by Pavia, Peter
“What’re you talking about?”
He let go of her. “That shot about him being a witch doctor. I didn’t mean anything by it. He’s not so bad, you know.”
Acevedo shrugged him off, but it made Arnie feel better, having said what he said. He moved toward the desk where Robotaille was babysitting his witness. Ron noticed him coming over and got up to meet him.
“Good timing. The guy’s gotta be at work soon. Says he would’ve been in earlier, except he fishes the Keys on his days off. I don’t know,” Robotaille said, “he looks more like the country club type to me.”
“Wherever he’s been, it was in the sun. Check out that white stripe across his eyes.”
Robotaille went and picked up a telephone and Martinson introduced himself to Douglas Waters. He took the chair Robotaille had been sitting in and said, “I’m sure you heard all about last Wednesday. On that night, did Manfred Pfiser receive any visitors?”
“Not to my knowledge,” Waters said. He was a babyfaced guy with cool blue eyes and a close shave.
“Not to your knowledge?”
“We have a policy about announcing visitors, but the restrooms of the café are on the mezzanine level of the lobby, and you can’t always tell who’s who.”
“The hotel isn’t exactly a model of security.”
“We have a team that works weekends,” Waters said.
“Nobody during the week?”
Waters tightened his lips and shook his head no. His tie was tied perfectly, coming up flush against his collar, the knot in the dead middle between the collar points.
“Did you see or hear anything suspicious, anything that would’ve alerted you things weren’t quite right Wednesday night?”
“I saw two men leaving the hotel, two men who weren’t registered guests and didn’t look like patrons of the restaurant. Something about them was just wrong.”
“Such as.”
“They were an odd pair,” Waters remembered. “One was short—”
Martinson cut him off. With Waters seated, Arnie couldn’t tell his exact height, but the man was probably close to six-three. Nearly everybody was short compared to him, and Martinson pointed this out.
Waters said, “Less than average height. With no kind of haircut, you know what I mean? Not combed or shaped or anything.”
“Must’ve been pretty obvious, you noticing that in the two seconds it took him to walk past you.”
“No, it took longer than that. I was on them when they got off the elevator, and I remember them walking through the lobby and out into the street. I was watching because I wanted to make sure they were gone. The guy’s hair was horrid, looked like it had been cut with a lawnmower.”
Waters’s own hair was gel-tight. His sideburns, which reached the precise middle of his ear, didn’t have a single whisker out of place. A bad haircut is something a guy like this would notice about someone. Maybe the first thing.
Martinson ran a hand though his own hair. “What about the other one, his partner?”
“Taller by a head, and thin. Cuban. I would’ve said light-skinned black but his features were Latin.”
“What does that mean?”
Waters backpedaled. “Forget that. He could’ve been white, with an olive complexion, Italian or Jewish. I can’t say. I didn’t get a good look at him, but I do remember this. He had an afro.”
Again with the hair, Martinson said, “An afro?”
“An afro. This might sound stupid, but you would’ve noticed these two by their hair alone. They rushed out of the lobby without wanting it to appear like they were in a hurry. Weird, it was like the taller one was trying to keep up.”
“What’s weird about that?”
“It should’ve been the other way around. Wouldn’t the taller man cover more ground with a stride?”
“I suppose he would,” Martinson said.
“In any event, there’s no question they were together.”
“Can you recall the time, Mr. Waters?”
“It was after midnight, that’s for sure.”
“Why’re you so sure?”
“The waiters were stacking chairs in the café. That’s the image I have of these two. Out the lobby and onto the sidewalk, past the piled-up chairs. The café closes at midnight on Wednesday.”
“One of your guests told us that on that night she had to phone the desk to get Pfiser to turn his music down. You took the call, right?”
“I remember it clearly. Ms. Lowenstein in room 1207. I think guests like Ms. Lowenstein would be more comfortable at the Eden Roc, but her wishes do need to be respected. I went up to Mr. Pfiser’s room personally, and asked him to lower the volume.”
“Was he alone at that time?”
“As far as I know, yes.”
“Was this before or after the haircut duo made their exit?”
