The Alex Shanahan Series

by Lynne Heitman

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  We were both hungry when we finally got upright, and didn’t like the thought of cooking with an extra ear in the house, so Jack took me to breakfast at his favorite Cuban restaurant. Once again, the man behind the lunch counter knew Jack and greeted him warmly and offered to seat us at the best seat in the house, which was like all the other seats in the house—vinyl chairs at tables with laminated tops under baskets of fake ferns. After we ordered, the waiter brought some plain old tea for me and a strange brew for Jack—Cuban coffee.

  “Too bad you don’t drink coffee,” he said. “This is great stuff.”

  It was a coffee cup full of milk with the blackest coffee I’d ever seen served on the side in a creamer.

  “Alex.”

  “What?”

  He checked around and leaned in so only I could hear him. “Do you always carry condoms in your bag?”

  That made me laugh. I hadn’t been with a man in so long I’d almost forgotten how to use them. “No. I bought them the other day. After the laundromat.” I shrugged. “In case you changed your mind.”

  “Ah.” He stared down into his cup and concentrated hard on his Cuban coffee ministrations. Either it was a highly complex procedure that took great concentration, or he was anxious for a change in the subject.

  “I never told you what Damon said.”

  “Tell me now.”

  I did. I recounted the warnings and the veiled threats. I told him Damon had confirmed without ever saying so that Jimmy was his informant.

  “I knew it,” was his response. And then, “So?”

  “So, what?”

  “Are you going to take his advice, and Jimmy’s, and go back to Boston?”

  “I told you the other day I was staying.”

  “Things are different now. Jimmy threatened you.”

  “Yeah, it seems really dumb to stay here. The problem is, I don’t feel driven by rational impulses. I don’t feel the danger. Even when I think back on what happened last night, Jimmy scared me, but I still thought…” I stopped and searched for the words, trying to articulate something I didn’t understand myself. “I don’t know how to say it except I should have been more scared of him. I was more pissed that he would do that to me.”

  “Jimmy is dangerous. Killing is no problem for him. It would be dangerous for you to stay. That’s not complicated.”

  “I know that. I know it would be stupid to stay. But the ‘being stupid’ argument is not persuasive. Apparently I’m willing to be stupid. So then I look at the other side of the equation. What are the right reasons to stay? That’s even more problematic.”

  He was grinning at me. “This is great,” he said. “You’re such an analyst.”

  “You’re making fun of me again.”

  “Yeah.”

  “This is the way I think.”

  “I know. It’s fascinating. Keep going.”

  “I keep picturing myself checking out of the hotel, getting on a plane, and flying back to Boston. I envision the scene where I tell Mae I’ve given up. I’ll say something like, ‘I did everything I could, but now the authorities have to do the rest.’ She’ll thank me for all I’ve done. She thanks me every time I talk to her just for coming down.”

  I stared over Jack’s shoulder at the warped wood paneling on the wall and the hand painted mural of Cuba in better days. “The truth is I couldn’t care less about a job I signed up for in a city I’ve never been to. I can’t see myself sitting at a desk anymore in my hose and my heels and my earrings, filling out head count reports and apologizing to some overwrought passenger because there are only fourteen seats in first class and he’s number fifteen.”

  “Why is that a bad thing?”

  “Because I feel as if I’m using him… using John’s death as an excuse to keep me from doing what I should be doing. That’s my dirty little secret. I’m not brave and honorable. I’m just less scared to stay here and face a homicidal killer than I am to go home and face my real life.”

  “That’s bullshit.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “First of all, what John did for you at Logan, I’m sure it was something you needed and no doubt he did stand up for you, and I know that’s important to you, but no one’s motives are ever as pure as you’re trying to make his out to be. He got something out of it, too. Maybe he had to be the hero. Maybe that’s why he’s dead.”

  I thought about Mae standing in her kitchen, telling me what I already knew, that John always wanted to save the world, and how she had wanted him to stop trying to save the world.

  “And second, it sounds to me as if your old life is not enough for you anymore. You’ve found a life you like better.”

  “What life?”

  “The life of an investigator.”

  “What?”

  “You’re good at this. You’re a good investigator. You’re smart. You ask the right questions. You can read people. You’re tough enough, especially if Jimmy doesn’t scare you, although that might fit in the category of recklessness. Or lunacy. I think you were born to do this work.”

  “I don’t have any training. I don’t even know how to shoot a gun. I wouldn’t even know where to start. I need money.”

  “You can learn. And you can earn money as an investigator. I’m not a good example, but take my word for it.”

  “It would never work.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s not a real job. I already told you I’m a single woman. I live alone.”

  “You’re making this far too complicated. Here’s the real dirty little secret. Doing this work excites you. It gives you a thrill like a nine-to-five job never could. It gives you a rush. It makes you feel alive. I know because I get the same juice. You’ve found something you really want to do, and you won’t let yourself do it. You’ve got some kind of repressed self-punishment thing going on. Are you Catholic?”

  “Sort of.”

  “That would do it.”

  “You’re saying there are no Catholic investigators?”

