That morning, Paz was the first one in the homicide unit, a suite on the fifth floor of the Miami PD headquarters building. Unlike the versions presented by the cop shows on TV, police work is largely desk work, using phone, typewriter, ballpoint, and, latterly, the computer. Despite the drop in the murder rate, the homicide unit remained busy, because it was also responsible for assault and domestic violence, which had not declined at all.
The unit was commanded by a lieutenant named Posada and was part of the Criminal Investigation Section, under a major named Oliphant. Paz thought Posada was a useless excrescence but had not made up his mind about the major. Major Oliphant was a newcomer. The city fathers had finally concluded that after two generations of almost continuous scandal and corruption they would try an outsider. This was fine with Paz; he didn’t have many friends among the old guard. Oliphant was ex-FBI, which did not endear him to the Miami cops. There were rumors, too, about why he had left the Bureau, some obscure Bureauesque imbroglio.
Paz was making phone calls, looking for a gold Lady Rolex watch bearing the inscription “To Estelle from Eddie, Love Always” because the love hadn’t lasted quite that long. Eddie had just put Estelle into a coma and proved to be a cad in the bargain, making off with all his gifts. On the eighth call, he found the right pawnshop. He put the phone down, smiling, and spun around on his swivel chair like a small boy but stopped when he saw that Major Oliphant was standing in the doorway of the detail bay, looking at him curiously. Paz stood up.
Douglas Oliphant was an offensive-tackle-size man, a shade or two darker than Paz. He smiled and asked, “Good news?”
Paz told him about the case. Oliphant nodded and gestured in the direction of his own office. “Come on, I’ll buy you a cup of coffee.”
“Want a churro with it?”
A little hesitation at the sight of the greasy bag Paz held up and then, shrugging, “Sure, whatever.”
Oliphant’s office had a big window looking north, but the blinds were already drawn against the glare of early morning. He poured Paz a cup and one for himself and sat behind his desk. Paz noticed that his cup was a souvenir item from the 1998 National Association of Chiefs of Police convention, and that Oliphant’s had “FBI” on it, with a golden seal. Oliphant examined the churro with interest and took a bite.
“Mm, my, that’s good! Where do you get these?”
“I made them.”
“Youmade them?”
“Yes, sir. I’m really a girl, but they make me cross-dress because otherwise I would have too much affirmative action. They’d have to make me the chief.”
This was delivered deadpan, and it took Oliphant a few seconds to get it, but he managed a laugh.
“Yeah, I heard you were a pisser…is it Jimmy?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Yeah. Why don’t you have a partner?”
The unexpected pertinent question of a skilled interrogator. Paz was impressed but not discomfited. “I prefer to work alone, sir. They fired my partner last year and none of the new guys seem to have worked out.”
“No, and what I hear is you ran them off. I also hear you got an attitude.” Paz did not comment on this. Oliphant regarded him over the rim of his coffee cup for a while. “And a perfect disciplinary record, an unusual combo in my experience. Well. The fact of the matter is, your preferences aside, you have to have a partner and you know why. This department, I can’t have detectives wandering around the town all by their lonesome. You make a case, I got to have two people saying what went down. And if the shit happens to hit the fan…” He made an indeterminate gesture with his hand, and Paz filled in, “You want to be able to get each of them in a room with a bunch of snakes and get one of them to rat the other one out.”
“You got it.”
“You could hire Barlow back.”
“Uh-huh, I could, just before I handed in my resignation and packed my bags. Your guy held the former chief of this department hostage at gunpoint while spouting all kinds of racist crap.”
“He was emotionally disturbed. The perp slipped him some kind of drug.”
“That’s the story, although I have to note that the docs found no drugs whatever in his system after you arranged for his capture.” He paused and waited, but Paz was not forthcoming. “I always thought there was something really fishy about that whole Voodoo Killer thing. Care to comment?”
“I wrote a report. Eighty-seven pages without appendices. And there was a book out.”
“I read both of them,” said Oliphant and pinched his nostrils together meaningfully. Paz kept mum. The major went on: “Okay, you need a partner and I’ll tell you what I’ll do. Since I think we can call this a special case, I’ll letyou pick your guy. Anyone in the department who’s got the right grade and time in service. I want a name by close of business tomorrow. And this arrangement stays between you and me. Are we clear on that?”
“Yes, sir,” said Paz and stood up.
“Sit down,” said Oliphant. “That wasn’t what I wanted to talk to you about.” He took another churro out of the bag, then smiled, patted his belly, and placed it on his desk blotter.
“Later, I think. Okay, this homicide at the Trianon you put away the other week. That was fast work.”
“A grounder. The perp was sitting there, the murder weapon was at the scene.”
“Still. There’s no doubt the doer was this woman Dideroff?”
“Not inmy mind,” said Paz, and then had an uncomfortable feeling. “Why do you ask?”
“Oh, no reason. Know anything about the victim?”
“A guest in the hotel. Flew in from Mexico City three days before he died. Some kind of Arab businessman is what I gathered from his stuff. A Sudanese passport.”
“Uh-huh. I got a call about the case.”
“Oh?”
“You know I used to be with the Bureau.”
“Yes, sir, I heard that.”
“The call was from a guy who works for the people who watch certain individuals from that part of the world. At the Bureau, I mean. This Jabir Akran al-Muwalid was on a watch list.”
“That’s interesting. Did he say why they were watching him?”
“Not really,” said Oliphant brusquely, discouraging curiosity. “He was mainly interested in knowing if it was really him, Muwalid. I had the file faxed up to D.C. He also wanted to know if the woman, the suspect, was going down for it. Is she?”
“That’s not up to me, sir, but you read the file: I can’t see how we could deliver a more unbreakable case. What’ll happen at trial…” Here Paz shrugged elaborately. “She’s a wack job was my take on her. Talking about mystic voices. She might try an insanity defense, I don’t know.”
“That would be a long shot, in my opinion,” said Major Oliphant. “But it might strengthen the case if we had a good sense of what the connection was between them. She say anything about that?”
“Only that the vic was her enemy and that he’d done some bad things back home in Africa. I gathered she was talking about massacres and stuff, war crimes.”
“Uh-huh. She elaborate any on that? What went down in Africa?”
“No, sir, not to me. But she’s writing out what she calls a confession.”
“Really. What does it say?”
“Well, actually I haven’t seen it yet. She says she has to write it in a special kind of notebook.” Paz had a certain expression on his face when he said this, and Oliphant’s eyebrows rose.