The Consummata (19 page)

I was ahead of her now. “But then the Bay of Pigs came along, and the Cuban Missile Crisis, and—”

“And the president shot down in a Dallas street, and all of the plans to assassinate Castro and invade Cuba became a political embarrassment, a Cold War liability. If Castro had JFK killed, nobody wanted to say so—at best, it meant that embarrassing proof we’d been plotting to kill a foreign leader would come out, and at worst that a hailstorm of nukes would fall all over the world.”

“Wait,” I said, and I touched her hand, squeezed it. “The money-truck heist—that was well
after
the Kennedy hit. All of these Cuba plans would have been shut down by then.”

She nodded. “Yes, but there were rogue elements within the Company that still wanted those efforts to move forward. That forty-million-dollar heist was a last ditch effort by those forces to fund an invasion of Cuba by Cuban exiles.”

“Actually a noble cause,” I said, then rolled my eyes. “All except for the part where Morgan the Raider gets framed for the heist.”

“That was a genius stroke,” Kim said, with a wry half-smile. “Somebody must have enlisted your crew and either painted it as a money-making effort, or possibly brought them in as patriots. You were all highly decorated heroes of the European theater.”

“They would have come aboard as patriots,” I said, “stand-up guys willing to re-up with Uncle Sam for one last mission...with one exception—the son of a bitch who wound up with the money. A man who had been disfigured in the war and felt his government owed him in a big way. The man you
heard confess, Kim. The man I shot on a windy runway in Nuevo Cadiz.”

Kim had nodded all through that, but now she held my eyes with so much concern in hers, I knew something bad was coming.

She said, “I agree with your high assessment of the character of your old war buddies...with that one notable exception. But Morgan...I’m sorry to have to tell you this...your friend, Art Keefer—last surviving member of your original Army heist crew—was killed last month.”

“Shit,” I said. I felt like I’d taken a body blow. “How?”

Art had helped us with surreptitious transport on the Nuevo Cadiz mission, but I’d stayed out of contact with him since, for his own protection—or anyway, what I’d thought was his own protection.

“A plane crash,” she said. “He was a pilot—what better way? Pilot error, they say, flying one of his small aircraft.”

“In a pig’s ass,” I said.

“You said Art wasn’t in on that forty-million haul, Morgan ...but are you
sure
?”

“I guess under the circumstances, I can’t be. Maybe that’s why Art helped me out when he shouldn’t have risked it—maybe he felt bad that I wound up blamed for a score I had nothing to do with.”

“But a score somebody signed your name to,” Kim said. “What about the other two on your crew?”

“Deceased. You know that.”

“Just in the last couple of years, right? Again, well after the money-truck heist? Meaning everybody on your crew but you, Morg, is dead now.”

I frowned, thinking it through. “One died of cancer, the other in an automobile accident—I never considered their deaths might have been liquidations.”

She cocked her head, raised an eyebrow. “The Company has given more people cancer than Phillip Morris. And do I have to tell you that a car crash can be staged?”

I shook my head. “Damn. I should have
seen
that.
Damn!”

“Don’t beat yourself up—until Keefer’s convenient death, I didn’t put it together, either.”

She stroked my cheek. Kissed me with a tenderness that made my heart ache almost as much as something else was aching.

“Darling,” she said, “we’ve both been working on this, from our respective positions. I know what you’ve been doing, all these months. Besides keeping your head down, you’ve been moving from coastal city to coastal city, going to museums and rare book stores and university libraries, tracking your namesake....”

“Sir Henry Morgan,” I said, nodding. “Before I shot my old buddy in the head, back in Nuevo Cadiz, he said he’d hidden the forty mil where Sir Henry kept
his
treasure. I figure the original Morgan’s treasure is long gone, but my old pal found one of the treasure hideaways and buried the loot. I have half a dozen good leads to track down between Panama and Jamaica.”

“Find that money,” she said, “and turn it in, and with my testimony to back you up, you’re a free man again. No more federal hounds on your trail.”

“Right.”

“But, darling, don’t you see, there’s
another
way...expose
the government traitor who set you up! And I believe the name of that traitor can be found, right here in Miami.”

