“Get a description?”
“Absolutely,” Muddy said, nodding. “The counterman came through. The dining companion was about thirty-five, pretty sharp looking and big for a Cuban type, tall, dark, and nearly handsome. Nearly ’cause of a squashed boxer’s nose and a scar kinda like a lightning bolt on his cheek. Not sure which cheek. Anyway, counter guy never saw the big Cuban before, and said he hoped he never did again, ’cause this character looked like the type you didn’t mess with.... Honey! Honey, do this again, would you?”
Muddy was holding his empty plate out to a passing waitress, and lifting his cup, as well. She stopped, took the plate, and filled the coffee with the pot she was hauling.
When she was gone, Muddy said, “Now here’s the kicker. When the big Cuban comes in, he’s carrying a package. Only when the two of ’em left? The old man had it.”
I nodded thoughtfully.
“Got him pegged?” Muddy asked me.
I nodded. The description fit Jaimie Halaquez, but I didn’t tell Muddy that.
“So don’t tell me,” Muddy said, shrugging. “Send me out for information, but keep the damn context to yourself. That’s a good way to get nowhere fast.”
I ignored him.
He had a slug of the coffee—it must have been hot because he said, “Ow,” before asking me, “Maybe you’d like to know something else?”
“Maybe.”
“You got that Walter Crowley guy really screwed up. They got a make on the spic who really belonged to those car-wash coveralls. Right now they’re figuring you’re long gone from the scene.”
But it hadn’t stopped Crowley from sending my photo around to the hotels.
“Where’d you hear that, Muddy?”
“Big ears, thin walls. It’s what makes my world go round.”
His new round of pie and ice cream arrived. He dug in.
“Anything on this Consummata dame?” I asked.
“Couple of things.” He kept eating.
“Don’t let me interrupt,” I said.
He swallowed a bite, which meant at least I wouldn’t have to watch him masticate while he talked. “Morg, are you aware that this is an older doll?”
“Who?”
“The Consummata!”
“How old?”
“Her activities go back to before the war, in Europe. That means, if she started out in her early twenties, you know, real precocious and such like, she’s got to be pushing fifty, anyway.”
“Last time we talked she was a rumor. A legend. Now she’s a broad of fifty? What gives, Muddy?”
He shrugged expansively. “Who the hell knows, for sure? But my guess is, she may be a political operative.”
“Attached to whom?”
“Who can say? Maybe freelance. Nazis, Allies, Commies, NATO, it’s up for grabs. But when you have some special somebody with key information, and that somebody has a kink in their make-up? That’s a sweet way to squeeze information out...and ideal blackmail material. Whether it’s for money, or military intelligence, it’s a great gambit.”
Like the Club Mandor, only more so.
I sipped iced tea, kept my tone casual. “You said a couple of things about the Consummata. What else?”
Now he leaned forward, as if suddenly there was something worth being confidential about. “There’s a big old house, built in the thirties, one of them stucco mansions, out on Palm Island—near the old Capone estate. Nobody’s lived there for years, but it gets rented out, for parties and so on. Word is somebody took it for the next couple months. Paid top dollar to do so.”
“Somebody.”
“Some woman. Some beautiful woman.”
“About fifty?”
“No age. No description. I can dig further and get more, maybe lots more. I can put private eyes on it, if you have the bread. We could stake the place out, see who shows up. Doesn’t have to be your Consummata babe. It’s a long shot. Longer than any they play at Hialeah. But it’s a shot.”
Maybe not so long a shot. A mansion on private grounds, out on Palm Island—what better place to install a whipsand- chains playroom or two? Where better to set up an elaborate if temporary dungeon? Elegant enough to suit her clients, secluded enough to let them scream for mercy, or more. What else could the Consummata ask?
“Keep digging,” I said.
“And it will be worth...?”
Discreetly, I passed him another three hundred bucks off the roll. “Enough?”
He slipped it away. “For now. If you pay for the pie.”
“I’ll pay for the pie. You just deliver. I’m in no position to go out on the snoop myself.”
“I gather that.” He glanced at me speculatively. “Anything else you want?”
“Yeah. Get what you can on anybody engaged in traffic with the Cuban mainland. Even suspected activity. Castro shut the casinos down, but I hear he doesn’t mind selling the decadent West illegal dope. You know, just to help along the decline of democracy.”
Muddy whistled, or anyway tried to. “Brother, you’re asking for a lot. That’s military ground you’re troddin’ on. And what isn’t military is Mob.”
“Information can be bought. That’s your business.”
He shrugged. “I guess you’re right—anything and anybody can be bought, can’t it?”
“Not everybody,” I said.
CHAPTER EIGHT
I took a circuitous route back through the night to the beginning of the maze Gaita had led me into, reaching into my memory for the right paths and the tunnels that had been part of an abandoned Prohibition brewery.
At intervals I stopped, listened for any feet that might be following my own, wondering whether Walter Crowley would still have kept any of his men posted in the area— Muddy had said the chase had been called off, yet I knew Crowley had only recently sent my photo around to the hotels.
When I was sure I wasn’t being followed, I felt my way through the last brick-lined corridor that curved over me like a vault to the nearly invisible door at the end, swung it open on its silent hinges and took a flight of considerably less silent stairs to the top. I laid my ear against the panel, heard nothing, then slipped my fingers in the recessed handle and slid it open.
She was sitting there at the dressing table, her eyes so intent on fixing her makeup, she didn’t notice me until I was all the way in. Then she stiffened, snatched a pair of scissors from the tabletop, and spun around in the chair.
“Hello, Gaita,” I said.
She took in a soft gasp, laid the scissors slowly down, and allowed a tremor of relief to take her body.
“Morgan,” she said, “you bastard. Don’t do that again—not ever! People, they can get killed that way.”
“People can get killed a lot of ways.”
That melted her glare, which became a self-conscious smile as she realized the negligee had partially opened, and the suddenly shy little courtesan, with a deft motion of her fingers, folded the lapels one under the other, covering the fullness of her dark-tipped breasts.
“You look like you’re dressed for a client,” I said.
Her eyebrows rose indignantly and her nostrils flared with pride. “Señor Morgan—do not mistake me for the others who work here. Gaita chooses her own company—I am the only one at the Mandor Club with this privilege.”
“Any guy you choose would be a lucky devil.”
She shook her head and dark curls bounced off her shoulders. “These days I choose to be alone.”
“Expensive choice in your trade.”
She ignored that, cocked her head and peered at me. “You surprise me, Morgan.”