36
As we went through the main entrance, we found ourselves in the section called Morocco. Off to the left was something called Zagora Cafe, which was a fancy name for a restaurant with cafeteria-like service. You grabbed a tray, got in line, and picked out what you wanted. We settled for coffee, deciding that we would eat later.
I carried both coffees to a table, where we sat while I told her exactly what I was doing in Tampa.
“Why didn’t you tell me this before?” she asked.
“Same reason I didn’t tell Becker,” I said. “You’re the law, and I’m not licensed in this state.”
“What did Becker say?”
“We made a deal, and he’s sticking to it. My end was to tell him what I was doing here and what I knew about the two murders.”
“Which is what?”
“Nothing,” I said. “I don’t know anything about either man.”
“And he believed you?”
“I hope so,” I said, “just as I hope you do. It’s the truth. I didn’t know either man, and I don’t know why they were killed.”
“Could their deaths have anything to do with your case?”
“I don’t see what,” I said. “I’m looking for a runaway wife.”
She digested what I had said in silence for a few moments.
“You do believe me, don’t you, Cathy?”
She took off her dark glasses and looked at me.
“I’d like to,” she said, “but let’s not let whether I do or not ruin our good time today. Okay?”
“Fair enough,” I said.
“Was this what you meant by mixing business with pleasure?” she asked.
“No,” I said, “that was just clearing the decks. I have reason to believe that the woman I’m looking for might frequent a gym hereabouts.”
“By hereabouts do you mean Florida,” she asked, “or Tampa?”
“Tampa, I hope,” I said.
I didn’t have the postcard to show her—I’d left it in the car along with my jacket—but I told her about it, and about Ray Cortez having been the photographer
“I’m hoping the fact that Cortez took the photo means she’s staying in Tampa.”
“If she’s even the girl in the postcard.”
“Well,” I said, “the whole job is predicated on my taking that as fact, that a husband would know his wife even from behind.”
“If she’s been working out for the past six months, she could look a lot different than he remembers.”
I told her about the birthmark.
“He saw that on a postcard?”
“He thinks he did,” I said. “Before you start thinking that I’m taking advantage of him by taking his money, let me say that I tried to talk him out of it.”
“I wasn’t thinking that.”
“Oh.”
“I guess that would be a New Yorker’s thought, wouldn’t it?”
“I suppose it would,” I said. I felt as if I should apologize, and almost did.
“I’ve never been to New York,” she said. “I don’t think I ever want to go.”
“If you ever do,” I said, “I’ll show you the good things about it.”
“Well, Busch Gardens is one of the many good things about Tampa,” she said, “so how about letting me show it to you?”
“I’m game,” I said. “Let’s just have a good time.”
37
She took me to a new ride called Questor. It was designed to make you feel like you were in a vehicle that could travel through rock, in the water, on land, or in the air—and it was pretty damned convincing.
After that we just started working our way through the park. She made me go on the Skyride, even though I didn’t relish riding high in the air in a bucket supported by cables.
We spent a good hour and a half in the arcade, playing games and winning stuffed animals. Actually, she was winning the animals. I couldn’t win a damned thing, except when it came to shooting baskets. That I was good at, and I finally added some prizes to our haul. By the time we left there we had to find a couple of shopping bags to carry everything, except for the big stuffed white tiger she had won. That I had to carry on my shoulders. When we first entered the park, I had seen someone with a big white tiger riding on their shoulders. Now I knew why. It was the only way to carry the thing.
It was in the arcade that I was able to actually verify that we were being followed. A couple of guys alone don’t spend that much time in an arcade full of games without playing something, not unless they’re tailing somebody.
This time the two men were not bodybuilders. These guys were professionals—except that they didn’t know how to act in the arcade, which gave them away. Still, an amusement park—or zoo—was not their regular stomping grounds, so I guess they could be forgiven for giving themselves away. I certainly forgave them.
We’d been there for hours, and it was getting dark. I didn’t know what the two guys had in mind. They might have just been keeping tabs on us. They certainly weren’t looking for a place to catch us alone, because that was impossible here. The only other thing I could figure was that they were waiting for it to get dark. There were lamps around the park, but I had the feeling that when it got dark, they didn’t help much.
“What time does this place close?” I asked Cathy.
“Nine,” she said. “We’ve still got some time.”
“Uh, no, I don’t think we do.”
“Why not.”
I looked around and spotted an ice cream stand.
“Let’s get some ice cream.”
“We just had chicken and french fries a little while ago.”
“Let’s get some ice cream, Cathy,” I said again in a different tone of voice.
She gave me a strange look. “All right, we’ll get some ice cream.”
I bought a couple of cones, and we took them to a bench and sat down. I put the white tiger next to me and the shopping bags full of stuffed animals on the ground at my feet.
“What’s wrong?”
“Do you have a gun in that bag of yours?”
