“That’s him,” I said, and stood up to greet him.
62
“Mr. Jacoby,” he said by way of greeting.
“Captain,” I said, holding up my bandaged hands, “meet Deputy Cathy Merrill.”
“Miss Merrill,” he said, executing a courtly bow, “a pleasure.”
“Hello, Captain,” she said. “Can we get you something?”
I marveled at how quickly Cathy Merrill and I had become “we.”
“I believe I will have a beer,” he said.
“Anything in particular?” Cathy asked. She was doing an admirable job of being hostess.
“Something Mexican,” he said, “as long as it is not Corona.”
Cathy made a face and said, “Corona is not a beer. I’ll go and get something for you.”
She rose and went to the bar, and DeLeon turned his attention to me.
“An attractive woman,” he said. “A deputy, you say?”
“Yes,” I said, “but she’s detective material, if you’re interested.”
“Perhaps,” he said with a small smile.
“Am I free to go home, Captain?”
“Free,” DeLeon said, “and strongly urged to do so, Mr. Jacoby.” He raised one hand off the table a couple of inches and showed me his palm. “Please, do not take that personally.”
“I’ll try not to,” I said.
“Your story checks out. I have talked with Alfonso in Orlando, who will keep an eye on Mr. Delta, just in case he had some involvement in this case.”
“I doubt that he did,” I said, “but I guess it doesn’t hurt to watch him for a while.”
He nodded his agreement.
“I have also been in contact with the Sarasota police. I feel certain Mrs. Worth will have a difficult time running her business, legitimate or otherwise.”
I ticked off names in my mind, and that took care of just about everyone who was involved except Carol Huffman.
“What about the girl, Captain?” I asked. “I believe she was about to hand me her gun.”
“Perhaps,” he said, “but she consorted with the wrong people, Mr. Jacoby. I think she will have to take her chances in court.”
Cathy had just returned with a bottle of Dos Equis for him.
“That sounds harsh,” Cathy said, setting the beer down at his elbow and taking her seat again.
He looked at her and said, “Well, she does not have a previous record, and according to Mr. Jacoby’s statement she didn’t really, uh, do anything but help the wrong people.”
“So then she’d have a good chance?”
“One can never tell,” he said, shrugging, “what a jury will decide. She is, however, young and attractive. . . .” He shrugged again and spread his hands.
“I also talked to your Detective Hocus in Manhattan,” he said then, looking at me. “He gave you a recommendation— not a glowing one, mind you, but a recommendation nevertheless.”
“I’m grateful for small favors,” I said, making a mental note to speak with Hocus when I got back.
“He wanted me to tell you that he has already talked with both Mr. Meyer and a Mr. Charles Haney. It seemed that these gentlemen are partners in some, eh, dubious endeavors. I believe they will also have some difficulty staying in their chosen professions.”
I’d gotten a call from Ray Carbone last night. He had checked out Haney and found out that he was another yuppie with delusions of being a crime czar. In fact, he’d told me that Meyer and Haney belonged to the same health club. No doubt they’d hatched their drug plot over a few games of racquetball.
I still didn’t know why Haney had called me, but I could guess. He probably didn’t approve of Meyer hiring me, and he was probably going to offer me a job that would pay so much I’d give up looking for Sandy Meyer to take it. Of course, we never hooked up, so that offer had never been made.
“Too bad,” I said. “Maybe they’ll try to become full-time drug dealers and hoods now.”
“One would hope not,” he said. “Ah, I would also urge you not to be in contact with Detectives Becker and Rizzo before you leave. They are not at all happy with you.”
“Because I called you instead of them?”
“Precisely,” he said. “I do not consider your act as having cast aspersions on their abilities, but they nevertheless feel, ah, somewhat slighted. You might understand this?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Excellent,” he said. “Then you will not hold it against them?”
“Of course not.”
“Excellent,” he said again.
He took a healthy swig from his beer and then put the bottle down on the table next to mine. Cathy was drinking Coors. I’d have to work on her.
“That sounds to me like everyone is taken care of, Captain.”
“Everyone whom you have mentioned to me, yes,” he said. He looked at me, and I suspected that the captain had a reputation for having looks that were worth a thousand words. “One cannot help wonder, however, what you might not have mentioned.”
“Like what, Captain?”
“We still haven’t found the drugs,” DeLeon said.
“And we probably never will,” I said. “Sandy Meyer knew where they were.”
“And we haven’t found her body either.”
“Okay,” I said, “so if she’s alive she’s somewhere else, and she’s got the drugs. If she’s dead, then the drugs are stashed . . . somewhere.”
“Cortez might have known where they were . . .” DeLeon said.
“. . . but he’s dead, too,” I finished. “If you think I know where they are, Captain—”
“I didn’t say that, Mr. Jacoby,” DeLeon said.
“You implied—”
“I simply asked if you had told me everything.”
“Why would I hold anything back?” I asked, with as much innocence as I could muster.
“Professional pride?” he asked, raising his eyebrows. “Don’t those of your profession delight in knowing things the police do not?”
“You’ve been dealing with the wrong members of my profession if you think that, Captain.”
I didn’t feel any guilt about not having mentioned Carl Caggiano. Why get Carl Junior any madder at me than he already was? It would simply not be the healthy—or smart—thing to do.
“Perhaps,” he said, “perhaps ...”
He picked up his beer and gave it all of his attention until it was gone. He set the bottle down with one hand and wiped the remnants of beer from his beard and mustache with a practiced movement of the thumb and forefinger of his other hand.
“Time to go,” he said, standing. “Miss Merrill. A pleasure. Perhaps we may have a chat sometime about, uh, professional matters?”
I checked the captain’s left hand for a wedding band, and there was none.
“I’d like that, Captain.” Her smile was worth a thousand watts.
