Authors: Jeremiah Healy
He read my face, and then held up his hand in a stop-sign gesture. Pepe turned and began walking back toward the gate.
I leaned against the driver’s door of the Achieva. ”What happens when the Colonel dies?”
”Financially, you mean?”
”Start there.”
Justo hesitated. ”I did not prepare the estate plan for him, but I have read it at his request. Why do you ask, John?”
”I’m trying to think of any reason for Veronica Held behaving the way she did in front of her grandfather at that party when everyone’s told me she had a knack—and a willingness—to push the right buttons to get what she wanted from people.”
”You think perhaps she did it to... please someone else?”
”Or maybe that somebody else told her it would work on the Colonel.”
A shake of the head this time. ”I do not see how.”
”Work the wrong way, maybe.”
Now a slow nod. ”To upset the Skipper.”
”Maybe even push him over the edge, healthwise but apparently naturally.”
”Dios mio,
John. You think someone used Veronica in an attempt to kill her grandfather?”
”And when it didn’t happen right then...”
”... Veronica would have to be silenced before she could tell the Skipper whose idea that song was.”
We both let it lay there a minute.
Finally Justo said, ”The estate plan, though detailed, is really quite simple in structure. But first you must know that Cassandra signed an antenuptial agreement. Upon divorce, separation, etc., she receives a lump-sum payment of only half a million dollars.”
”Only.”
Justo nearly smiled. ”From her perspective, today that would work out to less than thirty thousand dollars for each year of marriage.”
”During most of which the Colonel was hale and hearty.”
”That is correct, John.”
”But if he died before a separation or divorce?”
”Then the antenuptial agreement yields to the estate plan, and Cassandra receives one-half of the estate.”
”Amounting to...?”
"...seven million, give or take.”
God. ”And the rest of it?”
”Another million to various charities, three in trust to care for David in perpetuity, and the remaining three in trust for Veronica.”
”With a provision for his granddaughter predeceasing him?”
Another nod, slower than the first. ”Her three million to Spi Held, though again in trust, so he could not squander the inheritance.”
I turned it over. ”There a reason you didn’t tell me that last part before?”
”John, you only just now asked—”
”I mean without my asking you.”
Justo stiffened, then his shoulders sagged in a relenting way. ”My client’s wishes.”
”Go on.”
”He did not want to believe that the reformed Prodigal Son could have wanted his own daughter dead.”
”And so the Skipper told you not to say anything about a three-million-dollar motive for the girl’s father?”
”But that is where you are wrong, John. Spi Held wanted nothing more than to see his band be a success again, and he knew Veronica functioned as the linchpin of that hope. Not just the hope of money, either. A hope more strongly, I think, of the ego, to be on top of his music’s heap once again.”
”Dreams of fame and fortune trump a motive for fortune only.”
”Exactly.”
”Justo?”
”Yes.”
”Have you heard Spiral play lately?”
Another stiffening at the shoulders, but a slow shake of the head, too.
I got to O’Hara’s on Las Olas by 9:45
p.m. As
I went through the front door, an African-American bouncer at least six-seven and two-sixty greeted me warmly. Rabid applause was just dying around the red-bricked room, which looked like a cozier version of the Hollywood operation Mitch Eisen and I had visited the night before. On the small stage, a compact guy about thirty with curly, Prince Valiant-length hair was shaking out a soprano sax the color of mercury, a much taller and broader guy around the same age nodding thanks to the nearly S.R.O. house while he turned the little tuning pegs at the top of his guitar. A second guitarist and a drummer rounded out the group.
The small square bar inside the entrance was full, but I saw two empty stools on the left side of a larger oval bar in the middle of the room. As I got there and took the closest seat, a barkeep cleared the empty glasses of the recently departed and swabbed the drink rings with a towel.
”What’ll you have?”
I didn’t see any draught pulls. ”No taps?”
He pointed to a shelf of sample bottles above him. ”All of those, and Harp as well.”
”A Harp, please.”
As he said, ”You got it,” I missed the name of the next piece, which the saxophonist also announced could be found on ”our latest CD.” There was a swelling of applause before the first chord, and the song turned out to have a salsalike beat, the sax establishing as pretty a melody as I’d heard in years.
The bartender set the bottle of Harp on a coaster in front of me. ”Glass?”
”No, thanks.”
