They spent the next day there, Fulton and Karp sleeping on the camp beds in shifts, listening to Mafia talk over the taps, growing bored and seedy. Each of them went out once to get toilet things and a change of clothes.
At eleven-thirty on the afternoon of the second day, the home phone rang and was answered by a man the tap agent identified as Joey Cuccia. The caller said, “This is Vince. Tony there?”
“No, he ain’t. Vince who?”
“Vince Malafredo. Who’s this, Joey?”
“Yeah. What you got, Vince?”
“Yeah, that picture? Jimmy Ace and a couple of the fellas was by couple nights ago showin’ it around. I know the guy. I thought I knew him, but like, I wasn’t sure, you know. Now I know. He came in the joint and placed a bet on the dogs.”
“So? He got a name?”
“Yeah.” A pause. “This is for a yard, right?”
“Yeah, yeah, a yard. What, you don’t think we’re good for it? Who’s the scumbag and where can we find him?”
“Right. He calls himself Angie Cruz. Runs a bunch of those Cubano coffee stands, sandwich joints. Lives here in Hialeah.” The man gave an address on Fifty-fourth Street. “It’s off Flamingo Way.”
Karp and Fulton were in the Pontiac forty seconds later, tearing off east on Sixty-third, Karp flapping through a street map, calling out directions.
It took them forty minutes to get to Hialeah via the Seventy-ninth Street Causeway and 823, and twenty minutes more to find the lime green house among the numberless others on the identical streets.
Karp leaped out of the car and trotted up the path and rang the bell.
“He’s not home,” Karp said after five minutes of ringing.
“Maybe he’s at work,” said Fulton. “I mean, it’s the middle of the day.”
“We’ll wait.”
“Let’s get something to eat. Then we’ll wait.”
“Takeout,” said Karp. “We’ll eat in the car.”
Fulton sighed. “Man, you ever done a stakeout before?”
“No. Why, is it hard?”
“With you in the car, it’s gonna be a bitch,” said Fulton, and stalked off down the path.
They bought a couple of Cuban sandwiches each, two six-packs of Coke and a bag of ice and a styro box to keep the ice and the Coke in, and called Al Sangredo to come and relieve them at eleven that evening.
They waited, watching the breeze shift the crotons, watching the shadows change on the street. It was not too warm, about seventy-five; they kept the windows open. Karp learned how to pee into a can.
Around two-thirty, a green Plymouth rolled down the street slowly and pulled into a space opposite Guel’s house. The driver kept the motor running. This attracted the attention of the two men in the Pontiac.
“Crap, it’s Tony’s guys,” said Karp in a pained voice.
“Nah, no way!” Fulton scoffed. “Wrong car. You ever see wise guys in a Plymouth?”
“Not touring, but who knows what they use when they whack people? What should we do?”
“Just wait,” said Fulton. They waited, watching the blue exhaust from the Plymouth curl up into the air. “Uh-oh, he’s getting out.”
The man in the green car had turned off his engine at last and now stood on the curb, slowly looking both ways.
“It’s Guel,” said Fulton between his teeth when the man looked their way. He had gained some weight since his guerrilla days, and was now a tubby man, with a higher hairline and a thicker mustache. He wore heavy sunglasses, a white guayabera shirt, and rumpled gray slacks. He hadn’t shaved in a while.
Karp doubted he had just returned from gainful employment. “What’s he so nervous about?”
“You’d be nervous too, if the word was out on the street that a Mafia don wanted a personal interview, plus a hood you knew in the old days had just been whacked. Okay, he’s decided the coast is clear, he’s crossing the street. What I think we sh—Hey, Butch, what the fuck!”
Karp had flung open his door and was heading at a good clip down the street after Guel.
“Ah, excuse me, Mr. Guel?” he called out. “Could I talk to you a—”
Guel whirled, his eyes wide.
Karp stopped talking as something big and heavy struck him in the small of the back. He saw the pavement rise up at him and he threw his hands forward to protect his face. He heard several loud sounds as he crashed into the asphalt.
