Setup on Front Street (9 page)

She said
without thinking, "There were a lot of Conch girls after him, you
know."

"Well, you must've done something
right, because you've been together for a lot of years now."

She waved that off as her eyes returned to
mine. Her voice modulated downward to hiss level.

"Together, shit! You think I'm Barbra Streisand,
all googoo-eyed over Robert Redford? You think we're living happily ever after
in some fairy tale? What else could I look forward to in this town? What was I
going to do, marry a lineman for City Electric? And go to my grave worrying
about rent? Shi-it. Not this daddy's girl."

The waitress refilled Rita's tea from a
pitcher. She took a long, cold pull from it. It looked like it chased away some
of the heat.

Then she said, "Like you, I knew there
was no sense in walking when I could ride."

Suddenly, my shoulders relaxed. I felt
comfortable talking with her, like we were both listening to the same radio
station.

"So you hooked onto BK's bumper and
let him do the driving."

"Right. And now, after eighteen years,
I've got him covered like a tent."

"So why're you telling me all
this?"

She took a deep drag on her cigarette, then
slowly let the smoke out in a thin, gray trail. The breeze took it away again.

"Because I don't want to see you get
framed for this Sullivan killing."

"But why should you care? I mean, you
and I never —"

"It's not about you and me," she
said quietly. "It's the old man."

She knew. She knew the whole damn story.
But I had to speak carefully here. Very carefully.

"You mean Mr Whitney? What about
him?"

"I mean it's time that old bastard got
what's coming to him."

True, but I wasn't about to jump into that
swamp just yet. I needed a little more commitment from her.

"Wait a minute. He's your
father-in-law. A lot of people around here think he's tops. He's been a —"

"He's a piece of shit!" She spit
that sentence out.

"Keep going."

"He did everything he could to keep BK
from marrying me. He treated me like shit! Like I was some kind of worthless
bimbo that wasn't nearly good enough for his fucking boy-king son. Do you know
that he even tried to buy me off?"

I didn't know about any of this. My face
said as much.

"That's right. He offered me five
thousand dollars to leave town and forget I ever knew BK. I mean, five thousand
fucking dollars! The cheap son of a bitch! Like he didn't want to turn loose of
any more to save his precious fucking son! Like I'm some kind of a grade Z
slut!"

She took a couple of rapid puffs on her
cigarette and calmed her voice down a notch. "Not that I would've taken
ten thousand, you understand, or even fifteen. It's just the idea that he not
only thought he could buy me out of BK's life, but that he figured my price was
so fucking low."

I looked straight at her. Like everyone,
she had a price. Hers was obviously higher than the five dimes Whitney was
willing to shell out way back when. But not so high that she would turn down
the easy life that BK could give her.

Her upper lip curled into a sneer. "So
I want that old buzzard to get what's coming to him. And to get it in
spades."

She washed that down with some tea. An ice
cube landed in her mouth, so she chewed on it for a second, then mumbled around
it, "He shouldn't've underestimated me."

My turn to speak. "The cops'll never
believe he had anything to do with Sully's killing. And I'm sure he's got an
ironclad alibi."

"You bet your ass he does. He was out
with BK and me last night. Him and his new fucking girlfriend. We had a late
dinner, then over to the Casa Marina for drinks, and then we all went out to
his house, and he made sure we stayed there till after two. He and the girl
went up to bed and BK and I left and went home."

"Well, of course he wouldn't've hit
Sully himself, anyway."

"It was probably those two goons of
his. Milton and Bradley."

"Maybe, but I doubt it. They're too
close to him. More than likely, he gave the order to one of them — probably
Bradley. Then Bradley farmed it out to someone else. That way no one but
Bradley can connect the killing to the old man."

"And if he does, he cooks his own
goose."

"Right."

She
stubbed out her cigarette as she got up from the table, making a minor
adjustment on her hair.

