“Know him? No,” I said. “Just know that he owes me money.”
Ray nodded but didn’t say anything. He looked me up and down once but didn’t convey any emotion.
“Have you seen him?” I asked.
“I’m not sure,” he said. “I don’t normally answer questions from people dressed like you carrying two guns but who have to sneak into my building.”
Interesting.
“Jackie Roach,” I said, extending my hand. The man shook it but didn’t put much effort behind it. He wanted to hear my story. I had one. I always have one. “I work for the banks, tracking down people who’ve skipped on their foreclosures. Mr. Balsalmo, he owes Seminole Savings and Loan a considerable amount of money.” I pulled up my shirt and showed him the locations of my two guns, which he really shouldn’t have been able to see, but I had the sense that this guy had been around a gun or two in his time. “You gotta protect yourself when you have my job. You understand?”
“I understand,” he said, and lifted up his left pant leg, revealing a Saturday night special in an ankle holster. “You do property management for long? Packing is just like brushing your teeth in the morning.”
“Been there, done that, bought the bootleg off eBay!” I said and gave the man a full belly laugh. “One thing Jackie Roach knows is property management. Doing God’s work, buddy, God’s work.”
Ray still wasn’t smiling, still wasn’t exactly happy to see me and still didn’t know quite what to make of me. Being a property manager is a lot like being a prison guard: You see all kinds of miscreants on a day-to-day basis and everyone lies to you.
“You got a letter or something you want to leave?”
“Letters don’t work anymore,” I said. “You know that. It’s all about face-to-face with these people. That personal connection. Gotta be close enough to strangle someone to get your point across, right?”
Still nothing from Ray. He was listening to me, but it was as if he was trying to hear another conversation at the same time. Like he was looking for the subtext.
“Unless you got something,” he said eventually, “maybe you should just head on out. People in this building work for a living, someone like you in the building scares them, you understand? People got kids in here. We don’t need any more drama. Get it?”
I did. And “it” was not good. And accounted for the smell, too, I’d guess. I took a step toward Ray and leaned in a bit. “Look, this Balsalmo guy was bad news, right? Did a little time. Dealt some crank. I understand. I saw his record. I get that. I got kids, too, right? But, Machito, I’m just doing my job. Maybe you open the door and just see if he’s hiding in there? If he is, I have a conversation with him and then I go.”
Ray shifted his weight from foot to foot, as if he were literally weighing his options, but didn’t say anything. Having a conversation with Ray required one to fill in a lot of blanks.
“His girl been around at all? Maria? Because maybe I could talk to her. She was always the reasonable one.”
The mention of Maria’s name got Ray animated. “She moved out last week. Let him keep the place. Put him on the lease and everything. Stupid, eh? Italian guy living in Little Havana. You knew he didn’t have a clue.”
A little boy came running down the hall, screaming at full throat. Not like he was hurt. Like he was a little boy. But when he saw Ray, he came to a full and silent stop.
“Sorry, Mr. Ray,” the boy said, before hustling inside one of the open doors.
Ray started walking toward the door and shuffling keys. “Nick, he’s a nice guy. Respectful to me. ‘Sir’ this and ‘sir’ that, but he’s not the kind of element I want in my building. So maybe we just have a talk with him together. You up for that?”
“Ray, I’m one hundred percent up for that,” I said. “Nice people got bad debts and got bad jobs. But I got kids, like I said, so I know what you’re saying.”
Ray put his key in the door and started knocking at the same time, saying, “It’s Ray,” as loud as he could. “It’s Ray. I got Jackie Roach with me. It’s Ray,” he said one more time and then opened the door. He turned to me before he stepped in. “You smell that?”
“Maybe a dead rat?” I said, which was probably true, just not in the same context.
“That ain’t a rat,” he said.
Nick Balsalmo’s apartment looked like a Jackson Pollock painting. Spatter patterns on the ceiling, the walls, the floor. Pools of blood in the living room. From the angles and velocity, it appeared he’d been bludgeoned as the final coda, but the pools indicated he’d also just bled a lot, like, say, if his fingers had been cut off. Ray walked through the apartment briskly, opening doors while I stood in the entry hall surveying the scene. I hadn’t touched anything yet and wasn’t about to. I just needed to hear Ray say what I already knew: Somewhere, Nick Balsalmo’s body was rotting away under some chemical.
“Oh, Jesus,” Ray shrieked. “Oh, Jesus,” he said again. “He’s in here!” It sounded like Ray was in the bathroom, though it was hard to tell as I was already back down the hall and heading for the exit. Nick Balsalmo was dead. What I didn’t need was to be standing there when the police came, trying to explain who I was.
After I got to my car and zipped back into late-afternoon Miami gridlock, I called Barry. I had to try five different numbers, but I finally found him.
“Where are you?” I said when he answered.
“In a comfortable spiritual place,” he said, his voice just above a whisper.
“Listen to me,” I said. “You’re in danger. Tell me where you are and I’ll pick you up.”
“I’m in a church, Mike,” he said.
“What are you doing in a church?”
“I’m meeting a business associate.”
“In a church?”
“Do you know how hard it is to get a legal bug into a church? It’s sanctuary space. Plus, my business associate works here.”
“You’re washing money for a church?”
“Tough times, Mike. Even the Lord has to eat.”
Negotiating cramped Miami traffic and the cramped logic of Barry at the same time wasn’t something I was prepared for. “Do you know Nick Balsalmo?”
“I know his work.”
“He’s dead,” I said.
“He’s in a better place, then,” Barry said. “Praise the Lord.”
“Your friend Bruce gave him the drugs he got from the Ghouls’ stash house.”
“Why would he do that?”
“He had to pay him off for a prison favor and the Ghouls’ drugs worked out well for that,” I said. “I have a feeling the Ghouls found that upsetting.”
“There were plenty of people who’d like to kill Nick Balsalmo. He sold drugs for a living. It’s a very unstable work environment. Praise the Lord.”
“Barry,” I said, “there was more of him on the outside than on the inside. I’m going to guess that whatever someone wanted to get from Nick, they got. Maybe that included your name, maybe it didn’t, but I’m going to guess known associates of Bruce Grossman might be wise to keep a low profile.”
“Praise the Lord.”
“Really?”
“I’m just trying to fit in over here,” Barry said, his voice low again. “I sit in a pew talking on a cell phone in here, people might find that disrespectful.”
“But laundering their money is right with God?”
“No sin in getting ahead.”
I thought that was actually wrong, canonically, but opted not to press Barry on the issue. “I’m picking Bruce and his mom up and taking them somewhere safe. I’m happy to extend you the same courtesy. Consider it a returned favor for this great job you found for me.”
“Fortress inside of a moon crater?”
“My mother’s house,” I said.
“That’s sweet,” Barry said, “but I’ve got a safe house. It’s called a boat. On the Atlantic. Do you know how hard it is to drive a motorcycle over water?”
“What’s also nice is that no one can hear you screaming on the Atlantic, either.”
Barry didn’t respond for a while, so I just sat there and listened to him breathe. It was sounding a bit more labored than usual. He’s not a skinny guy, but he’s also not one of those wheezing fat guys, either. I definitely noticed a quickening of his intake, however.