Cut and Run (11 page)

“Actually, sir, I'll have to ask you to leave the area.” She hesitated, then dug in her own pocket for a business card. “But if you
do
find something like that, here or elsewhere, I'd appreciate a call.”

He took the card from her and slipped it into his pocket without looking at it. “Sure. How long is this area off-limits? I mean, I only have a few days off and I'd really like to get in some hunting, but I don't want to break any rules or anything.”

“The Everglades are a big place. I'm sure you can find another spot.”

“It's just—well, this is kind of a tradition for me. Me and Hugo. We used to come here with my father to hunt, before he passed away.”

“I'm sorry to hear that. We'll be done in a few days at the latest.”

“Okay. Good luck.”

“Thank you.”

Bolivar headed back the way he'd come, until Calleigh stopped him with a loud, “Excuse me?”

He stopped. “What?”

“You're going to have to exit this way, staying between the lines of tape.”

“Oh.” He hesitated, seemed about to say something else, then changed his mind and walked back toward Calleigh. “Sorry about that.”

“No problem.”

It wasn't until after he was out of sight that Calleigh realized something—if he'd been out hunting ducks, he should have been carrying a bag to hold his kills.
Maybe he had one, made of plastic, folded up and stuck in a pocket,
she thought.

Somehow, she didn't quite believe it.

It was late afternoon by the time they emerged at the edge of the field, hot and sweaty and covered with insect bites. Horatio was waiting for her, leaning up against his Hummer with his arms crossed, looking composed and patient and as if his knowledge of the word
perspiration
was entirely theoretical.

Calleigh trudged up to him and said, “You know, I could cheerfully shoot you right now.”

Horatio grinned, reached in through the open window of his Hummer, and pulled out a large, ice-cold bottle of water. “Not surprising. Maybe this will save my life.”

She took it gratefully, opened it, and drank half of it before pausing. “Maybe not,” she said, panting slightly, “but it's sure saving mine.”

“How'd you do?”

“Didn't find it. Found beer cans, shotgun shells, an old lawn tractor, and too many bottle caps to count, but no gun.” She finished the water and handed the empty plastic bottle back to Horatio. He tossed it into the Hummer, reached into the cooler on the driver's seat and got another one. She took it and said, “There was one thing, though. Met a guy out there that claimed he was hunting, but something was off about him. I got the feeling maybe he was looking for something, too.”

“Did you get a name?”

“Fredo Bolivar.”

Horatio nodded. “I'll run it, see what comes up.” He filled her in on what he'd found out talking to Lee Kwok.

“So,” she said thoughtfully, “Kwok knew what was going on. If Breakwash wasn't the type to try extortion, you think Kwok might?”

“Possibly—but that still doesn't give him a motive for killing his partner.”

“Maybe Breakwash was going to go to the police.”

“Maybe. Or maybe Timothy Breakwash was a suicide, after all.”

Calleigh shook her head. “I don't think so, H. I know the evidence is slim so far, but my gut is telling me we don't know the whole story yet.”

Horatio smiled. “Then we follow your gut. Which, I'm thinking, could probably use a good meal about now.”

“You got that right. After which I'm having the world's longest shower, and applying a gallon or so of calamine lotion.”

“I'll give you a lift back to your vehicle.”

 

Horatio wasn't quite ready to call it a night. He drove back to the lab, and checked Fredo Bolivar for priors. What he found prompted him to look harder.

The next morning, he was waiting for Calleigh in the layout room. “Good morning,” he said as she walked in. “Feeling refreshed, I hope.”

“A hundred and ten percent better. I'm thinking maybe I gave up too soon—I could expand the search parameters, widen the trail on either side.”

“Not a bad idea. I did something similar, and made a very interesting discovery.”

“Oh? You found something on Fredo Bolivar?”

“I did. He's been arrested a few times, but nothing major—assault, possession of stolen property. But his name sounded familiar…so I widened the trail. And I finally remembered where I'd heard it before.”

Calleigh looked intrigued. “Where?”

“It was a case I heard about years ago, when I was on the bomb squad. Back in the nineteen-eighties, a woman named Consuela Bolivar was kidnapped and held for a considerable ransom—five million dollars, I believe.”

“So she comes from money?”

