‘Moscowitz,’ Ironstone snarled underneath his breath.
‘Relax,’ I whispered. ‘Nobody’s going to shoot. Not even me. Although the fact that you have a deal with the Columbians gives me pause.’
‘I don’t have a deal with the Columbians!’ he whispered. ‘David used my name!’
‘That’s probably right,’ I agreed. ‘It’s also what’s keeping us alive for a minute. Tell your guy not to hurt Lena.’
Without looking, Ironstone mumbled, ‘Hattisits cheh.’
It was one of the Seminole languages; I thought it meant stop.
Crew Cut relaxed and Lena rolled away.
‘Good,’ I whispered. ‘Now will you go along with what I say? I can get us out of this.’
‘Let’s just see how it goes,’ Ironstone answered.
‘Look, Fidestra,’ I called out, ‘you can start a war if you want to. But you should probably think about what it would mean to have Italian families from the north and Seminole tribes from the south both coming at you with all kinds of malice.’
Nobody moved.
‘We could kill you all right now,’ he answered at length, ‘and bury you in the swamp. No one would ever know.’
‘You can’t be serious.’ I mustered a laugh. ‘I’m an agent of the state. If I don’t fill out paperwork, everybody and his brother comes looking for me. And if Ironstone disappears, every Seminole within a hundred miles would slog through the swamp until they’d found him. And they would find him. To you this is a wild place. To them, it’s a back yard. Don’t you get that?’
Lena stood up then, against every good instinct, and leveled an evil eye right at Fidestra.
‘And I can top all of that!’ she barked. ‘I work for Walt Disney!’
Nobody laughed. She somehow managed to make it sound like she had J. Edgar Hoover on her side.
Crew Cut got to his feet and murmured, ‘Tuchanocakin.’
Ironstone nodded.
‘Don’t know that word,’ I admitted.
‘Thirteen,’ Ironstone said. ‘That’s how many men there are in that parking lot.’
I didn’t bother counting.
‘I’m not in the mood to start shooting and hope for the best,’ I began. ‘And I kind of have to keep the kid out of harm’s way, you understand.’
‘I wasn’t thinking of shooting,’ Crew Cut whispered.
‘He was thinking of crows,’ Ironstone said.
It was such a weird thing to say that I didn’t know how to respond. So Crew Cut went on.
‘John Horse told me once,’ he said, ‘that if you have one or two crows, you can shoot and probably get one for dinner, if you want it. But if you have thirteen, they scramble. There’s chaos. All you can do with thirteen is scare them away – before they start thinking they can peck your eyes out.’
I nodded. ‘Creepy, but I think I get it. If we can stir up a little chaos, we might be able to slip back to our cars and get away.’
‘No!’ Lena protested. ‘We came here to get my sister. And that stupid DEA agent. We can’t just run away.’
‘Yeah,’ I admitted, ‘she’s got a point.’
‘Right,’ Crew Cut said, ‘so we do this: we all try to shoot up those cars over there, then Ironstone and I head back to the Fleetwood. We’ll see if we can get some of the bad guys to chase us while you and the kid look around here.’
‘That’s insane,’ I said.
‘I’m in,’ Lena told him.
Without another word she aimed her little pistol at a Buick and popped off a shot. There was nothing for it after that but to duck and fire. Crew Cut had a gun in each hand, Ironstone wielded a big Smith and Wesson something-or-other, and I managed to shoot the tires out of three cars before Holata’s gun was empty.
There was a lot of complaint about what we were doing, mostly in the form of returned gunfire, and also in plenty of Spanish cursing.
The four of us had cover, trees and palmetto plants and wiry shrubs. The Columbians were out in the open. They tried diving behind cars or dropping to the ground. After a minute they understood that nobody’d been hit, not a single bullet wound.
Ironstone and Crew Cut sensed that moment, and ran, back toward the restaurant and their Cadillac. Lena managed to slink away into some fairly dense undergrowth. I got myself behind a tree. Seconds later, maybe ten guys flew past us on the path, chasing after Ironstone.
