Dutch Uncle hcc-12

by Peter Pavia

  “Then you better start thinking about somebody who might have, you little cocksucker, and the next time I talk to you, which is gonna be real fucking soon, you better think about giving me that name.”

  Martinson tugged on the gold rope with the Mercedes logo, and Canter’s head came forward. He pulled it again, harder, but it stayed around his neck. Tightening the slack, the third time he used both hands, and snapping the clasp, he pitched the necklace into the gutter.

  The Switching Station was an overgrown dive with delusions of glamour, and though it might’ve been plush once, that was a long time ago. Track lights illuminated the dregs of a shag carpet, and three high-backed booths lined one wall. A hanging lamp threw a dim puddle of light on a pool table. Somebody had taped an OUT OF ORDER sign on an unplugged pinball machine.

  The bartender at the Calabash was right. The Switching Station had the dead-eyed makings of a tough, freaky crowd. Walking in, Lili counted six patrons and that number was instantly thinned by two. A pair of rugged Cubanos slipped out the second they made her for a cop.

  Somebody’s grandmother was bitching about her landlord in a drunken, foul-mouthed Spanish, but Lili didn’t recognize the accent as Cuban. Salvadoran, Costa Rican. Something. A sideburned Romeo listened to her woes, nodding compulsively.

  The bartender was dressed as a woman, but it wouldn’t be right to say he was in drag. He was making no effort to fool anybody. He had beefed-up arms, broad shoulders, and a thick, muscular neck. Sporting a pigtailed wig, he also had a dense mustache in addition to a solid five day-growth of beard. He was shirtless under a gingham jumper, a tragic Dorothy taken a twisted trail west of the Yellow Brick Road.

  Lili badged him and showed him JP Beaumond’s mug shots.

  “Yeah, I know him. Pulled a knife in here once.” He had a rumbling voice, not a queenie lilt. Lili had never seen it done quite like this before. The wig, the clothes, the beard. The guy must’ve been on the cutting edge of some new gay style.

  “Is he a regular here?”

  “He’s been in a few times. I wouldn’t say regular. What’d he do now?”

  A pockmarked poppo called him away. There was one other customer at the bar, a white male, maybe twenty-five. He was wearing a Ricardo Montalban suit, and had his heels hooked over the rung of his bar stool. He tapped his feet in the air, eyes darting, waiting for the action to start.

  When the bartender came back, Lili said, “Actually, I’m looking for his buddy. Young kid, tall, probably Cuban. You ever see him come in here with anybody matching that description?”

  “You gotta mean Alex. This other guy, the short one, he’s fairly new to the scene. Alex’s been around for years.”

  “So you know him?”

  “Like I said, he’s been around for years. Miami native, if I’m not mistaken. Last name Hernandez, Fernandez, something real common. Did you try the Ron-Da-Voo?”

  “Not yet. Have you seen him lately?”

  “Not since the night the short guy pulled the knife. They came in together. Alex’s fucked up, like everybody else who hangs out here, but he wouldn’t hurt a fly. What kind of trouble is he in?”

  “I just wanna talk to him.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” the bartender said. “He really is a gentle, sweet-hearted kid. But that other one is a chemical spill. Completely toxic. He’ll never get in here again, I can tell you that. Just do me a favor,” he said, tossing a pigtail over his shoulder. “Don’t give me up, okay? It’d be bad for business.”

  “Not a problem,” Lili said. “I appreciate your help.”

  “And I appreciate yours.”

  This was years before the hype washed over this town like a tidal wave, when all of South Miami Beach was sick with a poverty and an off-the-graph crime rate no European land baron or transplanted nightclub impresario, no Hollywood schlockenstein wanted to touch:

  The punk’s name was John Colangelo, a Times Square hustler whose bloom was so long off his rose he’d been niggled into running a short con with his boyfriend, Rudy Burkalter. They took out some classified ads and a PO Box, and had suckers mail in checks and money orders made out to their bogus company. It was a rock-bottom bunco scheme, but they weren’t after any prizes for originality. And it wasn’t like they were making millions or even thousands, though they did have a few hundred bucks coming in every week, enough to cover the rent on their flop, enough to keep them in jumbos and T-Bird.

