“ Chemo?” Sergeant Al Garcia read the teletype again, then pulled it off the bulletin board and took it to the Xerox machine. By the time he got back, a new teletype had been posted in its place.
This one was even more interesting, and Garcia’s cigar bobbed excitedly as he read it.
The new teletype advised Metro-Dade police to disregard the kidnap query. Miss Margaret Gonzalez had phoned the New York authorities to assure them that she was in no danger, and to explain that the disturbance at the Plaza Hotel was merely a dispute between herself and a male companion she had met in a bar.
Maggie had hung up before detectives could ask if the male companion was Mr. Blondell Wayne Tatum.
Commissioner Roberto Pepsical arranged to meet the two crooked detectives at a strip joint offLeJeune Road, not far from the airport. Roberto got there early and drank three strong vodka tonics to give him the courage to say what he’d been told to say.
He figured he was so far over his head that being drunk couldn’t make it any worse.
Dutifully the commissioner had carried Detective Murdock’s proposal to Dr. Rudy Graveline, and now he had returned with the doctor’s reply. It occurred to Roberto, even as a naked woman with gold teeth delivered a fourth vodka, that the role of an elected public servant was no longer a distinguished one. He found himself surrounded by ruthless and untrustworthy people-nobody played a straight game anymore. In Miami, corruption had become a sport of the masses. Roberto had been doing it for years, of course, but jerks like Salazar and Murdock and even Graveline-they were nothing but dilettantes. Moochers. They didn’t know when to back off. The word enough was not in their vocabulary. Roberto hated the idea that his future depended on such men.
The crooked cops showed up just as the nude Amazonian mud-wrestling match began on stage. “Very nice place,” Detective John Murdock said to the commissioner. “Is that your daughter up there?”
Joe Salazar said, “The one on the right, she even looks like you. Except I think you got bigger knockers.”
Roberto Pepsical flushed. He was sensitive about his weight. “You’re really funny,” he said to the detectives. “Both of you should’ve been comedians instead of cops. You should’ve been Lawrence and Hardy.”
Murdock smirked. “Lawrence and Hardy, huh? I think the commissioner has been drinking.”
Salazar said, “Maybe we hurt his feelings.”
The vodka was supposed to make Roberto Pepsical cool and brave; instead it was making him hot and dizzy. He started to tell the detectives what Rudy Graveline had said, but he couldn’t hear himself speak over the exhortations of the wrestling fans. Finally Murdock seized him by the arm and led him to the restroom. Joe Salazar followed them in and locked the door.
“What’s all this for?” Roberto said, belching in woozy fear. He thought the detectives were going to beat him up.
Murdock took him by the shoulders and pinned him to the condom machine. He said, “Joe and I don’t like this joint. It’s noisy, it’s dirty, it’s a shitty fucking joint to hold a serious conversation. We are offended, Commissioner, by what we see taking place on the stage out there-naked young females with wet mud all over their twats. You shouldn’t have invited us here.”
Joe Salazar said, “That’s right. Just so you know, I’m a devoted Catholic.”
“I’m sorry,” said Roberta Pepsical. “It was the darkest place I could think of on short notice. Next time we’ll meet at St. Mary’s.”
Someone knocked on the restroom door and Murdock told him to go away if he valued his testicles. Then he said to Roberto: “What is it you wanted to tell us?”
“It’s a message from my friend. The one with the problem I told you about-”
“The problem named Stranahan?”
“Yes. He says five thousand each.”
“Fine,” said John Murdock.
“Really?”
“Long as it’s cash.”
Salazar added, “Not in sequence. And not bank-wrapped.”
“Certainly,” Roberto Pepsical said. Now came the part that made his throat go dry.
“There’s one part of the plan that my friend wants to change,” he said. “He says it’s no good just arresting this man and putting him in jail. He says this fellow has a big mouth and a vivid imagination.” Those were Rudy’s exact words; Roberto was proud of himself for remembering.
Joe Salazar idly tested the knobs on the condom machine and said, “So you got a better idea, right?”
“Well…,” Roberto said.
Murdock loosened his grip on the commissioner and straightened his jacket. “You’re not the idea man, are you? I mean, it was your idea to meet at this pussy parlor.” He walked over to the urinal and unzipped his trousers. “Joe and I will think of something. We’re idea-type guys.”
Salazar said, “For instance, suppose we get a warrant to arrest the suspect for the murder of his former wife. Supposing we proceed to his residence and duly identify ourselves as sworn police officers. And supposing the suspect attempts to flee.”
“Or resists with violence,” Murdock hypothesized.
“Yeah, the manual is clear,” Salazar said.
Murdock shook himself off and zipped up. “In a circumstance such as that, we could use deadly force.”
“I imagine you could,” said Roberto Pepsical, sober as a choirboy.
The three of them stood there in the restroom, sweating under the hot bare bulb. Salazar examined a package of flamingo-pink rubbers that he had shaken loose from the vending machine.
Finally Murdock said, “Tell your friend it sounds fine, except for the price. Make it ten apiece, not five.”
“Ten,” Roberto repeated, though he was not at all surprised. To close the deal, he sighed audibly.
“Come on,” said Joe Salazar, unlocking the door. “We’re missing the fingerpaint contest.”
Over the whine of the outboard Luis Cordova shouted: “There’s no point in stopping.”
Mick Stranahan nodded. Under ceramic skies, Biscayne Bay unfolded in a dozen shifting hues of blue. It was a fine, cloudless morning: seventy degrees, and a northern breeze at their backs. Luis Cordova slowed the patrol boat a few hundred yards from the stilt house. He leaned down and said: “They tore the place up pretty bad, Mick.”
“You sure it was cops?”
“Yeah, two of them. Not uniformed guys, though. And they had one of the sheriff boats.”
Stranahan knew who it was: Murdock and Salazar.
“Those goons from the hospital,” said Christina Marks. She stood next to Luis Cordova at the steering console, behind the Plexiglas windshield. She wore a red windbreaker, baggy knit pants, and high-top tennis shoes.
From a distance Stranahan could see that the door to his house had been left open, which meant it had probably been looted and vandalized. What the kids didn’t wreck, the seagulls would. Stranahan stared for a few moments, then said: “Let’s go, Luis.”
The trip to Old Rhodes Key took thirty-five minutes in a light, nudging sea. Christina got excited when they passed a school of porpoises off Elliott Key, but Stranahan showed no interest. He was thinking about the videotape they had watched at Christina’s apartment-Maggie Gonzalez, describing the death of Vicky Barletta. Twice they had watched it. It made him mad but he wasn’t sure why. He had heard of worse things, seen worse things. Yet there was something about a doctor doing it, getting away with it, that made Stranahan furious.
When they reached the island, Luis Cordova dropped them at a sagging dock that belonged to an old Bahamian conch fisherman named Cartwright. Cartwright had been told they were coming.
“I got the place ready,” he told Mick Stranahan. “By the way, it’s good to see you, my friend.”
Stranahan gave him a hug. Cartwright was eighty years old. His hair was like cotton fuzz and his skin was the color of hot tar. He had Old Rhodes Key largely to himself and seldom entertained, but he had happily made an exception for his old friend. Years ago Stranahan had done Cartwright a considerable favor.
“White man tried to burn me out,” he told Christina Marks. “Mick took care of things.”
Stranahan hoisted the duffel bags over his shoulders and trudged toward the house. He said, “Some asshole developer wanted Cartwright’s land but Cartwright didn’t want to sell. Things got sticky.”