Cooler Than Blood

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by Robert Lane


  Kathleen asked, “No leads today?”

  “We met a man we think has Jenny,” I replied. “We negotiated an agreement. We help him find the money, and he—if he has her—turns her over to us.”

  “He’s holding her hostage?”

  “Yes. That’s what—”

  “Such a cowardly act,” Kathleen shuttered. “What kind of man would that be—a man who holds another man’s daughter as a hostage?”

  Damn fine question. “Some small-time crook in way over his head.”

  Garrett, who sat on the other side of Kathleen, looked away.

  She said, “This hardly seems like something that—”

  “Local scum,” Garrett said, keeping his eyes straight ahead at the red channel marker. On one side of the marker, the water ran thirty feet deep; on the other, the grassy sandbar was visible during low tides. I’ve witnessed a flotilla of boats get towed off the grass or wait for an incoming tide to rescue them. Slightly miscalculating one’s position, or ignoring the pulsating light due to ignorance or vanity, creates a vastly different outcome and experience

  “Jake?” Kathleen said again.

  “Yeah?”

  “Wherever you are, it’s not here. I’m going to bed. Five-star dinner, Morgan. I’d never have the patience for your chowder recipe.”

  “My treat,” he told her.

  She rose and trailed her hand over the back of my shoulder as she slipped into my house.

  “Cigar?” Morgan asked.

  “Certainly,” I replied. He cut a pair and passed me one. I wondered whether the smell would retrieve Kathleen. She was a sucker for a great smoke. Garrett didn’t partake. Of tobacco or grapes. Or Of Mice and Men. I’d never seen him read a book. He read at least three newspapers a day—paper or on his tablet—but not a book.

  “Small-time crook?” he asked as he waved smoke away.

  “Local scum?” I retorted. I tapped my cigar on the edge of the Copacabana ashtray.

  “You didn’t want her to know.”

  “No need for her to worry. It’s doubtful there’s any connection.”

  “And if there is?” Garrett asked. “Do we want to be the last to find out?”

  “I left a message with Binelli,” I told him, deciding not to address his question. “Let’s see what she comes up with. The feds must have something on Dangelo.”

  “Since when do we sit and wait for a phone call? It’s a stretch to believe we cross paths with the Outfit—or its brethren—two, possibly three times, depending on Mendis, and they never finger us for burying four of their own on a deserted beach.” He lowered his voice. “Even though we know Kathleen was never in possession of any damaging information about their operation, they don’t know that.”

  That was pretty winded for Garrett. We had no reason to believe that Dangelo, Mendis, and the associates of Kathleen’s deceased husband were intertwined. His assessment, however, was spot-on. You’re pretty stupid if you think you can swim with the sharks without becoming their dinner.

  “It’s a long shot that they’ve tied us to their missing hit men or”—I paused and took another draw and let the smoke float out of my mouth—“that they have any plausible reason to believe Lauren Cunningham was resurrected as Kathleen Rowe.” I flicked more charred tobacco leaves into the ashtray. “The question is whether we work our way up at his request or drop down in front of them. Make everyone else a day late, make them play catch-up with us.”

  “Whatever is best for Jenny and Kathleen,” Morgan said.

  I nodded. “If we don’t run this, they’ll run us. You saw the picture on Dangelo’s desk?”

  “Even better,” Garrett said.

  “How’s that?”

  “Got a picture of her on my phone.”

  “I didn’t see that.” I’d wondered why he’d had his hand in his pocket at Dangelo’s office. He never does that. Too vulnerable of a position.

  “That was the idea.”

  Garrett and I discussed our plan.

  Morgan interjected, “If you threaten someone, don’t you have to be prepared to fulfill the deed?”

  “No.” I said. “All parties understand. It’s like pointing nukes at each other. It doesn’t do any good if both sides launch.” I answered before Garrett gave his response, which would have been vastly different than mine. Not that, in the end, we necessarily disagreed. But I still chanted mental vespers to myself that I was someone other than who I truly was.

