“Him,” Jackie said, extending his arm to point at DeLeon, showing them a gold cuff link. “My betrayer.”
“Man likes that word,” DeLeon said.
Vincent said to Jackie, “Look, you don’t want to think ill of DeLeon, okay, I’ll use Ricky. I can arrange for Ricky to tell stories about you thinking he’s gonna get a plea deal. Which he won’t, but the cops would find out about you and they’d tell Gaming Enforcement—you know how cops are, like to help each other—and there you are. So what’s the difference? We’re talking about leverage.”
“Prick,” Jackie said.
“He’s feeling better,” Vincent said to DeLeon. Then turned to Jackie again. “But what this is all about, what you tend to lose sight of because of your personal problems, is Iris. You remember Iris?”
“I never made her do a thing she didn’t want to,” Jackie said. “She knew exactly what the deal was.”
“All I asked was, do you remember Iris?”
Jackie paused. “Yeah, I remember her. So? What do you want me to say?”
Vincent thought about it, looking at Jackie behind his executive desk; Jackie, if he was thinking about her at all, remembering some little broad who’d worked for him at one time.
“Maybe you better not say anything,” Vincent said.
A quarter to twelve Vincent came away from the cashier’s window with the twelve thousand dollars in the blue canvas bag. Somebody’s twelve thousand; he was still reasoning his right to it. If he couldn’t return it to Ricky and if he felt no obligation to give it to the State of New Jersey, who was left? He had never pocketed a dime of confiscated money or accepted a bribe in his life. When he had lunch at Wolfie’s on Collins Avenue he went along with them charging him only half price. But he tipped on the full amount. He was an honest cop and this was a unique situation. He could tell himself he was using the twelve grand in the line of duty, sort of.
From the casino, Vincent cut through the lounge toward the lobby. He noticed Tommy Donovan behind the bar talking to the barman. It caused Vincent to hesitate. He thought, why not? And walked over to the bar to stand a couple of stools away. Tommy was talking very intently about something. The barman saw Vincent, but didn’t want to interrupt his boss. Finally he said something and Tommy turned as the barman came over.
“A draft,” Vincent said.
Now Tommy stepped over extending his hand. “Tommy Donovan. How are you this morning?”
“Not too bad,” Vincent said.
“I was just saying to Eddie, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a blue mixed drink. Have you?”
“I don’t think so,” Vincent said. “I don’t think I’d want to either. Drinks should be sort of a gold color. Amber. Some are no color at all, they’re okay. But I prefer the amber ones.”
“You’re my kind a guy,” Tommy said. “What’ll you have? It’s on the house.”
The barman placed the beer in front of him. “This’s fine,” Vincent said. “I never drink hard stuff till the evening or I’m finished work.”
“I don’t either,” Tommy said. “I think I’ll have one with you.” He looked at the barman who moved off to draw another. “You have to be careful, especially mixing business with pleasure here. On the one hand I have to socialize. On the other I have to know what’s going on. You understand my position.”
Vincent said, “Are you the Tommy Donovan?”
“Well, I’m the only one around here, anyway.”
“You own the place.”
“I work at it.”
“Behind the bar?”
“I know what’s going on in every area of this operation. To me, the bar is as important as the casino. I don’t want to see any skimping on drinks or indifference to patrons. Eddie here”—the barman placed a draft beer in front of Tommy—“we were just discussing different kinds of drinks, seeing if we could come up with a new one, something unusual.”
“It must be interesting work,” Vincent said, “running a place like this.”
“Well, it keeps you out of trouble.” Tommy drank off part of his beer and touched a napkin to his mouth. “You just come in?”
“No, I’m checking out.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. How’d you do?”
“Not bad. I got what I came for.” Vincent raised the canvas bag, placed it on the bar and zipped it open. “Take a look.”
Tommy leaned close in the timeless semidark. He said, “Jesus Christ, I hope you didn’t win all that here. On the other hand if you did, well, that’s how it goes. How much you win?”
“Twelve grand.”
“Well, yeah, you know I thought you looked familiar.”
“You comped me,” Vincent said.
“Sure, I remember. You were pointed out to me.”
“I’m on my way now to San Juan. Try my luck there.”
“Well, hey, you’re gonna stay at Spade’s, aren’t you? I insist. Sure, we’ll comp you exactly the same as you got here. It’s on the computer, we just punch it down there.” Tommy grinned. “Give us a chance to get even. Yeah, your face is very familiar, I just haven’t been able to put a name to it.”
“Vincent Mora.”
Tommy began to nod. “That’s right, sure. Mora, you came down from Boston, didn’t you?”
“I came up from Miami.”
“Yeah Miami. Listen, I got a tell you, I have a little trouble with names, Vinnie. But faces, I never forget a face. Actually, once I have a drink with a guest I never forget his name either. Next time I see you I’ll know. Vinnie Mora, from Boston.”
Tommy, Jackie, Ricky, Teddy, Eddie . . . Vinnie. It was time to get out of here. Vincent finished his beer, offered his hand. “It was a pleasure, Tommy.” He stared away from the bar and looked back. “Hey, and say hi to your wife for me.”
Vincent left him standing there.