“No. In fact, she's from a rather poor Colombian family. But at the time, she was rumored to be dating someone with access to a great deal of ready cash—a cocaine smuggler known only as Rodriguo. The kidnappers hoped Consuela meant enough to Rodriguo that he'd pay the money.”

“What happened?”

“According to legend, Rodriguo paid the ransom in full—but he added a little bonus of his own. A thin sheet of C-4, hidden inside an interior wall of the suitcase with a very simple activator. The first time the case was opened it was primed; the second time it went off.”

“He blew up the kidnappers
and
the cash?”

“Five million dollars apparently meant less to him than making a point.”

Calleigh nodded. “So you think Fredo is related? Bolivar's not that unusual a name.”

“No, but I called up the officer who arrested Fredo the first time; sure enough, he remembers the kid blustering on about ‘you don't know who I am, who my father is.' Fredo was more than happy to tell him.”

“So even if Fredo isn't Bolivar's son, he's certainly portraying himself as such.”

“Yes. Which raises the question of what he was doing in the Everglades in close proximity to a crime scene.”

“What he was doing,” said Calleigh thoughtfully, “or what he was looking for.”

“I've been going over the files on Rodriguo, but there isn't much; he was successful, he was feared, but nobody ever managed to bust him or even discover his real name. He vanished at the peak of his career, and it was widely assumed he'd been killed by a rival. I have a call in to a retired DEA agent named McCulver; he was in charge back then, and I'm hoping he can tell me more.”

“Well, that's definitely food for thought. I guess I'll head back into the field and torment some more poor cadets.”

“Don't forget your bug spray.”

She sighed. “That stuff is worthless. I'm thinking maybe a thirty-eight; should take care of the smaller mosquitos, anyway…”

“S
O WHO'S UP NEXT
?”
Tripp asked Natalia.

She was studying her laptop's screen as Tripp drove. “I thought we'd talk to Joshua St. George.”

Tripp frowned. “Isn't he in his seventies? Seems unlikely, considering how violent the attack was.”

“Maybe—but the character in the novel is in pretty good shape, so maybe the real St. George is, too. And he probably has the strongest motive.”

“That's true. No statute of limitations on murder—and doing hard time at his age would be a death sentence. So where we headed to?”

She gave him an address in Liberty City, one of Miami's more crime-ridden neighborhoods. Named for the Liberty Square Housing Project of the nineteen-thirties, it was bounded by Northwest Twenty-seventh Avenue to the west, Interstate Ninety-five to the east, Northwest Seventy-ninth to the north and Northwest Forty-first Street to the south. Joshua St. George lived in an old three-story tenement on Twenty-seventh, an L-shaped concrete building that looked as if it hadn't had a fresh coat of paint since Nixon was in office—and the paint had been cheap and yellow then. St. George's apartment was a corner suite on the top floor, a prime location if you could ignore the area it looked out on. Across the street, piles of rubble crouched beside boarded-up public housing; the newest thing visible was a large wooden sign at the edge of a vacant lot proclaiming the exclusive condos soon to erupt from the ground like flowers sprouting on a grave.

Tripp nodded at the sign and said, “Gentrification. Why have six poor families living on a lot when one rich one will do?”

Natalia didn't say anything, but the look on her face told Tripp all he needed to know; somewhere between guilt and embarrassment, with just a touch of irritation.

“Hey, no offense,” said Tripp as he parked.

“Why should I be offended?” asked Natalia.

“Beats me,” said Tripp. “But you've got that look on your face—you know, the one Germans get when you mention World War II?”

“I just get tired of apologizing for having money sometimes. I mean, it's not like being well off automatically equates with being evil—but sometimes, that's the feeling I get from people.”

“Not me, I hope.”

“No, Frank, no. Let's just go talk to this guy, all right?”

“Fine by me.”

They got out and climbed the wide cement steps that connected the floors. Half the iron railing was missing on the second story; what was left was rusting and twisted, looking more like decaying licorice than iron.

Natalia knocked on the door of the apartment. She could hear shuffling footsteps inside, then a raspy voice call out, “Hold on, hold on. I'll be there in a moment.”

The door opened, revealing an old African-American man in a tattered gray bathrobe over a pair of new-looking blue pajamas. His hair was short and entirely gray, and he had a short, neatly trimmed gray beard. He was breathing in quick, wheezy gasps, as if he'd just run up a flight of stairs. “Yes?” he said.

