by April Smith
Raymond asks, “What about signability?”
“Signability is excellent. The parents are very knowledgeable, they’d love him to be a Dodger. If I can get him quickly it will be a done deal. He comes from a good family, not a lot of money, he wants to go out.”
“Negatives?”
“He might struggle with his lower half in the future. In some ways he’s crude. Never been coached. But he’s a good-looking prospect. It’s just a question of, what we see in him, others will see, too.”
She stops, heart pounding and breathless. Did she throw it all away? Travis’s expression is as unreadable as Raymond’s.
She gets up, red-faced, climbing over knees and feet to the door.
“Hell of a time to hassle you about your parking space,” Randy Elkins whispers kindly.
“Really.”
The room waits with a mix of smugness and disinterest, as if Cassidy were being called to the principal’s office, speculating, along with the bubble-gum fortunes, whether things will turn out well.
Or not.
Waiting in Raymond’s empty office, along with LAPD Detective Mark Simms, is a short amiable man with a brush haircut wearing a double-breasted tan sport coat and tie-dyed tie.
He comes toward her, extending a hand.
“Nate Allen, Detective Division, Vero Beach police department. Remember me?” he asks, altogether perky.
20
“Great view.”
Detective Allen goes to the window that overlooks the field.
“You sneak up here to watch the games?”
“Usually I’m on the road.”
Simms: “Who has time to sit through nine innings?”
“I know what you’re saying.”
Allen seems to have materialized as calm and attentive as he had been that night.
“Dodgertown is just down the street,” he continues, “but do I ever take my kid to a game? How’s the hand, Cassidy?”
“Better.” She waits. “What are you doing here?”
“A homicide occurred in Vero Beach the night you were attacked. I need your help in identifying a suspect.”
Her heart squeezes.
“You might remember we had some activity when you were leaving the station and we had to cut things short. It turns out a college kid was killed during a robbery. He worked as a clerk in a 7-Eleven. Good kid, nice family.”
“Those things make me sick.”
“It happened about three hours after you were assaulted in the parking lot. Two gunmen held up the store using automatic weapons. The incident took place less than a mile from the Coast Grill. The suspects fit your description.”
“You think it might have been the same guys?”
“They wouldn’t have sent Detective Allen all the way to Los Angeles if they didn’t think there was a damn good possibility,” says Simms impatiently, crossing his arms.
By contrast, Detective Allen seems almost apologetic. “We were hoping you’d cooperate in our investigation. We have the tape from the surveillance camera in the 7-Eleven. I was wondering if you would mind having a look.”
“Anything I can do.”
Allen opens a briefcase and takes out a videocassette as they wait in silence.
Finally Simms, with the hollow smile: “Are you okay with this?”
“I said I’m okay.”
Allen says, “It’s grisly. I have to warn you. But maybe you can help us catch the fuckers.”
He isn’t looking at Cassidy when he says this but she knows it is a coded reference to the conversation—no, interrogation—at the Vero Beach police department, a reminder that when she was injured he was there to help—a cryptic bond between them, like strangers who have passed on a street corner moments before an explosion.
Allen inserts the tape and presses the button on Raymond’s VCR and Cassidy’s mind goes desperately to the meeting in progress in the director’s room, wishing she were back there right now; what had been high drama seems placid and comforting as a nursery song.
The image hits the screen. A high angle behind the counter shows a moth’s-eye view of the convenience store. The top of the clerk’s head is visible as he sits on a stool, and a time imprint in the right-hand corner of the frame, 2:35 a.m. The sound quality is better than the visual. Country music playing from a radio is distinct, and motorcycles streaking by outside, but there isn’t much you can tell about the clerk except that he is African-American, skinny knees crossed over each other as he reads a magazine. The doors open with an electronic buzz, and then it is over fast—almost as soon as the two blurry men are in the picture the boy is standing, moving backward palms up, there are shouts in Spanish then suspects open fire with automatic carbines, a two-dimensional pock pock pock pock pock pock. The boy does not fly backward spraying blood, spread-eagled against the yogurt machine—in fact, for a moment does not seem to realize he is hit, then drops like a pile of books.
The men fire at the cash register but it won’t open so they keep on shooting, random, manic, scattering boxes of candy, spinning a card display, piercing the glass door of a cooler so it shatters. Then they are out of there but the camera rolls on unblinkingly, looking at the pitted counter, the upended stool; the clerk, lying on the floor, is not visible but a tiny mewing sound goes on for a very long time, forty-six seconds according to the timer, until a couple bangs through the doors, both fat, white and wearing undershirts, the man with a goatee, the woman smoking, barreling straight for the cigarettes until he jerks her arm with “Oh my Lord sweet Jesus Christ” in a slangy drawl and the woman startles, not entirely in shock, and Detective Allen shuts it off as the man is yanking her backward out of the store.
Cassidy finds she is gripping a tissue. She doesn’t know where the tissue came from, but she is clenching it so tightly her pinkie has gone numb.
Detective Allen rewinds and stops at the first man firing. “We’ve enhanced the image.” He removes a photograph from a file folder.
He slides it toward her.