Fidestra and a couple of stragglers were still by the cars. I was trying to decide the best course of action when Fidestra turned and shot the two guys standing next to him. Shot them dead.
‘OK,’ he called out. ‘I know you’re still here. Come on out.’
Lena knew better than to move, and I stayed mute.
‘I’m an old man,’ Fidestra went on. ‘You made some good points in your little speech: what do I want with Italians and Indians on my ass? I should be in the Cuban part of Miami right now, drinking rum and Coca-Cola and trying to score with a girl half my age. You know. So I can die happy in bed.’
I sighed. ‘Not five minutes ago,’ I called out, ‘you were going to kill us.’
‘I wasn’t going to kill you.’ He paused. ‘They were.’
‘Where’s my sister?’ Lena shouted.
‘I don’t know,’ Fidestra answered, ‘and that’s the truth. But I can take you to the DEA agent you’re talking about.’
I didn’t believe him. Lena didn’t believe him. That’s why it was so surprising when we both walked out onto the path.
He didn’t have a gun in his hands. He made sure to show us that. We kept ours pointed at him. Mine was useless, of course; I didn’t know about Lena’s.
‘I’m with Dr Moscowitz on this,’ Lena snarled, pointing her gun very carefully at his face. ‘Your third change of heart in under ten minutes – doesn’t seem especially reliable.’
‘Look,’ he said, staring down the gun, ‘sometimes I don’t know when I’m telling the truth and when I’m saying whatever it is I have to say so that I won’t get killed. I’ve been at this a long time. And I’m also pretty drunk, so that counts for something.’
That had a certain ring of truth. He probably was a little dazed and confused. It was fairly common knowledge that lots of Cubans had been killed. This guy was wily, but he was also tired. Anybody could see that.
‘Take us to the agent,’ Lena said, cold as January.
He nodded. ‘Come on, then.’
He turned his back on us and headed away.
I leaned close to Lena. ‘My gun’s empty.’
‘So’s mine,’ she whispered.
‘Any chance I could get you to kind of hang back?’ I suggested.
She laughed and followed Fidestra.
We weaved our way through the cars in the gravel parking lot and past some sort of out building, maybe a restroom. After that the path got narrow again, surrounded by live oaks and Spanish moss, the pervasive palmettos, and sandier ground. The light was dappled and the shadows moved quickly in a dank breeze. We caught up with Fidestra fairly quickly, Lena behind him on his right, me on his left, my gun still foolishly leveled at his back.
After a couple of silent minutes, we came to a gaggle of concrete picnic tables, all in better shape than the place where we’d found the sad little tent.
Without warning, Fidestra stopped. I bumped into him.
‘There,’ he said, and he pointed to one of the tables – an empty table.
Lena put the short barrel of her pistol against the back of his neck. ‘There’s no one there.’
He didn’t move. ‘She’s buried underneath the table.’
‘Damn it,’ I said, glancing down at my shoes.
I dropped like I was going to tie one of my Florsheims, but when my knee hit the deck I took hold of Fidestra’s ankle, locked on, and stood up. It had worked before, and it worked again. He went tumbling down. I had his foot and I twisted it hard enough to break his ankle. I put my foot right between his legs, ready to kick.
‘Just lie ther
e,’ I warned him, ‘or I’ll crack your eggs.’
Lena took a few steps back.
Fidestra did his best not to move, but he was in a very uncomfortable position. He rolled a little to the left and I twisted his foot harder. He grunted. His jacket fell open. He had two pistols tucked into his pants.
Lena saw and moved so fast he didn’t see her coming. She pocketed her Lilliput and dropped down, retrieving the two guns like she was picking wildflowers. She kept one and handed me the other. They were the same: police issue Smith & Wesson Model 10, commonly called the .38 Special, an old-timer’s gun, to my mind.
‘The idea was that we would—what was your idea?’ I asked.
He was wincing from the popped ankle. ‘Let me up and I’ll just kill you right now. Otherwise you’ll be alive for a long time watching what I do to esta plaga!’
