“The way I get the story, Mantooth tried to get into a club that was too exclusive for him. The bouncer went after him with a club. Mantooth not only took it from him, but cracked him in the head with it. And this is when he decides he ought to get out of New York.” Ronzini shuffles more papers, puffs, and sends another stream of acrid smoke Hannibal’s way. “We pick him up in Miami in ’96, accused of stealing a Lexus and changing the VIN number. He paid the owner off to get him to drop the charges. And it’s apparently about this time he gets deep into this dom-sub stuff.” Ronzini looked up. “You know about that stuff?”
“He dominates submissive women,” Hannibal said, nodding. “He’s pretty good at manipulating women’s feelings. Makes me crawly.”
“Good,” Ronzini said. “It ought to. Our boy apparently meets a woman down there with money, takes over her life and makes her his slave.”
“Patient zero,” Hannibal said under his breath. “Or victim zero. The trail of broken women starts right there.”
“From all reports he did her pretty bad before he emptied her bank account and kicked her to the curb. Then he bought a little club down there and life got good for him. Don’t know if you know much about Miami, but at that time down on South Beach things were pretty rough.”
“Miami Vice,” Hannibal said. “Art deco and big boats.”
“Yeah, and biker gangs and drug addicts and derelicts all over. Right about the time he got this club going, it started to get cool for sports stars and rock stars to hang out there. He had three or four girls at this point, and he had them waiting on him and on whoever he told them to service. Real dominant types didn’t like what he did to his women, but they just stayed away from him. Then he put the word out that he was connected to the mob. The real crime bosses didn’t like that but it seemed harmless and they let it slide. The rumor made him and his place cooler to the rap and rock crowds. They all think they’re gangsters. The mob sent a man to make contact, you know, explain the rules to him. Set up a cozy little live-and-let-live deal. He let the dealers do their thing in his place, the right people drank free, girls worked in there without giving Mantooth a cut, and like that.”
Hannibal reached for his cup, only then realizing that his jaws were clenched so tightly that it required a conscious effort to open his mouth. The brew was still hot, still strong, but it now had a bitter taste. Ronzini was quiet, as if waiting for Hannibal to digest the information.
“This guy’s no businessman,” Hannibal said after a moment. “Even with the mob nod, I can’t believe he ran a club successfully.”
“Didn’t last long,” Ronzini said. “Less than a year later the club is destroyed in a fire that looks mighty suspicious to me, but the insurance company paid. He dumped the money into a bigger, better place, subsidized by another woman of means, and managed by a girl who knew the bar business but I guess didn’t know much about men.”
“You’d think hanging with the big guys would have smoothed this clown out,” Hannibal said. “If the Madonnas and K.D. Langs didn’t change his behavior toward women, somebody like 50 Cent should have shot him. How’s he still walking around doing this stuff?”
“Guys like this don’t change. Look here,” Ronzini said, pulling individual sheets of paper from his folder and flipping them aside. “Accused of beating up an employee because the guy took a break without permission. No charges filed. Smashes a pro football player in the face with a beer bottle in his own VIP lounge. No suit filed, thanks to some nasty threats. Oh, this is nice. Gets in a fight with a professional weight lifter. The guy was the ex-husband of one of Mantooth’s subbies. The weight lifter left town right after that. Later claimed that Mantooth flew a bunch of guys down from New York to go after him. Let’s see, caught driving a stolen car. “
“Charges dropped,” Hannibal said. Ronzini nodded.
“Beat up patrons in the bar.”
“Charges dropped,” Hannibal said again.
“Arrested for assault and attempted murder after he stabbed paparazzi multiple times for taking his picture.”
“My God. Charges dropped again? What the hell sat this guy behind bars?”
Ronzini chuckled. “Well, it wasn’t until 2001. Guess he shouldn’t have told that undercover FBI agent about the neighbor he wanted to have whacked. Turns out the guy was a witness to a crime one of Mantooth’s pals committed. The feds did some digging and turned up enough to threaten charges for murder, robbery and racketeering. That was enough to make him turn in some pals in exchange for a three year vacation in a minimum security cell.”