Cassidy stares at the grainy enlarged face on Raymond’s desk. It is not the face of rage or pleasure, but wild-eyed distraction like someone in the grip of a waking seizure.
“Do you recognize this man?”
Her lips are dry.
“Yes.”
“Is this one of the men who assaulted you in the parking lot of the Coast Grill?”
“I couldn’t positively say. I didn’t see their faces. But I know this man.”
“Did you know him prior to that night?”
“Yes.”
The two cops look at each other.
“Where, Cassidy?”
It is no longer avoidable:
“In the Dominican Republic.”
Simms rubs his face as if incredibly bored. He is wearing the greasy gray ponytail and a windbreaker and brown slacks, convincingly as if he had just stepped off a powerboat loaded with cocaine.
“This was last fall, when you went to the Dominican Republic on an unauthorized trip?”
Where did this come from? What is he getting at?
Edgy, “Raymond Woods knew I was there.”
“What is your connection to the shooter?” asks Simms.
“Shooter?”
“This man.” He pile-drives a thick forefinger against the enhanced photograph. “How do you know him? What’s his name?”
“Monroe.”
“Yeah, okay, whatever he’s calling himself these days.”
“There is no ‘connection,’ ” Cassidy insists, dying to take off the tweed jacket but then they would see the sweat stains in her shirt. “He drove me to see a ballplayer.”
“Cruz?”
“Right.”
Simms looks disgusted.
Detective Allen shakes his head, concerned, a friend.
“You were alone in a car with this character?”
“I had to get to the game.”
“Work is work, I understand—” removing other documents—“but this guy’
s got outstanding warrants in three jurisdictions—street fights, bar fights, pushing drugs and guns, domestic violence—didn’t your dad ever tell you not to get into cars with strangers?”
Simms: “Three jurisdictions?”
“Dade County, New York City, the Dominican Republic.”
“That’s not a jurisdiction, that’s a country.”
“Mark, now I see why LAPD has such a reputation for thoroughness.”
Simms doesn’t even bother with the empty smile.
Cassidy is staring at the sheaf of faxes: warrants in English and Spanish; mug shots of “Monroe Rodríguez,” and “Manuel Castro” and a half dozen other aliases—younger, with and without a mustache and/or long hair; forms filled in with Spanish words Cassidy never learned in high school—robo, asalto y agresíon, falsificación.
“How did you get all this?” she asks. “How did you know it was him?”
“Superior police work,” says Allen.
“He means luck.”
“Ballistics was able to come up with the fact that the bullets used in the attack were loaded with Berdan primers, of the type only manufactured in the Dominican Republic. We faxed the enhanced photo and fingerprints recovered from the scene to the authorities in Santo Domingo. Turns out they know this fellow Monroe real well. His uncle’s a major drug lord down there. They call him the General. That opened it up for us.”
Cassidy swallows. “I met the General.”
Simms: “You know him, too?”
“I didn’t say I know him. Met him. Once. Twice.”
“When was this?”
“When I leased the car. The General owned the rental company.”
“One of his many fronts,” adds Allen. “He’s also into restaurants, malls—or whatever they have down there—prostitution, the whole deal.”
He was running a crime syndicate from a card table in an empty lot.
“When did you meet the General for the second time?”
“At the Gran Caribe hotel.”
A current runs between the two detectives who make it obvious by not looking at each other.
“Isn’t the Gran Caribe kind of rich for the budget of a scouting department?”
“Look, guys, I’ve got to get back to a meeting.”
“Let’s just complete the thought. What were you doing at the Gran Caribe?”
“The jeep I was driving in broke down. The Gran Caribe turned out to be close.”
She tries to sound bored, too.
“Detective Simms tells me Cruz has been receiving blackmail threats.”
Allen’s look is pleasantly receptive.
Cassidy tells him that is true.
“Monroe drove you out, saw Cruz play?”
“Right.”
“And he knew you signed the kid?”
“He was there. In the room. When we made the deal.”
Allen turns to Simms.
“Makes sense, doesn’t it Mark?”
Simms nods with eyes closed.
“We’re working on a theory, Cassidy, that your pal Monroe—”
“Don’t call him my pal.”
“—that Monroe is behind the extortion scam. What we’ve got so far, Monroe sees a kid make the majors. He sees an opportunity. He fires off some half-assed blackmail notes—”
“But why?” she says. “What does he have on Alberto?”—then suddenly afraid she’s gone too far.
“Say he’s fishing. Fear of violence against the family might be enough to make a naive kid pay up. He’s a target because he’s made it, that’s all. When nothing happens,” Allen speculates, “Monroe comes up here to get results. No question the uncle is behind this. The Dominican authorities have been playing cat and mouse with him for years.”
“Can I go?”
“Sure,” says Simms. “Just one more thing. Communication.”
Cassidy forces herself to stay in the chair.
“Communicate.”
“Detective Allen is here to solve a homicide. My job is to protect our ballplayers. Now where are you on that?”
“What do you mean, where am I?”
Simms: “It’s interesting.”
“What?”
