The Shadow Man (37 page)

when he pulls up for the jump shot, he doesn’t seem to rise as swiftly. Take away the baseline, so he can’t bring it around to his right. Insist he settle for that drop-step, fadeaway jumper, Winter concluded. He will make some, but most will rim out. Keep your feet moving and make him work hard for everything he gets and eventually he will slow down and start searching for a pass, and when that happens, you know you will have done your job.

Winter nodded and smiled. Playing the game in his head always resulted in the same thing: victory.

On the court before him, Winter saw the teenager knife between two defenders and deposit the ball with a gentle, soft touch. He thought to himself: the young man knows how to play. A smashing, backboard-rattling dunk may be impressive, but the real players recognize and admire the move that gets one there, not the result.

‘Is this your game, Mr Winter?’

Simon Winter pivoted in his seat at the sound of the voice. ‘It was once, Detective.’

Walter Robinson slid onto the bench next to him. ‘Not me,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t play the game. It was always what everyone expected: you’re black, athletic - surely you must play basketball. Instead, I played a little high school football. I was a tight end on a real good team. Won the city championship.’

“That must have been nice.’

“Probably the best day you could ever have. Seventeen, going on eighteen, walking off the field bloody, dazed, and exhausted, but the winners. Nothing like it, ever again. Has a sort of purity to it.’

Were you good, Detective?’

“Not bad. Not bad at all. But not nearly big enough to play the position in college. Tight end is an odd job, Mr Winter. Most of the time you’re fighting it out on the line,

smashing linebackers, defensive ends, another drone defending the glory boys at running back and quarterback. But every so often, kinda like a reward for all that hard work, you’re cut loose downfield, and you explode out into the secondary, finally on your own, and the ball is zipping your way. There’s always this great moment, defenders surrounding you, ball heading toward your hands, that you realize it’s up to you. If you drop it, it’s back to the salt mines. Back to being the worker bee. But catch that ball and you’re free to do what you want, make of it what you can. Those were the moments I liked.’

‘There is poetry in sport,’ Winter said, smiling.

‘And metaphor as well,’ Robinson added.

‘How did you find me here?’

‘The Kadoshes. They told me you liked to come down here to the park after dark and watch the basketball games.’

‘I didn’t think they were that observant.’

Robinson grinned and Winter shrugged, adding, ‘Of course. You’re right. Lesson one: The neighbors always know more than they let on. There you have it. So, that explains how you found me. Now the question is why?’

‘Because Leroy Jefferson goes to court tomorrow morning and by noon will be sitting next to a police artist, giving us a description and a statement, and once we have that, then we must take the next step.’

‘Baiting the trap.’

‘Exactly.’

‘I think we must be very cautious,’ Simon Winter said.

‘Yes. Why?’

‘Because, Detective, we are in an extremely vulnerable position.’

Walter Robinson nodded. ‘Go on,’ he said.

‘We must find this man. We must find him this time. We have this one chance and we can’t screw it up.’

‘Keep going,’ the detective said.

Simon Winter paused, watching the players pivot and weave on the court in front of him. The sodium vapor lights gave their skin a yellowish tone, almost as if the sweat and muscles were sickly and the struggle they made over the ball was against some odd disease.

‘If we do not identify and stop the Shadow Man, if we merely spook him, he’ll disappear. He can go anywhere. Be anything. If he slips past us, there is no telling where he will go. You see, we know nothing of his roots, of his history, not since the end of the war. So we know nothing of his resources. How do you pursue someone without substance? Do you think he’ll leave behind a trail that we could follow? I doubt it. Not if he’s reached this point after so many years. So I think we should assume that this man Leroy Jefferson is going to provide us with our one and best hope. We must get him this time.’

‘You’ve been thinking about this?’

Winter nodded, then looked over at Robinson.

‘As have you. In fact, I bet that’s why you came tonight to see me.’

Robinson extended his feet and stretched backward, relaxing. ‘You had quite a reputation in the City of Miami department.’

‘You pulled my service record?’

‘Of course. Wanted to know who I was dealing with.’

‘That’s all crap, you know. Solved this case. Made this arrest. Received this commendation. Doesn’t tell you about who I am.’

