LaBrava (23 page)

LaBrava said, “For how long?”

“There you are,” Torres said. “Do it right I need almost half the Detective Bureau, pull three shifts a day at three locations. They’re sitting in cars, hotel lobbies—all the bad guys hanging out would love to hear about it. See, if it goes down soon, right away—get the money in two days, deliver on the third—we’re all set. Otherwise I have to bring in the
federales
.”

“He’s not gonna call,” LaBrava said.

“You don’t think so.”

“He was a cop. He knows about traps and voice prints.”

“Yeah, but he’s strange,” Torres said. “You ever hear of one like this? The guy wants a garbage bag full of money. He says, use hay-baling wire, it’s good. Guy’s right off the farm. Look how he tried to intimidate, use that old protection shit. Like he was trying to get caught.”

“You know where he is?”

“Sure, he’s at his hotel. He walks up to Wolfie’s, walks back. Only place he’s gone.”

“You got a tap on his room phone?”

“His Honor the judge said no. So all we got is the Pen Register. He calls her we’ll know it.”

“What about the boat-lifter?”

“He hasn’t been home.”

“He check out?”

“No, he just hasn’t been around. We had a guy owes us one go in and ask for him.”

“Why don’t you take a look in his room?”

“His Honor the judge said no.”

“What about the boat-lifter’s car?”

“Nowhere around. You can’t miss that kind of car, but it’s no place we’ve heard, Dade, Broward or Palm Beach.”

“What bothers you the most?”

“About what?”

“The whole thing. How it looks.”

“Is the guy this dumb? That’s what I keep asking,” Torres said. “You say he was a cop, he was a gypsy. Then a rent-a-cop, four bucks an hour. He’s got a license for a three-fifty-seven, that’s pretty interesting. But does he know how to work extortion or is he dreaming?”

“What else?”

“I don’t believe he knows what he’s doing.”

“Thank you, Jesus—you hope and pray. Please let him fuck up, quick. What if nothing happens?”

“The Major says after three days we bring in the Bureau. Let the college boys run it. Send the letter to Washington, they analyze it sideways, upside down and tell us it’s a Smith-Corona on steno notebook paper, done with a black ribbon. Oh, is that right? Hey, thanks. Let’s go, boys, get out there and find that fucking Smith-Corona. The guy moves, Joe, or he’s full of shit and he doesn’t.”

“Maybe waits till some other time.”

“I got three days, that’s all.”

“He contacts her again. Then what?”

“She makes the delivery, we go with her.”

“With the six hundred thousand?”

“There’s no other way.”

“You can cut up paper.”

“What did the note say, Joe?
You try any tricks you will die
. We have to believe that. If we say, ‘Oh, he’s full of shit, don’t believe it,’ and it turns out the guy’s crazy and he whacks her? We don’t look so good. The woman, she looks terrible. Maybe the way it has to be, the way it turns out, he has to see the money before we can touch him. It has to look real. You know that. Long as we don’t let the movie star or the money out of our sight. Then it’s up to him, how good he is. But nobody’s that good and can sound so fucking dumb.”

“You ever see one of her movies?”

“I probably did, I don’t remember. I know her name and she looks kind a familiar, that’s all. Was she a big star?”

“No, but she was good. I mean she was good.”

“I like to see her sometime.”

“What about the money? Where’s she getting it? Six hundred thousand in cash?”

“You kidding? Miami banks, they got that lying around in boxes. Same ones the dope guys used.”

LaBrava didn’t say anything for a moment. “She tell you she could get the money?”

“I asked her, I said I don’t want to get personal, but are you able to put up that much? She said yes. She said since we know who it is she doesn’t consider it much of a risk. Also, considering the fact the guy’s a dummy.”

“She said that?”

“Words, you know, like that. She seems pretty sure Richard’s going to fuck up.”

“But first she has to come up with the money,” LaBrava said.

“Where she gets it,” Torres said, “she could have it under her bed, it’s none of my business.”

“You’re gonna copy the serial numbers.”

“Photograph the bills. I assume at the bank, I don’t know yet. But if the guy gets away with them, they’re gone.”

LaBrava was silent. He sipped his beer, looked out the window at the sky over the ocean, all that space in fading light; it was pure out there, nothing going on. Dirty ideas came about indoors. Now Torres looked out the window. He saw no answers there and turned back to LaBrava.