“Before. I told you they left after midnight.”
Martinson took a sip of his coffee and rubbed the back of his neck. He didn’t have any more questions for Douglas Waters but he hoped that Waters could come back on another day when he had more time, to take a look at the mug books. Waters said he would.
Martinson got Robotaille to escort Waters downstairs, and he caught Lili coming out of Kramer’s office. “What’d Big John have to say?”
“What’s he gonna say? It’s an autopsy report. The victim died of a gunshot wound. We knew that. What happened with the hotel manager?”
“He described the haircuts of two guys he saw getting out of an elevator.”
Lili said, “You like this guy the French chick’s describing?”
“I don’t like anybody.”
“Then who was the man leaving the room?”
“Couldn’t tell you,” Martinson said. “But we’re gonna need to find out.”
Kramer had his hair on fire over an editorial in some sporadically published model scene rag that accused the Miami Beach Police Department, and the Detective Bureau in particular, of negligence and sloth, not to mention indifference, toward solving the murder of Manfred Pfiser. Pfiser was a well-known figure among the gay set, and the editorial implied that the Dutchman’s homosexuality was the cause of foot-dragging by the Bureau, an idiotic allegation the paper did nothing to substantiate. The piece was headlined EQUAL JUSTICE UNDER LAW?
Kramer was white. He tossed the paper on his desk for Martinson to read. In the third paragraph, somebody left the second ‘p’ out of inappropriate. Arnie said, “Why’re you getting so worked up over a publication that doesn’t even know how to spell? Nobody reads these things.”
Kramer was pushing the idea of making the Annick Mersault composite public. They’d been back and forth over the relative merits of this strategy in the past, and for what it was worth, this was Arnie’s theory:
Nobody, no matter how stupid, who had committed a murder, wouldn’t think the cops weren’t after somebody. Especially with a body left at the scene. But there was a huge gap between an anonymous, faceless suspect, and the specific mug that appeared in a police composite. By keeping the picture in house, so to speak, the killer might be lulled into thinking nobody had seen him. It would naturally follow that he’d think he’d gotten away with it.
Then, on some booze-addled morning, the actor’s lips got loose, and he started bragging. Remember the Dutch guy who got it on the Beach? That was me. Next, somebody would rat the guy off. Which always happened. Too hot of a tip to sit on. Not to mention, there’s no way the actor arrives at the point where he’s pulling the trigger on a defenseless man in some hotel room without making a lot of people along the way hate his guts. This was your revenge factor.
They’d go pick the guy up. Using evidence detectives developed, the District Attorney’s office built a case against him. If they had the right man, and everybody did his job, a jury convicted him. Nine times out of ten, anyway. After that, the guy had the pleasure of putting his life on hold for twenty-five years in one of Florida’s garden spots. If he got lucky. If he g
ot lucky and the prosecutor didn’t decide he should do a little crackling instead. Because Old Sparky was always ready to receive.
Unfortunately, Arnie’s scenario was encountering furious resistance in the face of one quality John Kramer had in very light supply: patience.
“These miserable rags are more influential that you think,” Kramer said. “The Herald’s bound to pick up this baton, then the TV stations, and then we’re the do-nothing Miami Beach Detective Bureau that doesn’t give a shit when somebody gets murdered in our jurisdiction. I can’t have this, Arnie. I cannot have it.”
“Relax, John. Who knows how hard we’re working? We do.”
Though it was lying perfectly flat against his perfectly flat stomach, Kramer smoothed his hand over his tie. The point of it touched his belt buckle. No suspenders today.
“If we take the composite public,” Kramer said, “it could actually help us come up with a suspect, and that’s more than we’ve got right now.”
On the other hand, it could send all the hard work your detectives have done so far straight to hell, but Martinson didn’t say that. And there was an outside chance Kramer might be right. There was a first time for everything.
