He sat beside me. “You’ve never shot anyone, have you?” He took my silence as assent.
“We should be calling the cops.”
“Probably,” he agreed. I couldn’t see his eyes in the darkness, couldn’t tell what was there. “But that’s not how Parker and I play.”
“I thought you didn’t know him.”
“I don’t, but I know the type.”
Of course he did. The type was just like himself.
Colonel Tom Parker wasn’t alone, but we hadn’t expected him to be. Even indoors he was wearing the big safari hat. He also had a body-armor vest on his torso, the Walther holstered on his hip, and a small machine pistol hanging from his shoulder. But he had the courtesy bar open, and he was making a show of being hospitable, putting out whiskey and mixers alongside a can of nuts. “Make yourselves comfortable,” he said.
Lieutenant Kilgallen sat at a table near the window, watching us from slitted eyes, puffy lips set, a reef of cash in front of him held together with rubber bands.
The only surprise I got was finding Barry Irvington sitting next to Kilgallen. He had his fingers laced behind his head like a spectator who didn’t find the proceedings interesting. He didn’t look at me. I thought, Oh, crap. It was my day for disappointments.
Dad dropped the knapsack onto the sofa, and nodded to Parker. “Hi, Lou.”
“Hi, yourself.” Lou’s grin was almost as big as his hat. “Took a year off my life when I spotted you walking around Bahama Village tonight. When Gloria says she’s done someone, I thought I could take her word for it. She used to be better.”
“She wasn’t bad.”
I leaned against the wall beside the front door. Lou, or whoever he was, winked at me. “Some girl you got there, Dan. First off, I’m sorry about Hector. I know he was your boy, but he had to go.”
I shot my father a look, but he was watching the stack of money in front of Kilgallen. Without moving his head, he said, “What happened to him?”
“Gloria figured there wasn’t room for all three of us, and she liked me better.” The beard split in a grin.
“Two’s better than three,” my father agreed.
Listening to him, my heart sank.
Kilgallen cleared his throat. “Avila went in the gulf last week. Guess he didn’t float as well as you did, Dan. By the way, doing you was Gloria’s move. I wasn’t consulted. I got nothin’ against you. Are we okay?”
“Yeah.”
“Good.” He patted the cash. “This is your cut of what we did through December. Figured it might square things.”
“It’ll help.”
“Okay. Let’s get to our problem. We got two dead people that have to be explained. Sergeant Irvington here has kindly volunteered to be the fall guy. It won’t be airtight, but it’ll work.”
Barry’s glance met mine. For the first time, I noticed that the hands behind his head were manacled.
“Why would he have killed Bennell and Hewitt?” Dad asked.
Kilgallen lifted his shoulders. “Greed. We pass the hat, put twenty grand in his bank account. That would buy a local cop. Then we have a scenario. Crooked cop gets caught and eats his gun. We’re covered. The money-scrubbing business goes quiet for a while. Three months from now, we’re back up and running. No one from Miami gets bent out of shape, except at Avila, who’s run off with their money. You’re the only one we gotta bring on board, Dan.”
“What about Gloria Hasty?”
“What about her?” Kilgallen said.
“She’s dead.”
Kilgallen’s head turned. “Lou?”
Lou didn’t apologize. “One of those things. It can fit the cop. Okay with you, Danny?”
“Just fine. So which of you took care of Bennell and Hewitt?”
“Gloria.” He stopped playing with the whiskey bottle. “They’d gotten cold feet. She did it nice and clean with Bennell but lost it on Hewitt.”
“Okay. Why Gloria, Lou?”
“She had Avila’s boat. There’s about two million in good checks on it.” Lou tapped his big fingers nervously on the top of the machine gun. “I got the location out of her this afternoon.”
“Where’s the boat?” Kilgallen demanded.
Kilgallen and Lou stared at each other.
“We’ll talk about that later,” Lou said.
“Yeah, we will. That leaves who deals with Irv. Any volunteers?”
I couldn’t look at Barry. He had befriended me, had helped me over rough ground. If I hadn’t told him about Parker, he wouldn’t be here.
“Volunteers?” Kilgallen repeated.
“Guess it’s my turn,” my father said. My heart dropped. He took a big handgun from his jacket and was two steps from Barry when Lou complained, “Cripes, not here! It’s my room. Besides, if people are going to believe the cop did it, we got to set the stage.”
“What do you suggest?”
“Take the cop over to Gloria’s. She’s dead in the pool. Shoot him with her piece. Like the lieutenant says, it’ll work.”
My father rubbed his chin. “We’ll have to drive. Who’s got a car?”
“Dad,” I said. I owed him a warning. Behind me, I had my gun out.
Lou looked at me, and his hand moved a little on the machine gun. “Uh, Danny, we got a problem. Your kid is pals with Irvington.”
“She’s just stringing him for me,” my father said.
“You still shoulda known better than to bring her.”
Lou had the machine gun. When there’s one in the room, you can’t point a handgun and tell the guy to drop it. Both men had had the same training. Lou was about half a second late in realizing that in getting close to the fall guy, Dad had closed the distance with him, too. The protective vest he wore had a vulnerable area at the armholes. It’s where unlucky police officers catch one now and then. Dad was at the wrong angle for that. He shot Lou in both knees faster than you can say the words, and the heavy man went down too shocked to scream. Before Kilgallen could move, Dad had a knee on Lou’s back and was aiming across the table.
I stepped away from the door to have a better angle on the lieutenant. His hand twitched toward his jacket. He scowled. “What’s this, Dan? You want everything for yourself?”
Dad wagged the pistol. “Pull your gun, Larry.”
Kilgallen thought about it and shook his head. Then he blustered. “This is a stupid move.”
“Not for me.”
I said, “Dad...”
“Last chance to go for your gun, Larry.”
Kilgallen sat stock-still.
“No? Let me tell you something that might change your mind. Hector Avila was my friend. He also was an undercover Treasury agent. That makes killing him a capital crime. So, Larry: Are you sure you don’t want to try for your gun?”
Kilgallen kept his hands still. “I’ll take my chances in court,” he said.
When you sit with your father at a comfy restaurant, enjoying the sunset and the Straits wind, nibbling stone crab and Margaritas, it’s not a good time to say you were ready to shoot him. Not an ideal time to admit just how close he’d come, when he was moving toward my favorite cop.
“I couldn’t tell you the truth when I thought Hector was alive,” Dad said, as if that little fib was the only thing between us. “Gloria, Kilgallen, Bennell, and Hewitt were running the local laundry operation. It wasn’t a stable partnership even before Gloria decided to take out Avila and keep the money.”
“She said there was no honor among thieves,” I said.
“Once Gloria had the checks, she had to clean up the scene. Bennell and Hewitt had to go. She was leading Lou around by the nose searching for Hector’s boat, which she already had.” He chuckled in admiration. “I figure Lou got her just before she would’ve gotten him.”