I was, like many Floridians, the product of another place and time, drawn here by cosmic forces and great weather. I had loved New England as a kid, snow days and summers at the lake. But the older I got, the less I wanted to stay. It wasn’t until I played in a baseball carnival in Orlando during high school that not wanting to stay developed into wanting to leave. I chose University of Miami not because it was as far away from Connecticut as I could get, but because it was Florida, and they offered me a scholarship. I wondered at the time if I had gotten a scholarship at Stanford, whether I would have fallen in love with California. Then after college I got to test the theory, when I was recruited by the Oakland Athletics organization, and I spent the better part of four years in Modesto. I enjoyed it. It was a great club, a fun time and damned hard work. But when I got traded to the Mets, and they sent me down to their minor league team in St. Lucie, it felt like I was being sent home. And now it felt like a crossroads. Time to go or time to leave. Sally wanted me to buy a house, Lenny wanted me to buy a car, Ron wanted me to join the yacht club. There was a big world out there, unexplored by moi . I stood on the cusp of my thirtieth year on the planet, and I couldn’t help but feel like the universe was forcing me into a corner. What I didn’t know was whether the universe was telling me to stay or telling me to leave.
I walked home, showered and put on a red shirt with gold desert islands all over it and a pair of jeans, and I headed out. I generally didn’t like to wear jeans but made the exception when riding my bike. Coming off a motorbike was too easy, and the fall too hard. But there was little traffic as I drifted up toward Riviera Beach. I zoomed past the port, and the dockyards where Drew Keck had been polishing his beautiful boat, and crossed over onto Singer Island. I wound down past the older, low-slung homes on the canals, following the map in my mind and the brochure in my pocket. I got down near the Intracoastal and crawled slowly along, looking for the right number. I didn’t need a number. The house I wanted stuck out like a beacon on a rocky shore. The street was lined with new-build minimansions. Four-, five- or six-thousand-square-foot homes, more cinderblock and stucco than the eye was capable of taking in at one glance. They were all the same, yet unique, as if their owners were still in high school, trying desperately to fit in with the cool kids, while simultaneously proving they were individuals. They were mostly two stories, a couple three. Some had white pillars and some had arching palms and some had huge double doors, but they all wore the pastel colors of Florida.
I stopped the bike in front of the house that was the ugly duckling of the street. It was a single-story rancher, low-roofed and painted wood siding the color of shallow Caribbean water. To the side of the front door stood a royal palm, the tree of trees. It was thick-trunked and leaned over like a drunk at a bar. I got off the bike and wandered around. Sally said the owner had bought the place to knock it down and complete the matching set of luxury houses along the waterfront, but when the market plummeted they walked away. It was still early and the suburb was barely stirring, except the pickup full of guys who had arrived to continue work on the monstrosity next door. It looked like they were constructing a giant Greek wedding cake. They were quietly moving around, sharing a flask of coffee, waiting for the clock to tick over so they could begin banging and sawing in compliance with city regulations.
I turned away and peered in through the window at the front of the old home. Certainly no one was living in the place. It was as empty as a banker’s soul. I wandered around the side of the house and stood in awe of what I found. I could see what the developer was about. The rear of house was nothing more than a few palms and a roughly paved patio by a rear sliding door. But it looked out directly onto the Intracoastal Waterway. The water was ebbing from black to dark blue as the cloud reflected its mood. A couple of yachts were moored just out of the channel, and their rigging softly tapped against their masts, sending a tink, tink, tink across the water. On the mainland stretched the city of Riviera Beach, the last of the night lights doused, the town waking to another day. It was one hell of a view. I turned away from it to look at the house. It was a seventies original, like me, and like me, it seemed in reasonable if not spectacular shape. I pressed my nose to the sliding glass door to look inside. With the sun rising on the other side it was hard to make anything out.
“How you doing?” I heard someone say. I turned around to see a Cuban-looking guy in long sleeves and jeans ambling toward me. He had the thickest black hair and an easy smile.