Chapter Six
There used to be a lot more of these dives on the Beach, where a shot of no-name whiskey went for two bucks and you could buy a glass of beer for seventy-five cents, but those dirty saloons were t-shirt shops now, and the city Leo grew up with was gone. South Miami Beach had always been there — it had looked the same on a map — but South Beach hadn’t existed. Not by that name. The transformation was so complete that travel agents referred to the area by its cutesy nickname, SoBe. And although this revival played right into the hands of Leo’s idealized self, there was something sad about the gouge that had been hacked out of his personal past.
Leo started drinking here, in Loby’s Ron-Da-Voo, when he was going to Beach High. Everybody knew Leo’s crew was underage, but since the youngsters made up about a third of the crowd, there were never any ID hassles. Florida lifers hung out in Loby’s, guys who owned leaky tubs they chartered for tours of the Keys, and so did a claque of Cubans, Marielitas mostly, giddily drinking cheap and singing along with the jukebox.
If Loby ever existed, he was dead before Leo’s time. Loby’s Ron-Da-Voo was owned by Simon the Bartender. He poured drinks straight through all twenty-one hours of legal operation, and if you went to Loby’s and you didn’t see Simon, he had either just left or he was on his way in.
Leo didn’t have time to kill with any of Simon’s saggytitted surrogates tonight, and he wasn’t in the mood to fend off propositions from an end-of-the-line hooker or to make conversation with a stewed regular who smelled worse than the Ron-Da-Voo’s men’s room.
Fortunately Simon the Bartender was at his post, deadpanning and shaking the ice cubes in the pint glass of tap water he was always sipping from. He had to be over sixty, still beefy in the forearms, still handsome in a busted-up, old-guy kind of way. His wavy hair was mostly grey, but a touch of the brown it used to be was hanging on at the temples.
Instead of saying hello, he nodded at people as they walked in, to set the tone in case they were thinking he was the sort they could tell their troubles to. And if they were drunk or stupid or just plain bad at catching nonverbal drifts and they started in on him, he’d come right out and ask them why they thought he gave a shit.
The clientele was pretty much the same as Leo remembered, though the Cuban quotient had been watered down by tourists out for a slab of what was left of local color and slumming queers who got a thrill out of drinking in a real dive, not a chic, in-crowd place pretending to be a dive.
Leo told Simon he wanted a word and Simon signaled to his man Bruce, who got behind the bar and stood there, a bleary grin on his face.
A six-burner stove dominated the kitchen, its exposed, cobwebbed pipes connected to nothing. A doubledoored refrigerator hummed against one wall and Bruce’s cot was set up along another. What Leo needed, he told Simon the Bartender, was a piece.
Simon worked keys into a pair of padlocks securing a closet and opened the door. Leo spotted a mop, a bucket, and two brooms with their bristles worn to nubs. A pallet of cleanser was encased in shrinkwrap, and there was a stainless steel sink Simon hadn’t gotten around to installing. He reached into a bowling bag and pulled out a black pistol that had a dull, oily sheen.
He said, “Know how to work an automatic?”
Leo said he did, though he didn’t. How complicated could it be?
Simon the Bartender pulled back the slide. “Careful. It’s loaded.”
Leo closed one eye and brought the pistol level with his shoulder. “How much?”
“That’s a SIG Sauer,” Simon said. “P226, nine millimeter.”
“Right,” Leo said. He was thinking this baby would do a lot more than just leave a telegenic hole in JP Beaumond’s forehead.
“The FBI’s using these now, you know.”
Leo held the gun at his hip and made a High Noon quick draw. Probably take a big piece of that Beaumond bean right off. “How much?” he said again.
“Six hundred.”
“Six hundred,” Leo said. “That’s a lotta loochie.” He had about five hundred on him. He gave the SIG Sauer back to Simon.
“That is not the way you hand a man a loaded weapon,” Simon the Bartender said. “Barrel down, the way I gave it to you. I don’t need any fucking accidents tonight. Six hundred and I throw in an extra clip.”
“Can’t do it,” Leo said. “What else you got.”
“I got this,” Simon said, reaching into the bag. “Twenty-five caliber. A little short on stopping power, but you’re not hunting buffalo, right?”
A chunk of the handle’s knurled plastic grip was chipped off. “This’s no good,” Leo said. “It’s fucked up.”
