“Miami Jones,” said a guy in a clipped Brooklyn accent. The accent didn’t tell me everything. There were so many New Yorkers in Palm Beach during the season, it was like living on Long Island Sound. But not too many converts wore custom-tailored pinstripe suits.
“You boys lost?” I said, holding the end of the hose in my hand as if the guys would be afraid to get wet.
“Mr. Hoskin hasn’t heard from you,” said guy one, the shorter of the two.
I frowned. I certainly recalled Elroy Hoskin offering me undiscussed benefits to keep him updated on the lowdown regarding his proposed casino, but I didn’t recall accepting the job.
“Mr. Hoskin wanted to remind you that he values his friendships very highly.”
“That’s nice of him to send you guys down to say that. Most people would just call.”
“It’s important to him that you understand the quid pro quo involved.”
I wondered if those had been Hoskin’s words or if henchmen were now required to have a college education.
“Mr. Hoskin wonders why he hasn’t heard from you.”
“Mr. Hoskin hasn’t heard from me because I only met him a couple nights ago, I haven’t got anything to say to him, and I don’t have a duo of well-dressed baboons at my pleasure to send him a pointless message.”
The silent guy didn’t flinch, but the one with the gift of speech got the barb, and I saw his jawline tighten. “You’d do well to remember your place, mister.”
I laughed, a real, good old gut-giggle. I love it when rich people suggest I remember my standing in their totem, as if I was actually part of their damned hierarchy in the first place. And I especially enjoyed the irony of them sending that message through their minions.
“Are you serious? Unlike you pair of clotheshorses, I don’t have a place to remember. I don’t work for Hoskin, regardless of what he thinks. So if, and I mean if, I hear something useful, I will decide at that time whether or not I can be bothered to pass it on to him. And at this point, I am not particularly inclined to do so.”
The speech-capable baboon processed this message and grinned. “He thought you’d say that. He knows things are happening, and you haven’t provided anything useful. So he said we should offer you a reminder.”
He took a step forward and the backup baboon seemed to come alive at the smell of blood.
“You’re kidding me, right? Hoskin wants to give me a beating for not calling a couple days after we met? Doesn’t he understand playing hard to get?”
“He said you were the kind of smart guy who would respond well to ‘physical persuasion’, and not much else. So we’re here to give it to you.”
“Does that ever work? Telling people you’re about to beat them up? Kind of loses the element of surprise, doesn’t it?” I said.
“Where you going to go?” smiled Baboon One.
It was a fair point. I was at the end of a dock, with water one way and a beating on the other. But I knew that. I was buying time. The guys moved toward me, and when they got close enough, I punched open the lever on the dock hose, hitting them with a jet of high-pressure water. Despite the fact I’d had the hose in my hand the whole time, they weren’t prepared for the spraying, and they both recoiled as their fancy duds got soaked. But I knew the effect was limited. They weren’t actually going to go down, and eventually they would meet the intersection of can’t-get-any-wetter and very annoyed, at which point they’d be coming hard. The first guy came fast, but he was restricted in his tight suit—which was a stunning look, but not recommended boxing apparel—and the suit jacket ripped as he cocked his arm back. I didn’t wait for impact, dropping the hose and jumping back up onto the yacht. The guy struggled to get on the boat, and his buddy, who had taken a moment to discard his jacket, beat him to it. He came at me, and I moved toward the pointy end of the deck. The backup baboon had trouble getting traction on the wet deck in his loafers, and he grabbed at some wire stays to hold himself up. That was my cue. I stepped forward and kicked him right in the gut, sending him crashing over the gunwale and into the water. There wasn’t a whole lot of room between dock spaces, so he slammed hard into the hull of the yacht next door as he fell. I took a second to check that he was still conscious and wasn’t going to drown, and it was a second too long. Baboon One launched himself into a full-on body tackle. We both went crashing to the deck and started sliding down toward the lifelines. My shoulder crunched into a stanchion, and the baboon slid into me. He tried throwing punches, but between the tight suit and slippery deck, he didn’t have much success. I held him off until he used up a good dose of energy, then I slid out from under him and grabbed a stay and lifted myself up.
