“Maybe he didn’t keep records,” said Ron.
“No, he doesn’t seem like the record-keeping type. But there’s a difference between keeping records and there being records.” I leaned in to the screen and glanced at Ron. “May I?”
Ron gave me control of the computer, and I moved the cursor to the little trash can and clicked on it. The screen filled with emails, those sent and received that Stubbs didn’t wish to keep. He had trashed them, only he hadn’t deleted them. Lizzy had shown me the same thing once when I thought I had gotten rid of some emails. She’d said a forensic IT team could get at the data even after it was deleted, but simply moving it to the trash just left it in the trash. Just like in my kitchen, the trash can didn’t empty itself.
I read through some of the email headings until I found one titled Re: audio edit. I clicked on it. The email was from someone called Dexter at a free email account. Dexter had apparently done the edits requested by Stubbs and had attached the finished file. I clicked on the attachment, and it opened in a media player. I recognized the scratchy background noise straight away. It was the recording of Julio making the fix with Stubbs. I didn’t need to hear it all again, so as soon as I heard Julio’s voice I clicked it closed and went back to the emails. I found all the other emails to and from Dexter. Some of them related to other cases. One email instructed Stubbs on how to download the audio files from his recording device, which was followed by an exchange of emails that detailed Stubbs attempting to do this without success. The final email was from an exasperated Dexter, telling Stubbs to drop the device off at the recording studio and to trash all their email correspondence.
I waited while Ron finished reading the email, then we looked at each other and smiled. But our smiles dropped when we heard the sound of keys jangling at the front door. I clicked the email application closed as Ron hit the button to turn off the monitor. For a moment the room glowed and the screen stayed determinedly bright, and the key slid into the lock and turned. The little bell rang, and we heard a giggle that definitely hadn’t come from Stubbs. Then the monitor died. Ron and I dropped below the desk, blinded by the sudden darkness. We were blinded again by the burst of fluorescent light as the switch was flicked on.
“Here we are, my darling,” said Stubbs.
I blinked hard and waited for Stubbs to wander into the room and find us crouched behind his desk. I suddenly wished I’d worn a ski mask like a proper cat burglar.
“I’m not your darling, Max. And this is way too bright. Don’t you have any candles?” said a woman.
“Candles?” said Max. “What for?”
“For crying out loud, Max. If not for ambience, how about hurricanes?”
“I wouldn’t stay in here during a hurricane, darling.”
“Just turn the lights off, and let’s get this done.”
Once more the room plunged into darkness, blinding us again. My pupils were working so hard I felt faint, but at least now everyone had night blindness. The door slammed itself closed. I heard Stubbs and the woman fumble their way toward us. Someone, Stubbs by the weight of it, put a hand on the desk, and it moved slightly.
“Where?” said the woman.
“Here,” said Stubbs. “Right here.”
We heard the pfft sound of bodies collapsing on the sofa.
“Ow, watch it,” said the woman.
“Sorry, darling,” said Stubbs. “Now why don’t you come here?”
“No, Max. You lay back. I’ve got this.”
We heard rustling in the darkness, and I felt the growing desire to retch. Then the unmistakable sound of a zipper being pulled.
“Yeah, baby. You’re a bad girl.”
“Shut up, Max. Just lie back and think of England, or whatever.”
I heard Max groan softly and decided that was our cue to exit stage left. I tapped Ron and moved slowly away, staying in a crouch to keep our silhouette from appearing in the front windows. I edged along the wall to the door, then put my hand back until I felt Ron’s head bump into it. Then I gently opened the door a crack and got my fingers around the frame. There was going to be no quiet escape. The bell hanging above the door would ensure that. I was just banking on it taking Stubbs a good while to get up and going from his current position. I pulled the door open and the light outside flooded in; the bell rang out, sounding like Big Ben now, and I dashed out the door, still in a crouch. As I hit the pavement I stood and sprinted, glancing behind to ensure Ron was there.