“Don’t worry. It fires.”
“Who makes this one?”
“Phoenix Arms,” Simon said. “That’s your Model Raven.”
“I don’t know,” Leo said. The SIG Sauer looked so much more menacing.
“And I got rounds,” Simon the Bartender said. “About fifty rounds. I won’t need ’em.”
“Alright,” Leo told him. “What’s the price?”
“Everything? Tax included?”
Listen to him. Tax included.
“A hundred and fifty bucks.”
“Seventy-five,” Leo said.
“A hundred and fifty and I throw in all the ammo I got.”
“You were gonna do that anyway.”
“But I got two hundred into it.”
“Bullshit,” Leo said. “I’ll give you seventy-five.”
They settled on a hundred bucks. Leo was on his way out with the pistol tucked into his waistband when Simon the Bartender called him back. He made him come close. He lowered his chin and he lowered his voice.
“If you gotta use it, drop it and walk. Don’t run. You call attention to yourself. Walk. Better if you can throw it down a sewer grate, toss it in some weeds or whatever, but remember, drop it and walk.”
This bit of advice must have been included in the purchase price. Leo wondered what had gotten into Simon the Bartender. Turned into a regular chatty Cathy right before his eyes.
Every light in the house was burning, but there was nobody inside. A drained 64-ounce Diet Dr. Pepper and a flattened pack of More 120s cluttered the coffee table, but Vicki wasn’t in her usual spot in front of the TV. The plate she’d been snorting from was licked clean, and it looked like she’d gotten a nosebleed at some point: a blood-spotted paper towel was wadded up next to the plate. None of her clothes were in the living room. Something wasn’t right.
Leo thought Vicki might’ve gone out with Beaumond and Fernandez, but Vicki didn’t go anywhere without Mimi, and the Chihuahua got car sick, so Beaumond wouldn’t let it in the Eldorado. That killed that explanation.
The bathroom had been cleared of her shampoos and her eyes shadows and her laxative
s. The panties always drying on the towel rack were missing. The closet in the bedroom she shared with Fernandez was emptied of her sundresses and her shoes. Vicki was gone.
Leo dismissed the minor possibility that she went to the cops. Considering it was Vicki who helped them get next to Manfred in the first place, she was as guilty as any of them. He hoped she realized that. Plus, she was ga-ga over Alex Fernandez. No way she’d give up Alex. Not a chance.
But motherfucker. Now he had a whole other bundle of worries to deal with, just as he was on the verge of getting everything sorted out. He wasn’t going to let this setback throw him off. Oh no. He had work to do. He added Vicki to the list of potential problems that had to be dealt with, and he’d deal with her, too, in his own sweet time.
Using a wooden spoon to crush some rocks, Leo took a paring knife and diced the powder. He shaped the line into the curve of an S and sniffed it through the casing of a ballpoint pen, chilling to Gloria Estefan. She was singing in Spanish. Leo hardly understood a word. He wasn’t crazy about the music, but he loved this sexy Cuban babe. He bet he’d do all right with Miss Gloria Estefan, if he ever got the chance to meet her. He bet she’d be right on his tip.
He stuffed some blow into the end of a cigarette and smoked it like that, took a bump for each nostril, a freeze for his gums. This coke was the bomb, the best he’d had in months, from his own secret stash. Now what did those morons do with his pipe? Here was a nice rock that’d cook up juicy, give him a real buzz.
Leo originally saw himself standing behind the door and whacking Beaumond the second he came in, but the problem was, he didn’t know which door. So he sat on the couch with the automatic in his lap. Let Beaumond come to him.
The Eldorado’s headlamps flashed though the living room window, and after what seemed like a long time, Beaumond’s drunken voice came drifting in, warbling a current hit he didn’t know the lyrics to. He let go of a belch that sounded like it came from his heels.
They picked the sliding door. Came in through the kitchen. Fernandez first, mutely blasted, the opposite of Beaumond, who got stupider and louder the more booze you put into him. Fernandez didn’t say anything, blinking Leo into focus from the other room. He opened the refrigerator.