Kill City USA

by Warren Roberts

  ‘I hope it’s of you of course, sweetheart.’

  ‘No, it isn’t.’

  ‘Then the gorgeous black stallion.’

  ‘No, it’s someone else.’

  ‘Oh I can hardly wait. I love playing games, darling. Bye bye.’ She hung up.

  I called The Russian Blue to get their e-mail address and had Tonique send the photograph for Pandora’s attention.

  24

  We sat in the Cafe Versailles on Calle Ocho in Little Havana. A home away from home for Miami Cubans, it was gaudily chandeliered and mirrored like a kitsch budget palace, and full of Miami-Cuban power brokers discussing today’s conspiracies and the latest news of Fidel over breakfast.

  Jonah had tracked down a copy of The Detroit News and was looking for Ann’s by-line in the crime pages as we sat at our table in the rear of the restaurant. He’d spoken to friends in London who were passing the word to the Wandsworth cons. He was well connected in their world.

  Jay was flying back to Miami tonight. I planned to return Sayers’ calls later in the day. I was mindful that the hourglass sands were running well into Quaranto’s deadline for me to leave Miami.

  Rafe and Dario walked into the restaurant. It took them several minutes to reach our table as they were greeted by half the patrons between us and the door.

  We ordered cafe cubanos, juice, and rich Cuban breakfast pastries which I needed for a blood sugar fix, after a two-hour workout on the gym apparatus at the hotel.

  Rafe said, ‘We have news for you.’

  He looked around at the nearby tables, making sure we were out of earshot. Then he said, ‘Guess where your English friends have been?’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘Fishing.’

  ‘Fishing?’

  ‘As on a lake. Beats us. We’ve kept a tail on them. They’ve been up to Lake Okeechobee. About ninety miles north of here.’

  I could imagine Sayers in his Harris tweeds fly fishing on some Scottish laird’s estate after a hard evening rogering the chambermaids. Okeechobee fishing with the local rednecks didn’t seem his speed. And Irish was probably a dynamite-for-bait angler, whose idea of a sporting afternoon would be to scoop the stunned fish up with a net after they’d floated to the surface. Then hit them with a hammer just to make sure. These guys were an odd couple. Butch and Sundance they weren’t.

  I said, ‘Tell me.’

  ‘They spent a couple of hours with a couple of Cubans and a Mexican guy on a boat on the lake. Boozing, fishing and talking.’

  ‘That it?’

  ‘They tied up at a place called Boone Dock, near a rundown fishing lodge and went inside. The Commodore Motel and Fishing Lodge,’ he said. ‘The Waldorf it ain’t.’

  I said, ‘One mystery solved then. Now all we need is when.’

  ‘Jesus Da Silva has rented three reefers for next Monday.’

  ‘Reefers?’

  ‘Refrigerated trucks.’

  Rafe looked around again. A family group was now sitting at a nearby table. He dropped his voice.

  ‘They’re picking the trucks up first thing Monday morning. And Sayers booked a room at The Commodore Monday, under the name Brown.’

  I said, ‘QED. Theorem solved.’

  Rafe and Dario had been efficiently busy boys. The more I worked with them the more I enjoyed their company, and the way things got done.

  I said, ‘How do you know all this?’

  Dario said, ‘Trust me.’

  I trusted him.

  ‘Where are The Odd Couple today?’

  Rafe pulled his cell phone out of his pocket. ‘I’ll find out.’

  The Cafe Versailles was becoming busier and noisier. You build a large Cuban restaurant in Miami and name it after a French palace and decorate it with kitsch and people will come. The logic escaped me but the formula worked. Go figure.

  ‘They’re at The Delano poolside with a couple of hot looking babes,’ said Rafe.

  I said to Jonah, ‘Fancy a swim?’

  At the Shelborne we changed into Miami smart pool gear. Casual slacks, loafers with no socks and loose fitting shirts, to get us past the NO ENTRY GUESTS ONLY sign at the bottom of the steps leading from the rear of The Delano Hotel to its pool area.

  We were soon drinking a mojito. It wasn’t as good as those at Havana’s Bodeguita, but then I’m pretty easy to please.