There was a devastating pain in his midsection, and he struggled to bring air into his lungs. His hands stung from road burn and a weight was bearing down on his back. He was strangling. Another explosion, much louder. His ears rang. There was a brown forearm braced in front of his face. Fulton.
“Clay, goddamn it … ,” Karp choked out. He could barely hear his own voice above the ringing in his ears.
“Stay there!” Fulton ordered. Karp felt the weight leave his back. He lifted his head and saw Fulton dash, crouched, gun in hand, across the street to Guel’s house, kneel behind the croton hedge, and look cautiously around it. A door slammed, sounding very far away.
Karp rose painfully to his feet, took a few deep breaths, and inspected his scraped and bleeding hands. He walked to where Fulton knelt. Fulton motioned him down with an abrupt gesture. “Christ, Butch! Didn’t you see he had a gun?”
Karp shook his head.
“You gotta be blind! It was in his belt under that shirt. He could’ve had a fuckin’ sign on him, armed and dangerous. And antsy. Didn’t you see him go for it?”
Karp cleared his throat and took several deep breaths. “Hell, no! All I saw was him walking away and then he turned and then you sacked me. I guess you had to do that, right?”
“Unless you wanted another eyehole. Goddamn, Butch! Talk about dumb-ass stupid …” He flapped his mouth soundlessly, as if unable to find words adequate to the stupidity.
“Hey, what do I know? I’m not a cop,” objected Karp weakly, flushing now with embarrassment.
“You sure the fuck ain’t. And speaking of which, Counselor, neither am I anymore, and especially not in this fucking municipality which we is now in. What the fuck’re we supposed to do now?”
Inside the darkened house, Caballo stood flat against the kitchen wall, barely breathing, his little pistol cocked in his hand. He had been awakened from a light doze by the ringing of the doorbell some hours since. He had no idea who had rung the bell or where they were now. Obviously it was not Guel, and just as obviously somebody else was expecting Guel to return home. After the bell ringers left, he had eaten some cold beans from a can. Guel apparently liked black Cuban beans; Caballo had found a dozen or so cans in a cupboard and he had been living on them for the past three days, that and beer. He had also searched the back bedrooms and the bathroom, just to keep himself busy. He had found a tin box full of cash, which he’d taken, but nothing of significance.
When the shots outside sounded, he had placed the food and utensils under the sink and pressed his back against the kitchen wall to the left of the doorway. It was the right place to be. Behind the wall he leaned against, the living room led to the front door on one side and a Florida room opposite. The back door opened on the Florida room. The kitchen was to the right of the living room, connecting by an open archway. Another archway led from the kitchen to a short hall and two small bedrooms and a bath.
He heard the front door opening, then slamming shut. Steps. Heavy breathing. A rustling sound. Guel was looking out his front window, pushing aside the rattan blinds. Caballo tensed. More footsteps, coming closer. Guel rushed by him on the way to the bedrooms. To get his cash.
Caballo took a silent step, extended his arm, and fired twice at the back of Guel’s head at a range of about four feet. The man collapsed. Caballo leaned over the prostrate Cuban and fired three more shots into the base of Guel’s skull. Then he walked out through the rear door.
“What the hell was that?” asked Fulton, peering cautiously around the foliage, his pistol clutched high in both hands.
“Didn’t you hear it? It sounded like shots. From in the house.”
“Well, shit, Clay, we know he’s got a gun.”
“No, not his gun, another gun. Guel had a big piece, a .38 or a .357. This was like a little gun, a .22, four or five shots. Didn’t you hear it?”
“No, my ears are still ringing from when you shot at him over my head.” He paused and listened, trying to ignore the ringing. “Hey, I heard that.”
“Yeah, the door; our boy just went out the back.”
Karp jumped to his feet and started to walk around the hedge, but Fulton cursed, grabbed him by the belt, and yanked him back down again. “Stay here, damn it! I oughta cuff your damn ankle to the fence, and I would, if I had cuffs.”
