‘Moscowitz. With a Z. Tuesday at eleven.’
I hung up before he could get in another word. The advantage of a call like that was simple: it got the guy nervous. I wanted him nervous.
Getting a copy of the death certificate wouldn’t be hard. Maggie Redhawk could handle that. The Letters Testamentary were more difficult. They could take weeks. I’d just have to get them forged. It was important to get the check as soon as possible. Once I had the money, I had leverage. Someone had gone to the trouble of making sure there was a million-dollar policy. If it had been David, then I’d be serving his interest. If it had been someone else, that someone would come looking for me and the money, and I’d figure out why there was a policy in the first place.
My third call was to Baxter. Time to figure out just how deep he was into the stew.
He answered right away, but he wasn’t happy about it.
‘What?’ he barked.
‘It’s Foggy,’ I said. ‘Ramon Fidestra just tried to kill me.’
Silence.
So he did know at least a little something about what was going on.
By the time he realized that his silence had told me things, it was too late. He stammered and tried to recover, but I was wise.
‘W–who?’ he hiccupped.
‘Yeah, nice try, but you know Fidestra.’
‘I–I really don’t. He tried to kill you? Where?’
‘Baxter,’ I moaned. ‘I don’t care if you take a little folding money. I just want to put David Waters behind me. And right now I got about ten different theories about the guy and about his business. So quit play-acting and let’s get a donut.’
More silence.
Then: ‘Right. Let’s get a donut.’
The aptly named Donuts was a prominent business in the center of Fry’s Bay. Always smelled like heaven and wasn’t too brightly lit.
At the helm was one Cass, sixty years old, barely five feet tall, cheeks artificially red, eyes the same color naturally. Henna hair sprouted out of her hairnet every which way, and her face was clearer than any book about what her life had been like.
‘Cass,’ I said when I sauntered through the door.
‘Foggy,’ she grated, ‘ain’t you supposed to be at the hospital?’
I sat down in front of her at the bar. ‘Naw. I’m fine. Meeting Baxter. Got a case.’
She nodded. ‘I heard. Some half-breed spawn of David Waters.’
Cass was a nice enough person, but her perspectives were of the more conservative bent. If by conservative, you meant racist.
‘You heard,’ I said.
‘I got ears,’ she growled. ‘I hear things.’
‘What exactly did you hear?’
‘It was two Indians in here last night,’ she began, ‘says David Waters got shot, and then his father shot you. Did you kill David?’
‘No,’ I began, about to explain what had happened.
But Cass went on.
‘Says David had a kid. That’s why you was in here the other day showing me the photograph. That was the half-breed’s mother.’
‘And you came to that conclusion how?’ I asked.
‘I got a brain connected to my ears,’ she snapped. ‘I can add things up.’
Cass was especially crotchety; I wondered why.
‘You seem a little on edge,’ I told her, ‘if you don’t mind my saying.’
‘Everybody thinks I’m stupid!’ she exploded.
Baxter chose that moment to walk into the shop.
‘Cass,’ he said, ‘you all right?’
‘Kiss my ass,’ she muttered and went into the back.
‘I’ll want some coffee,’ Baxter called out after her, ‘and a cruller.’
She took off to the kitchen and Baxter sat down at the bar, leaving one stool in between us.
‘What’s got her riled up?’ he asked me. ‘You been pestering her?’
I shook my head. Something had happened to Cass to put her on edge. It could have been anything, but her ire was unusual. I wanted to ask her about it, but not with Baxter around. So I just got on with the business at hand.
‘I went to the Cherry Pocket,’ I began.
‘Why?’ he interrupted.
‘Ellen Greenberg wrote letters to David Waters on stationery from the Chalet Suzanne in Lake Wales. One thing led to another.’
‘And that’s where you met Fidestra,’ he sighed. ‘At that seafood joint at the Cherry Pocket.’
I nodded. ‘He kicked my ass. I was lucky to get away alive.’
‘You were. He’s a really mean guy. And, yes, I met him. How much of this whole mess do you know?’