“Bien,” he said with a nod. He turned to me. “Mr. Jacoby, when may we expect you to head back to New York?”
In other words, “Here’s your hat what’s your hurry, don’t let the door hit you in the ass on your way out.”
“A couple of days at the outside, Captain,” I said. I lifted my bandaged hands and said, “I might want to see the doctor one more time about these.”
“Yes, of course,” he said. “Well then, pleasant flight.” He reached to shake hands, then realized I couldn’t and gave me a little salute instead. He looked at Cathy one more time, said “Con mucho gusto,” and left.
“Does he really think you found the drugs and are . . . keeping them?”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “He just strikes me as the kind of man who doesn’t like loose ends.”
“And what about you?”
“Loose ends?” I said. “They’re part of life. You could waste a lot of time trying to tie them all up.” I looked at her. “He likes you, you know.”
“Well, he is very good-looking,” she said, giving me a sidelong lo
ok.
“And unmarried,” I said, “and he wants to have a, uh, professional chat with you.”
“And why not? You’re certainly not going to be around.”
“No,” I said, “no, that’s true, I’m not.”
“So that takes care of everybody,” she said with a shrug, “except me, of course. What about me?”
“Cathy,” I said, at a bit of a loss, “I like you a lot. . . .”
“But?”
“There are no buts,” I said, “but I have to go home.”
“Well . . . you have a telephone, don’t you?”
“Well, sure . . .”
“And who knows? You may need a vacation in the near future.”
“That’s true.”
“And when your hands heal,” she said, “you can write.”
“Yes,” I said, “I will.”
“Promise?”
“Of course.”
“And you’ll call, and talk to me when I call?”
“Yes—”
“Promise?”
“I promise,” I said, looking at her. “Cathy, of course I—”
“Come on, then,” she said, “let’s get out of here.”
“Where are we going?”
“My place.”
“Miss Merrill?” I said, looking at her askance.
“Why not?” she asked. “You said you still had a couple of days. I might as well see how many good reasons I can give you to keep your promises.”
“You’re shameless,” I said to her as we headed for the door.
“I know,” she said, shaking her head, “I can’t understand it myself.”
“I can.”
“Oh?”
“Sure,” I said, “it’s my New York charm.”
“Ha,” she said. “Ha, what?”
“Here I was thinking I liked you in spite of that.”
“Well,” I said, holding the door open so she could precede me, “I like you in spite of your, uh, problem.”
She did a quick turn and said in an exasperated tone, “What problem?”
Afterword
In 1984 my family and I moved to Florida. We stayed there less than a year, and then returned home to Brooklyn, New York. Moving to Florida had been a mistake. At least, that’s what some of us thought.
While I was in Florida I got to know the Orlando area pretty well. I also—for no particular reason—started collecting Florida postcards. One of my favorites showed a girl in a bikini from the back, a girl who was in very good physical condition. I’d stare at that card and wonder who the girl was. Then I started to wonder if there was anyone—her family, her boyfriend, a friend—who would be able to recognize her from the back.
A few years later, after I had moved back to Brooklyn and then to St. Louis, to start over after a divorce, I was trying to think of a new case for Jacoby when I found those postcards in my desk. I stared at my favorite again.
And it hit me. A man approaches Jacoby, shows him the postcard, tells him he knows who the girl is and he wants Jacoby to find her. It’s the only Jacoby book that takes place mostly out of town. I take Jacoby through all the locations I remembered from my time in Orlando as he searches for—and finds—the girl in the postcard.
The cover. Oh yeah, the cover. Another cover horror story? I gave the art department the postcard so they could copy it for the cover. Not copy it exactly, but I told them that this was where the whole idea for the book came from. I wanted to copy it as closely as was legally possible.
A writer exerts very little control over the covers of his or her books—unless they are a national best seller like Stephen King or Mary Higgins Clark. I made my suggestions, but when I got a copy of the cover I was amazed at how bad it was. Yes, it was a girl in a bikini from the back, but it looked more like a cartoon than a postcard. But I was very happy with the book itself, and it got some nice reviews for me and Miles.
Robert J. Randisi
About the Author
Robert J. Randisi, recipient of the Private Eye Writers of America’s Lifetime Achievement Award, is a publishing phenomenon. With more than five hundred novels under his belt, he shows no sign of slowing down. His latest work includes The End of Brooklyn, which Booklist in its starred review called “dark, brooding and thoroughly compelling.” The six-volume Miles Jacoby series, reissued by Perfect Crime, brings back the prize-fighter PI in novels as infused with the harmonies of New York as a Canarsie cab driver. “If [it] moved any faster you’d have to nail it down to read it,” said Elmore Leonard of the first Jacoby book. Described by Booklist as “the last of the pulp writers,” Randisi has published in the western, mystery, horror, science fiction and men’s adventure genres. He was born and raised in Brooklyn, N.Y., and from 1973 through 1981 was a civilian employee of the New York City Police Department, working out of the Sixty-SeventhPrecinct in Brooklyn. After forty-one years in New York, he now lives in Clarksville, Missouri, with writer Marthayn Pelegrimas in a small house overlooking the Mississippi.
Also by Robert J. Randisi
THE GUILT EDGE
232 pages. $13.95. ISBN: 978-0-9825157-3-0
THE BOTTOM OF EVERY BOTTLE
186 pages. $12.95. ISBN: 978-09825157-1-6
THE SHAMUS WINNERS VOLUME I (1982-1995)
336 PAGES. $14.95. ISBN: 978-0-9825157-4-7
THE SHAMUS WINNERS VOLUME II (1996-2009)
282 pages. $14.95. ISBN: 978-0-9825157-6-1
Available at bookstores, Amazon, and at ww.PerfectCrimeBooks.com
Hard Look Page 22
