The Rich and the Dead (17 page)

“How'd you get so comfortable with a sword?” Lila asked. Racer of yachts, dealer of art, wielder of weapons. What else, Lila wondered, fell into Javier's realm of expertise? How close an eye should she keep on this jack-of-all-trades?

“I had a young man's dreams of acting. When I was at university in Buenos Aires, I tried out for every play, but all I ever got to do was some sword fighting. I was never the hero or the lover. Always the soldier.” Javier lunged with his sword into an invisible opponent, then placed the weapon in his imaginary sheath and took a deep, grand bow. Lila clapped.

“You may have missed your calling,” she said.

“Hardly, my dear. In essence, a salesman is an actor. I merely play a different part depending on who the person is and what I want from them. It's quite simple.”

“And what part are you playing for me?”

“Today, for you, I'm playing a very special part, one quite close to my heart: Javier Martinez. For you, I play myself. And you'll play the wealthy divorcée.”

He put the samurai sword back on the wall.

As they toured the remaining rooms of the vast gallery, Lila talked about the Star Island house she was supposedly purchasing, and Javier suggested how to decorate it. If Javier had his way, all of Teddy's money would go toward art.

Finally, after she'd seen everything, Lila turned toward the door. Now that she and Javier had a connection, she'd be able to spend time with him, maybe find out who his enemies were.

“Well, Javier, thanks for showing me around. I—”

“Now, what time is it?” Javier said, looking at his watch and cutting Lila off midsentence. “It's almost three o'clock, and I'm starving. Camilla, will you join me for lunch? I know of the most fabulous place in Miami to eat, and, let me tell you, it's somewhere Effie would never, ever take you.”

“Perfect,” Lila said. No time like the present to spend more time with Javier. He led the way out of the gallery and into the chauffeured black Escalade idling by the front door. As Lila settled into the backseat with Javier, she took note of the custom details. The outside of the car was definitely armored, and Lila suspected that the heavily tinted glass was bulletproof. Whatever Javier was into, it went far beyond the art world if he thought he needed this type of protection.

“
¿Adónde, señor?
” the driver asked.

“
El Pub, por favor.
”

After a short drive, they pulled up to a small, humble restaurant right on Calle Ocho, in the heart of Little Havana. Several groups of white-haired Cuban men sat with curious tourists at the outdoor tables, talking and eating their lunch. The place was bookended by two six-foot fiberglass roosters painted in the red, white, and blue of the Cuban flag.

The young waitress standing behind El Pub's linoleum counter broke into a huge smile when Javier walked into the restaurant. He took a seat on a stool and patted the adjacent stool for Lila to join him.

“Looking at you, I'd say you exist on birdseed,” Javier admonished, giving Lila a thorough once-over. “All skin and bones like you girls want to look, but this is a Cuban restaurant. There's no birdseed on the menu, so I'll order for you if it's okay.”

Five minutes later, Lila was tucking into the best
ropa vieja
she'd ever tasted, and Javier was gobbling down a cubano sandwich. Yesterday they had both eaten at the most expensive restaurant in the city. But Lila was much happier here, spending less on her whole lunch than the price of one pre-dinner cocktail at The Villa.

“Thank you for sending that champagne over last night,” Lila said.

“Please.” Javier delicately patted the sides of his mouth with the corner of his napkin. “I did it for Dylan. The man looked like he was drowning, with you practically pouting into your foie gras. Rich, handsome, and charming isn't your thing?”

Lila's mind raced back to the kiss she and Dylan had shared. Her face turned crimson, and her eyes dropped to the counter. “Actually, the night ended better than it started.”

“It couldn't have gotten much worse.” Javier let out an exasperated sigh. “I haven't had an easy road, darling, trust me on that. But I thank Christ every day that I'm not attracted to women. Your kind are . . .”

Javier abruptly stopped speaking as the door to the restaurant opened and Carlos Mas Canosa walked in, followed by two bodyguards in black suits and sunglasses. Lila suppressed the gasp that almost escaped from her lips. Before the Star Island killer monopolized the Miami Police Department's time and money, Mas Canosa had been their number one target—a known head of the Juárez cartel, murderer of hundreds of drug war soldiers, kingpins, and civilians. Everyone called him El Chapo, or “Shorty,” because even in his heeled cowboy boots he was barely five feet, three inches.