He’d used the word that meant vermin or insect. I didn’t know if Lena understood the exact translation, but she correctly interpreted the intention. She responded by kicking the guy in the head.
‘You’re a worthless piece of crap,’ she told him. ‘And we’re going to kill you now.’
‘No you’re not,’ he said calmly. ‘I know things. I made a deal with the DEA so they could stop all the drug traffic in Florida. They know that. Why do you think they kept me alive?’
I didn’t think he meant to say that, but it really brought down the house as far as I was concerned. This guy had convinced the Feds that he was working with them. He’d convinced the Columbians that he was on their side. And he had tried, a couple of times, to convince me and Lena that he wanted to help us. He was a trickster.
‘My Aunt Shayna used to tell me, when I was little, stories about old rabbis who would work miracles. One of these guys was bragging about his abilities one day. He says, “When I climb up on my chair, I can see with my luminous eyes to the very ends of the earth!” And one of his students says, “What? You need a chair?” The idea in this case is that you can brag about your miracles all day long. But in the end, I can see farther than you can, and I don’t need a chair.’
Fidestra just stared.
Lena leaned in, keeping her gun pointed at Fidestra.
‘You’re going to have to unpack that a little more, Foggy,’ she said.
‘He’s boasting about stuff that he really can’t do, and I’m going to take him down a notch,’ I said simply. ‘I’m going to finish breaking his ankle for messing with us. We’re going to take his guns and get back to my car, if it’s still there. And then I’m going to tell Detective Baxter how great it was that Fidestra helped us by ratting out his Columbian cohorts.’
That got a rise out of Fidestra. He started kicking and rolling.
I twisted his foot past the halfway mark, and the ankle popped like a hatchet falling. He howled. Then, just for good measure, I shot him in his right hand.
‘Let’s go,’ I told Lena.
She didn’t hesitate. She took off running back toward the restaurant and my T-Bird.
‘So that means Baxter is working with the Columbians?’ she asked me as we raced.
‘Something like that,’ I mused. ‘Ironstone. The Columbians. The police. That’s who we’re up against. We’re really going to need some reinforcements, here.’
We ran. Moments later we slowed down to make sure there was no one waiting for us near the restaurant. The parking lot there seemed empty. The Fleetwood was gone, and there were only two other cars evident, mine and a beat-up Ford pickup I’d never seen before. I hoped it belonged to a customer of the establishment, took a deep breath, and headed for my car. Lena was stuck to my side.
We made it to the car. I started it. I backed out. No trouble.
I had a very eerie sensation that we were being watched, but nothing happened. We got out of the Cherry Pocket and onto the main road. Neither one of us had put our guns away.
After a minute or two, Lena put her gun in her lap and leaned back.
‘My sister’s dead, isn’t she, Foggy?’ she asked me softly.
I kept my eyes on the road. ‘You have to at least consider that as a possibility, yeah.’
She looked down. ‘So you’re going to stop looking for her.’
‘No,’ I said instantly. ‘When I woke up in the hospital and you were there, I promised you I’d find her. That still goes. Even if she’s buried under a picnic table.’
It was such a cruel, macabre image, we both started laughing, for some reason. Probably just the tension.
‘Could we, like, never go back to the Cherry Pocket?’ she demanded. ‘I mean, like, ever again? It’s the opposite of Disneyland. It’s the least fun place in the world.’
‘I don’t know,’ I told her, ‘what’s so fun about Disneyland?’
She looked out the window. ‘Nothing there is real.’
TWENTY-ONE
Back in Fry’s Bay, Lena conked out on the sofa and I sat in the kitchen pondering a couple of the toughest problems I’d had in a while.
The first was about the insurance policy that David had taken out for Ellen and the baby. If he really didn’t know Ellen well enough not to confuse her with a look-alike; if he really had juiced her, boinked her, and cut her loose – why would he have taken out a million dollars’ worth of insurance on himself with them as the beneficiaries?
Second, it was really hard to believe that a spoiled rich kid, which was his modus, could intimidate people like Fidestra and take over an operation that guys much tougher had put together.
