They walked through the empty lobby.
“Yeah, I think reclined. Unless you’ve got some ideas.”
“It’s your painting.”
“I’m gonna render myself about twelve pounds lighter and straighten my hair. See if I can turn the guy on.”
They crossed the street past locked parked cars.
“I like your hair the way it is.”
“Really? You’re not just being nice?”
“No, I mean it.”
And crossed the grass to the low wall made of cement and coral where she raised her face to the breeze coming out of darkness, off the ocean. “I feel good,” Franny said. “I’m glad I came here.”
“Somebody else told me that, just a little while ago.” He sat down on the wall, facing the Della Robbia, looked up at the windows. Faint light showed in 304. “I’ll tell you who it was. Jean Shaw.”
Franny turned from the ocean, her face still raised. “Who’s Jean Shaw?”
“You never heard of Jean Shaw?”
“Joe, would I lie to you?”
“She was a movie star. She was in pictures with Robert Mitchum.”
“Well, obviously I’ve heard of Robert Mitchum. I love him.”
“And some others. She was my favorite actress.”
“Wow, and she’s a friend of yours, uh?”
“I met her today.”
“Is she the one, dark hair, middle-aged, she came out of the hotel this evening with you and Mr. Zola? We were in the van, we’d just pulled up.”
“We went out to dinner.” He thought about what he was going to say next and then said it, before he changed his mind. “How old you think she is?”
Franny said, “Well, let’s see. She looks pretty good for her age. I’d say she’s fifty-two.”
“You think she looks that old?”
“You asked me how old I think she is, not how old I think she looks. She’s had a tuck and probably some work done around the eyes. She looks about forty-five. Or younger. Her bone structure helps, nice cheekbones. And her complexion’s great, you can tell she stays out of the sun, and I’ll bet she buys protein fiber replenishers by the case. But her actual age, I’d have to say fifty-two.”
“You think so?”
“Joe, you’re talking to the Spring Song girl.”
“Okay, how old am I?”
“You’re thirty-eight.”
He said, “You’re right.”
“But you don’t look a day over thirty-seven.”
Cundo Rey was driving his black Pontiac Trans Am that he had bought, paid for, black with black windows that Nobles said you couldn’t see for shit out of at night, lights looked real weak, yellowish and you couldn’t read signs at all. Cundo Rey let him bitch. He loved his Trans Am, he loved going slow in it like they were doing now even better than letting it out, because you could hear the engine rumble and pop, all that power cooking under the hood. Cundo was wearing blue silk with a white silk neckerchief, one of his cruising outfits. Nobles was still wearing his uniform, blue on blue, both the shirt epaulets hanging, the buttons torn off. Nobles said somebody had tried to give him a hard time. Cundo said, “It look like they did, too.”
They were creeping along south on Ocean Drive, the strip of Lummus Park and the beach on their left, the old hotels close on their right, the other side of the bumper-to-bumper parked cars. “Netherland,” Cundo Rey said, hunched over the steering wheel, looking up at signs. “Cavalier . . . There, the Cardozo. See? On that thing sticks out.”
“The awning,” Nobles said. “Okay, slow down.”
“I’m going slow as this baby can go.” He pushed in the clutch and gave it some gas to hear that rumble, get a few pops out the ass end.
A man and a girl with strange electric hair, crossing the street in the headlight beams, looked this way.
“There it is, on the corner. Della Robbia. I don’t see a number but that’s it,” Nobles said, “where her friend took her.” And then said, “Jesus Christ—” turning in his bucket seat, both hands moving over the door. “Where’s the goddamn window thing?”
Cundo Rey glanced at him. “What’s your trouble now?”
“Open the goddamn window.”
“Man, I got the air on.”
“Open the fucking window, will you! Turn around.”
“Hey, what’s the matter with you?” Cundo scowling.
Guy acting like he was going crazy, like he was trapped, clawing at the door.
“That’s the guy, the fucker ‘at hit me.”
“Where? That guy with the girl?”
