A Death In Beverly Hills (18 page)

Chapter Thirty

Today her outfit was pink, from a ridiculous little pink pillbox hat to a pair of shinny pink high heels. It only made her look more monstrous, like dressing Frankenstein in a tuxedo. Steve looked away and kept on walking but it did no good. The Beast zeroed in on him like a guided missile.

"You talked to my client," Margo said in a voice with an edge sharp enough to cut bone.

"We've already had this conversation."

"I usually don't have to repeat myself."

Steve increased his pace. Margo's heels clip-clopped beside him as she broke into a jog to keep up. "You're only making things worse."

Steve glanced over his shoulder and the sheer meanness twisting her face brought him almost to a halt.

"I'm a busy man. Say what you've got to say and then get lost."

"I'm not having you ruin Kaitlen's reputation. I won't allow it."

"Threat noted. Anything else?"

"You don't believe me, okay. Maybe you think that just because I'm a woman--"

"Are you sure?"

"About what?"

"That you're a woman. Has anybody run a chromosome test?"

"You son of a bitch," Margo whispered, leaning close, her lips twisted into an evil smile, "when I get through with you--"

"Yeah, I heard the threats last time. Do you have anything specific to say or are we done?"

"Stay away from Kaitlen Berdue."

"At the present time I have no more questions for her."

"And stay away from her friends, her job, her--"

"Ex-boyfriend, Carey Ebbe?" Margo's eyes widened then snapped back. "Didn't think I knew about him, did you? Before you threaten me again, I've already talked to him. He's got an alibi for the day of the murder, which exhausts my current interest in your client. Of course, something new might come up. Brother Bobby was in the San Diego jail at the time but he's got some very unsavory friends. Meth dealing biker gangs are capable of almost anything, including murdering a pregnant woman.

"Of course, they'd need a motive. If Bobby owed them money and they figured that with Marian out of the way, Travis would marry Kaitlen and that would put some cash into Bobby's pocket. . . . Or maybe Bobby set the whole thing up and got himself locked up just so he'd have an alibi, then Travis was arrested and that ruined the whole scheme. Not much of a plan, I admit, but nobody said Bobby was a genius. What do you think? Does that sound like a possibility to you?"

"That sounds like an alcohol induced delusion that nobody's going to believe."

"Yeah, you're probably right. I'd need some evidence to make something like that stick. I guess I'd better get busy. Like I said, if I have any more questions for Kaitlen, I'll give her a call."

"Over my dead body."
If only
, Steve thought but kept his mouth shut. "If the tabloids mention one word about Bobby Berdue or Carey Ebbe, I'm coming after you."

"You mean if they figure out that Bobby's a drug dealer or that Carey's got a child support warrant out after him? Right now I've got no motive to call to the tabloids. My suggestion is that you keep it that way."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"You know what it means. I don't want to see your smiling face again. Ever. Who knows, maybe we'll both get what we want. Are we done now?"

"Remember what I said," Margo warned before turning away.

"Wait, there is one more thing."

"What's that?"

"Kaitlen Berdue is a sweet girl. I like her. I wouldn't want anything unpleasant to happen to her. I'd take something like that really badly."

"I don't get your meaning."

"If you lay one manicured little claw on her on her creamy skin, we're going to find out between the two of us who the real Beast is."

Margo's face went from white to red, passing through an in-between shade of pink that almost matched her hat. For a moment Steve wondered if her head might explode, then he paused and his face went slack as if a switch had been tripped. Without wanting to, the thought of an exploding head triggered Janson's memories of the last time he had seen Alan Lee Fry.

* * *

Steve barely noticed the airport or the flight to Cuba or anything else once he'd conned Katz's old partner, Ben Olivera, into giving him Fry's address in Havana.

"You're not gonna do anything stupid, are you Steve?" Olivera asked in that quiet, laid-back voice he used when he got a suspect in the Box.

