you…I just needed…

Stop. You don’t have time to bullshit me. You are 32 minutes out. You need to wire transfer $2.5 million into the account number I gave you or get arrested when you land. Now just in case you are thinking of touching down in Venezuela instead of Columbia, they don’t like Americans so much there, and I will be informing authorities you have $5 million in cash on the plane. Try your luck at that if you like.

Oh, one more thing. Your pilot, Barry, works more for me than for you.

Silence on the other end.

You now have 31 minutes.

Ok, Ok, I will get it done, I promise, Lars says sounding as sincere as any CEO running from his auditors with $51 million can sound.

Lars, I do not care about your promise. If my account does not show the two and a half million before you land, your ass is in prison. And the prisons are not so nice in Columbia. Hope you get smart quick. I will stay on the line.

Now Lars and I both know he had no intention of paying me for making his great escape possible and providing him a new home in tropical Columbia. But now we both also know he has 29 minutes to avoid a Columbian jail.

With seven minutes to landing the money hits my account. I hang up on Lars.

I waste the next three minutes deciding whether to let Lars end up in prison in Columbia. Finally, I decide I have a reputation to protect and he did, after all, finally pay up. So I call Gustavo, the Columbian Immigration chief and tell him private flight 2204 from Boston has paid. I then transfer $20,000 to Gustavo’s account and the deal is done.

I need to find a better class of clients. The problem is, every client has huge problems and cannot use legal solutions. If they could go legal they would not be contacting me. I guess that makes me a specialist.

I looked to the clock. 6:03 AM. Lars gave me an early start to the day. I swung out of bed and headed for coffee. It was only about six steps away since I am living in a rent-by-the-hour dump in Ft. Myers. I fired up Mr. Coffee and stood waiting for the first cup. Love the smell of coffee in the morning.

I looked around my room. The TV was an old tube box that used antenna rabbit ears, and the bathroom was circa 1960’s and would have to be gutted to clean it enough to be remotely sanitary. The orange carpet was more brown, bald and stained, than orange. All in all, the stale smell trumped everything else. This place was a genuine, authentic dump. I felt at home.

If you are wondering why a guy who just made $2 million plus before breakfast is staying at the Vista Motel-Free TV, the answer is I have a few past acquaintances who wish me bad health or no health at all. So I move around a lot until I can rid myself of people who make me sleep with one hand on my Glock. It is just a part of my line of work.

You see I am a repairman. I fix things when they go wrong. I fixed Lars Bennet’s exit from his company so he could take his unofficial retirement settlement with him before he was fired and jailed for embezzlement. Before Lars I fixed a movie star who was being stalked by a fan. And I fixed an office holder’s problems with some graft that he took for approving a crooked contractor on a stadium job.

All in all, at the age of 44, and still in decent shape, I have fixed some twenty-five problems over the last ten years, helping generally not nice people get what they wanted. It pays well. Ballpark, I have made in the vicinity of $30 million helping people with their problems.

More importantly, I love my job. I take new assignments every few months, assignments I pick or decline as I see fit, I create solutions no one else can come up with, and it pays great. What is not to like?

The coffee was ready. Strong and black and hot. Perfect. The old Mr. Coffee did well enough.

I grab a shower, get dressed and my cell rings. It is Cara, one of my two employees. Hey boss, got a minute? We have a potential new client.

Tell me. I pour a second cup. Still hot.

I got a call from a Fiona Powers, owner of a hotel on Cleveland Avenue, the, hold a sec…The Carlisle. She says she would like you to stop at her office today after 2 to discuss a problem she has. I told her you are not a PI and your fees are out of the range of a lot of people. Fiona said she got your name from Peter Thomas, and she understands your requirements.

I pause to sip my coffee, remembering Peter Thomas. Right, Thomas had three new car dealerships and he was being harassed by some Hispanic toughs who were offering him protection of his cars for a fee. And, since he refused, he was having cars damaged daily on his lots. It turned out these boys were part of a Miami gang expanding into Ft. Myers. They were a lot more trouble to get rid of then I expected since they had some bigger connections.

Ok, I will stop over there. Wasn’t there a fire at the Carlisle a couple of years ago?

Ah, yes. Top four floors as I recall. Want me to meet you there? Cara asked, indicating she wanted to have a vote on any client before we accepted a job. Being a dick, I ignore her request for a while.

I gulp down the last of my second cup and drop my cup into the sink. It is not alone. Cara, have you seen any sign of the Beckworth boys? I ask, hoping all their attention is on finding me, not Cara or KJ.

Nope, nothing. But I have not swung by the office this week. Probably should pick up the mail, she offers willingly.

No, I’ll drop by and get the mail and see if everything there is untouched. See you at two.

I put on my boots and open the curtain a few inches to see if anything looks different than it should this morning. Nope, it looks like a dump of a motel with deadbeats and drunks sitting on their steps with bottles in bags. Home sweet home. I should check out and find a new dive today. Maybe later.

