“Slow. She’s hung up Robotaille’s eyes.
“Uh-huh. And who’s that with Robotaille?”
“Douglas Waters. He was the manager on duty at the hotel that night.”
“Oh, yeah?” Martinson said. “When did he get here?”
“About five minutes ago.”
“Here’s the autopsy report, Lil. Why don’t you go over it with our fearless leader? I wanna talk to this guy.” She was about to head for Kramer’s office when Martinson grabbed her elbow. “Hey, by the way, I’m sorry what I said about Williams.”
“What’re you talking about?”
He let go of her. “That shot about him being a witch doctor. I didn’t mean anything by it. He’s not so bad, you know.”
Acevedo shrugged him off, but it made Arnie feel better, having said what he said. He moved toward the desk where Robotaille was babysitting his witness. Ron noticed him coming over and got up to meet him.
“Good timing. The guy’s gotta be at work soon. Says he would’ve been in earlier, except he fishes the Keys on his days off. I don’t know,” Robotaille said, “he looks more like the country club type to me.”
“Wherever he’s been, it was in the sun. Check out that white stripe across his eyes.”
Robotaille went and picked up a telephone and Martinson introduced himself to Douglas Waters. He took the chair Robotaille had been sitting in and said, “I’m sure you heard all about last Wednesday. On that night, did Manfred Pfiser receive any visitors?”
“Not to my knowledge,” Waters said. He was a babyfaced guy with cool blue eyes and a close shave.
“Not to your knowledge?”
“We have a policy about announcing visitors, but the restrooms of the café are on the mezzanine level of the lobby, and you can’t always tell who’s who.”
“The hotel isn’t exactly a model of security.”
“We have a team that works weekends,” Waters said.
“Nobody during the week?”
Waters tightened his lips and shook his head no. His tie was tied perfectly, coming up flush against his collar, the knot in the dead middle between the collar points.
“Did you see or hear anything suspicious, anything that would’ve alerted you things weren’t quite right Wednesday night?”
“I saw two men leaving the hotel, two men who weren’t registered guests and didn’t look like patrons of the restaurant. Something about them was just wrong.”
“Such as.”
“They were an odd pair,” Waters remembered. “One was short—”
Martinson cut him off. With Waters seated, Arnie couldn’t tell his exact height, but the man was probably close to six-three. Nearly everybody was short compared to him, and Martinson pointed this out.
Waters said, “Less than average height. With no kind of haircut, you know what I mean? Not combed or shaped or anything.”
“Must’ve been pretty obvious, you noticing that in the two seconds it took him to walk past you.”
“No, it took longer than that. I was on them when they got off the elevator, and I remember them walking through the lobby and out into the street. I was watching because I wanted to make sure they were gone. The guy’s hair was horrid, looked like it had been cut with a lawnmower.”
Waters’s own hair was gel-tight. His sideburns, which reached the precise middle of his ear, didn’t have a single whisker out of place. A bad haircut is something a guy like this would notice about someone. Maybe the first thing.
Martinson ran a hand though his own hair. “What about the other one, his partner?”
“Taller by a head, and thin. Cuban. I would’ve said light-skinned black but his features were Latin.”
“What does that mean?”
Waters backpedaled. “Forget that. He could’ve been white, with an olive complexion, Italian or Jewish. I can’t say. I didn’t get a good look at him, but I do remember this. He had an afro.”
Again with the hair, Martinson said, “An afro?”
“An afro. This might sound stupid, but you would’ve noticed these two by their hair alone. They rushed out of the lobby without wanting it to appear like they were in a hurry. Weird, it was like the taller one was trying to keep up.”
“What’s weird about that?”
“It should’ve been the other way around. Wouldn’t the taller man cover more ground with a stride?”
“I suppose he would,” Martinson said.
“In any event, there’s no question they were together.”
“Can you recall the time, Mr. Waters?”
“It was after midnight, that’s for sure.”
“Why’re you so sure?”
“The waiters were stacking chairs in the café. That’s the image I have of these two. Out the lobby and onto the sidewalk, past the piled-up chairs. The café closes at midnight on Wednesday.”
“One of your guests told us that on that night she had to phone the desk to get Pfiser to turn his music down. You took the call, right?”
“I remember it clearly. Ms. Lowenstein in room 1207. I think guests like Ms. Lowenstein would be more comfortable at the Eden Roc, but her wishes do need to be respected. I went up to Mr. Pfiser’s room personally, and asked him to lower the volume.”
“Was he alone at that time?”
“As far as I know, yes.”
“Was this before or after the haircut duo made their exit?”
“Before. I told you they left after midnight.”
Martinson took a sip of his coffee and rubbed the back of his neck. He didn’t have any more questions for Douglas Waters but he hoped that Waters could come back on another day when he had more time, to take a look at the mug books. Waters said he would.
Martinson got Robotaille to escort Waters downstairs, and he caught Lili coming out of Kramer’s office. “What’d Big John have to say?”
“What’s he gonna say? It’s an autopsy report. The victim died of a gunshot wound. We knew that. What happened with the hotel manager?”
“He described the haircuts of two guys he saw getting out of an elevator.”
Lili said, “You like this guy the French chick’s describing?”
“I don’t like anybody.”
“Then who was the man leaving the room?”
“Couldn’t tell you,” Martinson said. “But we’re gonna need to find out.”
Kramer had his hair on fire over an editorial in some sporadically published model scene rag that accused the Miami Beach Police Department, and the Detective Bureau in particular, of negligence and sloth, not to mention indifference, toward solving the murder of Manfred Pfiser. Pfiser was a well-known figure among the gay set, and the editorial implied that the Dutchman’s homosexuality was the cause of foot-dragging by the Bureau, an idiotic allegation the paper did nothing to substantiate. The piece was headlined EQUAL JUSTICE UNDER LAW?
Kramer was white. He tossed the paper on his desk for Martinson to read. In the third paragraph, somebody left the second ‘p’ out of inappropriate. Arnie said, “Why’re you getting so worked up over a publication that doesn’t even know how to spell? Nobody reads these things.”
Kramer was pushing the idea of making the Annick Mersault composite public. They’d been back and forth over the relative merits of this strategy in the past, and for what it was worth, this was Arnie’s theory:
Nobody, no matter how stupid, who had committed a murder, wouldn’t think the cops weren’t after somebody. Especially with a body left at the scene. But there was a huge gap between an anonymous, faceless suspect, and the specific mug that appeared in a police composite. By keeping the picture in house, so to speak, the killer might be lulled into thinking nobody had seen him. It would naturally follow that he’d think he’d gotten away with it.
Then, on some booze-addled morning, the actor’s lips got loose, and he started bragging. Remember the Dutch guy who got it on the Beach? That was me. Next, somebody would rat the guy off. Which always happened. Too hot of a tip to sit on. Not to mention, there’s no way the actor arrives at the point where he’s pulling the trigger on a defenseless man in some hotel room without making a lot of people along the way hate his guts. This was your revenge factor.