‘No, that’s true. So, who are you, Mr Winter?’

Simon Winter paused. Then he pointed out at the game. ‘See the kid with the ball?’

Walter Robinson nodded. ‘The kid draining the twenty-footers?’

‘Yes. That one.’

‘Uh-huh. What about him?’

‘He wouldn’t score like that on me.’

Robinson started to laugh, then stopped, and instead he watched the teenager play, saw the quickness in his first step, saw the burst of speed as he made a crossover dribble.

‘Out muscle him?’ he asked after a moment.

‘No. Just start taking things away, one by one. And then, when he doesn’t expect it, force him into the double-team. Catch him unawares. He’ll turn the ball over.’

Robinson breathed out slowly. ‘Difficult.’

‘But the only way.’

‘You’re right.’

‘That’s how you think we should do it?’

‘Yes. The trap must have a fine line. Invisible defense. The Shadow Man must think something is available to him. Success. But really he is doing what we want. Where we are waiting. That’s how it must work.’

The two men were silent.

‘The two old people, Rabbi Rubinstein and Frieda Kroner…’

‘Don’t worry about them. When the time comes, they will do what they have to.’

‘I’ve put a squad car in front of each of their apartments twenty-four hours.’

‘No. You have to take those away. We can’t make him warier than he already is.’

‘But what if—’

‘They understand the risk. They’re the bait, and they understand.’

‘I don’t like that.’

‘How else would you do it?’

Walter Robinson paused. ‘I still don’t like it, much,’ he said finally.

Winter smiled. ‘You see, that’s the advantage I have over you, Detective. I don’t work for anyone. No City of Miami Beach paycheck for me. I don’t have to worry about anything except succeeding. I don’t have to worry about what it will look like in the papers or to my superiors or anything. When I said we could set a trap, that’s what I meant. And a trap requires bait. It has to be fresh and attractive and it always runs the risk of being eaten, doesn’t it? That maybe the springs on the trap won’t slam shut at precisely the correct moment, and maybe the quarry will race away after robbing the trap of bait. So, my recommendation to you, Detective, is that you play this very close to the vest. That your friend, Miss Martinez, and you keep this to yourselves. Then if it all goes wrong, you can blame it on me.’

‘I wouldn’t do that.’

‘Sure you would. And it would be okay. I’m just a crazy old ex-cop, and it wouldn’t bother me in the slightest. Hell, probably make my life more exciting.’

‘I still wouldn’t do it.’

‘Why not? I’m old, Detective Robinson. And you know what? Nothing frightens me anymore. Got that? Nothing. Except maybe not catching this son of a bitch.’

Simon Winter smiled and applauded a nice shot on the court in front of them. ‘I don’t think I want this guy to outlive me.’

‘I think you’ve got some good years left.’

The old man laughed out loud. ‘Well, at least they are years, even if I wouldn’t leap to characterize them as good.’

All right. I’ll pull the squad cars. What then?’

Winter’s voice gained a certain coldness with his

response: ‘Then we force him to make a move.’

‘How did you imagine that going down?’

‘Well, ordinarily, with a picture of a suspect, you’d be likely to flood the place with it. Get it on the television news and make the Herald run it on their front page. Post that picture everywhere, right? Hope maybe someone will make a call.’

‘That’s the standard drill.’

‘Won’t work with this guy, will it?’

‘No,’ Robinson said. ‘Not from what I’m beginning to see. All that would do is make him take off.’

‘Of course, if we scared him off, that might save Frieda Kroner and Rabbi Rubinstein. Scare him off and they might live out their lives in peace.’

‘Always looking over their shoulder, expecting him back.’

‘But alive.’

‘True enough. But alive.’

Both men were quiet for a moment. The air around them was filled with the sounds of the game, voices raised, the slap of bodies coming together, the chain of the net rattling as the ball slipped through.

‘So, we don’t do what is standard,’ Robinson said. ‘What do we do?’

Winter smiled. ‘I had an idea,’ he said carefully. ‘You see, he won’t know that we have his picture, and he won’t know that we’re waiting for him. So what we do is very subtle. We suggest something. We do just enough to make him move rapidly, maybe before he is quite ready.’