  The early afternoon groupie shift of barflies was already assembled at the pool bar; a mix of holidaying suburban dentists who smoked Gitanes for reasons known only to them, drug dealers who looked like suburban dentists, 24-carat-gilded gangsta rappers, Bahrainis with more rings than Saturn, clubbed-out Puerto Rican rave kittens with aspirations who believed they were the sum of their designer parts, high-maintenance Waspish American princesses with perilous hairstyles and major cleavage, a few gold-sandalled wannabes, and a young Panamanian girl whose black T-shirt bore the message When I’m good I’m very, very good… in shocking pink lettering, who was drinking a Mai Tai. Plus the customary hangers-on.

  I could see Irish sitting in a chair in the sloped shallow end of the pool catching rays. His bulk which once may have been muscle was now paunch, and his upper arms and shoulders had been inked by con jab artists in prison tatt parlours, a retrospective of his stretches in stir. He wore dark-lensed sunglasses with heavy gold trim and undoubtedly a designer logo on their frame.

  On a poolside deckchair Sayers was sitting with a girl on either side, in stereo. His pink starched shirt was as crisply creased as his khaki shorts. He’d left his pith helmet in his room. His companions hadn’t needed to dress like guests to get admission, their bodies had done that for them.

  I asked the barman to send them all a mojito with my compliments. It was too nice a day to think of putting it on their tab. Irish took his without a glance to us but raised his glass to Sayers assuming it had come from him. We raised ours at the same time the waiter pointed to us as the source of the round. He waved us over and said something to the girls who stood up.

  As we approached he said, ‘Thanks for the drinks. The girls will take theirs to the bar while we talk.’

  They reluctantly took their cue after giving Jonah a visual howdy there. They were lookers, the sort that could get away with charging by the day, not just by the hour.

  Sayers said, ‘About bloody time we met. I’ve left you a lot of messages. Where the hell’s Jay?’

  I said, ‘I’m not her keeper.’

  We sat on the end of the deckchairs the girls had occupied, on either side of Sayers. Irish had finally noticed our presence and walked over. He held his stomach in to move some of his flabby gut to his chest. It just made him look constipated.

  He said, ‘Who’s this?’ looking at Jonah.

  I said, ‘Thank you for thanking me for the drink. I’d forgotten you had such good manners.’

  Sayers said, ‘Cool it.’ The word cool didn’t come naturally to him. ‘We have serious business to discuss.’

  Irish went and retrieved his chair from the pool and sat down facing Sayers, between Jonah and me. His belly spilt over his bathing briefs.

  Irish pointedly stared at Jonah while Jonah let him see his reflection in his shades. The humid air was thick with belligerence. Irish moved his body forward for effect. Jonah fixed him with a frigid stare in return. He didn’t need to inhale to show his chest and Irish was starting to realise he’d been more in his depth in the shallow end. Jonah had a look backed by substance, even to the partially sighted. He stared with bemusement at Irish until he casually sat back in his chair, then turned away. Sayers seemed relieved when the sideshow was over.

  He was irritated and said, ‘Has Jay gone back to London?’

  ‘I don’t know. But she told me to deal with you. So let’s deal.’

  He said, ‘No way. I’ll only deal directly with her. And you tell her that if she’s too foolish to realise that, she can suffer the consequences. I’m too busy to put up with her crap. Or to deal with her messenger boys.’


  For a tough talker he was a little unsure about what he’d just said, particularly the last part. I leant forward. ‘Listen carefully to this, you piece of shit,’ I said. ‘And Yogi Bear here. Now you dirtbags pay attention. Jay is a friend of ours. And we’re overprotective of our friends. We hear anything more from her about either of you contacting her in any way. Any shape. Any form. You’ll regret it. Am I making myself clear here?’

  Jonah looked devoutly uninterested while I kept my focus on Sayers.

  ‘Milo. Did you even give the package I gave you to Jay?’

  ‘Yes, I did. And I’m fully aware of its contents.’

  ‘Then you know the trouble you are going to get her into. All to satisfy your uncouth macho ego.’

  I didn’t mind the uncouth bit, but macho? ‘You haven’t listened to a word I’ve said.’

  He pursed his fat lips. The look suited him. ‘I’ve understood perfectly that despite your tough-guy threats you are getting into something that will become out of your control. Don’t say I haven’t warned you. We have force behind us here.’

