Lizzy pouted her lips and frowned. “Aha, yeah, I’ve heard of him. Not the most discreet guy you’ll meet. Word is he’ll take any case, and get whatever result you need. I’ve heard he’s good for telling whatever story you need on the stand. Perjury doesn’t seem to faze him.” She shook her head and snarled. “I can’t abide that.”
“Lying under oath?” said Ron.
“With your hand on the Bible. That’s lying to God.” She shook her head again.
“Sounds like he’d sell out his mother for a cheap steak dinner,” I said.
Lizzy turned to me on the sofa. “He’d sell her out for a salad.”
Ron and I both grimaced at the idea of getting sold out for a bowl of greens.
“Do you know where he works out of, Lizzy?” I said.
“He’s got an office out near the turnpike, on Okeechobee Boulevard, if I recall.”
I looked at Ron and he at me.
“Field trip tomorrow?” he said.
Chapter Twenty-Five
HAVING A LOW-rent office in a strip mall in South Florida is no sign of anything. Lots of decent businesses have such offices, mainly because there are a lot of strip malls, and the rent is cheap. But even as far as strip malls went, this one was a doozy. The parking lot had been cracked and faded to the color of ash by the constant beating of the sun. The tenants were a choice collection of pawn shops, check cashing outlets, and a liquor store whose claim to fame seemed to be that it had sold a winning ticket in the state lottery, back in 1999. At least I was dressed for the occasion, in cargo shorts and my blue palm tree motif shirt. Stubbs’s office was at the end of the row, windows tinted with peeling, silver reflective panels. My busted SUV had been moved from the crime scene to an auto shop, so I parked the tiny Korean rental at the other end of the strip, and Ron and I walked by the storefronts to the PI’s office.
A little bell dinged as we stepped inside, like a convenience store. The height of security. Stubbs was nowhere to be seen. The office was sparsely furnished with drab, well-used items. Desks that looked like hand-me-downs from the Department of Corrections, vinyl chairs that were universally splitting, a ragged sofa and fake plants that were the color of dust. A battalion of tiny ants marched along the skirting board. We heard a flushing sound and a door opened at the rear of the space. A man built like a beanbag waddled out, waving a newspaper at his behind. He appeared to be sweating, as if he’d just run a half marathon. He got to his desk before he noticed us, then he dropped the paper on the desk and jutted out his chin.
“Help you?” he said.
“Looking for Max Stubbs,” I said.
“You found him.” Stubbs bobbled forward and stuck out a moist paw. I looked at the hand but declined to shake it. Dysentery seemed like a real possibility.
“My name is Miami Jones,” I said instead. Stubbs dropped his hand, not seemingly put out by the rebuke. He frowned like he was trying to place me at a high school reunion.
“I know you, don’t I?”
“I don’t believe we’ve ever met,” I said.
“Yeah, I know you. I seen you in the papers. The Miami Jones. You did that case for BJ Baker. Found his Heisman trophy.”
“That we did.”
“You do a lot of work in Palm Beach?” he said.
“Some. You?”
He shook his head and puckered his face. “Not really my scene.”
No, indeed. Stubbs didn’t offer us a seat or a coffee, though I would probably have declined both, on health grounds.
“What do you guys want?” said Stubbs, cutting to the chase.
“You recently did some work for the West Palm Jai Alai and Casino.”
Stubbs shrugged. “Did I?”
“Yes, you did. Impersonating an illegal bookmaker. Ring any bells?”
Stubbs frowned. “What is it you want?”
“We’re curious about that case. How you came to discover that Diego Alvarez was open to illegal betting.”
“They’re all open to it. It’s jai alai, isn’t it?”
“You watch a lot of jai alai?”
“Nup. I only watch real sports. American sports.”
“Well, I can appreciate that,” I said. “But had you known more about jai alai, you might know that it is virtually impossible for one man to fix a game.”
“So they were all in on it. What of it?”
“Why did you focus on Diego Alvarez?”