“Which is where he meets Vernon Cooper, and where the story begins for me.” Hannibal hated the indiscriminate way luck got handed out in the universe. Career criminals get their share just like heroes do.
“In what way?” Ronzini asked. “What is your business with this man?” Ronzini leaned back and drew hard on his cigar. For the first time it occurred to Hannibal that Ronzini had done all this research without really knowing why Hannibal was chasing Mantooth. He knew this was business, knew it was about recovering stolen property, but little else. Hannibal smiled, nodding in recognition of his obligation. But at this point he was no longer begging for help. They would now speak as equals.
“Okay, Tony, here it is. Mantooth had a cellmate in the joint. The man was a chemist who developed something very special. Mantooth found out where the formula was hidden, and sometime after that this man died suddenly in prison. When he got out, Mantooth stole the records of the formula from his old cell mate’s daughter.”
“A new pharmaceutical?” Ronzini asked. “I ask this because drug people have expressed an interest.”
Hannibal looked at the floor. “Not a drug.”
“If not a new narcotic, then what?” Ronzini sat still, exuding calm, but Hannibal felt the pressure of his eyes. It wasn’t his secret to share. It wasn’t any of Ronzini’s business. It wasn’t something a career criminal ought to know. But he felt an obligation here. And in some ways, this was a man he could trust. He took a deep breath, and let it out while saying, “Shit” under his breath.
“From all reports, it appears to be the beginnings of a cure for addiction.”
Ronzini’s mouth dropped open, and a small smile curled his lips. “So. In Hitchcock terms, this is the McGuffin. Drug dealers undoubtedly want to destroy the formula. Drug manufacturers want to own it. Or, even this could be dealt illegally. Imagine being able to use cocaine without worrying about getting hooked.”
“I don’t care who wants it,” Hannibal said. “It belongs to the girl.”
“Unless Mantooth sells it to make his big score,” Ronzini said, pointing his cigar at Hannibal. “This, we can expect soon. One of the friends he made in Miami is on his way up here with a great deal of cash. He must mean to trade it for this secret formula.”
“Then tell me, am I going up against the Cuban mob if I snatch the prize?”
“Think about it,” Ronzini said, leaning back with his hands laced over his ample stomach. “What do you know about this man now?”
“I know this guy has been chasing the big score all his life, and never managed to make it stick,” Hannibal said, standing and beginning to pace. “His temper gets in his way half the time. He’s desperate to land the big fish, and he thinks he’s got it on the hook now.”
“And one other thing.” Ronzini leaned forward, using an index finger to drive his point home. “Consider the reason for the time lapse. Why does he still have the formula to sell?” When Hannibal didn’t answer, Ronzini shook his head, looking disappointed. “He offered this prize to the local people, those who run this city, and they turned him down. They turned him down in Washington. They turned him down in Atlanta and Philly.”
This brought a smile to Hannibal’s face. “He’s not a made man. I don’t get it, but I guess the real players don’t want anything to do with him. How come?”
Ronzini spread his hands wide. “He’s messy and he gets his mess on other people. That’
s why you can do this thing. Even though he’s inside, he’s an outsider.”
“So if I can figure out how to get the formula away from him…”
“He won’t stop if you do,” Ronzini said, in a very matter of fact tone. “You know you’ll have to take him out.”
“That ain’t me,” Hannibal said.
“It would make you some important friends.”
“Those friends I don’t need,” Hannibal said.
“We’ll see,” Ronzini said, standing. “You’re a blunt instrument, my friend. When the time comes, we’ll see.”
As they headed for the car, Hannibal held his tongue, not offended by the comparison to a blunt instrument, but still bristling at Ronzini referring to him as friend.
-19-
SATURDAY
“You should have seen it, Sarge,” Monte said through a mouth full of pastry. “My man was riding that beat old school. Rhyming like Nelly on speed, boy. I never had so much fun losing a bet in my life!”
