I grinned at him. “Tell me something, Luis. Did you guys use ESP or something, to lead me here?”
Saladar didn’t see the humor. “No, my friend. We are simply taking advantage of an opportunity. Naturally, I learned at once of your presence here. I am fully aware of your past history. That is why I ask you for the suggestion. In these matters, you are the expert, the professional.”
“Not in the political arena, amigo. Sorry to disappoint.”
Once again Saladar paused and leaned forward, his hands still clenched. “Know this, Señor Morgan, we do not seek repayment for aiding you. You need to banish any such thought from your mind.”
“Okay.”
“We will make sure you escape from this place. We do so with gratitude. We are your true friends.”
“You’ve proved it, Luis.”
He smiled and it was a sly thing. “So...can not a friend ask another friend for a suggestion? Whatever you say, we will attempt to do. At this point, we are desperate for a solution.”
“I won’t suggest anything,” I said.
His eyes grew a little sad. “Very well. May I ask why?”
I held up a hand. “Because somebody might get hurt taking my advice. Like you said, I’m the pro. A generous definition for a hood, but apt enough.”
“We can try our best.”
“No.”
He started to cover his disappointment with a shrug, then I added, “I’ll do it myself.”
His eyes widened abruptly and he unlocked his fingers and ran them through his hair. “No, señor, it will be enough for you merely to escape. You cannot jeopardize yourself on our account.”
I laughed, once. “Hell, it’ll keep me in practice.”
“Your suggestion would be enough, señor. Tell us what to do and—”
“My suggestion is you listen to the pro. You can conduct your own search in your own way, and if you’re smart, you’ll get one of the friendlier police agencies to help you. You want to go that route, fine.”
“We do not.”
“Then I have my own methods and my own contacts and I don’t want any amateurs screwing them up.”
“Señor...”
I cocked my head. “That is, unless you’re afraid to let me loose on this thing.”
They glanced at each other, then back to me. “Why would that be, señor?”
“Maybe if I get my hands on that dough, I’ll just take off with it myself.”
Because I was grinning at them, they didn’t take it as an offense. Both of them smiled back and Maria’s smile was the biggest of all.
Finally Saladar said, “No, señor, we are not afraid of that at all. You are a man of honor.”
I was glad I wasn’t taking a swig of beer when he said that. “Say that in front of some people,” I said, “and you’ll get the biggest laugh of your life.”
There was silence for a moment, then Saladar reached in his inside suitcoat pocket and withdrew an envelope. He opened it on the table and bills spilled out.
“Jaimie Halaquez did not find everything, SeñorMorgan,” he said. “To do what you must do, you will need money. Here is the last of it—five thousand dollars. I trust it will be enough to serve the purpose.”
“You’re a trusting group.”
Saladar nodded. “That is our nature, señor. Our mistake before was not picking the right one to trust.”
“You could be making the same mistake now.”
“We don’t think so.”
“I tell you what.” I reached for the bills and tucked them back into the envelope. “We’ll call this a down payment. Toward fifteen percent of what I recover.”
“That is fair, señor,” Saladar said.
“If I don’t get your money back,” I said, “I reimburse you for everything but expenses. Okay?”
“You are too generous,” Pedro said.
“Not really. Got a picture of this character?”
They did. A snapshot taken a street festival right here in Little Havana—Jaimie Halaquez had an arm around Pedro and they were all smiles. Wearing a black leather vest over a purple shirt, his hair a long, perfect, shining black crown, Halaquez stood a head higher than Pedro, loomed above everyone around him. A handsome son of a bitch, but for a boxer’s pushed-in nose and a jagged scar on one cheek.
“Can you find him, señor?” Maria asked, wearing the same expression she no doubt wore to mass. “Can you return what he took from us?”
“Well, I can’t get back the betrayed loyalty. But the money I have a shot at.” I slipped the photo in a pocket, then gestured with the envelope of bills. “And tell you what—if I have to kill your amigo Jaimie Halaquez, along the way?”
