The Naked Detective (26 page)

Blast now followed blast. There were three exchanges, four. A stack of CDs toppled; a speaker grille was gashed.

Cruz moved in our direction; maybe—probably—he had in mind to use us as a shield. But the motion made him more exposed, and before he reached us, a bullet caught him just above his trigger hand; his revolver flew out of his fingers. He shook the wounded arm and dropped low to scramble after it.

Lydia Ortega took the opportunity to stride into the room on high-heel shoes. Her makeup was tidy; her face had taken on a deranged and fatal clarity of mission. She stepped close to Cruz and shot him in the knee; we could hear the crack of bone. He rolled and writhed and kept on crawling. Standing over him, she shot him in the other leg and he finally kept still. A lot of blood was coming out of him, but his eyes were open and he looked more pissed off than frightened.

I cowered on the floor. Strangely, perhaps, I felt no threat from Lydia. She was there to settle scores, to avenge old torments, not to kill outsiders, and not to save herself. But I was still afraid of Cruz. He was desperate and I didn't trust that he was finished. I stared at him; his eyes and my eyes were on a level. Belatedly, I thought to reach up to the little table and grab my own unfired gun. Never taking my gaze off his, I seized my weapon, braced my elbow on the floor, and pointed it at his face. Too late I realized that what I'd picked up was the remote control.

Shot three times, the rogue cop still managed a sarcastic snarl. Just before losing consciousness, he said, "You're pathetic, Amsterdam." Then his eyeballs rolled and his head thumped lightly on the floor.

Maggie scuttled over and knocked his weapon farther away.

Slowly, I sat up and looked at Lefty's daughter. Her eyes were dazed and distant. I took a deep breath. The air was acrid with gunpowder; it caught at the back of my throat. As steadily as I could manage, I said, "It's over now, Lydia. Can I have the gun, please?"

She blinked, then gazed down at me as if she'd only at that moment noticed I was there. Suddenly she seemed confused, and, I thought, a little piqued, like her revenge was not quite perfect. She said to me, "Where's Veale?"

She sat down in the chair where Maggie had been sitting, and crossed her legs with a rustle of silk, and helped herself to the last of my grappa while she waited to be taken away.

"When did you know it was the cops?" asked Maggie.

This was a couple days later; and we were sitting in the hot tub. We had a lot to talk about, and it was hard to talk above the rumble of the jets, so we hadn't turned them on. This meant we had no bubbles to disguise our nakedness. I looked at Maggie's lightly freckled breasts, her tan and tapering midriff.

Sheepishly I said, "I didn't realize it until that stupid stamp came on the tape. Being honest, I didn't totally get it even then. I got it when they stormed into the room."

She nodded, fixed me with the limpid and sincere gray eyes that, to my secret shame, I had at moments doubted. "And now it seems so clear."

"Now it does," I said. "But I made the same mistake that Kenny made. An understandable mistake, I guess. I assumed that Lefty owned the cops, rather than vice versa."

Sweetly, Maggie said, "Those bastards."

I reached over and grabbed my glass of prosecco. One should never drink in the hot tub, of course, but if one must, this off-dry Venetian sparkler is the way to go. I rolled some over my gums and said, "And it never even dawned on me they owned Veale too."

"And played them off against each other," Maggie added.

"For years," I said. I leaned back and glanced up at the poinciana tree that hung over the spa, and thought back to the chat I'd had with Veale the day before.

I'd gone to him to try to help out Lydia, who was in custody, being held without bail. She'd killed a cop and badly wounded another. Forget that Cruz and Corallo were murderers themselves—the brutal men in snorkels, who'd killed Kenny and Andrus, and would surely have killed Maggie and me, had things gone a little differently. The fact was, Lydia had shot Corallo in the back; so much for self-defense. I hoped to show, at least, that there were extraordinary circumstances that should allow her to finesse a plea and ask for clemency.

