Metro Girl

  We shuffled Bill out of the elevator, down the short hall, and rang Judey’s bell.

  “Oh my goodness,” Judey said, throwing the door wide open to us. “Just look at this poor little sad sack.”

  “He’s a lot higher than the twenty-seventh floor,” I told Judey. “They gave him some painkillers for the ride home.”

  “Lucky duck,” Judey said. “I have my guest room all ready. We’ll just tuck Wild Bill in, and I’ll take good care of him. I’m very nurturing. And I won’t leave him alone for a minute. Nothing bad is going to happen to him while I’m on the job.”

  Judey’s condo was decorated in bold warm colors. Tangerine walls and hot red couches. A zebra skin coffee table ottoman. Black granite counters in the kitchen. It was striking, but it was a little like looking through your eyelids when you have a hangover.

  We walked Bill into the guest room and put him to bed.

  “Everything’s red,” he said. “Am I in hell?”

  “No,” I told him. “You’re in Judey’s guest room.”

  “J-u-u-deeee.”

  I handed the bag containing Bill’s antibiotic and pain medication over to Judey. “Instructions are on the labels,” I said. “There’s also a sheet with instructions for changing the dressings and for doctor’s visits.”

  “Never fear. Judey’s here.” Judey cut his eyes to Hooker. “And you take good care of Barney.”

  “I’m trying,” Hooker said.

  We left Judey and Bill, and we walked the short distance to the elevator. The doors opened, we stepped in, and Hooker hit the lobby button.

  “If you’re afraid of the elevator, big brave NASCAR Guy would be willing to hold you close and make you feel safe,” Hooker said.

  “Thanks, but I’m too numb to be afraid.”

  “Could you pretend?”

  When we were kids Bill was always bringing stray animals into the house. Dogs, cats, birds with broken wings, baby bunnies. My parents didn’t have the heart to turn the strays away, but the rule was that the animals were only allowed in the yard and in Bill’s room. Of course, eventually the blind dog and the cat with half an ear chewed off found their way into the living room. The birds were healed and set free but refused to leave. The bunnies grew up and migrated throughout the house, eating the wires and gnawing on the baseboards. And we loved them all. The point to this is that Bill loves easily and immediately. And the rest of my family, me included, loves more slowly.

  Against my better judgment, Hooker was growing on me like one of Bill’s adopted animals. The smart part of me was saying are you kidding? The soft squishy part of me that let the one-eared cat sleep on my chest all night long, almost smothering me for five years, was finding Hooker endearing. And the sex part of me was thinking the bakery theory was one of those male things I’d never fully understand. My way was to develop a craving for a particular pastry, to obsess about it, to dream about it, to desire it. And finally to lose control and buy it and eat it.

  And now Hooker was looking tasty. Scary, hunh?

  We took the elevator to the parking garage and found our way back to the Mini. Hooker and I had new cell phones. Mine rang just as I was about to buckle up.

  “Barney,” my mother said. “Where are you? Is everything all right?”

  “Everything is fine. I’m still in Miami.”

  “Are you with Bill?”

  “I just left him.”

  “He never answers his phone. His message machine is filled. I can’t leave any more messages.”

  “I’ll tell him to call you. Maybe tomorrow.”

  “When are you coming home? Should I go over to your apartment and water your plants?”

  “I don’t have any plants.”

  “What do you mean you don’t have plants? Everybody has plants.”

  “Mine are plastic.”

  “I never noticed.”

  I hung up and Hooker smiled at me. “Do you really have plastic plants?”

  “So sue me, I’m not a gardener.”

  My phone rang again. It was my boss.

  “Family emergency,” I told her. “I left you a message on your voice mail. Yes, I know this is inconvenient. Actually, I’m not sure when I’ll be back, but I think it’ll be soon.”

  “Did that work out okay?” Hooker asked when I hung up.

  “Yep. Everything’s great.” I was fired, but what the hell, I didn’t like the job anyway.

  I had two more phone calls. One from my friend Lola. And the other from a woman who worked with me at the insurance company. I told both of them I was fine and I’d call them back.