“Turn the fuck around, now.”
They had to go down to Twelfth. Cundo backed into the street and came out to move north on Ocean Drive.
“Put your window down.”
“I can see okay. Be cool. Why you want to get excited for?”
“I don’t see ’em.” Nobles hunched up close to the windshield.
“There,” Cundo Rey said. “On the porch.”
Nobles turned to look past Cundo, and kept turning.
“Guy is opening the door with a key,” Cundo Rey said. “So he must live there too, uh? Is that the guy?”
“That’s the guy,” Nobles said, calm now, looking out the back as they crept past the Cardozo. “That’s him.” He didn’t straighten around until they came to Fifteenth, where Ocean Drive ended and they had to go left over to Collins.
“I didn’t see him too good in the dark,” Cundo Rey said. “You sure is the guy?”
Nobles was sitting back now, looking straight ahead. He said, “Yeah, that’s him. That’s the guy.”
“You want me to go back?”
“No, I don’t want you to go back just yet.”
Looking at him Cundo Rey said, “You sound different.”
9
* * *
THERE WAS SUNLIGHT in the window. LaBrava picked up the phone next to his bed and the girl’s voice said, “I woke you up, didn’t I? I’m sorry.” He recognized the voice now. She said, “I don’t know what time it is and the goddamn nurse won’t come when I call . . .”
He drove past the hospital thinking it was a resort motel or it might be a car dealership with all the glass and had to U-turn and come back for another pass before he saw the sign, Bethesda Memorial.
Jill Wilkinson was alone in a semi-private room. She looked different, smaller and younger, out of character as victim. She had been diagnosed as having a slight concussion and was under twenty-four-hour observation, chewing on crushed ice when LaBrava came in.
“This is all I’ve had to eat since yesterday afternoon. You believe it? They won’t give me anything else till I’m all better.”
“You look pretty good.”
“Thanks. I’ve always wanted to look pretty good.”
He leaned over the bed, close to her, looking into her face clean of makeup. Her eyes were brown looking at his, waiting. “You look great. How’s that?”
“Better.”
“You fish for compliments?”
“I don’t have to, usually.”
“Your head hurt?”
“It’s a little fuzzy. I feel dragged out. Used up.”
“That what he did, he used you?”
“He tried to. He had ideas. God, did he have ideas.”
“What stopped him?”
“I did. I said, ‘You put that thing in my mouth I’ll bite it off, I swear to God.’ “
“Oh.”
“He had to think about that. I told him I might be dead, but he’d be squatting to take a leak for the rest of his life.”
“Oh.”
“He put his gun in my mouth—and you know where he got that. And then that gave him the other idea.”
“He hit you?”
Two people talking who knew about violence.
“He pushed me around. I tore his epaulets and he got mad. I tried to run in the bathroom and lock the door, but he came in right behind me, banged the door in, and I fell over the side of t
he tub and cracked my head against the tile.”
“He had his uniform on.”
“Yeah . . .”
“Were you knocked out?”
“I was sort a dazed, you know, limp, but I wasn’t out all the way. He put me on the bed and sat down next to me—listen to this—and held my hand. He said he was sorry, he was just goofing around.”
“Did he look scared?”
“I don’t know, I wasn’t all there.” She shook the ice in the paper cup, raised it to her mouth and paused. “Wait a minute. Yeah, he tried to take my blouse off, he said he’d put me to bed, and I grabbed one of his fingers and bent it back.”
“Then what?”
“Nothing, really.”
“He touch you?”
“Did he give me a feel? Well, sorta. He gave it a try.”
“You tell the police that part?”
She hesitated and he thought she was trying to remember.
“I didn’t tell them anything.”
“You didn’t call the cops?”
“I called South County, my office. I got Mr. Zola’s name and number and I called, but there was no answer. Last night.”
“How’d you get my number?”
“I had your name. I took a chance you lived in South Beach, near Mr. Zola, so I called Information, this morning.”
“You haven’t told the cops anything.”
