South by Southeast (24 page)

“I'm only going to say one thing,” April said. “I know you made Chela a promise, but it sounds like you're trying to sabotage your movie role. Just when things start moving ahead for you, all of a sudden your director is the bogeyman. Gustavo Escobar is eccentric, but that doesn't make him a serial killer.”

Before my last exchange with Escobar, I might have agreed with her. “When it comes to my cases, when have my instincts ever been that wrong?”

April couldn't argue. Never.

“I hope this isn't the first time,” April said finally. “I'll call you
back. But under one condition. Don't shut me out. If I'm helping you, I know what you know. And if there's something to it, you won't talk to any reporters before you talk to me.”

The
L.A. Times
may have laid her off, but April's reporter spirit was alive and well.

“Deal,” I said. “Tell me anything you find, no matter how small.”

“I'm on it,” April said, and hung up.

For a short time, at least, April and I were a team again. It almost felt good.

April took twenty minutes to call me back. Escobar hadn't come out to his car yet, and neither of the security guards in the lot had noticed me sitting in my car waiting.

“I can't see a name on this boat, but I might have something,” April said.

She had found a
Miami
magazine story online about Gustavo Escobar with a photograph of him at a dockside party after the release of his film. The only boat in view was white with a cherry-red stripe, a vessel small enough to match Victoria's description. The photo had been taken at the Fontainebleau marina a year earlier.

The Fontainebleau was one of Miami Beach's best-known hotels, on Collins Avenue and 44th Street. I had stayed there many times. It was an iconic hotel with a history, featured in
Goldfinger,
and had hosted Frank Sinatra, Jerry Lewis, Elvis Presley, and countless other celebrities over the years.

That seemed like a good fit for him.

“Okay, thanks.”

“Hey, not so fast,” she said. “What are you going to do with this information?”

“Think I'll do a little fishing. And find a way to keep him busy tonight.”

Since April insisted on full disclosure, I worked out my plan with her. Escobar preferred to drive himself to and from the set
in his bright white Hummer, which was easy to recognize from a distance. Still on the phone with April, I composed a note to stick beneath his windshield wiper. If he was my killer, the note would get his attention.

YOU AND ROSA ARE IN DEEP WATER. I HAVE ENOUGH EVIDENCE TO DROWN YOU, BUT I WOULD RATHER GET RICH. MEET MR. VANDAMM IN HIS ROOM AT THE FONTAINEBLEAU HOTEL AT 8 A.M., OR I WILL UNMASK YOU
.

“He's going to laugh at that,” April said.

“Unless he has reason not to.”

If Escobar was my killer, the note might shake him up enough to keep him from hunting. He would have to assume he was being watched. And what if he actually came to the hotel? A killer would not politely wait until the assigned meeting time.

“If he doesn't show up, please try another angle,” April said, her voice pleading. “I know you've been right before, but this sounds really far-fetched. It could blow up in your face. He tried to give you a break, Ten. If you mess this up . . .”

“I promise,” I said. “If he doesn't bite when I go fishing, he's not my guy.”

I have a dummy credit card under the name of Phillip Vandamm left over from my past year of secrets. I hadn't used that card since Hong Kong, but I kept it with me as a souvenir. There was a chance that the card had been deactivated, but I bet it still had a bit of juice left. Extra cash would be Marsha's way of inviting me to call her again anytime. I was her gambling addict in need of a fix.

I might accidentally invite my femme fatale back into my life if I put a charge on the card, but it was a chance I was willing to take. I didn't want my name anywhere near the hotel records.

Phillip Vandamm is the bad guy who chases hapless Cary Grant in Alfred Hitchcock's
North by Northwest
in a case of mistaken identity, and if I know Marsha, the name wasn't a coincidence. She could have named the card for Grant's good-guy character, Roger Thornhill, but that wasn't her style. I tried to forget what happens to the villain at the end of the movie.

I sat for a long time to give my plan thought. I didn't want a direct confrontation with Escobar. I only wanted to lure him into my trap so I would have evidence, however flawed, for the police. If I could, I wanted to avoid a face-to-face meeting. I would need time to set up my lair, and I couldn't let Escobar out of my sight.

This would be a two-person job.

The Fontainebleau had plenty of rooms available, so I made my reservation from the car, using the dummy credit card to hold two adjoining rooms. I also left instructions that a key to the first room only, room 1025, should be given to Gustavo Escobar at the front desk if he asked for Mr. Vandamm. He should be sent right up for immediate entry without a call.

My net was ready. Next, to bait the hook.

I scanned the sheet of paper where I'd written the note, searching for identifying characteristics—a stray phone number or information about me. I'd used the blank side of a WaveRunner rental receipt I'd gotten at the beach with Chela a week before. I'd paid cash, so it only mentioned the price, date, and company, South Beach Day Rentals. No names, no credit-card numbers. I would have preferred a blank sheet, but it would do. My note was written in carefully masked block letters on the blank side, the Sharpie's ink bleeding through.