“Look, I’m not talking about this with you. It’s none of your goddamned business.”
“We represent Mr. Alvarez, so actually it is very much our business.”
“Represent him? For what? You ain’t lawyers.”
I looked at Ron. “We’re not lawyers?”
“No, technically you have to pass the bar,” said Ron.
“Is that so?”
“And go to law school.”
“All right, smart guys,” Stubbs said. “I know when I’m being made fun of. You think because you come over from the island that you’re so much better than me.”
“No,” I said. “I think I’m better than you because I bathe regularly.”
“Get out,” said Stubbs, stepping toward me. He was a big guy, but there are different versions of big. George Finau was big in a muscular, imposing way. I was big in that I was head and shoulders taller than Stubbs. Stubbs was big in the way Australia was big. All girth, no height. He stepped to me so his belly touched my shirt, but he wasn’t nearly as scary as he thought he was.
“I said get out, fancy boy.”
It had been a long time since I had been called fancy while wearing a shirt with palm trees on it, so I smiled. Stubbs tried to snarl, but it looked more like a facial spasm, and it was unpleasant to watch, so I turned away to the door.
“Later, Stubbs,” I said.
Ron held the door open, and the bell rang, and we walked back out into the million-dollar sunshine.
“What do you think?” I asked Ron.
“He’s a real snake in the grass, but that doesn’t prove anything. Not everyone in this profession is as pleasant as you,” he said.
“Or you, good sir.”
We got into the rental car, and Ron turned to me. “Do you think he’s up to no good?”
I nodded. “On a regular basis. But specifically related to our case? Not sure. I do have one nagging question, though.”
“And that is?” said Ron, as I pulled out of the lot and back onto Okeechobee Boulevard.
“Did that look like a high-tech operation to you?”
Ron frowned. “It looked like a refugee camp to me.”
“Exactly. Yet the evidence was burned onto a CD. With a label printed directly on it. I don’t think that falls into Mr. Stubbs’s skill set, do you?”
“Anyone can burn a CD. It’s not that hard.”
“It’s the printed label that got me. It looked like a pro job, not an ink jet and some craft glue.”
“I see what you’re saying. So Stubbs had the CD done up. But what does that mean?”
“It means there was someone else involved,” I said. “And I want to know who.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
RON AND I lunched at Longboard Kelly’s. I stayed with iced tea, as I was waiting for Lucas to arrive and couldn’t be sure what the afternoon might hold. Ron took the rental car back to the office to do some digging into Max Stubbs, and I sat and watched Muriel polish glasses until Lucas arrived. We took his beat-up Tacoma pickup down A1A, to a seventies special office block just south of the airport. We had gotten the address from the unlucky driver of the bookie’s van. The building was two stories with a facade of concrete mixed with crushed coral and seashells. The vacant lot next door was covered in grass sun-bleached the color of dead wheat, and the other side was a vacant storefront that looked like it had once been a cocktail lounge. The ground floor of the office we wanted was made up like a travel agency—lots of posters for places like Prague and Fiji. I didn’t realize that travel agents like that still existe
d, which made me think the whole thing was a front. I paused on the street before the door.
“You don’t need to do this, you know,” I said. “Desi is safe now.”
Lucas didn’t look at me; he just stretched his neck to look up at the building.
“As long as these guys are still here, there’ll always be another Desi. It’s something every government I ever took orders from didn’t get. You can’t just snip the top off a weed and walk away. You have pull it out, roots and all. Otherwise it grows back.”
We took the stairs on the side of the building to the upper floor. The reception area was humid, more so than outside, and smelled of cigars. A young guy in shirtsleeves sat behind a heavy wooden desk. He eyed us as though his distance vision was less than 20/20, but said nothing.
“We’re looking for Mr. Barrett,” I said.
The guy made a face and shrugged.
“No one by that name here,” he said.
“And your name is?”
“I don’t got a name,” he said.
