Buck Torres was talking to his superior, the major in charge of the Detective Bureau, Miami Beach Police. When Torres came back on he said, "It wasn't mailed, right? She found it in her car."
"This morning," LaBrava said. "The windows were broken last night at ten past ten, that's the exact time. But the note wasn't found till this morning."
"You went out to the car last night..."
"We heard it, glass breaking. We went out, but didn't see the note. It was on the front seat. The car was locked, the guy had to break the side window to drop the note inside. This morning, when the lady went out to her car, she found the note."
"Nothing came in the mail."
"I just told you," LaBrava said, "it was in the car."
"This's the first one."
"Right."
"Nothing in the mail, no out-of-state phone calls."
"Look, it's yours," LaBrava said. "You want to bring the FBI in that's up to you."
"The Major isn't sure."
LaBrava shifted his weight from one foot to the other, looking at the elephant named Rosie pulling the cement roller. There were small figures, men wearing blazers and white trousers in the background of the photograph. He said, "Well, it wouldn't be a bad idea if somebody looked at the note. You know what I mean? Got off their ass"--getting an edge in his tone--"since it's a murder threat if the money isn't paid." He had to take it easy, stay calm, but it was hard. He knew what Torres was up against.
Buck Torres said, "How much was it?"
"I told you, six hundred thousand."
"I thought you said six thousand," Buck Torres said, calm, and was silent.
"You gonna choke?" LaBrava said. "If you're gonna choke then get some help."
"Take it easy," Torres said. "I'll be over in a few minutes." He paused and said, "Joe, don't let anybody touch the note."
"I'm glad you mentioned that," LaBrava said and hung up. He was on edge, out of practice. Or on edge because he felt involved in this, a personal matter. But he shouldn't have said that about choking, or any of the dumb things he said. He said to Jean and Maurice, looking at Jean, "They don't know if they should call in the FBI."
Jean straightened. She said, "Well, I do."
"Or if they should come here or you should go there," LaBrava said, approaching the dining room table. "This's a big one and it caught them by surprise. I can understand that, they have to stop and think for a minute. But Hector Torres, I know him, he's very good; he's their star, he's closed homicides over a year old. He'll look it over and then decide about the Bureau, whether they should bring in the feds or not. But technically it's not their case--at least not yet. I think, the way Torres sees it, it would be better if he came here--and I mean without any show, no police cars--than if we went down to the station. In case the hotel's being watched."
Jean said, "Well, it's fairly obvious who to look for. It can't be anyone else."
"Last night," Maurice said, "I thought it was some kids got high on something. You see in the paper this morning, Beirut, they blew up a Mercedes this time with a car bomb. A white one. You wonder why they didn't use a Ford or a Chevy." He looked at LaBrava. "You didn't see anybody?"
"It was too dark."
"It's Richard Nobles," Jean said. "As soon as I read the note--I can hear him, the way he talks."
"The hay-baling wire," LaBrava said. "His uncle, Miney Combs, when I was talking to him yesterday he mentioned hay-baling wire. He said Richard's dad used to twist a few lengths of it together and beat him with it when he was a boy, to teach him humility."
"It didn't work," Jean said.
"I looked at the note, that word jumped right out at me," LaBrava said. "He doesn't know how to spell it though."
He leaned over the back of a chair to look down at the typewritten message, a man who had experienced a great deal of waiting, a man who had read several thousand threatening letters at a desk in the Protective Research Section, Washington, D.C. This one was typed single-spaced on ruled steno notebook paper, a vertical red line down the center of the sheet, the top serrated where it had been torn from a spiral binding. The type was elite in a common serif-ed face. There were typos, capital letters struck over lowercase letters, as in the words Hefty and Hay. Only the one word, baleing, was misspelled. The type was clear, without filled-in or broken letters, or irregularities; though the touch of whoever had typed the note was not consistent, there were dark letters and several very faint ones. The I.D. technicians would photograph the note, print blow-ups, then check for latents with an iodine solution that would stiffen the paper and turn it a tie-dyed purple.
LaBrava pictured Nobles hunched over a portable typewriter pecking the note out slowly, painfully, with two fingers. The message read:
Your Life is Worth $600,000
You have three days to get the money. It must be used money with nothing smaller than a 20 or bigger than a $100 bill and don't say you can't get it. You are worth a sight more than that. Get 4000 100s, 3000 50s and 2500 20s. You are to put the money in a Hefty 30 gallon 2-ply trash bag. Put this one into another Hefty trash bag of the same size and tie it closed with some type of wire. Hay baleing wire is good. You will be told where to take the money. If you do not do as you are told you will die. If you try any tricks you will die. Look at your car. You know this is not just a threat. You have 2 DAYS to get the money and your car fixed. I am watching you.
Buck Torres came with an I.D. technician, both of them in shirt sleeves, without ties, Torres with a jacket over his arm. The I.D. technician, young and respectful, brought their holstered revolvers out of a black athletic bag and they hooked them on--both at the point of the right hip--before approaching the note lying on the dining-room table, moving toward it almost cautiously.
LaBrava, waiting a few feet away, watched them read the note, neither of them touching it. Jean and Maurice watched from the living room. Torres--white Latin male, forty-three, with hard-boned, tough-guy features that made him almost handsome--appeared older today. Immobile, lit by the hanging dining-room fixture, his face was a wood carving for several minutes, a man looking into a casket. He brought a notebook out of his hip pocket, sat down at the table and copied the typed message word for word. Then said something to the I.D. technician who used the eraser end of a pencil to slide the note and envelope into a file folder. The I.D. technician opened his black leather bag and Torres said to Jean, "Miss Shaw, we have to fingerprint you, if you don't mind, for elimination prints." He said, "You understand, if you're the only person who's touched the note."
Jean said, "Joe made sure of that."
Torres looked at LaBrava, waiting. "I'm glad you were here."
LaBrava was glad too, about some things. He was glad he had felt this coming and had got the shots of Nobles and the boat-lifter. He was glad Torres was handling it; but he knew what was going to happen now and he wasn't glad about the waiting.
There was no way to hurry it. There was no way yet to pull Richard Nobles out of a hotel room and throw him into a police car. LaBrava thought only of Nobles at this point. He believed once they had Richard they would also have the boat-lifter, the Marielito.
The I.D. technician left. They waited for Jean to wash her hands, then waited again while she made coffee in Maurice's kitchen, LaBrava knowing he would keep his mouth shut through the next part and listen to things he already knew about.
For the good part of an hour then, Jean told Buck Torres about Richard Nobles, Torres waiting for long pauses before he asked questions, always quietly, never interrupting, taking only a few notes. She had the photographs of Nobles ready, the ones LaBrava had given her. Torres studied them and looked at LaBrava.