Blood Relations (12 page)

“Say it. For me?” He kissed her forehead. “You’re tearing me apart.” His throat was tight. “Please. Say it, Catie.”

Her eyes closed. “I love you, Frank.”

“And I love you. More than anyone. Or anything in this world. I’ll never leave you, I swear it.” He held her tightly, stroking her back. “We’re stuck with each other, Catie. Ain’t nothing we can do about it.”

ugene Ryabin, a homicide detective with the Miami Beach Police Department, sat by the window in Sam Hagen’s office smoking. Ryabin was waiting to be called across the street to testify in the strangulation murder of a transvestite prostitute, a young Puerto Rican who called himself Monique when he worked the area around Fifteenth and Collins. “With such a body, even you he would have fooled.”

Ryabin was a compact, white-haired man in his mid fifties, with sloping shoulders and an expression of weary bermisement. His skin was pale and lined, with pouches around his eyes and the blue sheen of beard under a close, cologne-scented shave. Gold cufflinks twinkled at the cuffs of his starched shirt, and a semiautomatic pistol rested in a holster at his waist. His suit coat, arms neatly aligned, lay across a stack of cardboard boxes containing files for a contract killing Sam was taking to trial in a week.

He had dropped by to see what was happening with the Duncan sexual battery case. Sam told him that the victim was due to show up at two o’clock that afternoon. His latest message on her answering machine, after a week of messages, had threatened to have the police bring her in if she didn’t come on her own. It had been Sam’s experience that victims who avoided the prosecutor were usually lying.

Considering that for a moment, Ryabin said, “Do you want an opinion?”

“Please.”

“My opinion is she’s not lying.”

Sam asked, “Did she ever get picked up for prostitution? Drunk and disorderly? Possession of drugs?”

To each, Ryabin shook his head. Nothing on the Beach, that he knew of. Sam said, “I’ve ordered her juvenile records.”

“This is the victim, may I remind you?”

Sam asked Ryabin what he thought of Alice Duncan.

Ryabin tilted open the window to let out the smoke.

A truck ground its gears in the street below. He said, “Ambitious. Smart, but not as smart as she thinks. She left home at sixteen, and earned a high school degree at night. Her parents are divorced. She comes from the suburbs west of Fort Lauderdale. Have you been up there, Sam? So many shopping malls and subdivisions and houses the same as the next, and landscaped walls around them. Miami Beach to a girl like that would be paradise.”

Several years ago in the Club Deuce, back when it was seedy instead of tame, Ryabin, sipping a fourth glass of beer, had told Sam how he himself happened to be on Miami Beach. He was not Russian, bite your tongue, but Ukrainian, born Yevgeny Ryabin in the city of Odessa, which, as a seaport with an established criminal class, offered certain opportunities for a clever young man. Yevgeny-Zhenya to his friends-became a fardzovshik, a low-level black marketeer. Even so, life was not easy. In 1972, with Jews getting out on special invitations to Israel, he arranged for a Jewish wife.

He paid the equivalent of $5,000 for Anna Levitsky, daughter of a poor, intellectual family (such families were nearly always poor). As soon as the system had spit out the paperwork, Zhenya left the Soviet Union with his bride and her sister and their widowed mother. To his surprise, he grew fond of these three women, his new family. They settled near the Golan Heights, where he learned to drive a tractor and shoot at Syrians.

In 1982 his mother-in-law, who with Anna’s sister had gone to live in Miami Beach, was robbed and brutally beaten. She died a week later, her daughters and son-inlaw at her side. The suspect was a criminal from a Cuban prison, sent by Castro in the Mariel boatlift, one of dozens of such men who settled on South Beach, which was then in a state of decay. The police sought him until his body turned up in Flamingo Park, neatly garroted. It was assumed, but never proved, that one of the local drug dealers had done it.

Ryabin and his wife stayed in the U.S. with her sister.

He changed his name to Eugene, polished his English, and joined the police department. Better the sands of Miami Beach than the sand of the Negev, he had told Sam.

It’s great here. A piece of cake.

Now he was looking at Sam over the glowing tip of his cigarette. “What do the witnesses tell you?”

“Depends. on whose side they’re on,” Sam said. “You listed nine of them. Two haven’t returned my calls. So far I’ve spoken to five others. Three now swear they didn’t see anything. One is sure she heard Ms. Duncan say she wanted to have sex with Marquis Lamont. A British male model says she was attacked. He’s convincing, but I get the feeling he’d like to nail Ruffini. His name’s Charlie Sullivan. What did you think when you interviewed him?”