Saladar said, “Yes, señor?”
“Well, I’ll just toss that in.”
And I pocketed the five thou.
CHAPTER THREE
Getting through the loosened cordon that still peppered the area wouldn’t be too hard—not when you had the back alley knowledge my escort did.
In the dim, soft light of the back room of the building where Pedro and Maria lived, I had been delivered to this lovely little chaperone with no ceremony, just quick, explicit instructions. The small dark-haired wench had a lithe, cuddly look, but when you touched her, there was no softness there at all.
She could have passed for one of those sudden-blooming Latin women who are mature at fifteen, at least until the light caught her face just right and illuminated her expression as she passed judgment on me, bringing her years into view.
She was thirty, easy.
Her eyes were black and challenging, framed under rounded V’s of brows that seemed like birds in startled flight. There was a natural high rise to her cheekbones and a mouth barren of lipstick, yet lush and blushed with a sensual red, courtesy of God, not Max Factor.
The clothes she wore were loose-fitting with a gypsy swirl to them, pastel greens and browns, though she was born to wear red. And those loose threads couldn’t hide the pert tilt of full breasts nor the tight, nipped-in waist that flared into miniature Madonna hips.
They called her Gaita, but I knew that wasn’t her name— kitten, it meant. But this was a sex kitten grown into fullscale cat, with the claws and purring intact—I hoped she had most of her nine lives left, for what lay ahead.
I was in greasy coveralls that had Farango Car Wash stitched across the back. I wore makeup and a spirit-gummedon gaucho mustache that wouldn’t work on Broadway but should do just fine in dark byways.
I had said to Pedro, “It’s not the local police I’m worried about. They’ve got no stake in this. By now, they’ll be pulled back to their normal duties.”
Pedro nodded. “It has been explained, my friend. This one, Gaita, knows where the local militia are posted. And we have spotted the outsiders who hunt you as well.”
“Good.”
“If necessary, others will help, too. Remember, we are all too familiar with authority’s perros de caza. They are true hunters. At nothing will they stop.” His brief smile was reassuring. “Nor will we.”
Under my breath I said, “This girl, she knows the drill? And understands the danger?”
“Oh yes. You may trust Gaita.”
But now, barely half an hour later, I was wondering just how far I could trust her, or how far she could trust me....
Six feet away two feds—their accents said Miami office— held the beams of flashlights on us, crossing like swords and piercing the darkness of our cover. In the side glow of the guy at right, I could make out a gun in his other hand.
And me still unarmed.
Every muscle in my body went hard except the part of me that should have been hard—Gaita and I had our clothes halfway off and lay entwined in what looked like a wild little sex party behind the packing crates only twenty feet away from the opening of an alley leading out of the area. And if that light hit me where I remained suspiciously limp, the flashlight guys might see I wasn’t laying her, we were playing them....
; It hadn’t been my idea. Playing slightly inebriated lovers, we had flitted past the others stationed at strategic intervals; but these two held critical posts. I was all for charging them, knocking them over like bowling pins and taking a chance on the chase.
But Gaita had held me back.
“No,” she whispered, insistent, “they will have guns.”
“They won’t get a chance to use them,” I told her.
“Perhaps not. But if one discharged accidentally, the other militia, they would be alerted. And if they got to their feet while our backs were in view, then—”
“So I make sure they’re taking a nice nap, after I lay ’em out on the pavement.”
She shook her head, and dark curls bounced. “No, señor, two men with guns? No. If you fail, the game would be over.”
My fists unbunched slowly. “Okay, sugar—but they’re patrolling an area we can’t get by without being seen. Let’s hear your better idea....”
I caught the quick turn of her head in the darkness and the flash of even, white teeth. “Perhaps you will even like it,” she said.