  “I’m saying you should do what you want, not what you think you should, and see what happens.”

  That was a wicked thought. Do what I want? I tried to think only about where I wanted to be right then and what I wanted to be doing, and I started to get a thrill, a power surge, just thinking about directing my life that way. “I want to stay here and see this to the end. Jimmy killed John, and I want to see that he’s punished for it.”

  “Do you care how?”

  “Are you asking if I want to kill him?”

  “No. I’m not suggesting that. Maybe something that’s not your traditional approach to law enforcement is all.” He smiled. “If the cops can’t help us, and the Feds won’t, we have to find someone who will, and give them a reason to do it.”

  “I vote for Vanessa,” I said. “I think she’s the key.”

  A cell phone rang. We both reached, but it wasn’t my ring. It was Jack’s. He answered and did a lot of listening. I heard a lot of uh-huhs. He started looking around for something to write with. I pulled a pen from my backpack and handed it over. He used it to write an address on his napkin.

  “How about a phone number?” He paused to listen. “Are you going to show up this time?” Another pause, shorter. “Okay—” he checked his watch—“half an hour.”

  He hung up and smiled at me. “Guess who just resurfaced?”

  Chapter Forty

  ​The address Bobby Avidor had given us turned out to be in a warehouse district along one of the seedier sections of the Miami River. We took a downtown exit off the interstate, turned away from the gleaming chrome and glass towers, and drove down into an industrial enclave of dead end roads and concrete docks, where bars covered the windows and air conditioners dripped on asphalt sidewalks. There were no tourists here.

  We parked underneath a drawbridge, and before we got within a hundred yards of the building, we ran right into a stench that was overwhelming. And overwhelmingly
familiar. The place turned out to be a small fish-processing plant, and I had last inhaled that odor while standing over my bag on the floor of Bic’s inbound bag room.

  “Is Bobby taking up a second career?” I asked.

  “He said it’s his cousin’s place.”

  Inside the building I flagged down a small old man wearing nothing but shorts and unlaced track shoes. His brown skin hung on his chest like soft suede as he struggled to roll a metal barrel on its edge across the crusty floor. He didn’t speak English. Jack asked him in Spanish to find Bobby and tell him we were there.

  We waited on the dock behind the warehouse where the smell of dead fish was cut by the industrial aroma of the river. Every once in a while a boat would motor by. They tended to be working boats—trawlers and tugboats—rather than the pleasure craft that jammed other venues.

  We heard Bobby before we saw him. “What the fuck… do you think I’m coming out there to stand next to you in plain sight?”

  We turned toward the voice. It was so bright outside that looking back into the warehouse was like staring into the mouth of a black cave. “Where would you feel comfortable?” Jack asked him.

  “Nowhere, goddammit. But if you want to talk to me, you come inside.”

  And so we had to wade back into an odor so thick you could lean on it, and stand on a cement floor caked with dried fish guts. When my eyes adjusted again to the dim interior, I took one look at Bobby and turned to Jack. “Another mystery solved.”

  Bobby looked as if he were wearing a cockeyed turban when in fact it was a thick gauze bandage wrapped around his head, with special consideration for the place where his left ear had once been. He reached up reflexively to touch that side of his head.

  “Too bad.” Jack stuck his hands in his pockets. “If we’d known sooner, maybe they could have reattached it.”

  “What are you talking about, reattaching? How do you know what happened?”

  “I was the lucky recipient of your detached ear,” I said. “It came to me in a Baggie full of blood. But it took me a while to figure out what it was, and I certainly didn’t know it belonged to you.”

  Bobby turned, and the light from outside fell across his face. The sight of dried brown blood and yellow pus caked along the edge of his bandage was bad enough, but the thought of what it must have looked like under the bandage made my stomach lurch.

  “Why did Jimmy take your ear?” I asked.

  “He thought I told you he was a snitch.”

  Jack turned to me. “Where would he get that idea?”

  “Beats me.”

  Bobby’s jittery eyes shifted from one of us to the other. He appeared to be struggling for just the right word. Instead, he put on a spiteful smirk and walked over to a bucket a few yards away. It was filled with the same vile stew that had defiled my allegedly lost bag. “Too bad about that bag of yours.” He looked as smug as anyone with one ear can look.

  “Bobby, I can get a new bag.”

  The smirk faded and his hand drifted up once again to tug nervously at the bandage. “I need protection.”

  “Apparently.” I marveled again at how flat the left side of his head was.

  “You said you could do that, right? Keep that crazyass Jimmy away from me?”

  Jack took a step closer to Bobby. “How do you expect us to do that?”

  “Get him the fuck in jail.”

  I took a step toward Bobby. “How do you expect us to do that?”

  “I’ll give you what you need. You make sure it gets where it needs to to lock his ass away.”

  “No deal,” I said, “unless you tell us what happened to John.”

  “I don’t know what happened to him.”

  “Let’s go, Jack.”

  “Honest to God,” he whined. “I don’t know who killed him. But I know who he went to see the night he died.”