  I laughed, and paused to follow the progress of two raven-haired fillies with legs as long as Shergar’s, prancing their chestnut tans poolside.

  I gave my attention back to Sayers. ‘The only force here is one you should be worried about. It’s force majeure.’ I’d heard the phrase on TV. I said to Irish, in translation. ‘Unforeseen circumstances. Superior and irresistible forces. Me and him.’ I pointed to Jonah. I said, ‘He’s force and I’m majeure,’ as I wondered what majeure actually meant.

  Sayers had heard enough.

  Irish stood and stared down Jonah. Jonah stood and went nose to nose. Irish slowly sat again.

  Sayers’ lips compressed into a thin line of contempt. ‘As you’re not our guests here – and as you’re not hotel residents – I think you should both now leave. And you tell Jay she can contact me here until my departure on Wednesday next. After that it’s too late.’

  The imperious treatment towards others he’d perfected for years at British public school, his upper lip, stiffer than a Ubangi tribes-man’s, came naturally. Not guests and not residents indeed.

  He picked up a Jeffrey Archer novel. That figured. ‘That’s Wednesday next week. Goodbye.’

  We got up and left. Further talk was pointless. Irish didn’t seem unhappy to see us go as we were intruding on his tough-guy credentials. A few more days like this and he’d be expecting his P45.

  25

  At the office was a message to call Les Cargill on his cell in Bloomfield Hills. He answered on the second ring.

  ‘I’m going away for a few days, across to Windsor in Canada,’ he said, and he gave me another cell number.

  I said, ‘You thought about what I said? I can put you in touch with the authorities.’

  He paused. Then he said, ‘Yeah. Go ahead. I won’t tell them about your forced entry.’

  ‘As I told you, I know nothing about any forced entry.’

  ‘As you wish. But I still won’t tell them.’

  ‘Always best not to muddy the waters.’

  ‘You have any more news for me?’

  ‘I’m hopeful things’ll be sorted out in your absence.’

  ‘I’ll be back in a couple of days. Keep in touch,’ he said, not really reassured.

  After deciding I was posed no imminent threat from assassins, Jonah had taken his red-headed waitress friend for stone crabs in South Beach. Dooley was out of town, upstate on business.

  Cza lived in a modern apartment complex on Bull Run Road in Miami Lakes, near to Don Shula’s Athletic Club.

  I rang her bell, clutching a couple of bottles of Italian red I’d picked up in a deli in the Miami Lakes main street.

  The door opened to frame a grin and a long T-shirt, short shorts and painted nails. She read the label as I handed her the wine. ‘Barolo, Pio Cesare. My favourite libido builder. You certainly know how to please a girl.’

  Her split-level apartment overlooked a large pool built in Mediterranean style, according to the realtor’s come-on sign advertising vacant apartments outside the building. The living area had an audio and video system along one wall, with floor to ceiling speakers. A couple of sofas and recliners filled most of the rest of the room. Monochrome photographic prints were on the walls, and two Persian cats were curled up on a large circular rug under a glass topped coffee table. They ignored us.

  She put on a CD, the Larry Adler & Friends harmonica and vocal homage to Gershwin. Sexy romantic stuff.

  I crouched down and gave one of the cats a stroke. It whacked me with a closed fist in reply. The other cat looked on in approval.

  ‘The lighter grey one’s Gotti. He thinks he’s the cat’s pyjamas. Got a cashmere coat like the Dapper Don wore. The other one’s Spade.’

  ‘Spade?’

  ‘Sam Spade. Another damn private eye. It should really be s-p-a-y-e-d but I didn’t want to give him a complex. Poor thing. He thought he was going to the vet for a flu shot.’

  The cats lost interest in us and in each other and went back to sleep.

  ‘Well Milo. I’ve got good news and bad news.’

  ‘I’m waiting.’

  ‘The bad news. I’ve got to send some work down the web which will take me half an hour.’

  ‘What’s the good news then?’

  ‘That I’m a lousy cook. So it’s over to you. I was planning a penne pasta and salad. Here’s the fixings,’ said Cza, pointing to a brown paper shopping bag on the bench while she opened the fridge door. It was filled mainly with white wine and cans of Diet Coke and beer. Food plugged whatever few spaces remained. She took out one of the bottles of wine, a Frascati, and handed me a corkscrew.

