Her footsteps faded. “We have got to do something about that girl,” Leo said. “She’s nothing but a liability.”
Beaumond said, “A what?” He was looking at Fernandez.
“Vicki’s cool,” Fernandez said. “She can hang.” He wiped some oily sweat on the back of his hand, and shook another Newport out of his pack.
“She sucks my dick good,” Beaumond said. He had his sandbox shovel in the coke. He lifted some up and vacantly dropped it back in the pile.
“Look,” Leo said, “the party’s over here. We’ve got some serious fucking trouble on our hands. She’s gotta find some other place to stay.”
Beaumond’s narrow eyes turned to yellow-brown slashes. “There’s where you’re wrong, dude. My Victoria ain’t going nowhere.”
His Victoria. So it was like that, was it? Okay.
“Anybody leaving this house, it’s gonna be you. Want you to keep that right here.” Beaumond stabbed an index finger into the center of his forehead. “Don’t fuck with me.”
He screamed the word fuck. Leo flinched. He said, “Take it easy, big guy.”
Leo figured Beaumond probably thought he’d be easy to get over on, with his soft skin and his high-fashion cheekbones, but Leo wasn’t about to get vic’d by this white trash piece of shit, not in a million years.
There was something about him Beaumond didn’t understand. Leo was as tough as he needed to be. Let Beaumond think he was squishy. This was the way he lulled you to sleep when he was pitching. Blockheads muscled up to the plate to dive into pitches, all macho and shit, trying to pull everything, the way they saw major leaguers do it on TV. Leo stayed outside, outside, tossed one in the dirt, then — how ya doing? — buried his fastball in your ear. That was the danger of underestimating Leo.
Beaumond hadn’t blinked since he handed up his warning, the muscles in his neck tense, his jugular blue and pulsing. Leo looked at him, at the place where he had touched his forehead, and pictured a smooth round bullet hole squirting blood, Beaumond tipping over backwards in his chair, his Wal-Mart sneakers and his graying socks dangling in the air. It was going to be his pleasure.
There was a way out of this, Leo told himself, definitely a way out, if he just kept his cool, if he didn’t panic and let the situation get the best of him.
The situation. All baseball was situations. All of life was situations, too. He was on to something here. He’d have to think it through when he had some time. When he had some time and his head cleared and he wasn’t worried about whether Negrito was going to take him for a ride to the Glades and feed him to the fucking alligators.
At the corner of 17th and Washington, Leo coughed and gagged and lowered his head between the bumpers of two cars. He heaved a few times, but nothing came up. When his eyes stopped watering, he peered out from behind his shades, hoping he wouldn’t see anybody he knew. Because there were tons of people heading back from the ocean in the dying afternoon light, the streets buzzing with girls in bikinis and beach wraps.
The Barbarossa announced its existence in indigo neon, a ten-year-old update that did nothing to distinguish it from a half-dozen other restaurants within walking distance. The place was usually empty, though on occasion the overfed Cubans who ran the joint would be forced to set down their cigarettes and coffee, or beer, depending on the time of day, and actually maneuver their fat asses around the tables. A waitress wiping the counter moved toward the window that opened onto the sidewalk, where somebody was signaling for something to go.
The tables were fitted with lilac-shaded linen, and glass tops with cracks and chips that cost the owners zero credibility with their budget-minded clientele. Each one was adorned with a plastic vase that held a single paper flower, and every chair had a laminated placemat in front of it, fun facts over a map of Florida, Spanish on one side, English on the other.
Negrito’s name was Ramon Santiago, and he wasn’t Cuban or even Colombian as Leo first suspected, but was born in a banana republic down that way, Ecuador or Venezuela, something like that. Leo never asked and Negrito did not offer extra specifics about himself. He was a nephew of Miguel Santiago, better known as El Negro, which was how he got his nickname. Leo didn’t know where they came up with this Big Black-Little Black business. Negrito and his uncle were both medium-toned Latin guys.
Negrito was hogging a booth that probably fit eight. The table was clear except for that paper posy, a small saucer, and an espresso cup he was drinking from. He was alone. Leo wasn’t sure if this was a good sign or not, whether Negrito’s uncle or one of his thugs weren’t going to slip up behind him and strangle him with a piano wire, like in The Godfather.
Negrito was about thirty. He wasn’t more than 5’6”, a rock-solid fat guy who never touched a weight but would bury the biggest Body Tech blockhead in the sand and cut off his head if he was in a bad mood, and Negrito was never in a good one. He looked like he’d gained a few pounds since the last time Leo saw him.
He had a head like Rex the Rottweiler, and his eyes were set way apart like Rex’s, but the animal he most resembled was a hyena, no neck, the head sprung straight from shoulders knotted tight with muscle. His fat cheeks made his thin-lipped mouth look smaller. Handsome, no. But his strong chin saved him from being homely.
He sipped his coffee. He looked Leo up and down. He set the cup on the saucer. After what seemed like a long time, Leo just standing there, he said, “I suppose you think you’re pretty slick.”
Leo could hear him breathing through his nostrils, snuffling like he had a cold. He said, “Why would I think that?”
“Shut up, Leo. Shut up and sit down. You arranged a delivery. That delivery was made. Then they guy who took the delivery got smoked in his hotel room.” His English had no accent. “You gonna tell me you don’t know anything about this?”
“Well, no. I saw the papers. And it was on TV. They said it was, I knew it was Manfred.” He waited for Negrito to say something, but Negrito kept quiet, so he added, “The guy I arranged the delivery for.”
“You thought this would be good for my business? My uncle’s business? Using us as the set-up men in your peabrained scam?” He smoothed the corners of his mustache.
“You know I, I mean I...”
“We’ve got friends, Leo, all kinds of friends, and you know what our friends told us? They told us none of our product was found in the man’s room. Now that’s odd. What happened to our delivery? That’s what I don’t understand. Maybe the guy was able to flip the whole kilo between the time our people left and the time the murderer arrived. Hey, maybe the cops stole it. Maybe the package grew wings and flew across the street into the ocean. What do you think?”
He wasn’t waiting for answers, Negrito getting downright rhetorical.
“Or maybe, just maybe, somebody who had inside information on this deal let his friends in on his secret, and they got themselves an idea. Let’s steal it. C’mon, who’s gonna know? Negrito’s too stupid to figure it out, so let’s tie his operation to the murder of a man who was no trouble to anybody. Bring a blast furnace of heat right down on Negrito. Let’s make an asshole of Negrito. Fuck El Negrito.”
“I swear to Christ and on my mother’s grave I did not rob that guy and I had nothing to do with his murder.”
Negrito raised his fist and swung it down in an arc, slamming the table top. The cup jumped off the saucer and tipped, spreading espresso out on the glass. That earlier nausea Leo was feeling crept further down his intestinal tract. He was struck with the overwhelming urge to shit.
Negrito took a breath and collected himself, letting the red go out of his face. “This is a complicated situation, Leo, but all life is situations. Some you can get around, and some,” he paused, and Leo wasn’t liking the sound of this silence, “you can’t.”