Riding the Rap (15 page)

“I just met them myself seven days ago,” Harry said, “but I haven't seen them yet.” He held up his bathing cap. “I have to put this on, anybody comes in.”

“I saw them,” King said. “I won't forget them, either.”

The wrong attitude.

“I'd put the blindfold back on,” Harry said, “if I were you,” knowing King wouldn't do it, the type of hairy-assed individual he was, used to having his way.

“How long have you been here?”

See? Didn't even listen.

“This is my seventh day,” Harry said.

“How much they want from you?”

“All they can get.”

He saw King becoming interested in him. “Yeah? What do you do?”

“I'm retired,” Harry said, not feeling a need to confide in this guy, this crook. He began to wonder how the black guy was going to work his scam, whisper things to him with King in the room. It was something to think about. But if
the black guy could cut out his partners to deal with him one-on-one, he could do the same with King.

“You ever play the Breakers,” King said, “the ocean course?”

Harry shook his head. “Never have.”

“I was on a straight par four,” King said, “lining up my approach. If I got anywhere near the pin I was going for a bird. . . .”

 

Louis took Chip to the kitchen to make drinks, but mostly to get the man away from Bobby. Louis got out the ice, put it in three glasses and poured Scotch, telling the man, “The way you
see
something work in your head, don't mean it can work that way when you go to do it. Understand? Bobby say they gonna be talking anyway, comparing their situations, asking each other if they gonna pay and how much, all that shit.”

“They ought to be in separate rooms,” Chip said.

“That's right, but what you have is this cheap motherfucking video system, a camera in the one room. I told you I wasn't gonna keep running up and down the stairs, check on the room don't have the camera. Man, a cut-rate operation like this, you play it as you go.”

“Bobby's got money,” Chip said.

“You want to ask him for it?”

Louis saw the man thinking of something else, sipping his drink and thinking.

“I have to pay Dawn. She called, she's getting goosey.”

“You want me to talk to her?”

“It was on my mind—you and Bobby got back and I mentioned it to him. He's gonna go see her?”

“Want to scare her more'n she is, huh? Well, Bobby's the man.” Louis picked up his drink and the one for Bobby.

Chip said, “The marshal came back.”

Louis paused. “He see you?”

“Rang the bell, went around and knocked on the patio doors.”

“I want to know did he see you?”

Chip shook his head.

“We can talk about it afterwhile,” Louis said. He turned and led the way from the kitchen across the hall to the back study, the TV room.

Bobby was standing, watching the screen. He said, “Look at this.”

Louis turned to the screen with a drink in each hand. “Yeah? You said they be talking.”

Bobby said, “That's all you see? I told him don't take off the blindfold. He has it off.”

Louis said, “No,
I
told him don't take it off.”

Chip said, “This's what happens you start changing things.”

Louis said, “I knew we gonna have trouble with this one.”

Bobby said, “No, we're not,” and walked out of the room.

Chip said, “Where's he going?”

“Gonna beat him up,” Louis said. “Want to watch? Be good if the man fights back, huh?”

Louis's eyes held on the screen; he didn't look at Chip or hear him say anything. What
Louis saw, waiting for the door in the hostage room to open:

Ben King sitting hunched on his cot and Harry Arno, the bathing cap off, sitting hunched on his, the two hostages facing each other, Ben King doing the talking, gesturing, the man taking his left thumb in his right hand—look at him—like you grip a golf club, taking a short swing now, showing Harry—the man, blood in his hair, blood on his shirt—telling Harry about his golf game. It's what he was doing. Wait. Looking up now. Harry looking up and putting his bathing cap on quick and then sitting back, and here was Bobby in the room, Bobby from behind going to Ben King, Ben King starting to push himself up from the cot, Bobby grabbing him by the hair to raise his face and punch him, what it looked like, but it wasn't happening. Right there Chip said, “Jesus!” loud, because Bobby's right hand was behind him, coming out from under his Latino fiesta shirt with a piece Louis hadn't seen before, not the Browning, one that looked like it, an automatic that size
Bobby put in Ben King's face, King all eyes seeing it, mouth coming open, and Bobby shot him. They heard the sound of it like somewhere in the house far away. Louis watched Bobby turn and look up at the camera, his face on the screen with no special kind of expression, like saying to them, hey, nothing to it, and now he was gone. Louis saw Ben King lying dead across his cot in the trash, blood on the wall, man, blood all over it, Harry Arno sitting there made of stone with his bathing cap on.

Louis looked at Chip staring at the screen.

“You wanted Bobby Deo, you got him.”

 

Lay it on the man, then go speak to Bobby. He was in the mother's bedroom now, the show over, but still holding the piece when Louis walked in and turned on the light. Louis stood watching him, not saying anything just yet, wanting to hear what Bobby had to say.

