Hard Case Crime: Dutch Uncle (15 page)

Robotaille looked over, and Lili quickly averted her glance to Healy’s mug shot. The look in Healey’s eyes was one of half-drunk exasperation, not that dead-lensed, clench-toothed, tough-guy stare that jumped out of so many of these pictures. Healy was trying out the you’ve-got-the-wrong-man stare. You saw a lot of those, too. Annick Mersault, that syrupy little pain in the ass, hadn’t done much with the shape of Healy’s face, or his nose, or his chin. But the eyes, she had gotten the eyes exactly right.

Wispy clouds splashed white like brushstrokes against the sky. It was a bright afternoon, a day for the Department of Tourism. Martinson was driving with the windows down. It was hot enough for the AC, but Arnie held out for the muggiest weather to run it, afraid that the shock of the cold air blowing on him could trigger a migraine.

Traffic was one fact of South Florida life the tourism people never got around to mentioning. This ride between Miami and Ft. Lauderdale got more aggravating every time he made the drive, and he did it only when it couldn’t be helped. The state started a highway improvement program a decade ago, and Martinson couldn’t remember the last time all the lanes on the interstate were open. He drove past coned-off quarter mile sections. Long stretches of road he swore were finished the last time he came this way had somebody in florescent orange flagging traffic to a virtual standstill. What used to be a forty-minute trip could sometimes take an hour and a half if you weren’t lucky. Highway improvement. He got off on Sunrise Boulevard.

Sailor Randy’s was in a strip of yahoo-joints that catered to a young crowd, go-go bars and indoor-outdoor booze shrines roping them in with goofball promotions. A sandwich board at the entrance to the parking lot said TUE: DRESS TO KILL WED: LADIES DRINK 2-4-1 ETC. Arnie wondered what you got for that ETC.

The club featured two outside bars and a cinderblock building that looked like a warehouse standing behind them. Inside, the concrete and cement trapped the stink of stale beer. Two Latin teenagers were dealing with a delivery, restacking cases of Heineken on a handtruck that was as tall as either of them. They wheeled it into a storage room, one kid pushing, the other bracing the load so it didn’t wind up on the floor. The deserted space had a weird feel.

Martinson knocked on a half-opened door and pushed it in. A man was sitting at a desk. He looked to be in his late thirties, with a rock star haircut and a beard flecked with grey. He looked up, saw Martinson, and said, “Hi.”

Martinson badged him.

The man introduced himself as Bryce Peyton, and stood up to shake hands. He was about 6’2” and he had huge hands, his right covering Arnie’s like a catcher’s mitt. He said he owned Sailor Randy’s.

“I’m investigating a homicide that occurred on March fifth,” Martinson said. “We got a tip from the Sheriff’s Office that this guy might be working in your place.” Arnie showed him Healy’s mugs.

Peyton pulled a variety of faces, squinting, bringing his eyebrows together, pursing his lips and pushing them out. No question in Martinson’s mind he knew the suspect, but he might’ve been debating whether to give him up.

Peyton said, “Healy, huh? He told me his name was Harry James.” He handed back the photos. “Am I gonna need a lawyer? Because if I’m gonna need a lawyer, you’re supposed to tell me. That is, if I’m not mistaken and I don’t think I am.”

Where was this guy coming from? Martinson said, “What would you need a lawyer for?”

“In case I was under arrest.” Peyton lit a Chesterfield. Now there was a brand you didn’t see every day. He took a sip from a glass on his desk.

“I’m just trying to run a business here,” he said. “Make a living and pay my taxes. Trouble with the law? I don’t need it.”

Martinson thought, pretty shaky. Maybe he was worried about the illegals he had stocking his beer.

The first two fingers on his smoking hand were stained to the second knuckle, from sucking those lung-busting Chesterfields right down to the nub, probably a good forty or fifty a day. Martinson wanted to tell him, There’s a reason people quit smoking.

“Listen,” Martinson said, “whatever you got going here, I don’t give a shit about it. I’m asking you what you know about Harry Healy.”

“He was this drifter type looking for work.” Peyton picked up his glass and drained it. It wasn’t water, it was vodka. “I felt sorry for him, but to tell the truth, I needed the help. By the time March rolls around, I get a thousand heads a night in here. Somebody’s gotta control ’em. Harry seemed like a nice guy, and he did a good job.”

