Love Kills (12 page)

MIAMI, FLORIDA

Detective Pete Nazario, on the phone at his desk, scowled and tried to tune out Joe Corso's unsolicited personal advice to fellow detectives.

Corso's dubious beneficiary was Sam Stone, whose romance with a young U.S. Justice Department investigator appeared to be growing serious.

“Kid, lemme tell ya one of my unbreakable rules of life. This one's right at the top of the list: Never buy a ring for a woman!” Corso nudged Nazario, still on the phone. “Ain't that right, Pete?”

Emma, the lieutenant's tiny middle-aged secretary, peered disapprovingly over her little spectacles.

“Why not?” Stone asked.

“Simple. When you never buy a ring for a woman, you never buy a ring for the
wrong
woman.”

“That explains your popularity with the opposite sex,” Burch said, from his desk.

Stone frowned. “What are your other unbreakable rules for life?”

Corso ticked a few off on his thick fingers. “Always lock your car. Never sign or tear a check out of the book until you fill out the stub—”

“See, those two make sense,” Stone said, “unlike that first one.”

“Take it from me, kid, from a man who learned the hard way.
Never
buy a ring for a woman.”

“Found 'im!” Nazario ended his phone conversation with a jubilant grin. “Dyson Junior works at a Sunny Isles tattoo parlor. Just talked to Lou, the manager. The kid's there right now.”

“Let's go see what his story is,” Corso said. “I'll tell you my other unbreakable rules of life on the way.” He pointed his finger like a gun at Stone as they left. “Bro, heed my good advice. Don't wanna have to say ‘I told you so.'”

 

Lou, the manager, a muscular shiny-domed man, was a dead ringer for Mr. Clean except for the tattoos covering his thick arms and burly neck. His body was a walking, talking billboard for his business. He summoned Dyson from a back room.

Colin Dyson Jr. had inherited his father's shifty black eyes and shaggy unibrow. Tall and wiry, he wore distressed blue jeans, a green and brown camouflage T-shirt with
HA, YOU CAN'T SEE ME
printed on the front, and had wavy dark hair to his shoulders. A multicolored tattooed cobra wound around his right arm from his wrist to his bicep, where its open mouth exposed fangs and a darting red tongue.

Nazario introduced himself and Corso. “Is there a place we can talk for a minute?”

“I don't talk to cops,” Dyson said sullenly.

“It'll only take a couple minutes,” Nazario said affably.

Dyson arrogantly flipped back his hair and turned away.

“Guess you'd rather talk to us downtown,” Corso said.

With that, Dyson spun without warning and shot out the front door of the tattoo parlor as though the starter pistol had just been fired for the fifty-yard dash and he was the favorite to win.

“Hey, get your ass back here!” Corso yelled.

He and Nazario exchanged resigned glances, and Corso took off after him.

“
Me cago en su madre
,” Nazario said, and followed.

Dyson darted out onto busy Collins Avenue, dodging heavy traffic. Corso followed, huffing and puffing by the time he reached the far curb.

Nazario outpaced him, sprinting just a few feet behind Dyson, who cut across a fenced-in construction site and ran down toward the beach. Construction workers began to shout.

As the sand slowed Dyson down, Nazario tackled him and wrestled him to the ground. Dyson cursed, kicked, and flailed as Corso, red-faced and panting, fumbled for his handcuffs and piled on.

“That's the kid from the tattoo parlor across the street!” a construction worker yelled.

“Hey!” another shouted at them. “Whadaya doin'?”

“Let 'im go!” A burly worker in a hard hat charged in their direction.

“Police!” Nazario flashed his badge as Corso cuffed Dyson's hands behind him.

The converging construction workers pulled up short to watch.

“What'd he do?” one asked.

“Nothing! I didn't do anything!” Dyson yelled, as the detectives lifted him to his feet.

Curious beachgoers began to gather.

“Let's get him outa here,” Corso muttered, doing a double take at two teenage blondes in bikinis.

They marched Dyson back across Collins Avenue in handcuffs, a chorus of boos trailing behind them.

“You couldn't just answer a coupla questions like a gentleman,” Corso complained, still breathing hard. “You're lucky I don't rip the coconuts right off your palm tree for this little stunt. You just made things a helluva lot harder for yourself, kid.”

Nazario radioed for a patrolman with a cage car to transport Dyson to the station.

“Sorry 'bout that.” The tattooed manager watched Nazario shake beach sand out of his jacket. “I shoulda warned ya, the kid's a little edgy.”

Corso put Dyson in the back of their unmarked.

“A marked car is on the way,” Nazario said. “Let's sit 'im on the curb till it gets here.”

“Nah, he's cuffed. He's okay in here.” Corso slammed the door.

Nazario emptied the sand out of his shoes one at a time.

Corso was at the Coke machine, and Lou was asking Nazario when he could expect Dyson to return to work, when their car started and began inching away from the curb.

“Hey!
¡Para, hijo de puta!
” Nazario yelled, and ran toward the unmarked Ford. “Stop! Stop right there!”

“Oh, shit!” said Lou, the tattoo parlor manager.

Corso dropped his Coke can. “Son of a bitch!”

Nazario ran into the street in front of the car, hands up like a traffic cop. “Hold it! Hold it!”

Dyson saw a break in traffic and floored it.

The car knocked Nazario off his feet. He landed on the hood, his face hit the windshield, and he stared for a long moment into the driver's eyes. Neither blinked. Dyson stomped the brakes and Nazario rolled off the hood into the center lane, motorists swerving to avoid his prone body.

“Son of a bitch!” Corso pulled his gun, loped into the street, waved traffic away from Nazario, who wasn't moving, took a shooter's stance, and opened fire. He didn't stop squeezing the trigger until his eighteen-shot Glock automatic was empty.

