High Crimes

by William Deverell

  “We’ll let the Miami police do that,” Mitchell said. “It can’t come from us. I know you had been friends, but I’m sorry, Theo. We still have an operation.”

  O’Doull fumbled with the packaged creamer and squeezed half its contents onto the tablecloth. “The police have made a mistake,” he said softly. “Kevin didn’t kill anyone. Somebody has dressed some bullshit up on a plate, and we’re being asked to eat it.” He felt his anger rising.

  “You know, Theo, it’s time you said good-bye to dreamland and woke up to the real world. We’re dealing with hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of narcotic in this operation. The obvious scenario is that Kelly found out Escarlata had been spying for us. He killed him, died himself in the process. That’s the way the system works, Theo — if an informer’s cover is blown, he gets blown. Blown right away. Rats are marked men in the narcotic industry. Targets. I just hope Kerrivan doesn’t know. He might abort the trip.”

  O’Doull’s face had turned from white to red. He leaned towards Mitchell and spoke hoarsely. “That scenario reeks, Inspector. Kelly committing murder? A heart attack? Come on, Inspector!”

  “Theo, you can’t be a cop with tearstains on your face. Let’s let Miami Homicide do the figuring. They’re paid to do it.”

  O’Doull felt himself teetering on the edge of control, and he was hanging on tight. He looked up to see Meyers peering down at him.

  “Massive heart attack,” Meyers said. “That’s the word from the county medical examiner’s office. Still no sign of the murder weapon. That part of it is a little hard to figure out. Good morning, Theo. Hell of a thing, hey?”

  Beneath Meyers’s bristle moustache, his mouth was set. The smile, for once, was missing.

  “Goddamnit, Meyers,” O’Doull said, almost shouting, “what’s going on?” Several other customers turned around to look.

  “That freak turned out to be a vicious little fellow, didn’t he?” Meyers said. “You never know about people.”

  O’Doull thought for a second he was going to slug Meyers. He half-rose from his chair. Mitchell put a calming hand on his arm.

  “All right, Theo,” Mitchell said, “you look into it. Stick around here for another day, and bring me back a report.”

  “The local boys aren’t going to be happy about some outsider butting in,” Meyers said.

  “You’re not going to play Sherlock Holmes, Theo,” Mitchell warned. “Just keep out from under people’s feet, and don’t fall over your own. Talk to the pathologist, talk to the detectives. Meyers will show you around. Let’s get together a nice clean report on this, without any blurred edges. I don’t want Ottawa asking questions we can’t answer.”

  ***

  The point is, thought O’Doull, Kelly could not take another’s life. Such an act lay beyond the domain of the conceivable. In Newfoundland, Kelly had been a member of a small brave band who stood against the killing of fur-seal pups. To him life was a sacred flame. He was awed by all things that grew, or hopped, or creeped, or flew, or swam. He was awed by the magic of life, and had talked about it seemingly forever during those long sessions after lights out when adolescent boys debated life and the cosmos, God and eternity.

  Kelly had not been much of a fighter, unless backed to the wall or defending Kerrivan’s name against a slander. A school friend whose imagery was crude once complained that Kelly “thinks the sun shines out of Kerrivan’s asshole.” He had always been the odd kid in the crowd — following along behind Kerrivan with a sniffly nose, or going off by himself to moon over some private adolescent grief.

  O’Doull remembered that Kelly had gotten into mysticism in his teens. He had studied birth charts, Buddhism, Taoism, the Book of Changes.

  Kelly had disappeared suddenly in the summer of 1966. Letters arrived from New York, where he had discovered the East Village scene. O’Doull now realized Kelly had probably been selling pot to support himself that summer. He had come back to Newfoundland in the autumn: a long-haired pilgrim from the land of Leary. He turned people on. O’Doull toked up a few times, but didn’t get off. Perhaps he had been too scared to let go. But Kerrivan, of course, flew wide-eyed and feet first into the world of drugs, and he let Kelly lead him through pot, acid, peyote, and the whole roller coaster.

