La Brava (1983) (16 page)

Mr. Fisk leaned against the counter separating them, concentrating on the open wallet. " 'Private protection means crime prevention.' Is that suppose to be clever? I got a son in the advertising game could write you a better slogan than that one, free."

"See, prevention," Nobles said, "that's what you have to think about here. See, you call the cops after something's done to you, right? Well, you call us before it happens and it don't."

Mr. Fisk said, "Wait a minute, please. Tell me what you're not gonna let happen the cops one minute away from here down the street would?"

"Well, shit, they could mess your place up all different kinds a ways."

"Who is they?"

"Well, shit, you got enough dagos living around here. You got your dagos, your dope junkies, your queers, this place's full a all kinds. But, see, five hundred dollars in advance, you don't have to worry about 'em none. It gives you protection all year, guaranteed."

"Guaranteed," Mr. Fisk said. "I always like a guarantee. But tell me what in particular could happen to my place if I don't buy your protection?"

"Well," Nobles said, "let's see..."

Surveillance, the way LaBrava remembered it from his Miami field-office days, was sitting across the street from a high-rise on Brickell Avenue or some place like the Mutiny or the Bamboo Lounge on South Dixie. Sitting in a car that was as close as you could come to a plain brown wrapper with wheels, so unnoticeable around those places it was hard to miss. The afternoon the wholesaler came out of the Bamboo, walked across the street to the car and said, "Joe, the lady and I're going out to Calder, catch the last couple races, then we're going up to Palm Beach, have a nice dinner at Chuck & Harold's with some friends..." it was time to move on, to Independence, as it turned out...

But not anywhere near the kind of independence he was into now--protecting his movie star--standing in some bushes on the east side of Flamingo Park, catching Richard Nobles with a long lens coming out of a motel named Sharon:

Richard Nobles walking over to the swimming pool. Snick. Nobles turning to say something to the little guy standing in front of the office. Snick. The little guy with his hands on his hips, feisty pose, extending his arm now to point at Nobles walking away. LaBrava saying, eye pressed to the Leica, "I see him." Snick.

The guy turned to his office, then turned back again and yelled something at Nobles. Nobles stopped. He looked as though he might go back, and the little guy ran inside the office.

LaBrava got in Maurice's car, crept along behind Nobles over Twelfth Street to Collins and parked again, got out with his camera and followed Nobles up Collins. Silver jacket and golden hair--you didn't have to worry about keeping him in sight. There he was, like he was lit up. The Silver Kid. The guy never looked around either; never even glanced over his shoulder.

From the east side of Collins, LaBrava shot him going into Eli's Star Deli. About fifteen minutes later he got him coming out. He got him going in and coming out of a dry cleaner's. Finally he got him going into the Paramount Hotel, just above Twentieth Street. LaBrava hung around about an hour. The bad part. But better than sitting in a car full of empty styrofoam cups and crunched-up paper bags. At least he could move around.

He walked to the taxi stand on the southwest corner of Collins and Twenty-first and waited nearly twenty minutes for a red Central cab to arrive with the Nigerian, Johnbull Obasanjo behind the wheel, scowling.

"What's the matter?"

"Notting is the mattah." With an accent that was both tribal and British.

"You always look pissed off."

"It is the way you see, not the way I look."

There were parallel welts across his broad face, tracks laid by a knife decades ago that Johnbull, second cousin of a Nigerian general, told were Yoruba markings of the warrior caste. Why not?

"You're disappointed."

"Ah," Johnbull said. "Perhaps what you see is disdain."

"Perhaps."

"Mon say to me, the fare, 'Did you learn your English here?' No, in Lagos, when I am a boy. 'Oh,' he say, 'and where is Lagos?' " Johnbull's twin knife scars became vivid, underlining the white-hot pissed-off expression in his eyes. "When I am a child in school, for God sake, I can draw a map of the United States. I can show you where Miami is, I can show you where Cleveland is. But nobody here, they don't know where Lagos is, where you get the second most oil from any place in the world."