As he turned away, I felt a hand rest lightly on my left shoulder and whiffed a little perfume mixed with that distinctive tang of female perspiration.
Sergeant Lourdes Pintana leaned into my ear to say, ”How much have I missed?”
I watched her fold onto the stool next to mine and arrange a tote-sized handbag between her feet, the strap around one ankle. She wore a lime-green blazer and pale-yellow skirt, the hem riding eight inches above her knees.
I leaned toward Pintana, but not as closely as she had to me. ”Just got here myself.”
The bartender automatically brought over a clear, carbonated drink with a straw. She nodded to him, then glanced at the guitarist before leaning into my ear again. ”His name is Mark Vee. Enjoy.”
We sat in silence as Vee contributed three minutes or so of virtuouso lead before yielding back to the sax. Pintana and I joined in the applause, the guitarist grinning shyly.
Pintana leaned into me again, this time her lips actually brushing the hair over my ear. ”He’s from Chile.” She reached for some purple bookmarks on the bar to her left, putting one in front of me and pointing to a photo and caption under it. ”The sax man’s Joe Sha-shaty, Lebanese heritage. And this is a list of the other places they’ll be playing this month.”
I watched her lips close on the straw sticking up from her glass.
When the piece ended, there was an ovation of applause, whistling, and cheering. Then Sha-shaty announced they’d be taking a short break and reminded us to be good to the bartenders and waitresses.
As the crowd quieted, some getting up to leave, Pintana leaned into me again. ”They’re as good as you’ll hear live.” I looked at her.
”What’s the matter?” she said, leaning back now.
”When you asked me here this morning, I told you about what happened to me.”
A neutral expression. ”The women in your life.”
”Who
were
in my life. I’m not claiming sexual harassment, but you don’t have to blare into my ear for me to understand your words.”
A mask came down over Pintana’s features. ”Remember I told you about Kyle taking a bullet for me?”
”Yes.”
”Before I put the shooter down, he capped off another round about two feet from the right side of my head.”
”Got you.” I closed my eyes. ”Sorry.”
”Thirty percent hearing loss in this ear. So I sometimes overcompensate, especially with background noise like—” Opening my eyes, I turned toward her. ”I said I was sorry.”
Pintana hardened the mask, then let it slide off like a gossamer veil. ”You would be a hard man to love, and an impossible one to leave.”
I picked up my Harp. ”Now’s who’s getting ahead of themselves?”
She dipped toward her drink instead of raising it, the lips once again on the straw before she straightened again. ”You called me.”
”About Malinda Dujong.”
”I’m waiting.” v
I told Pintana about Dujong’s message on my voice mail at the hotel and what I learned from visiting the tennis club, including not listening to Dujong’s own tape machine.
”Department policy says forty-eight hours before we classify it a missing person.”
”Hasn’t been that long yet.”
”And might never be. All I’ve heard so far is she makes one call to you, blows off a tennis game, and forgets to water some plants.”
It was a way to see it. ”When I spoke with Dujong yesterday afternoon at Spi Held’s house, she told me something she said didn’t come up when Cascadden interviewed her.”
Pintana dipped to take another—but now very casual — sip of her drink. ”What?”
”That someone calling herself ‘Wendy’ lured Dujong away from attending the Helides birthday party.”
A look of genuine interest this time. ”Lured her how?”
I went through it.
”So,” said Pintana, ”we add this mystery woman Wendy, and we still don’t have anything that authorizes me to violate the privacy of a maybe-missing citizen’s tape messages.”
”So maybe we do it without authorization.”
Her eyes went toward the front entrance. ”Let me find a pay phone first.”
I watched Pintana as she did a ninety-degree turn away from me. Sliding the strap of her totebag over a shoulder, she went back toward the rest room signs. Just as I lost her in the crowd, I felt that tingle of not remembering something important. Then I felt something else.
The weight of hands substantially heavier than Pintana’s landing on each of my shoulders.
Sitting in the backseat of a Ford Crown Vic cruiser with the bigger of two patrol officers, I remembered what the tingle had been trying to tell me.
I said, ”You have a cell phone.”
Sergeant Lourdes Pintana turned around in the front passenger’s seat, speaking through cage wire at the edge of a Plexiglas divider. ”What?”
”You have a cellular, so you didn’t have to look for a pay phone.”