Brakes squealed. A cabbie driving a family of Chinese tourists to the airport swerved onto the sidewalk and slammed into a power pole. Pedestrians and construction workers dove for cover. Lou, the tattoo parlor manager, hit the sun-baked pavement. Bullets flying, he answered his own question about Dyson's return to work.

“Not soon,” he muttered.

“Shots fired! Officer down!” Corso radioed, requesting backup and rescue.

The fading echoes of gunfire were followed by piercing screams from a restaurant and the front porch of a retirement hotel down the block.

His still-smoking gun in his hand, Corso knelt beside Nazario.

“Pete, Pete? You okay?”

“I think so,” the detective said. “I didn't want to get up with all the cars and bullets flying by. Tell me all that shooting wasn't you, Joe. It wasn't you, was it? Say it ain't so.”

“Damn right it was me. That son of the bitch tried to kill you with our own goddamn car.”

“Oh, shit!
Coño, que mierda.
” Nazario struggled to get up.

“Don't move, Pete. Wait for rescue.”

“No, I'm okay. Get me the hell out of the street.”

Corso helped him to the sidewalk. Nazario hunched his shoulders at the curb and shook him off.

“What the hell happened?” he demanded. “You cuffed him behind his back.”

“The son of the bitch has gotta be double-jointed,” Corso said, “some kinda contortionist. He musta stepped through the cuffs, got them in front of him, climbed over the front seat, and started the car.”

“You left the keys in it? What about your unbreakable rule of life? Goddammit!
Comemierda, le diste un tiro al carro nuestro.
You shot our car?”

“Musta hit it a dozen times,” he said.

“I don't think so. I've seen you at the range,” Nazario said, disgusted.

“You must be in shock,” Corso said. “Musta hit your head.”

 

K. C. Riley burst out of her office. “Shots fired at that tattoo shop! Corso's on the radio. He sounds okay but we have an officer down.”

“Pete's the only one with him.” Stone reached for his jacket.

“Oh, no!” Emma, the lieutenant's secretary, gasped and covered her mouth with her hands.

They all stared at one another.

“Let's get out there,” Riley said.

“I hope Corso didn't do any shooting,” Burch said. “I couldn't believe he qualified last time I saw him at the range.”

 

The patrol car Nazario had requested to transport Dyson screeched to the curb. “Let's go!” Corso told the rookie behind the wheel.

He had just heard on his walkie that their missing unmarked Ford Crown Victoria had been sighted from an overpass by a Florida highway patrolman responding to a serious multicar pileup in the opposite direction. Dyson was now reported southbound on Interstate 95, speeding toward the city. He had slapped the detectives' blue flasher onto the dashboard and was weaving through heavy traffic.

“Cross the 163rd Street causeway,” Corso yelled. “We can cut him off at the pass!” He dove into the front seat. “Wanna come, Pete? You up to it?”

Nazario paused for a moment, watching Corso reload his weapon. He shook his head. Screams still echoed from half a block away.

“I'll check out the collateral damage here.”

“Okay, but get yourself checked out first.”

The patrol car tore away from the curb, lights flashing, siren screaming.

More sirens as paramedics arrived. Nazario pointed down the street, waving them on in the direction of the screams. His handheld radio was dead, run over in the street by an SUV that narrowly missed him. He limped painfully down the sidewalk toward the retirement hotel.

“
Dios mío.
” A tiny elderly woman, her dress bloodied, lay pale and dazed, holding a blood-soaked towel to her head as shocked senior citizens and hysterical hotel employees milled about her.

Shit, he thought.
Este hijo de puta mato a una vieja.
My God, the son of a bitch killed an old lady.

Medics scrambled to treat the injured woman as Nazario trudged grimly on down the street to the restaurant. Shots had shattered the front windows, showering an early lunch crowd with flying glass. Bullet holes pocked an inside wall. Nazario ventured inside. Broken glass crunching beneath his feet. Small tables and chairs had been overturned in the chaotic stampede. Broken crystal and fresh flowers from the tables littered the floor.

“Everybody okay in here?” he called hopefully.

“It's dead!” The manager raised his head from behind the counter. He was trembling.

“
¿Qué?
” The detective dreaded the answer.

“The cappuccino machine!” the man burbled emotionally. “They killed it. Shot it dead center in the middle of lunch hour. What happened? Was it terrorists?”

“No, not terrorists.
No, no es un terrorista, es peor, un policia comemierda.
”

Miraculously, no one was dead or seriously hurt, though scores of customers had fled during the confusion without paying their checks. The detective stepped out, scanned the street for other casualties, and returned to the hotel.

The news was better than he dared hope. One of Corso's hollow-point bullets had nicked the elderly woman's right earlobe as she rocked in her chair on the hotel's front porch.

Though the wound bled freely, medics believed that Irma Jolly, eighty-six, would be fine. The outcome would have been far different had the slug struck a mere fraction of an inch to the right.
Gracias, señor.
Nazario fought the urge to drop to the ground and give thanks. His battered knees ached too much.

The medics wanted him checked out at the ER.

“Later,” he said. “After we get our car back.”

Nazario used the radio of a Miami police sergeant who had just arrived. He saw no life-threatening injuries at the scene, he said, and was proceeding with the sergeant in the direction of the chase.

 

Corso and the young patrolman were in hot pursuit, with Dyson in sight, still handcuffed and at the wheel of the Crown Vic. The blue flasher on the dashboard alerted motorists, many of whom yielded or pulled over. An angry Metro-Dade bus driver called 911 and complained about cops chasing each other through traffic.