At the stove, Marquita said, “Now I begin to wonder if there is anything our Mr. Jones can’t do.”
Hannibal smiled, shook his head, and bit into another of the powdered sensations, even as he listened to more sizzling in a big skillet in front of Marquita. She flipped the little pastries in a couple of inches of oil as they floated to the surface, then fished them out and laid them on paper towels. She called them beignets, and they filled the suite with a sweet scent. They tasted like powdered donuts without holes, only lighter than anything he’d ever gotten from Dunkin Donuts or Krispy Kreme. And the fact that he, Sarge and Monte were sucking them down as quickly as she could pull them out of the pan and powder them meant they were still warm as he chewed and washed them down with hot, fresh coffee.
“Oh, he has his limits, Markie,” Sarge said, at the table in his undershirt. “Boy can’t dance a lick. Can’t cook for squat. And don’t get him for a partner in pinochle.”
“Thanks for the support, pal,” Hannibal said, delivering a playful punch to Sarge’s shoulder. “Like everybody else I just do what I can. Now Marquita here, she can cook.”
“There is more I could do,” she said, ladling the last of the beignets out of the pan.
“What else?” Hannibal asked with a shrug. “You put up with me calling at a ridiculous hour after I picked up Monte last night, because I forgot to check in and let you know we were okay until I was getting ready for bed myself. You made us this super breakfast. You hung around here an extra day when I know you’d rather be as far from Rod Mantooth as possible. What else could you possibly do?”
“I could testify,” she said, and Hannibal felt the chill that raced through her body as those words flew out. “I could go to court and testify. If you could get Anita to talk about Rod beating her, between us I bet we could get him thrown into jail.”
Sarge reached her in three long strides and wrapped his beefy arms around her. For a moment she shook within his embrace. “You,” Sarge said in a soft voice, close to her ear, “are a very brave woman.”
“Yes, that would call for a great deal of courage,” Hannibal said. “You and Anita would have to explain your history with Rod to the police. And you would have to make them understand why you did certain things.” Hannibal’s eyes cut to Monte, who seemed to understand that this was no time to be asking questions. He filled his mouth with a beignet as if to assure his own silence.
“Yeah, baby, then you’d have to face the whole thing again in open court,” Sarge said.
“If you got through it all, Rod probably would end up in jail for a few years.” Hannibal said. “A strong, direct approach. But we’re not going to do it that way. It doesn’t fulfill my mission, and I have an idea that will.”
Sarge stepped away from Marquita, as if he did not want to spatter her with his anger. “What do you mean, your mission?” What’s more important than getting this guy off the street?”
Hannibal counted to ten in his head. Then he asked Sarge a question that seemed irrelevant. “When you see a guy being loud and abusive with his girl and you’re working as a bouncer, what’s your first priority? Protect the girl from harm? If it is, I assume you separate them.”
Sarge backed off a step. “Well, my job’s to maintain order in the house. I generally just tell the jerk to take it somewhere else. But this…”
“Is no different,” Hannibal said. “I need to recover that formula. I have to make Anita whole. Besides, nobody wants Rod to be able to come back in three or four years and sell this formula for a fortune and live happily every after. Right?”
“Okay,” Sarge said. “Didn’t you say Rod’s out of town today? Maybe we should go up to his house and toss the joint until we find the formula.”
“Naw. Breaking and entering’s not one of my strong points, and his alarms looked pretty sophisticated. I’m planning to make him think I’ve already got it.”
“But, how can you make him think that?” Marquita asked.
“That all depends on you,” Hannibal said, leaning back. “I’m convinced that the disc you saw Rod get so excited about during your little cruise contained his big break. If you remember it well enough for me to make an accurate copy, and if I set up the situation just right, we might just con the con man.”
“You mean that disc that cost Mariah a beating?” Marquita’s eyes moved up and left as she searched her memory. “I know it was gold colored, with a white label and numbers on it. 4-9-3 maybe? Not so sure. Then words like base line formulae or something of the sort, in a very small, fine handwriting.”
