Cundo Rey woke up the next morning, 6:00 A.M., he didn't sleep so good, he opened his eyes he had a headache. Ouuuuu, he had a good one. He believed it was from not using his anger.
Anger was good if you could use it right away, let it pick you up and carry you. But if you didn't use it, then it passed and it left your brain sore. Like balls became sore if you were ready to make love but for some reason didn't do it. Like you had to get out of her house quick. Man, they ached. It was the same thing with the brain. He took aspirin and Pepsi-Cola. Pretty soon he was able to think. In time he began to wonder why he had got angry.
The creature had told him to get a good place close by to hide. He had found a perfect place, Bonita Drive, a one-block curve of apartments, cheap, between Seventy-first Street and Indian Creek Drive. Ten minutes from the action down on South Beach. One minute from the North Bay Causeway, shoot over to Miami, you're on the freeway. He rented the first floor of a two-story place for a month; it even had a garage to hide the car in.
He had given the address to the creature and the creature said good, here's what I do and here's what you do, and told him all the things he eventually did. Take the bag from the woman, who would follow a note to the car-park building. Run home and hide the bag. Get rid of the stolen car... Then after a week or so, when it was cool, the creature said he would come and pick up his half of the money and they would never see each other again.
But the creature never told where he was going to be hiding. The creature never called him a name and said, don't try to take the money for yourself or I'll find you and kill you. That should have opened his eyes. But his own greed, thinking how easy it would be to take it all, had perhaps blinded him.
So last night, 8:30, he came back from getting rid of the Skylark, a nice car; he opened the Hefty bag upside down, and for a long time he sat looking at the pile of cut-up newspaper on the floor, the Miami Herald and one called the Post.
What made him angry was thinking the cops did this to him. The cops not caring if it endangered the woman. The dirty cops, like all cops, full of cop tricks. He drank a pint of rum and a liter of Pepsi-Cola to become tranquil, but it didn't do any good.
This morning, a beautiful day outside, he looked at the pieces of newspaper he had kicked all over the living room, at the pieces of broken glass and dishes on the floor, and began to wonder different things.
Why the creature hadn't tried to frighten him: take the money, you die.
How the creature himself was able to put the note in the woman's car and in that hotel if the cops were watching. How he could do it, a man who always wished to be seen, and not be seen.
Why there were no cops in the car-park building if the note told her to go there. He had been very careful entering, looked in cars, all over.
Why, if the note didn't say to go there, she did.
It was getting good.
Why she seemed to be stopping the car--there was no sound of her car's tires--before he came out from behind the post.
Why she looked at him so calm and did not appear frightened. Like she expected him to be there.
He sat staring at the pieces of newspaper, thinking again of the notes the creature said he had written, wondering again how he could have given them to the woman, beginning to see the fucking creature was a liar--as a thought related to this lifted him out of the chair.
He went through the kitchen to the garage that was part of the building, and looked in the trunk of his car. There it was in a case--which he opened to make sure--the typewriter he had forgot to drop into Biscayne Bay. He touched the typewriter and the carriage slid out to one side and locked there; he couldn't get it back. So he left the case and took the typewriter into the apartment.
That typewriter got him thinking some more and he sat without moving, letting thoughts of Richard and the woman slide through his mind, seeing the two of them friends, good friends. Seeing the woman, again and again, stopping her car as though she knew exactly where he would be, almost smiling at him, so calm, knowing he wasn't going to hurt her, knowing he was taking pieces of paper.
He sat without moving and thought, Richard isn't coming. Of course not. It was Richard and the woman. He didn't know how. He didn't know why she would be stealing from herself, except that Richard was a liar and maybe she wasn't rich and it wasn't her money they were stealing. Richard was a liar and it was Richard and the woman.
Cundo sat without moving for so long that finally when he moved he knew he would keep moving and get out of here. What was he hiding for? He didn't do nothing. What did he steal, some pieces of newspaper? He didn't have to stay here, he could go any place he wanted...
Because if it was Richard and the woman they wouldn't want him to be caught and talk to the police. So she wouldn't look at pictures and identify him. Afraid he might tell the police about Richard. He would, too.
Uh-oh. It made him think of something else he had forgot about just as he had forgot about the typewriter.
What if it wasn't the woman and the creature stealing the money but the woman and the picture-taker?
He had forgot about that fucking picture-taker.
If he'd had the snubbie when the picture-taker sat in the wheelchair and took his picture... But he had bought the snubbie after, to use on the picture-taker, and then had become too busy preparing to steal a bag of newspapers cut in pieces. Oh, man... crazy.
And thought of the time he walked in the crazy-place in Delray naked, to get information. He had to smile. There was always a way to find out what you need to know.
Sure, call up the woman. Don't worry about the picture-taker, if he's in this or not. What difference does it make?
Call up the woman and ask her she wants to buy a typewriter, cheap. Only six hundred thousand dollars.
See what she says.
Chapter 25
McCORMICK SAID HE DIDN'T WANT to bother her, he could get the manager, with her OK, to let them in. This was Bureau check-list routine, go over any area known to the suspect. Jean said no, it wasn't a bother--immediately establishing an attitude--she'd be glad to drive up and meet them; not asking, which suspect? In the car she tried on several attitudes from wide-eyed innocence to cold resentment, cutting remarks, but decided she'd been instinctively right on the phone: victim with a passive respect for authority was still the way to play it.
They were waiting downstairs when she arrived, Mr. McCormick and two officers from the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Department with their evidence kits; McCormick explaining they would like to pull a good set of Nobles' prints if they could, also look around in case he might've left something; Jean nodding, following every word, showing how fascinated she was; McCormick saying clues turned up in unexpected places; Jean saying yes, she imagined so; thinking, You sneaky FBI son of a bitch. Both sides buttoned up with respect.
Jean had to play it with a knot in her stomach at first--until McCormick came out of her closet; then, for a while, with mild apprehension. She could have overlooked something. A crumpled sheet of steno paper behind the desk, a scrap of newspaper in the closet. She had gone over the apartment thoroughly once the plan was set. There were no Hefty bags around. No Walther automatic to find unexpectedly. All old Miami and Palm Beach papers had been thrown out...
As apprehension eased, left her, McCormick became fun to watch. Neat but beefy in his seersucker suit, blue Oxford cloth button-down, beige and blue rep tie--he dressed like so many guys she used to know--glancing at his reflections in silver and glass, trying to remain offhand, polite. But losing it as he looked in or behind every closet, cabinet, piece of furniture and found nothing. He did come up with a pair of sunglasses she'd misplaced and her gratitude, at this time and somewhat overstated, apparently rubbed him. With suspicion in his eyes, quiet awareness in hers, he seemed bound to pull out something, if even remotely incriminating.