The Mickey Veale I'd found that day, almost catatonic in his office, with its shades drawn against the brilliant light and the view of Sunset Key, was shaken, self-pitying, but surprisingly forthcoming. "A cheeseball but not an evil guy."

"Who?" said Maggie.

I hadn't quite realized I'd spoken aloud; I was still catching up on my sleep. "Veale," I said. "He told me he was being blackmailed too. Cruz and Corallo figured out exactly how to set him up, practically from the minute he hit town. Motel room with an underage girl. Procured by them, of course. They got Polaroids, a statement from the girl, the works. If the paperwork got turned in, maybe he'd do time. At the very least, there went his chance of ever getting a license for the gambling boat. They owned him from then on."

Maggie pretzeled up her legs, twisted onto her side to stretch her hips. She said, "But if Veale was a victim too—"

"Then why did the Ortegas hate him?" I said. "Because they didn't know. The cops used him as their point man. When they'd made the tape of Lydia, it was Veale they sent to put the squeeze on Lefty. Veale had to fake being involved. Lefty believed him. Lydia still thought it came down to Veale when she walked into the house and started shooting."

Even in the hot water under the hot sun, Maggie gave a little shiver. "And a good thing she showed up."

"A good thing
two
cars followed Ozzie," I said. "When Lydia's flunkies reported that we were heading off with shovels, it was a pretty good bet that she'd visit."

Maggie sipped some wine, then went into another yoga stretch, one that arched her back. The effect was pretty stunning. She said, "And the watersports business—as much as they hated each other, Ortega and Veale really shared it?"

"Ortega and Veale," I said, "were names on paper. Probably they'd been hit up for some seed money. But the business belonged to Cruz and Corallo. And I'll bet it was quite profitable, since most of the Jet Skis had been stolen."

"Stolen?"

I sipped some more prosecco. It was tasting fabulous. I said, "That's why we couldn't figure out what they were smuggling with the Jet Skis. What they were smuggling was Jet Skis. Associates would grab them from other operations all up and down the Keys, from as far away as Lauderdale. They'd disappear into
The Lucky Duck
and come out with new serial numbers. Handy too if the cops needed an untraceable craft for when they put their snorkels on and went off to kill somebody. Or even for making little jaunts to the Bahamas."

"So you think it was one of them who found Kenny on Green Turtle?"

I shrugged. "Seems reasonable," I said. "The handwriting on the matchbook seems to be the same as on the note that was pushed under my door. Plus, what the guy told Kenny happened to be true: The pouch was worth nothing—except to the people it incriminated."

There was a pause. Maggie slipped down lower in the water, made it look as though her chin was floating. The wispy hair at the nape of her neck was plastered down. Her smooth face darkened, and in completion of some unspoken train of thought, she said, "Poor Lydia."

"Poor Lydia," I agreed. The mention of her name sent me reaching for my wineglass once again. "A victim of good old-fashioned hypocrisy and family craziness."

"How so?"

"Here's what I think. Take it for what it's worth. Lefty was a macho papa. I think he wanted a son, and Lydia felt that every day. Lefty would have wanted his boy to be a hell-raiser and an ass-kicker and a stud. Lydia got even by trying her best to be exactly those things—even to the extent of snorting coke and doing sex shows for the cops. Here's your ideal, Dad—in your face."

Maggie thought that over. "A little pat," she said.

I admitted that it was. "But pat doesn't mean wrong. Look, Lydia found the perfect way to humiliate herself and to hold an unbearable mirror up to Lefty. So of course he'd do anything to keep that tape from being shown around. He gave Lydia the money to buy it back, then she rubbed his face in it still more by putting the dirty prize in his safe."

Maggie shook her head. "On the night that Kenny pulled his robbery."

"Which was just Kenny's lousy timing and piss-poor luck."

