“Halaquez,” I said.
“No,” she said, and shook her head firmly. “Halaquez is just a henchman for a traitor still among them. But if we can find Halaquez, and make him talk...and we can make him talk, Morgan...he will lead us to the one he’s working for. The one who has seen to it that for the last several years, all of the efforts of Little Havana’s Cuban exiles have gone for nothing.”
I laughed without humor. “I had that bastard in my damn hands, but he slipped out of them.”
“Halaquez?”
“Yes,” I said, and filled her in on my side of things.
It took a good ten minutes, going through in a linear fashion, starting with Pedro and company recruiting me to recover the stolen seventy-five grand, and winding up with the beating of Tango in her motel room, with me killing Halaquez’s crony there and Halaquez himself getting away.
“This has to be about more than just the seventy-five thousand dollars,” she said, when I finished, her expression and tone intense. “Two Cuban heavies, imported to back Halaquez up? It has to be much more.”
“The answer,” I said, “is tied up with this Richard Best character.”
“Him I’ve never heard of,” she admitted. “That’s a new lead...and maybe you should keep chasing it down.” She took my face in her hands and said, “We’re very close. You keep up your efforts on the Best front. Can I contact you here?”
“Yes, through the madam—Bunny.”
She nodded. “I know Bunny. This house is an intelligence resource for the Company. Morg, you can reach me at the Raleigh Hotel. I’m registered as Kim Winters.”
That made me smile—Winters was the name I’d married her under, using “Morgan” as a first name.
“Spies shouldn’t be sentimental slobs,” I told her.
Her smile turned up wickedly at one corner. “I never said I was perfect, did I?”
“No. That was me who said that about you.”
She gave me a kiss, nothing hot, just friendly, and slid off the bed.
“Gotta go,” she said.
I followed her to the hidden door. “Why? Look, that bed is as good as any other. We’ve talked our business. So let’s get down to business.”
She shook her head. “I would like nothing better than to crawl under those covers with you and not come out for a week. But we don’t have a week, and I’m just stubborn enough to want to start this marriage off with better than a quickie.”
“Aw, Kim, for Christ’s sake....”
“Morg, do you know who I report to? Do you know who’s in town, running the Halaquez operation? Or did your ego tell you you were the star of the show?”
My mouth dropped and the words crawled out. “Not... Crowley.”
“Yes. Your own personal Inspector Gerard himself. I report directly to him, and he knows about us, so he’s been watching me like a hawk. That’s why I’ve waited for days to risk this. My love...we must be careful.”
I took her by the arms, firm, almost rough. Almost. “I want to see him.”
“What?”
“Crowley. Goddamnit, Kim, we’re working on the same case. I want Halaquez, and so, apparently, does he. I want a chance to sit down with him at a neutral place, and see if we can’t come up with a truce till this thing is over.”
“Morgan, I don’t really think that’s—”
“Kim, I am trying to conduct an investigation, a manhunt, from a goddamn whorehouse bedroom. I have something in common with the Cubans—I want some freedom. What do you say?”
Her eyes were slitted with worry. “If he knows we’ve had contact, I would be in a shitload of trouble.”
“Then make up a story. Say I tracked you down, and we talked just long enough for me to make this request.”
She thought about it.
Then she nodded, crisply. “All right. Is there a phone in here?”
“No, but Bunny has one.”
Bunny—who was learning not to ask too many questions—gave us the use of both her office and her phone.
Kim dialed the Raleigh, said, “Room 414, please,” and moments later had Crowley on the line, telling him she was sitting in an all-night diner near the City Curb Market, and that I’d come out of nowhere and braced her.
“Crowley wants to talk to you,” she said, putting just the right alarm and hesitancy in her voice.
She gave me the receiver.
“Hi, Walter. Long time no see.”
“Morgan,” Crowley said, giving it the inflection of a curse. “I guess I should have kept a tail on that wife of yours.”
“She’s not my wife. That was just a cover story, old buddy. I want a few minutes of your time. We have some mutual interests here in Miami that could be served.”
“...All right. You’ll want the meet in a neutral place.”
“Tomorrow morning, ten o’clock, Bayfront Park. Find yourself a seat in that amphitheater, and come alone. Keep in mind what happened to Mayor Cermak in that arena.”
“All right, Morgan. I’ll keep that in mind. And I’ll come alone.”
“I see any sign of agents backing you up, no meet. Got it?”
“Got it.”
I hung up.
Kim said, “He agreed to it?”
“Yeah.”
“He’ll have agents there, Morg.”
“Oh, I know. They’ll be hard to spot. They’ll be the assholes in dark suits and ties.”
That made her smile.
Then I walked her up to Gaita’s room and, before I could convince her that another half an hour would be worth risking, my bride had flown.
The cab dropped me under the front awning of the Raleigh Hotel, a 1930s-modern hotel dating to the pre-war boom, when that ten-mile sandbar called Miami Beach really took off. In a black sport jacket, charcoal sport shirt, and gray trousers, I looked like just another fairly well-off tourist, though my only baggage was the .45 under my arm.
I didn’t enter the lobby, instead skirting around the building to where a massive if oddly shaped swimming pool was alive with Latin-styled popular music, laughter, and splashing. A nice salty breeze was rolling in off the ocean, but it was still a warm night. Lots of pretty girls in bikinis sunning by Hawaiian-type torchlight were getting plied with mixed drinks by determined guys in bathing suits, who knew that at a little after one o’clock a.m., they better get lucky damn soon.
Avoiding the lobby probably hadn’t been a necessity—I wasn’t checking in, or even asking for information, so the desk having my photo probably didn’t come into play. Though I supposed it was possible that some security was lounging in the lobby.
But I didn’t think so. An advantage the hunted has over the hunter is that the hunter is seldom in hiding. The hunter never thinks about getting stalked himself.
So when I knocked on the door of room 414, it only took two knocks before it cracked open, without even a “Who is it?” Which meant I’d wasted time coming up with the “Telegram, Mr. Crowley” gag.
I pushed the door open, grabbing Crowley by the arm with one hand—he was in a terrycloth Raleigh bathrobe over blue silk pajamas—and with the other whipping the .45 out, kicking the door closed behind me.
I dragged him into the hotel room—not a suite, just a good-size room with sea-foam coloration and modern furnishings, if 1937 was your idea of modern. I dumped him on the bed, went over and double-locked the door, using the night latch, commenting, “You ought to try this thing—it’s the latest in security measures,” then came back, pulled up a rounded pink chair that was more comfortable than it looked and sat across from him. Pointing the .45 at him in a not terribly menacing way.