The Mango Opera (32 page)

I groped for a way to reach him. I heard my phone ring. “Your sister knew I was a friend.”

He lifted the gun a fraction of an inch. “All this Key West bullshit kill that pretty little girl. You just as bad as that cuckoo man with the phony name that twisted her neck…”

“So it was Kemp who killed her?”

“That coward cry because we show him what happen to worms.”

“You punched his ticket?” The phone rang again.

Carlos grinned as if recalling a dirty joke. “Fuckhead having trouble walking. I’m hungry for my fuckin lunch. I gotta go.” His eyes had not lost their evil glint. Carlos leveled the gun, pointing it at my nose. The tendons in his forearm bulged, his fingers moved, clenched the pistol grip, settling their alignment for the squeeze. Any emotion he might have possessed fled his expression. He had expelled me from humanity, turned me into a cardboard target. I waited for my life to flash before me, waited for my lights to go out. All I got was an intense view of the backyard. Time slowed. A third ring from the phone. The machine would get it next time. The sun glistened on individual leaves behind the man. Wind in one shrub, then another. Why wouldn’t the dog bark, just once? Why was I lost for anything to say, anything to prolong the talking, to add an extra minute to my life, an extra thirty seconds? Suddenly I got a brainstorm about the identity of the murderer. No use now. The fourth ring cut short by the machine.

The gun went off.

The whole right side of his head went away. Charlie Balls Balbuena tipped sideways, looking puzzled by where his life had gone. He rolled into the sandy grass, shaking the gun as if it were stuck to his hand, hot as the blazing sun. A small hole next to his left ear dribbled blood. I felt cold, out of breath.

Monty Aghajanian crouched in the shadows alongside the screened porch, the satin black Walther firm in his hand. He slumped forward and squeezed his forehead with his other hand, then jumped up and ran toward Carlos with the weapon extended. He kicked the pistol out of the man’s lifeless grip and leaned down to confirm that he was dead.

“Thanks for leaving this in your bookcase.” Monty laid the Walther on a plastic table.

“Did you have to make it so dramatic?”

“I barely had time to plant my feet.”

Someone would have been listening to my voice on the answering tape the instant I died.

31

My life had not flashed before my eyes. No reruns, no grim reminders, no highlights of yesteryear. I sat on a cobwebbed redwood chair under the mango tree with the towel around me, wondering about the parameters of luck. In the past three days I had dodged a bomb and a bullet. I wasn’t given much time to be introspective. City police swarmed into my yard. Two accusatory officers I didn’t recognize started to order me around. Monty backed them off with some departmental mumbo-jumbo. I went inside to get dressed.

Marnie was on the phone to her office. “Look,” I heard her say, “if you won’t bump down the dogcatcher story for this, Russell, I’ll file my piece with the fucking
Miami Herald.
Don’t think I won’t, you kiss-ass dipshit.”

Sam sat in the front room, pensive and distant, an arm’s length from the window fan though sweat drenched his denim shirt. He nibbled hangnails and stared at a magazine. The police had blocked Dredgers Lane to traffic. Bright yellow crime-scene ribbon snapped in the wind like party decorations. The flat-toned speakers of two-way radios broadcast constant chatter. All the activity prompted indignant barking from the neighbor’s dog.

Cootie Ortega arrived and unpacked a bag of dirty cameras. I offered a packet of lens-cleaning paper and let him do his thing. Larry Riley’s team from the Monroe County ME’s office arrived in two white Cherokees and a van. An EMS vehicle bore a bumper sticker:
HAVE YOU FLOGGED YOUR CREW TODAY
?

Marnie went out to get statements from Riley and the neighbors. Hector Ayusa ambled across the lane to make sure everything was okay. He lifted his guayabera shirt to show us the pistol stuck in his belt, to assure us that he could handle any aftershocks. Sam hurried Hector back over to his house.

“Weird,” said Monty. “All this revenge and no arrests.”

“Only paybacks,” I said. “How’d you know Carlos was about to send me to Happy Hour?”

“I had to drop some papers at Nathan Eden’s office, so we came up Eaton instead of Fleming. When Marnie turned onto Grinnell, Sam noticed Dade plates and gold hubcaps on a green Mercedes parked by the Paradise Cafe. A man was in the car. Sam guessed the other guy was headed for your house. Marnie made the light at Fleming and turned left, out of sight of the Benz. I sprinted up Fleming and Sam ran back to the pay phone in front of Cobo’s.”