  Finally a call came in from Rosa. It was the call I’d been waiting for. I’d asked Rosa to do some research for me.

  “I got it,” Rosa said. “I got a list of all the properties Salzar owns in Miami. Felicia helped me. She has a cousin who works in the tax office. We even got his girlfriend’s address.”

  I disconnected and turned to Hooker. “Rosa’s got the list.”

  Hooker found a parking space half a block from the cigar factory. We had sodas and burgers from a drive-thru, and we took a couple minutes to finish eating. Hooker’s cell phone rang. He looked at the readout and shut his phone off. He drank some soda and saw that I was watching him.

  “My publicist,” he said. “That’s the fourth call today. This guy never gives up.”

  “This is about the schmooze thing in Homestead?”

  “Yeah. I talked to him earlier. The transporter’s there with the PR car. He’s still trying to talk me into making an appearance.”

  “Maybe you should go.”

  “Don’t want to go. And who’ll protect you if I go?”

  “In the beginning you were following me around because you didn’t trust me.”

  “Yes, but all that’s changed. That was only partly true, anyway. I was mostly following you around because of the little pink skirt and your long pink legs.”

  A blue Crown Vic parked on the opposite side of the street at the far end of the block, and Slick and Gimpy got out.

  “I don’t believe this,” Hooker said. “What are the chances?”

  Slick still had his arm in the sling, plus he had a huge Band-Aid across his nose, and both his eyes were black and blue. Gimpy was wearing a neck brace and a knee brace. His foot was still bandaged and wrapped in a thing that looked like a Velcro sandal, and he had a single crutch to help him walk.

  Neither of the men saw us. They crossed the street and walked into the cigar factory.

  “Maybe we should call the police,” Hooker said.

  “The police won’t get here in time. We should go in to see if we can help Rosa.”

  We were half out of the Mini when the door to the cigar factory crashed open and the crutch flew out, followed by Slick and Gimpy. They went to the ground, stumbled up, and scrambled for the Crown Vic.

  The entire factory emptied onto the sidewalk, yelling in Spanish. Rosa and two other women had guns. Pow! Rosa squeezed off a shot that ripped into the rear quarter panel of the Crown Vic. Pow, pow. The other women fired.

  Slick cranked the Crown Vic over and laid a quarter of an inch of rubber on takeoff.

  “Silly butthole,” one of the old women yelled at the fleeing car.

  We walked over to the group.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “Some losers came in and tried to take Rosa away, can you imagine?”

  “It was those two guys from Key West,” Rosa said. “They say they want to talk to me outside. I say to them I don’t think so. I tell them they can talk to me inside. Then they start to get smart mouth, threatening me if I don’t go outside.”

  A chunky old woman with short gray hair and a cigar in her mouth elbowed Rosa. “We show them, hunh? You don’t get smart mouth in this shop. We kick their asses good. We get all over them.”

  “You wait here,” Rosa said to Hooker and me. “I’ll get the list.”

  The crutch was still in the middle of the road.

/>   A dusty pickup truck with gardening equipment in the back rattled up to the crutch and stopped. A man got out, walked to the crutch, and examined it. Then he threw the crutch into the back of the truck and took off.

  “You never know when you’re going to need a crutch,” Hooker said.

  Rosa swung out of the cigar factory with her big straw bag over her arm and a piece of paper in her hand. She was wearing clear plastic opentoed shoes with four-inch spike heels, blue cotton pants that came to midcalf, and a red T-shirt that advertised a crab house.

  “All right,” Rosa said. “I’m ready to go. All we have to do is pick up Felicia.”

  Hooker grinned at me. “And to think I was going to waste my time on a fishing trip.”

  We stopped at the fruit stand and Felicia crammed herself in next to Rosa.

  “You know those two guys you shot?” Rosa said to Felicia. “They stopped by the cigar factory just now and tried to get me to go with them.”

  “They did not.”

  “They did!”

  “What’d you say to them?”

  “I said they should eat some lead.”

  “Maybe they going to stop here next, and I’ll miss them. That would be disappointing,” Felicia said.

