“We’ll call in just before noon anyway to see if Harv has anything juicy.”
Bert Kindler and Barney Scheff arrived at the Harkinson place a few minutes past eleven on Monday morning, drove through the open gate and got out of the department sedan slowly.
A maid in a blue and white uniform, and a man in dark pants and a blue shirt, suit coat over his arm, were coming down the open staircase from an apartment over the garages. Both were apparently Cuban. The maid hurried toward them with smiling greeting.
“No, not Mrs. Harkinson,” Scheff said after they had identified themselves. “We want to ask you some questions, honey. What’s your name?”
“Why question? Why?” the girl demanded.
“Your name,” Kindler said.
The girl looked very frightened. She backed away slowly. “Why?” she asked again.
“Honey,” Scheff said, “maybe you haven’t got papers, huh? Maybe we just put you in the car and take you down and...”
“No!” she said. “No! Oh please!”
“ ’Cisca!” the man said sharply in Spanish. “Go back up to the apartment and wait. They will not take you anywhere!”
As she went running up the stairs they stared blandly and curiously at the man. “Comprendemos un poquito, hombre,” Kindler said.
“My English is adequate. Her name is Miss Francisca Torcedo. What do you wish to know?”
“What’s your name?”
“Raoul Kelly.”
“You work for the Harkinson woman too?”
“No.”
“Kelly, what makes you think you can stop us from taking that little broad in for questioning if we want to? Man, I get a reaction like that from anybody, my ears grow points,” Scheff said.
“I think I can stop you if you will listen to why it would be a bad idea. If you won’t listen, I can’t. You look as if you’ve both been in your line of work long enough to want to listen.”
“Talk a little,” said Kindler.
“First, her papers, and mine, are in perfect order. She does not have much English. She is of a family which was very wealthy and important in Havana. When the Castro militia came into the city, her father was shot and killed in the confusion. She went into the street and wounded a militiaman. They took her to a military compound and kept her there. She was mistreated. There was serious emotional damage. Her brother and I were in the Bay of Pigs invasion. He was killed. I was captured and exchanged later. He told me to look after her. I am going to marry her. She is getting better, little by little, day by day. Taking her in for questioning might push her way, way back, out of anybody’s reach, and she might not come out of it. I am close enough to her to be able to answer any question you might want to ask her. If you try to bother her, I will try to stop you, believe me.”
Both officers looked sleepy. “Kelly means it,” Scheff said.
“What we could do,” Kindler said, “we could stand in the shade.” They walked to the nearby shade. Kindler said, “If you are like we call unresponsive, then we take her in where we got somebody can speaka the spic.”
“And you take me too, I suppose. Horizontal, if I make a fuss. Cubans are tricky. You got to watch them.”
“He’s real sensitive, Bert,” Scheff said.
“You know what I think about Cubans?” Kindler said. “I wish there wasn’t any other kind of civilian in Dade County except Cubans. You know what that would do statistically, man? It would cut crime almost in half. I could spend more time with the wife and kids. So unpucker yourself, bud.”
Raoul grinned ruefully. “So all right. My mistake. What do you want to know?”
Scheff gestured toward the main house. “Word has it here and there the boss lady is prime gash, and it was old Fer Fontaine set her up here before he died. Bert and me have a thing about bothering anybody who has real good friends in politics. Anybody we might know subbing for the Senator?”
“No.”
“So then if we happen to be trying to locate somebody by the name of Staniker, and if we leaned on her some, like saying we know Staniker kept on using her as a shack job after she sold the boat he operated for her, she wouldn’t phone anybody in the court house or in Tallahassee.”
“It’s not very likely.”
“Would she say it wasn’t like that with Staniker?” Kindler asked.
“I don’t know. She might deny it. She might admit it.”
“Then Staniker wasn’t just making a brag to his marina pals?” Scheff asked.
“No. But whether she admits it or denies it, I imagine she’d tell you the same thing she told Francisca, that she and Staniker had a quarrel before he took the job aboard the Muñeca, and she told him to stay away from her. And she’d tell you that since Staniker came back from the Bahamas last Friday he’s been bothering her by calling her up and asking to see her.”
“So,” Scheff said idly, “last night she went to see him to tell him to stop bugging her?”
Raoul explained that Crissy Harkinson hadn’t been off her property since Saturday afternoon, and explained about the car and the locked gate.
“But she didn’t know you were right here all the time with your girl, Kelly?”
“No. I’ve never stayed here before. But it seemed like a good idea to talk Francisca into it. That locked gate wouldn’t keep out anybody who wanted to get in. Staniker used to thump Crissy Harkinson around sometimes. I thought he might get loaded and come around and Francisca might try to keep him from bothering Mrs. Harkinson. And there was another unknown factor too, a kid Mrs. Harkinson just broke up with because he was acting strange. The locked gate was to keep both of them out.”
Scheff and Kindler both began to speak at once, then Scheff let Kindler take it. He said, “Was the kid getting any?”
“I know she would deny that. But he was. She hired him to teach her how to sail, and it went on from there.”
“Name?”
“Oliver something. Nineteen, twenty. A big, husky kid. Kept his sailboat in her boat basin. Flying Dutchman. I looked it over once when Mrs. Harkinson was out. You could probably trace him through the name of his boat. The Skatter, with a k.”
Raoul saw the two men glance at each other with identical expressions of bland satisfaction. “And,” said Scheff, “I guess the reason the kid began acting weird and getting on her nerves was because he knew she used to be Staniker’s piece, and he knew Staniker was back and he knew Staniker was bothering her.”
“She told Francisca the kid knew Staniker was bothering her.”
“So she gave Oliver the old heave? Like take your sailboat and go, Sonny.”
“He came and got the boat in the early evening last night. She’d taken a pill and gone to bed early. She asked Francisca to take a look later on and be sure the boat was gone and the kid wasn’t hanging around the area or bothering Mrs. Harkinson. I went with Francisca when she took a look.”
“What time was that?”
“A little after nine last night. Then Francisca went and looked into the bedroom and Mrs. Harkinson was there asleep.”
“Good-looking woman?” Kindler asked.
“I’ve seen her at a distance. Well built. I would guess about thirty, but Francisca is certain she is close to forty.”
“And fooling around with young kids,” Scheff said. “I got a boy nineteen. My old lady is thirty-eight. Look, why is your girl working for a bum like the Harkinson woman?”