“Good,” I said. “You?”
“Very good. You looking at this place.”
“Yeah. I heard it was for sale.”
The guy reached me and we both looked at our reflections in the glass door.
“Yeah, man. The guy who owned it, he went bust.”
“It happens, I guess.”
“Third one on this street. ”
“That right?” I looked over to the building site he had come from. “You working on the place next door?”
“Yeah, we’re lucky. That guy lives in Argentina, Brazil or somewhere. This is gonna be his Florida place. He paid cash, so no bank to take it away from him.”
That sounded good to me.
“Still,” continued the builder. “It’ll be worth less finished than what he paid for it. But I guess what goes up must go down.”
“Let’s hope the opposite is true, too.” I smiled and the guy shrugged.
“You wanna look inside?” he asked.
“It’s locked up.”
The guy frowned and grinned at the same time, then turned and ambled over to a palm tree and yanked one of the fronds off it. As he walked back to me, he pulled a piece of fencing wire from his pocket, and then he set to work on the door. With the foliage and wire he took less than thirty seconds to open the door. I considered hiring the guy as a consultant.
He slid the door open and ushered me in. The inside was like the outside: old but in decent repair, and oh-so seventies. The living room was sunken, and covered in orange shag carpet. The walls were wood-paneled, right around the rear door until the kitchen on the opposite side, where a floral wallpaper took over. The kitchen counters were brown laminate and the counters orange Formica. All the appliances were in place with the exception of a refrigerator, which left a large empty space between the cabinets and a pantry. I wandered through the place, looking in each of the three bedrooms, which all met my basic criterion of being big enough to fit a bed. There was one bathroom, a shower in the bath and a basic tile, nothing too grotesque. I turned the faucet but got nothing but thumping pipes.
“Everything’s turned off. The power, the water, everything,” said the builder from the bathroom doorway. I nodded at his deductive reasoning.
We walked back into the living room and I took one more look around. It had been a home, a real home, to someone. Someone probably of a vintage not unlike my own. A couple, with kids who grew and left and found colleges and lives in Seattle or Boise or London. A couple now no longer of this zip code or maybe no longer of this earth. There were memories here, and I glanced at the sliding door we had left open as if those memories were wafting away on the breeze, lost forever.
“You could really do something with this place,” said the guy. “Do it cheap, you could just go up, second story, redo this kitchen, add beds and baths upstairs. Or you could just knock down and do it good.”
I nodded and took one last look, and then we stepped outside. The guy used the palm frond and the wire to lock the door. He was a master at break and enter, but he was no criminal. He threw the frond away and put the wire in his pocket, and then handed me a business card. It said, Ernesto Anaya, Contractor .
“You get the place, you wanna fix her up, you call me.” He smiled and nodded.
“Thanks, Ernesto,” I said, and he ambled away toward his work site.
I took one more look at the water, and then I walked back around the side of the house. I threw my leg over and slipped my helmet on, and then I checked my watch to see ho
w long the drive was to the office.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
I MADE IT to the office in twelve minutes. I left the bike under the eaves of the building, a vain attempt to shelter it from the rain that would surely come sooner or later. Then I bounded upstairs. No one was in and I didn’t yet have a key, so I wandered back down to Banyan Street and grabbed a coffee and a bagel breakfast sandwich. I walked down to the water and watched the comings and goings, looking over to near where we had almost crashed a boat the previous evening. I didn’t fancy ending up in the Intracoastal. I heard the bull sharks were something.
By the time I made my way back, the downtown was alive and Lizzy was in the office. I said good morning and she said it back, which was nice, and then I mentioned I didn’t have a key, and she opened a file drawer, took out a large envelope and handed me two keys on a keychain that read And be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit; Ephesians 5:18 . I had plenty to say on that, but kept it to myself. Lizzy made me sign for the key, and then I went into Lenny’s office and lay on the sofa to wait.
