“We’ll start at the beginning, Marvin, way, way back, more than thirty-five years,” Drummond said. “You sold drugs in Starksville then, built a nice little business out of it, didn’t you?”
“No,” Marvin Bell said, sounding bewildered. “I—”
From out of nowhere, Drummond pulled out a small ball-peen hammer. He snapped it forward with power, speed, and accuracy. The round head of the hammer smashed into Bell’s swollen left hand, and he howled in agony.
“Try again, Marvin,” Drummond said, waving the hammer in Bell’s peripheral vision. “You sold drugs. You built a gang.”
“Yes,” Marvin Bell whimpered. “I sold drugs. I built a gang.”
“Here in Starksville?”
“Yes.”
“Name of that gang?”
“The Company.”
There it is, I thought. Bell started the Company. He’s Grandfather.
Drummond said, “You had a ruthless business model, Marvin. Got people addicted on freebies until they were like your slaves. You had people killed. You killed people yourself.”
“I never killed anyone,” Marvin Bell said, crying. “I keep telling you that and you don’t believe me.”
Chapter
97
“I don’t believe you,” Drummond said, wagging the hammer. “But we’ll come back to that. You admit you made a lot of money dealing drugs?”
Marvin Bell looked from his hands to the hammer, and nodded sullenly.
“You laundered that money
in legitimate businesses all around Starksville,” Drummond went on.
Looking as if his world was ending, Bell said, “Yeah.”
“But even after you’d bought the legit businesses, you didn’t stay away from the drug trade, did you?”
Bell set his jaw as if he were going to argue, but then he shook his head.
“Course not,” the sergeant said. “Moving coke and heroin and meth was just too lucrative. The money was almost too easy if you were smart about it. So one day you noticed the freight trains going back and forth all day and all night through Starksville, and thought, Why not use them? Why not expand? Am I summarizing your personal history correctly?”
Bell tried to move his hands and gasped before nodding.
“Yes,” Drummond said. “You built a distribution network that stretches from Montreal to Miami?”
Again, Bell said, “Yes.”
“And with all that money, you bought yourself an estate up on Pleasant Lake, a gorgeous beachfront place down on Hilton Head, and a condo in Aspen. Trips all over the world. Art collector. Isn’t that right?”
He nodded.
“Got your adopted son, Finn Davis, involved too.”
Bell swallowed, said, “Finn’s part of it.”
“Finn kill his ex-wife?” Drummond asked. “Sydney Fox?”