"I'm looking for a guy," LaBrava said, "who doesn't know where his ass is. Big blond guy staying at the Paramount." LaBrava handed Johnbull a ten-dollar bill. "Watch for a black Pontiac Trans Am, late model. If it picks up the big blond guy, follow it. Then give me a call. I'll pay for whatever time you spend on it. If you have to leave, tell the other guys, I'll give 'em the same deal."

"I want a picture for my mother," Johnbull said. "This one smiling."

"Let's see a big one," LaBrava said. He raised his camera and shot the Nigerian framed in his window, grinning white and gold.

* * *

The woman in the office of the Sharon Apartment-Motel said, "Tell me you arrested him and you want Mr. Fisk to take a look it's the same one... Nuh, no such luck, uh? Oh well. Mr. Fisk is lying down he's so upset. Soon as the other police left he had to lie down. You know what he's worried you don't find him? What if he comes back?"

LaBrava waited.

Mr. Fisk came in, wary.

"You don't look like no cop to me, would wear a shirt like that. With a camera. What is this, you're on your vacation?"

LaBrava said, "We like to take a few pictures when we process a crime scene, Mr. Fisk. You by any chance speak to Sgt. Torres?"

"I don't know--they come in a car with the lights. You know how long it took them? Twenty-five minutes."

"See, they make out a U.C.R.," LaBrava said. "That's a Uniformed Crime Report. Then the Detective Bureau follows up. Did he give you his name? The big blond guy?"

"He showed me a gold star and the name of the company, something that says 'Private protection means crime prevention,' and his name printed there, typed. But I don't remember it. I should a wrote it down."

"What'd he say exactly?"

"I told the two other cops were here. I told them all that."

"In case you might've left out something important."

"Okay, he wants to sell me protection. What else is new? I tell him I don't need any, I tell him I've got the Miami Beach Police Department one minute away from here down the street. That's how dumb I am. I don't know it takes you to drive from First Street to Twelfth Street in a police squad car full speed with the siren and everything twenty-five minutes."

"How much did he ask for?"

"Five hundred. In advance, of course. He says for a year's protection guaranteed. Oh yeah? Next month he's back for another five hundred. I grow up, live forty years of my life in Crown Heights, I don't know this kind of business goes on?"

"He threaten you? Say what would happen if you didn't pay?"

"Get ready. You want me to tell you exactly what he said?"

Mrs. Fisk said, "We can't prove he said anything. The policeman was here said unless the other places he did the same thing, we all speak up, then maybe."

"Tell me what he said, Mr. Fisk."

"He gives me the pitch, all this protection I'm suppose to get for five hundred dollars. I ask him, against what? What could happen to my place? The guy says, 'Well, let's see.' He goes over to the door, looks out. He says, word for word, 'Somebody could come around and take a dump in your swimming pool every night.' Wait. Listen. Then he says, 'That wouldn't be too nice, would it?' Not, he's gonna smash all my windows, he's gonna throw a bomb in, blow the place up, like they used to do it. Or even threaten to break my legs. No, this big blond-hair son of a bitch is gonna poo poo in my swimming pool."

LaBrava shook his head. After a few moments he said, "Would you step outside here, Mr. Fisk? Thank you. Over by the pool more. Yeah, right there. Now give me kind of a pissed-off, defiant look. If you would, please."

"Then the cop comes," Mr. Fisk said, "and what does the cop do? He takes my picture. I'm telling you..."

LaBrava passed up dinner with Jean and Maurice to spend the evening in the darkroom, watching Nobles appear in trays of liquid, pleased with the shots because they were clear and in focus. He liked the ones where there was motion in the foreground, out of focus, the top of a car as it passed, in contrast to the clarity of Nobles' confident, all-American boyish face. Hometown hero--the hair, the toothpick, the hint of swagger in the set of silver-clad shoulders. What an asshole.