From behind the wheel, the smaller patrol officer laughed. ”You sure this guy’s smart enough to—”
”Not another word,” said Pintana to him, and the four of us rode mute the rest of the way to 1300 West Broward Boulevard.
”Glad to see you back, Beantown.”
”Glad to be back.”
Standing against the wall of Pintana’s office in the Homicide Unit, Detective Kyle Cascadden probably would have rubbed his hands together with glee but for the light-brown folder swaddled against his chest. ”You won’t be glad for long, especially once—”
”Kyle?” said Pintana, sinking into the chair behind her desk.
”All right, all right.”
I took the seat across from her again, the two uniforms having left us at the reception counter on the second floor.
She said to me, ”You have any idea why you’re here?”
Figuring that nobody from the trailer park would be likely to contact the Lauderdale police, I shook my head.
”Kyle?” said Pintana again, but with a different inflection.
Cascadden came toward my chair, brandishing the file like a blackjack. Instead of hitting me with it, he slipped out an eight-by-ten photo, slapping the glossy on the desk in front of me the way an aggressive kid might play the game of ”Go Fish.”
I looked down at the photo, a head and shoulders shot of a man bare from the breastplate upward. You didn’t need to see the tattoo of a spider to know it was Ford Walton, and you didn’t need to have seen many dead bodies to know this was another one.
I looked back up at Cascadden.
”Well?” he said.
”I’ll take a dozen wallet-sized.”
He raised the Semper Fi forearm as though he was going to backhand me.
”Kyle!” from Pintana, and Cascadden dropped the pose before stepping back stiffly to his place at the wall.
I said, ”Where was Walton killed?”
Pintana put a forefinger to her gleaming, even teeth. ”Found him in an alley, warehouse district off Andrews Avenue. But, from postmortem lividity, the M.E. figures he was just dumped there.”
Cascadden clearly didn’t like the way his commander was sharing information with his prime suspect.
”How about cause of death?” I said.
”Another knife, back of the neck this time.”
”You mean through the spinal cord?”
Cascadden said, ”Just like they teach you in the Corps.”
I looked at him. ”I was Army.”
”Don’t matter, Beantown. That’s where you could’ve learnt it.”
Back to Pintana. ”You wouldn’t be telling me all this if you seriously liked me as the killer.”
She tapped the forefinger’s nail against her teeth. ”We think it’s kind of odd that a man supposedly attacks you with a knife after his girlfriend dies by one and then he ends up dead from one himself.”
”But three different methods.”
”Huh?” said Cascadden.
”Of using a knife. You told me Sundy Moran was slashed.”
Pintana barely moved her lips. ”Repeatedly.”
”Well, when Walton came after me at the hotel pool, he used the slash move only as a feint. The rest of it was pure street fighter, up from under.”
Cascadden grinned. ”Maybe old Ford reckoned you’d be more trouble than a ninety-eight-pound whore.”
Pintana blinked, but kept the lids down for longer than the level of light in the room required. ”And Walton himself was killed by somebody who knew where to stick a man from behind.”
”Or by somebody who wanted to give you that impression.”
More tapping of her forefinger. ”Let’s hear it.”
I came forward in the chair, resting my elbows on my knees. ”There’s no reason Ford Walton would attack me last night saying it was ‘for Sundy.’ I didn’t know him from Adam, or him me. And I wasn’t even in Florida when she was killed.”
Cascadden said, ”Lourdes, I—,” but stopped when Pintana shook her head.
I stayed with her. ”On the other hand, whoever did slash Moran maybe knew something about her life, and therefore could have known Walton, too.”
”Or at least that he was Moran’s lover.”
Cascadden grunted. ”Seems old Ford was rutting through the whole goddamned fam—”
”Kyle,” said Pintana, in her ”knock-it-off” tone.
I didn’t bother to glance at him. ”And our killer also could have known Walton liked to use a knife, and might even be blamed for both deaths.”
Cascadden looked genuinely confused. ”Both?”
I said, ”Sundy Moran’s and mine.”
He didn’t seem to appreciate my help.
Pintana said, ”We got back the lab results on the residue from that knife you say Walton used on you.”
”Moran’s blood, too?”
”Don’t worry, Beantown. You can’t get AIDS from a goddamned blade.”
Neither Pintana nor I bothered with Cascadden now. She said, ”Moran’s blood, too.”
”So whoever killed her went to the trouble of keeping the murder weapon ..
”...to plant on somebody else, let us close the case.”