“No,” she said, “why?”
“We picked up a tail.”
“Where?”
“Two men, one taller than the other by a little bit. They’re getting some ice cream right now.”
She looked, but didn’t make it obvious.
“They were in the arcade,” she said.
“I know.”
“I thought it was strange, two grown men in the arcade, but . . . are you sure?”
“Very,” I said.
“What do we do?”
“We split up.”
“Why?”
“Because they’re following me, not you.”
She thought about it for a moment, then said firmly, “No.”
“No . . . what?”
“No we’re not splitting up.”
“Cathy, I don’t know what these two guys have in mind—”
“Does this have to do with your missing wife?”
“Honestly, I don’t know what this has to do with,” I said. “Look, when I got back to my hotel last night there were two guys waiting for me. I managed to ditch them. Now there’s these two guys. I don’t know what’s going on, but obviously somebody is sending these guys after me. There’s only one way I’m going to find out why.”
“How’s that?”
“I’m going to ask them.”
“What?”
“We’ll split up, I’ll lead them away to someplace secluded . . . is there someplace secluded around here?”
“You see?” she said. “You don’t know your way around the park. You need me.”
“Cathy,” I said, “they’ve probably been waiting for dark to make a move—”
“Then we’ll make a move first,” she said. “They probably don’t know their way around either. I’m the only one who does. I’ve been all over this park with Shane sixteen times.”
I hated to admit it, but she had a
point.
“And I am a cop,” she added. “I’m not going to run from these guys.”
“Okay,” I said, “okay. . . I just feel bad that I got you into this.”
“Well, don’t. If everything you’ve told me is true, it’s not your fault.”
“Yeah,” I said, finishing my ice cream and licking my fingers. “It’ll be night soon. Will people start to head for the exits?”
“They should, yes,” she said. “It gets pretty dark here after the sun goes down.”
“We need someplace secluded to take these guys,” I said. “What about the Brewery?”
“That’s a possibility,” she said, “but there are bound to be some people still taking the tour. I think I know a better place.”
“Where?”
“The snakes.”
“What?”
“Near the petting zoo there’s a display of snakes,” she said. “It’s pretty dark there, and the snake tanks are partitioned off.”
“All right,” I said. “You know your way around. Let’s go.”
“Let’s leave the animals,” she said. “Especially the tiger.”
“I wanted you to take it home to Shane,” I said.
She smiled at me. “He’s already got two of them.”
“Fine,” I said.
At that moment a small boy was passing with his mother and father. He was carrying a small stuffed monkey, and his eye fell on the big white tiger.
“Wait here,” I said.
I grabbed the animal and the shopping bags and approached the family.
“Hello,” I said. “Here.” I held my booty out to them, wanting them to take it off my hands.
The mother looked at me. She was dark-skinned and dark-haired. She smiled and said, “No English.”
“You don’t need any English,” I said. I thrust the white tiger into the startled father’s hands and pointed to his son. “For him.”
He said something I didn’t understand. It might have been Spanish, I wasn’t sure.
I gave the kid the smaller bag of animals, and the mother the other bag. The boy, who was about six, took it all in with wide eyes.
“Thank . . . you . . .” the mother said, still looking puzzled.
“You’re welcome,” I said.
I turned and saw the two guys moving toward me. Seeing me give away all the animals, they must have thought something was up.
I ran to the bench, grabbed Cathy’s hand, and said, “Here we go.”
We started running.
38
We were in Timbuktu and had to run to the next section, Nairobi, where the reptile tanks were. On the way we passed the Scorpion roller coaster, the Festhaus, which served German food, and the elephant display.
“The petting zoo is up ahead,” Cathy said. She kept hold of my hand and assumed the lead.
“Slow down,” I said to her. “I don’t want to lose them.”
Losing them might have been a good idea, but I thought it was time I found out what the hell was going on. Bodies—both dead and alive—were showing up in my room much too often to suit me.
I saw the Nairobi train station up ahead, but instead of running toward it, Cathy cut left and I saw the petting zoo.
“Over here,” she said, pulling me toward some partitions. When we got behind them, I saw the reptile tanks up close.
“Cathy, stop,” I said, looking around. The snakes were behind glass, and extended beyond us to a right-angle turn.
“More around the corner?” I asked.
“And an exit,” she said.
“Okay, go,” I said. “Around the corner. We’ll get them when they come around.”
I could hear the footsteps of the men trailing us. As we rounded the corner I grabbed her arm.
“Do you have a lipstick?”
“What?”
“Lipstick,” I said again.
“Y-yes—”
“Let me have it.”
“What?”
“Hurry!”
She opened her bag, stuck her hand in, and scrabbled around for what seemed like hours, then came out with the metal case and handed it to me.
“All right,” I said. “You’ll have to take care of one of them. Can you do that?”