No one made eye contact with El Chapo as he walked across the dining room, then into the men's room at the back of the restaurant. His two bodyguards stood at attention at the entrance to the restroom.

“Keep enjoying your food. I want you to fatten up a little bit,” Javier said, twisting around to give the restaurant a quick scan. “Miami men aren't like those walking haircuts on Wall Street that I'm sure you're used to dating—they like their women a bit curvier. Now, excuse me. I'll be back momentarily.” He turned and headed toward the back of the restaurant, where El Chapo had disappeared seconds before.

Sitting there alone at the linoleum counter as the sweet young waitress refilled her barely touched coffee, Lila wondered what, exactly, was going on. Was El Chapo the Star Island killer? Was it a drug deal gone bad? What was the connection between Javier and El Chapo?

With the hope of overhearing something from the women's room, Lila got up and headed in that direction. But as she was about to open the bathroom door, she felt a steely grip on her left shoulder. It was one of El Chapo's bodyguards.

“Pardon me, señorita,” said the giant man with a shaved head and a jowly face like a bulldog's. “Bathroom's closed.”

“I just need to quickly wash my hands,” Lila said.

“You'll have to wait. Out of order.”

Not wanting to continue a debate with a refrigerator-sized man, Lila returned to her spot at the counter. The previously lively restaurant had taken on a funereal tone.

“Does that guy come in here a lot?” Lila asked the waitress, whose big brown eyes had widened into frightened saucers. The waitress looked at her but then quickly looked away, not answering, not nodding, nothing. El Chapo's favorite way of dealing with his enemies, and those who spoke out of turn, like overly chatty waitresses, was beheading. Rumor was his men played soccer with the heads of rival cartel members.

Ten minutes later, El Chapo came out of the washroom, followed by his two bodyguards. When all three of them exited El Pub, the entirety of the restaurant exhaled. A minute later, Javier glided back to his seat and returned to his now cold cubano sandwich.

“Who was that man?” Lila asked, playing the wealthy divorcée from out of town.

“What man?” Javier said, blinking at her blankly.

“The tiny guy with the bodyguards?” His blank look went unchanged. Lila's tone got louder, “Javier, the man you were just in the washroom with for the last ten minutes?”

“I don't know what you're implying, dear Camilla,” Javier said with the self-righteous tone of the unjustly offended, “but the days when men like me were forced to hide away in washrooms for clandestine assignations are long, long gone.”

“That's not what I was saying, Javier. And you know it.” Two red-faced tourists squeezed through the door with Miami guidebooks in their hands and cameras around their necks. Javier looked at them like they were carriers of a plague.

“I've got to get out of here. It's getting a bit too midwestern for my sensibilities. Well, my darling, did you enjoy your field trip to the wrong side of the tracks?” Javier asked.

“I know more about places like this than you'd think, Javier,” Lila snapped, irritated at the thought that something important had happened and she'd somehow missed it. Little did Javier know that her own apartment was just a few blocks from this very spot. “I haven't always been wealthy.”

“Of course!” Javier exclaimed. “I knew there was something different about you, a toughness that sets you apart. Now I know why. You started with nothing.”

Lila thought suddenly of her childhood. Her dad hadn't been in the picture, so she, her sister, and her mom had learned to live on her mother's meager paycheck. Though they had little, Lila's mom was a wild and artistic dreamer. She would spin tales for her two little girls about a better life than the one they were living: a sophisticated life full of glamour and art and luxury. A life very similar to the one Lila was leading now, as Camilla Dayton. Thoughts of her mother brought tears to Lila's eyes. Javier reached his hand out to hers, patting it affectionately.

“Remembering one's childhood is always an exercise in melancholy, dear Camilla. Don't feel shy about being sad.”

A contemplative silence fell over Javier. He watched Lila in a way that made her feel he was sizing her up somehow. Then he broke into a smile. Whatever question had come to his mind had now been settled.