  “If they want to talk to you bad enough, they’ll be back,” Rosa said. “In the meantime, maybe your husband will shoot them.” Rosa leaned forward. “Turn right at the next corner,” she told Hooker. “And then go two blocks. The first property will be on the right. It’s an apartment building.”

  The apartment building was four stories tall, and the ground-level wall was covered with gang graffiti. The front door was missing. Just some hinges left on the jamb. Inside there was a small dark foyer with four mailboxes built into the one wall and a scary-looking stairwell to the right. We all squeezed into the foyer and read the names on the mailboxes.

  “I don’t know none of these people,” Felicia said. “They must be foreign. Some of those South Americans.”

  The foyer didn’t smell great. And the stairwell smelled even worse.

  “No point to all of us trooping up the stairs,” Hooker said. “I’ll go, and you three wait here.”

  “Be careful,” Felicia said. “Watch for the big cockroaches.”

  Hooker went upstairs, and Rosa, Felicia, and I stepped out of the foyer, onto the sidewalk.

  “This building could use some bleach,” Rosa said. “That’s the best thing to clean up a building like this.”

  “Be better if it had a fire,” Felicia said. “Urban renewal. Start over.”

  Ten minutes later I was looking up at the windows, worrying about Hooker.

  “He should be down by now,” I said.

  “No gunshots,” Rosa said.

  “Yeah, and no screaming,” Felicia said. “We give him some more time.”

  A couple minutes and Hooker appeared at the bottom of the stairs, followed by a bunch of smiling people.

  One man had Hooker written on his forehead.

  “Good-bye, Sam Hooker,” they were saying.

  “Thank you for autographing my hat.”

  “Thank you for calling my sister.”

  A woman came running with a camera, and the group posed for a picture with Hooker smiling in the middle of it all.

  We got into the Mini and pulled away.

  “Race fans,” Hooker said. “Maria wasn’t in there.”

  We searched two more apartment buildings with similar results. The fourth property on the list was a warehouse. We all thought this had some potential, since a truck filled with gold could be hidden in the warehouse.

  The warehouse was three stories tall and took up half of a city block. There were three garage bays and a standard door. All were closed and locked. Windows were dark above the doors. Second-floor windows were broken. We drove down a refuse-strewn alley that intersected the block and backed up to the rear of the warehouse. There were a couple Dumpsters back there, and there was a rear door, also locked. Ground-floor windows were painted black and secured with iron bars.

  “Get on the Dumpster,” Felicia said to Hooker. “Then you can go in through the window above it.”

  Hooker looked at the Dumpster and the window. “Wouldn’t that be breaking and entering?”

  “Yeah, so?”

  “What if someone’s in there?”

  “Then we run like hell. Unless they’re race fans, and then you can stay to sign autographs.”

  “I guess I’d look like a hero if I found Maria. And since I’m doing this for your brother, you’d be real grateful,” Hooker said to me.

  Felicia shook her finger at him. “Shame on you. I know what you’re thinking.”

  “I’d be grateful,” Rosa said.

  “Something to remember,” Hooker said.

  Hooker dragged a crate over to the Dumpster and used it as a step. He stood on the Dumpster and tried the window.

  “It’s locked,” he said. “And it’s too high. I can’t see in.”

  “And?” Felicia said.

  “And I can’t get in.”

  “Break it.”

  “I’m not going to break it! You can’t just go around breaking windows.”

  Rosa climbed onto the crate and then onto the Dumpster.

  “Hand me the crate,” she said to Felicia.

  Felicia passed the crate up to Rosa, Rosa swung the crate in an arc and smashed the window. There weren’t any alarms. No one came running.

  “I’m gonna look in,” Rosa said to Hooker. “Give me a boost.”

  And Rosa started climbing up Hooker. She had her heel on his thigh and her big boobs in his face. Hooker had a grip on her leg. Rosa got her foot on Hooker’s shoulder and Hooker got his hand under her ass and pushed her up to the window.

  “What do you see?” Felicia asked.

