“It’s been a half hour. What’s that clerk waiting for?”
“Probably has customers and is on the phone.”
Numbers changed on the screen. “Wait, he just claimed it. Six hundred and forty-two bucks. You want to move?”
The agent in charge shook his head. “Strictly surveillance for now. Believe it or not, that store is part of a chain of seventeen in the area. We want to see where all this is going . . .”
Back inside, a migrant worker stepped up to the counter. He glanced around before clandestinely showing the clerk a Lotto ticket that he refused to let go of, so the clerk had to pull the man’s arm toward the scanner. Not a complete winner, but close. Five of six numbers.
The clerk abruptly ended his personal phone call and dialed another number. “. . . Yes, I’m sure. I scanned it myself . . . all right I’ll tell him . . .” He hung up. “Wait outside at the corner.”
A white Audi eventually pulled up, and the back door opened. The farmhand climbed into a lifestyle he had never seen before. The car drove off. A laconic man in a tight bicycle shirt inspected the $7,931 ticket. He stuck it in his briefcase and handed the worker an envelope with five grand.
They dropped him off at a strip club.
Chapter 13
Thoreau Club
Traffic crawled north on U.S. 1, and the cross streets began bearing presidents’ names. When you reached Roosevelt, you knew which one it was because it lay between McKinley and Taft. The last was Coolidge, a hint at the age of the planned community that opened in 1925.
Hollywood, Florida.
The 1920s were a high-water mark of optimism in the Sunshine State. People imagined everything from floating hotels to golf courses in the Everglades. The city of Hollywood, for instance, had a wishful-thinking main street called Hollywood Boulevard, and there was even a Hollywood Bowl on the shore. It was all designed to give the California movie industry a stiff run.
Didn’t quite work out that way. But when the hucksters and hoopla dissipated, a tastefully quaint community accidentally emerged from the fog of failed avarice. Reevis’s car reached the middle of town and entered a massive roundabout circling a green space for children called Anniversary Park. He turned east toward the sea. Along both sides of the road, stucco houses and bright splashes of color: flowers, trees, canvas awnings, Bahama shutters. Reevis approached a blue street sign for Clownfish Lane. He made a left and pulled up to a modest beach apartment building constructed during the Gulf of Tonkin incident. A single story of eight units in a row, white with orange-and-green citrus trim. The screen doors still had those sixties-era wire sculptures of herons and palm trees and swordfish. A lizard made ripples in the concrete birdbath supported by a concrete seahorse. What used to be a lush lawn had since been replaced by a yard of big, smooth white rocks, because the owner had taken up apathy. The same reason was behind a landscaping theme of sea grapes and banana trees. Try to make them not grow. It was one of perhaps a hundred such apartments in Florida with names like the Surfcomber, the Sands, the Tides, the Tradewinds. Except this one wasn’t called anything.
Reevis got out and approached unit number three with keys in hand. He originally wanted a place in the Gables, because of his fondness for coquina and banyans, but that was not in a journalist’s budget. Still, this place had personality.
“All right,” said Brook Campanella, walking up behind him. “Let’s see this great new pad you’ve been bragging about.”
Reevis opened up. Cozy was generous. Just a bedroom and a living room, with a kitchen nook clinging in the corner.
Brook stood amid the terrazzo floor. “I like it. When does the rest of your stuff arrive?”
“This is it.”
“Two wicker patio chairs? Not even a TV?”
“I’ve decided to minimalize,” said Reevis. “Every move, so many possessions to haul around, until it was almost like they were possessing me.”
“You’ve been reading Thoreau again.”
“Actually Fight Club, but there’s a parallel.”
“I’ve got to see the bedroom.” She strolled and stopped in the doorway. “A mattress on the floor and an alarm clock?”
“Lifestyle aesthetics,” said Reevis. “I was concerned about losing my enthusiasm for all the little things.”
“In other words, you got rid of distractions so you could be distracted?”
“Something like that.”
She put her arms around his neck and gave him a quick kiss. “Don’t change.”
“Then you’ll dig this.” He quickly led her into the kitchen nook, reached up and opened doors. The cupboards were as unburdened as the rooms. He pulled down the only thing on the bottom shelf, a shiny device with a handle and no moving parts. “I bought a classic old-style stove-top espresso machine. I was just going through the motions flipping the switch on my Mr. Coffee. But this baby . . .” He held it at eye level and began twisting. “. . . You unscrew the bottom half and fill it with water. Then replace the perforated little metal chamber where you tamp down the coffee grounds. Turn the burner on and wait for the water to boil up and trickle out a post in the upper chamber. It takes a lot more time, but you can’t compare the taste.”
“Waiting makes it taste better?”
“I’m introducing a new set of simple ablutions into my daily routine.” He opened another cupboard and placed a pair of miniature cups and saucers on the counter. “Then I carefully pour it into authentic Cuban demitasse. Check out the tiny gold rims and blue-and-red diamond patterns like tile work from Ybor City.”
“Demitasse ablutions?”
“It’s all about the little stuff.”
“Don’t take this the wrong way, but you’re starting to remind me of someone.”
“I take it as a compliment.”
She looked toward a brown paper grocery bag with the end of a loaf poking out the top. “Is that the dinner you promised me?”
“I went shopping at this funky market in Little Havana next to the dominoes park. The palm sprig they stuck in the bag is some Catholic tradition.”
“There are only about five hundred closer supermarkets.”
He grabbed the sack and pulled out the loaf. “Real Cuban bread . . .” Then the bulk of the contents. “. . . Rice, black beans, tomato sauce, plantain chips—don’t know how to cook regulars yet—green peppers, one large onion, one clove garlic, and the beef is in the fridge.”
“You’re making me traditional ropa vieja? That’s so romantic.”
“Means ‘old clothes’ or ‘rags,’ probably because of how the beef is shredded.”
“I know.” She opened a drawer for a knife and went to work on the onion. “I’m starting to get what you see in all this.”
“Peace.” There was a small boom box on top of the refrigerator, and Reevis punched up his date-night theme track. “How’s the law clinic going?”
“Seriously pissed off at a landlord.” Brook’s eyes started to water. “Looks like a pattern of fraud—something you’d like to cover?”
“. . . Take a sad song . . .”
“Right in my wheelhouse,” said Reevis. “Just have to ditch these new TV producers and sneak out with my old cameraman.”
“That bad?”
“They want me to use the middle name ‘Danger.’”
“. . . Hey Jude . . .”