“I tell you what,” I said, but before I could continue Lucas strode to the door leading back to the offices and pulled at it. It didn’t open. The guy at the desk gave a grin like there was some kind of secret password required, and he knew it, but wasn’t sharing. Lucas, however, had his own password. He stepped back, then kicked at the lock once, twice and on the third shot smashed the knob. Lucas slipped the knob out of the hole and used the hole to pull open the door. The guy at the desk stood, mouth open like a trawling net, but did nothing more. Obviously his squinting drove off most unwanted visitors.
Lucas charged down a hallway of worn carpet flanked by office doors, some of which flew open, but no one made a move toward him. I dashed through and kept on his hip. All the faces looked like accountants, not mobsters. Rolled-up shirtsleeves, loosened ties. At the end of the hall was another door, and it flew open, and a big guy in a cheap suit stepped out.
“No,” was all he said, and he marched right at Lucas. I thought for a moment he was going to pull a gun, but he didn’t. It seemed like he was pretty confident he could solve problems without one, and I wasn’t completely sure he was wrong.
“Mr. Barrett,” said Lucas.
The big guy shook his head. “Not happening.”
They reached each other in the narrow hallway like jousters, at less than full pace but still no one giving any quarter. The big guy put his fists up and propped, ready for a fight. Lucas didn’t reciprocate. He kept moving, then he drove the heel of his palm into the guy’s breast plate, knocking the wind out of him. The guy collapsed backward like a fallen pine tree, and Lucas stepped over him and continued into the office. I hurdled the guy struggling to suck back a breath and followed Lucas in.
The office wasn’t large, but it was nicer than the rest of the place. The desk was polished rosewood, and the real houseplants were well cared for. The vertical blinds were drawn, keeping out the wonderful winter sun, so the only light came from a desk lamp. The guy behind the desk was olive-skinned and dark. Deep-set eyes watched us enter from under heavy eyebrows. He looked neither shocked nor pleased with the kerfuffle we were causing. Lucas stepped into the room and positioned himself away from the door, at forty-five degrees to the desk.
“You Barrett?” said Lucas.
“Who wants to know?” said the guy.
“I do. You think I’m here for the good of my health?”
“I think we can be certain that your health is of no concern to you.”
The guy had one of those homogenous accents that could have been from the Midwest, or even the West Coast. A television accent.
“All right, mate. I am going to assume you are Barrett. If it turns out you are not and I have wasted my time, I am going to beat your face to a pulp until your own mum couldn’t recognize you. Got me?”
“Sounds ugly.”
“You’ve been taking bets in a van at the West Palm Jai Alai,” said Lucas.
A crease of recognition flashed over the man’s face.
“You are the man who hurt my employees,” he said.
“Your employees hurt themselves,” said Lucas, “the moment they decided to take bets from underage kids.”
Barrett shook his head slowly.
“We do no such thing. We provide opportunity. People want to play, who are you to say they can’t? This is a free country.”
“These are not just people, they’re children. You’re taking money from kids who can barely afford to eat, and then you’re throwing them in the ocean when they can’t pay.” Lucas’s face was contorted with barely suppressed rage at the thought of Desi in the water.
“Listen, my friend, I don’t want any trouble. And I don’t want anyone killed. That isn’t good for business. Dead people never pay. I like live bait, you see? Live people play, and they pay. We might have to help them remember their obligations, but nothing serious. I want them around to play again.”
“Your guys threw a boy in the ocean.”
“Those boys no longer work for me,” said Barrett. The office door creaked as the big guy from the hallway staggered in, still short of breath but looking for a fight. Barrett put his hand up to hold the guy in place.
“Look, like I said, I don’t want trouble unless I want trouble. Good help is hard to find. Those boys overstepped without authority, and now they are no longer part of my organization. So I suggest you take your beef to the gym and work it out on a bag, because no good can come from me ever seeing you again.”
Lucas stood tall and breathed in and out.
“What a man does is his business, his responsibility,” said Lucas. “But when you take money from children, when you hurt them, then you overstep. So leave the kids alone.”
Barrett smiled. It wasn’t a pleasant smile.