‘Just enough to scare me,’ I admitted. ‘Looks like David tried to take over some drug rights and got in between Columbians and Cubans.’
‘Here’s the thing,’ he interrupted, ‘Ironstone gives me, like, a retainer. I was supposed to keep David out of the mess.’
‘How’d that work out?’
‘It was fine,’ he insisted, ‘until Goldilocks killed him.’
‘You know what was about to happen to her.’ I leaned closer to him. ‘You collected his syringe before you called me. And you only called me because Mary was there to look out for the kid. Otherwise she would have ended up in a cell or worse.’
He didn’t look at me.
‘You tampered with significant evidence, man,’ I went on. ‘It wasn’t just Lena who saw the syringe. Other people are asking where it went to.’
That was a lie, of course, but it was in the service of the truth, so to me it was legit.
‘Things have gotten out of hand,’ he said at length.
Before I could respond, Cass banged through the kitchen door with a percolator and two cups.
‘Here.’ She set the cups on the counter. ‘Made a special batch just for you two. This is the good stuff – what I drink. Maxwell House.’
She poured.
‘Thanks,’ I said.
‘Ain’t got no crullers – not fresh.’ She set the coffee pot down. ‘You want the lemon-filled. They just come out.’
‘OK,’ Baxter said.
‘I think I’d like,’ I began.
‘I know what you want!’ she interrupted. ‘Why a man would come in a donut shop and eat a English muffin don’t make no sense to me. But I got one toasting now.’
I sensed that Cass was somehow trying to make amends for losing her temper, but I didn’t understand it.
‘I also need an assortment,’ I said, ‘for the kid.’
She nodded. ‘Now,’ she announced, ‘I’m going to tell you both something.’
That was all. She stopped talking. Baxter and I sat in silence. I sipped the coffee. Baxter finished his cup in three gulps.
‘David Waters was not what people thought,’ Cass said softly. ‘He ain’t no pervert, not like people says. He was a nut job. Wacky in the brain pan.’
Baxter smiled. ‘Cass, everybody thought David was nuts.’
‘No!’ she snarled. ‘I mean he had something real wrong with him. Like one day he’s mean as a snake and bopping people in the head, and the next day he don’t remember doing it, and sweet as a lamb. You ever see that Spencer Tracy movie Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde? Like that.’
There it was: a really hefty piece of the puzzle. If Cass’s pronouncement was even partially accurate, David could have been both a vicious drug lord and a loving father.
I knew a little something about split personality. My father was a kind, loving man, but he was also a heater for The Combination. He taught me to play chess and told me I was a genius; he whacked people for money and didn’t give it a second thought. It was just his job. After he was gone, and I found out what he was – thanks to a newspaper article about Murder, Inc., which is what the gentile press called his business – I asked my Aunt Shayna about it. She gave me the two-bit tour around Sigmund Freud. It piqued my interest and I read more. Aside from the fact that the Oedipal Complex has more to do with Freud than with most male children, I
thought he was maybe the smartest Jew who ever lived. He replaced Lenny Bruce in my estimation. The point was that I understood how David Waters might have been two people.
‘Yeah, thanks, Cass,’ Baxter said, completely dismissing her observation. ‘I’ll have that lemon-filled.’
She caught my eye and read my mind: we were going to have a talk after Baxter left. She nodded once and was gone.
‘You were saying that things got out of hand?’ I encouraged Baxter.
‘It used to be a little harmless pot passing through town on the way to Miami,’ he said.
‘Yudda,’ I told him, so he’d realize I was in the know. ‘Skip ahead.’
‘Well.’ He was uncomfortable that I was wise to Yudda, but he forged on. ‘It all changed when the Columbians got into the picture. And then David Waters decided he was Mr Big Stuff. And then Ironstone turned on David. And then the Tribal Council got involved. I’m telling you, legalize drugs and open stores. Put the bastards out of business and let the little man make a living.’
‘Not a proponent of the War on Drugs.’ I said.
‘It’s not a war on drugs,’ he said angrily. ‘It’s just something a politician can say so that it looks like he’s doing something to help, which he is not.’