“Clay, I—”
“Just don’t move, okay? If he gets by me and goes for his car, you just stay there, understand?”
Karp nodded.
Fulton, still crouched, moved in a quick rush down the concrete path to the door, flattened himself at the hinge side of the doorway, waited for a few seconds with his ear pressed to the door, and then slipped in.
Karp sat down on the pavement and worked on recovering his breath. He had a hole in his pants at the knee, where blood oozed, and his palms were beginning to sting fiercely. He pulled out a handkerchief and used it and a little spit to clean the road grit out of the scrapes on his hands and knee. Across the street an elderly Cuban woman observed him incuriously from her front step. In a solid Cuban working-class neighborhood like this, nearly everyone would be at work or school now; those that remained seemed in no hurry to report a gun battle on the street to the authorities.
At the end of the street a battered red pickup stopped and let out a man in stained work clothes. A school bus from a parochial school came down the street and dropped off three kids, who ran into houses. Another man, in khakis, a blue ball cap, and sunglasses, walked around the corner of the block, entered a tan sedan, and drove away. An elderly man came out of a house with a small dog on a lead. Then the street was quiet.
Fulton called to him from the doorway, and Karp rose stiffly to his feet and joined him.
“He’s dead,” said Fulton. “Our guy was waiting for him. There’s a cracked pane in the rear door with fresh tape gum on it. He broke in and waited and shot Guel when he came in. Guel’s in the kitchen; took a bunch in the back of the head with a small-caliber gun. Then our boy just strolled out the back over a little fence, into the next yard and away, while we were squatting in the fucking bushes. Shit! I hate this, this fucking half-assed police work. We should’ve come in here with a couple dozen guys and a warrant and sealed off … what’s wrong?”
Karp had gasped and was staring wildly. “Holy shit! I saw him. I just saw him! It was Caballo. He was wearing a blue ball cap, a skinny guy with sunglasses. He just walked around the corner and got into a car and drove away. And I was just sitting there, watching him. Christ!”
They looked at each other. There was nothing to say. After a moment, Fulton said, “Well, fuck this! I’m gonna call it in and then we can wrap up and get the hell out of this town.”
“No, wait, I want to take a look around,” said Karp.
Fulton started to object, but then, seeing the expression on Karp’s face, sighed and said, “You’re fuckin’ crazy, you know that? Make sure you get his blood on your shoes and leave plenty of prints.”
Karp did not get blood on his shoes. There was a good deal of it on the kitchen floor and he had to step carefully past the corpse of Angelo Guel. One look at the two bedrooms and the bathroom told him that he was not going to find anything of relevance. All three rooms had been searched by an expert: drawers turned over, closets emptied, the mattresses and pillows slit and disemboweled. There was a blue metal bank box torn open in the mess, empty. Karp poked around desultorily for a few minutes, pausing to collect some Band-Aids and antiseptic in the ruins of the bathroom, and then came back to the kitchen, cursing under his breath.
“The fucker tossed the place too,” he said in response to Fulton’s questioning look.
“You think there was something Guel had that he wanted?”
“Had to be. He did a real pro job on the place.”
“Uh-huh, back there, but not out here. He couldn’t’ve, or the ambush wouldn’t have worked. Guel would’ve seen the mess and been on his guard. He didn’t touch either the kitchen or the living room or the back room that I can see.”
“Let’s do it!” said Karp, brightening somewhat.
“No, let me do it,” said Fulton sourly. “You sit on that couch and if I need legal advice, I’ll ask.”
Karp sat on the couch and practiced first aid. Fulton started searching the Florida room. Forty minutes later, Fulton came out of the kitchen with a manila envelope and tossed it on the couch next to Karp.
“Where’d you find this?”
“Taped to the back of the fridge. Nobody ever looks there. Inside the fridge, yeah, but not behind it. Or under it. It’s as safe as a—”
“What’s in it?”
“Look for yourself. Bankbooks and some papers in Spanish. There’s a ledger there you might find interesting.” Fulton had a broad grin on his face.
“Tell me.”
