“You better,” Marlis said.
“That’s from Cold Chillin’, so it has to be Kool G. Rap. Yeah.”
Joe had to wait, not having any idea what they were talking about, before saying, “How about that disaster at Club Hell? I was working there that night. It was horrible.”
“Nobody had to clean that one up,” Franklin said, coming out of the john, “the sharks took care of it.”
“Come here for a minute, will you?” Joe motioned them over to the sliding glass door that led to the patio. “See that guy sitting by the pool? Over on the other side. Who does he look like?”
“I can’t see him good,” Franklin said.
“Take your goggles off.”
Franklin squinted now, eyes uncovered. He said, “I don’t know. Who?”
Marlis came over and right away said, “The dude with the cigar? He looks like Castro. Either Castro or that dude goes around thinking he looks like Castro. You know what I’m saying? Mickey Something-or-other’s his name. Yeah, Mickey Schwartz.”
“Wait a minute,” Franklin said, still squinting. “What Castro you talking about?”
“Castro, the one from Cuba.”
“They all from Cuba.”
“What’s his name — Fidel,” Marlis said. “Fidel Castro. Shaved off his beard.” She paused and hunched in a little closer to Joe and Franklin. “Shaved his beard and must’ve shaved his head, too, ’cause the man’s wearing a rug.”
“That’s what I thought too,” Joe said. “But whose hair does the rug look like?”
Now Marlis squinted till she had it and said, “Yeah, that high-waisted cat kung-fus everybody he don’t shoot.”
Franklin said, “I know who you mean. That kung-fu cat with the big butt. Doesn’t take shuck and jive from nobody. But listen to me now. If that’s the Fidel we talking about here, there’s a man will pay a million dollars to see him dead. Man name of Reyes. It would be easy as pie to cap him sitting there, wouldn’t it?” He looked at Joe Sereno. “I mean if it was your trade.”
“Tempting,” Marlis said, “but safer to clean up after. Celebrity, be nothing wrong with doubling the fee.”
Joe was thinking. He said, “You suppose a hit man killed these two in here?”
“Hit men as a rule,” Franklin said, “don’t make this kind of mess. One on the back of the head, use a twenty-two High Standard Field King with a suppressor on it. We’ve followed up after hit men, haven’t we, precious?”
“We sure have,” Marlis said. “Lot of that kind of work around here.”
Joe Sereno said, “You don’t suppose...” and stopped, narrowing his eyes then to make what he wanted to say come out right. “In the past few days I’ve run into three homicides, counting these two, and a fourth one they’re calling an accident looks more like a homicide to me. I have a hunch they’re related. Don’t pin me down for the motive, ’cause I don’t see a nexus. At least not yet I don’t. But I got a creepy feeling that once these two are identified, it will explain the others. I’m talking about the old woman, and a guy named Phil. And, unless I miss my guess, it all has something to do with that man sitting over there smoking a cigar.”
“Unless,” Marlis said, “the dude over there is the Fidel impersonator, Mickey Schwartz.”
“Either way,” Joe Sereno said, “ID these two and this whole mess will become clear.”
A look passed between Franklin and Marlis.
Joe caught it and thought, Hmmmm.
Part III
MIAMI VICES
To Go
by Lynne Barrett
Hialeah
(Originally published in 1996)
So I insist that we stop and at least I’ll get something to go, even if B.K. won’t come in, won’t eat, his stomach nervous, he’s in such a rush to make Clewiston by noon. He stays in the cool car
while I pass through bright heat into one of those places, lunch counter/souvenir store, where the air has the sweet mustiness of pecans and orange wine. I wait while they zap the sausage biscuits and when I come out with iced teas on a tray and hop into the Chrysler
he’s dead. Hunched over the wheel with the same glare he had when he drove a two-lane and some old-timer in an Airstream got ahead of him and nothing, not flashing the high beams, not honking, not gunning up to ride three inches from the guy’s bumper, nothing would make the slow poke speed up. B.K. looks just like that now, aggravated
and dead, clutching the wheel. His cheeks are slippery with tears and there’s a faint bad smell. The air conditioner is blasting. The motor runs ragged. I stick my foot over and press his shoe down on the gas, and the idle richens. I want to charge inside and howl for help, but I know for once in my life I ought to stop and think. I look out through purple-tinted windows at the parking lot — nobody in sight but some family at a picnic table under the sign for LIVE BABY ALLIGATORS and GOAT’S MILK FUDGE. If I go inside I’ll have to say,
Excuse me, Mr. Brian Kittery is out there, dead. It must have been his heart. His stomach bothered him last night, but it always did. He used to say, “Nobody dies of indigestion.” And it never slowed him down. Sure, we did it this morning in that motel on South Dixie he liked to stay in whenever he visited the Home Office, me leaning on the table, looking out the window at the sunlit swimming pool, him with his pants around his ankles as if when he finished he would yank them up and dash — but that was his favorite way and it was his idea, don’t blame me,
he wouldn’t, he wasn’t that kind of guy. Impatient, sure, with inept cashiers, Zavala Junior at the Home Office, but basically fair. He groused about phoning his wife in Arcadia every evening at seven, but he did it on the dot, I noticed. When I first rode with him, six weeks ago, he was so jumpy I thought he could be one of those guys like they show on TV, Mr. Normal Church Choir Wife and Two Kids in Little League, who is socking it away the whole time, stealing everyone’s investments, and then takes off — but no, I got to see he was just in a rush, horny, in hock, buying scratch-off lottery tickets, pressing to make time on the road, driving
up and down Florida stopping in every I Love Jesus Beauty Parlor & Auto Repair to sell his line of beauty products — Seagrape Scrub and Alligator Mask and Key Lime Conditioner, with me as his demo. It was his great idea, my fake ID saying I’m forty-two years old and look thirty, when really I’m twenty-six looking thirty, which is an achievement if you ask me because I’ve been through enough to look forty-two. We like to say life is short
but it’s a long, long time when you’re sitting in it. When I met him, I was in Cocoa, doing a Miller Lite promotion, giving out free hats in a sports lounge during Monday Night Football, wearing short-shorts and high heels. “Nice wheels,” he said, meaning my legs. I told him I taught aerobics in the daytime, was saving for a move to Miami, where you can get work as a dancer, and he said, “Why wait?” Big man, seventeen-inch neck, eating chicken fingers. That night we got as far as Briny Breezes, Palm Beach County, and next morning, just for me, he took the slow route down the A1A past the oceanfront millionaire houses, to Miami. While he was at the Home Office, Señora Zavala’s storefront in Coconut Grove, I checked out the rents and decided to say yes to a swing around the state with him, zigzagging: Naples — Fort Pierce — Tampa-Orlando-Daytona-Jacksonville and then the long glide out the Panhandle where I saw my granny. And then back down, opening up new territory in Ocala and Port St. Lucie. Amazing how fast the state changes, new cutteries in strip malls and vanished salons. Florida is motion