“Mister St. George?” Natalia asked. “I'm Natalia Boa Vista of the Miami-Dade crime lab, and this is Detective Frank Tripp. I was wondering if we could ask you a few questions.”

“About what?” he demanded.

“Hiram Davey.”

“What about him?”

“He's dead,” said Tripp.

“So? What's that got to do with me?”

“He interviewed you a few weeks ago,” said Natalia. “That's all we wanted to talk about. Please? It'll only take a few minutes.”

He studied her suspiciously, then gave a resigned nod and beckoned them to come in. Inside, the apartment was sparse but neat, with an aging sofa and several overstuffed chairs. Posters of Malcolm X and Louis Farrakhan hung on the walls, as well as an ancient and frayed-looking Black Panthers flag. St. George took a seat in one of the chairs, and they sat on the sofa.

“So what do you want to know?” he asked. Between sentences, his breath was stil coming and going in big, rasping gasps.

Natalia studied him for a moment before answering. From what she could see, St. George fit the description Davey had used in his book: angry, resentful, not willing to back down from anyone. “Davey was killed yesterday morning, Mister St. George. At the time of his death he was working on a book, and we think something in that book might have been the reason he was killed. He mentions you, but his notes on that part of the book are missing.” It wasn't exactly a lie; the laptop that presumably contained a version of those notes had been stolen. “We were hoping you could tell us the same things you told Davey.”

He mulled it over for a moment and then said grudgingly, “Well, I suppose. I heard about Davey getting killed on the news. Thought it was a shame; he always gave me a chuckle when I read his column. He seemed nice enough in person, too—kind of quiet, but a good listener. Didn't expect that.”

“What was it he talked to you about?”

“All kinds of things. Wanted to know about my life in the camps, mostly.”

“The turpentine camps,” said Tripp.

“That's right. I'm always amazed how many people—even Florida people—don't know about the camps. Friend of mine tried writing a book about it once, but nobody wanted to publish it. Guess nobody wants to hear that slavery was still alive and well in this state as late as nineteen-fifty.”

Natalia nodded. She could tell by the tone of the old man's voice that he was getting warmed up for a story, and that was exactly what she'd hoped for.

“I was born in nineteen-thirty-six. My father was from Mobile, Georgia, and he'd come to Florida in thirty-five to get work. He found it in Cross City, at a turpentine camp, or so he thought. What he actually found was a living hell that eventually killed him.

“These days, mineral turps is what everybody uses for paint thinner and whatnot, and it's made from petroleum. But that wasn't always the case; used to be, turpentine came from pine trees—the longleaf, the loblolly, the ponderosa. You'd tap the tree and collect the sap, then boil it in vats.”

“Like maple syrup,” said Tripp.

St. George gave him a scornful look. “No, not like maple syrup. You had to debark a big chunk of the tree—a quarter or so of the circumference, and three or four feet up the trunk. You hacked a V-shaped cut into the exposed part and stuck a tin pipe at the bottom of the V. The resin flowed out the pipe into what was called a Hurty pot, which was dumped into the vat. But the biggest difference between the two is that collecting pancake topping won't burn your lungs out.”

“That toxic, huh?” asked Tripp.

“You better believe it. And it wasn't just the turps—the Russians came up with this method of spraying sulphuric acid onto the bark to increase the sap flow, and pretty soon all the camps in the States were using it, too. Gave 'em an opportunity to sell us safety equipment—goggles, gloves, soda for acid burns. And that was how they got you, through the company store. Wouldn't sell you much but meal, flour, dried beans, or salt pork—but they'd charge you an arm and a leg, plus rent on the crappy little shack you were forced to live in. You found out real quick that the wages you were being paid weren't enough to cover living expenses, and that was just what the bosses liked.”

Tripp frowned. “Sounds horrible—but this was the nineteen-forties, right? Couldn't people just leave?'

“You'd think so, wouldn't you?” St. George's voice was flat and cold. “But by the time you left, you already owed the store money—didn't matter how much. As far as they were concerned, that made you their property. Long as you stayed and worked, they didn't care how big your tab was; they knew you weren't ever going to work it off. But if you tried to leave, that bill came due—and anybody running out on a debt was treated exactly the same as a runaway slave. Local sheriff would block the roads, the boss would strap on a pistol and get out the bloodhounds. You'd be arrested and charged with deserting your debt, and the authorities would give you a choice; work it off on a chain gang, or go back to the camp. Some men picked prison, because at least they knew their debt would come to an end; back at the camp, it'd just get bigger.”