I worked it through the other things I’d found out. ”I think I know who played the role of prospective client in that telephone call Malinda Dujong received.”
Cascadden said, ”What call?”
I stayed with the sergeant. ”‘Sundy’ is a contraction of Sunday.”
Pintana’s eyes widened. ”And ‘Wendy’ of Wednesday.”
”Contractions?” said Cascadden.
I leaned back in my chair. ”And after Sundy Moran did that little favor for someone, the person killed her, and then used Walton, figuring he’d be mad enough to take out whoever the real killer said had slashed his girlfriend.”
”What call and what contractions?” said Cascadden again. Pintana let her hand fall to the desktop. ”Which meant Walton had to be killed—”
”—whether he finished me or not, because Walton could somehow link Moran’s killer to her and me both.” Cascadden came off his wall now. ”The hell are you two talking about?”
Pintana said, ”Then why didn’t our killer take out Walton right away?”
”Because maybe Walton couldn’t link Moran’s killer to her until the killer approached Walton to knife me.” Cascadden said, ”Beantown, if you don’t fucking answer my—”
”Kyle, shut up or get out.”
Pintana didn’t say it very loudly, but the edge in her voice would have cut cold steel.
Cascadden turned red as a beet just before stomping from the room and slamming the door behind him.
I looked back at Lourdes Pintana.
She said, ”I think maybe we should go hear Malinda Dujong’s telephone tape messages now.”
From the shadow of her front door, Shirley Nole shaded bleary eyes with a hand.
I said, ”We’re sorry to bother you, Shirley, but this is Sergeant Pintana from the Fort Lauderdale Police, and she needs your key to Ms. Dujong’s unit.”
Nole drew in a breath. ”Is Malinda... okay?”
Pintana said, ”We don’t know.”
Head bowed, Nole said, ”Just a second, please.”
Everything looked the same as it had early that afternoon, except that the plants on Dujong’s porch seemed to be faring a little better.
Nole had left us in favor of sleeping. Pintana said to me, ”All right, where’s this tape machine?”
I started walking toward the entertainment center. ”Over here.”
Pintana joined me, taking a pen and notepad from her big handbag. ”Push
play.”
I did.
There were about twenty messages. I didn’t pay much attention to the specifics on any of them, though Pintana looked up at me each time my voice came over the tiny speaker. Jeanette Held accounted for half a dozen herself, each time sounding a little more frenzied. Another woman—Mi Soo, Dujong’s tennis opponent—called twice, once about being stood up for the match, a second time concerned about whether ”you maybe sick or something." Others were names and voices I didn’t recognize, but the nature of all was pretty consistent: Malinda, where are you?
I waited until after the last message before saying, "I really don’t like this.”
Pintana pointed toward the machine. ”Anything on there you want to tell me about?”
”Nothing you haven’t already heard.”
She put away her pad and pen. ”Leave the tape as is. I’ll get a forensics team over here, although”—Pintana glanced around the living and dining areas—”nothing looks wrong to me.”
”And Dujong’s car is gone, too, so given the security you saw at the gate, I’m guessing our friend waited until she was somewhere outside the club, where his taking her wouldn’t be noticed.”
”His?”
”I don’t see any of the women I’ve met so far being this...”
”Elaborate?” said Pintana.
”As good a label as any.”
”But still no idea on who might have taken Ms. Dujong?”
”Or where, for that matter.”
Lourdes Pintana started for the door. ”After we give back this key, I’ll drive you to O’Hara’s.”
”I’m not much in the mood for music anymore.”
A shake of her head, the honey-colored hair whisking her shoulders. ”Maybe you really do have that concussion.”
”Sorry?”
”I meant that I’d give you a lift so you could pick up your
car.”
”Oh.”
Pintana pulled her unmarked sedan into the open space in front of my Achieva on Las Olas Boulevard. ”The least I could do.”
”After setting me up in there?”
I thought she’d keep her eyes forward until I got out, but her head turned to me now. ”I didn’t intend it as a setup originally.”
”Just after you found Ford Walton’s body.”
Pintana turned back to her windshield. ”A suggestion?”
”What?”
”Get somebody to teach you how to recognize a compliment.”
I closed my eyes, realized how tired I was. ”Under other circumstances, I might be able to learn it from you.”
Lourdes Pintana’s voice said, ”God didn’t give me that kind of patience.”