She bit the delectable nub at the center of her upper lip. "Very sad," she said, and then she tried to brighten. She lifted an arm from the tub, and shook it off, and grabbed a soggy paper folded on the edge. Snapping it open, she said, "But hey, according to the
Sentinel
, at least you solved the whole thing brilliantly."

According to the
Sentinel
, yes. But of course, the
Sentinel
was seldom accurate. From the banner headline on—local p.i. cracks linked murders—the paper gave me entirely too much credit. It hinted at expert detection, when in fact I'd only blundered into information here and there. It suggested deep commitment, when the truth was that I'd fought involvement at every turn. It conjured for the reader a climactic and heroic shootout, but the reality of that confrontation was that I'd been sitting there watching a porno flick when all hell broke loose, at which point I trembled on the floor till it was over.

Still, I was glad to have this single flashy item for my scrapbook. It would preempt any hassles I might have with the IRS. Not a real private eye? Oh yeah? Well, suck on
this!
Then again, my music room had been destroyed. Speakers shot out, carpet stained with gore. Repairs would just about erase what I'd saved in taxes. Some might call that justice.

Rather goadingly, I thought, Maggie waved the paper in my face. "You're going to get a lot more work from this," she said.

"Oh no, I'm not," I vowed.

She raised an eyebrow, then refolded the paper and put it aside. Something in the gesture made me sad; for a moment I didn't know why. Then I did. It somehow made me think of Kenny Lukens, with his mildewed clipping from a long-forgotten paper; his clipping and his desperation and his tattered dream. Dreams sometimes made people reckless. Things got out of hand and people needed help. And you weren't immune from being asked for help just because you happened to be naked in the hot tub. Would Kenny Lukens be alive if I had helped him sooner? Would I?

I looked up at the poinciana tree. It was coming into leaf just as its shade was needed most. Sometimes things worked out, happened in their proper season.

Distracted, I didn't notice Maggie moving until she was nestled up against me. I felt her arm, her flank. Under water, her body had no temperature, just a smoothness and an almost fluffy buoyancy. She threw a leg across my thighs. I leaned my cheek against her short damp hair. She'd told me that you learned to see things through by seeing them through, that finishing was just a habit. I wanted to believe it. She and I had something left to finish, after all. Though at that moment, for the first time in what felt like many days, there seemed to be no hurry.

—####—

MANGROVE SQUEEZE

by Laurence Shames

Key West seduces people—then asks them to leave in the morning. When one opportunity seeker stumbles upon a nefarious plot revolving around a handsome Russian and his string of T-shirt shops, she finds the Russian mafia on her trail. As dead bodies sully the Key West scenery, a secret society of killers puts on the squeeze— and conspires to turn an island paradise into a tropical death-trap. . . .

"Laurence Shames has carved out his own piece of turf in South Florida. Mangrove Squeeze is his sixth book set in torpid, unpredictable Key West. Shames' sense of place is unerring, but it is his people that make his books unforgettable."

—The Hartford Courant

WELCOME TO PARADISE

by Laurence Shames

Before mild-mannered furniture salesman Al Tuschman left New Jersey for a week in Key West, he hadn't an enemy in the world. But a series of puzzling assaults on his privacy, his sanity, and his life has turned his stay at the Paradise Hotel into Tropical Hell. Now, if Tuschman doesn't watch nis back, somebody's going to be reporting the death of another salesman.

"Zany humor. . .Shames mixes sun and fun, wise guys and dumb guys, smart gals and bad gals with such wit and style it makes you want to head straight to Key West and join the party."

—The Orlando Sentinel

ABOUT THE AUTHOR— Laurence Shames has set eight critically acclaimed novels in Key West, his former hometown. Now based in California, he is also a prolific screenwriter and essayist. His extensive magazine work includes a stint as the Ethics columnist for
Esquire.
In his outings as a collaborator and ghostwriter, he has penned four
New York Times
bestsellers, under four different names. This might be a record. To learn more, please visit
http://www.LaurenceShames.com
.