  It was soon after that that O’Doull’s path diverged from theirs. He refused to reject his parents’ values. Corporal O’Doull had been old-line, old-fashioned, stern, disapproving. But he had also been loving, generous, weak. O’Doull had loved him too much to hurt him.

  Kerrivan and Kelly sailed the Atlantic a few times, working the hash run from Tangier, then began to operate from Colombia.

  Kelly had become a full-time smuggler, all right. But he was not a killer.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  From his motel room, while Meyers drove Mitchell to the airport, O’Doull called Operation Potship, raising Constable Hughes in the wiretap room.

  “Anything from the ship?”

  “I’ll check.”

  After a minute. “Jeez, there’s about five minutes on here.”

  “What time?”

  “I don’t know. It’s a six-hour tape. We put it on at nine o’clock last night.”

  O’Doull remembered: The transmissions were voice-activated. Unless a monitor happened to be listening, there was no way to pin down the time of a conversation. O’Doull asked the constable to plug the tape machine into the phone.

  The first voice on the tape was that of the Miami marine operator. “This is the marine operator, wom, calling the Alta Mar. Whiskey Bravo, six six three three.” O’Doull presumed the call sign was pirated.

  After a few repeats of that, Kerrivan’s voice came on. He was angry. “Jesus! Yeah, this is the Alta Mar.”

  The caller was Kelly. His voice was wavering, distant, rising, falling, subject to the blur of static.

  “Pete. Pete. Can you hear . . . can you . . .”

  “Jesus, boy, all the world can hear!” Kerrivan’s voice said. “What the hell are you doing?”

  There was some sound from Kelly’s end, but O’Doull could not make out the words. Kerrivan continued to shout: “I can’t read you. Repeat. I can’t read you! Over.”

  Then Kelly’s voice, suddenly coming in clear: “Just a minute. Stay with me. Hang on. I’ll be back to you.”

  The static was gone. There were sounds, muffled or distant. About eight seconds passed. Then Kerrivan’s voice: “Kev? You there?”

  Then Kelly’s voice, strong and urgent: “Deep-six it, boy. Deep-six the cargo.”

  Kerrivan: “Get off your paranoia, Kevin, and get off the fucking phone!”

  The static came back, and Kelly’s voice faded into it. Something about “alpha, alpha.” A code? “Meyers,” “the gypsy’s witch,” something. The gypsy’s witch?

  “I can’t read!” Kerrivan shouting.

  Kelly’s voice warbled and died, sputtered back. O’Doull thought he heard the words “jettison the cargo.” Then his words were coming clearer: “Scuttle the ship, Pete!”

  And that was it. A sound like a grunt. A harsh clunk and a clatter.

  The operator: “Sorry, sir . . . noise . . .”

  Something else, distant. A cry? Or a shriek of static from the ionosphere? The sound triggered a shudder that shot up O’Doull’s spine.

  A click.

  Kerrivan: “Operator, operator, goddamnit! Come in. Over.”

  The operator, distant, wavering: “ . . . party . . . hung up.”

  A loud “Shit!” from Kerrivan. Then his voice calling wom Miami, requesting the phone number of Escarlata’s hotel. Then asking the desk for the penthouse.

  “The party does not answer.”

  “Keep ringing!”

  “I am sorry. Your party does not answer.”

  O’Doull had the constable play it again for him. Then he aske
d him to send the tape, air dispatch, to his hotel. “Send the original. Keep a slave copy.”

  “Yeah. Hang on. Maybe you want to listen to this, Sergeant. It’s a call coming over on Kelly’s phone. The missus, talking to her sister.”

  Hughes plugged him into the Uher tape machine. It was Merrie Kelly’s voice: “He phoned yesterday. He’s coming home, Sis! He’s coming home! God, if I’m preggers, like I think I am, he’ll die!”

  ***

  “It helps to have friends in the police,” Meyers said. “The chief investigating officer, Braithwaite, he’s pretty smart, for a spade. He’ll give you all the information you need. Mind you, they’re busy, busy, busy. We got a couple of murders a day in Dade County. Good name for it: Dade County. Get a lot of dade people here.”

  O’Doull stared out the window of Meyers’s car at a city bleaching in the sun. He had only been in Miami one day, but already the skin of his face felt burned.

