“And …?”
“We’re meeting this evening to discuss it. I think it’s time to buy those two plane tickets to California, Wit. Don’t forget, book them with a layover in St. Louis or Chicago. Leave a message on my machine with the details.”
“I’ll have them booked for us so the information is out there if anyone is interested. I’ve also called a few people at Esquire and let the name Jeffrey Anderson slip out of my mouth in connection to Steven Brightman.”
“Good. I’ll see you at the airport tomorrow.”
Klaus was a bit confused by my showing up at the store when I was supposed to be preparing for my return to the job. I assured him that it had nothing to do with a lack of confidence in him. Beyond that, I was unwilling to say much else. Wit and I had to strike a proper balance in setting things in motion. While leaving enough of a bread crumb trail for interested parties to follow, we could not afford to leave whole loaves on the ground behind us.
Barto strolled in about a quarter past one and asked Klaus if he could help him select a red wine to have with dinner. I told Klaus to take his lunch break and that I’d be happy to help the gentleman. Klaus rolled his eyes at me and mouthed the word “Cop.” I guess Barto did look a little out of place. He was strictly a scotch and beer man.
“So what can I do for you, Mr. Prager? You were kinda vague on the phone.”
“No, I was very vague on the phone. The truth is I think I have an idea why Joe Spivack committed suicide. It’s why he left me the flag. He wanted me to wonder about that. It was a sort of challenge.”
“That don’t sound like Joe. He wasn’t a subtle kinda guy. If he had something to say, he’d just come out and say it.”
“Even if he was ashamed of himself?.”
Now Barto hesitated. “Maybe then. So why do you think he-”
“I don’t want to say anything about it now, because I would just be guessing. I think I owe him more than a guess. But I’m not going to bullshit you, Ralph, if it turns out I’m right, it won’t be pretty.”
“Joe’s dead. It’ll take more than sticks and stones to do him any harm. And if what you say is true about him leaving you the flag and all, then he wanted you to find out.”
“Okay, so you’re not gonna get squeamish on me?”
“I can’t afford to,” he confessed. “I got ex-wives in two states to support.”
“You said something to me at the bar that day after Joe was buried about Spivack and Associates having financial trouble, but that he refused to let anybody go. Do you remember telling me that?”
“I do.”
Barto went on to explain how last year had been a financial nightmare at Spivack and Associates. Most of Spivack’s staff were old-school investigators, either ex-marshals or ex-cops. They had been slow to adapt to the use of computers and other electronics.
They were seat-of-the-pants types of guys, and Joe Spivack had an aversion to taking divorce work. He felt it was beneath him.
“The Moira Heaton thing,” Barto continued, “now that was the kind of thing Joe loved. But those kinda cases are few and far between. That case kept us going for a time, but by last year even that had petered out.”
“Do you know where Joe got the money to prop up the company after things went south?”
“To tell you the truth, Mr. Prager, I didn’t give a shit where he got it from. When I went to the bank with my paycheck, they cashed it.”
“When you were a marshal, where were you stationed?”
“Vegas, Miami, but mostly New York. Why?” he asked. “Is that important?”
“Maybe. You met Spivack in Miami?”
“No. Up here, but we had mutual acquaintances down in Florida.”
“How would you like a job, Ralph?”
“What’s it pay?”
“Five hundred retainer against your regular daily rates plus all expenses. But you might have to do a little traveling.”
“When I was eighteen, I joined the navy to see the world. There’s plenty I ain’t seen yet and a lot of places I’d like to see again.”
We went back to the office and I wrote him an eight-hundred-dollar check. Five hundred was the retainer. Three hundred was for the trip to Miami.
I had to be careful with Larry McDonald. For one thing, he was a good cop. He’d been a real detective while I’d only played one in my head. He’d sat across from some of the world’s most accomplished liars. Now I was going to sit across from him and feed him a plate of bullshit while trying to convince him it was caviar.
“What’s going on, Moe? You called in today and you’re not even back on the job yet.”
I kept reminding myself not to overexplain. “It couldn’t be helped.”
“So what are we doing here? What could Wit possibly do to give us shit? We haven’t done a fucking thing-”
“Whose idea was my reinstatement?”
Larry’s face went blank.
“Come on, Larry,” I prodded, not wanting to give him too much time to think. “Who came to you with it?”
“My chief.”
“And do you think your chief snatched this idea out of midair? Somebody with juice whispered in his ear.”
“I didn’t give it much thought, Moe. I was just happy for you.”
“I’m happy for me too, but Wit’s gonna fuck it up for all of us.” I appealed to Larry’s healthy sense of self-interest.
“How?”
“He thinks he has a line on something Brightman did as a kid that will ruin his political career. I was with him in Jersey yesterday checking it out. That was no coincidence today that someone mentioned me getting the bump to second grade. You’re too smart a man not to see the connection.”
Larry got down to business. “Tell me what’s going on.”
“Wit got a lead about some bombshell shit Brightman and this guy Jeffrey Anderson did as kids. We went to Jersey yesterday to talk to this Anderson, but he’s moved out to California somewhere. Wit’s flying to California tomorrow to look for this guy, and I’m going with him. I gotta keep an eye on him. Can you clear a few days for me, postpone my reinstatement for a while?”
“Don’t worry about it, but to tell you the truth, Moe, it sounds like you’re talking outta your ass. What could this guy possibly have on Brightman?”
“That’s what I’m going to find out.” I stood to leave.
“Don’t you want your drink?”
“No time. Gotta go home and pack. I have a long trip ahead of me.”
He didn’t know the half of it.
Chapter Nineteen
The flight from La Guardia to O’Hare had been uneventful if not exactly enjoyable. Wit was a nervous flier and had trouble keeping still. The Wild Turkeys didn’t do anything but exacerbate his jitters, and frankly I was glad that we’d made the second legs of our journeys to separate locations. Actually, only one of us had taken that second flight. By the time Wit got to L.A., I was already in Miami.
Miami was a funny place. In some ways it was like the Catskills south. Once the hot vacation destination, it had fallen on hard times in the seventies. Unlike the Catskills, however, Miami was enjoying a renaissance of sorts, but not one built on art and enlightenment. No, the rebirth of Miami was driven by the ultimate cash crop of the decade, cocaine. Miami was the most desirable transshipment point for the bulk of cocaine smuggled into the States from the Caribbean and Central and South America. Florida’s seemingly endless coastline made it a smugglers’ paradise, as the coastline of Long Island had been a boon to bootleggers and rumrunners half a century before. But I wasn’t here about cocaine. I was here about another kind of smuggling, the human kind.
Barto had gotten a good head start and had a fair amount of information by the time I checked into my motel. He’d left a message for me at the front desk. It was dark here just as it would be back in New York, but the harbingers of autumn, the crispness in the night air and the hints of gold in the leaves, were absent. By the feel of the hot, damp night on the skin of my face, it might as well have been mid-July. The dankness that lurked in the peach and teal green corners of my cheap room did nothing to argue me out of the illusion of summer.