“I've got a quick errand to run. But maybe you should come with me. It's close by. I don't get over here that often. Do you have the time?”

Of course Lila would come along. That mysterious meeting with El Chapo had just made Javier Martinez, the charming and unassuming art dealer, much more interesting.

During their twenty-minute drive north on I-95, Lila and Javier mostly talked about art. Javier went on and on about how he found Claes Oldenburg to be grotesque and spent another five minutes detailing his obsession with Richard Serra. Lila smiled and nodded when she knew it was conversational to do so, but she wasn't listening. He was talking bullshit, just filling up the empty air, and they both knew it. She needed to figure out Javier's role in all of this. What was he up to, and how was it connected to the Star Island killer?

When the car made a left on Ali Baba Avenue, Lila realized they were in Opa-Locka, a bizarre, forgotten town founded by an aviation Hall of Famer who'd designed the place with a Thousand and One Nights theme, as if it was his own personal amusement park. Though some of the Moorish architecture remained, like the crescent moons sitting atop the white-domed roofs, now it was just another shitty Florida city, populated with one-level cement homes with bars on their windows and foreclosure signs on their dirt lawns.

The car pulled to a stop in front of a small pink stucco house with two large Dobermans in the front yard.

“Would you believe that inside this horrendous little house is the world's sole connection for ancient Mayan sculptures?”

No,
Lila thought. The house's windows were covered on the outside by steel bars and on the inside with flattened cardboard boxes.
No, I wouldn't believe for one second that the occupant of this house is in any way connected to the art world.

Lila, Javier, and Javier's driver got out of the car. The driver removed a large metal briefcase, which he kept close at his side. As he handed it to Javier, Lila noticed that the briefcase had a biometric fingerprint lock. Whatever was in that case had to be extremely valuable.

The moment the three of them set off in the direction of the house, the two dogs began barking and jumping, putting their paws on the top of the chain-link fence. The front door of the house swung open to reveal a tall, reed-thin man with a black mustache and a thick scar wrapped around his neck.

“
Mi amigo. ¡Callesen estos perros del diablo si no quieres que ellos ahogan en mis balas!
” Javier shouted over the cacophony of barking, snarling dogs.
Shut up those devil dogs if you don't want them to choke on my bullets,
he'd said. Then, as gentle as the morning sun, Javier turned to Lila. “You don't speak Spanish, do you?”

Lila shook her head no, though the answer was, of course, yes. To be a detective in Miami and not have at least a pretty good handle on Spanish was to just be bad at your job.

The mustachioed man called something to the dogs, who both sat down immediately and ceased their barking.

“These people don't speak a word of English, so just wait for me in the kitchen. I'll only be a couple quick minutes, then I'll show you some of his best sculptures.”

Javier shook hands with the thin man, whispering something into his ear. The man gave Lila a slow once-over, then smiled, nodded, and slapped Javier on the back in approval. Javier walked a couple steps ahead of Lila, then turned to give her a devilish look. He had the face of a little boy about to set off a firecracker, full of bad intentions.

“Isn't my job fun?” he said.

The inside of the tiny house was anything but fun. It smelled of stale marijuana smoke and an indescribable musty scent that Lila figured was the by-product of the enormous iguana sleeping in the terrarium that took up half of the living room.

Javier and the man retreated into a back room, closing the door behind them. The driver stood by the door, and Lila went, as Javier instructed, down the hallway to the kitchen. A young woman stood at the stove, and a tiny toddler in a dirty T-shirt was in a high chair, picking at Cheerios spread out in front of him. The woman nodded at Lila and gestured to the small kitchen table, where Lila took a seat.

Lila wondered what Javier, an incredibly rich man and member of the Janus Society, was up to in a shithole like this. If this guy was in fact a black market smuggler of archaeological remains, he could get up to twenty years for doing what he was doing. But it seemed like something more was going on here.

She had less than six weeks left to figure everything out before Javier and the rest of the society would be dead. Lila decided that tomorrow, she would set up some surveillance on this run-down house. The bigger question was why Javier, a near-perfect stranger, had brought her along on what was clearly an incriminating errand. Was this some sort of test? And if so, would she pass?