How did they get so sure of themselves, these guys, without knowing anything? Like people who have read one book.

He hung Nobles up to dry and spent the next two and a half hours with Jean Shaw, in her apartment.

They did talk about Nobles, recapping, and he told her what Nobles had been up to and that he'd have prints in the morning, confirmation. She seemed fascinated. She sat facing him on the sofa and asked questions, probed for details, listening intently. Yes, it was fascinating--she used the word--that he could follow someone so closely, document the guy's activity, and not be detected. She asked him about the Secret Service and continued to listen until-GCo

In one of her pictures, she said, there was a subplot about counterfeiting and they began to talk about movies and she told him what she hated most about making pictures: the two-shot close-up face to face with an actor she often couldn't stand. Nowhere but in the movies did people stand so close when they talked--and you'd get these actors with foul morning breath or reeking of booze--the two of them on the sofa getting closer and closer and that was fine, with confident breaths, good smells, aware of nature's horny scent in there, LaBrava ready once again to try for that overwhelming experience. He told her he wanted to see one of her pictures with her. She said she would get one; she was going home tomorrow to pick up some clothes, a few things, she'd bring the tapes. He said he would like to drive her, see her place.

She said, "Spend the night with me. Tonight."

That sounded good.

She got a wistful look and said, "I need you, Joe."

And that didn't sound so good because--there it was again--it sounded familiar, and he had to tell himself that playing was okay, they were just having some fun. Except that she made it sound serious.

She said, "Hold me."

He did, he held her tight and she felt good. Before she felt too good he sneaked a look at his watch.

LaBrava was in his own bed when Johnbull Obasanjo phoned a few minutes past 2:00 A.M.

"I have been trying to call you, you never at home."

"I'm sorry."

"You tell me you want information--"

"I apologize."

"I accept it," the Nigerian said. "Now, you want to know where they went to in the black Pontiac sportcar, I tell you. They went to a place call Cheeky's. I know a man name Chike, he is an Ibo, but not a bad man. I don't believe this place, though, is of the Ibo. I believe it is for men who have pleasure in dressing as women. So they go in there."

"You saw the driver of the Pontiac."

"Yes, a Cuban man."

"What'd he look like?"

"I told you, a Cuban man. That's what he look like."

LaBrava wondered if Nigerians told jokes and if they were funny. "Was there anything different about him?"

"My friend, you have to be different to go in there. I told you that already."

"I apologize." Maybe they had a sense of humor if you got to know them. "You didn't by any chance get the license number of the Pontiac."

Johnbull Obasanjo said, "You have a pen? You have the paper, something to write on when you ask such a question?"

LaBrava turned the light on and got out of bed. Fucking Nigerian. The guy delivered, though, didn't he?

Five and a half hours later, still in bed, the phone again lay on the pillow against his face. He raised it slightly as Buck Torres came back on with his NCIC computer report.

"Cundo Rey. That's the owner's name. You got a pencil, I'll spell it."

"Please do."

"You ready?"

"Spell the goddamn name, will you?"

Torres spelled it. "You're a bitch in the morning, aren't you?"

"What else?"

"Cuban National, came from Mariel during the boat-lift but wasn't processed. Arraigned for transporting a stolen motor vehicle, Volusia County, that's up north, no conviction. Assigned to Chatahoochee for psychiatric evaluation. He disappeared from there."

"Is there a warrant out on him?"

"Nobody wants him, figuring we got enough Cubans."

"You got his picture?"

"I can get it. Take a couple of days," Torres said. "He looks harmless to me. Refugee, fell in with some bad hombres."

"Get the picture," LaBrava said. "I think you're gonna need it."

Chapter
14

NOBLES HAD HALF OF a Debbie Reynolds to finish and a few half-done fries left. Little Eli could make a sandwich, damn, but he couldn't deep-fry worth shit. Nobles said to Cundo Rey, who was playing with his coffee spoon, "You do any good last night?" and took a big bite of his Debbie.