I saw her hands move to the drawstring of the blouse by her throat. She moved one shoulder gently and let the dress fall away from her olive flesh. Then she reached behind my neck and pulled me down to the ground in a gentle spiral, took my hands, moved them to the swell of her naked breasts, at once soft and firm, and nestled me between silken bare legs while she busied her fingers with the zipper of my coveralls.
Her moan of delight came too soon and too loud and one leg thrashed out and kicked into something and—before I had a chance to move or even swear—her mouth closed on mine like a hungry trap, and I had a crazy instant of wondering what the hell I was doing here.
Under normal circumstances, I would have been hard as a rock with a vixen like this giving herself to me.
Under normal circumstances.
The flashlight beams lingered, then one snapped off and the guy behind it said, “Damn, they’ll do it anywhere, these people.”
Bare-breasted Gaita came out from under me, eyes wild and angry, nostrils flaring as she gave the two cops a Medusa stare, shrieking a stream of Spanish that was blistering even if you didn’t understand it. It was the most beautiful response to getting caught in the act I ever saw.
And all I could do was try to readjust myself in the greasy coveralls.
For a second, light splashed my face as I tried to disappear inside the clothes, hoping the makeup and mustache wouldn’t sweat off my face.
Gaita’s act carried it, though.
The first one grunted, said, “Shut it, muchacha,” then added, “Third pair of ’em tonight, and they all turn out the same way. The broad comes charging out like a tiger while the clown she’s with just cowers like a kid caught stealing candy.”
“These people,” the other one said dismissively.
His partner paused, then made a motion with the light, streaking the darkness like a drunk guiding a plane in. “All right, you two—get your tails outa here and keep ’em covered. We got public decency laws in this country.”
She spat at them and swore in her Cuban-dialect Spanish, and damned near kept it up too long. It was like she couldn’t stop swearing and every once in a while something would come out in English.
Finally I grabbed her arm and dragged her out of there while she was aiming air kicks at their increasingly distant shins, and Shakespeare himself, writing a sequel to The Taming of the Shrew, couldn’t have invented action any better suited to the scene.
Within minutes, we were outside their perimeter on a semi-darkened street, hugging the shadows while we headed west.
When I could, I said, “Fast thinking, querida.”
“It was nothing.” She sneered back at our long-gone audience. “It was what they expected and how they always react.”
“It’s always good when the other side underestimates you.” I drew in some humid night air. “But we have another problem.”
“Señor?”
“They may be bigots, but they aren’t dopes. They’ll report the incident or at least start thinking about it.”
She frowned, considering that.
I went on: “I’m a lot bigger than your average Cuban, and that’ll make me memorable. There’s a sharp boy named Walter Crowley that these locals will report up the ladder to. He’ll figure it out and widen the area of search.”
After a moment, Gaita nodded and said, “It is most possible.”
“It is most probable,” I said.
Her face tilted up to mine and she gave me a peculiar glance. “But they do not have an army, Señor Morgan. This is a large city, Miami.”
“They can get an army.”
Her eyebrows lifted, casual yet serious. “In that case, señor, we must take the car.”
“What car?”
“The one I have waiting, a block away. Where we go, they will not find you.”
“You sound confident.”
“That is because for such a place as I am taking you, many precautions must be taken for it to exist at all.”
“It’s your show,” I said.
And so far, tonight, she’d been the star.
*
The suite had an atmosphere about it, all right—nothing you could quite define, because the space was neither big nor elaborately furnished. But some thought had been given to it, a living room area, a bedroom, and a bathroom where I’d washed the makeup off, gotten out of the coveralls and taken a quick shower. Alone.
Now I sat in the big, comfortable chair with a cold can of beer in hand and gave my new surroundings some thought. It took a while, but it finally came to me.
This was a man’s room, browns, yellows, tans, touches of black, furniture with strong simple lines suggesting strength but comfort...but a suite decorated by a woman for a man, with masculine comfort in mind, designed to instill male confidence.
