He suggested to Ernesto that they go out and try to get laid.
15
Luis Amaros kept his money in a bank where the manager liked doing business with drug dealers. The manager thought they were unusually courteous people with courtly Old-World manners and soft Spanish accents. Like Luis Amaros. Who everyone in town said was the scion of an old Cuban family who’d fled from Castro and invested in Louisiana soybeans, but who Roger Ware suspected was a Colombian thief who was very heavily invested in controlled substances.
This didn’t matter to Ware.
Drug dealers brought a lot of money to the bank. Millions of dollars. Always deposited in amounts of less than five thousand dollars so the bank did not have to report them to the IRS. Drug dealers never asked for loans. They let their money sit for long periods of time and, whereas they often withdrew huge sums, they normally gave notice far in advance that such withdrawals were about to occur.
Except on rare occasions.
Like today.
Friday, the twentieth day of June, and raining to beat the band in Miami and Luis Amaros sitting across the desk from him at nine in the morning, smiling and saying he wished $600,000 transferred from his account to a bank in Calusa.
Ware was taken by surprise.
He did not like rainy days to begin with. He had not moved from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, for rainy days in Florida. He had also had a fight with his wife this morning. It was never good to approach a banker with an unusual request if he’d had a fight with his wife just before coming to work. Unless you were a drug dealer with zillions of dollars on deposit.
“I’m sure we can handle it, Mr. Amaros,” Ware said, “although this is rather short notice.”
Chidingly but smilingly. The last thing on earth he wanted was for Amaros to take his money across the street.
“Yes, I know,” Amaros said, looking extremely doleful. “And I apologize.” His pudgy little hands fluttered on the air. “A family emergency,” he said.
“Happens to all of us,” Ware said understandingly. “Did you have any particular bank in mind? Would our own branch office in Calusa suit you?”
“Where is it?” Amaros said.
He still looked extremely sad, perhaps there really had been a family emergency. Everything he said sounded apologetic. Like just now. As though it were somehow his fault that he didn’t know where their Calusa branch office was.
“Downtown,” Ware said. “A block north of Main Street. Very centrally located.”
“Is it near the Suncrest Motel?” Amaros asked.
“Well, I... I really don’t know. I can have my secretary check if you like. The Suncrest, did you say? I’m sure we can—”
“No, that’s all right,” Amaros said. “The Main Street branch will be fine.”
“If you’d prefer some other bank, there’d be no problem at all.”
“No, no, that’s fine. Centrally located, you said.”
“Oh, yes. Not on Main Street, but just a block north.”
“Fine. I’ll need the address...”
“Of course.”
“So I can tell my cousin where to pick up the cash,” Amaros said.
“Had you planned...?”
“Before the close of business this afternoon.”
“No problem,” Ware said. “So,” he said, “as I understand this, you want six hundred thousand dollars transferred immediately for withdrawal later today. A simple wire transfer.”
“Yes, I wish you to wire six hundred thousand dollars for withdrawal in cash before the close of business today at your branch in Calusa, yes,” Amaros said.
“Can you let me have your cousin’s name, please? We wouldn’t want that kind of money falling into the wrong hands, would we?”
“No, we wouldn’t. His name is Ernesto Moreno.”
Ware began writing, talking out loud at the same time.
“Ernesto Moreno,” he said. He pronounced it Mor-eeno even though Amaros had just pronounced it correctly. “That’s M-O-R-E-N-O,” he said, writing, “I’ll just say withdrawal on proper ID. I’m assuming he’ll have proper identification.”
“Of course.”
“Would you want me to add any special instructions? This is a large amount of money, you know.”
“Special instructions? Like what?” Amaros asked.
“Well, we could prearrange for the bank to ask your cousin a question that only he would know the answer to. His mother’s name, for example...”
“I don’t know his mother’s name.”
“Or his birthday...”
“I don’t know his birthday, either.”
“Well, something.”
Amaros gave this some thought.
Then he said, “Ask him what we call the blonde girl in Spanish.”
“I beg your pardon,” Ware said.
“Write it down,” Amaros said. “What do we call the blonde girl in Spanish.”
“What... do... we... call... the... blonde... girl... in... Spanish,” Ware wrote, speaking the words at the same time. “And what answer do you want him to give?”
“Cenicienta,” Amaros said.
“Would you spell that, please?” Ware said.
The wire transfer took exactly seven minutes. It took longer than that for Amaros to get Ernesto on the phone at the Suncrest Motel to tell him that the money was on the way. It was raining in Calusa when the bank on First Street got the wired instructions. In fact, it was raining all over Florida that day. The hurricane season was supposed to be from July to October but people were beginning to say it was coming early this year. They said that every year at about this time.
In his second-floor apartment at Camelot Towers, Vincent paced from sofa to rain-streaked windows to sofa and back again. It’s a wonder he isn’t wearing a track in the carpet, Jenny thought.
He was very disturbed that this lawyer Matthew Hope had been here yesterday. He kept wanting to know exactly what she had said to this lawyer. She had to repeat word for word, as closely as she could remember, everything the lawyer had said and everything she had said to the lawyer. The last time she’d seen Vincent so upset was when he was talking about the man who came around with the picture of her, the one she figured Larkin had sent but which she didn’t say because Vincent didn’t even know Larkin existed. Or that she had a gold Rolex in a safety-deposit box at the Sheraton where she was registered as Julie Carmichael. She didn’t worry about keeping things from Vincent. She suspected he kept a lot of things from her, too. Listen, they weren’t joined at the hip, and after tomorrow she didn’t plan to see him ever again.
“We have to get out of this town as soon as possible,” he said now. “We do the deal tomorrow, and we split. It’s getting too hot here.”
She hated it when he tried to sound like a gangster. The words sounded ludicrous coming from his faggoty lips. Though she’d read someplace that homosexual murders were the most vicious of any murders committed anywhere. That sounded ludicrous, too. She could just imagine Vincent trying to shoot somebody, he’d probably shoot himself in the foot. Or stab him. Or anything.
“What time are you supposed to meet them?” he asked.
“Twelve noon.”
“Where?”
“They’re staying at a place called the Sunset Motel.”
“Where the hell is that?”
“On the North Trail, near the airport, they said.”
“That’s all motels, that stretch near the airport,” Vincent said.
“So what’s wrong with that? There’s nobody here this time of year.”
“I’m just saying.” He kept pacing. He was wearing very tight jeans, you could see the bulge of his machinery there at the crotch. What a waste, she thought. “Are they expecting me?” he asked.