Martinson said, “Where is he now?”

“I haven’t seen him in a week. He took Tuesday off, and he was supposed to work Wednesday, but he never showed up. He said he had experience and he worked like he had experience. He’s from New York, you know. He dropped the right name, so I hired him.”

“What name?” Martinson said. He had his notebook out.

“Frankie Yin.” Peyton inhaled a chestful of smoke and blew it toward the ceiling. “You ever hear of Frankie Yin?”

“Why would I have heard of Frankie Yin?”

Peyton’s irises shined with a reverential gleam. His hands gestured loosely, as if words wouldn’t do justice to the admiration he had to express. “Why would you have heard of Toots Shor? Or Josephine Baker? They’re legends of this industry.”

Martinson didn’t know who the other two were, either. He said, “Is that right?”

“Legends of the time-honored profession of showing people a good time. Frankie Yin is a legend.”

“And Healy worked for him, is that it?”

“Detective Martinson,” Peyton said, switching gears, “May I offer you a cocktail?”

“Can’t do it,” Martinson said.

“Beer or something?”

“Thank you, no.” This Peyton was a prize.

“Then if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to help myself. You don’t mind, do you?” Not really expecting an answer.

“This’ll only take a minute,” Martinson said, “if you’ll bear with me.”

“No problem,” Peyton said. “I’ll be right back.”

His boots clopped across the concrete, and then Arnie heard the sound of bottles clinking. He checked out the photographs Peyton had mounted on a wall, pictures of himself with members of the Dolphins, the Marlins, the Miami Heat. He couldn’t get over how tall the basketball players were, like they had to duck down to fit in the frame. The seven-footers dwarfed Peyton, a paw here or there on his shoulder, like he was a little kid.

“Would you believe,” Peyton said, re-entering his office, “that Frankie Yin started out as a busboy?”

“I’m here to find out about Harry Healy, who I’m investigating on suspicion of murder. Frankie Yin does not concern me. What more can you tell me?”

“Not much,” Peyton said, less enthusiastic now. “He seemed decent enough.” He swallowed some vodka and looked through it to the bottom of the glass. “Likeable. He was a likeable guy.”

“So he must’ve made some friends here.”

“I don’t know. He was polite, but he pulled up a bit short of being friendly.”

“Nobody he was particularly close with?”

“He might’ve had something going with one of my bartenders,” Peyton said. “Aggie St. Denis.”

Martinson wrote down her name. “What was she, his girlfriend?”

“One night, he swapped shifts with another guy so he could leave with her. Occasionally, I’d notice them coming into work together. Does that make her his girlfriend?”

“Did you ask her, this bartender girl, what happened to her pal Harry?”

“As a matter of fact,” Peyton said, “I did. She told me she hadn’t seen him, and I took her at her word. She’s not responsible for his behavior.”

“I didn’t say she was. But I’d like to get an address and a phone number for her.”

Peyton said, “Sure.” He opened a desk drawer and rummaged through a mishmash of catalogues and brochures and order forms. “I gotta have it around here somewhere.” He unjammed another drawer overflowing with the same kind of mess.

A green metal filing cabinet sat between the desk and a wall. On the side that was facing out, somebody had taped a list of names and corresponding phone numbers. In black marker across the top it said STAFF PHONE LIST. Healy’s name wasn’t on it.

Peyton was rooting in a third drawer.

Martinson said, “What about that?”

Peyton straightened, red-faced and winded, and told him he could use the phone on the desk.

Unless Aggie St. Denis turned out to be a rabid, cophating brat, Martinson made up his mind going in, the right way to play her was soft.

She buzzed him into the building and waited in the doorway of her apartment. She was expecting him, after that phone call from Peyton’s office, but Martinson showed her his badge anyway. She glanced at it, left the door open, and walked back inside.

She was pretty. Not a knockout model type, but fine-featured, attractive, with boyish hair she parted on the side. She was dressed in stiff new Levis, a man’s cut that gapped at the waistband where her figure tapered in, and fit snugly over her hips. She wore a v-neck t-shirt without a bra. Her feet were bare.

They were standing in her living room, near a couch and a TV with a 19-inch screen. She didn’t ask him to sit.

Martinson told her why he was there, and he asked her if she knew a man named Harold James Healy. He might have been going by Harry James.