  “That’s just on paper,” Morgan said. “That’s the rhetoric of men who sit around wooden tables and wear blue suits and talk about football games while sending young men into tropical jungles and sandlots in the name of democracy. Intellectuals who’ve never been at the tip of the spear. They’re arrogant men, the Achilles’ heel of the species.”

  We were all a little winded. That was a political dissertation from Morgan. He had as little interest in politics as anyone I knew. He had as much interest in other people as anyone I knew. A boat came in from the Gulf, its outboards ripping the night.

  “Point well made,” I said. In fact, I had brought too much heat when I felt Kathleen was threatened and in all likelihood had created much of our own problems. I tend not to dwell on such issues; denying failures makes me a happy man. “But”—I snuffed out my cigar—“you’re better off playing your own game, even poorly, than engaging in someone else’s.”

  We said our good nights, and they went out the back door and around the fence to Morgan’s house. I crawled into bed with Kathleen, but I wasn’t even in the same galaxy as sleep. I got up and returned to the screen porch, but that didn’t work either. I dropped some ice cubes into a tumbler and floated them with Maker’s Mark. I went to the end of my dock and sat with my legs over the water. A dolphin blew off to my left; I wondered if it was Nevis. If Binelli didn’t call me early, I’d ring her during her morning coffee. I needed more information on Dangelo. Hadley III joined me, and we stared at the blinking red light. I thought of Garrett taking a picture of Dangelo’s daughter with his phone.

  I wondered whether Dangelo had a picture of Kathleen on his phone.

  CHAPTER 28

  I awoke in a panic when I realized the first hint of light had cracked the darkness and I was still in bed. Few things in the world disturb me more than being in bed when light comes around again. Starving children do—because I feel they should. I left Kathleen and headed to the pink hotel, which was less than a mile from my home.

  I entered the pool before sunrise and swam for forty minutes. I followed that with a three-mile barefoot sprint on the beach. While running, I came across a tidal pool and attempted to clear it, like we do in our dreams when we take great leaps and almost fly. But like my attempt to cover the length of the pool to retrieve the girl’s bone, I came up short and landed in two feet of water, which resulted in a slight twist in my left foot. I figured it would nag me for days. I rinsed off under the outdoor faucet on the boardwalk by the edge of the sand. At the far end of the pool, a thick man dressed in Johnny Cash black sat in a wheelchair that struggled to contain him. He had a cigar in one hand and his other hand pressed a cell phone to his ear.

  I shaved in the locker room—the hotel has facilities that allow members to use it as a club—and fixed a cup of Columbian dark. I snatched a banana and a couple of newspapers and went to the second-floor balcony. I sat in a white rocking chair that overlooked the flowered tropical courtyard, the pool, and the Gulf of Mexico. The sky hung like a blue baby blanket draped over an impressionist painting. I placed the newspapers on the table to my left and tasted the first drops of coffee. I was in my office. We pick our places.

  My phone rang. Binelli.

  “What do you got?” I answered.

  “Common courtesy, for one thing. That’s more than you can muster, cowboy.”

  I took a bite from my banana. “What do you got, please?”

  “Joseph Dangelo,” she said. “From Chicago. The Mexicans are moving into the Windy City, so the Outfit is
retiring south. He’s been in Tampa for a little less than a year and is of mild interest to us. Tampa Bay, to fill you in, was the playground of the Santo Trafficante family, the Tampa Mafia. Typical bootleggers—they whacked a few of their own while managing to stay an indictment ahead of the feds. These guys, though, caught a slice of history when the CIA recruited them to hit Castro, and then later Santo Junior testified before a congressional committee on the assassination of JFK. You know this, don’t you?”

  I did. “Tell me about now.”

  “Long gone. The old New York families the Trafficantes were loosely associated with have bigger markets and bigger problems, and so do we. The trouble in the Sunshine State comes from points south. That’s where we focus our resources.”

  “If I was smuggling drugs, I’d bring them in a U-Haul from the north.”

  “Jeepers, am I ever glad I called you today.”

  “You guys should have dialed me up years ago.”