The ringing telephone.

“How’d you find us in the yard?” I said.

“I sneaked onto the porch and heard his voice out back. I almost couldn’t remember the name of that book that Bernier said was in front of the gun.”

“Legends of the Fall.”

“I remembered.”

“Did Emilio get away?”

Sam opened the porch door and cracked a grin. “Marnie made the ultimate sacrifice. I was on the phone at Cobo’s when I heard the gunshot. The boy in the Mercedes heard it too. He cranked up his car and floored it up Grinnell, ran the light and hooked a left onto Fleming. Marnie timed it perfectly. She whipped her Jeep away from the curb and crashed the Benz on the left front wheel and the driver’s door. She played it like she didn’t know who he was. She got out and acted hurt and stumbled around. I’m running up from Cobo’s, the bad guy scoots out the passenger side of the Mercedes with a big nasty gun in his hand. She’s leaning over, whimpering, holding her ankle. Next thing you know, she karate-kicks his Adam’s apple. Out went his lights, just like that. Whammo.”

“I believe you’ve got a keeper, Sam,” I said.

“Superwoman. I’m in love.”

“Where’s Emilio now?” said Monty.

Sam laughed. “We grabbed his keys and stuffed him in his trunk. It smelled like puke and piss in there. Kemp must’ve had a nasty ride. I looked down the lane a minute ago. Emilio’s in the backseat of a cruiser, bunch of kids standing around sticking their tongues out at him.”

Monty asked to borrow my micro-cassette recorder. His civilian permit to carry a weapon would get him off the legal hook on the shooting, but the department would require a statement. Why spend an hour, he said, pounding the computer? Or two hours writing a police “white paper” in longhand? He walked into the bedroom and closed the door.

Sam went back to his chair by the fan.

As I put away the clean dishes that Bernier’s team had left in the sink rack, I watched the yard through the kitchen window. Every uniformed city cop wore a mustache. Someone had appropriated the tarp from my Kawasaki to cover Balbuena’s body. As if the city couldn’t afford their own body blankets. To hell with it, I thought. A small price for being alive. It wasn’t as if I couldn’t hose off the stains. I’d have all day tomorrow to put my world back into kilter. All week next week. All year long. I could buy a replacement tarp. Carlos couldn’t.

I felt no desire to call West Palm Beach to tell Annie what had happened. Judging by Carlos Balbuena’s comment about having taught Kemp a lesson, I figured Annie was out of danger from that direction. If we could believe Avery, Anselmo never had been a threat. She could read about it in the newspaper, or watch TV. Still, in all the confusion, something didn’t ring right. I felt convinced that Kemp had killed Ellen and Julia, and had planted the bomb in Annie’s VW. That much was clear. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that a piece was missing from the puzzle. I tried to recall what had occurred to me just as Carlos was pulling his trigger. I didn’t know what it was or where it went.

Carmen stuck her head in the front door, her face a funereal grimace. “My mother called me at work. That Cuban boy tried to kill you?”

“He was deep in the process of killing me.”

Carmen gave me a hug. It lasted long enough to let me know that I needed it. “Monty had to shoot him?” she said.

“Monty found out this morning that he’s probably going to get his badge back,” I said. “I don’t think he wanted to celebrate like this.”

“This is probably old news,” said Carmen in a quieter tone. “And I’m sorry I waited to tell you, but I talked to Larry Riley the other day like you asked me to. He said, quote, ‘Your friend’s on the right track.’”

The place was turning into Grand Central Station. Bob Bernier barged in with his all-purpose black FBI briefcase. “We found Kemp in Marathon,” he said, out of breath. “Fishermen’s Hospital, intensive care. A beachcomber found him at the south end of the Bahia Honda Bridge, right where they found Julia’s body. He was wrapped in plastic. They castrated him. He almost bled to death.”

“Good God,” said Marnie.

“Good,” said Carmen.

Emilio’s scalpels had gone to war.

Monty came out of the bedroom. “Paybacks.”

“I hope he makes it,” said Sam. “Anglo castrati get all kinds of preferential treatment in prison.”

“They think he’ll pull through,” said Bernier.

“Good,” said Carmen.

“By the way,” I said to Bob Bernier, “Carlos bragged on two things while he was waiting to pull the trigger. He implicated Palguta in Billy’s death, and he knew for certain that Kemp had killed Julia. I don’t know how he knew it…”

“Maybe Ray admitted it after they cut off the first nut,” said Sam.