I was parked near the gated exit. Escobar was parked with the other early arrivals near the mansion's garage door, which lay open as a makeshift rally point, equipment storehouse, and break area. The parking area was well lighted, but I was able to stick to the shadows as I made my way from one end of the driveway to the
other on foot, walking casually. I had credentials to explain my presence if either of the guards saw me—hell, they knew me—but I didn't want Escobar to suspect I'd been sniffing around his car.

When I got to the Hummer, I slipped the paper firmly in place and hopped down in one smooth motion. The paper flapped a bit in the breeze, but it was secure. He couldn't miss it.

I slipped into the garage to make one more phone call.

He picked up his cell phone on the second ring. I'd finally trained him to keep it on.

“Yeah?” he answered, sounding grumpy because he was already sleepy.

“Hey, Dad,” I said. “You busy tonight?”

I judged that the shoot had at least another hour left, so I made a quick run to the hotel.

The Fontainebleau is a spectacle as much as a hotel. When it opened in the mid-1950s, it was the luxury gem of Miami Beach, dreamed up by famed architect Morris Lapidus. Now it's listed on the U.S. Register of Historic Places, and the walls vibrate with stories. The rooms are arranged in a bow-tie shape, mirrored by the huge pool area, where a scene from
Scarface
was filmed.

The lobby was made famous in Jerry Lewis's 1960 movie
The Bell Hop
; the hotel was the real star of that film. I've visited a lot of luxury hotels, but the sheer size of the chandeliers and the expanse of the Fontainebleau's shiny lobby, bow-tie patterns on the floor, evoke an old-school glamour newer hotels can only dream of. Of course, there's a dark side to that history. During segregation, I wouldn't have been permitted to walk through the front door, much less reserve a room. And that was true for entertainers such as Sammy Davis Jr., who could perform at the hotel but couldn't stay there. Mind-boggling.

I was whistling Sammy Davis Jr.'s “Candy Man” when I went to the front desk to check in and claim my key. It was eight thirty when I walked into Mr. Vandamm's tenth-floor room.

The room was smallish, with only a partial ocean view, but I wasn't there to sightsee; at night, the ocean is just a dark hole in the air. A smaller space was better for my purposes, anyway. I surveyed the room and found a good home for the nanny-cam disguised as a clock radio I'd picked up at a cheap spy shop on my way. Spy shops don't rule every corner of Miami like they did in the eighties, at the height of the cocaine trade, but you can find the basics on short notice.

I set up the camera on the desk, angled between the bed and the doorway, and checked to make sure it would capture Escobar once he entered the room. My evidence might not hold up in court, but his presence alone would be incriminating.

I finished a few last touches to prepare the rooms according to the plan I'd mapped out with my father, and everything looked as perfect as a movie set.

“Gotcha, you sick freak,” I whispered.

I had no idea how right—and wrong—I was.

I would have loved to see Gustavo Escobar's face when he found my note on his windshield, but I lacked equipment and prep time for that. Instead, I parked half a block down the quiet residential street outside the gate to wait for the end of the shoot.

After an hour of waiting, I was climbing out of my skin. Dad had always come home in a bad mood when he had to spend long hours on surveillance, and I understood why. At least fifteen cars streamed out before Escobar's. I was wondering if he'd decided to ditch the Hummer when it came racing around the corner, turning toward the stop sign with a screech of brakes. I'd kept my infrared
binoculars trained on the gate, but he'd left so fast that I'd missed the driver's face. Was it a decoy, or was it Escobar himself?

Cursing to myself, I followed the Hummer.

At the stop sign, I got my positive ID. I could tell that Esocbar was driving the car by the shape of his head, but he wasn't alone. Louise Cannon was sitting beside him, talking in an animated way. Escobar kept his eyes straight ahead. Had he shared the note with her? If so, it wasn't likely he was the killer.

“He's out,” I said after I got Dad on the phone. “Heading for the causeway.”

“Remember—two or three car lengths,” Dad said. “Don't get antsy.”

Dad sounded more alert than he had in months. Gleeful, really. He'd given me a lecture on exercising caution, but he loved the chase as much as I did. Maybe more. He knew I'd had surveillance training, but he couldn't help acting like my CO.

“Yessir,” I said, just to give him the thrill. “I've got him.”

Because there was so little traffic, I stayed far behind him. Star Island is tiny, so Escobar only had to turn twice before he reached the guard gate leading to the MacArthur Causeway. We were all familiar faces by now, so the guard waved us past, Escobar first and then me a safe distance later. On the causeway over Biscayne Bay, I drifted back eight or ten car lengths.

I expected Escobar to keep driving east toward the hotel-laden shoreline, maybe even to the Fontainebleau, but instead, he turned north on Alton Road, away from the tourist district, into a neighborhood of modest homes under canopies of coconut palms and shady ficus trees. Six-foot bougainvillea hedges flamed in hot pink and orange under the streetlamps, both street décor and privacy fencing. The quiet area nudged a memory free: I'd heard that reclusive novelist Thomas Harris had a house somewhere on Miami Beach, a thought that brought unwelcome visions of Hannibal Lecter from
The Silence of the Lambs
.