‘And then Lena waded into all that mess,’ I interrupted his observation.
‘I knew what David did. Everybody knew.’ He shook his head. ‘I have to say I was pretty happy to see him dead.’
‘But the mess is still very much in evidence,’ I asserted.
‘Yeah.’
‘And you’re afraid it might fall down on you,’ I went on. ‘You are at least tangentially involved in international drug trafficking. Plus, the aforementioned evidence tampering in a murder investigation.’
He reared back. ‘Wait. Are you threatening me?’
I set down my coffee cup and swiveled my bar stool so that I could look him straight in the eye.
‘No,’ I said firmly. ‘I meant it when I said I didn’t care about your pocket money. I’m suggesting that we work together, you and me, for the benefit of the nation.’
‘The nation?’
‘Too grandiose?’ I nodded. ‘All right then, so we can maybe clear up a little of the mess in Fry’s Bay. I need to get my kid out of trouble. And I need to get David’s insurance policy to pay out to his progeny. Oh, and I need to make sure Yudda’s not in trouble; he makes the best seafood in Florida.’
‘Anything else?’ Baxter asked, eyes wide.
‘I need to get some new furniture for my office,’ I said, ‘but maybe that can wait.’
‘Yeah, what happened to your office?’
That was a good question. What had happened to my office? I was only in a coma for a little while, but who in their right mind would take my ratty old furniture – and did it have anything to do with the rest of the mess? It seemed so unconnected that I shuffled it back into my pocket, saved for a rainy day reflection in favor of more pressing matters.
‘First things first,’ I told him. ‘How do we clear Lena out of the legal system and get her into some kind of foster care and away from here?’
Baxter nodded. I could hear the gears in his little brain whirring.
‘Let’s say, hypothetically,’ he began, ‘that an officer of the law, by accident, discovered a syringe full of whatever underneath the booth where David Waters was killed.’
‘Why,’ I responded, ‘that would lead such an officer to believe that maybe Lena fired in self-defense.’
‘Say.’ He nodded. ‘It might at that.’
‘And then the officer could examine the gun used by the terrified little girl,’ I went on, ‘and he might discover that it was a VP70, a 9mm machine pistol with the three shot burst system and a hair trigger. Way too much gun for a child. She only meant to wave it around, stop him from stabbing her with the syringe.’
‘But this damned gun,’ he added, ‘it just went off – as guns will do in the hand of a child – and fired three bullets at once. Into David Waters.’
‘After which he died and good riddance,’ I concluded. ‘The end.’
‘Of course we’ll need the DA on board, and a coroner’s verdict,’ Baxter said, ‘but I think that’s it.’
Cass breezed back in, gave me my English muffin and a box of half a dozen assorted.
Then she set down a white bag in front of Baxter.
‘It’s three,’ she said softly. ‘Two lemon and one chocolate. On the house.’
Baxter stared at the bag like it might explode.
‘What’s the occasion?’ he asked.
‘The occasion is I lost my temper for a minute there,’ she answered. ‘Sorry.’
He didn’t take his eyes off the bag.
‘Cass,’ he said slowly.
‘Plus which,’ she interrupted, ‘I heard what you said just now. It’s a good plan. Let that little girl go.’
‘You really do hear everything, don’t you?’ I said to her, smiling. ‘You know everything that’s going on.’
She didn’t smile back.
‘I do,’ she mumbled. ‘It’s a fucking curse.’
TWENTY-TWO
Baxter headed back to his office to put his simple plan into action. I’d gulped down my English muffin and started toward that conversation I was going to have with Cass but was suddenly seized by an overwhelming desire to go to Abiaka Park. Could have been that I wanted to see Hachi and just hoped she’d be there. Could have been that there was something in the back of my brain that was trying to get my attention, some bit of information that I’d overlooked or hadn’t noticed on a conscious level.
I was glad I’d driven to the donut shop instead of walking, the park was a couple miles away. I hopped into the T-Bird.
The morning was shaping up nicely. The sun was out and the clouds were moving faster than freight trains. The wind was coming in from the ocean, probably meant a storm was on the way.