"Listen,
Don Roy, if there's anything I can do to help you out of this jam, you let me
know. Here's my number — my private number at home."

A pen
appeared from her purse as she jotted down the number and slid it across the
table at me. Reaching toward my face, she brushed my cheek, her fierce red
nails lightly scratching me.

Her smile
was wicked, full of everything that a woman was all about.

She said, "Remember, I said
anything
."

SHIMMY
sat across from me in the dim corner booth at Mambo's.

Last time I saw him, he was a fresh-faced
kid, a wheel man making pickups for Mambo's bolita operation. He'd lost a lot
of his boyish look since then, even though he was still somewhere in his
twenties. He was a tough kid and pretty well-built, not afraid to mix it up if
he had to.

Now he was running a high-stakes poker game
out of one of the big resort hotels here in town. Normally, these places frown
on that kind of thing, but the hotel's GM was a big player himself, so he was
only too happy to set aside one of his rooms for the game.

It was a once-a-week thing, so Shimmy
brought some of the high-limit players down from Miami and Fort Lauderdale,
plus any of the rich hotel guests who could be lured into the game by well-paid
concierges. He told me they played at the $100-$200 level with a high rake,
which meant that he was pulling in, after expenses and before Mambo's cut,
about three dimes a week.

The waiter brought us a couple of beers.
Shimmy moved around in his seat, but he didn't drink from his right away.

Instead, he said, "So tell me about
you, man. What was Vegas like?"

I took a pull on my beer. "It's big.
Let me tell you. There're big changes in the wind out there. It's starting to
grow like crazy. Even before I went inside, you could smell the changes coming.
By the year 2000, it's not even going to be the same town. A lot of the old
casinos are closing up. The Landmark, the Silver Slipper, a few others … they
even tore a couple of them down."

"The Landmark? Isn't that the one that
looks like a giant mushroom sticking up out of the ground?"

"That's the one. It was only around
twenty years old when they brought it down."

"Man, why do they want to destroy
those places?"

"To build bigger ones. I hear that
eventually all the older casinos are gonna go. The Sands, the Dunes, the Desert
Inn, all of them."

His chestnut-colored eyes widened into the
look of someone who is just now learning that there is a complete world out
there beyond Big Pine Key.

"I heard about those places. I gotta
get out there one of these days. The action is still great, though, isn't
it?"

"It's still great," I said dryly,
"and I ought to know because I contributed more than my share to it."

Shimmy showed surprise on his baby-face.
"You? Man, I didn't know that. What … what …"

"I never could pass by the dice tables
with money in my pocket."

"Dice. Shit, that's a tough game,
brother."

"Not if you know how to play it.
What's tough is when you've got twenty or thirty thousand spread around the
table and the shooter sevens out on you. Poof. There it all goes, right down
the toilet."

He relaxed back into the booth, running a
hand through thick, black hair.

"Man, I'll stick to poker. With that
game, you only have to beat the other players, not the house. At least you got
a shot, and if you're a good player, you can be a favorite to win."

I'd heard all of these arguments before.
Shimmy wasn't really arguing, he was just trying to tell me in a very indirect
way that I have a problem I should do something about, because it's cost me a
lot of money.

Thing was, I already knew all that. Even
though I was smart enough to know better, I still somehow wanted to believe,
deep down, that the big score was waiting for me at some dice table somewhere.

He ordered up another beer.

"So what'd you have working out
there?"

"A lot of things. Up until the diamond
deal, I was doing all kinds of things."

"Like what?"

"Well, for example, I had this mail
order thing going. Selling those books that aren't really books, but rather,
places to store cash and valuables. You know, cut-out inside where the pages
are." I held my hands out like an open book.

"Oh, like you see in the movies."

"Right. I got about twenty-five bucks
apiece for them. But I had a deal with this second-story guy I knew. Guy they
call Doctor Chicago. One of the top cat burglars in the country. Broken in to
over a thousand homes, never been caught. I mean, he gets past alarms and guard
dogs and the whole bit."