  “We suspect that Dangelo runs some narcotics and attempts to get people like the Colemans to supply him product without upsetting larger organizations. He also oversees several strip joints, and we think their primary purpose is to launder the cash from the drugs. His businesses include loan-sharking, prostitution, and protection services.”

  “Run that last one by me again.”

  “Protection services. Racketeering. You pay his organization a monthly fee, and they make sure you’re safe. If—”

  “I know what it is.”

  “Then why ask?”

  “People still fall for it?” Below, in the courtyard, a man sang “Happy Birthday” while he simultaneously held his phone over his head and took a panoramic view of the resort. Someone was getting a video birthday card.

  “No choice. They’ll break your front glass or mug you on the way to the night deposit. It’s a clean business compared to drugs. They still tend to shy away from the hard-core narcotics.”

  “Little old-school, isn’t it?” I picked up the local paper and noted the tide schedule as well as sunrise, sunset, and the moon’s phase.

  “The classics never go out of style.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Dangelo’s associates have ownership in three casinos in Vegas. Nothing whole, but they don’t exactly put out an annual report.”

  “He thinks someone ripped him off a hundred forty-two grand. Half the two eighty-four that’s missing.”

  “That would prick the hairs on his head.”

  I described Captain Tony, but Binelli had nothing on him. I bent my head down. A nasty spider the size of a Hummer darted out from under my rocker. I took my right foot and squished the arachnid. I wondered why I’d killed it when I’d merely flicked off the spider that was on my left hand when Garrett and I lay in the grass at the Coleman property.

  “How can I get to him?” I asked.

  She paused then continued. “Usual means, I assume. But that’s your area. You think he has the girl?” I didn’t know whether the pause was the result of our conversation or something that distracted her on the other end.

  “Jenny?”

  “Right. You think Dangelo has her?”

  “Yes, unless he’s stringing me along. Leading me to believe he does so I clean up his kitchen for him and find the missing dough. Would he risk kidnapping for that kind of cash?”

  “Are you awake?”

  “Withdrawn,” I told her.

  “Besides, it’s not just the cash.”

  “Tell me.”

  “We think he was sent south to see what he can do, if he can handle his own operation and show some growth. He loses cash, he loses face. His career is done.”

  “Do those careers typically wind up on the wrong side of the grass?”

  “Unlikely. The days of Eliot Ness are long gone.”

  “However…” I said, but let it go.

  “The classics never go out of style,” she said for the second time.

  “What can you tell me about Dangelo’s family life?”

  Binelli didn’t respond. I finished my banana and tossed it toward a seashell waste can. Below, Johnny Cash motorized across the courtyard, phone still pressed to his ear. He’d lost his cigar.

  “Vassar, you still with me?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Just a question.”

  “Don’t screw with me.”

  “Tell me what you know.”

  “Don’t boss me either,” she said.

  I blew out my breath. If I can’t screw or boss around, I’m out of things to do. Her tone reminded me of Susan admonishing me while we sat at the end of her dock.

  She was silent, so I prodded, “I’m the good guy, remember?”

  “That’s right. But you don’t play by rules.”

  “Nor do you, sweet pea.” It came out fast and with intended sharpness.

  “That was one time and—”

  “We got the job done.” I stood up and paced. “We worked well together. We did the right thing. That’s what we’re doing know.” I decided not to back down or soften my tone with her. “I know Dangelo’s got a daughter. Tell me about her.”

  For a moment, the phone was a silent instrument of hope and desire, pressed hard into my ear. “I’m not sure about any of this,” she said.

  “About what?”

  “Don’t fu—”

  “I’m not. Just tell me.” I tried to soften my tone.

  “I don’t know if I like where you’re going…your course. Helping you—”

  “Let’s save a girl’s live. Help me do that.”

  I gave that line less than a fifty percent chance and was upset with myself for having cut her off.

  “You didn’t get it from me.” She was talking before I had a chance to reply.

  “One more thing,” I said when she had finished.

  “Shoot.”

  “He in the same boat as Mendis?”

  “Don’t think so.”