“The same. But a lot of people would like to see Klaus Ruffini go down, if only for amusement. The Beach loves gossip, and what happened at the Apocalypse is on everyone’s mind. The best gossip of the season.”

“What can you tell me about Ruffini?”

“Besides the gossip?” Ryabin’s grin revealed the gap between his front teeth, which were stained with nicotine. “He’s a generous man. Last Christmas he sent baskets to the Jewish Home for the Aged. This is true. Swiss chocolates, wine, cheese, patd. He gave the city library a check for a hundred grand. The mayor made a speech, how lucky we are to have Klaus Ruffini in our town. And to the Police Athletic League he gave I believe fifty thousand dollars. For this he can make illegal U-turns and park in handicapped zones.”

Ryabin blew a stream of smoke toward the crack in the window. “Last week,” he said, “I went to Ruffini’s house and had a conversation with the intercom at the gate.

He’s deeply hurt to be the victim of false accusations.

Maybe Alice Duncan wants revenge because he didn’t agree to hire her as a model. Then he said I should call his attorney. The same from George Fonseca and Marquis Lamont. Fonseca said to me, ‘You’re a detective. Go detect.”

” Ryabin exhaled a smoky sigh. “It makes me nostalgic for Odessa. People were more cooperative there.”

Sam smiled. “All right. They deserve to be prosecuted.

So do a lot of people.” He gestured toward the files stacked on his desk, laid out across the sofa, and packed in boxes on the floor. “I’m supervising fifty or sixty cases, eight of which are set for jury trial this week. If this one washes out, I’m not going to cry about it.”

At the sound of a knock on the door, Sam swiveled around. “Come in.”

It was Joe McGee, holding half a guava pastry, flakes of crust dotting his tie. He said, “Got a message for you from Adela Ramos.” He lifted a hand toward Ryabin.

“Zdrastye, comrade.”

“Buenos dias, ” said Ryabin.

“You know about Ramos, right?”

Ryabin nodded slowly. “The child whose stepfather threw him from the window.”

“Yeah, but Adela Ramos, the kid’s mother, never married the guy.” Chewing the last of the pastry, McGee wiped his mouth, then said to Sam, “She called this morning, had a neighbor on the line to translate. You were in a meeting, so Gloria put the call through to me.

Seems like an acquittal wasn’t good enough for Balmaseda. The prick’s been following her. He calls her at work, says stuff like, ‘You bitch, you think you can talk like that about me.” I told her to get a restraining order and meanwhile stay low till he cools off. Woman’s petrified.”

Ryabin smiled, cigarette at his lips. “Tell her to buy a gun.”

“I’ll call her,” Sam said. “Make sure I’ve got her number. Gene, where is she living now, do you know?” It hadn’t been Ryabin’s case, but the entire department knew about it.

“I think with the brother, who has an apartment on Eighth Street, not far from the station. I’ll send someone to check on her.”

McGee paused at the door and said to Sam, “You want to grab lunch? We’re doing Chinese.”

“Can’t today,” Sam said. “I’m meeting my wife downtown.”

After the door closed, Ryabin looked across the office at him. “How is Dina?” he asked gently.

This was more than a polite inquiry. Ryabin had visited her at the hospital a few times. Sam didn’t know what to say except, “Better. She’s working again. I’ll tell her you asked about her.”

Ryabin nodded.

When Dina had called an hour ago she hadn’t told Sam why she needed to talk to him in the middle of the day, only that it was important. When he said he had no time for lunch, a sigh had come over the line. Please, Sam. I have to see you.

Sam pushed himself out of his chair. “Give me a call tomorrow on Duncan. I should know by then what we’re going to do.”

Ryabin didn’t get up. Extending an arm toward the windowsill, he tapped ashes into his Styrofoam coffee cup. “I’m noticing a strange thing, Sam. The physical evidence is still in the property room. Usually by now it would be in the lab for analysis. Blood type, hair samples, semen. But the lieutenant said never mind. I said, ‘What do you meanT He told me never mind sending the evidence to the lab. It would be a waste of time because the case wouldn’t be filed.”

“Why did he say that?”

Ryabin shrugged. “I asked. He said I could take it up with the captain if I didn’t like it. What can I think, Sam?

Only that the captain will send me to the chief-unless he first tells me to go to hell. I’m not crazy enough to ask Chief Mazik where he’s getting such information.”