  That was good enough.

  “Bobby,” Jack said, draping his arm around his neck, “let’s go next door and have a chat. I’ll protect you while you have a beer.”

  Next door was the deck of a run-down bar, where the rats had the decency not to strut about in the open. It had a silver disco ball, a stuffed parrot, and a chain-link fence that kept patrons from pitching over the side into the river. It also served tuna fish on Ritz crackers. They weren’t appetizing, but they looked better than the other free condiment—a bowl of pickles swimming in sour juice. I reached for a cracker.

  Bobby drank beer and held forth while I took notes and Jack drank strong, black coffee, which seemed a cruel and unusual refreshment on such a humid day.

  “It happened,” Bobby said, “the way I said. Johnny showed up here out of the blue. He called me that morning and told me to meet him for a cup of coffee when he got in.”

  Jack seemed content to sit back and let me ask most of the questions. “What did he say to you?”

  “All the things I would expect him to say, being the self-righteous bastard that he is… was.” He lifted his chin into a defensive pose. “He said he was ashamed he’d ever known me, and he was sorry to say it on account of me saving his brother the way I did. He gave me two choices—go to the cops myself, or sit and wait to be arrested. One way or the other, I was out of business.”

  “And your mother gave him the logbook and the ring?”

  “Fucking bitch. ‘I don’t want the ring from a dead woman’s finger in my house.’” He’d pitched his voice into a high, unkind imitation of a woman and made the sign of the cross. “‘May God have mercy on her soul.’ Ignorant fishwife. That’s all she is and all she ever was. I shouldn’t have even told her what was in the package.”

  “Why did you?” Jack squinted at him. He wasn’t wearing his sunglasses.

  Bobby turned toward him. “Because I thought it was so frigging cool, and I couldn’t tell anyone about it. I couldn’t show it to anyone. My mistake believing she would ever think anything I did was as good as anything the great Johnny McTavish would do.”

  Jack chortled over on his side of the round table. “Bobby, I don’t think you’re cut out for a life of crime.”

  “What else happened with John?” I asked.

  “He told me I had twenty-four hours to think about it, that he would be at The Harmony House Suites, and at the end of twenty-four hours, he was going to walk into the police station.”

  “When would that have been?”

  “Three o’clock the next afternoon. And I knew if he said three p.m., that’s when he’d be there.”

  I reviewed my notes. John had checked into The Suites around four o’clock on Monday afternoon, so that would have made sense. “What did you do next?”

  “I tried all the stuff that usually worked on him before.” He set the beer bottle on the table so he could press his hands together in a prayer pose. “‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I fucked up. I know I did, but I can fix it.’” His wheedling voice matched the exaggerated gesture of contrition. “‘Johnny,’ I says, ‘I would never want you to be ashamed of me, and I want to do my best for you. Give me another chance…’ I could always get to him before, but not this time. He said I’d gone too far. He said stealing tools is one thing, or even selling drugs, which on my mother’s eyes I never did, by the way. He said at least people make a choice to take drugs. But no one makes a choice to be on an airplane with a bad part. Pretty screwed up logic, if you ask me.”

  John was not the one who’d been screwed up and Bobby knew it. He tipped back and finished off the rest of his beer. Then he looked for the waitress to bring him another.

  “After he left for the hotel what did you do?”

  “I was on the phone first thing to Jimmy. I said we got a problem here. This guy Johnny McTavish, I know him from back home and he will do what he says he will do which is to turn us in. Jimmy says, ‘He don’t even know me.’ He’s testing me, right? I say, ‘If I get picked up, everyone’s going to know everything I know. I just tell you that up front so there won’t be a misunderstanding. I’ll flip on
you in a second if it will help me.’”

  Jack thought that was pretty funny, too. “Were you on drugs, Bobby?” The tone suggested he must have been.

  Bobby’s shoulders stiffened. “I wanted him to see that my problem was his problem, is all that was.”

  “You’re an idiot. Not only did you turn yourself into a huge liability for Jimmy, you also involved yourself in a conspiracy to commit murder.”

  “There was never any discussion about killing him.”

  Jack pushed forward and stretched his arms across the table. “What did you think Jimmy was going to do? You gave him no choice. He either had to kill John, or kill you. He’d have been better off killing you.”

  “Jimmy wanted to scare him is all.”

  “What are you saying?” I set down my notebook. “Jimmy was just trying to scare John with a knife and things got out of hand?”

  “No. Nothing like that. Jimmy asked me for personal stuff I knew about Johnny’s family. Like where his kids went to school. I didn’t know that. I didn’t even know about the baby, but I told him what I knew, about his neighborhood, his address, and what the house looked like. He needed it to make Johnny think they were watching his family.” He caught sight of the two of us staring at him. “I figured it was better than him ending up dead.”

  Jack sat back and crossed his arms. “You’re a pitiful bastard.” That pretty much summed up how I felt, too.

  “I didn’t ask him to come down here. If he’d have just stayed home and minded his own business, he wouldn’t have got killed and I would still have both my fucking ears.”