“What bothers you the most?”

“Same thing you’re wondering. Is he that dumb?”

“I have to believe it.”

“Or does he want you to think he’s dumb?”

“He doesn’t have to try very hard.”

“But what if he’s not the guy in charge?”

Torres had to think about that one. He said, “Who, the boat-lifter?”

“Cundo’s been around a few days looking things over,” LaBrava said. “The note’s delivered, he drops out of sight. He gives you Richard to watch. Maybe to keep you busy while he operates.”

“I wish we could check him out, see what he did in Cuba.”

“He did time. According to David Vega by way of Guilli and Paco Boza.”

“You got more informants than I do.”

“I don’t bust them.”

“Maybe you can find out some more about the boat-lifter, what he did.”

“Maybe all you have to do,” LaBrava said, “is pick up Richard. Are you smarter than he is?”

“Jesus, I hope so.”

“Put on a show, like you got hard evidence. Then tell him you’ll trade off for the boat-lifter. Richard loves to make deals with policemen. Pick up the boat-lifter and put ’em in a room together. The one that comes out alive gets ten to twenty-five.”

“Yeah, or they both walk.”

“It’s an idea.”

Torres said, “You know what I get, listen to you say something like that? What I feel?”

“Tell me.”

“You don’t seem too worried about the movie star, her best interest.”

LaBrava didn’t say anything.

“I don’t want those guys for ‘Attempted,’ I want them with the garbage bag in their hand. So what I have to do, I have to keep my eyes on her and on the garbage bag. Never let them out of my sight. That’s the only thing I have to worry about. I don’t want her to lose her life on account of me and I don’t want to look bad,” Torres said. “In that order.”

IT WAS LIKE
one of her movies
.

It came into his mind at different times now because of what Buck Torres had said. “You don’t seem too worried about the movie star.”

He had to think about that, see if it was true. If it was true then it was because he was getting the two Jean Shaws mixed up. The real one and the one on the screen. He had never worried about the one on the screen because she could take care of herself, or because she wasn’t a person who deserved a lot of sympathy. She was often the perpetrator, never the victim. But now she was in something that was like one of her movies and she
was
the victim in this one and not playing the part of the spider woman or the other woman or the girl with the greedy eyes. This time she was the good girl. Except that good girls were usually blond, wonderfully wide-eyed, fairly chaste, and ended up with Robert Mitchum, Dick Powell . . .

Victor Mature.

He could see her, a glimpse of her with Victor Mature in a room with barred windows. Blowing cigarette smoke in his face. (Good girls didn’t blow smoke of any kind.) The bars casting striped shadows in the bare room. And Victor Mature making his jaw muscle jump but not blinking at the smoke. Not pissed off as much as disappointed. Near the end of the picture . . . She blows the smoke at him, walks into a courtroom and is sentenced to life in prison. For murder.

She screams at the judge, “I didn’t do it! I swear I didn’t!” And they lead her off as the newspaper guys are running out putting on their hats and Victor Mature is standing with the good girl now, the professional virgin, in the back of the courtroom, Victor clenching his jaw but with a wistful look in his eyes.

And he remembered Franny Kaufman saying to Jean, after they had seen
Let It Ride
and Franny was trying to identify another Jean Shaw picture, “Your husband commits suicide . . . what a guy . . . and makes it look like you did it.” And Jean said . . .

Jean said, “Oh, that one.”

And he had turned from Maurice’s bar with a drink in each hand and heard Jean’s car windows being smashed.

Like one of her movies?

The movie audience didn’t worry about the girl who played Lila in
Let It Ride
. Poisoned her husband in
Nightshade
. Had her lover thrown off the Golden Gate Bridge in
Deadfall
. They could worry about the good girl if they wanted to, but the good girl always won out in the end. The good guy saying to her, “You crazy kid, don’t you know it was you all the time? How could I ever fall for a dame like that?” And the dame, out of the picture, is saying, “Swell.”

So he had to remind himself: she’s the good girl in this one. But this one isn’t a movie and doesn’t have to end the way movies end. Okay. Except that when he thought of the real Jean Shaw he saw the same confidence, the same quiet awareness that he saw in the screen Jean Shaw. He had to somehow separate the two images in order to be able to worry about her. If there were background-music scores in real life it would be easier to identify her.