  “One, one more.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  I asked her to run the plates on the truck Garrett and I had ridden to Ybor City in.

  Binelli said, “Your turn.”

  “At your service.”

  “Would you have?”

  “What?”

  “The wrist.”

  “I don’t know.”

  She disconnected.

  I picked my banana off the gray concrete balcony floor and dropped it into the can. I can never make that shot.

  Garrett was on my back porch reading a newspaper when I returned. His iPad rested on the table. Kathleen was gone. She had informed me what her meeting was about—I’m thinking two, maybe three times—but of all my senses, listening is the one that shuts down on its own. I blame it on an explosion in Afghanistan that my ears, particularly my left one, never recovered from. Pulsating tinnitus. That’s mixing the literal and the figurative, like no man’s land, but they often go well together.

  “Binelli called,” I announced, and plopped down beside him. He had the overhead fan on high, and it whipped the sticky air into a frenzy. On the water, a barge carried iron beams for the new bridge. A Jet Ski skimmed around it like a gnat circling a wounded elephant.

  “And?” Garrett asked.

  “Theresa Ann Howell. Lives in Austin.”

  “What happened to ‘Dangelo?’ Not like the name?”

  “Married, divorced, and kept the married name.”

  “Kids?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “We can trade her for Jenny and—”

  “Hold her over Dangelo’s head if he makes us for the beach scene.”

  “What else?” Garrett put the paper down and guzzled half a bottle of water.

  I recapped my conversation with Binelli then asked, “You run this morning?” “I did. Also performed a number on that pink, smiling face.” He finished the water and opened another. “You need a new one.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Split it with my right foot.”
<
br />   For more than a year, I’d tried to destroy my punching bag, but all it did was smile at me. And now Mr. Greek God informed me that he’d split it? “No doubt,” I said, “the canvas became weak due to my constant punishment.” A great blue heron took flight and let out its ice-age cry when a snowy egret invaded its territory.

  “Austin?”

  “That’s what the lady said.”

  “We’ve got to move on this.” He flipped open his iPad and punched some keys. “A flight leaves in three hours. We can—”

  “A round trip blows a day, at minimum. We know—”

  “Holzman.”

  “He’s in Austin?” I asked.

  “Dallas. Can be there far quicker than us.”

  “That man is junk. He’s an open-and-closed case on crimes against humanity.”

  Garrett shrugged. “Perfect qualification.”

  “Didn’t you tell me he was nearly killed his first day back by a repeat-offender drunk in a pickup, but his girlfriend wasn’t as lucky?”

  “I did.”

  “That’s not the whole story.”

  “Driver of the truck died six months later. A slow death.”

  “How do you know he’s in Southfork?”

  “We talk. I’ll give him a call and text him the information.”

  “Tell him, ‘Do not touch.’” An osprey flew by with a fish in its talons. The tail was still flapping, as if the fish were swimming in the air. I wondered whether Patricia Wilkinson ever lost sleep worrying whether she’d ever see her dog, Happy, being flown away. “I don’t know how long she’ll work with us.”

  “Who?”

  “Binelli. She’s nervous. On the edge. Could shut me out at any moment. It would be good to cultivate a reliable source in Hoover.”

  “Pass her a little cash,” Garrett suggested. “She can work for more than one agency.”

  “I don’t think cash enters the equation.”

  “Give it a try. It’s like aspirin; it cures nearly everything.”

  He stood and walked out the screen door. I assumed he was heading to the outdoor shower. I left Binelli a voice mail. Every time I called her, I wondered whether she would even return the call. I could be detrimental to her career or introduce her to a new one. During the short time I’d spent with her while I recovered the stolen Cold War letter and shut down Raydel Escobar, I sensed within her a taste for adventure. She had volunteered to work undercover as Escobar’s mistress. It was a job that had demanded certain extracurricular activities that demonstrated not only a willingness to practice backseat morality but also the desire to venture outside the tedious boredom of everyday life in exchange for the unknown. She had displayed an intuitive understanding of clandestine operations, which could make her a useful asset. She called back a minute later.

 

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