Lenny and Ron came in together, offering good mornings to Lizzy and getting chirpy responses.
“Top of the mornin’ to ya,” Lenny said to me as he ambled into his office.
“Did I miss something? Is it St. Paddy’s day?”
“Luck of the Irish, my boy.” He smiled. Ron offered raised eyebrows.
“You’re not Irish.” Then I looked at the mane of rust-colored hair and spotty complexion and reconsidered. “Okay, maybe you are.”
His smile deepened. “Ron got a client.”
“That so?” I flipped my feet off the sofa and Ron sat down.
“Last night at the yacht club. One of my irons caught fire,” said Ron.
“Is that how that saying goes?” I asked.
“It is now. He’s an insurance guy. We do a good job, there could be plenty more work.”
“Good work, Ron.”
“When are you meeting them, Ron?” asked Lenny.
“He wants to see me this morning.”
“All good,” said Lenny, and he looked at me. I knew what he meant. It wasn’t about the client. Clients always found us, and we were rarely out of cases for long. It was about Ron getting back on the horse and moving on. Then the horse turned around and came to a stop, refusing to budge, as the phone buzzed. Lenny picked up and said hello, then held the phone up and looked at it like it was busted, then put it to his ear again and said hello once more. He was staring at it again with a frown when there was a tap at the door and Lizzy stuck her head in.
“You need to press the button,” she said to Lenny.
“What button? ”
“The button that lights up on the phone. It’s the intercom.”
He looked at the phone’s console. “What light?”
“It’s not lit now, Lenny. I’ve hung up, haven’t I?”
He replaced the handset. “How about you just open the door like you are, and come in if you want to speak to me?” He smiled and she shook her head.
“There’s someone here to see you.”
“Someone?”
“A new client.”
“Well, send him in.”
“I will. His name is Mr. Baggio. Mr. Michael Baggio.”
Lenny’s eyes opened wide and he looked at me. I turned to Ron, who looked at Lenny. It was like a Three Stooges routine, without the physical violence.
Michael Baggio stepped into Lenny’s office. He looked as well-presented as he had before, if a little tired. He wore pleated trousers and a pressed Oxford shirt that tucked into his tight waist. He was a fit little unit, and I could imagine him in another life being a mob enforcer.
“Mr. Baggio,” said Lenny, sounding like a schoolteacher.
Michael nodded at Lenny, and then glanced at Ron and me.
“Ron,” he said in surprise. “I heard you were out.”
“Michael, yes, back on the streets.” Ron smiled, but Michael didn’t. Suddenly he didn’t look so sure of himself. He turned back to Lenny.
“Mr. Cox,” he said. “You’re a hard man to find.”
Lenny shrugged. “I’m in the phonebook,” he said. I wasn’t sure anyone used phonebooks anymore, but I took his point.
“Your listing has you on Okeechobee Boulevard. It looked empty. ”
“That was our old place. We just moved.”
“You might want to stick a note on the door,” said Michael. It was a fair point, and a good idea. I made a note to drop by and do just that.
“What can I do for you, Mr. Baggio?”
Michael half-glanced back at Ron, and then turned back to Lenny. “I need your help.”
“How so?”
“You told Keegan to give himself up to the FBI.”
“I did.”
“He’s been charged with embezzlement.”
“I would have expected so,” said Lenny, leaning back in his chair.
“He didn’t do it.”
“I recall he said that at your office. If that is the case, I’m sure that will come out.”
“Now the sheriff is looking into Will Colfax’s death. He’s suggesting the two are linked.”
“But he didn’t have anything to do with that either,” said Lenny.
“No, he didn’t. Nor did I.”
“Did you speak to your lawyer?”
“Yes, and he thinks he can get Keegan off, but he says it might be a drawn-out process. And there’s the link to Will. They say the sheriff might come after me for that.”
“Keegan didn’t get bail?”