I holster my Glock and hang my shirt over it and tuck my 38 caliber in my boot. Uniform on, I go to my Jeep. I check out under the Jeep, lift the hood, look at the engine, everything looks like non bomb stuff so I climb in and start it up. I left the top down last night because rain was unlikely, so the air is a little chilly on this January morning. Chilly, but not worth putting up the top. I head out looking for breakfast.

In this part of town, the most popular breakfast joint is the Mission where you can get breakfast for free. A good deal, but I like Benny’s, a greasy spoon that just smells like breakfast cooking. And my favorite waitress there is, honest to God, named Flo, a slim 50-year-old who lets me know every day that she wants to be a lot friendlier with me.

I take a stool at Benny’s. Flo instantly pours me a cup of coffee and shouts back my order. I get off at 10, she says pointedly.

Sorry Honey, got to work today. We will have to postpone our future, I tell Flo, attempting to show my great regret.

Half an hour later I finish breakfast and hit the road. It is after 8 AM and the day looks to be typical Florida, sunny and warm. South Florida winters are great, the average temperature is about 75 degrees and the average day is perfect. It is still chilly cruising with my top down this early in the day, but I find the chill a great wakeup call. By the time I reach the block where our office is located I am awake, alert, and hopefully ready for whatever I find.

The only problem is… someone is following me.

Chapter Two

Last year I had a case where my client was a guy who owned a string of pawn shops in South Florida. Now pawn shops have a lot of dissatisfied customers, people who could not redeem their pawned item and resented my client for selling their lost treasure. So when his store windows were being broken at regular intervals, it was impossible to identify just who might be guilty. But when the Punta Gorda store was fire bombed one night the case took on a different nature.

After digging into all the possible enemies that could have decided to terrorize the pawn shops I found out from Jesus, the Pawn Shops owner, that he had a problem at the Fowler store in Ft. Myers recently. A guy had hocked an oriental mystery case, one of those wooden boxes with a hundred slots to lift, twist, turn and jiggle to open. So the guy never picked it up and Jesus sells it to a customer for a thousand. At the time Jesus thought it sold high, 90% more than he paid for it, but who complains about making too much profit on a deal?

So maybe a month ago, four months after the item was hocked, the character who put it in hock shows up and goes nuts when Jesus tells him it is gone, sold. The way Jesus tells it he had to raise steel on the guy to get him out of the store.

But it is not the end of the story. Maybe a week later two thugs came into the store dragging the hock guy by his shirt. The guy is beat to hell, bleeding all over the place. The bleeder says This… this is him and they drop the poor bastard to the floor and approach Jesus. When Jesus starts to draw his ’38, the moose on the left moves quickly, and slaps Jesus’ gun to the floor.

They proceed to introduce themselves to Jesus by giving him three quick gut punches, leaving him folded and gasping for breath and feeling pretty sure they broke a couple of ribs.

Now that they have Jesus attention, they tell him to give them the name and address of the guy who bought the box. Now Jesus does not like pain, but there is apparently a code among pawn shop owners that they are like lawyers in keeping their client’s information secret. Hard to imagine, but I have seen stranger things.

At any rate, crook ethics or not, Jesus won’t give up the name. The giants tell him they will be back and if he doesn’t give them what they want they will break a few fingers, for starters. It was after that that the vandalism started and the store bombing happened.

That was when Jesus called me.

Jesus gives the buyer up to me, ethics suspended for reasons of health, and I find the guy and the Chinese box. He is a collector of all things Chinese from the Ming period in China and sells me back the box for $5k of Jesus’ money. This guy and I are both happy with our deal; Jesus bitches about me wasting his money.

I take the box to a friend in New York who has a PhD in Oriental Art, and he takes the box apart without damaging it. We find a combination and a safe deposit box key in the last secret chamber.

Ok, so now I know the deal is about money. It is always about the money.

So I give the key and combination to Cara to find the bank and the account holder. Cara can find anything. I swear Cara could find a used pack of matches from a bar closed 20 years ago if I asked.

So Cara goes to work and I go hang out at Jesus’ shop in the back with my Glock, a taser, and a new toy I want to try. The new toy is called the Sound Bomb and it is the size of a hand grenade and has a metal lever that you raise to turn it on. Once armed it gives off so much nasty noise that it will drop a grown man to his knees and make his ears bleed. And it just keeps it up until you lower the lever.

So my plan is to come out when the giants come back and ask them nicely to go away. Now I go about 190 and am buff but I am not a giant, so these two will not take my advice. That is when I will arm the Sound Bomb. Jesus and I will have already put our ear buds on before they hit the door and the grunts will fall to the floor without a doubt. Then I will taze them both because I paid $700 for this toy and have yet to use it. I want to try the high setting on my new Taser.

The plan has one other element. My other employee, KJ, will park in the alley by the store. When the Sound Bomb goes off KJ will plant a homemade bomb in their car, just a little something to entertain the cops when we call in the attempted robbery.

Six days of hanging around at the shop brings the thugs back to visit Jesus.

It all ends up working. Just not quite the way I planned it.

Turns out Jesus is more than a little jittery. Or maybe he just never believed my plan would work and the two big guys would really break a few of his fingers. It’s not like he plays the piano.

Anyway he sees them coming but instead of shouting back to me so I know they are here, he jams the earplugs