“Well, as far back as these bankbooks go, Guel’s been depositing two grand a month in cash. Guess who from.”
Karp dumped the contents of the envelope out on the couch. The account book was the old-fashioned narrow black model, with greeny yellow pages ruled for double-entry bookkeeping. Karp was not a bookkeeper and his Spanish was rusty, but it was clear that listing income under columns marked “actual” (verdadero) and “reported to the tax man” (informe a impuesto) was not a generally accepted accounting practice. As far as the IRS was concerned, Guel’s coffee and sandwich business was barely hanging on. But Angelo Guel was making plenty of money, much of it from a source identified in Guel’s neat handwriting as PXK.
Karp shoved the material back into its envelope and stood up. “Great, this is great,” he said. “V.T.’s already got a lead on it, this PXK angle.”
“So what now?” asked Fulton, indicating the feloniously violated crime scene.
“What now,” said Karp pleasantly, “is that I intend to walk down the block and call a cab from the nearest phone booth, pick up my stuff at the motel, and catch the first plane back to Washington. Basically, I’m fleeing, leaving you to clean up the mess here.”
Fulton laughed and sat down, rubbing his eyes. “Some guy!” he said. “He runs like a thief and dumps me in the shit, and after I just saved his life.”
“Hey, what can I say?” said Karp grinning. “I’m a lawyer.”
“You didn’t burn the place?”
Bishop’s voice was calm over the phone, but Caballo could tell he was upset. Extremely upset.
“No, like I said, some people showed up. They tried to get in and then I heard some shots fired. Then the guy, the client, came in at a run with a gun in his hand… .”
“All right, I understand. Let’s not discuss it over the phone. We’ll have to continue under the assumption that whatever material your client had is in the hands of our competitors.”
“So, what should I do? You want me to go down the list?”
“No, not just yet. And I want you to stay out of Texas for as long as possible. Things in Washington will be coming to a head soon. I think I’d like you back here.”
SEVENTEEN
Marlene walked in the door and was immediately hit by, “Mommy, Mommy, guess what? Sweetie bit a bad man!”
“Oh, Christ! Harry?”
“He bit him really hard and made his pants rip off!”
“Harry!”
Harry Bello strolled in from the kitchen, wiping his hands on a dish towel tucked into the front of his pants. “How’d it go?” he as
ked.
“What’s this about the dog?” Marlene countered.
Harry shrugged. “The kid’s right. We were walking in that park up the highway a couple miles. I got a ball for the dog, we’re throwing it. Guy gets out of this pickup and watches us for a while. The dog comes by him, chasing the ball, he makes a grab for its collar. The dog goes crazy, does his rabies act, growling, snapping. The guy backs off, makes a run for his truck, the dog goes after him, grabs his behind, rips the seat of his pants off, shorts and all. We’re just standing there, it went down so fast. The guy’s in the truck, he starts yelling his old lady paid two hundred for the dog, he’s gonna sue our ass. I gave him the eye for a while and he ran out of steam and took off.”
“He said a lot of bad words, Mommy.”
“I bet he did, honey. Harry, this guy: about six-one, two-hundred, crew cut, bent nose, looks like a bouncer in a redneck bar?”
“Yeah. You know him?”
“In a way. He used to live next door. His wife actually did buy the dog, but this bozo was always getting on her to get rid of it. I guess he found out he could get some cash for it and wanted it back. They were real mean to him anyway, and I guess old Sweetie has a long memory.” She glanced at the dish towel.
“You’re cooking?”
“Yeah, she was hungry.”
“We’re having SpaghettiOs,” crowed Lucy, and she began to hop around on one toe singing the eponymous jingle.
Marlene lowered her brows at Bello. “Harry Bello, you brought SpaghettiOs into my house?”
Bello made an appeasing gesture. “She wanted.”
“This gets out, I’ll never be able to walk down Grand Street again.”
“I got steaks for us, wine for you,” said Bello.
“Oh,” said Marlene, “in that case …”
They ate, and afterward the dog licked all the plates and crunched up the steak T-bones like potato chips.
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