The Case of the Miami Blackmailer: The Fairlington Lavender Detective Series

By S. N. Bronstein

Private investigator Fairlington Lavender was considering the merit of downing another cup of coffee at his usual breakfast caf when his cell phone rang. He decided against more caffeine, tossed the paper cup in the trash, and answered the call that displayed a "305" area code. This indicated the call was from Miami and therefore it had the potential to be from a prospective client.

It was Friday, January 2nd, 2009 and Lavender was finding his holiday break from the Washington, D.C. agency he worked for to be tedious. He was looking for an excuse to leave the cold winter climate and return home to South Florida.

The call was from Rochelle Talbot, the victim of a nefarious blackmail plot. When Lavender takes her case, it leads him on a four month journey from Washington to Miami Beach and New York in search of a killer.

Lavender quickly resolves Talbot's blackmail case but he becomes entangled in a murder when Scott Diamante, Talbot's blackmailer, kills Shea Hurley. Hurley, a prostitute and the partime girlfriend of Diamante is killed when Scott suspects that she helped Lavender solve the blackmail case. Driven by a sense of guilt over Hurleys murder, Fairlington Lavender once again sets out to seek justice for those who can no longer speak for themselves.

Detective Lavender tangles with the DEA, a Miami Beach cop who resents him, and a crew of Miami drug dealers as he tracks down Scott Diamante and seeks to bring him to justice. As always, Lavender incurs the wrath of everyone he encounters as he employs deception, guile, cunning, and old school detective work in search of his suspect.

The Case of the Miami Blackmailer moves more quickly than the jets that carry Lavender up and down the east coast right behind Scott Diamante.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Oct 4, 2010
• ISBN: 9781452084107

S. N. Bronstein

S. N. Bronstein is the author of the Fairlington Lavender Detective Series, a collection of crime stories based on the adventures of a Miami Beach private investigator. In addition to The Case of the Yellow Flower Tattoo, his published works in the series include The Case of the Miami Philanthropist, The Case of the Miami Blackmailer, and The Case of the Miami Vigilante. He is also the author of two children’s books, Private Eye Cats: Book One: The Case of the Neighborhood Burglars and Private Eye Cats: Book Two: The Case of the Kidnapped Dog. The author presently resides in Florida with his wife, Dawn, and cat, Nugget, and devotes his time to fiction writing.

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© 2010, 2015 S.N. Bronstein. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse  02/03/2015

ISBN: 978-1-4520-8409-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4520-8408-4 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4520-8410-7 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2010914228

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

About The Author

For my parents and Scooter

Chapter One

F or people born and raised in northern cities, the winters are like migraines. They learn to get used to them and adjust to their side effects. When people move from a warmer climate to a northern city, the winters are more like gall stones. They pass, but they can’t abide the discom fort.

I spent practically all of my life in South Florida. Since moving to Northern Virginia three years ago to work for a man named Tim Lagone, an ex-FBI man who has a large private investigative practice in D.C., I’ve had a problem dealing with the winters.

I kept my PI license active in Florida, obtained one in the state of Virginia, and simultaneously work in both states. If I receive a call from Florida to meet with a potential client, I fly down and usually take the case. I work with Tim in Virginia because his fixed salary beats the unpredictability of sitting and waiting for the phone to ring back in Miami Beach. The economic downswing had even effected the detective business.

I wrapped up a major case in Miami back in May of 2008. It concerned a murder that the cops were politically pressured to ignore because the main suspect was a powerful community leader. I lost money on the deal. I was paid nothing because I had no fee paying client. I got involved pro-bono when an old friend fell into the middle of this collision of justice versus power, and he couldn’t get out of it alone.

Although I have a condo that I own in South Florida, the cost of staying in Miami Beach for about six weeks to resolve this case when the police could not or would not, was steep. I enjoy expensive meals, the race track and casino, drinks at overpriced bars, $10.00 cigars which I chew but never smoke, and these things ran the tab sky high during this adventure.

I spent the summer and fall of 2008 in Virginia working for Tim. His assignments for me were to conduct background investigations. These were done on prospective employees of private companies that were awarded government contracts. It paid well and it was not dangerous work, but I was getting a little bored with the routine. Now, in January of 2009, the cold weather had settled in for an extended stay.