Nothing. Laying the piece on the dresser, he looked over at Louis and Louis said, “What you got there?”

Bobby seemed to shrug, subdued after killing a man. He said, “A Sig Sauer. I've had it.”

“You had it at the golf course,” Louis said. “I see you getting out of the car without a piece . . . but you had that on you, huh? Have it on you all the time. You wanted to shoot the man right then, didn't you? Out on the links. Why was that, you hadn't shot anybody in a while?”

“I didn't like him,” Bobby said.

“I got that impression.”

“You the one told him don't take off the blindfold. Didn't you say, or you shoot him?”

“In the head,” Louis said. “Laying it on to make my point.”

“Well, you tell them what you gonna do, man, you have to do it. You know? Or else don't say it.”

“I do the telling and you do the shooting, huh?”

“I could see already it was a waste of time with him. He wasn't gonna pay us nothing.”

“What about the mess you made?”

Bobby said, “Harry can clean it up,” still subdued, like he was tired or didn't care.

But when Louis said, “Harry, the witness, heard the whole thing. You gonna shoot him too?”

Bobby got his attitude back, put on that macho shit saying, “If I have to.”

It hooked Louis. He said, “You mean if you want to.” He watched Bobby shrug like, yeah, that was cool, and Louis said, “What you gonna do with the man's body?”

“Dump him in the swamp. You want to help me?”

Louis walked over to the dresser; he picked up the piece Bobby had told him was a Sig Sauer and hefted it.

Bobby said, “Light, uh, for a .45? Eight shots.”

“You think that's enough?”

“I can have one, nine millimeter, holds twenty in the magazine, if I want it. Five hundred.”

“Go to war with a piece like that,” Louis said. “How ‘bout I help you to the car with Mr. King? You take him to the swamp, wherever you take people, and I'll get Harry to clean up the room.”

Bobby gave him his shrug.

“Want the room nice,” Louis said, “for the next guest. That is, if you like him.”

Bobby gave his dead-eyed look now, no expression.

The man's problem, he had no sense of humor.

 

Louis said to Harry, sitting on the cot with him, “You didn't see nothing, you didn't hear nothing.”

“It was loud,” Harry said. “Jesus.”

“I bet it was.”

“I had the bathing cap on.”

The man seemed numb.

“I know you did. Like doing time, man, you don't know nothing going on around you, even right in the cell you're in. So don't think about it no more. You never saw the man. . . . You listening to me?”

He watched Harry's bathing cap with the yellow flower nod up and down, the man sitting straight, like afraid to move.

Louis sat thinking for a minute, looking at Mr. King's stain smeared on the opposite wall, then looked away as he realized he was staring at it. He said, “Harry, go on in the bathroom and stand at the mirror—you be away from the camera—and pull your blindfold off.” He had to say, “Go on,” before Harry picked up his chains and shuffled in there. Louis followed him.

Louis stood behind Harry, taller, looking over the man's shoulder to see his face appear, red marks on it from the bathing cap, eyes bloodshot, with the pitiful expression of a man who didn't know shit what was happening to him.

Louis said, “Harry, what you see behind you, man, is your salvation. Me. I'm the only way you gonna get out of here alive. I want you to see
what I look like ‘cause we partners now. Understand?”

He watched Harry's head nod up and down without much change in his eyes.

“You gonna do whatever I tell you, huh?”

Harry nodded.

“We get out of here, you gonna take a trip to Freeport with me.” Harry waited and Louis said, “Aren't you?”

Harry nodded.

“And since we partners, we get there you gonna move half your money from your bank account to my bank account.” Louis paused. “Go on, nod your head.”

Harry nodded.

 

Chip was back on his weed, moving like a man underwater to sit down on the sofa, stoned as far as you could go without losing it. He looked up at Louis fooling with the remote and said, “He killed him. Just like that.” As if Louis hadn't been here to see it.

“That's Bobby's way,” Louis said, “you fuck with him.”

“He's going to see Dawn tomorrow.”

“That's a bad idea,” Louis said.

“I told him he didn't have to, I'd call her. He said he wanted to talk to her anyway, get his fortune told.”

“It's still a bad idea,” Louis said.

F
riday morning Raylan called Reverend Dawn from Miami, gave his name, told her he was there last Sunday for a reading, had stopped by yesterday and was anxious to talk to her again.

She said, “I know.”

Her voice calm, telling him—the way Raylan heard it—she knew who he was and what he wanted to talk to her about. She didn't try to avoid him. When he asked if he could come by this morning, she said as long as he came an hour or so before noon; she'd be leaving
then to go to the restaurant. So Raylan got in the Jaguar and headed up 95 in the traffic, the lanes both ways, north and south, strung with cars and pickups, vans, semis, motor homes . . . Otherwise it was a nice sunny day and Raylan felt ready for it. He had on his dark blue suit, the air-conditioning turned up high.