“Enough already,” I said, puffing.
But he clearly took his job seriously and wasn’t giving up so easily. He dragged himself up and finally tore away his jacket, then gingerly moved forward. At this point I was over the whole episode, so I used my sartorial advantage. I charged at the guy and tackled him. I went to University of Miami on a football scholarship, so I could lay a tackle. Granted, I was a quarterback, so it wasn’t a bone cruncher or anything, but we both went flying over the edge of the deck anyway, landing right on top of the other baboon who was floating there, holding his head. The two guys started flapping like spawning salmon. They were in suits and clearly didn’t swim much. I swam at City Beach on a regular basis, and I was wearing shorts and deck shoes, so I took a deep breath and went down under the hull. It was further than I thought, and my chest was burning by the time I felt the middle of the hull turn upward, so I kicked hard and exploded up on the other side of the yacht. I figured from that point I could outswim them if I had to. But I didn’t have to, because at that moment I heard the burble of a police siren. I grabbed onto the post at the end of the dock and felt the steady beat of multiple sets of feet marching forward again.
“Get those two out of there,” said a voice, clearly in command, and I felt my stocks take a dive. Footsteps in my direction and I looked up to see a face appear from the dock. The face of Palm Beach detective and my part-time nemesis, Detective Ronzoni. Ronzoni took a moment to clarify what he was looking at.
Then he smiled, like the cat that had just gotten the cream.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
“YOU REALLY ARE in a whole world of hurt,” said Ronzoni, as he paced before me. I sat on a dock box, sans towel, shivering in the twilight. Ronzoni prowled like a toddler in need of the bathroom. He wore his trademark wrinkled Sears wrinkle-free suit, and a tie covered in the kind of paisley I hadn’t seen since the seventies. He was thin and wiry, except for his belly, which was a bulb that pushed at his tie. He was enjoying himself.
“See, Jones, it’s simple math. Two against one. These gentlemen say you attacked them, and seeing as you don’t have any witnesses . . .” He smiled at the thought. We both knew there was nothing that could stick, but he’d enjoy putting me in the lockup for the night.
“You do that math yourself, Zamboni?”
“It’s Ronzoni, meatball, and even you can’t harsh my mellow. This is too good.”
“Those guys were sent by Elroy Hoskin. It doesn’t worry you that he’s bringing New York action to Palm Beach?”
“Mr. Hoskin is a guest on the island,” said Ronzoni. “What’s your excuse?”
“Same, pretty much. But Hoskin thinks this is how you do things here. Is that right? You going to let this kind of thing happen on the island? Don’t think the residents will be very pleased with that.”
“No, I am not going to let that kind of thing happen on the island. I am going to put you in lockup, and tomorrow I am going to escort you off the island as far as the bridge. You can walk to the impound to get your car from there.”
“My car’s not in impound,” I said.
“Not yet,” smiled Ronzoni.
Touché.
I couldn’t have wiped the smile off his face with an electric sander, but then his phone rang. He took the call with his back to me. “Yes, Chie
f. Aha. Yes, sir, he’s here.”
Ronzoni glanced over his shoulder, and as he did, I saw the bubble deflate. “But, sir,” he said.
He spun and took several steps away from me. “Yes, but sir. There are witnesses. Yes, sir, they are together. No, sir, they have no reason to be on the dock. No, sir. Yes, sir. Yes, sir.” He ended the call and stood slack-shouldered, then took a deep breath, then slowly turned back to me.
“Three bags full?” I smiled.
“You have more lives than a rabid cat,” he said. His suit suddenly looked too big for him. “That was the chief. Seems like the dock security that called in the disturbance also called the owner of the yacht you were on. Seems she was at a party at your friend Lady Cassandra’s, and when they heard you were in custody they called the chief.”