I clicked the fob and thanked Lizzy’s Lord for small mercies like electronic locks, then I dashed around the car and into the driver’s seat. Ron landed in his seat as I turned the key, and both our doors flew open as I hit the gas and reversed away from the liquor store I’d parked in front of, out onto Okeechobee Boulevard. They slammed closed as I accelerated away, under the turnpike. Ron turned and looked over his shoulder.
“Nothing,” he said. “He’s not out.”
“That was close,” I said, slowing a little as the surge of adrenaline eased.
Ron turned back and sat down. “That was worse than seeing it happen. My mind filled in all the blanks.” He shuddered.
“Tell me about it. I’m not going to sleep for a month.”
“At least we got something,” he said.
“Yeah. Now we just have to find a recording engineer who moonlights.”
Chapter Thirty
THEY SAY IN the last two minutes of a football match, the coach can do nothing but watch. He can pull all the fancy timeouts he wants, but ultimately he has to trust in his players, in their training and their knowledge and their skills. I didn’t have many ideas on how to find our mysterious recording engineer, so the next morning I threw the task at Lizzy, and within twenty minutes I had a name, a phone number and an address.
“You’re sure it’s the guy?”
Lizzy shot me a look that would frighten the socks off Beelzebub himself. “No, I don’t know it’s the guy. I know it’s a guy called Dexter who works as a recording engineer in Miami. That’s all I can tell you, because that’s all you told me.”
“Well, good work,” I said.
“Thank you,” she said, storming back to her desk.
We made a stop on the way, a quick detour to the auto repair shop where the Escape was undergoing triage. The guy told me the frame might have a hairline fracture, and they would need to X-ray it to be sure, and then he added that the engine block might be cracked. It sounded like brain damage to me, so I told him to euthanize. I was as sure that the insurance would pay for a new car as I was that my premiums were going to end up in the Guinness Book of Records. We left and headed down I-95, the traffic building in Lauderdale until it became slow near the airport, and we crept into Miami. The studio we wanted was in a nondescript office building near the water, conveniently just across from Star Island, where plenty of recording artists had winter homes. The lobby was plastered with gold and platinum records in frames and posters for albums that had been recorded there. I didn’t recognize half of them. There was plenty of hip-hop looking stuff, plus the Bee Gees and the Miami Sound Machine. The receptionist was bottle blond, wore shocking pink lipstick and looked about twelve years old, but was kind enough to call Dexter when I said I was from Max Stubbs Management and I had met Dexter at an industry party.
Dexter looked like a stuntman, or a bouncer at a nightclub. He was about six three, heavy without having gone completely to flab, and he wore a trendy, close-cropped beard. His shirt looked like the Tommy Bahama palm print I was wearing, but turned out to be microphones and skulls, whatever that was supposed to mean. He frowned as I put my hand out.
“Come inside,” he said, without shaking hands.
We followed him along a hallway lined with more records and photos of Ricky Martin and Enrique Iglesias and a bunch of other nameless faces into a recording studio. Once the door closed it was so quiet it was like the outside world ceased to exist.
“You guys work for Max?” said Dexter.
&nb
sp; “More or less,” I said.
“I told him to never come here. It’s not cool, man.”
“I know, I know,” I said. “You don’t want your moonlighting work to interfere with your professional life.”
“You better believe it, and you better leave now.”
“Before we do, I just wanted to ask about the edits you did for him. The meeting with a guy called Julio.”
Dexter frowned. “You want to know what?”
“What happened to the original files?”
Dexter looked at me in my Tommy B and chinos, then at Ron in his Nautica shirt and Helly Hansen trousers, and his frown grew. “You guys don’t work for Stubbs.”
“What makes you say that?” I said.
“You’re too well dressed, for starters.”
I nodded. The guy knew classy threads when he saw them.
“You got us,” I said. “We don’t work for Stubbs. We work for the guy he’s trying to frame.”