Yesterday afternoon he had stopped by the Sheriffs Office to run Louis Lewis on FCIC, the state computer, and found he had spelled the name right. Lewis comma Louis. Also known as Ibrahim Abu Aziz. Date of birth—Louis three years younger than Raylan. A notation said: Born in Freeport, Grand Bahama. Black male, black hair, brown eyes. Six feet tall, 165 pounds—if they ever had a fistfight they'd be evenly matched. Scar, right arm, not specific. No FBI number. Early charges of importation of marijuana nolle prossed, temporarily dismissed for some reason and never brought up. Grand theft, auto, nolle prossed. Here we go:

A 790.01, carrying a concealed weapon. A 790.16, discharging a machine gun in public, and a 790.19, shooting into or throwing deadly missiles into a dwelling. Which sounded like a drive-by. Convicted on all counts. His sentence wasn't on the sheet—or all the hustles he got away with that Raylan read between the lines—but Louis must have done a few years' state time.

So Raylan's three suspects were all felons: Warren Ganz, one-time homicide suspect convicted of bank fraud and placed on probation;
Bobby Deo, suspected killer for hire, convicted of manslaughter; and Louis Lewis, minor felon until brought up on gun charges and convicted. The question that remained in Raylan's mind: which one was in charge? It would appear to be Ganz. But could he handle two ex-cons? Raylan didn't know enough about Louis Lewis to make a valid judgment, so he saw Bobby Deo as the one to look out for.

Later on he picked up Joyce and they went to Joe's Stone Crab for dinner. At the table he told her everything he knew to date and his theory that Harry could be in Ganz's house—even though, he admitted, it didn't make much sense.

It did to Joyce. She jumped at the idea, wanting to believe Harry was alive and not buried in a swamp. Raylan had to tell her why he couldn't go in to investigate without permission or a search warrant, and this was the part that didn't make sense to her. If he had no trouble shooting a man seated at a table with him in a restaurant, why couldn't he walk into someone's house?

He said to her, “Why don't you take my word for it?” tired of trying to explain distinctions, the gray areas in what he did for a living.

They picked at their crab claws pretty much in silence after that. He asked why she didn't try the mustard sauce. Joyce said she preferred drawn butter. Would she like another beer? No, she was fine. How about a piece of key lime pie?

He said to her, “We're sure polite, aren't we?”

Joyce didn't bother to answer.

 

This morning Raylan stopped by the Sheriffs Office to listen to the tape Falco had mentioned, off the wire Dawn was wearing when she met Warren Ganz.

Falco set it up in one of the squad room offices, saying the conversation had taken place right out there—Falco pointing through the glass wall of the office to a row of chairs—Ganz thinking he'd been brought in again for questioning. “You understand this was Dawn's idea,” a way she could touch Ganz, their prime suspect in the murder of the woman in Boca, and find out if he did it or not.

Falco started the tape and sat down with Raylan. This was what they heard:

 

Ganz:
You waiting to see the lieutenant?

Dawn:
They want to ask me about Mary Ann Demery, the lady who committed suicide? I'm Dawn, a friend of hers.

Ganz:
No, you're not. I'm her friend, you're her fortune-teller.

Dawn:
If you say so.

Ganz:
What's going on?

Dawn:
What do you mean?

Ganz:
You sit down and shake my
hand
? What're we gonna do, get cozy here? You read my mind and I confide in you?

Dawn:
I already know things about you.

Ganz:
Is that right? From Mary Ann or you look in a crystal ball?

 

“Dawn doesn't answer,” Falco said.

 

Ganz:
You read palms?

Dawn:
I can. I don't usually.

Ganz:
Here, take a look. Tell me what you see and maybe I'll confide in you.

Dawn (following a long pause):
You're egotistical.

Ganz:
Where do you see that?

Dawn:
Your index finger's longer than your ring finger. Most people, they're the same length.

Ganz:
Amazing.

Dawn:
You have trouble paying bills.

 

“You'll notice he doesn't deny it,” Falco said.

 

Ganz:
Which one's my life line?

Dawn:
This one, curving down.

Ganz:
All the way to my wrist. That's good, huh?

Dawn:
The length doesn't mean much.

Ganz:
What do you see?

Dawn:
A lack of energy.

Ganz:
Don't you see anything
good
?

Dawn:
Well, your fate line—you're ambitious, you know what you want. The line's a bit ragged though.

Ganz:
You want me to confide now?

Dawn:
If you like.

Ganz:
What if I tell you Mary Ann didn't commit suicide, she was murdered?