Third, if David was a child molester and the whole tribe hated him, why hadn’t John Horse stopped the guy? That was the sort of thing John Horse would do: run a punk off the rails. And yet David had lived to molest another day – that day being the one when he messed with the wrong kid, in the person of the one sleeping on my couch.
The rest of it was standard to me. Baxter was on Ironstone’s payroll? My experience in Brooklyn was that a cop who didn’t take at least a little pocket change was not to be trusted, didn’t know the game. Ironstone was involved in the drug mess in and around Miami? What else was new? Rich people get rich by seeing that everybody else gets dosed. Get poor people hooked on drugs or fast food or Coca-Cola – whatever makes them zombies, whatever kills them off, whatever keeps them in line.
So if I eliminated the standard, what I was left with was David Waters. Who was he, exactly?
And that question made me realize that Hachi had been trying to get me to think about David from the very first time I met her. Which meant that John Horse wanted me to find out about David. Find out about what I had no clue at that point. It was all a muddle.
I stood up.
‘Hey,’ I called out gently.
Lena shifted on the sofa. ‘What?’
‘I’m going out for a minute. Got to check my office – what’s left of it.’
‘What time is it?’ she mumbled.
‘Early. You slept for a while. It’s dawn. You want me to bring anything back?’
‘Donuts.’
‘Right. I’m locking up. Don’t let anyone in.’
‘Yes.’
‘Anyone, Lena.’
She rolled over and looked at me. ‘OK.’
I nodded, and I was gone.
I actually did go to my office. Someone had replaced the S so that the signage read ‘Child Protective Services’ again, like it was supposed to. But most of the furniture was still gone. My desk was a mess. There was no chair for it.
I picked up the phone and was very surprised to hear a dial tone. I made a few calls. The big office in Miami was very sympathetic to my plight. They’d already reinstated the office. I told them about the whole mess with David Waters. They gave it an official case number. They were also giving me a hundred dollars to ‘refurbish.’ So that was nice.
My second call was to Escalante Insurance Agency, the group that administered David’s questionable insurance policy. I laid the policy on my desk and waited for someone to answer the phone.
‘Esca
lante,’ a woman’s voice said, ‘how may I help you?’
‘I’d like to speak to Mr Lopez,’ I said.
It was the other signature on the policy beside David’s.
‘What is it regarding?’ she asked tonelessly.
‘Insurance policy for David Waters. He’s dead. I’m with Child Protective Services and we’re looking to collect on behalf of the beneficiary, a juvenile: Ester Greenberg Waters. Mr Lopez issued the policy.’
‘Oh.’ Her tone changed considerably. ‘David Waters. Yes. That’s quite a – Mr Lopez? Someone from the Child Projected Service is calling regarding David Waters!’
There was a click on the other end and a sudden voice.
‘Hello? This is Charlie Lopez.’
‘Yes, Moscowitz with Child Protective Services,’ I said, trying to sound as official and impatient as I could. ‘We represent Ester Greenberg Waters in the collection of the insurance policy you wrote for David Waters, now deceased.’
‘Yes.’ He shifted the phone to his other ear. ‘Of course.’
‘What steps need to be taken?’
He paused. ‘Oh. Well, we would need the death certificate, of course, and Letters Testamentary demonstrating your power of attorney in the matter.’
‘Of course. And then?’
‘Well, then – I mean, we would issue – there are several options. We prefer to set up a convenience account for the beneficiary. We would administer it for a nominal fee and said beneficiary could withdraw from it whenever needed. Like a bank account.’
‘Is one of the options that you just write out a check for the insured amount and hand it over to said beneficiary?’
Again with the hesitation.
‘Well. Yes, that is possible. But we prefer—’
‘I’ll bring the papers to you on Tuesday,’ I said like a Frigidaire. ‘You’ll hand over a cashier’s check then. Shall we say eleven AM?’
‘Now, you’re with who, exactly?’
‘Child Protective Services. We protect children. From people like you. If you like you can call the main office there in Miami. Just got off the phone with them. Ask about Case Number 2247J. Anything else?’
‘And your name was?’ he asked very deferentially.
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