‘I follow. What sort of suggestion?’

‘At services one evening, perhaps the local rabbis make references to, oh, say, the shadow that has fallen over the community. At the Holocaust Center, we post a sign requesting anyone with any knowledge of wartime Berlin

to contact Rabbi Rubinstein. Maybe have that same announcement made at a few of the condo association meetings. Just enough so that the right words and sensations creep back to him and he thinks he must make a move. But not so much that he decides to flee.’

Walter Robinson nodded his head. ‘This seems tricky,’ he said quietly.

‘Have you ever been on the flats off Key Biscayne, fishing for bonefish, Detective? It’s a great sport. The fish are very skittish in shallow water, attuned to every sound and motion, anticipating threats. But they are hungry, and the fiats are where they find the shrimp and small crabs they consider delicacies, so that is why they are there. The water is gray-blue, a hundred colors, changing with every breath of air, and the fish appear like the slightest small alteration in the color scheme. One writer once called them ghosts. You stare at the water for hours, and then, suddenly, you’ll see that little motion, that minuscule departure in tone, that indicates a fish. Then you cast, and if you lay the fly just gently, a foot or so in front of that indistinct shape, you will hook a bonefish, which is something sportsmen all over the world look forward to.’

‘I’ve heard that,’ Walter Robinson replied.

‘You should learn to fish, Detective,’ Simon Winter said. ‘It will help you understand, as it did for me.’

Robinson grinned in spite of an unsettled nervousness inside. ‘When this is over, will you teach me?’

‘It would be my pleasure.’

Robinson hesitated, before asking: ‘This is like fishing?’

The older man smiled. ‘Precisely.’

The game had ended and Walter Robinson insisted that Simon Winter accompany him back to the Sunshine Arms. They rode through the nighttime world of downtown Miami Beach in the detective’s unmarked cruiser. Winter kept glancing at the small computer unit attached to the center of the dashboard and finally said, with a small, wry grin:

‘That damn thing really makes me feel old.’ He looked up, his eyes gathering in the street life they rolled past. The older detective sighed slowly. ‘What?’

‘You know, look at this. See what’s happening?’ Robinson let his eyes rest on a tangle of white limousines and gleaming, dark luxury cars double-parked midway down the block outside a nightclub. The club had a large, two-story purple and red neon palm tree flashing above its front door. There was a crowd of people on the sidewalk, mostly young, white or Hispanic, upwardly mobile, early twenties. They were just out of college, newly minted with an MBA or a law degree, and searching for a little diversion on their way to their first big score. They mingled with the older but trying to appear young types. There was a smattering of a category that seemed unique

to Miami, the drug-culture hangers on; young men in particular, who affected the airs of a narcotrafficista: gaudy shirt open to the waist, gold chain around the neck, fine linen suit, as if this successfully concealed the realities of their lives as clerks and accountants. It was like a masquerade, where everyone portrayed some exotic, wealthy, heartless Colombian hit man, which, of course, helped to hide the few but legitimate killers that were mixed amidst the crowd, in the same outfits. The women, for the most part, seemed to favor high, spiked heels and hair flounced into manes. They dressed in spangles and silks, peacocks as colorful as the sign that blinked above them. As Simon Winter and Walter Robinson slid past, the bass-heavy sound of rock and roll with a Latin accent shook the car.

‘What do you see, old-timer?’ Robinson used the word to poke fun at Winter, who recognized this immediately, and so replied in a fake-crotchety-old voice filled with wheezing and accented with pseudo-irritation.

‘What I see is change, young fella. On one side of the street, the Broadway Delicatessen. Used to serve the best chicken soup on the Beach. Probably still does. Next to it, there’s a grocery, where the old folks like me get fresh fruits and meats that haven’t been collecting frostburn for a month. The sort of place where they know your name and if you’re perhaps a little short of cash one week, will wait until the Social Security checks come in for you to pay.’

Simon Winter paused, then resumed, in his normal tone of voice: ‘A year from now, maybe two, they won’t be there, will they? You see, that nightclub is hot, and that means competition, and the space across the street suddenly has value, because - and you know this, Detective -a new dollar always seems to be worth more in our society than an old one.’