There she was in his mind again with Victor Mature. Blowing smoke at him. Bits of the picture coming back. He believed it was the same Jean Shaw picture Franny had seen and mentioned the other night.

Now it was the morning of the day after the note was delivered. He had not yet seen Jean or Maurice. He knocked on Franny’s door, waited, went down to the lobby and there she was surrounded by Della Robbia ladies. At first he thought she was giving them a skin-cream demonstration, using one of the old ladies, Mrs. Heffel, who sat rigidly in front of her.

But she wasn’t. Franny was sketching the woman in pastels. She looked up at him and said, “Well, say it, Joe.”

He was surprised. “I thought you did hotels.”

“Sit down, I’ll tell you about it.”

At this point he saw the cop across the lobby motion to him: a young, clean-cut guy in plainclothes standing by the alcove that led to the darkroom and the command post in the hotel kitchen. Walking away he heard Franny say, “Hey, Joe, what’s going on?”

The young cop glanced around before saying, “Sergeant Torres, I’m suppose to tell you, wants you to meet him at the M.E.’s office, Jackson Memorial.”

“For what?”

“They got a floater he wants you to identify.”

“Why me?”

The young cop didn’t know.

The body of Miney Combs lay naked, autopsied and closed, on a metal tray-table inside a refrigerated semitrailer.

The Dade County Morgue, Jackson Memorial Hospital, had become overbooked since Miami’s jump in population, the 120,000 who rode in on the Mariel boat-lift. Some of them were now killing each other. So the Medical Examiner had rented the refrigerated semitrailer to accommodate the overflow. It stood behind the morgue and at one time had displayed the name
Burger King
on the side panels. But the words had finally been painted over and it was no longer something to write about in the paper.

LaBrava stared at the man’s face, bloated, mutilated, no longer a face he would recognize, as Buck Torres told him about gunshot entrance wounds in the back of the head, one through and through, one hollow-nose .38 caliber slug deflected—hard-headed old guy—lodged within the frontal lobe of the brain. The old man’s body had been picked up by the Coast Guard on its way out Government Cut on the tide. He had been in the water close to twenty-four hours. LaBrava was called because his name and address were found in Miney Combs’ wallet, written in ballpoint pen on a five-by-seven memo sheet imprinted with the name
STAR SECURITY, Private Protection Means Crime Prevention
. The dead man’s pickup truck had been found in front of the abandoned Biscaya Hotel.

His gray work clothes, work shoes, keys, a can of Copenhagen, wallet containing a driver’s license and thirty-eight dollars, were in a paper bag wedged between legs that resembled marble tubes about to burst. A white tag was attached to the big toe of his right foot. Torres said no, they didn’t find a snuff stick. What was a snuff stick?

LaBrava stared at the bulge of the old man’s body, the crude incision from breastbone to navel, and again at the mutilated face.

LaBrava said, “He’s Richard Nobles’ uncle.” He said, “I sent him over there, to Richard’s hotel.” After several moments he said, “Well, you have a reason to pick him up now, don’t you?”

He could hear himself, his voice, amazed that he sounded as calm as he did. He was not calm inside his body. He felt his waiting period coming to an end.

He went home. Jean’s car stood on the street, whole again. He wanted to see her, but he went to the darkroom instead and printed a set of Richard Nobles eight-by-tens. Then sat alone in his living room looking at the former rent-a-cop Franny thought was a hunk. A hunk of what? He wanted to say to Franny, “Look at him closely. Watch him move. Listen to him talk.”

Could you lean on a guy like Richard? Scare him? Make him run?

Torres called in the late afternoon and said to stop by.

LaBrava walked down Collins. Was the guy dumb or not? When he reached the La Playa Hotel he hesitated. Was the boat-lifter running it or had he pulled out? LaBrava continued on to the MBPD Detective Bureau, the windowless stucco building built like a blockhouse on the corner of First and Meridian.

The squad room inside was like all the squad rooms he had ever seen in older police buildings: different types of desks and tables bunched in rows to conserve space, a few men at desks who might have been athletes at one time, solidly built, or had the look of career noncoms in civilian clothes. No one wore a shoulder holster anymore; they packed Smiths on their hipbones, short-barreled mags with big grips. In a corner of the room was the holding cell—and this was different than all the others he had ever seen—made of wrought-iron bars, the kind of ornamental grillwork you might find on a Spanish patio.