I snorted. "That's not enough?"
"You used the past tense about Nancy. She was a sweet kid. I gather she is no longer alive?"
"Yes." I explained the vicious manner of her passing.
"I'm very sorry. She meant something to you. I can hear it in your voice. Harry, also, perhaps?"
I nodded. "She was pretty terrific. It got to where we just waited on her to have any fun."
"That explains why you showed up on my door for the first time in ages, then."
"I'm sorry." I was. She came to see me when she heard about Arabella overdosing. She knew I'd had to get away to save myself, but she'd also known that I'd blame myself for not finding a way to help someone who was beyond wanting or accepting help.
"I appreciated the book you sent," she offered in a suddenly gentle tone.
It had been a first edition copy of Christie's, Murder in Mesopotamia. The original dust jacket was in pristine condition, and the binding tight, no slant. It was the first thing I'd bought when I'd received all that money. Jeanette would never know how I got it. She didn't need to know.
"It was the least I could do." It truly had been. She was a strong, lovely woman who had turned a tragedy into a purpose. Her patients did not come here, into her home. She had an office in downtown Miami. But we had become friends over the years, and she welcomed me here. She would have been angry to know that I felt sorry for her. Miami men, Florida men, every man in the country, all of them were missing out on a great gal. Jeanette was warm, funny, attractive, and could talk on a surprising number of subjects because she read all the time. And she loved sports.
She hadn't let her legs go to pot simply because she couldn't use them to walk on any longer, either. Every day a physical therapist came in for an hour and worked with her, kept the muscles there, so they wouldn't shrink away. She'd wear shorts in the heat of summer and it sort of made it sexier that she was trapped in the chair and couldn't get away if you made a move. I said so once, half teasing her, and she'd just laughed. Then she'd reached over and squeezed my hand. "You know, that's incredibly wonderful and honest, and it makes me feel sexy. You want to know a secret, Seth?" I'd said I did. "It's the look I was going for." It was my turn to laugh then.
Jeanette's voice brought me back to the present.
"I'm sorry?"
"I said before I speculate about Nancy and her family dynamic tell me about the other girl."
I tried not to smile. Getting something past Jeanette was impossible.
"Does it show that bad?"
She smiled. "No, it shows that good. Who is she?"
"Her name is Caroline." And I told her everything. I knew if I held back she'd manage to wheedle out of me every feeling I'd had from the moment I'd first seen Caroline until the way I felt about her now, which was pretty much only a validation of the earlier feeling. When I finished, Jeanette's smile was wider and warmer. She reached over and touched my cheek.
"Good for you! She sounds wonderful, and just what you need, someone to rescue and adore. And she needed someone who would truly believe she's even more wonderful now than she was before. People who poo-poo sudden love do so simply because they are afraid to risk their own heart in such a manner. They dismiss that indefinable magic between two people who through some miracle we'll never understand and shouldn't try to, actually find each other in this crazy, godawful world."
She took her hand off my cheek and leaned back in her chair.
"We're the last of the romantics, Seth, you and I. That's why we fall in love so often yet have to wait so long for the right one. And we know instantly." She laughed. "They'll be no five-year engagement for us."
Her face clouded just a bit, and she added in a much different tone, "It's that same romantic heart that will compel you to hunt down Nancy's killer, Seth, and perhaps in some small way, make it okay to say goodbye to her."
I didn't say anything, I simply reached over and squeezed her hand. We sat there a minute or two, the only sound the ticking of a big grandfather clock that looked very old. Finally she sighed and slipped her hand from mine. "I guess unpleasant matters are more pressing at the moment."
"I wish they weren't."
"I'm sure you do. Okay, here goes, but it is only supposition. Incest is not about sex. That is the first misconception, that it is about the taboo. It isn't. In that respect, it is similar to rape. But rape is usually about anger and frustration. Incest is about control, complete and total control. It is not always a male figure who initiates it but that is most often the case. The man you describe, this drug dealer, certainly fits that profile. We will make the assumption that he did. We will also make the assumption that he murdered the daughter's mother. Strangely, the two may be unrelated events. Having the wife present would have offered a facade from which to hide behind. Since he is who he is, he certainly had the means at his disposal to control the wife, so we will assume he killed her for other reasons. Infidelity perhaps. It could also be that the incestuous relationship did not begin until after the first wife was murdered. There is no way to be sure. Two items you spoke of I find quite disturbing. The first is the length of time and current status of the relationship. It has become all the daughter knows, her only point of reference for sex and love being, quite sadly, her father. She would be obsessively jealous, almost insanely so. If she is now the one in the position of controlling him, he may have begun to look elsewhere to reassert his position as the controller. Having remarried and then having another daughter easily accessible might have been too much of an enticement. But then again, perhaps it is something else entirely, something more dangerous. If he were going to have a sexual relationship with the younger daughter, why not begin earlier, when he did have control and could persuade his oldest daughter to share his affections? Nancy might simply have been a pawn in their game of sexual control. If the father began to use Nancy's presence and proximity as a threat to regain control of the older daughter and reassert his dominance, which is the entire lure of incest, he may have underestimated his oldest daughter's reaction to such a threat."