  “Mostly drug murders,” Meyers continued, “although the police have a pact with the tourist bureau to try to tone down the statistics. Scares off the money, you know. The rich Jews from New York, that’s what keeps Miami Beach going, and Miami lives off the Beach. Lives off dope, too, if you want to know the truth. Well, we all do, don’t we? Me, you, drug cops, the lawyers, the judges — where would we be without drugs?”

  A high, dry chuckle.

  There was a beep from the pager strapped to Meyers’s belt.

  “That’s my office. I’ll have to let you find your way around town on your own after this. I’m too busy, Theo — can I call you Theo? — much too busy. I have a big agency with too much work. Thirty men full-time. God knows how many on contract. Spying and protection, that’s my business. Security service, uniformed guards, the whole razzle-dazzle. I use Cubans, they’re the best. A lot of sickos and dipsticks came over on the boatlift, but some good people too. We screen the nuts out. Escarlata: I thought he was top-grade material, but he turned out to be a patsy. Fell for Marianne and she left him behind. She’s a stewardess. You know what they’re like. Short on brain, big on pussy. She’s been stuffing nose powder up her hole, walking right through customs. The ship whore. That’s why Kerrivan brought her along. Nice-looking, though, Theo. I’d pay a month’s taxes for a little go or two.”

  O’Doull thought the man was an obscenity.

  “Bad luck for Kelly that the little freak left the ship after the caper we pulled. He’d be alive if he hadn’t been a coward. By the way, I like your Inspector Mitchell. He went along with it all the way. A lot of cops wouldn’t. They like to tie you up with routines. Safe, unimaginative, no room for initiative. I spend half my time fighting my way out of the red tape the snivel servants use to tie up private policing agencies.”

  Meyers dropped O’Doull at the modern, rambling fortress that was Miami’s police building. “Homicide Detail, fifth floor. Get a pass at the desk. We’ll have a drink before you go back to Canada. You shouldn’t be long here.”

  “As long as it takes.”

  “Like I said — not long. Dope must give hippies weak hearts.”

  ***

  Braithwaite did not seem anxious to spend any time with O’Doull. “I’ve got exactly five minutes, then I’ve got to get out of here. I’m on overtime. We got a murder in Liberty City, and that’s the sixth body this week, including the two you’re interested in. And the week’s only half-over. I’m going to quit. We’re two hundred men short and I’m working on nerves and chocolate-bar energy.”

  He went to a drawer and pulled out a thin file. “Look, if it was a politician or a tourist got themselves offed, we’d spend some time at this, but these dirt-bag dopers are a dime a dozen. Informers, rip-offs, double crosses — there’s a thousand ways and reasons for drug murders. Strictly speaking, you got no business looking at these reports, but the DEA has asked us to cooperate, and we’ll do it.”

  “What time were the bodies found?” O’Doull asked.

  “Two o’clock this morning. About there. It’s in the report. I’ve got to go. Look, hell, take a Xerox. It’s not as if you’re a private citizen.”

  O’Doull read the sheets as Braithwaite fed them through the duplicating machine. “Who called in the report?”

  “Anonymous. A woman. Called the hotel desk downstairs. It’s all in there. Maybe there was a hooker in the room. The place is full of them. She does the decent thing at least, by calling the desk. We’ll never find her.” Braithwaite was edging his way to the door.

  “You dust for fingerprints?”

  “Yeah, of course.” Braithwaite sounded offended.

  O’Doull was about to tell him about the taped ship-to-shore call, but he hesitated, then decided to hold onto the information.

  “You lift any prints from the phone?” he asked.

  “You better check with ident on that. The prints aren’t back. Look, I got bodies out there.”

  O’Doull walked with him. “Did you take a brief from Rudy Meyers about our operation?” he asked. “Do you know what’s been going on?”

  “Enough to know it’s none of our business. I talked to him. I talked to Flaherty. Some big drug deal on its way up to Canada. The Cuban was working for you guys. He loses his cover. He gets killed.

  “Any suspects?”

  They were at Braithwaite’s car now, and the policeman paused. “What do you mean, suspects? The suspect died already of a heart attack. Talk to the county medical examiner, Jackson Hospital.” He opened the door, swung into the car, and started the engine.