“Get out,” said Dexter, pointing at the door of the studio.
“Before you get all feisty—” I said.
“Get. Out!” His throat started to pulse and his face grew red.
I put my palms up, but Ron stepped forward.
“What does he have on you?” said Ron.
“What? Nothing. Now please leave.”
Ron shook his head. “Stubbs is not a cool cat,” he said, sounding like a Doobie Brother. “He’s framing a good guy for something he didn’t do, and you’re helping. We’re going to prove that. Now it’s up to you to decide if you go down with Stubbs or if we help you, too.”
Dexter looked at us both again but didn’t relax. “How can you help me?”
“He’s got something on you, hasn’t he? Just like he has on our friend,” said Ron.
Dexter took a deep breath. He was on the edge, between a rock and a whole world of hurt, to mix a metaphor. He was trying to decide if he could trust us, if we were the lesser of two evils. I was going to prod him along, but sometimes the best thing to do to gain someone’s trust is to simply keep your trap shut. Dexter got there himself. He stepped around some microphone stands, over to a sofa in the corner of the studio, and flopped down.
“He has pictures of me,” said Dexter.
“Okay,” I said.
“Pictures of me with a woman,” he said.
“All right, well that’s not the end of the world.”
He looked at me. His frown had been replaced by a look of . . . was it fear? No, it was the look of a small boy, who had done something that was going to disappoint Mom in a very big way.
“I don’t think my wife would agree,” he said.
“Oh,” I said.
“It was foolish. Just the one time. Well, just those few times. She was an artist, and . . . Well . . . you know. But it was a year ago, and I haven’t done anything like that since and I never will again.”
I wasn’t a priest and I wasn’t a psychologist, but with this dude on the sofa, I kind of got a feeling for the job. “Dexter. Can I call you Dexter?” I said. “I get it. You made a mistake, and this guy is blackmailing you. I tell you what. You help us out, we’ll find those pictures for you. Your wife never has to know.”
Dexter took a big gulp and a deep breath. “How will you get them?” he asked. “I don’t know where they are.”
“Don’t worry about that. We found you, didn’t we? We know what we’re doing. We can find your pictures. And take Stubbs down in the process.”
A small smile edged its way onto Dexter’s mouth. He nodded. “Okay, one minute.”
He stood and left the studio, and for a moment I thought he might have done a runner, but he returned in a few minutes and handed me a CD.
“I burned this,” he said. “It has all the original files from Stubbs’s recording device.”
“How did you do it?” I said.
“Easy. He got audio of the guy talking, saying things in a completely different context. Like he’d ask the guy ‘Can you throw that ball at a hundred miles an hour?’ and the guy would answer ‘Of course I can do that,’ then I splice a recording of Stubbs saying something like ‘Can you fix this game?’ and edit it in with the guy’s other answer, and voila, a whole different conversation.”
“It sounds authentic,” I said.
“Of course. I’m good at what I do. You think half the singers who come in here actually sound that good? Hell, no. A few even use my dubs in their live shows.”
“But wouldn’t someone be able to tell?” said Ron. “Aren’t there ways?”
“Of course, if you were an expert and analyzed the wave patterns. I told Stubbs that. I said it would never pass a challenge in court. But he said it didn’t matter.”
“Of course not. He wasn’t planning on going anywhere near a courtroom,” I said.
“Which reminds me,” said Dexter. “This won’t be going near a court. You do that, I’ll deny everything, and I know how to get rid of all the evidence so even a forensic analyst won’t find it.”
“No, Dexter. We’re not going anywhere near a court, either.”
Dexter walked us out, and I said we wouldn’t be in touch and he said that was good. We got back into the car and I tossed the CD to Ron.
“Okay,” I said, starting the car. “So we know Stubbs was framing Julio. The question remains, who put him up to it?”
“Whoever was sending the death threats,” said Ron.
“That’s my guess,” I said.
“Which sort of puts us back at square one.”
