The Consummata (21 page)

“What was that valuable thing?”

“I don’t know!”

“When he worked you over, Theresa, didn’t Halaquez say what he was looking for?”

“No! Just...
’Where is it?’
Over and over again...
where is it!
”

The door opened and I turned, wondering if I’d been made, hoping that if it was cops, Crowley calling off the dogs included alerting the local canines that I was off the federal wanted list.

But it wasn’t a dog at all—it was a Bunny.

Funny to see her in a black-and-gray business suit, looking more like an officer at a bank than a whorehouse madam. Even all that blonde hair was pinned back in a dignified way, though there was no hiding the purple streaks.

“Morgan,” Bunny said, and rushed to my side. “How’s my girl doing?”

“Ask her yourself,” I said, turned to smile and nod at the patient, then stepped aside.

I took a chair in the corner while the two women talked for about five minutes. Nothing touched upon why I was here. Finally I called Bunny over and she pulled a chair around, so we were facing each other. I saw Theresa thumb her morphine button, and her eyes closed, and she drifted off early in my conversation with Bunny, which was whispered.

“You’re taking a chance, being here,” Bunny said to me.

“Not as big as it used to be. I’ve worked out a truce with that fed, Crowley, though I’m not sure the white flag extends to the local fuzz.”

“I can spread that word to my contacts on the Miami PD,” Bunny said, “if it’ll help.”

“Worth a try. What do those cop contacts have to say about Tango’s situation?”

“Nobody has any idea that Morgan the Raider was in that
motel room. They think another guest at the Vincalla heard the scuffle, got involved, and one of Tango’s torturers got himself plugged with his own gun in the process. The fuzz figure this guest called it in and then made himself scarce.”

“And that’s as far as it goes?”

“No, they’re investigating. Questioning the other motel guests.”

“Good. That’ll keep ’em busy. Did they say anything about the Best killing? I understand cops from both Homicide and Burglary were here talking to Tango this morning.”

Her eyes and nostrils flared like a filly’s on its hind legs. “Damn, Morgan—you pick up information like blue serge does lint. As it happens, there’s an oddity about the Best killing that’s come up. Seems two neighbors at Best’s apartment house report hearing what might have been a scuffle next door, tallying with the approximate time of death.”

“That’s not surprising.”

“No, but these neighbors also heard noises
later
on...not another scuffle, but sounds that could have been Best’s room being tossed...that same night. About two hours after.”

“Really? Interesting.”

“Interesting? That all you have to say, Morg? What’s it mean?”

It might mean Halaquez had killed Best prematurely, and whoever he reported to had sent Jaimie’s dumb ass back to search for the same unknown item that Tango had been tortured over.

“No idea,” I told her.

“Listen, there’s something that may or may not mean a
damn thing. Gaita’s kind of...well, fallen off the map.”

“
What?
”

“Morgan—easy. I probably overstated it. She took off early yesterday, without saying anything, which is unusual. Today’s her regular day off, but I don’t get any answer where she stays, when she isn’t at the Mandor.”

“I should check this.”

She held up a hand. “I already did. I stopped by on my way here. Her landlady was there and said Gaita hasn’t been around for several days. I asked to look in her room, but she wasn’t there.”

“Any sign of a struggle? Anything unusual?”

“No. Sometimes that girl just takes off, to be by herself. The only thing really unusual is, well...with what’s going on lately, I would think she would stick around. In case she was needed.”

“Did you check with her friends in Little Havana? Pedro and Maria...?”

“Yes. They haven’t heard from her either. Really, it’s probably nothing. Hasn’t even been twenty-four hours. But I figured you should know.”

I nodded, troubled but not sure if I needed to be, and not knowing what the hell I could do about it, if I did need to be.

Theresa was asleep as I headed out, so when Bunny called to stop me, her voice was hushed: “
Oh
—Morgan. Something else....”

I went over to her. She was getting in her purse.

“This came today,” she said, and handed me an opened
envelope. It was addressed to Bunny at the Mandor Club, no return address, and inside was a kid’s birthday card with bunnies on it.

Tucked in the card was a thousand dollars in C-notes.