Dawn:
How do you know?

Ganz:
It's why we're here, isn't it? I'm a suspect and they want to know what you
feel
about me, or however you get your messages. If you're any good you know I didn't do it. But what if I tell you I know who did?

 

“The guy isn't dumb,” Falco said.

 

Dawn:
Do you?

Ganz:
Let's say I know, but I can't tell the people here. Let's say for personal reasons I can't afford to become implicated in any way, the idea I was close to a woman who was murdered. Okay?

Dawn:
You want
me
to tell them who did it.

 

“She isn't dumb either,” Falco said.

 

Ganz:
You go in there, you tell them you laid out your magic cards or you touched something Mary Ann gave you . . . Listen to me telling you how to do it. You're the pro, you see things, right? You turned over a card and there he was. Or you closed your eyes, went into your clairvoyant mode and you actually
saw
what happened, the guy picking Mary Ann up and throwing her off the balcony. You hear her scream as she's falling. The guy looks down, he turns, and that's when, clairvoyantly speaking, you see his face. You describe the guy to the cops and they go looking for him. Overnight you're
famous, the clairvoyant who cracked a murder case.

Dawn:
Get my picture in the paper . . .

Ganz:
In the paper, in magazines, you're on talk shows. Before you know it they're lined up to get a reading. Will I ever meet Mr. Right? Is my husband fooling around on me? Pretty soon you have a syndicated column in newspapers. . . .

Dawn:
What if they find out the guy I describe didn't do it?

Ganz:
Then you're fucked. You were gonna go in there and put it on
me
, and if it turns out I did it, you're a star. You want to work this mental telepathy shit to make a name for yourself. Okay, go ahead, try it. Only I'm clean, I wasn't anywhere near Mary Ann's place that night. As I said before, if you're any good, if you know what you're doing . . .

Dawn:
You said Mary Ann screamed as she was falling.

Ganz:
Wouldn't you?

Dawn:
She was already dead.

Ganz:
They told you that?

Dawn:
I told
them
.

Ganz (after a pause):
Are you always right?

Dawn:
Often enough. You want a quick reading? I won't charge you.

Ganz:
Sure, go ahead.

Dawn:
Give me your hand.
(long pause)
You make a good first impression, you can
turn on the charm when you want to, and can talk people into doing things they'd rather not. At least some people. You could make a lot of money in sales, but you'd have to work and that's out of the question. So you live by your wits and a high opinion of yourself, for what it's worth, and so far it hasn't proved to be worth much at all.

 

“She's got him down cold,” Falco said.

 

Ganz:
But I know what I want and I'm ambitious. You saw that in my palm, right? When we're through here, what do you say we have a drink?

 

“I think they had that drink,” Raylan said, watching Falco reach over to push the rewind button, “and got to be pretty good friends. She tell you right away it wasn't Ganz?”

“She said she didn't think so, but wanted to meditate on it. A couple days later she said she was positive he didn't do it.”

“After they got to know each other,” Raylan said.

Falco was nodding. “That was taken into consideration. We know she thought the guy had a lot of money, living in Manalapan.”

“Anyone tell her he didn't?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Why was Ganz your main suspect?”

“We didn't like anything about him, the guy's shifty. We know he'd borrowed money
from the victim, we see cancelled checks in the amount of two grand, twenty-five hundred, that add up to over twelve thousand. He says he paid her back in cash, if you want to believe that, this born fucking loser—we know he owed bookies in Miami. The theory was, he's in deep, he asks Mary Ann for another loan and she turns him down. The guy's desperate, frustrated, they get in a violent argument and he creams her with the bookend, this brass modernistic bull.”

“The one Dawn identified as the murder weapon,” Raylan said, “without having seen it.”

“Right, it was being held as evidence. She did see the other bookend on the shelf; there were two of them. We said, ‘You mean that one?' She goes, ‘No, the one that was used has blood on it.'”

“Wasn't it wiped clean?”

“No prints, no, but minute traces of blood around the base, this wood block the bull's standing on.”

“What about Ganz's prints?”

“All over the apartment. Listen to this, even on Mary Ann's checkbook. The only other prints belonged to the cleaning woman. That's another reason we leaned toward Ganz; there wasn't anyone else, unless some guy walked in off the street.”

“None of Dawn's prints around?”

“Not that I recall.”

“Wasn't she ever a suspect?”

“We checked her out. There was no reason to think she had a motive.”

Raylan gave that some thought before saying, “The two guys that robbed the grocery store, you haven't picked them up, have you?”

“Not that I've heard, no.”

“I think I know who they are.”

“Like you happen to know Ganz's mom?”

“In a way, yeah,” Raylan said. “I want to take them federal. If I don't, they're yours.”