"How's he manage that?"

"I don't know how he does it. Anyway,
he paid me a grand for the name and address of each customer, then he would go
to their home, wait for them to leave, slip in and look for the book. Every one
of those books was loaded. Jewels, Rolexes, cash … fucking loaded. All of them."

"You just sold him the addresses?
That's it?"

"That's it. I sell him the address, he
takes all the risk. I cleared about ninety grand when all was said and done.
But he made over a million."

Shimmy smiled through glistening white
teeth. "He'd go wherever these people lived? Anywhere in the
country?"

"Sure. Even with the travel expenses,
it was worth it to him. He said some of his biggest scores were in tiny little
apartments in rundown parts of hick towns. People who didn't trust banks, or —"

"Or people like us. Members of the
cash economy."

We both had a good chuckle.

As we clicked our bottles together, the
hazy outlines of a plan floated into my mind.

IT
was dark out by the time I left Mambo's. High clouds blacked out the moon.
Looking down the silent street toward Truman a few blocks away, I could see
traffic flowing in both directions.

As I headed that way, a car pulled up to a
stop next to me.

I braced for trouble.

"Don Roy Doyle?" said the driver.
He spoke across the front seat through a lowered passenger-side window.

I kept on walking.

"Doyle?" he repeated as the car
slid past me. He jumped out, flashing a badge. "FBI. Hold it right
there."

He got out, then came around to the
sidewalk.

"Hands on the car," he said.
"Come on, you know the routine."

He patted me down. When he was satisfied,
he said, "Get in the car."

I looked at him. Khaki pants, a bright
yellow Hawaiian shirt, worn outside to conceal the waistband holster.

The "new" FBI.

J Edgar Hoover would be rolling over in his
grave, puking his guts up.

"What's the beef?" I asked.

"Just get in, Doyle. And don't try
anything."

I got in the passenger side. He drove me to
a spot I remembered from my childhood.

It was abandoned now, much worse for the
wear, but when I was a kid, I remembered the bakery that used to be there, not
far from my house, in fact. The aromas that flowed endlessly from that building
were some of my favorite memories of growing up. For some reason, no other
bakery ever smelled as good.

My mother would buy Cuban bread in there
every day, then when she could afford it, she'd bring me a few cookies or other
treats. Often times, on my way home from school, I would detour just to pass by
that great old building, inhaling its pleasures.

Now, however, it sat empty, crumbling,
ready to surrender.

He escorted me inside. Reaching over to the
side wall, he flipped a light switch which looked like it had been recently
rigged up. It lit up a naked bulb suspended from the high ceiling.

All remnants of the bakery had disappeared,
with dirt and junk everywhere. Under the bulb sat an old, cleaned-off wooden
desk with three chairs around it.

He nudged me into one of them, but remained
standing himself.

"All right, here we are in your little
playground. So who the hell are you and what's going on here?" I asked.

He showed his badge again. This time I took
a closer look.

"I'm Special Agent Ryder," he
said. "I understand you've been having some trouble with former mayor
Whitney."

I had to laugh. Is there anything in this
town that isn't public knowledge?

"What of it?"

"What of it? Oh, nothing much."

He finally sat down in the chair behind the
desk and continued. "Only that I know he's guilty of just about every
crime imaginable over the last thirty years, including whacking your pal Sullivan.
This local jerk, Ortega, he's trying to pin that on you, but you and I both
know who did it. Whitney's got a date with justice, and I intend to see that he
keeps it."

I stood up to leave. "You're full of
sh —"

He quickly moved around the desk, shoving
me back into the chair.

"You're not leaving until I say
so."

For a guy who was only medium build, he had
giant-sized balls. It was just the two of us there in that dark old building
and I could've cracked his skull right then and there for pushing me down in
that chair. But he was a fed, and there was no percentage in it whatsoever.

I sat there and took it.