Tripp shook his head. “Sounds like a helluva place to grow up.”

“Hell is exactly right. No doctors or decent food, and they worked you from sunup to sundown. You complained or slacked off, you were beaten. They encouraged men to bring their families, because a man with a family was less likely to run off. Gave 'em hostages on top of everything else. I started working when I was nine years old, and by the time I was fourteen my father was gone. He lit out to get work in Kansas City, planned to pay off his debt from there. We never saw him again.”

St. George paused, his eyes focused on a memory far away but still intense, like a burning house seen from a distance. “The bosses went out to hunt for him, and the dogs came back with blood on their muzzles. Tried to tell us he was no good, he'd just abandoned us, but I knew better. They killed him and buried his body in the woods—and he wasn't the first, either.”

Natalia phrased her next question carefully. “How did you handle that?”

He met her eyes, let her see the fire still burning there. He took a few more sharp, wheezing breaths. “I let it go. I lit out myself, first chance I got, and they never caught me. Things changed around then—not as much as they should have, and damned slow at that—but enough that killing a black man became more trouble than it used to be. I went north, wound up in Chicago.”

“That's where you got involved in the Civil Rights movement?” asked Natalia.

“That's right. Summer of nineteen-sixty-six—they called it the Chicago Freedom Summer after that. All kinds of things happening, from lawsuits to protests; it was us against Mayor Daley and his whole corrupt machine. Martin Luther King was our general, but he didn't want bloodshed; he just wanted what was right. I stood shoulder to shoulder with him at the second Marquette Park march, and I consider that one of the finest moments of my life.”

“Weren't there riots that summer, too?” asked Tripp.

“There were streets full of angry people, yes. But a lot of the time, those people were white. When we marched from Marquette Park, there were five hundred of us, and we weren't there to make trouble; all we wanted was to be heard. The crowd that met us were made of white, middle-class Americans that were afraid we were going to move into their neighborhoods and drive prices down. There were four thousand of them.”

He paused and shook his head. His breathing sounded like a machine badly in need of maintenance. “Four thousand. They threw rocks and bottles at us. They
spit
at us. They set ten of our cars on fire and pushed two more into the lake. And our so-called ‘police escort' did nothing at all.”

“Not our finest hour,” said Tripp. Natalia didn't know if he was talking about members of his profession or his race.

“That's just how it was, back then,” St. George said. “Two years later Doctor King was dead, but the movement went on. And I kept fighting, too.”

“When did you move to Miami?” Natalia asked, keeping her tone neutral.

“Nineteen-seventy-seven. Got tired of those cold Chicago winters.”

“You've lived here since then?” asked Tripp.

“In the neighborhood, yes. Moved around a bit, been in this place for the last fifteen years.”

“Where were you living in nineteen-eighty?” asked Natalia.

The look on St. George's face changed, shifting from a contemplative nostalgia to a more focused suspicion. “Just around the corner from here, on Twenty-fifth Street. Not that it matters—that building's gone now.”

“Was it damaged in the riot?” asked Natalia.

He gave her a long, appraising look before he answered. “The Liberty City riot, you mean? No, it was torn down a few years ago, after a fire.”

“Were you here during the riot?” asked Tripp.

“I was here. Where else did I have to go?”

Natalia leaned forward, put her forearms on her knees. “Must have been terrible.”

“Terrible? That's one word for it.”

“How would you describe it?” asked Natalia.

“Necessary.” He said the word coldly.

“Eighteen people died in that riot,” said Tripp. “How can you call that necessary?”

“Because I'm not the one that made that decision.” St. George's voice wasn't angry; if anything, it sounded sad. He got to his feet and shuffled into the small kitchen that abutted the living room. “I'm going to have a cup of tea,” he said. “Chamomile. Can I offer you some?”

“No, thanks,” said Tripp.

“I'll have a cup,” said Natalia.

St. George kept talking as he moved around the kitchen, putting on a kettle and getting out the cups. “Either of you read the Ford Foundation's report that came out a year after the riot?”

They both admitted they hadn't.