Oh, there were enough feminine touches to inspire the beginnings of masculine passion, like the modern paintings that somehow suggested female figures, nude ones, with orange and red tones. From then on, comfort and confidence could take over.
Clothes had been waiting for me, and the sizes well estimated— a dark gray sport coat, black sport shirt, even darker gray slacks. I still had my own shoes and socks, but was damn glad to be rid of those lousy coveralls.
Still in her peasant blouse and skirt, Gaita sat at the dressing table, the stiff-bristled brush in her hand crackling through her lustrous hair, her eyes on me in the mirror while a faint smile played with the corners of her mouth.
“You are right, Señor Morgan. This is a burdel.”
Whorehouse. Rose by any other name.
I took a pull of the beer. “I didn’t say anything.”
“Ah, but you have an awareness. It shows.”
“Not on my face it doesn’t.”
“In your eyes, it does.”
I let out a laugh. “Well, a bordello like this usually has out-of-the-way approaches. Like those damn alleys and tunnels we took to get here.”
Her smile was a little too knowing. “You have been in other establishments like this before, señor?”
“Perhaps.”
“...or perhaps not?”
“Really, no perhaps about it. Some of my best friends are putas.”
For a second the brush paused in mid-stroke. “You do not seem like one who would need to make use of such facilities. To turn to the recourse of a woman who requires payment, this does not seem right.”
I finished the beer. “I didn’t say I paid any of them, kitten —but in my racket these places come in handy now and then. You can hide out in a whorehouse, because nobody’s supposed to be there.”
“Well put, Morgan. A most intelligent answer.”
“Must come from having damn near a complete college education.” I grinned at her. “Ask anybody—I’m an intelligent guy...in some ways.”
One eyebrow arched though both eyes were half lidded. “Could not
such intelligence have been put to better use?”
“Not by me. I’m one of those guys born in the wrong era that you hear about. Baby, I wasn’t made for this world.”
“Possibly it wasn’t made for you either.”
“I get by.”
“Do you?” She put the brush down and stood abruptly, still facing the mirror, hands on her hips, legs apart, then took a deep breath. “You seem relaxed for what you have been through in recent days. Almost...placid. Why is that, Señor Morgan?”
“Just ‘Morgan,’ querida. Why not be relaxed? I’m not going anywhere—not until you tell me the score.”
Gently, she pivoted like a dancer to face me. “Those who look for you...they will be here. They will know of this place. Perhaps some have been patrons.”
I frowned. “Yeah?”
“But they will not find you. Fortunately for your sake, this is the...house extraordinario.”
“Delicate way to refer to a whorehouse,” I said.
“Our clientele appreciates that it is so.” She looked at me, and when I stayed quiet, she said, “It is surprising how many men of stature in business and government prefer private, uh...outlets for certain personal activities beyond the doors of their own homes.”
“It’s an old story, kid.”
“It is also an old story that such men often seem to prefer women who are not so pale of skin, nor skinny, nor fat. Behind closed doors, with these strange dark women...” Her tone was arch now, her smile wicked, mocking. “...such men can shed the sexual inhibitions of modern civilization that they find so limiting to their pleasures.”
My eyebrows had long since hiked in surprise.
She noticed that, and nodded. “Yes, señor, I too have studied in the college. The university. Does this surprise you?”
“Not anymore it doesn’t.”
“But there is learning, señor,” she said, “and then there is learning.”
Gaita walked to the carved oak bar in the corner, poured herself a finger of rum, and tossed it down like a thirsty sailor. “This place is, in itself, the university. The pupils learn, but the instructors, they do not realize they instruct.”
I wasn’t sure I was following her. Curiouser and curiouser, as Alice said.
“The world is in a state of, how do you say it? Flux. Of change. There is much trouble ahead. Not long ago, my people were promised that Castro would be gone and Cuba ours again—then your president was shot like a dog in the street, and where are our dreams now?”
The Consummata Page 4