She paused. I said, "So you don't think the father would have killed Nancy?"
"This is all guesswork, Seth. But I would say no, at least not in the manner she was murdered. That required hate, a terrible hate."
"Like the threat of taking away daddy's love."
"Exactly."
"What about the wives?"
"Oh, he is most certainly capable of murder, cold blooded and violent. Look at his chosen profession. But his youngest daughter? And you really don't know that either wife is dead for certain, do you? I think we can assume the oldest girl's mother is dead, because of the long period of time which has passed. But with Nancy's mother it hasn't been as many years. While it would be unusual for a woman to leave a man and not take her daughter with her, consider who the husband is. A violent, powerful drug kingpin -- do they still say kingpin? -- capable of ending her life on a word. I would not imagine a man in his position having access to many women of fine character. Simply because Nancy was such a wonderful girl does not mean that her mother was."
I hadn't considered that, nor had I considered that Nancy's mother might still be alive. Where would she go? I needed to find out.
"You've been more help than you realize. I think everything you've said makes sense. My only question is why both of them, the daughter and father, came to Cozumel looking for Nancy."
"I know this will sound strange, possibly even ridiculous, but the father might actually have paternal feelings for Nancy. Did they come searching together?"
"No, Caroline said the sister showed up first, then the father."
"There's your answer. He wanted to find Nancy before his lover did. He may have realized too late what he'd done."
"And he came to save one daughter from the fury of the daughter who was his lover, the daughter who felt threatened and hated Nancy for it, even though Nancy had no clue.” She smiled. “Isn’t love grand?”
Seventeen
; After reminiscing for a while about Florida the way it used to be, Jeanette sensed I was eager to be on my way. She made me promise I would not let so much time pass before calling on her again, even if it had to be at an ungodly hour. I told her truthfully that she was easy on the eyes at any hour and there was no such thing as a bad time for fabulous. Her eyes said she appreciated the compliment, appreciated being noticed as a woman.
She was right about the two of us; we were romantics, despite the darkness that had touched us constantly over the years due to our vocations. Romanticism is a terrible burden to bear until you find her, or him, and then it is a wonderful thing to be, something you are proud to be. Until then, it is almost a shameful thing to be, and consequently kept to one's self. I wondered how many times Jeanette had fallen in love and been disappointed? She deserved a different kind of love than everyone else was forced to settle for. She deserved the real stuff, the magic they showed up on the silver screen more than a half-century ago.
I felt melancholy as I drove the 'Cuda through the never quite deserted streets of Miami. I did not want to imagine this terrific woman with so much to offer never finding that special someone. It would have to be someone who'd been kicked around enough to appreciate how special Jeanette was. Someone who would reach over and take the book out of her hands on a rainy night and turn her mild protests into sighs and coos of contentment. Millions never find him or her, and the sad truth is that millions more don't really deserve to. Jeanette was one of the good ones, and she did.
I found a phone booth that hadn't yet been vandalized by those fashion icons who wore their boxers in public, down around their knees, and their baseball cap with the bill turned to the side. You knew they were bad-ass because they could walk while their legs were restricted and see with the sun in their eyes. I hadn't asked to use Jeanette's phone because I didn't want it showing up on some NSA report that she had placed a call to an untraceable number that satellites informed them originated in Russia. I would be taking a circuitous route to discover the fate of Nancy's mother, but Vlad had the resources, and he was more familiar with the Dade traffic than any Russian had a right to be. And more importantly, I trusted him.
Our relationship began about six years ago with some very gruesome homicides. More than one cop had lost his lunch at those crime scenes. It had only been after I had identified one of the men as Russian that Vlad contacted me and asked for an off-the-record meet, mano-a-mano.
I had been surprised at our first meeting. Vlad was a rather nondescript looking fellow for a KGB Agent, not what I'd imagined at all. Yet there was something dangerous about him I couldn't quite put my finger on. My instincts had screamed danger, danger, Will Robinson. After feeling each other out, comfortable with what we saw, we'd swapped information. Piecing it all together we discovered that two rogue KGB agents had ripped off a ship full of cocaine and intended to swap it for weapons.
Vlad was here on American soil in an unofficial operation to find the agents, and clean up any mess that would cause an embarrassing international incident. It got a little crazy in the end because those two KGB agents got greedy and decided they could kill everyone and keep both the cocaine and the weapons. But the good guys, which in this case was me and my Ruskie friend Vlad, prevailed.
America got the shipment of cocaine and the weapons, which included surface-to-air missiles, and Russia got their men. A joint Florida Dade-Kremlin venture. Vlad told me he had no idea where the weapons were headed had his comrades succeeded, and we'd developed enough of a working relationship by that time, albeit a clandestine one, that I believed him. The two KGB agents conducting an unsanctioned extremely capitalist operation on foreign soil were found -- or at least pieces of them were found -- a month later, floating in the Everglades. They were never identified as Russian, of course. They'd been chewed up so badly by the gators that they were barely identifiable as human.