He eased down to sit on the edge of the bed, not wanting to wake her, not yet; but saw her eyes open in the moment before he kissed her and felt her arms come around him and strain to hold him, keep him here. Linda said, “I’m not going to let you go.”
“Come with me.” Raising up on his arms to look at her.
She didn’t say anything. Their eyes held in the dim light, the bedroom draperies closed, her eyes changing now. It wasn’t the look he wanted to take with him. There were good ones he already had stored away. This one was solemn, almost sad; it meant she cared about him, but it was not the one he would look at when he thought of her. He said, “I wouldn’t ask you to leave your job.”
“My gig.” Trying to smile.
“Chiquita Banana. You are some entertainer.”
She said, “I don’t have a name for you, not yet. But I’ll think of one.” She said, “You have to go, don’t you?”
“DeLeon’s putting Teddy in the car, the limo. You might as well use mine as long as you’re here. It’s on a card and I’m rich. Right? The keys are on the desk . . . They’ll probably ask you to leave . . .”
“I’ll get a place. Don’t worry.” Looking at him with sad eyes again. She said, “Vincent?” and hesitated.
“What?”
“Is it going to work? What you’re doing?”
He felt she was going to say something else and changed her mind. “It has to. I don’t see any other way.”
She said, “Vincent?”
Her hands moved over his shoulders, bringing him to her. They held onto each other as long as they could, until he whispered to her, “I have to go.”
She missed him with the sound of the door closing, in the silence now. She saw him in darkness in his white jockeys holding the gun upright against his shoulder and saw him—looking out the window of Room 310 of the Holmhurst—in the street light, out in the cold mist in his skivvies. He had never told her what the man coming out of the hotel said, the drunk, seeing him like that. They had made love. A man fired shots into their room and they made love after, under the covers, the room cold because of the broken window. He had not told her what the man
said and there were things she hadn’t told him. They should have told each other things. Maybe they didn’t have to, but there were things that were good to hear. She got up and went into the living room.
The car keys were on the desk, lying on a hotel envelope addressed to CHIQUITA. Inside were twenty one-hundred dollar bills and a note that said:
Dear Chiquita,
This is scale, the going rate for getting shot at and being part of all this. I hope it is only the first part and we will have a lot more parts to come, but I have to leave it up to you. I’ll be at Spade’s Isla Verde. Maybe even comped.
Vincent the Avenger
Vincent came off the elevator, hesitated and turned left toward the casino instead of the other way, into the lobby. Twelve-thirty in the afternoon the room was alive with players, with flashing lights and bells going off. He was beginning to feel at home here. He dropped a quarter into the first free slot machine he came to and pulled down on the handle. The drum, illustrated with bars, cherries, bells and oranges, rolled, jolted to a stop. Nothing. He dropped in another quarter, pulled the handle down, watched the drum spin and stop. Silence. He slipped his last quarter into the machine, yanked on the handle and walked away, indifferent, but ready to hunch his shoulders against the sound of clanging coins, jackpot bells . . .
Well, there were all kinds of ways to gamble in San Juan.
25
* * *
MODESTA MANOSDUROS, ISIDRO’S WIFE, told them she could describe the man, yes, and identify him if she saw him. An American with light hair, a narrow nose, skin so pale you could see his bones and the color of his veins . . . They told her to wait please, not yet. They brought her into the dark end of a room where five men stood at the other end with lights shining on them. They asked her if she saw the man she believed had been with her husband. She said, yes, that one, and pointed to Teddy Magyk. They dismissed the five men and asked her where she had seen this man before.
“I never saw him the way you think,” Modesta said.
The policemen looked at each other. “Then how can you identify him?”
“I don’t see him with my eyes.” She touched her forehead with one finger. “I see him here.”
They brought her into another room, an office, asked her to please sit down and showed her a photograph.
“My husband when he visited El Yunque with the American.”
“Have you seen this picture before?”
“No, never.”
“How do you know this is El Yunque?”
“I know El Yunque.”
“Did you know your husband was going there with the man you identified?”
“I know he did,” the woman said, “because this is my husband and this is El Yunque.”
The policemen looked at each other again. They asked her to remain seated in a chair that was uncomfortable and gave her coffee that was weak, like water. After talking to them for more than an hour, repeating everything Isidro had said to her about the man who was his prize, she was hungry and told them she wanted to go home.
An American who wore a beard offered to drive her in his car from Hato Rey to her house in Puerta de Tierra. He told her his name and said he was sorry about her husband. He drove slowly, making other cars blow their horns and pass them. Her husband’s car, when he owned it, was much larger and more comfortable. This car, the road was right there in front of them and the seat was small. She was thinking of her husband’s Chevrolet, which she had sold for 2,500 dollars, when the American asked her if she had enough money to live.
She looked at him now, to see into his bearded face, and told him yes, she had money. She had bought a color television and new clothes for the children.
He drove so slow . . .
“Why did you tell your husband to be careful of that man, Teddy?”
“Because he’s call Mr. Magic.”
“That’s only his name.”
“Yes, what he is.”
“But he isn’t magic, it’s his name. It sounds like magic.”
