Hard Case Crime: Dutch Uncle
Read Hard Case Crime: Dutch Uncle Online
Authors: Peter Pavia
Vicki was in the Jacuzzi with Mimi, in the water up to her neck, holding the Chihuahua’s head just above the churning surface.
The lawn chair where a towel or a bathrobe should’ve been hanging was empty.
Leo said, “Are you naked under there?”
“Get in and find out for yourself,” Vicki said.
Mimi had been appealing to Leo with her eyes. Just her luck her mistress would be the one person in the world who thought this was a cute idea, a Chihuahua in the hot tub.
The sliding glass door was locked. Leo tapped the Jag’s ignition key against the pane, a clinking that brought Beaumond’s eyes, yellow and dilated, out from behind the curtain. The dining room table was cluttered with boxes of baking soda, a roll of sandwich-sized baggies, and a jar of unlabeled powder.
Beaumond and Fernandez had gotten hold of two triplebeam scales, strategically angled near their places at the table. Dumped on the Business section of the Sunday
Herald,
the kilo sparkled under the glow from a hanging lamp.
“How’d you make out?” Fernandez wanted to know. He was puffing the tobacco part of the Newport.
“Not too good,” Leo said, grabbing his lighter and sparking a Marlboro. “I’m supposed to meet El Negrito in a little while.”
“What’re you gonna tell him?” Beaumond asked. He was using a yellow sandbox shovel to blend baking soda and cocaine. He dumped a heaping tablespoon of the jarred powder into the batch.
“I’m gonna deny everything.”
Fernandez said, “You think that’ll work?”
“What choice do I have?” Leo said. “I don’t know about you guys, but I’m too young to die...”
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UNCLE
by
Peter Pavia
A HARD CASE CRIME BOOK
(HCC-012)
First Hard Case Crime edition: July 2005
Published by
Titan Books
A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd
144 Southwark Street
London
SE1 OUP
in collaboration with Winterfall LLC
Copyright © 2005 by Peter Pavia
Cover painting copyright © 2005 by R. B. Farrell
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Print edition ISBN 978-0-85768-312-0
E-book ISBN 978-0-85768-384-7
Design direction by Max Phillips
www.maxphillips.net
The name “Hard Case Crime” and the Hard Case Crime logo are trademarks of Winterfall LLC. Hard Case Crime Books are selected and edited by Charles Ardai.
Visit us on the web at
www.HardCaseCrime.com
Miami Beach, 1996
Strolling Ocean Drive on his third day of parole, Harry Healy ran into Leo, whose last name he didn’t learn the weekend they threw Leo into his cell, at a sidewalk café sipping espresso.
Harry started out just Drunk and Disorderly, but when he landed a left on the chin of arresting officer Kenneth Simms, a pack of O’Learys fell on him and dealt him the beating of his life. They knocked out two teeth and fractured the fourth rib on his left side, and one cop bent his arm so sharply behind his back it separated from his shoulder, still popping out from time to time so that Harry had to realign it himself. That didn’t bother him too much, and neither did the rib after the first eight weeks or so, but he was still pissed about the teeth, holes where an incisor and a bicuspid used to be, making him look exactly like the ex-con he now was.
Leo was Drunk and Disorderly too, and he spent the weekend getting orderly while his father’s attorneys tracked down the connections who got him undone.
Leo was twenty-five or thirty. He had a wiry build that was going soft, a superstar jock who got hurt and had his shot at baseball glory ruined. To hear him tell it, anyway. Leo knew a lot of baseball, good memory for stats, and kept Harry entertained talking about great stars Harry had never heard of. He was an okay guy to spend a weekend in jail with.
Harry squinted into the sun. He asked Leo for a Marlboro.
Leo said, “Why don’t you sit down?”
“Because I don’t have any money I wanna spend here, and I hate those faggy little cups of coffee, and I ain’t all that fond of broiling on the concrete, either.”
Leo looked at him from behind his sunglasses and his mouth got tight. He waved his Marlboro and shrugged one shoulder. He said, “Hang out, man.”
A brunette sashayed past the table. She was carrying a portfolio and switching her hips, wearing patterned hose over a g-string. Or, possibly, no panties at all. Peering at life through lenses tinted brown.
In the sun-bleached afternoon, Harry missed his shades, the spanking new Ray Bans that were among his personal effects when he went inside, but weren’t when they let him go.
Harry made his hand into a visor. He followed the brunette with his eyes. “She’s probably a model,” he said.
“You think so? What tipped you off?”
“Look at how tall she is and look at her clothes. And her face, well, you can’t see it now, but she was beautiful.”
“C’mon, Flash, of course she’s a model. They’re all models down here. It’s the number one industry in this town. I’m thinking of taking a shot at it myself, soon as I get my book together.”
Leo was over six feet tall. He had smooth skin and a pointy chin and a nose that had never been broken, and Harry supposed he was good looking, but no more so than a dozen other guys he’d seen that afternoon alone. Besides, the modeling racket meant getting up when the sun was right and wearing make-up and having somebody blow air at you so your hair went flopping in a certain direction. Not a job for a man, he thought, but he didn’t say anything.
“Harry, what’re you doing?”
“Right now? I’m trying to get back to New York.”
“Is that right,” Leo said. “How much money you got?”
“I don’t know, I got a few bucks.” He knew the amount to the penny, $12.97, but there was no reason Leo had to know it, too.
“You feel like making some?”
Harry didn’t know if he liked the way that sounded. “What do I have to do?”
“When was the last time you saw your uncle?”
“My uncle,” Harry said. “What uncle? How do you know my uncle?”
Leo looked at him like he knew a secret. “I’m talking about your uncle Manfred.”
“Manfred?” Harry said. “You mean Manfred Pfiser?”
He wouldn’t in a hundred years have paired Leo and Manfred. Manfred was New York by way of Rotterdam, a Euro-wiseguy who dealt with the Chinks, in town two, maybe three times a year, and Leo, Leo was strictly Miami. “How do you know Manfred?”
“I know a lot of people,” Leo said. “Now listen to me. Your uncle’s here.”
“In Miami Beach? No shit.”
“He likes the weather. And he heard about your predicament. As your Dutch Uncle, he feels obligated to lend a helping hand.”
“Yeah, right,” Harry said, “a helping hand. He’s so fucking concerned about me, where was he when they had me locked up like a dog, just for trying to defend myself against a dozen steroid-crazed freaks? Dutch Uncle, my ass.”
But Harry sat down anyway, and after he settled in with Leo’s cigarettes and the ten dollar whiskey Leo was paying for, he figured he might as well hear Leo out. Three things became clear: It was easy, it was illegal, and Leo was cutting him a break. Harry wondered why.
Leo was profiling a lilac-colored Guayabera shirt over a white guinea-t. He pulled a container from the left breast pocket, a canister with the Eastman Kodak logo on its lid.
“After you shoot a roll of film, you stash it like this. On the Beach, it’s the most inconspicuous package you could possibly be carrying. ‘A photographer friend took these for me, officer, but since he did the work as a favor, I have to pay to get them developed.’ One of these bad boys holds a quarter ounce. You pack like a dozen rolls in a satchel. The live ones you bury at the bottom. You’re betting he doesn’t get to what he’s looking for. That’s if he stops you at all. See what I’m saying? Totally plausible. Specially if you look the way I do. Hi, darling.”