I smiled. “Some days you’re the Louisville Slugger, some days you’re the ball.”
A modicum of joy came back to Ronzoni’s face. “Chief said to let her dock boy go. So you can go, dock boy.”
I considered giving some cheek back but thought better of it. He wasn’t a bad guy; he was just a poorly paid cop doing his job in one of the ritziest places in the country. Having your face rubbed in it like that everyday could give you a real Upstairs, Downstairs mentality. I patted him on the shoulder as I stood.
“Maybe you’ll win the next one,” I said.
He nodded.
“Just don’t bet on it.” I smiled as I walked away into the night.
I dried off in Cassandra’s bathroom and then joined the impromptu party I had planned on skipping. I regaled everyone with details of events, then the conversation drifted away as people added their own anecdotes about the time they did this or the time they saw that. I was okay with it. The spotlight wasn’t my favorite place to be. Despite years as a professional pitcher, I never coveted the bright lights. On the mound I was in a cocoon, a bubble where I blocked out the noise and crowd and chitchat coming from the batter and just did my thing. But win or lose, after the game, I would take to the shadows and let the other guys tell the stories about the games, to girls in bars or guys in trucks, or just to each other. As the conversation flowed I drifted outside onto the massive deck. There was a breeze coming in off the ocean, and it was as cold as it gets in South Florida. I could almost have gone for pants. Almost. I heard the door slide open and closed, and Ron appeared at my side. We stood looking at the waves breaking on the beach in the moonlight.
“You okay, Kemosabe?” asked Ron.
“Just fine.”
“Interesting evening.”
“You could say.”
Ron sipped his drink, then looked at me. “Why is Hoskin so twitchy?” he said.
“I don’t know. But you are right. He’s twitchy. Maybe he’s just used to getting it all his own way in Vegas, and he’s not taking kindly to Palm Beach thumbing its nose at him. I was a convenient whipping boy for his annoyance.”
We stared out at the ocean again for a time, then Ron’s phone bleeped from his pocket. He smiled at the screen and winked at me.
“Well, hello, Deputy Castle.”
I stood upright at Danielle’s name. I hadn’t spoken to her since she had left for Atlanta.
“No, his phone is a little out of commission right now,” said Ron. “But he can explain himself. He’s right here.”
Ron handed me his phone with a smile and turned to go inside. I leaned on the balcony and put the phone to my ear.
“Hey, you,” I said.
“Back at you,” she said. She sounded good. She could have worked in telemarketing and made a bundle with that voice.
“Sorry I haven’t caught you,” I said. “How’s it going?”
“Actually, it’s going pretty great.”
“Yeah? Tell me.”
“Well, I’m learning a lot. The latest theories on law enforcement, new techniques, all that.”
“Sounds like a hoot.”
“But that’s not the best part. Everyone here is pretty senior, and of course they know that I’m just filling in for the boss, but that doesn’t seem to matter. When we’re workshopping, or even just chatting at the bar, they all listen to my opinion, as if it were just as valid as any of theirs.”
“It is just as valid,” I said.
“Yeah, I guess so. But it feels like it’s validated somehow. Like I belong here. Like I could offer more than just being a deputy.”
“You could be more, so good for you.”
“Really, you think so? You never said that before.”
“I haven’t?”
In that moment I realized that it was true. I hadn’t said it, because I hadn’t seen it. I saw Danielle as my lover, my partner, a sharer of sunsets and good times. And when she left for work in her uniform, I saw her as a deputy. A damn good-looking one, for sure, but a deputy nevertheless. I knew she could be more. She was smarter than the average bear, and tenacious and caring and resourceful. But it occurred to me that I might not have said those things. That I might have assumed them to be facts in evidence and taken them for granted.
Taken her for granted.
“Well, if I haven’t,” I said, “I’m saying it now. I’m glad it’s going well.”
“How about you? Did you get anywhere with Desi?”
“It’s been an interesting few days. But yes, we found out who was behind the betting ring that snared little Desi.”