“Not exactly,” I said. “Now we have a link between Julio and whoever is threatening the pelotari. Stubbs.”
Ron nodded. “And some ammunition to use against him,” he said, holding up the disk.
“Exactly.”
I pulled out and headed back toward the freeway.
“But that leaves one thing. How do we get the photos back from Stubbs? The ones of Dexter.”
“We don’t,” I said.
“Huh, not like you to leave a guy hanging like that,” said Ron.
“You see the receptionist at that studio?”
“Pretty girl. Your point?”
“Bright pink lipstick. The same color lipstick that was on Dexter’s collar. Either he hasn’t done laundry in a year or he’s a lying, cheating sack of manure.”
Chapter Thirty-One
WE GOT BACK to West Palm for a late lunch and decided to hit up Longboard’s. Mick was boiling peel and eats that Muriel said had come from a friend’s boat in the gulf. Gulf shrimp are pink to begin with and sweet, and we nodded an emphatic yes at the idea. Despite the cloud cover and cool breeze, Muriel was still in her tank top, little goosebumps forming on her arms. Somewhere in the inside bar came the patter of golf claps from the television.
“So you think we should just spring it on him?” said Ron, taking a long pull on his beer.
I didn’t touch mine. I was deep in thought, but not about Max Stubbs. Ron’s comment pulled me back.
“Hmm? Oh, Stubbs. I don’t know. I sure would like to see the look on his face when we did spring it on him.”
“But then he’d know it was us running out the door of his office.”
“Pretty sure he’s going to figure that out sooner or later, anyway,” I said. “My bigger concern is what he does when he learns about it. If we don’t know who hired him, he might take it to them, and that makes our job much harder.”
“True enough. But if we don’t use him, then we aren’t any closer, are we?” he said, sipping.
“I’m not saying we don’t use him. It’s like having a killer play in football, one you know is going to bamboozle the opposition. You don’t pull it out in the preseason. You wait until it’s really going to count.”
“Okay, so . . .”
I sipped my beer then held the bottle up. “We know Stubbs was setting up Julio, and that he wasn’t doing that off his own bat. Someone got him to do it. And we know that that someone also threatened Julio—and Perez
for that matter.”
“Agreed. So?”
“So there are two ends to the thread. Stubbs at one end, the threats at the other. The same person is pulling the strings. If we can’t pull one end loose yet, maybe we can pull the other.”
“Are you thinking out loud? ’Cause you’re losing me,” said Ron.
“A trap. We set a trap.”
Ron nodded and thought it through. As he did, a group came in through the courtyard entrance and took up position under a faded umbrella. They were ladies just come from tennis, and once upon a time would have been ripe for the picking for Ron. I glanced at him and saw him watching them sit. He smiled to himself—something that looked sneakily like contentment—then spun back around on his stool and faced the bar.
We ate delicious shrimp with a side of fries and then made our way back to the office. Lizzy was out at the post office, doing I had no idea what, so we went into my office and made calls. I had a plan, and we needed to prepare in order to put it into action. I called Julio to tell him to hang in there, that I had proof he didn’t do anything wrong, then I called Miami marina and left a message. Ron wandered down to the local print shop to get some artwork made up and some flyers printed. The print shop told him it would take an hour to turn the job around, which seemed lightning fast to me but didn’t impress Lizzy at all.
“You should leave that stuff to me,” she said.
“You weren’t here,” I replied.
“You should just leave it to me.”
There was no arguing with that logic. Once Ron returned from the print shop we headed over to the fronton. Roto had gathered all the pelotari, at my request. Their performance tonight was in the evening, so they had come early to help out. We hit the streets, around the fronton mainly, but then down around the airport and up A1A toward downtown West Palm, and we handed out flyers to anyone we saw. We taped them to light poles, posted them in storefront windows, tacked them on notice boards in the grocery. As a team, we plastered the area with paper promoting the fronton and the following week’s mega championship series.
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