"You're not gonna lie to me, are you, Miguel?" Olivera would begin. "I've treated you like a man, haven't I? I've treated you with respect, right? So, you're not going to insult me by lying to me, right?"

And half the time the gang-banger or wife-beater or general drunken, coked-up mope would nod and look Ben in his friendly brown eyes and tell him that he hadn't meant to do it but one thing just sort of led to another until everything turned to shit, just like the rest of his life. Then Ben would smile and thank him for treating him with respect and not lying to him and ask him, politely, if he'd like a Coke or a bag of chips or something. As soon as he was out of the room, Olivera would write down the guy's confession, word for word, and seal his fate.

Steve gave Ben a smile and said, "No way" with as much conviction as he could muster. "I'm just going to hire an off-duty cop down there to keep an eye on the guy. I'm betting he'll get tired of Havana sooner or later and try to slip back into the states under another name. I just want to be sure that the Feds are waiting for him at the airport when he does."

Ben gave Steve another of his grand-fatherly smiles and a little nod and slid the scrap of paper across the desk. "Anybody asks, you got this out of the file," Olivera slapped the four inch thick mound of paper with the flat of his hand, "while I was in the can."

Steve nodded and slipped the note into his pocket without even looking at it, then forced himself to sit there shooting the shit with Olivera for another ten minutes before heading for the door. It was just his bad luck that he passed Simon Katz on the way to the elevator. Steve knew that he had no time to waste. Simon was going to ask Olivera what Steve was doing there. The guy was more terrier than pitbull but he was going to keep after his partner until he got an answer.

Steve had no illusions. Olivera would give him two or three days, tops, then he'd admit to Katz that he had left Steve alone with the Headless Killer file sitting right there on the desk. Katz would try to track Steve down and when he couldn't find him Katz would call the Havana police. Simon couldn't help himself. The Law, the idea of the Law, was as sacred to Katz as his wedding vows or the oath he took thirty-five years before when he joined the Marines and swore to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States with his very life.

The only notice Steve took of Havana were indirect glimpses interspersed with meaningless details that clung to his brain like houndstooth and ragweed. The airport was crowded and echoed with a polyglot of voices. The humid air stank of humanity and strange spices. The cab driver, a compact brown-skinned man with a short, thick neck and ebony hair curling at the ends, cursed and pounded the wheel as he shoved the Toyota Tercel through a river of ancient steel, maneuvering as if by brute strength alone.

The traffic was a strange mixture of Tercels, Audis and Daewoos intermixed with 1953 Chevys, '56 Fords, Plymouths, DeSotos, a '49 Mercury, all lovingly cared for.

"You speak English?" Steve asked when the horns and shouts had declined to a background clamor.

"A little."

"Cities," Steve waved his hand around, "can be dangerous. Dangerous.
Peligro
."

"Yes," the driver agreed, "dangerous."

"I would like to buy a gun,
pistola
, for protection."

"
Pistola
?"

"Yes." Steve bent his fingers into the shape of a gun and snapped his thumb back and forth. "Bang, Bang."

The driver studied Steve carefully in the mirror.

"Can you help me,
ayudame con pistola
?" Steve held out five one-hundred dollar bills. The driver eyed the money longingly. Steve added another hundred to the pile and they almost crashed into a '55 Dodge. A seventh bill joined the stack. Steve waited for five seconds, then began to put the money back into his pocket.

"Okay," the driver said and turned onto a side street and parked.

"My name is Juan," Steve said, tapping his chest.

"Jaime," the driver replied. Nervously he eyed the bills. "La Policia. . . ." he began and looked around. Steve showed him his U.S. passport but covered his name with his thumb.

"Secreto," Steve said.

"Secreto," Jaime agreed, then stared hard at Steve. "Tu no sabes mi. Yo no sabo tu."

"Yes, Si," Steve agreed.

Jaime studied the passport again. A flick of his tongue caressed his suddenly dry lips.

"Okay," he said, reaching for the money.

"El dinero por la pistola."

Jaime bit his lip then nodded and pulled away from the curb.

