I thought about this. “So what’s the point of patting them down?”
Jimmy looked at me as though I were a little child. “Appearances, Lupe. There are some city commissioners who want to shut down the clubs completely. They think the clubs bring the wrong element to Miami Beach.” He finished off his coffee.
“But South Beach is famous for the clubs,” I said. “Take away the clubs and you take away the top industry on the Beach.”
I hadn’t considered a political/economic angle to this case, but the possibility was too strong to ignore.
“You don’t know the whole story.” Jimmy looked around to make sure no one was listening, then moved closer to me. His voice had lowered to a whisper.
“What do you mean?”
“Whenever there’s an overdose or a bad reaction in one of the clubs, our orders are to take the person out back and dump him in the alley,” Jimmy told me. “In other words, get him out and get him away. And we’re supposed to search him, make sure he doesn’t have a matchbook or anything linking him to the club.”
“What then?” I asked. “Call an ambulance?”
Jimmy paused, seeming almost sad for an instant. “Police and ambulances get noticed. That brings publicity and investigations. Keep things quiet, and the clubs stay in business. If a guy takes too many drugs and dies, well, I guess it wasn’t his lucky day.”
Even though it was about a hundred degrees outside, I had to suppress a shiver. I couldn’t believe that it had come to this. And I didn’t like knowing that Jimmy was a part of it. “You don’t agree with this, do you?” I asked him. “Leaving guys in the alley like they’re sick dogs?”
Jimmy looked at me long and hard. ‘‘Lupe, someone did call the police about the six guys,” he said, very slowly. “And that guy isn’t surprised that nothing came of it. You know what I’m saying?”
With that, Jimmy got up, said goodbye, and left. I hadn’t learned enough to know how to proceed on this case, I realized. And Jimmy didn’t know what to tell me. If anything, he was more frustrated than me. It was shaping up to be that kind of case.
Four
After Jimmy left, I finished my latte and walked back to my car, which I had parked on 17th Street. I planned on returning to my office as I turned off the alarm and unlocked the door.
I began weighing the possibilities, and decided that I needed to talk again with Manny Mendoza. Instead of driving back to the Grove by way of Alton Road, I decided to take Washington Avenue, the street that’s home to most of the South Beach clubs. It had been awhile since I’d been there, and I wanted to get the lay of the land.
The three clubs were within four blocks of each other — definitely close enough for someone to cover the area on foot in a short period of time. I saw an empty space in front of the Miami Beach post office and parked the Mercedes there. From where I was parked, I could see most of the relevant stretch of Washington Avenue.
The blocks weren’t very long, and they were jammed with small storefronts — mostly an odd assortment of shops that sold cheap, glittery clothes, along with a few fast-food joints and delicatessens. The outfits in the windows of the clothes shops catered mostly to cross-dressers, from what I could tell. It wasn’t exactly a high-rent district. In the cold light of day, the neighborhood looked run-down and in need of a face-lift. By night, though, I knew it was a different story. The place would be pulsing with activity and energy.
The clubs’ entrances were marked with small, nondescript signs, looking as though they were almost an afterthought. I assumed this was intended to convey a cachet of exclusivity. If a visitor hadn’t known this was the place to find the clubs, they would have been easy to miss. At night it would be easy to find them; usually there were crowds outside on the sidewalks, hoping they would be among the chosen ones allowed entry into the hallowed ground.
I left my motor running to supply me with life-giving air-conditioning, and sat there for a good fifteen minutes trying to figure out why someone would murder six young men in such a nasty manner. No answers came to me, no matter how long I stared, so I grabbed my purse from the floor of the car — where I usually kept it to avoid tempting a smash-and-grab artist. I looked up Manny’s number at the Oceana from the case file and punched it in.
I was in luck. Despite the early hour, Manny answered on the second ring.
“Any luck?” he asked hopefully.
“We’ll see,” I said. “Look, I’m parked a couple of blocks away. Is it all right if I come by to talk to you?”
“Sure,” Manny said, a note of cautious curiosity in his voice.
I turned off the car, put some quarters in the meter, and crossed Washington Avenue headed toward Ocean Drive. Manny was waiting for me on the Oceana’s terrace. He was again dressed all in black, with a cigarette dangling from his lips and a fresh pack clutched in his hand. He was staring out at Ocean Drive and obviously waiting for me.
He called out my name when he saw me, then bounded down the half-dozen steps to street level to greet me. He kissed me on the cheek, surprising me a little, and escorted me back to the table where we’d talked with Tommy a couple of nights before. I declined Manny’s offer of a drink and got down to business.
“Manny, you told me these guys died from a combination of GHB and alcohol,” I said. “You’re sure about that?”
We were the only people on the terrace, but Manny leaned close to me and whispered, “Whatever I tell you is confidential?”
“Of course,” I said.
“Promise me?”
“I promise you.”
Manny put out his half-smoked cigarette and took a fresh one from the pack. As he lit it, I was willing to bet that smokes were one of the primary expenses in his budget. I didn’t want to even think about the condition of his lungs.
“I found out about the deaths from my boyfriend,” Manny said, his voice almost inaudible. “He’s the one who gave me all the inside information. He’s worried sick about what happened, and how it’s all been kept quiet. He’s really afraid of what’s going to happen this weekend.”
Manny took a long drag on his cigarette. “He’s been a mess since this happened,” he continued. “He can’t eat, can’t sleep.”
I knew this might be delicate ground, but I had to ask: “Manny, who is your boyfriend?”
He flinched back from me. He thought for a moment, wrestling with some unvoiced question.
“All right,” he said. “My boyfriend is an officer in the Miami Beach Police Department.”
That made sense. It explained how Manny had access to so much information that was being hidden from the public.
“I don’t need to know his name,” I said, eliciting a look of relief on Manny’s face. “But I need to know more details about the deaths.”
“Sure, ask away. But I don’t have all the answers.”
“What about the police investigation?” I asked. Manny nodded slowly; I could tell that he was worried about getting his lover in trouble. “Was there anything to tie the six victims together, any common links that might explain why they were killed?”
“No.” Manny smiled without pleasure. “You know, that was the first question I asked. But my boyfriend said that it seems to be random. Six guys over two weekends. Like a serial killer.”
Sounded right. But I had no proof of anything.
“So apart from the fact that they were all partying in gay clubs, there’s nothing to link them? You’re sure about that?”