“Did you report it to the office?”
“Sort of.”
“MJ?”
“You knew we had a word with the guys who hurt Desi.”
“Yes, and I’d like to have more than a word,” she said.
“Not necessary. They sort of came after me.”
“Oh, no. Are you okay?”
“Yes, I’m fine. The two idiots tried to take me down in the office parking lot.”
“That lot doesn’t seem to be very good luck for you,” she said.
“No, but this time it had its benefits.”
“Like being right across from the courthouse?”
“Exactly. The West Palm PD took down one of the guys, and the other is in custody.”
There was silence on the line, and I waited until I thought we’d been cut off.
“Danielle? You there?”
“Yes,” she said softly. “Just be careful.”
“I’m always careful, sweetheart.”
I decided to not mention the visit to El Tiburon, or the van, or the little altercation with Hoskin’s guys in Palm Beach. She didn’t sound ready to hear about that.
“Listen, I have to go, I’m meeting some people for drinks.”
“You bet. Enjoy. I’m just here, hanging out at Cassandra’s,” I said.
“No picking up some wealthy heiress,” she said.
I smiled. “I thought I’d already done that.”
Danielle laughed. “You chose poorly,” she said. “I love you. I’ll call again before I head back.”
“Love you, too. Go impress the pants off them. Well, not the pants. You know what I mean.”
“I do. See you soon.”
I looked back over the ocean, and it wasn’t long before Ron wandered back out.
“All okay?” he said.
“All good. Sounds like she’s having a great time. Networking, all that jazz.”
“Good stuff.”
I handed Ron his phone.
“I need to get a new phone,” I said. “Mine’s waterlogged.”
“Fix that tomorrow. Let’s get you a drink. Cassandra has a room all set up for you to stay.”
“That’s generous, but I have something I need to do first. Should only take an hour.”
“I’ll come with you,” said Ron.
“No, you enjoy the party.”
“Like you said, it’ll just be an hour. Besides,” he said, smiling at me, “a man should never commit breaking and entering alone.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
THE STRIP MALLS on Okeechobee Boulevard don’t look any better at
night. At least not out near the turnpike. Half the lights were busted, so there were plenty of dark shadows. Unfortunately the light out front of the offices of Max Stubbs, Private Investigator, was burning brightly. I dashed around the back to check the rear entrance but found two decent deadlocks. The front door, however, was a flimsy aluminum frame around glass and had a lock to match. We could have broken it easy enough, but first preference was to leave no trace of our having been there. I played lookout, and Ron got down on his knees and picked the lock. Traffic wasn’t too heavy, and most people were focused on the upcoming ramp onto the turnpike, so we took the chance that passersby would pay us no mind. Ron had a few drinks in him, so it took a little longer than was comfortable, but with a giggle he got the lock open. Clad in latex gloves, we entered like cat burglars. The little bell rang, reminding me again of an old general store. I locked the door behind us, to give us at least some warning if someone—particularly Stubbs himself—appeared. Ron scanned the room with a flashlight, finding the same disheveled space: a matted sofa, a filing cabinet, and a desk with a computer monitor sitting on it. The main drawer of the cabinet was locked, but the key was sitting in the upper drawer for anyone who cared to look. I flicked through the files but found nothing related to casinos or jai alai.
“His computer is on,” said Ron.
I turned to see Ron’s face glowing in the light of the monitor. I edged through the darkness to join him at the screen that was showing a fireworks display.
“Password?” I said.
Ron wobbled the computer mouse with his hand; the fireworks dissolved, and a desktop appeared. “Doesn’t appear to have a password,” he said.
“This guy is not exactly Fort Knox, is he?”
“Who can remember all these passwords, anyway?” said Ron.
He clicked around the screen, looking through files but finding nothing of interest. He opened the email application and looked through the communications. It seemed Stubbs worked a lot of divorce cases and had accepted in-kind payment from a number of jilted wives. But there was nothing that helped us.
High Lie Page 14