  I opened the white and a bottle of the Barolo, not to let them breathe but so we wouldn’t change our minds about drinking both of them.

  She toasted. ‘Italian wine. Italian crime.’

  ‘A mere hint of extortion,’ I said, sniffing then sipping the wine. ‘With a subtly larcenous bouquet of racketeering. A good year.’

  ‘Yeah. Twenty to life.’

  We drank.

  ‘Well, handsome, I’m leaving you in charge while I wrestle with my laptop.’

  She held both my hands and threw a pecked kiss, then went into her study.

  On Cza’s bench was a fully loaded knife rack, the weapons in showroom condition. Alongside was a spice rack with the seals of each jar unbroken. A pristine set of expensive Scanpans hung from hooks along the adjacent wall. I was in virgin implement heaven.

  I scalded and peeled plum tomatoes, roughly diced some fresh basil, chopped some salad onions and crushed a couple of garlic cloves for the pasta. Plus a touch of chilli. The salad dressing was a Milo Caesar with industrial strength olive oil, a dash of Worcestershire Sauce, lemon juice, garlic, Dijon mustard, white wine vinegar, thick parmesan shavings and a carefully separated egg yolk; to hell with salmonella. I even found a tin of anchovies which are to Caesar Salad what potatoes are to Idaho.

  I mixed garlic, parsley and butter and spread it on half-sliced French sticks and wrapped them in tinfoil for fifteen minutes’ baking. The food in the refrigerator was now down to anorexia comfort level.

  ‘How’s it going?’

  Cza reappeared with an empty wine glass which I filled.

  I’ve cleaned out the food in your fridge,’ I said.

  ‘So, I live on takeouts. And look at the bright side. There’s more room for wine.’ She looked over the ingredients on the chopping board and inside the oven.

  ‘My… skins off the tomatoes. Can you iron as well, Milo?’

  ‘Sounds like you need a wife,’ I said.

  ‘She’s got a dick and scrubs floors, fine by me.’

  The Larry Adler CD had finished so I went and put on Natalie Merchant’s Tigerlily.

  ‘This has nothing to do with her Beloved Wife track,’ I called out.

  ‘I’d rather hear an How To Do FBI Encryption On My PC track. Won’t be long.’ />
  I sat back to listen to the music and enjoy the white wine before I started on the serious stuff, the deep red. Natalie’s music was more Barolo than Frascati. Cza came back into the room just as Gotti was settling on my lap to prevent me from standing up and getting another drink.

  ‘All finished,’ she said, pushing the cat off me and sitting herself on my lap instead.

  ‘Save the world from baddies?’

  ‘Mainly getting my expenses in to the bean-counters for a deadline tomorrow. Otherwise I don’t get reimbursed for another month and I won’t be able to afford to feed the cats.’

  We went into the kitchen. Cza brought a candle to the kitchen table and topped up our wine glasses so she could use the Frascati bottle as a candlestick. I grabbed two fresh glasses for the Barolo.

  She said, ‘I hope you like eating in a kitchen.’

  ‘The last tribal meeting place.’

  The penne was draining as I added the fresh basil to the pasta sauce and quickly stirred it in. I dressed the cos lettuce leaves and added the cheese and the contents of a packet of croutons I’d found, only a couple of months past their use-by date.

  She left to take a phone call, and returned after twenty minutes. ‘Sorry,’ she said. I held out the almost empty Barolo bottle and shrugged.

  ‘What’s in the oven?’ said Cza, as she put everything onto the kitchen table.

  I removed the bread and unwrapped the tinfoil.

  We sat opposite each other, the candle was moved to one side.

  ‘This looks great, Milo. Bon appétit.’

  ‘It seems a pity to spoil this evening with business,’ I said. ‘

  Must we?’

  Cza was massaging my shin with her bare toes.

  ‘Only if you want to get gold stars for an arms deal bust next Monday.’

  ‘That’s not the sort of arms deal I’m thinking about. Mine was more legs, hips, knees, thighs and hands than arms. But if you must. Going down on Monday. Where?’

  ‘I’ll know more about it tomorrow. I think somewhere in Hialeah. I’ll call you about noon.’