No signature.

“Best?” I said.

She shrugged and nodded at the same time. “I think it’s that late birthday present he promised me. Must have been forwarded by a lawyer or something.”

“Was there anything else in the envelope?”

“Yes...but not addressed to me.”

She got back in her purse and found a tiny manila envelope that said:
Please give to Tango for me. R.B.

My fingers told me it was a key.

“I’m taking this,” I said.

She didn’t argue. “What is it?”

I tore open the envelope, shook the contents into my palm, showed her the key there. It said
UBS 117
.

Glancing over at the battered beauty, I said, “I think it’s what Tango got the hell beat out of her over.”

I gave the startled-looking Bunny a kiss on the cheek, slipped the key back in its little envelope, and dropped it in my sportcoat pocket.

On the way out I told the young cop at the door to stay sharp.

“Somebody may to try to kill that woman,” I told him, jerking a thumb at the hospital room door.

His eyes popped. “You really think so?”

“A possibility. One other thing.”

“Yeah?”

“Start checking I.D.”

He was nodding at the wisdom of that as I walked away.

The Union Bus Station on Northeast First Street was fairly dead just after lunch. I was all alone at the wall of lockers when I searched out number 117, tried the key, and found nestled within a black leather bag that resembled the sort of bag doctors carried, back when house calls were more common.

I admit to being surprised—I figured on finding an envelope, a much larger manila one than the little key had come in. Surely what Halaquez and his boss were after were the finished plans to that improved version of Best’s atomic divining rod.

How else could the crackpot inventor have expected to come up with the kind of loot he’d told Tango he could “shake out of them”?

I wandered into the men’s room. There were half a dozen sinks and as many stalls, but right now I had the place to myself. Taking no chances, I selected a stall, faced the toilet, put a foot on the stool, and propped the Gladstone bag against my leg—no lock on the thing, it just popped right open....

The money was stacked in there with a scientist’s precision. It was all kinds of bills, mostly small and well-used, and I wasn’t about to take the time and trouble to count it; but odds were this was the bulk of the seventy-five grand that my Little Havana employers had asked me to recover.

It should be at least $1000 short, because Bunny had
earned her late birthday present for being the buffer between Tango and the hidden loot.

And now I got it.

Now it made sense, everything falling into place like the tumblers of a lock picked by an expert safecracker.

Dick Best recognizes Jaimie Halaquez at the Mandor Club from back when both were working with the CIA on various
Cuba libre
projects. The aging inventor approaches Halaquez and tells the Cuban that he’s developing an atomic-materials detector, a potentially key discovery in the Cold War arms race.

Halaquez steals $75,000 from the Cuban exiles’ treasury and funds Best’s research project. In the meantime, Halaquez goes into hiding, moving from one safe house in one city to another in another, until finally returning to Miami to collect on his investment.

But for reasons unknown, Best does not or cannot deliver— possibly the inventor had been scamming his angel all along, or likely Best demanded more money, saying additional research was required.

Either way, Halaquez decides to cut his losses, and the only further payment Best gets is a fatal karate chop to the back of the neck.

But when Halaquez reports in, his superior sends his heavyhanded minion
back
to Best’s apartment to search it—for either the atomic plans, the money...or both.

Torturing Tango was likely an attempt to find those plans, not retrieve the relatively paltry seventy-five grand. But the importance of the invention Best was dangling in front of
the Commies explained why heavies from Cuba had been imported to give Halaquez a hand....

This was speculation, of course, but informed speculation, and as if more proof were needed, the door to my stall was kicked open, swiping me across the back and sending me off balance, only to catch myself with a hand against the wall. I looked back and saw a guy a head taller than me with skin the color of coffee-with-cream—spiffy in a sharply cut brown suit with black lapels—grinning (he had a golden incisor) the way a big rapist does at a little girl.

Then he grabbed me by the shoulders and dragged me out of the stall and flung me against the row of sinks. The doctor’s bag of money, which I hadn’t snapped shut, stayed in the stall, clunking on its side on the tile floor, spilling cash.