  The fight was most likely over money. Colangelo grabbed the first thing handy, a cast iron frying pan, and whacked Burkalter with it. Then he hit him again. And again. Twenty-six times all together, until Burkalter’s head was a squishy nub on top of his neck. Colangelo emptied their post office box one last time, cashed the checks, and hit the road.

  Who knows what he was thinking? Maybe he just wanted to go where the weather was warm.

  But Miami Beach was not then and not now an ideal location to go on the lam. First of all, it was an island, and east of the city, you were in the Atlantic Ocean. West, you’d run into the Everglades. South, there was one lonesome road in and out of the Keys. And north was the direction Colangelo had run from. He was at the end of the line.

  Before long, somebody made him for John Colangelo, who was wanted for the murder of Rudy Burkalter. That same somebody, his greedy heart set on some imagined reward, phoned the NYPD and informed them that John Colangelo was occupying quarters in an Ocean Drive fleabag, where he was registered as Jerry Collins.

  Homicide detective Pat Judice called Beach police and gave them the rundown on John Colangelo. He also gave them the name of the hotel where Colangelo was holed up, a building that had since been torn down to make way for the inevitable forces of progress, a hotel whose name, at the moment, escaped Arnie Martinson.

  Colangelo was not there when Martinson and Frank Matzalanis arrived to collect the debt he owed New York State, not to mention the memory of Rudy Burkalter. So they waited. They waited six hours. And during that six hours, Colangelo, with an overwhelming longing to return to his salad days, or perhaps just in need of some company or some cash, made a date with a Philadelphia businessman. The businessman’s wife, it turned out, was in another hotel room way up Collins Avenue.

  Martinson was stretched out on the lumpy mattress, and Matzalanis sat on a rickety chair, with the lights off. By then, it was dark. When they heard voices in the hallway, they stood up and positioned themselves on either side of the door. They drew their weapons. The door opened, and as Colangelo reached for the wall switch, Martinson stuck the barrel of his .38 caliber service revolver into John Colangelo’s right ear. The key still clammy between a thumb and a forefinger, Colangelo raised his hands. His trick let out a bark before he broke down in sobs.

  Pat Judice arrived the next day with a partner, and they flew back to New York with John Colangelo. Colangelo confessed. He copped a manslaughter plea and was sentenced to not less than fifteen years. He would be just about eligible for his second shot at parole now.

  Judice was a ginger-haired man with a dozen years in on the hotshot Homicide Division. Arnie was wondering how he was getting along.

  “Pretty good,” Judice said, over the long distance line. “I feel pretty good for a man my age.”

  “I don’t know what kind of time you’ve got,” Martinson said, then used up some of it breaking down the Manfred Pfiser case. How they were getting close to a guy named Harry Healy.

  “A precinct detective up there’s working something on a known associate of Healy’s, a loser by the name of Jimmy De Steffano. They took a fall together way back when, and this precinct guy, he figures they’re never too far out of each other’s sight.”

  Pat Judice said, “What’s the cop’s name?”

  “Cop is named Don Kellog and he works out of the, let’s see, Ninth Precinct. The Ninth.”

  “Right. Don Kellog, Ninth Precinct.”

  “Collared our man not long ago, as it turns out,” Martinson said, “before he made detective.”
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  “Nice,” Judice said.

  “Anyway, I need this Healy soon as I can get him. I’m not squeezing you, but we could really use a hand with this.”

  “I’m not making any promises, Arnie, but I’ll help you out if I can.”

  “That’s all I’m asking,” Martinson said.

  Judice said, “I’ve gotta go rid the streets of crime.”

  “Whatever you can do to make this happen,” Martinson was about to say, but by that time he was talking into a disconnected line. Just then, he remembered the name of the hotel where he arrested John Colangelo. It was called the Sao Paulo.

  The computer hit thirteen times on the name Alejandro Hernandez. Six of them were incarcerated, and of the two out of seven who were still in their twenties and free for the time being, one was five feet, two inches tall, and the other one was black.

  A similar search on the name Alejandro Fernandez spit up eleven names, nine of whom were currently guests of the state, so Lili requested the records of the two on the outside. They were the same height and the same age, but the one who had a criminal record stretching back to his sixteenth birthday had also managed to lose an eye somewhere along the way.