I needed to make a call. I ducked into the bedroom. As I closed the door, I caught an inquisitive look from Monty. I looked up the number and hoped that Anselmo was back in his office. Bad luck. It rang four times and a voice-mail tape grabbed the call. Shit. Leave a message or not? As the beep sounded, I heard someone pick up the receiver.

“Anselmo here.”

He did not sound surprised when I identified myself.

“What can I do for you, Alex?” The perfectly modulated voice of the legal professional. As if nothing out of the ordinary had been happening for the past thirty days.

“A favor,” I said. “I got dragged into the periphery of the Mary Alice Noe murder case. I don’t mean to pry into your personal life, but I understand you once dated the woman.”

This time he hesitated. “Okay, let’s say I did.”

“She ever discuss her previous gentlemen friends?”

“No. I didn’t appreciate that topic of conversation. My job, every minute, every day, I deal with near-term history. I prefer to deal with the future in my friendships.”

“Did you tell her that, Mr. Anselmo?”

This time a long wait. I looked out the window to the side yard. All of the uniforms were gone. Liska and Riley were talking. Chicken Neck still wore the bad-lavender trousers and purple shirt. He also wore a grim expression.

Anselmo cleared his throat. “I don’t recall exactly what I told her.”

“How about pictures in her house? Any where she’d been photographed with male friends?”

“Yes, one. I found it upsetting, and she discarded the damned thing.”

I made a sniffing noise, then remained silent. He knew the next question without my asking. The name he gave surprised me at first, but I realized that it confirmed a deep, almost subliminal suspicion. I thanked him and hung up. Have fun with the IRS, pal. And all your future friends.

I slid open the window. “Detective Liska, you got a minute?”

I met him at the porch door and ushered him toward the bedroom. Sam, Marnie, and Carmen were out in the yard. Monty sat in the chair near the fan, staring at the Pearlcorder. I was glad that he’d saved my life. I also was glad it wasn’t me who’d had to kill a man.

“What’s up?” said Liska.

“I need you to call Sheriff Tucker. He won’t give me straight answers.”

“What am I supposed to say?”

“Ask him what time he heard about Fernandez being found dead. Ask him what time he told Avery about it.”

Chicken Neck looked puzzled, then suddenly deflated. He sat on the bed and nodded, slowly recovering his swagger, as if things were adding up for him, too. “I was just talking to Riley. I brought up the Jacuzzi Murders. That boy’s got some heavy secrets locked in his head.”

Liska dialed a number I did not recognize. After he’d spoken with Tucker he looked worse. “Why am I a goddamned detective?” he said. “I accept Avery’s shit about Mary Alice Noe. I check out the Guthery suspect. That shrimper’d lived with the woman for months. Naturally his fingerprints were all over the place. But he also had a previous manslaughter charge. I figure that part of Avery’s story was legit. His Ray Kemp details made sense, too. I never would’ve bought the pizza…” He shook his head. “My ex-wife is gonna be pissed.”

“You go with your gut…” I said. “Avery knew Billy was toast. We didn’t.”

“I could tell before he said good-bye, Tucker knew how big a shitstorm would hit his department. He’ll blame the messenger.” Liska paused, then said, “He can’t fire me. I don’t work for him. What made you think…?”

“When Sam got picked up on Sunday, was Avery the arresting officer?”

“Yeah.”

“I figured so, since Billy was in Miami trying to hustle Raoul Balbuena for five grand. So I wondered why Billy was worried more about reward money than covering his tracks for a murder. Then I wondered why Avery would arrest Sam on a total long shot, especially if he secretly knew that Billy was the killer. The detail that never locked tight was the GM sedan that Sam used to see parked by the Noe house. Billy’s Oldsmobile, Avery’s Buick … There was one too many GM sedans. Sam can’t tell one GM sedan from another, but Avery didn’t know that.”

Liska shook his head. “He knew the charge against Wheeler wouldn’t hold, but he needed him cooped up and shut up…”

“… until the Noe rap had come down solidly on the late Billy Fernandez.”

Liska bit his lip and punched the mattress. “A nervous breakdown. He tells the wife to call me instead of 911. He confesses to crimes too old to prosecute, tells the truth about Kemp’s crazy spree, then passes off the Noe murder on his dead partner. What do you think, he went over for a piece of ass?”

I shrugged.

Liska rolled with the thought: “I’ll bet he raped her to get his nut, then killed her to protect his career. My old lady is gonna be pissed.”