They’d go pick the guy up. Using evidence detectives developed, the District Attorney’s office built a case against him. If they had the right man, and everybody did his job, a jury convicted him. Nine times out of ten, anyway. After that, the guy had the pleasure of putting his life on hold for twenty-five years in one of Florida’s garden spots. If he got lucky. If he got lucky and the prosecutor didn’t decide he should do a little crackling instead. Because Old Sparky was always ready to receive.
Unfortunately, Arnie’s scenario was encountering furious resistance in the face of one quality John Kramer had in very light supply: patience.
“These miserable rags are more influential that you think,” Kramer said. “The Herald’s bound to pick up this baton, then the TV stations, and then we’re the do-nothing Miami Beach Detective Bureau that doesn’t give a shit when somebody gets murdered in our jurisdiction. I can’t have this, Arnie. I cannot have it.”
“Relax, John. Who knows how hard we’re working? We do.”
Though it was lying perfectly flat against his perfectly flat stomach, Kramer smoothed his hand over his tie. The point of it touched his belt buckle. No suspenders today.
“If we take the composite public,” Kramer said, “it could actually help us come up with a suspect, and that’s more than we’ve got right now.”
On the other hand, it could send all the hard work your detectives have done so far straight to hell, but Martinson didn’t say that. And there was an outside chance Kramer might be right. There was a first time for everything.
Chapter Six
There used to be a lot more of these dives on the Beach, where a shot of no-name whiskey went for two bucks and you could buy a glass of beer for seventy-five cents, but those dirty saloons were t-shirt shops now, and the city Leo grew up with was gone. South Miami Beach had always been there — it had looked the same on a map — but South Beach hadn’t existed. Not by that name. The transformation was so complete that travel agents referred to the area by its cutesy nickname, SoBe. And although this revival played right into the hands of Leo’s idealized self, there was something sad about the gouge that had been hacked out of his personal past.
Leo started drinking here, in Loby’s Ron-Da-Voo, when he was going to Beach High. Everybody knew Leo’s crew was underage, but since the youngsters made up about a third of the crowd, there were never any ID hassles. Florida lifers hung out in Loby’s, guys who owned leaky tubs they chartered for tours of the Keys, and so did a claque of Cubans, Marielitas mostly, giddily drinking cheap and singing along with the jukebox.
If Loby ever existed, he was dead before Leo’s time. Loby’s Ron-Da-Voo was owned by Simon the Bartender. He poured drinks straight through all twenty-one hours of legal operation, and if you went to Loby’s and you didn’t see Simon, he had either just left or he was on his way in.
Leo didn’t have time to kill with any of Simon’s saggytitted surrogates tonight, and he wasn’t in the mood to fend off propositions from an end-of-the-line hooker or to make conversation with a stewed regular who smelled worse than the Ron-Da-Voo’s men’s room.
Fortunately Simon the Bartender was at his post, deadpanning and shaking the ice cubes in the pint glass of tap water he was always sipping from. He had to be over sixty, still beefy in the forearms, still handsome in a busted-up, old-guy kind of way. His wavy hair was mostly grey, but a touch of the brown it used to be was hanging on at the temples.
Instead of saying hello, he nodded at people as they walked in, to set the tone in case they were thinking he was the sort they could tell their troubles to. And if they were drunk or stupid or just plain bad at catching nonverbal drifts and they started in on him, he’d come right out and ask them why they thought he gave a shit.
The clientele was pretty much the same as Leo remembered, though the Cuban quotient had been watered down by tourists out for a slab of what was left of local color and slumming queers who got a thrill out of drinking in a real dive, not a chic, in-crowd place pretending to be a dive.
Leo told Simon he wanted a word and Simon signaled to his man Bruce, who got behind the bar and stood there, a bleary grin on his face.
A six-burner stove dominated the kitchen, its exposed, cobwebbed pipes connected to nothing. A doubledoored refrigerator hummed against one wall and Bruce’s cot was set up along another. What Leo needed, he told Simon the Bartender, was a piece.
Simon worked keys into a pair of padlocks securing a closet and opened the door. Leo spotted a mop, a bucket, and two brooms with their bristles worn to nubs. A pallet of cleanser was encased in shrinkwrap, and there was a stainless steel sink Simon hadn’t gotten around to installing. He reached into a bowling bag and pulled out a black pistol that had a dull, oily sheen.
He said, “Know how to work an automatic?”
Leo said he did, though he didn’t. How complicated could it be?
Simon the Bartender pulled back the slide. “Careful. It’s loaded.”
Leo closed one eye and brought the pistol level with his shoulder. “How much?”
“That’s a SIG Sauer,” Simon said. “P226, nine millimeter.”
“Right,” Leo said. He was thinking this baby would do a lot more than just leave a telegenic hole in JP Beaumond’s forehead.
“The FBI’s using these now, you know.”
Leo held the gun at his hip and made a High Noon quick draw. Probably take a big piece of that Beaumond bean right off. “How much?” he said again.
“Six hundred.”
“Six hundred,” Leo said. “That’s a lotta loochie.” He had about five hundred on him. He gave the SIG Sauer back to Simon.
“That is not the way you hand a man a loaded weapon,” Simon the Bartender said. “Barrel down, the way I gave it to you. I don’t need any fucking accidents tonight. Six hundred and I throw in an extra clip.”
“Can’t do it,” Leo said. “What else you got.”
“I got this,” Simon said, reaching into the bag. “Twenty-five caliber. A little short on stopping power, but you’re not hunting buffalo, right?”
A chunk of the handle’s knurled plastic grip was chipped off. “This’s no good,” Leo said. “It’s fucked up.”
“Don’t worry. It fires.”
“Who makes this one?”
“Phoenix Arms,” Simon said. “That’s your Model Raven.”
“I don’t know,” Leo said. The SIG Sauer looked so much more menacing.
“And I got rounds,” Simon the Bartender said. “About fifty rounds. I won’t need ’em.”
“Alright,” Leo told him. “What’s the price?”
“Everything? Tax included?”
Listen to him. Tax included.
“A hundred and fifty bucks.”
“Seventy-five,” Leo said.
“A hundred and fifty and I throw in all the ammo I got.”
“You were gonna do that anyway.”
“But I got two hundred into it.”
“Bullshit,” Leo said. “I’ll give you seventy-five.”
They settled on a hundred bucks. Leo was on his way out with the pistol tucked into his waistband when Simon the Bartender called him back. He made him come close. He lowered his chin and he lowered his voice.
“If you gotta use it, drop it and walk. Don’t run. You call attention to yourself. Walk. Better if you can throw it down a sewer grate, toss it in some weeds or whatever, but remember, drop it and walk.”