“The federal prosecutor said they can show funds being transferred from the company to accounts abroad, so they claimed Keegan was a risk to leave the country. The judge agreed.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” said Lenny. “But what is it you want from me? ”
Michael glanced at Ron, and then back to Lenny. “You got Ron out of jail. I want you to get Keegan out, too.”
Lenny took a deep breath, and then sat forward in his chair. “Michael, we found enough to get Ron out where the state attorney had nothing to go on but limited circumstantial evidence. We just showed that evidence could have applied to anyone. This is not the same.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know what the FBI has, but I’ll bet there’s something that links Keegan to the money. Signatures, passwords, account access. Whatever. Stuff that only he could do. We might find enough to muddy the waters at trial, maybe, but that would still be at trial. It might help get him off, but it won’t get him out early.”
Michael propped his hands against the desk and leaned over. For a second I thought he might be sick all over the new carpet, but he wasn’t. He was just spent. He’d come here as a last resort, hope overriding logic. And Lenny had set him straight, as he must. Michael was short and stocky, and bent over like that he resembled a dying rhino.
He didn’t look up when he spoke. “Mr. Cox, I don’t know what else to do.”
“Your attorney probably has investigators they use. They’ll look into it.”
“They’ll look into that and a hundred other cases. I don’t have much faith.” Now he stood, slack-shouldered, beaten. I didn’t know if Keegan Murray was innocent, but I knew Michael Baggio believed he was. Lenny saw it too.
“Look, Michael. I don’t want to give you false hope, or take your money doing what your attorney may already be doing. ”
“He’s not looking into Will’s death, Mr. Cox. So can I retain you to do that? Keep me out of jail.”
Lenny took a deep breath. “There’s a problem, Michael. A conflict of interest.”
“What conflict?”
Lenny looked at us on the sofa. “Ron,” he said. “Ron remains in the frame for Will’s death. As our colleague, and quite frankly our friend, he is our first priority.”
Michael looked at Ron and me. He looked pretty close to the end his rope.
“Lenny,” said Ron. “I didn’t hurt Will.
And I don’t believe Michael did, either. So if you continue looking into this, I think you’ll help us both stay out of jail.”
“There’s more,” said Michael, looking back to Lenny. “The sheriff told Keegan he has physical evidence that shows someone hit Will, dragged him across the deck and threw him overboard.”
“The sheriff might be overstating his hand,” I said. “They found blood and some kind of brain fluid on a winch handle. It suggests that someone did hit Will, but there are no fingerprints, so it doesn’t say who did it.”
“I'm not surpised there are no fingerprints,” said Michael. "Pretty much everyone wore sailing gloves. But the rest till suggests someone is trying to set up Keegan and me.”
Lenny put his hands behind his head, and then ruffled his hair. “All right, Michael. Here’s what we’ll do. We’ll look into this. If we can show that you didn’t or couldn’t have killed Will, we’ll provide such evidence.”
“Thank you, Mr. Cox.”
“There’s a but. What we won’t do is take you on as a client. If we find something that shows you did hurt Will Colfax, we will turn that over to the sheriff, because as I said, our first priority lies with Ron. If we find in your favor, something that helps you, then we can agree to terms for our work.”
“You mean hold me over a barrel? Not release information unless I pay up?”
“Mr. Baggio,” said Lenny. “You don’t know me that well so I’ll let that slide. You do yourself a favor and ask around. If you find one person who tells you I’m not a man of my word, then I’ll do your case for free.”
Michael nodded. “I apologize. You’re right. I did ask around. And I agree to your terms.”
“Good. In that case, Michael, sit down and tell us your story.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
RON MADE HIS excuses to get to his meeting with the insurance client, and Lizzy brought iced tea in from goodness knows where. Michael took a seat and Lenny came around and sat on the sofa. I sipped my tea and Lenny gave his a suspicious look as we waited for Michael to talk.
Crash Tack Page 17