The park was more crowded than usual. Five people were landscaping. Hachi wasn’t one of them, but John Horse was. When I saw him I got the crazy notion that he’d summoned me to the park and that’s what accounted for my odd impulse to visit.
He saw me drive up and he waved from where he was sitting in front of some purple fountain grass.
I got out of the car and he stood, brushing dirt off his hands and onto his jeans. He smiled and I suddenly felt calmer. About everything.
‘Hello, Foggy,’ he called out.
I headed his way. ‘Morning.’
‘I’m glad to see you,’ he went on. ‘I’ve got a few things to tell you.’
We repaired to the same bench where I’d sat with Hachi.
‘You’re probably confused about David Waters,’ he began. ‘I was too, at first.’
‘You got Hachi to plant doubts in my mind,’ I said, ‘right here on this bench. I’m wise to your tricks, you know.’
‘Good,’ he said. ‘I want you to be wise. I also want you to know that David Waters had trouble with dark spirits. Doesn’t matter to me if you think of them in psychological terms or mystical terms; it amounts to the same thing.’
‘Well this is weird,’ I admitted. ‘Cass, you know, over at the donut shop, she was just more or less saying the same thing.’
‘I know.’ He nodded.
And there was one of his tricks: to claim that he knew something like that. There was no way to prove or disprove his assertion. It made him seem like the shaman he wanted me to believe he was. But it was also evidence that he was pretty good as a con man. Maybe it didn’t matter which he was. Maybe it was like he’d said: it amounts to the same thing.
‘She told you,’ he continued, as if he’d read my thoughts and wanted to prove his magic, ‘that he had a split personality. That he was two people. At least.’
I nodded. I didn’t want to speak because I knew that if I did I would give him more ammunition for his improvisational theatrics.
‘Anyway.’ He shrugged. ‘I’m glad that Baxter is go
ing to do the right thing.’
Now, how did he know that? Or was that sentence just bait? Was it supposed to make me reveal something? It was a vague enough pronouncement that it really might have applied to nearly anything.
‘What I want you to know,’ he said after a second of hesitation, ‘is that your current client, Lena, did the right thing. She had to shoot him. He wanted to die. Since he was twelve or so, he was in trouble. I don’t know what happened to him, but something broke him in half, and he never healed. If I’d known about it sooner, I might have helped him. But whatever it was that damaged him, it happened while I was incarcerated.’
His voice was very soothing, almost hypnotic. I felt dizzy for a moment. Then I had the sensation that everyone around me was an actor and I was in a movie. Lena lied as a matter of course – I didn’t blame her, but she wasn’t the most reliable person. John Horse routinely invented himself in deliberately confusing ways. And Cass from the donut shop: she was suddenly the fabled Cassandra who my Aunt Shayna said was a relative of hers in Russia but who I later found out was a Greek myth: gifted with knowing the truth, fated never to be believed.
I think I said, ‘I feel funny.’
The next thing I knew I was lying on the ground in the park with two or three strangers staring down at me. John Horse was not among them.
I tried to sit up. It didn’t work.
‘Where’s John Horse?’ I asked.
They stared. They were all Seminoles. They were pretending that they didn’t speak English.
‘E-ah-kal-e-mas-cheh,’ one of them mumbled.
‘No,’ I snapped, ‘I’m not very sick.’
‘Hocktoche,’ another one said. ‘Is-tah-chee.’
‘Little girl?’ I blinked. ‘Do you mean Lena?’
‘Yes,’ the first one said. ‘John Horse went to get the little girl.’
I rubbed my eyes, trying to clear my head.
‘What happened to me? Why am I on the ground?’ I looked at all the strange faces.
The first one knelt down and tried to hand me a pill. I stared at it.
‘Hil-lis-wa,’ he said.
‘No.’ I looked him in the eye. ‘That’s not medicine.’
‘It’s from John Horse,’ he said. ‘You need to take it.’
‘Did he do this to me?’ I asked. ‘Did he knock me out with his voodoo?’
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