I was doing a lot of thinking about maybe moving back to Miami before the cold weather, snow, grey skies, rain, and sleet slowly wore me down. Better to be warm and waiting for cases than working regularly and waiting for better weather. However, I stayed in Virginia, kept working, and had Miami Beach on my brain all the time.

I feel comfortable with routine. Once I find a restaurant or bar I like, one where the employees working there or customers who visit there get to know me, I latch on to the place and go back constantly. I found a restaurant that fit the bill a few blocks from my rented Alexandria condo. This restaurant was one of those franchised bagel, pastry, soup and sandwich places, and I ate breakfast there every morning. I often sat for hours eating a sesame bagel, drinking coffee, reading the paper, and people watching.

During the past three years I watched a lot of people come and go. All types came in there. There were the retired ladies who worked their thirty years as teachers or government employees, a large number of uniformed military personnel who worked at the various installations in the area including the Pentagon, electricians, plumbers, and an assortment of white collar workers who picked up their coffee on the way to work. There were also a lot of guys my age who came in alone to hang out for hours, and a lot of young females who lived at the rental apartments, condos, and townhouses that surrounded the eatery. These two hour commuters grabbed breakfast and headed to their cubicles in D.C. like bored zombies. I routinely sat at the round bar tables next to the window, just adjacent to the area where people lined up for service. This gave me a great view of the world outside as well as a close-up of everyone who came in and conducted their business, totally unaware of my scrutiny of each of them.

Christmas and New Years had passed. I was more than pleased because I always disliked holidays even as a kid. I guess a psychiatrist would have a field day with this revelation, but the big deal everyone always made about Christmas, New Years, Thanksgiving, and assorted other notable times of the year made me uncomfortable. I was divorced and maybe that would explain my stoic comportment when these events rolled around, but even when I was married and my wife and I celebrated, I felt a sense of perturbation about the whole thing.

It was Friday, January 2nd, 2009, and I sat eating breakfast at my usual nest watching the people come and go. I wasn’t working that day. Business slowed down in Tim’s office around the holidays and we took advantage of this by taking some time off.

I was really pushing the envelope that morning; I read USA Today instead of the Washington Post. I was just getting to the sports section when my cell rang. It was a ‘305’ area code that indicated the call was from Miami. It was either a friend or a potential job, and I was in that cold, icy, rainy, January frame of mind to talk to someone from home.

Hello. This is Fairlington Lavender’s office, I said.

Big businessman; a real busy office.

Are you a private investigator?

Yes I am.

Well then Mr. Lavender, I need to meet with you. I think I need your services. I would like to set an appointment for today.

Right now I’m in Washington on a case, but I’ll be returning to Miami in a few days. Can we meet then? I asked.

Some case I had. It involved eating bagels, drinking coffee, and staring at people like a voyeur for half the day.

Just give me a time and place and we’ll meet. My name is Talbot, Rochelle Talbot.

I arranged to meet with her on Monday, January 5th, at 9:00 am at my office on Miami Beach. Although I’d been working in Virginia, I kept a small office as well as my Sunny Isles Beach condo down there.

The office was across the street from the Forge Restaurant, one of the ‘A-List’ venues known throughout the world for its food, drinks, and history of hosting the rich, the famous, the notorious, and the hangers-on who dreamed of being one of the above. I didn’t select the site for my office due to its proximity to the Forge; I took the place because the rent was cheap. My condo was costing me a King’s fortune because it was located in an expensive area just north of Miami Beach. Between the mortgage, maintenance fees, periodic assessments by the condo association, and taxes, it was an expensive proposition.

I wasn’t exactly starving. I retired after thirty five years of service with the police department in Miami-Dade County and I had a substantial pension. I worked in Miami Beach as a PI for about eight years following my retirement, periodically raking in decent fees. The money I was now making in Virginia working for Tim was more than adequate, but this ocean front property was making me feel like I was paying alimony to Ivana Trump. I needed it though. It was my anchor to Miami Beach, the place where I grew up and spent all of my adult life. Psychologically, as long as I still had the condo and the office, I was connected.

I booked a flight and made arrangements to pick up a rental car at the airport in Fort Lauderdale. I left Reagan-National in D.C. on Sunday morning, January 4th, at 8:30 am and arrived at Fort Lauderdale at 11:12 am. I did the paper work for the rental car and drove to my condo, a twenty minute ride down I-95. This gave me a day to get reoriented and rest a little before meeting up with Rochelle Talbot the next day.