"What the hell is this shit?" I
said. "If this was a real FBI roust, we'd be in your office, not in some
falling-down building with the rats and lizards."

Ryder said, "I'm FBI all right, Doyle.
You can bet on that."

"Then what're we doing here? In this
place?"

I took another look at our surroundings.
The light bulb cast a harsh glare across the desk. Not that it mattered, since
there was only an ashtray on it. Beyond the desk, shadows gave way to total
darkness.

"Let's just say this is a … a … let's
call it an unofficial discussion. A fine example of a dedicated federal law
enforcement officer working overtime, after hours, in a secret meeting with a
Confidential Informant. All in the name of truth, justice, and the American
way."

"Informant, my ass. Why should I do
anything to help you?"

He came around to sit on the front of the
desk, just a foot or two away from me. This close, I could see he appeared to
be in excellent shape. His body was relaxed.

"You're looking at it backwards,"
he said.
I'm
here to help
you
. Unless I miss my guess, you're
going after Whitney on your own. If for no other reason than to get out from
under this murder frame."

He pulled a cigarette out of the pack in
his shirt pocket, sparking it with a Bic lighter, whose flame shot up about a
foot into the air.

Then he went on. "But you may need a
little boost here and there. A little help from an unseen hand. That's where I
come in. I can give you the FBI."

I looked hard at him, figuring him to be in
his early thirties. His face told me he was deadly serious.

"Why? Why would you want to get me out
of a murder charge? It's not even a federal beef."

He began to gesture with his hands. They were
clear gestures, easy to read, and they complemented his words.

"You know a lot of people in this
town, Doyle. The kind of people who might have the information I want. The kind
of people who wouldn't tell me shit."

"What kind of information?"

"We think Whitney's in bed with the
Russian mob. We also think they're down here establishing a base to move into
Cuba when Castro gives up. Probably to set up gambling and prostitution
operations. We're not sure of the details just yet."

I sat still while he got up to walk around,
burning energy.

"Like I said, Doyle, you name the
crime, Whitney's done it. But we don't have a shred of evidence on him,
especially for federal offenses. So I can't touch him, yet. However, if a
private citizen — yourself, for example — should suddenly get the
urge to dig something up on him, well … I'd certainly do what I could to grease
the way. Unofficially, of course."

"Yeah, but the FBI doesn't act
'unofficially'. What's your real reason?"

"I just told you. Anything else is my
business. Now are you ready to cooperate?"

"What's to keep me from just blowing
off the whole thing and skipping town? Which I've got half a mind to do
anyway."

He threw the cigarette hard onto the
concrete floor, stomping on it.

"Because if you do, there will be a
warrant issued for your arrest. You will be hunted down and arrested for an
armed robbery that will have taken place, an armed robbery for which you will
have no credible alibi, and one in which you will have been positively
identified by two eyewitnesses. That, plus the obvious violation of your
parole, which requires you to maintain weekly visits with your parole officer,
would mean a fifteen-to-twenty-year stretch, minimum. You ready for that?"

I didn't
answer. But I think he picked up the "no" in my eyes.

He lowered his voice a notch, losing the
bad-cop hard edge. "Look, Doyle. I know you better than you think I do. I
know you've been on the grift for a long time. You stood up for Sullivan, and
did your bit out in Nevada,
and
you kept your mouth shut. I know you
don't work with cops, especially the FBI. But I'm not like any other cop."

I was beginning to believe him.

He said, "Get us anything you can on
Whitney's link to the Russians."

He leaned closer toward me, slipping a
scrap of paper into my shirt pocket.

"This's my private phone number. I've
got one of those new cellular phones you carry around with you, so you can get
me twenty-four hours a day."

Then, he shifted his voice all the way down
to a cold, hard whisper. "Whitney's nothing but scum. He's going down. One
way … or another. You get my meaning?"

I got it, all right. I threw him a nod. Our
meeting was over.