Yes, well? She said, “Let me ask you what you think they are going to do to him?”
“They’ll take him to Superior Court and put him on trial for murder.”
“Yes?”
“As soon as the district attorney has proof to show in court.”
“Yes?”
“And then, well, I think they’ll send him to Oso Blanco for life.”
“Tha’s what you think?”
She was wrong. This one didn’t know any more than the policemen. She was disappointed. But he was rich, he gave her money when they stopped in front of the house. Five one hundred-dollar bills and then five more when the children came out to see the car. He was generous, kind to her; so she said, “I’ll tell you something. You don’t think he’s magic?”
He shook his head at her. “No.”
“Then why are they going to let him go free?”
This time the Criminal Affairs investigators having lunch at El Cidreño would look over at the table—see, the same one, with the beard, still on medical leave but without his cane—and know what he was discussing with Lorendo Paz. Lorendo looking immaculate, as usual, and the bearded guy looking the same as before. Some of the investigators were discussing the same thing as Lorendo and the American detective: the fact that Teddy Magyk had killed the taxi driver, there was little doubt of it, but would be walking up Franklin Delano Roosevelt Avenue by six o’clock this evening. “We had him, on the Loíza ferry,” Herbey Maldonado told the man seated at the table with him, “and we let him go.” The American detective, look, had hardly touched his dinner. “I know how he feels,” Herbey said. The American detective was drinking whiskey and smoking cigarettes today.
* * *
“You have to understand the influence of the district attorney in our system, in our preparing a case.”
“The clout,” Vincent said.
“Yes, the clout; that’s good.”
“He doesn’t want to try a case if there’s a chance he might lose.”
Lorendo shook his head. “No, he doesn’t want to see a defendant get off on a technicality, so he makes himself very objective looking at evidence. He doesn’t try this guy he’ll try somebody else, what’s the difference? This one, he sees more holes the guy can use to walk out than ways to keep him in . . . Come on, you know what I’m talking about. What else is new, man? . . . Even if we can show he took the picture, yes, at a place directly above where the body was found, how do we prove it was taken the day of the murder? What day was the murder? There’s no date on the print. The Fast Foto place, they say maybe they have his name somewhere, they’ll look. But it won’t prove nothing anyway. Okay, witnesses that can put Teddy with Isidro—”
“Me,” Vincent said.
“I have you. You saw them at a beach, not on a mountain. I have a doorman at the DuPont Plaza, he maybe saw them together once or twice. The only person I have who can positively identify Teddy is the victim’s wife, and she never saw the guy before today. You like to hear her testify?”
“She knows he’s getting off.”
“We should know it too, right away. Why didn’t we?”
Vincent didn’t answer.
“You say he bought a handcarved parrot at the rain forest gift shop and gave it to Iris. Oh, he did? What day?”
“Teddy’s gun,” Vincent said.
“We say is the murder weapon,” Lorendo said, “but we don’t find any bullets in the victim. Shot twice, only one exit wound, I thought we would have a slug for comparison.” Lorendo shook his head. “He was badly decomposed, two weeks or more out there, some of him eaten by animals. I don’t know what happen to it. But it’s the only chance we got to prove anything, if we find that slug. So I’m sending a crew out there again, have them go over the ground with their toothbrushes.”
“Can you hold him in the meantime? Lock him up?”
“No way. I can’t even hold him for the gun. You brought it, he didn’t. His lawyer would say,
who are you? You have no jurisdiction. Teddy says it’s not his gun, he never saw it before, so . . . All I can do, tell him he can’t leave Puerto Rico until we finish the investigation. Put some men at the airport to make sure. Then stretch it out, uh? Maybe think of some other way. I don’t know, Vincent, it look good when we looked at it. We should know better, not get excited too early.”
“He did it,” Vincent said.
“You don’t have to tell me, I believe it. But we both been here before.”
“Too many times,” Vincent said.
“You had the feeling he wouldn’t be extradited, you said so. You had a feeling all along. So you bring him, maybe we’ll run him through, shut the door on him.”
“Maybe,” Vincent said.
“But it doesn’t work like that, here or Miami or Atlantic City, it’s the same, the bad guys have the advantage. I ask him if he like to plead. You know what he said?”
“I know he’s killed three people in the past three weeks,” Vincent said.
“Yes.”
They sipped their drinks, a silence between them within the clatter and voices in the restaurant. Lorendo looked over at a table and back to Vincent.
“You know Herbey Maldonado . . .”
“On the Loíza ferry.”
“Yes. Herbey says take him out there again and don’t bring him back. Is he kidding or not? Some of these guys—you know them yourself in Miami, they wouldn’t think twice about it, and they’re good guys.”
Vincent didn’t say anything.
“I hope,” Lorendo said, “you don’t have something like that in your mind. Not you, Vincent. Okay?”
Vincent didn’t say anything.
“Come on—you worry me. Please. Where are you?”
Here but not here. His dinner barely touched. Cigarette stubs in the tin ashtray. He raised his eyes to Lorendo.
“Never worry about anything that’s already done or you have no control over.”
“I believe that too, yes.”
“Never seek revenge . . .”
“Don’t even think about it, no.”