I hit hard, but not so hard that I couldn’t whip my .45 out from under my arm, only the big guy, who looked like a linebacker but had a ballet dancer’s grace, nimbly kicked the gun from my hand, his pointy Cuban boot jabbing my right wrist. The automatic skittered and spun on the tile floor, way out of reach. He was coming at me with clawed hands outstretched and with a gold-toothed grin that seemed at once menacing and simple-minded, and I braced my hands on the edge of sink behind me, lifted myself and kicked out with both feet and caught him in the chest.

He went windmilling back, slapping open and returning to the stall he’d dragged me from, moisture catching his fancy boots and depositing him on the floor, the stool stopping him, and this time it was my attacker who was clawing
for a rod under his arm, a .22 automatic that was aimed right at me when I was all but on top of him, and I batted it away and took him by the legs and upended him. He conked his head on the porcelain edge of the crapper, dazing himself, and then I lifted him up and over and dunked him in, so that he made a splashing underwater headstand in the bowl. I had him around the waist and I hugged him like I loved him, his feet kicking harmlessly above me, his hands trying to swim in the air but getting nowhere, swiping at me but seldom landing and then with more hysteria than power, and it took him probably two gurgling minutes to drown.

I pulled him up and out and sat him loosely on the stool. His eyes were open but not seeing anything, and his hair, which had been slicked back like George Raft’s, was trailing down his forehead in damp seaweed tendrils now. I had gotten pretty wet myself, my pants anyway, and I was exhausted. You try holding a two-hundred-pound bastard upside down in a john and see if you don’t come out wiped.

When I shut him in there, all you could see were two feet visible under the door of a stall. The floor was a little waterpooled in there, but otherwise it was normal enough a sight.

I retrieved my .45 and stuck it back under my arm.

At the row of sinks, I repacked the Gladstone bag, some of the bills pretty damp. With the party over, I was more attuned to the danger of somebody coming in on me, but either nobody at the bus station had time to go before catching their ride, or I was even luckier than usual.

I even took time to throw some water on my face and stand there till my breathing was back to normal. I looked
at myself in the mirror and answered my own unasked question.

He must have been watching the hospital, spotted me, and followed me here. Whoever he was.

But I
knew
, didn’t I? This was the third Castro Cuban I’d killed in two days....

On the way out, I understood why we hadn’t been disturbed— my assailant had thoughtfully hung an out of order sign on the door. I guessed I owed him one, but didn’t feel too bad I’d never get the chance to repay him.

The diner I was meeting Muddy Harris at was only half a dozen blocks from the bus station, so I walked it, and the Miami sunshine dried my trousers by the time I got there. I spotted the bail bondsman in a back booth, waved at him, he waved back, but first I needed the men’s room.

For a less strenuous session, I hoped.

It was a one-seater with a single urinal, and you could lock the door, which I did. At the sink, I unloaded the bag of money, and did a fast but probably accurate count.

There was one-hundred-and-twenty grand in the bag. So Best had squeezed that $75,000 out of Halaquez, and a little more. That gave me an extra $45,000 to play with. If I were a great guy, I would hand that over to the Cuban exiles, too. But I was Morgan the Raider, who just drowned a guy in a toilet, so I would pocket the excess for my trouble.

That Muddy was having a piece of pie did not surprise me. That he could eat that way, and carry all that weight around, and still find clothes that looked baggy on him, remained a mystery.

“I hear the heat’s off,” he said cheerfully.

“Temporarily,” I said. “I struck a deal with Crowley.”

“Do you trust him?”

“We have mutual interests. He’s after Jaimie Halaquez, too. What is that, coconut cream? À la mode? Are you kidding?”

His frown was disgusted and disgusting, white-smeared as it was. “Do I look like I need health tips from Morgan the Raider? Listen, I can assure you the Mob is no part of what’s been going down.”

“You can, huh?”

He nodded, licked ice cream from his upper lip. “The Mob boys have really distanced themselves from the Cuban exile crowd, the last couple years. Not to mention the CIA— they feel they got burned. Anyway, it’s looking obvious the casinos aren’t going back in, in Havana, any time soon. And you were right—Castro’s made a deal with Trafficante, and dope is flowing. Big heroin source.”