  “Nothing. It’s just a big empty warehouse. There’s nothing in it. It’s three stories high, but it’s all space. There’s no other doors in it, so it doesn’t even have a bathroom.” She looked at Hooker. “You can put me down now.”

  Hooker was braced against the building. “Be careful where you put the heels.”

  Rosa had one heel snagged into Hooker’s waistband and her other leg crooked around his neck. She grabbed his shirt and swung her leg free, and Hooker lost his balance.

  “Oh shit!” Hooker said. He was flailing his arms, looking for a handhold, and Rosa was hanging on for all she was worth, wrapped on him monkey style.

  Hooker hit the Dumpster flat on his back with Rosa on top of him.

  “This isn’t so bad,” Rosa said.

  “Call 911,” Hooker said.

  I was on tiptoes, peeking over the Dumpster at Hooker. “Are you hurt?”

  “No. I’m going to kill Rosa.”

  ELEVEN

  We got Hooker and Rosa off the Dumpster and back into the Mini.

  “There’s two more warehouses,” Felicia said. “One down the street and one on the next block.”

  We drove to both warehouses and found the garage doors open on both of them. Rosa volunteered to go in and look around while she asked directions. “We’re lost,” she’d say. “We’re looking for Flagler Terrace. And what do you guys do here, anyway? And do you have a ladies’ room?”

  Both warehouses came up zero.

  We checked out a parking lot, a Laundromat, several deli marts, and two more slum apartment buildings. We skipped Salzar’s house and his girlfriend’s condo.

  “The only thing left is an office building on Calle Ocho,” Felicia said. “That is where Salzar has his offices.”

  We all did a silent groan. None of us wanted to run into Salzar.

  “He don’t know me,” Felicia said. “I’ll go in and ask around.”

  “I’ll go with you,” Rosa said. “He don’t know me either.”

  There was a small, unattended parking lot adjacent to the office building. The lot was full so Hooker pulled the Mini into the lot and idled in an exit lane while Rosa and Felicia went into
the building. Hooker and I sat in the car, facing Calle Ocho. We watched the rush hour traffic and we kept an eye on the building’s front door.

  A black Lincoln Town Car dropped out of the traffic and parked at the curb. Puke Face exited the building and held the front door open. Salzar strode through the door, crossed the wide sidewalk, and paused at the Town Car. He turned and glanced at the lot where we were parked. His face showed no expression but his eyes locked onto the Mini.

  Hooker did a little finger wave. “Hi,” Hooker said, smiling. “Nice to see you survived the fire.”

  Salzar turned from us, disappeared into the backseat of the Town Car, and the car eased from the curb and rolled down the street.

  I looked over at Hooker.

  “What?” he said.

  “I can’t believe you did that.”

  “He was looking at us. I was being friendly.”

  “Give me a break. That was announcing your dick was bigger than his.”

  “You’re right,” Hooker said. “He brings out the NASCAR in me.”

  Hooker put the Mini into gear and drove out of the lot and circled the block. Rosa and Felicia were waiting for us when we returned.

  “We didn’t find anything,” Rosa said. “But Salzar has a fancy ass office. We didn’t go in. We just looked through the big glass door.”

  “I could smell brimstone,” Felicia said. “Good thing I’m wearing my cross.”

  We took Felicia back to the fruit stand, and we dropped Rosa off at her apartment.

  “Now what?” I asked Hooker.

  “I don’t know. I’m a race car driver. I’m not a detective. I’m just stumbling along here.”

  “What about Columbo, James Bond, Charlie’s Angels? What would they do?”

  “I know what James Bond would do.”

  “Forget James Bond. James Bond probably isn’t a great role model for you.”

  “Okay, how about this. Let’s find a convenience store and get a load of junk and park and eat.”

  We got the bag of junk, which consisted of soda, nachos, Twizzlers, a box of cookies, a couple shrink-wrapped sandwiches, and a big bag of chips, but we couldn’t find a place to eat.

  “It has to be someplace romantic so I can make a move on you,” Hooker said. “Hey, look here, we can park in this alley. There’s some space just past those garbage cans.”