  That left one Fernandez, Alejandro, also known as Alex. Born: 7/3/68. Height: 6’2”. Weight: 140. In this photo, he was a doe-eyed kid with close-cropped hair, taken when he got busted for possession of a controlled substance, a quarter-gram of cocaine. The judge suspended his sentence. Lili got into her car and drove to 15th Street in Hialeah, the address listed on his record.

  The Medical Examiner’s report stated that if Pfiser was shot while he was standing, then he had been killed by a person shorter than himself. This eliminated everybody but Beaumond. Only they couldn’t ascertain whether Pfiser was standing. In that case, why not Healy for Pfiser? Why not Leo Hannah? And why not Fernandez, Martinson had said, and Lili thought sure, why not?

  The house was finished with stucco, like most of the other homes on the block. There was a grapefruit tree in the front yard, and the dug-out circle around the base of its trunk had been filled in with white stones. A line of shrubs banked the front of the place, six squat bushes trimmed to identical height. Two taller ones, shaped to resemble Christmas trees, grew on either end of the row.

  The driveway was paved and sealed with tar, giving it a smooth, blue-black sheen. The front stoop was shallow, six feet wide by four feet deep, but evidently, somebody enjoyed watching the world from this perch: A lawn chair leaned against the stucco.

  The screen door looked in on a sofa covered with a knitted blanket. A painting of a bullfight’s final stages hung behind it.

  Lili pushed the doorbell and got startled by a buzzing twice as loud as it needed to be. The laughtrack of a sitcom was rising and falling somewhere in the house. She was going to hit the buzzer again when Alex Fernandez came into view, tall and lanky, his Soul Train afro intact.

  She said, “Alex Fernandez?” She had her badge in her right hand.

  The kid tilted his head like he was about to say Yeah, pivoted off his left foot, and disappeared. Lili ran toward the driveway side of the house. Another screen door banged shut. She rounded the corner to see the long-legged Fernandez scrambling over a chain link fence, his feet moving as he hit the sod in his neighbor’s back yard. Lili took off after him.

  She hopped the same set of fences, her gun flapping against her hip in its holster. She yelled for him to stop, that she was the police. That was stupid. He knew exactly who she was.

  He continued in a southerly direction, loping through a second set of yards. Lili felt confident on the hard pavement of the street, the asphalt and concrete, where the footing was certain and it was easier to run. Fernandez had veered east on 13th Street, and Lili caught a flash of one sneakered foot before it vanished around a corner. She followed it.

  He cleared another fence and landed in a yard guarded by a snarling German Shepherd. Drool flew from its snapping jowls. Fernandez raced the animal to the back fence and won, the dog leaving all four of its feet in a last lunge the kid beat by some miracle.

  Lili ran alongside the fence. She was closing the gap. Her breathing was deep and steady. If Fernandez wanted to run all day, that’s what she would do. She yelled, Stop, Police a couple more times in a couple more places, and as he hit 11th Street, he showed signs of weakening. His arms pumped crazily. His head lolled.

  He came to another fence. Spooked by his confrontation with the dog, he dashed past the fronts of a few houses. Lili gained ground. “Your time’s up,” she yelled. “Where’re you running to?”

  He headed down an alley. Lili was right behind him.

  Coming to 9th Street, he pulled up short and shot a look back. He took two steps to his right, kicked it into gear, and broke east again, toward Palm Avenue. The light was against him. Two lanes, both directions, heavy traffic.

  He dashed into the intersection, clearing the northbound vehicles. Lili got hung up on the curb. She yelled one last time for Alex Fernandez to stop. Looking over his shoulder, he sprinted off the safety island and directly into the path of a late-model Buick. They collided with a crunch of steel and bone. Fernandez got knocked ten feet into the air, and flipped a reverse somersault, his ankles bent back over his head, forming an inverted U. She was close enough to see the shock on his face. Thinking about it later, Lili would’ve sworn they made eye contact while he was still in the air.

  He hit the street with a smack. The driver of the truck that ran over his legs and snagged him and dragged him had less than a second to hit the brakes, which he did, with an air-piercing screech. It sounded like a lullaby next to the scream he let go of when he jumped out of his truck and saw what he had done.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Sweet.