“My friend, this is America. It’s a free country. So I’ll run my business however I please. If little illegal runts want to wash their money away, that’s not my problem. And neither are you. You’ve made your big statement, smashed into my place like Rambo. So now let me tell you something. I see your face again, you’re dead. If I hear you’ve been near my people, you’re dead. You show your face at the fronton, you’re dead. You are not a customer, you don’t play. So I really don’t mind if you are dead.”
Lucas and Barrett stared each other down, then Lucas relaxed his shoulders. I waited for the storm to come, for him to explode into action. But he shrugged and walked out, past the big guy in the doorway. I followed, wondering what his plan was, as we ambled down the stairs and back onto the street. Lucas said nothing all the way back to his truck. Once we got in, I watched him. He seemed calm, serene even. My heart was almost pumping out of my chest.
“What do you think?” I said.
Lucas shrugged.
“I learned a long time ago, mate, some fellas can’t be reasoned with. No point getting worked up about it—that’s just how they are.”
“So that’s it?”
He looked at me and smiled.
“Christ, no. When a fella won’t hear reason, then you just gotta get unreasonable.”
I nodded. I had no idea what that meant, but I got the feeling it was something like a pitcher deciding to throw at the batter’s head, on purpose.
“So what now?” I said.
“Now I gotta get back to the marina. I got two big boats visiting that both want a full clean and pull through.”
“No, I mean about Barrett?”
“Oh, him. I reckon we let him sweat a little bit more. ’Sides, I’ve got a boat delivery I gotta do. I’m gonna be away for a couple days. I’ll catch you when I get back. Righto?”
I didn’t answer. It didn’t feel like a question, but with Lucas it was hard to tell. He dropped me near the courthouse and pulled away toward the freeway with a wave of his hand. I wandered back around the parking lot where the police tape had been removed and everything was back to normal. But nothing felt normal. Lucas was backing from a fight, I hadn’t spoken to Danielle in da
ys, and when I got to the office I learned Ron had taken off to see Cassandra in Palm Beach. I didn’t even go to my desk. I told Lizzy I was heading out, and she said that was fine, like her whole life revolved around my movements. I tossed up going to Longboard’s, but without Ron or Danielle, I lacked the energy for it. Then my phone rang. It was Ron.
“Cassandra’s got a friend who needs some strong hands to help sail her boat for a twilight sail tonight. Peel and eats, champers included. You in?”
“Not sure I’m great company right now, Ron.”
“Come on, come get some of those negative ions in you. Besides, her husband is in New York, and I can’t work all the sheets myself.”
“And the girls can’t help?”
“What are you thinking? I can’t ask Palm Beach ladies to do the heavy lifting. That’s what guys like you and I are for.”
I couldn’t work up a rebuttal so I said I’d be there in half an hour, and I got in the tiny rental car and headed out over the bridge, to pull some ropes and clear my head.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
I TOTALLY GET why rich people sail. There’s something invigorating about feeling that salty breeze in your face, doing a little manual work, pulling sheets and trimming sails, and then following the effort up with a glass of bubbly at sunset. That’s my kind of sailing. None of this offshore, big waves, no-land-in-sight garbage. Ron was right; I felt much better after the sail, and as we tied up back at the docks at the end of Australian Avenue, I came to the conclusion that I was overthinking things. Time would reveal the solutions, with a little prodding. We enjoyed a few drinks on board at the docks, then Ron led a group to adjourn to Cassandra’s apartment, a short walk across the island. I declined, with the excuse that I had to drive home, and offered to wash down the deck. I grabbed a hose and wandered around the white deck, washing the salt back into the Intracoastal. As I was coiling the hose I felt the vibration in the dock of the approach of multiple footsteps. I looked up to see two guys in slick, thin-cut suits standing before me. I wondered whose black cat I had driven over to warrant another set of hoods visiting me, and although neither guy’s slim-fit suit left anything to the imagination, I couldn’t discount firearms.
High Lie Page 13