A few minutes later they parked outside a bar and the driver left Steve in the car. Ten minutes later Jaime returned with a paper bag which he placed on the floor in front of the passenger seat, then tore off again, eventually pulling into the parking lot behind the ancient Hotel Sevilla on Calle Trocadero. Looking around carefully he passed back the bag but retained the clip.

It was a model 1911 Colt .45, big and heavy and awkward and with as much subtlety as a chainsaw. Steve thought it was perfect. He handed over the Ben Franklins which immediately disappeared into Jaime's underwear. After Steve left the cab, the driver slipped him the clip. Steve surreptitiously stuck the gun into his belt at the small of his back and waited for the cab to disappear, then he walked over to the Hotel Telegrafo on the Prado a few blocks away.

After checking-in he took a nap and then a cold shower to jar him to consciousness. He was too nervous to be hungry but he forced himself to eat anyway, as much to kill time as anything else. First, he decided, he'd check out Fry's place. Steve figured it would be all gates and locks and guards. He might have to watch him for a couple of days before he . . . before he did what he came there to do. He didn't let the phrase 'kill him' pass through his mind.

He had arranged with the hotel to rent an Audi and it was the work of a few minutes to pick up the paperwork at the Telegrafo's Guest Services desk. It was after ten and the city was jumping, jammed with Germans, Poles, Brits and Canadians all taking advantage of the great weather, friendly locals, and bargain prices. In Old Havana the sidewalks were thronged and cars danced through the glowing blue smog like chorus girls in a basement cabaret. The restaurants were busy, the fancy places filled with tuxedoed waiters, young men in pale silk suits, gorgeous women sparking in sequined sheaths of ruby and emerald. The neighborhood bistros were equally crowded, candles and cigarettes flaring like glowbugs in the dark, but in the Miramar District the wide, plane-tree shaded streets were subdued.

A few couples glided through the shadows while dark windowed Audi's and BMWs whispered past, headed for the clubs and restaurants on Calle 23. Fry's building, a four story white stucco apartment house, stood at the end of the block. An eight foot high black iron fence circled the property. Within its confines was a swimming pool and a garden of palms and boxwood and hedges of flowering rosemary and yellow and red lantana. Each floor housed two luxury apartments with balconies on the upper floors. Fry's place was on the third floor, facing the pool. A yellow radiance poured through the patio door and in the balcony's shadows the stub of a single cigarette pulsed with an orange glow.

Steve waited until an elderly couple turned the corner then he slipped into the entranceway. A numeric keypad flanked the steel-latticed glass door. Inside the lobby a guard in a gray uniform watched a mini-DVD player, occasionally pausing to glance at the elevator. Steve ducked to one side and gave the door a closer look. The frame around the glass was steel, inset with a Yale deadbolt lock. So, the first question was, did the tenants need both a code and a key or either a code or a key?

He caught a flicker of movement and scuttled back to the street a second before the guard peered through the glass. Steve walked casually back to the car and killed a couple of hours before returning around one a.m. He had barely parked when a young couple got out of a cab and headed for the lobby. Steve pulled out a miniature telescope and focused it on the entryway. Too fast for Steve's eyes to follow the man punched in a four digit code and pushed through the door. Okay, then, you needed either a code or a key, but not both.

Steve crouched in the Audi for another twenty minutes then crept up to the building. The guard was tilted back in his chair, drowsing if not fully asleep. During his two hour break Steve had located a drug store. Glancing over his shoulder, he pulled out a plastic bottle of talcum powder and puffed a white cloud over the pad. After another quick check on the guard Steve blew on the keys as if he were making a birthday wish. The four most frosted numbers were 2-6-7-9, that meant twenty four possible four-digit combinations. Now for the big question, did the door make a sound when any combination was pressed or only when the right one was entered? Half holding his breath, he tapped in 2679. A small LED at the corner of the pad flashed red three times, then went dark. Steve peeked through the window. The guard was still tilted back in his chair.