I kept a straight face. “What gave you that idea, Cappola?”
“Idea? We know. You think nobody but AXE keeps track of what’s what? We got an ear in Cuba. He’s like this with Fidel.” He held up two fingers tight together. “Jerome wants Fleming out of the way for good.”
“Uh-uh.” I wasn’t impressed. Whatever information the Cosa Nostra had, it didn’t match with ours nor did it fit with the Colonel’s behavior. “Fleming was out of the way in the States. Jerome called him back.”
Cappola had a wicked grin. “Because you pulled the rug. Listen to me, buster. As long as Fleming was loose on the mainland, Jerome couldn’t make his power play and bring the Reds in here. The U.S. would have put the Doc in the front boat, shipped him over and supervised the election. Jerome would’ve been booted off the island. But with Fleming in a Cuban jail, Jerome could yell that if he was running the country, he could bail out the Doc. He’d be put in the Palace in a blink and that would be the last anybody ever heard of Randolph Fleming.”
I’ll listen to anything that makes sense. What Cappola was saying might. But I wasn’t jumping on the Mafia bandwagon yet. Even if all this was true, Jerome’s hands were tied now.
A buzzer sounded like a snake, three quick hisses. Cappola rammed to his feet, read the doubt in my face, and said across my shoulder to the redhead, “Take him out of circulation and tell him the rest of it.” He went out of the office fast.
Mitzy Gardner got off the couch and slung a bag over her shoulder without hurry, watching me, appraising, mocking.
“Heart attack in the casino,” she said without interest. “Happens once in awhile, a big winner or a big loser.” She had a scorching voice that came clear from her chest. “Let’s take a ride, lover.”
“The security chief walk out on trouble? If you really think Jerome made a try for Fleming, it’s my job to see a second grab doesn’t come off.”
She shrugged lightly. “The casino has its own staff apart from the hotel’s. Fleming’s safe for the day. Chip has him bottled up in bed, doped. He’s not going anywhere and you need to hear and see a few things.”
She touched the door control and led me through, telling the black lackey with easy familiarity, “We’re going down, Duke.”
He stretched a white grin for her. Liked her looks better than mine. The button he chose opened an elevator at the opposite end of the hall from the casino entrance. It took us to a four-car basement garage with a Volks station wagon and a long lavender Cadillac. Nice privacy for visitors who didn’t want to be seen. I commented on that.
Her smile was wry. “The elevator goes to Chip’s roof penthouse too. That’s where Fleming is.”
She slid under the wheel of the Caddy. I sat beside her.
“On the floor until we clear the hotel,” she told me. “Jerome would have a tail on you if you showed.”
I played along, let her try to spook me, doubled down on the floor as she pushed a button. A steel partition sighed up. She kicked the big motor to life and we purred under the door. The hollow echo beyond indicated a larger garage with the grease smell of a service section, then we nosed up a ramp to ground level. The shell drive whispered under the tires. She made the turn toward town at the boulevard and half a mile later beckoned me up. The litter from yesterday’s celebration was being swept up and the street was back to its normal quiet.
“Jerome,” I said. “If there was anything to Cappola’s suspicion, the obvious way to remove Fleming would have been to kill him. Why send him to Cuba?”
She didn’t even glance at me. “A corpse is of no use to anyone. Fleming alive might be used as a bargaining point against Russia.”
“Possibly. Now about me, why would Jerome want a tail on me?”
Her look withered me. “He stumbled over you once. That business with your gun didn’t just happen. He wanted you out. How many times do you have to be hit on the head to wise up?”
I put it all on the back burner to cook. With Fleming safely in Cappola’s cocoon for the coming hours, there was time to think ahead and plan moves, things best done in relaxation. I relaxed.
We drove past the open market and through Government Park where the Palace dominated. Beyond that, alone on a hilltop, crouched a great time-blackened fort from the early days. Its base would be honeycombed with dungeons for government prisoners. Ugly place. At the bottom of the hill on the bay side was the cluster of the old town. The road narrowed there. Mitzy crawled past donkeys, carts, native women in bright skirts and kerchiefs toting loads on top of their heads. The color, old charm and history of the island was on parade here, where tourists didn’t venture.
The houses petered out. Mountains rose from the side of the highway away from the water. Against the bay, in lonely isolation, an old resort hotel rotted away silently. Gingerbread dripped from roofs and balconies, wide verandas sagged into the blooming lawn gone wild in a tangled riot. Doors and windows were boarded with plywood. In Victoria’s time it had been elegant.
“The old Poinciana,” the redhead said. “Finest place in the Caribbean when it was built. Termite paradise now. I looked at it once for a Miami friend with a notion he could revitalize it. Huh-uh. But it’s still used. The mountain people camp there when they want to stay near town.”
A couple of things about her seemed odd. She didn’t speak like a moll. Her well-modulated voice held intelligence and breeding. And for a mere bag girl, her opinions appeared to carry weight among the Mafia. She was obviously something more than a carrier of unlawful money. She had even been told my true identity. That made me curious. I asked her how come. She gave me a Mona Lisa smile.
“When Chip got scared he could lose the casino, I called Davey and told him to shoot you down here for the rescue.”
Davey? Davey Hawk?
Hawk taking orders from this broad? It hit me right between the eyes. Was Mitzy Gardner an AXE agent? Was Hawk playing games, letting me dig it out by myself?
“Honey,” I said, “fun and games are fine, but who the hell are you?”
My question got a counter question. “Which one of my hats would you like me to put on?”
I damned her under my breath and leered to even the score. “I’d rather see you take them all off.”
She didn’t lose her cool. “You’re in luck. Were on our way”
We continued into open country with jungle growing thick down to the road on both sides. Then there were patches of sugar cane and small banana plantations. The girl talked about the changing economy of the place. Bananas brought more profit than sugar cane — green gold she called them. Mace, cloves, cinnamon, and the fragrant tonka beans were also becoming popular crops. She said she had a small plantation on the far side of the island. A nest egg for a rainy day I assumed.
The road was anything but straight. It followed the shore for awhile, then it bent toward the mountains that formed a spine down the middle of the island.
When the plantations were behind us, the ground roughened into swamp jungle on the sea side and wrinkled into hogbacks and canyons the other way, heavily timbered and tangled with vine. We were about twelve miles from town when Mitzy swung the heavy car away from the road into two sand ruts, wallowed a quarter of a mile down that and stopped where the trees did, at the back of a lagoon.
She killed the engine, kicked out of her sandals, and opened her door. I sat admiring the view. The shore cupped around deep blue water to a horn half a mile away. There the land rose abruptly to a high nose with the hint of an ancient fortification still visible.
The view in front of me was even better. Mitzy was out of the Caddy, running, shucking off jacket and pants, briefs, streaking for the water. She turned and flung an arm to wave at me. I didn’t need a second invitation. I dropped my own clothes and went after her, but she’d had a head start and hit the water well before I did.