  “What about the other people from the ship? Could any of them have stayed behind with Kelly?”

  “How the hell would I know? Ain’t Meyers supposed to be on top of all that?” He slammed the door, floored the gas pedal, and laid rubber.

  ***

  O’Doull went back inside and got directions to the identification section. One of the officers checked the file for him.

  O’Doull looked over the photographs. “This is the phone? It was on the hook when you arrived, like this?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Prints?”

  “Jeez.” The man riffled through the cards. “I don’t know how we forgot to take lifts from the phone. Jeez, it was right near the body, too.”

  O’Doull borrowed some fingerprinting equipment.

  ***

  The assistant examiner at the morgue, Dr. Benitez, was young and eager.

  “I state cause of death, that’s all I do. I don’t say murder, I don’t say suicide, I don’t say foul play. I say, like here, massive cardiac arrest. Or I say, about the other guy, contusions and lacerations to the brain. That’s all I do. Or I can tell you if there’s anything in the bloodstream or stomach or urine. High thc content in the cardiac fellow, by the way. That’s the narcotic ingredient in cannabis. Marijuana.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Very light alcohol intake. Point zero four at time of death. We took anal temps at half-hour intervals. Cooling rate gives us two a.m. time of death, give or take a quarter-hour. That’s the cardiac case. Now, with the older guy, we got massive brain injury. The bone and cartilage of the nose are twisted right up into the mid-brain, ripping it to shreds. Both frontal lobes lacerated. Heavy hemorrhaging in the subdural space. Instant death. Nearly instant, anyway. Zap. Eternity.”

  “How . . .”

  “How does a man get such an injury, you ask? I say foul play. I am not supposed to say it, but I say it. You do not drive your face into your brain by falling on your nose or against the corner of a table. We have a driving blow, enormous force, up and in.”

  “The guy you call the cardiac fellow. Kelly. Did you check for bruises, cuts?”

  “None. No, you couldn’t do this with a fist. Everything twisted in.” He paused. “Personally, I think there is something strange here. A murder and a heart failure. Coincidental in time. I tell Detect
ive Braithwaite there is something strange here, and he tells me the police have a great many other fish to fry. I talk to the state attorney, and he tells me the police, as he puts it, ‘don’t have the time to investigate variables other than the scenario that commends itself to obvious reason.’ He’s a lawyer; that’s the way he talks.”

  “A heart attack could happen during a fight,” O’Doull said.

  “What fight? I saw photographs. Not a lamp knocked over. The cardiac fellow: no bruising on the chest. The heart just fails. An explosive coronary No evidence of thrombosis, no arterial blockages. But one of the lungs collapses. Why? It collapses. I don’t have a theory. A couple of bruises on the arm, but they could be old. Well-nourished, well-developed specimen. Slight obesity, but not your standard cardiac candidate.”

  He looked through his notes. “I took a swab from what was left of the brain man’s nostrils. Analyzes for erythroxylon. Cocaine.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  At the bottom end of the Miami city limits near Coral Gables, O’Doull found the district of Coconut Grove. The area was mixed ritz-hip. The Mangrove Arms Hotel was outwardly sedate, apparently luxurious.

  A young woman in a tight dress sat in a corner of the lobby, her legs crossed. She looked poised for action.

  The clerk wore a shirt open three buttons from the top. A gold chain was twined among the dark hairs on his chest.

  “I’m a police officer,” said O’Doull. He did not show identification. Explanations of his exact status would complicate things. “It’s about the murders in the penthouse.”

  “You’re kind of late,” the clerk said. “Everybody else left twelve hours ago.”

  “You were on duty last night?” O’Doull asked.

  “Found the bodies. You got my name? It’s J.R. Peabody. A lady called, switchboard put her through to me, told me I’d better check the penthouse. An emergency. Then clicked off.”

  O’Doull pulled out the duplicates of the police reports, showing, for the benefit of J.R. Peabody, the printed name of the Miami Police Department. “That checks out,” he said. “Did you see anyone go up in the elevator or come down from it around two o’clock?”