I squinted at her, as if I were trying to bring that lovely face into sharper focus. “You said you were deep cover. What are you doing in Miami?”

“You and I are after the same prey—Jaimie Halaquez, the man who raided the treasury of the Cuban exiles here.”

“I thought the CIA was out of the Cuba business.”

“Overtly we are. Even covertly, not so much now. But these people were our allies,
are
our allies, and we keep an eye on them, their activities, and those who move against them. And they have something in common with the Company that I work for—they, too, have a traitor in their midst.”

“Halaquez,” I said.

“No,” she said, and shook her head firmly. “Halaquez is just a henchman for a traitor still among them. But if we can
find
Halaquez, and make him talk...and we
can
make him talk, Morgan...he will lead us to the one he’s working for. The one who has seen to it that for the last several years, all of the efforts of Little Havana’s Cuban exiles have gone for nothing.”

I laughed without humor. “I had that bastard in my damn hands, but he slipped out of them.”

“Halaquez?”

“Yes,” I said, and filled her in on my side of things.

It took a good ten minutes, going through in a linear fashion, starting with Pedro and company recruiting me to recover the stolen seventy-five grand, and winding up with the beating of Tango in her motel room, with me killing Halaquez’s crony there and Halaquez himself getting away.

“This has to be about more than just the seventy-five thousand dollars,” she said, when I finished, her expression and tone intense. “Two Cuban heavies, imported to back Halaquez up? It has to be much more.”

“The answer,” I said, “is tied up with this Richard Best character.”

“Him I’ve never heard of,” she admitted. “That’s a new lead...and maybe you
should
keep chasing it down.” She took my face in her hands and said, “We’re very close. You keep up your efforts on the Best front. Can I contact you here?”

“Yes, through the madam—Bunny.”

She nodded. “I know Bunny. This house is an intelligence resource for the Company. Morg, you can reach me at the Raleigh Hotel. I’m registered as Kim Winters.”

That made me smile—Winters was the name I’d married her under, using “Morgan” as a first name.

“Spies shouldn’t be sentimental slobs,” I told her.

Her smile turned up wickedly at one corner. “I never said I was perfect, did I?”

“No. That was me who said that about you.”

She gave me a kiss, nothing hot, just friendly, and slid off the bed.

“Gotta go,” she said.

I followed her to the hidden door. “Why? Look, that bed is as good as any other. We’ve talked our business. So let’s get
down
to business.”

She shook her head. “I would like nothing better than to crawl under those covers with you and not come out for a week. But we don’t
have
a week, and I’m just stubborn
enough to want to start this marriage off with better than a quickie.”

“Aw, Kim, for Christ’s sake....”

“Morg, do you know who I report to? Do you know who’s in town, running the Halaquez operation? Or did your ego tell you
you
were the star of the show?”

My mouth dropped and the words crawled out. “Not... Crowley.”

“Yes. Your own personal Inspector Gerard himself. I report directly to him, and he knows about us, so he’s been watching me like a hawk. That’s why I’ve waited for days to risk this. My love...we
must
be careful.”

I took her by the arms, firm, almost rough. Almost. “I want to see him.”

“What?”

“Crowley. Goddamnit, Kim, we’re working on the same case. I want Halaquez, and so, apparently, does he. I want a chance to sit down with him at a neutral place, and see if we can’t come up with a truce till this thing is over.”

“Morgan, I don’t really think that’s—”

“Kim, I am trying to conduct an investigation, a manhunt, from a goddamn whorehouse bedroom. I have something in common with the Cubans—I want some freedom. What do you say?”

Her eyes were slitted with worry. “If he knows we’ve had contact, I would be in a shitload of trouble.”

“Then make up a story. Say I tracked you down, and we talked just long enough for me to make this request.”

She thought about it.

Then she nodded, crisply. “All right. Is there a phone in here?”

“No, but Bunny has one.”

Bunny—who was learning not to ask too many questions—gave us the use of both her office and her phone.

Kim dialed the Raleigh, said, “Room 414, please,” and moments later had Crowley on the line, telling him she was sitting in an all-night diner near the City Curb Market, and that I’d come out of nowhere and braced her.

“Crowley wants to talk to you,” she said, putting just the right alarm and hesitancy in her voice.