“You take an unauthorized trip to a foreign country that’s out of your territory. Way out—”
Angry, “That’s called working your butt off—”
“—You make a dubious connection with a known felon which maybe later goes bad—”
She turns on Allen. “Is this a joke?” He signals, Calm down.
“You come back here and immediately there’s all this gnarly stuff around the ballplayer. Blackmail notes. Vodou whatever.”
“What are you implying? Do I need a lawyer?”
“—You go to Vero and become involved with a violent incident yet you don’t tell the investigating officer, Detective Allen, any of the background. Didn’t you think it was relevant?”
“I didn’t think about it, frankly—”
“She was pretty shaken up,” interjects Detective Allen.
“Nate,” says Simms, exasperated, “you have to ask yourself, Where is the loyalty of this gal?”
“Where do you think?” Cassidy stands up. “What are you saying? I broke my own hand?”
She shows him.
“Like I said, things go bad. You and Monroe might have had a falling-out—”
“Me and Monroe?”
Simms keeps on pounding.
“Why wasn’t the very first phone call you made after the attack to this organization? Instead you hop on a plane to LA, like what? Like it was nothing, like you had a Rollerblading accident? It raises questions.”
A shock goes through her, wildly paranoid. She used that lie, Rollerblading, with Travis. She finds she is twisting the silver bracelet and stops.
The LAPD cop brazenly leans against Raymond’s desk, fingers gripping the edge. He is wearing gross overwrought gold rings on both hands. Part of the costume or the real guy?
“If you have a direct question,” Cassidy suggests, “something you want to know, ask.”
She lets her eyes go blank, the give-’em-nothing stare.
“Alberto Cruz is potentially worth a lot of money. Maybe, as scouts, you and your friend Pedro Pedrillo—he’s the one who found him, isn’t he?—are the only ones who know exactly how much. And you also know how vulnerable the kid is right now.”
“Somehow,” she says, “I’m still not getting it,” shooting a look toward Allen, who lowers his eyes.
“In our business, Cassidy, a lot of the time, the perpetrator turns out to be the one who is closest to the victim.”
“In my business, Mark, it usually turns out, the bully with the ugly mouth is the one who’s scared.”
She goes to the door. She opens it. She walks out. Nobody stops her.
21
At four-forty that afternoon Cassidy is still waiting at the top of Elysian Park. Finally the highly waxed hood of the Bentley comes gliding over the hill and swings into the last spot in the shade.
“You’ll get those berries all over your car,” Cassidy calls.
As Joe strides toward her late afternoon sun strikes his forehead like brass and Cassidy realizes it is all up there—the source of his determination—different from hers. Subtle glints come off the belt and the temple of the black sunglasses, because like everything about him, they are fabricated of expensive jazz, as the creamy soft cotton of the shirt with the mini-checks Cassidy crushes between her fingers, pulling him toward her forcefully.
“You look terrific,” he murmurs.
A balmy wind that smells of sage lifts her hair as it falls from the headband.
A gentle kiss.
“Are you okay?”
“No,” she says, “I’m not okay. How are you?”
Reflexively Joe checks his Cartier tank watch.
“I’m supposed to be in Century City.”
They can see it twelve miles to the southwest, a cache of tiny skyscrapers poking out of th
e mauvish sprawl that unfurls over the curve of the earth until swallowed up by the glare of the Pacific.
“Oh well, it’s other people’s money. What’s going on?”
“I’ve been talking to the police, Joe. Or rather, they’ve been talking to me. Detective Allen, my bud from Vero Beach, showed up at the stadium today along with our security advisor from LAPD. They embarrassed the hell out of me, pulled me out of an important meeting—”
“Back me up. What was an officer from Florida doing in LA? Why were they questioning you?”
“They’re investigating a homicide. The night I was assaulted, a kid who worked in a 7-Eleven was shot to death. They showed me a tape from the camera in the store. They wanted to see if I could ID the killer. The killer was Monroe.”
Joe shakes his head, not understanding.
“Monroe?”
“Monroe, the runty little driver from the Dominican. You know Monroe. He was beating up the jeep when you drove by and picked me up. He works for the Gran Caribe.”
“Monroe shot someone?”
“Why is that a surprise? He’s a psychopath. I’m almost certain it was him who attacked me in the parking lot. It’s him behind the blackmail threats. Him and his bad uncle, who the cops say is the Dominican Mafia.”
Two crimson-faced, sweat-soaked joggers have laboriously crested the hill. A man walks by with four Shih Tzu dogs on four leashes.
Joe: “Let’s get out of traffic.”
“Which way?”
To the east is the picnic area overlooking the stadium, grills and cement picnic tables and skinny baby trees still in their stakes: exposed wide-open space.
Ahead is a trail that leads into thick brush.
Joe coaxes her toward the trail.
“I think this is becoming clear,” he says. “Monroe was fired.”
“When?”
“After I saw him beating the crap out of that car, it occurred to me he might not be the type of individual we want to employ. I told transportation to fire his ass.”
“Did he know it came from you?”
“Most likely.”
Doubtfully, “So he blackmails you?”
“He doesn’t plan it. He doesn’t think that far ahead. He comes across the opportunity. Like witnessing the accident.”
“You think he saw it?”