Ryabin took a final drag off his cigarette and dropped it into the cup, where it hissed briefly in the remaining coffee and went out.

“He didn’t get it from me,” Sam said.

“From who, then?”

“Try the city manager. Hal Delucca called Eddie Mora last week and said he wanted this case to go away.

Apparently Delucca likes to take care of his VIPs over there. Eddie told him forget it, then asked me to check it out.” Sam spread his arms. “It’s my sterling reputation, Gene. Nobody can accuse the state attorney of being pressured not to prosecute. You don’t have to repeat that.”

“No, of course not.” Frowning, Ryabin pulled on his earlobe.

Sam had told Dina that Eddie might leave the office.

The only other person he would trust with that information was sitting in this room, but Sam knew how Ryabin might see it: the head of Major Crimes putting his seal of approval on a noaction in exchange for Eddie’s job. It wasn’t that way, but it bothered Sam enough to make him ask a question.

“Have you heard any talk about Eddie Mora and Hal Delucca?”

Ryabin raised his eyes, pale blue under heavy brows, deep lines at the corners. “Talk about what?”

‘Connections.”

‘No. I don’t like either of them. Is that enough in common? Why are you asking this?”

” Just being careful. If I tell your department not to file charges, I don’t want to find out later that somebody benefitted.”

:‘Somebody who? Eddie Mora?”

‘Anybody. The Tourist Commission. The fashion industry. The Miami Film Bureau. Or any of our three subjects.” Sam laughed, leaning back into his chair. “How much do you think they’ve already paid Alice Duncan to come in here and tell me it was all a misunderstanding?

‘No, no, Mr. Hagen, please don’t make me testify. I didn’t mean it.”

“

Dropping his coffee cup into the basket beside Sam’s desk, Ryabin said, “What if she says otherwise?”

“Come on, Gene. I had to twist her arm to get her here today.”

The street noises faded when Ryabin pushed shut the bottom section of the metal-framed window. He lifted his jacket off the stack of boxes and brushed some dust off a sleeve.

“You know, Sam, if you visit South Beach, and you have money, you expect certain things. Marquis Lamont and his friends, they’re in town making a movie.

They want to have a good time, so they go out to a club.

Klaus Ruffini and his friends go also. The clubs fill up if everyone thinks important people are there. This is how George Fonseca earns his living. He fills the clubs. The owners give him a percentage, and Fonseca gives the VIPs what they want so they’ll show up. Drinks, food, music. Girls. The models get in free. And maybe not always girls. You want a boy, okay. Or maybe some cocaine so you can feel good at three o’clock in the morning. PCP, speed, heroin, whatever you want. Enjoy the hospitality. Is this a crime? No, it’s a party. All private. Who does it hurt?”

Slipping one arm into his neatly pressed jacket, then the other, Ryabin said, “I know that George Fonseca has friends in organized crime. I know that he distributes drugs in some of the nightclubs. We used to have in the budget money for special undercover units. I myself would see bags of cocaine in plain sight. Not now. We stay out of the clubs. The city wants us to chase the kids from Hialeah and Liberty City who come over to snatch purses, and the thieves who prey on the tourists. Real crime.”

“Gene, I can’t file a case to make a point.”

With a smile, Ryabin said, “Am I preaching? You should tell me to be quiet.” He buttoned his jacket over his pistol and adjusted his cuffs.

“All right,” Sam said. “Go ahead and send the evidence to the lab. Say I told you to. If you get any heat, call me.”

The gap appeared between Ryabin’s front teeth. “Maybe we should send it to MetroDade.”

The Beach police had a crime scene unit, but the county’s was more sophisticated-and possibly more secure. Apparently, Ryabin was concerned about it. Sam said, “Whatever. MetroDade. Look, even if we get a warrant to take samples from all three guys, and we get DNA matches on swabs from the victim, we’ve still got consent to worry about. We might prove they had sex with her. It’s harder to prove she didn’t let them do it.”

At the door, Ryabin stood looking into the mauvecarpeted corridor for a moment. Then his eyes shifted back to Sam. “Don’t judge her too quickly. You don’t like South Beach. The party life, what goes on there.

This I can understand. But don’t judge her too quickly, Sam.”

Eugene Ryabin often spoke in a roundabout way, so that his words, beyond their apparent meaning, carried subtleties that only those who knew the context could discern. The listener would hear the obvious, and then, like the grumble of thunder following a distant flicker of lightning, would come rolling echoes of comprehension.