  Oh yeah, this was sweet.

  Just as sweet as sweet could be, live from Hialeah, Chopper Lens pointing straight down on the corner where Alex Fernandez had been hit by two cars and killed. Cut to a ground shot, and a picture of Alex’s mother, her wide mouth wailing one unbroken, dry-eyed sob. The frame went shaky after a few seconds, one of Fernandez’s uncles, Leo thought, taking a swing at the cameraman.

  Leo felt sorry for Alex. He felt sorry for Alex’s mom, for his sister, and for the uncle. On the other hand, the hand that counted, he didn’t have to worry any more about Alex blabbing to the cops. He’d done the right thing, waiting him out. Fernandez was dead and Leo didn’t have a thing, not one thing, to do with it.

  But here was the true genius: Fernandez got run over jetting from the same sexy cop who was here busting Leo’s balls just a day or two ago, Detective Lili Acevedo. Well, according to the television, Detective Lili Acevedo was in deep shit. The Fernandez family had hired a lawyer, and he was suing the City of Miami Beach for $163 million, due to the reckless and irresponsible behavior of Detective Lili Acevedo. A young man had been cut down in his prime, an act of criminally negligent homicide, if not outright murder.

  There was footage of Acevedo wearing her cheap-ass sunglasses, surrounded by cops and lawyers of her own. The head of her union, his mustached cop’s face hogging the screen, was convinced a subsequent inquiry would reveal Detective Acevedo acted in full compliance with Department guidelines regarding the pursuit of a suspect. She had not fired a single shot. At no time did she draw her weapon. He was one hundred percent confident she would be cleared of any wrongdoing.

  In the old days, the days before sexy Cuban detectives, before Beaumond and Fernandez or even Manfred, when he had fresh leases on a six-room house and a fine British automobile, Leo might’ve taken a margarita into the back yard and gotten into the Jacuzzi to feel the warm sun on his face, dreaming his dreams of endless possibility. What happened? It wasn’t that long ago.

  He didn’t feel so much possibility now. For one thing, somehow or other he had managed to spend nineteen thousand dollars in three months. All he was doing was spending money, so he couldn’t claim it as a total shock, but where could almost twenty grand have gone? Th
is was after the house and the Jag, twenty thousand of his grandfather’s hard-earned dollars roaring up and down the Beach.

  And then he thought of something else: Vicki, who must have been the one who’d ratted him out.

  There was a moment back there, when Leo was on his roll, that he was looking for Vicki, and he was going to take care of her, too. He was sitting at that Ocean Drive café. His eyes mine-swept the crowd for her, because he knew if he just sat there long enough, Vicki would pass by. But then he forgot her. Didn’t give her another thought after that evil afternoon until a minute ago, when it was too late to do anything about her. This was why you had to watch. The one kink out there against you, if you didn’t eliminate it, was the one that would take you down.

  His path was so hard and bright, and he let Whitney get in his way. Whitney, a pain in the ass who caught his eye and cost him money and made him forget Vicki, who by all rights should be alligator shit right now. Okay, the alligator part didn’t work out, but still.

  Another thing pissed him off. What had the cops done with Harry Healy besides crash Leo’s door one sunshiny morning and throw the guy back in his face? Leo figured he’d found the perfect patsy once he worked out that Vicki knew Harry’s girlfriend. And though the girlfriend told Vicki she was done with Harry forever, she knew pretty much to the second when he was getting out. When it turned out Manfred knew Harry, too, come on, who could blame Leo for setting this up?

  But then instead of calling when Harry got back to the hotel, Vicki got scared and ran, leaving it to Leo, and that meant to Beaumond and Fernandez, to take care of business.

  That’s where it had gone wrong. Leo’d just meant for Healy to absorb the heat from the robbery. He fully expected to see Manfred, if not the next day, then the day after. He didn’t think that pig-ignorant, white trash piece of shit Beaumond was going to shoot him.

  Leo was so glad Beaumond was dead. He was so happy he’d killed him. But where did that leave Leo now?

  More bad news: Between Whitney and Jo Ann, Leo was down to an eightball. Not counting the quarter ounce he had stashed in the freezer, tucked between two slices of a loaf of Wonder Bread, where nobody would ever think to look for it.