She jumped on him. “Let me tell you something right now, detective. You’re making a mistake. Harry didn’t kill anybody.”

Which told him Peyton was right. She did have something going with Healy or she wouldn’t have come out of the box so defensive.

“We have a witness who saw him leave the scene shortly after the murder,” Martinson said. “And we have corroborating evidence that proves he was there.” He let this sink in. “If you were me, you’d be looking for him, too. When was the last time you saw him?”

“Earlier this week,” she said.

“What does that mean?”

“Tuesday or Wednesday.”

“It was one or the other, wasn’t it?”

She kept the apartment neat, but she owned too many books for the bookcase that stood to the right of the entrance. There were stacks of books on the floor. Martinson unshelved an oversized, leather-bound edition of Shakespeare’s tragedies. It was an old volume, the leather dry and cracked, and there were two more like it that made a set. He thumbed through the first few pages.

Aggie St. Denis closed the cover and put the book back. “I’d rather not have you sorting through my things,” she said, “if it’s all the same to you.”

“I’m sorry, I was just trying to find out when it was published.”

“1897,” she said.

“Wow, that’s a hundred years ago. That set must be worth some money.”

“Ten dollars each,” she said. “I tried selling them when I was broke, and that’s the offer I got.” She refolded her arms, remaining near the bookcase, but her shoulders had dropped down a bit.

“That’s funny,” Martinson said. “The same thing happened with this watch my grandfather gave me when I was a kid. I kept it in a cloth bag that closed with a string, and put it in a jewelry box and forgot about it. Long story short, I recently came across the watch. I thought, hey this is probably a really valuable piece. I took it to a jeweler and he appraised it for a hundred bucks.”

“But is has sentimental value,” she said. “That’s different.”

Martinson pretended to think about what she was saying. He said, “I guess so.”

“You weren’t close with this grandfather?”

“Nobody was. He was an ornery son of a bitch. Lived in the same apartment on the Lower East Side of Manhattan most of his life. In ’57 or ’58, he was supposed to come and live with us. My father hired a contractor and was all set to build an addition to our house, but then grandpa died.”

“That’s sad,” Aggie St. Denis said. “But what you’ve got is a family heirloom, and I’ve got a set of books I bought at a garage sale.”

Martinson said, “Family heirlooms are usually worth something besides sentiment, aren’t they? Although when you think about it, nothing has any value, except for the value we assign it. I’ll give you an example. A painting sells for twenty-five million dollars. Twenty-five million. What makes a piece of canvas with some colors splashed on it worth even one dollar? Basically, just somebody’s say-so. Then a second guy comes along and says, Hell, twenty-five million? That’s a bargain. I’ll take it. There you go. That’s what your picture’s worth.

“Same thing with the watch,” Martinson went on. “I take it to three jewelers, they all say the same thing. It’s worth a hundred bucks. But let’s say I had a totally different relationship with my grandfather. Let’s say I loved him more than anybody I ever knew. I’d starve to death before I sold that watch. That watch would be priceless.”

Aggie St. Denis was getting lost following the Martinson logic. She shook her head, and Arnie knew his argument, if he was trying to make one, was falling apart.

“But isn’t that what I said in the beginning?” She sounded like she genuinely didn’t remember. “We’re talking about two distinct quantities. On the one hand, money. On the other, what, emotional attachment? Anyway, that’s a weak example. Your watch’s got nothing to do with my books.”

“Maybe not,” he said, though he’d forgotten where they were, and he wasn’t thinking about whether he agreed with her or not. Arnie felt the first twinge of a headache boring in under his eyes. He took two deep breaths and hoped whatever was coming would go away. Just for a while.

“I guess I was taking the long way around to the point that all of us cling to various things, convinced they’re so valuable, and then something happens, or somebody comes along, and proves us wrong.

“Now let me ask you a question,” he said. “You’re an intelligent woman. What’s more important, living up to some false sense of honor by protecting a potentially dangerous criminal, or helping society make this individual answer for his behavior?”

“We’re back on Harry.”

“That’s what I’m here for.”

“He didn’t do it,” she insisted. “Harry wouldn’t hurt anybody.”

“That’s odd,” Martinson said. “Because he’s been arrested for assault, and he certainly hurt one of our police officers. Put him in the hospital. I would say that not only is he capable of hurting people, he already has.”