“No.”
He waited a few moments. “Why not?”
Now Jill waited. “He really didn’t do anything. I mean you have to consider the kind of creepy stuff I run into every day, at work. A guy making a pass isn’t all that much.”
“How’d he get in your apartment?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t think he broke in.”
“No.”
“What he did comes under attempted sexual battery. In this state it can get you life.”
She said, “How do you know that?”
“But you say he really didn’t do anything. What would he have to do?”
“You want to know the truth?”
“I’d love to.”
“I’m going to Key West for ten days. It’s my big chance to get out of that place and nothing’s gonna stop me.”
“What do you think he wanted?”
“I sign a complaint, I know damn well what’ll happen. Get cross-examined at the hearing—didn’t I invite him over? Offer him a drink? I end up looking like a part-time hooker and Mr. America walks. Bull shit. I’ve got enough problems.” She coaxed ice into her mouth from the paper cup, paused and looked up at him. “What did you ask me?”
“What do you think he wanted?”
“You mean outside of my body? That’s why I called—he wants you. ‘Who was that boy, anyway?’ “ Giving it the hint of an accent. “ ‘What newspaper he with?’ About as subtle as that crappy uniform he had on. He’s a classic sociopath, and that’s giving him the benefit of the doubt. I know his development was arrested. He probably should be too.”
“But you’re going to Key West.”
“I’ve got to go to Key West. Or I’ll be back in here next week playing with dolls. I don’t think that asshole should be on the street, but I have to put my mental health first. Does that make sense?”
LaBrava nodded, taking his time, in sympathy.
She said, “He thinks you hit him with something.”
“I should’ve,” nodding again, seeing Mr. America in his silver satin jacket. The shoulders, the hands. “But there wasn’t anything heavy enough.”
“I told him you didn’t hit him, you put him down and sat on him.”
“Oh.”
“That’s when he got mad. I should’ve known better.”
“Well, I don’t think it would take much . . . Let me ask you, did he mention Mrs. Breen? The lady we picked up.”
“No, I don’t think so . . . No, he didn’t.”
LaBrava was at ease with her because he could accept how she felt and talk to her on an eye-to-eye level of understanding without buttering words to slip past emotions. She was into real life. Tired, that’s all. He wouldn’t mind going to Key West for a few days, stay at the Pier House. But then he thought of Jean Shaw and saw Richard Nobles again.
“How did he get in your apartment?”
“If I tell you I think somebody gave him the key, then we’re gonna get into a long story about a naked Cuban who thinks he’s Geraldo Rivera.”
“Well,” LaBrava said, “even Geraldo Rivera thinks he’s Geraldo Rivera. But I could be wrong.”
“Do my eyes look okay?”
“They’re beautiful eyes.”
“I see giant red things all over your shirt.”
“I think they’re hibiscus,” LaBrava said. “What naked Cuban?”
* * *
Joe Stella said to Joe LaBrava, in the Star Security office on Lantana Road, across from the A. G. Holley state hospital, “You believe you can walk in here and start asking me questions? You believe I’m some wore-out cop’s gonna roll over for you? I put in seventeen years with the Chicago Police, eight citations, and I’ve been here, right here, seventeen more. So why don’t you get the fuck outta my office.”
“We got two things in common,” LaBrava said. “I’m from Chicago too.”
Joe Stella said, “We aren’t over in some foreign country on our vacation. Gee, you’re from Chicago, uh? How about that, it’s a small fucking world, isn’t it? I run into people from around Chicago every day and most of ’em I just as soon not. You could be, all I know, from the license division, Secretary of State, come in here you don’t have nothing better to do, see what you can shake loose.”
“I’m not from the state, not Florida,” LaBrava said. “I’m asking about one guy, that’s all.”
“See that?” Joe Stella said, the spring in the swivel chair groaning as he leaned back, motioned over his shoulder at the paneled wall.