She gave me the receiver.

“Hi, Walter. Long time no see.”

“Morgan,” Crowley said, giving it the inflection of a curse. “I guess I should have kept a tail on that wife of yours.”

“She’s not my wife. That was just a cover story, old buddy. I want a few minutes of your time. We have some mutual interests here in Miami that could be served.”

“...All right. You’ll want the meet in a neutral place.”

“Tomorrow morning, ten o’clock, Bayfront Park. Find yourself a seat in that amphitheater, and come alone. Keep in mind what happened to Mayor Cermak in that arena.”

“All right, Morgan. I’ll keep that in mind. And I’ll come alone.”

“I see any sign of agents backing you up, no meet. Got it?”

“Got it.”

I hung up.

Kim said, “He agreed to it?”

“Yeah.”

“He’ll have agents there, Morg.”

“Oh, I know. They’ll be hard to spot. They’ll be the assholes in dark suits and ties.”

That made her smile.

Then I walked her up to Gaita’s room and, before I could convince her that another half an hour would be worth risking, my bride had flown.

The cab dropped me under the front awning of the Raleigh Hotel, a 1930s-modern hotel dating to the pre-war boom, when that ten-mile sandbar called Miami Beach really took off. In a black sport jacket, charcoal sport shirt, and gray trousers, I looked like just another fairly well-off tourist, though my only baggage was the .45 under my arm.

I didn’t enter the lobby, instead skirting around the building to where a massive if oddly shaped swimming pool was alive with Latin-styled popular music, laughter, and splashing. A nice salty breeze was rolling in off the ocean, but it was still a warm night. Lots of pretty girls in bikinis sunning by Hawaiian-type torchlight were getting plied with mixed drinks by determined guys in bathing suits, who knew that at a little after one o’clock a.m., they better get lucky damn soon.

Avoiding the lobby probably hadn’t been a necessity—I wasn’t checking in, or even asking for information, so the desk having my photo probably didn’t come into play. Though I supposed it was possible that
some
security was lounging in the lobby.

But I didn’t think so. An advantage the hunted has over
the hunter is that the hunter is seldom in hiding. The hunter never thinks about getting stalked himself.

So when I knocked on the door of room 414, it only took two knocks before it cracked open, without even a “Who is it?” Which meant I’d wasted time coming up with the “Telegram, Mr. Crowley” gag.

I pushed the door open, grabbing Crowley by the arm with one hand—he was in a terrycloth Raleigh bathrobe over blue silk pajamas—and with the other whipping the .45 out, kicking the door closed behind me.

I dragged him into the hotel room—not a suite, just a good-size room with sea-foam coloration and modern furnishings, if 1937 was your idea of modern. I dumped him on the bed, went over and double-locked the door, using the night latch, commenting, “You ought to try this thing—it’s the latest in security measures,” then came back, pulled up a rounded pink chair that was more comfortable than it looked and sat across from him. Pointing the .45 at him in a not terribly menacing way.

Just menacing enough.

“Hello, Walter.”

“You’re out of your goddamn mind!” Crowley spat.

That bland mug of his actually worked up some emotion, the tiny dark eyes dancing with outrage in the pale oval face under the thinning amber hair. His fists were clenched, and they looked small, like a child’s. He wasn’t a small man, but he was smaller than me, and fish-belly pale.

Bureaucrats can make your life a living hell, but they often don’t look like much in the flesh.

“I decided to move our meeting up a few hours,” I said. “And change the location. Last-minute changes for meets, there’s another security measure you Company boys may want to consider.”

“Morgan, there are half a dozen agents on this floor!”

“Yeah, all snug in their beds, or maybe down by the pool trying to get laid. Guys on your side of the fence never figure they need any protection. You’re big bad G-men, after all.”

“What the hell do you want?”

“Like I said on the phone—I want to talk. I just don’t want to get my ass hauled off to the slammer before we have the chance to confab.”

“I told you I’d come alone tomorrow.”

“Yeah, well, you were lying. But I don’t hold that against you. I already knew I wasn’t going to show up at that park.”

His upper lip curled back in outrage, exposing too much gum and tiny white teeth. “
Where
is Kim Stacy? What have you
done
with Kim Stacy!”