“That’s excellent,” Hannibal said, watching Marquita light up again, as she did whenever she received the slightest praise. “Now I propose that we all check out and head back up north. I’ll go to the source of the disc, since I’m pretty sure Anita wrote all the labels, and get an apparent duplicate made. Then I’ll come back down here tomorrow, attend this big party, and find out if I’m slick enough to skin this cat.”
For Hannibal, the drive back to Washington was like a day in his office, if his office had been moved to an MTV sound studio. Before they reached the Virginia Beach city limits Monte had shoved a CD into the machine. Huge had given him a collection of discs he had either performed on or produced. Hannibal waited until the end of the first head-splitting rap tune before shutting it off, explaining that he had some work to do.
“Hey man, don’t you want to hear your greatest hit?” Monte asked, waving a disc at Hannibal.
“Is that what Huge made when I was in the booth?”
“Yep. This one’s mine. He sent one for you too.”
“Yeah, well, maybe later when I’m too drunk to be embarrassed,” Hannibal said. Now chill while I make a few calls.”
First he called Anita to make sure that no unexpected health problems had arisen. Mother Washington was sitting with her, so he learned that she was eating well and feeling better since Mother Washington had called in a hairdresser to get her back to looking normal. She still had bruising around her nose and seemed depressed much of the time. They would be there when he arrived to talk about whatever he could do to get her stolen property back.
He then called Cindy’s number, got no answer, and left a message on her machine. On a guess he called her office number. Again no answer. Hoping for information he tried the main number. A receptionist answered, which even on Saturday was not really a surprise. She explained that Ms. Santiago had already been in the office that morning and would be back soon. He asked to be switched back into her voicemail and left a message for her to call him as soon as she was free.
Then he gritted his teeth, focused on the rolling road ahead, and let Monte have his way with the CD player.
By the time he pulled up in front of Anita Cooper’s home, Hannibal had a crick in his neck and a persistent headache dancing behind his eyes from driving into the sun. He shut off the engine, deciding to sit for a moment and enjoy the quiet. He had followed Sarge back to their building and dropped Monte off across the street
before proceeding to Anita’s. Along the way he had tried Cindy’s home and cell phone numbers, before leaving another message at her office. Missing her was probably contributing to his headache.
At the door Hannibal tried to keep the pain out of his smile. When Mother Washington opened the door he knew his plan wasn’t working.
“Oh, child, are you all right?”
“It’s just a headache, ma’am,” he said, stepping through the doorway. “Anita?”
“Downstairs waiting for you. Now you be kind, you hear? She’s not looking her best.”
At the bottom of the stairs Hannibal discovered that Mother Washington had been both right and very wrong. Physically, Anita did not look her best. The pale bruising under her eyes made her look jaundiced, and her right cheek was swollen just enough to make her face appear lopsided. Her nose was also still a little bigger than it should have been, swollen during its healing process. Her lower lip looked as if she had split it, maybe by smiling too much or crying too much. It was healing, but the red line down the middle told him that doctors had removed the stitch too soon.
On the other hand, her eyes were bright and lively, and her posture a tiny bit more erect than before. She was holding her head up. This last beating may have given her strength, he thought, or maybe it freed her from Rod Mantooth for good.
“Why are you looking at me so funny?”
“Sorry,” Hannibal said, smiling. “I just didn’t expect you to look so good.”
Anita flushed crimson at his remark. “You’re so full of stuff. But, listen, Mother Washington said something about you having an idea on how to get Daddy’s formula back. Did you actually, I mean, have you seen Rod?”
“Yes, we’ve met now,” Hannibal said, avoiding her eyes as he walked toward the computer desk. “And I know he hasn’t sold your father’s formula yet, but he will soon, unless I can trick him into showing me where he stashed it. What he has is on a gold CD-Rom.”
“Oh, one of these,” Anita said. She slid a storage case forward on a shelf and blew dust from its top before opening it. The case held two rows of CDs. Light glinted off them, stabbing into Hannibal’s eyes, sparking the pain again. He forced himself to look at the labels.
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