“I’m trained to do that,” she said.
“Okay,” I said, “take the smaller one.”
“Right.”
The exit ahead of us led right to the petting zoo. We made for it, turned another corner, and stayed out of sight. We both heard them as they made their way past the reptiles.
When the first man came into view, I rushed him, slamming him right into the glass in front of the pythons. I didn’t look behind me, hoping that Cathy’s training would indeed allow her to handle the other one.
Inside the glass partition there seemed to be miles of python, but there were actually three of them. The head of one was right up against the glass, and I bent my man over so that he was face-to-face with it. Before he could struggle much, I jammed the lipstick into the small of his back.
“You move and a bullet will go right through you and shatter the glass. If the bullet doesn’t kill you, the pythons will.”
“Jesus,” he said, “take it easy.”
Behind me I could hear Cathy struggling with her man.
“Tell your friend to stop fighting,” I said. When he didn’t obey immediately, I pressed the lipstick into his back as hard as I could, at the same time bending his left arm upward.
“Ow!” he yelled. “Ed, ease up! Stop fighting! This guy’s got a gun on me.”
“Cathy?” I called.
“I’ve got him.”
I risked a look and saw that she had her man turned and pinned to a partition.
“Frisk him,” I said.
I waited a few seconds and she said, “He’s clean.”
“No gun?”
“Nope.”
“I’m going to let your arm go,” I said to my man. “Don’t get any ideas.”
I released his arm and frisked him. I came up with an automatic I couldn’t readily identify. It didn’t really matter much, though. I pocketed the lipstick and backed away from him, holding his own gun on him.
“All right, Cathy,” I said. “Let him go.”
She released her man and stepped away from him.
“Get over there with your friend,” I told her man.
He joined my man, who had turned around now and was being careful not to touch the glass behind him.
“I hate snakes,” he said to no one in particular.
“That’s good to know,” I said, “because if I don’t hear what I want to hear in the next five minutes I’m going to put you in there with them.”
“Jesus,” he said, his eyes widening.
“He’s bluffing,” the other man said.
“Take the chance,” I said.
“Shut up,” my man said to the other man, whom he had called “Ed” earlier.
“Okay,” I said, “why are you following me?”
“That’s what we’re getting paid to do,” my man said to me.
“By who?”
“Mister,” he said, “I can’t tell you that, even if you put me in with the snakes.”
I decided to let it pass for the moment.
“What were you supposed to do?”
“Scare you,” he said. “Make you leave Tampa, and Florida.”
“Why?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“That snake behind you looks hungry.”
“Come on,” he said, moving away from the glass, “stop kidding around. We were told to tail you and scare you. We weren’t told why.”
“Okay,” I said, “we’re back to who hired you.”
“I can’t tell you that,” the man said wearily.
“Cathy, show the man what you have in your bag,” I said, hoping she’d understand.
She opened her bag and brought out her badge. Good girl!
“She’s a cop?”
the man said incredulously.
“You got it, sport,” I said. “She’s a deputy, and I think you guys are under arrest.”
“Oh shit,” Ed said, looking at his friend. “I didn’t sign on to tail no cop, Norman.”
Norman?
Norman bit his lip and then said to me, “Nobody told us about no cop.”
“You’re not from Florida, are you?” I asked.
“No.”
“New York?”
“Jersey.”
Almost as good.
“You get hired here, or there?”
“I come in for this job,” he said.
“You work through a broker?”
“Yeah.”
A broker was a contact. Sometimes for hit men, but these guys weren’t killers, they were just hired muscle. I knew some of the brokers in New York.
“You work for Sammy Benson?”
“Once,” he said, “not anymore. You know Sammy?”
“Yeah, I do,” I said. “I also know Johnny Kent.”
“Shit,” he said, “Johnny’s an asshole.”
“I know that, too.”
“Look, pal,” he said, “the guy I work for knows who hired us, I don’t.”
“Then I’ll talk to him.”
He bit his lip, then said, “If you let us go, I’ll talk to him and get you the information.”
“Why would you do that?”
“Because I ain’t gonna work for him no more,” he said. “Not after he gets me a job tailing a cop without telling me.”
I looked at Cathy, who was a bit out of her element and trying to look like she wasn’t.
“Maybe I can get her to let you guys go,” I said. “What do you think?” The question was directed to Cathy.
She shrugged and said, “I hate paperwork.”
“Hear that?” I said to them. “You’re in luck.”
“Great!” he said enthusiastically.
“Not so fast,” I said. “Give her your wallets.”
“What?”
“Your wallets,” I said. “Hand them over.”
“Shit,” Ed said, “I can’t—”
“Shut up, Eddie,” Norman said. He took out his wallet and gave it to Cathy. “Give, Eddie.”
Reluctantly Eddie gave up his wallet, a fat thing held closed by a thick rubber band.
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