In Miami Dade's files you'll find no mention of Vlad or Russia in connection with a tanker full of cocaine that led to the seizure of sensitive weaponry. That's because no one but myself knew about Vlad and I left him out of all my reports. We'd heard chatter about the tanker transporting a massive shipment of narcotics which in turn led us to the weapons being swapped for the cache of blow. The official story.
The truth was much different, but in order not to name Vlad, on paper it had to play out as a lucky bust, an anonymous tip leading us to the military hardware. None of the law enforcement hierarchy holding press conferences to take bows, however, were willing to admit anything other than solid, diligent police work had been responsible for one of the largest drug busts in US history. It actually had been, of course, so without realizing it, they were telling the public the truth. But the paperwork would never bear the scrutiny of their claims.
I heard two rings before Vlad answered.
"Hello, my old friend. A great deal of time has passed since our last contact."
"Contact? Do you spies all talk like that?"
"It is in the KGB manual. We must use the terms contact, dissident, and capitalist pig at least once per day."
"I hope I didn't corrupt you with the West's excess by taking you to Krispy Kreme."
I heard Vlad groan on the other end.
"Do not remind me. I would gladly defect for a dozen of those delectable round balls of sweet dough."
"Don't let the Reds hear you say that, they'll ship you off to Siberia or something."
A chuckle. "Soon they will be sending me to America as punishment the way your leaders are rushing toward the old Soviet ideologies." He had that right. "Now, tell me, to what do I owe this pleasure, comrade?"
"I need a favor, if it's possible, Vlad."
"If it is possible, certainly, although I cannot imagine what circumstance in the civilian life of leisure you now lead would require it?"
He was telling me he knew I wasn't a cop any longer. He'd kept up with my activities. I wondered if he knew about Escobar. It would not surprise me.
"That would be a long story that would have to be told face to face, perhaps over dinner."
"Perhaps another time, then. What is it that you need to know?"
I told him.
"Do you believe her to be alive?"
"I have no idea, either way. DEA and ATF would have at least done a little bit of looking for her after she supposedly took off, just to try to get something on Vargas, but budgets being what they are, if it looked like a dead end they'd probably have abandoned it as a waste of time and resources pretty early on."
"Ah, it is a problem here as well, this lack of resources."
"And Krispy Kreme donuts."
"I asked you not to remind me, comrade. You are in Miami?"
"Just for the moment. I'll be heading back to Cozumel soon."
"Mexico? I take it your boat is there?"
Old Vlad really had taken an interest in me. It was a bit flattering that he considered us close enough friends to do so. It was also just a tiny bit unsettling since we hadn't spoken in so long. But then again, that was the nature of his business, not mine. If he'd been a CIA spook from South Dakota I'd probably have kept in touch.
"Yes, I'm not at the marina though." I rattled off the longitude and latitude where Stella was moored. Harry'd trained me to always know where we were positioned.
"You know, my friend, you do not have to be so non-conformist that you cannot carry a cell phone. You are not, after all, a communist country. At least for the present, anyway. In a few years, perhaps, who knows?"
"I know. But I'm sure a resourceful operative like yourself can find a way to get me a message."
"I will do my best to prove worthy of your faith. It might be quick or it could take some time. We will have to see."
"I appreciate it, Vlad. Someone was murdered who meant something to me and someone who means everything to me has a target on her back."
"That changes things considerably. I will make sure it is sooner, for the sake of your grief, and the life which
means so much to you. May I ask her name?"
"Caroline."
"Caroline. Very lovely. I will be in touch." He hung up.
After I rested the receiver in its cradle and began walking to the 'Cuda exhaustion set in, and with it weariness at the world. I was tired of the Vargases of the world, tired of society, and tired of Miami, which was really two cities now. Florida had once been a wonderful place, and Miami its crown jewel. Romantic Miami was gone now, and it wasn't just the flow of narcotics moving through that had turned her into a sour mistress. There existed something close to a Third World feel to certain neighborhoods in Miami now. Cubans, Dominicans, Puerto Ricans and a potpourri of Latino and Caribbean nationalities had integrated somewhat into the world of Lamborghinis and Ferraris but for the most part had not. And much too often when they had, it had been through illegal means, perpetuating a stereotype. Miami had become a city of haves and have-nots living only blocks away from each other.
Miami's exotic atmosphere of white beaches, movie-star glamour, swaying palm trees, and sensual fragrances from expensive perfumes had given way to shallow people and pretend glamour. Every club was filled with character-deficient males looking for a quick hook-up, and character deficient girls wearing short, body-form dresses and stilettos who would disappear from the dance floor only long enough to snort a line. The coke or the ecstasy, or the rufie slipped into their drink unknowingly would impair what little judgement they had and make it easier for some guy to get a little. The girl would wake up in an unknown bed or a bathroom floor, oblivious to how they'd got there and all too often unable to recall what they'd done once they had. Some would remember and feel horrified. More than a few would remember it with relish. A night to tell their girlfriends about. The latter group would keep going back because they enjoyed the scene. The former group would stay away for a while, but finally return under pressure from their girlfriends. If they kept declining invitations to join their shallow brethren, they would have to stand apart from an entire culture. No prospect was more frightening in popular culture than being considered 'different'.
The Turquoise Shroud: A Seth Halliday Novel Page 13