LaBrava thought he was pointing to the underexposed, 5:00 P.M. color photo of a bluish Joe Stella standing next to a blue-black marlin hanging by its tail. The marlin looked about ten feet long, nearly twice the length of the man, but the man was about 100 pounds heavier.
“That’s my license to run a security business,” Joe Stella said, “renewed last month.”
LaBrava’s gaze moving to the framed document hanging next to the fish shot.
“I’ve posted bond, my insurance is paid up, I know goddamn well I am not in violation of any your fucking regulations ’cause I just got off probation. I spend a whole week running around, get the stuff together, make the appearance before the license division . . . I gotta show cause on my own time why they’re full a shit and ought never’ve put me on probation. I have to show ’em it wasn’t my fault the insurance lapsed one week, that’s all, and long as I’m there show ’em in black and white all my guys are licensed, every one of ’em. Fine, they stamp a paper, I’m pardoned of all my sins I never committed. I’m back in business. I’m clean. So why don’t you get the fuck out and leave me alone, okay? Otherwise I’m gonna have to get up and kick you the fuck out and I’m tired this morning, I had a hard night.”
LaBrava got ready during Joe Stella’s speech. When the man finished, sitting immovable, a block of stone, LaBrava said, “The other thing we have in common, besides both of us being from the Windy City, we’d like to keep the Director of Internal Revenue happy. Wouldn’t you say that’s true?”
Joe Stella said, “Oh, shit,” and did sound tired.
“You’re familiar with form SS-8, aren’t you?”
“I don’t know, there so many forms”—getting tireder by the moment—“What’s SS-8?”
LaBrava felt himself taking on an almost-forgotten role—Revenue officer, Collection Division—coming back to him like hopping on a bike. The bland expression, the tone of condescending authority: I’m being nice, but watch it.
“You file payroll deductions, withholding, F.I.C.A.?”
“Yeah, a course I do.”
/>
“You never hire guards as independent contractors? Even on a part-time basis?”
“Well, that depends what you mean . . .”
“You’re not aware that an SS-8 has ever been filed by a former employee or independent contractor? It’s never been called to your attention to submit a reply?”
“Wait a minute—Jesus, you know all the forms you gotta keep track of? My bookkeeper comes in once a week, payday, she’s suppose to know all that. Man, I’m telling you—try and run a business today, a bonded service. First, where’m I gonna get anybody’s any good’d work for four bucks an hour to begin with? . . . Hey, you feel like a drink?”
“No thanks.”
“You know who I get?”
“The cowboys.”
“I get the cowboys, I get the dropouts, I get these guys dying to pack, walk around the shopping mall in their uniform, this big fucking .38 on their hip. Only, state regulation, they’re suppose to pin their license—like a driver’s license in a plastic cover—on their shirt. But they do that they look like what they are, right? Mickey Mouse store cops. So they don’t wear ’em and the guy from the state license division sees ’em and I get fined a hunnert bucks each and put on probation ninety days. I also, to stay in business, I gotta post bond, five grand, and I gotta have three-hundred-grand liability insurance, a hunnert grand property damage. The insurance lapses a week cause the fucking insurance guy’s out at Hialeah every day and it’s my fault, I’m suspended till I show cause why I oughta not get fucked over by the state of Florida where I’m helping with the employment situation. I’m not talking about the federal government you understand. You guys, IRS, you got a job to do—keep that money coming in to run the government, send guns to all the different places they need guns, defend our ass against . . . you know what I’m talking about. Fucking Castro’s only a hunnert miles away. Nicaragua, how far’s that? It isn’t too far, I know.”
“Richard Nobles,” LaBrava said, “he ever been arrested before?”
Joe Stella paused. “Before what? Jesus Christ, is that who we’re talking about? Richie Nobles? Jesus, you can have him.”
“You know where I can find him?”
“I think he quit. I haven’t seen him in three days. Left the car, no keys, the dumb son of a bitch. All those big good-looking assholes, I think they get hair instead of brains. What’s the matter, Richie hasn’t paid his taxes? I believe it.”