After almost ten years as a private investigator I still feel uncomfortable when I conduct my first meeting with a new client. Cops, murderers, whores, dopers, petty thieves, and everyone else who exists or works in the substrata of society, I can deal with comfortably. My problem is I can never figure out how a new client during the initial meeting should perceive me.

I can do the therapist routine; keep eye contact, do the ‘forward lean’ thing, repeat a statement the client makes to get them to embellish on it, summarize periodically, and all of the other moves that encourage the client to talk. The problem is, this often makes me feel like a damn marriage counselor not a detective. I do these things and I can’t help but wonder if the person is looking around the walls to see my Doctorate in Psychology degree instead of a PI’s license.

On the other hand I can sit there looking like a tough guy, smoke a cigarette, and keep a wary snarl on my face. I don’t smoke cigarettes, I’m not a tough guy, and I look foolish when I snarl. I’m not comfortable with the tough guy persona any more than I am with the therapist routine. I never got this introductory phase down.

On Monday morning I cleaned up my office and waited for Rochelle Talbot to knock on the door. She did at 8:50 am.

I didn’t have time to do a background check on Talbot before meeting her. Usually I do this prior to meeting new clients. Aside from my informants, police contacts, and on-line research, if I really need intensive background information on someone I call my ex-wife’s sister, Zoë. She works for a major network in New York in the research department of the news bureau. I rely on her a lot and she’s always accommodating. She’s got a million ways to find out background information on anybody from the day they were born up until that morning. Zoë saved me a lot of leg work in more than one case over the past few years, but Ms. Talbot was an unknown entity to me at 8:30 that morning.

Come in Ms. Talbot. I said.

The offices in the small building I was located in had wooden doors. There was no fogged glass with my name and the words ‘Private Investigator’ etched on it like one would expect from watching detective movies. The building management was generous enough to put a small, plastic plaque on the wall to the left of the door. It had my office number and my name on it, and probably cost them three dollars.

Rochelle Talbot walked in. She was in her mid-thirties, medium height, slim, black hair of salon quality, almost no wrinkles on her face, and the most outstanding green eyes I have ever had the pleasure to stare into. She had manicured nails, an expensive outfit, and no wear or tear on the heels of her shoes.

This shoe thing. If you want to find out if someone is playing the ‘I got money and dress like it’ game, but in reality they’re starving, look at the heels of their shoes. Worn down shoes, especially unevenly worn down shoes, is a dead giveaway no matter what they’re wearing from the ankles up.

This one was no poser and she reeked from money, someone’s money if not hers. Although she had a minimal amount of jewelry on, what she did have, including a wedding ring and gold necklace with a thin chain and heart attached, was top quality from Harry Winston.

I’m pleased to meet you Ms. Talbot, I said as she entered.

I stood up, shook her hand and politely asked her to sit down. My interview chairs were placed on a rug a few feet from my desk. Two comfortable leather armchairs faced each other. This arrangement eliminated the problem of ‘social distance’ which made a client feel there was a power play going on since the interviewer was sitting behind a desk, protected, and the client was sitting facing them with a great divide between the two. Another therapist’s technique that I learned.

How can I help you today? I asked.

I really don’t know how to begin, or where to begin. I have a situation that has sort of spun out of control and I can’t handle it alone. This has to go away and it won’t unless someone, I guess someone like you, can assist me with it.

What made you decide to select me to help you?

Mr. Lavender, I was born and raised on Miami Beach and I sort of know everyone in my age group here. Many of them are attorneys and I have to say, you are quite well known in the circles they travel. Let me also say that people in your age group, their parents, know you pretty well. I don’t mean you are old or anything like that, but my parents’ friends and my friend’s parents; well a lot of them know you and say you have been around a long time here, and…

I interrupted her at this point since she was beginning to wander off course.

I understand. I’ve been around for a while I guess. Your last name is Talbot. What was your family’s name before you got married? You were Rochelle who, when you were growing up on the Beach?

Rochelle Foster, she said. "My dad was Alec Foster. He was a self-employed financial advisor and had a small office not too far from here. He died a few years back, but mom is still living in the same house where I was born. I grew up in that house and lived there until I