Spiral (8 page)

I checked the digital timer on Pintana’s VCR. ”That says we’ve seen a total of only twenty-five minutes of tape?”

”Right.”

”You ask Kalil Biggs why he stopped rolling on his epic?”

”
Sí.
He said to me that he got bored with the party.”

I looked at Lourdes Pintana. ”Shortly after Veronica left it.”

The homicide sergeant just nodded.

”Let me give you my cellular number so you don’t have to play phone tag with the voice mail, okay?”

We were in the corridor leading to the metal security door by the reception area. I watched Pintana in front of me take a business card from the side pocket of her green, maybe-linen jacket.

At the door, she handed the card to me. I read the information on it, then looked back up at her. ”Good cop, bad cop.”

The twitch that was almost a smile. ”Polite cop, difficult cop.”

”Use whatever adjectives you want, but I have the feeling you and Cascadden were kind of playing me, him stonewalling so I’d be even more appreciative of whatever you gave me.”

Pintana did smile this time. ”I am playing you, Mr. Cuddy, but Kyle is not. He is what he seems, but he took a bullet for the city once, and he came back from it maybe a little harder than wiser. So I try to temper him, but I do not pretend to control him.”

”Yet he stays on Homicide?”

”The politics of heroism.”

”That’s pretty blunt.”

Her smile grew wider, as though my comment were a compliment. ‘Then allow me to be blunter still. The reason I am playing you is that this is the most problematic kiling I have seen in my time in the department, much less running Homicide. The captain I report to dumps on my head all the shit which is dumped first on his. I would like to really work this case, not shuttle to another press conference every time one of our esteemed politicians has a ‘promising lead’ for the police to follow. The force in Miami Beach suffered from the Cunanan-Versace media circus, and I myself have studied the Ramsey case in Colorado until my eyes cross. The fact is, though, that every one of the people at the Helides party may have put in the same amount of study, because they all either have gotten lawyers or claim to be dumb as fenceposts, and the forensic evidence doesn’t give me squat to use as leverage with any of them. If you can make better progress, I would welcome it, and I would hope you would share your results with me.”

”With you, not Cascadden.”

”Do not underestimate Kyle, Mr. Cuddy. A man who would step in front of a bullet is capable of many things.”

”He
stepped
in front of one?”

”
Sí
.” She pushed open the security door, ushering me into the little second-floor reception area. ”One meant for me, in fact. And Kyle does not appreciate another male showing him up before the woman he saved.”

By the time I turned around, the beige metal door was closed enough that I couldn’t see Lourdes Pintana’s face.

”And who are you showing up?” said Justo Vega as we went down the stairs toward the first floor.

”Long story. Will Pepe be outside?”

”I have never known him to fail in an instruction I have given him. Where do you wish to go?”

”Back to the hotel, pick up my rent-a-car.”

”You feel sufficiently familiar with the area now?”

”I can still read a compass.”

Justo gave one of his musical laughs. ”What did you think of Sergeant Pintana?”

”Smart and tough. Maybe even smart enough not to feel she has to show just how tough.”

”And a genuine beauty, a woman who grows more attractive the more one speaks with her. If I were not married already, she would be a good choice.”

I looked back at Justo before being aware of how my face must have looked to him.

”Oh, John. Forgive me, please. I — ”

”No forgiveness is necessary among friends.”

The grave nod. ”Perhaps not, but an apology is still appropriate, and I extend it.”

My turn to nod, and then we went through the doors that could remind you of an airport terminal and into the heat of the nearly midday sun.

After Pepe dropped me back at my hotel, I stopped by the front desk to see if there were any messages for me. The clerk seemed a little nervous, but dutifully checked his computer before saying yes, a ”Mr. Tranh” had called a while before.

I thought I should return it from my room, so I went up there. Once inside, I touched the beach photo atop the bureau again on my way to the bed. Using the mattress as a seat, I dialed, and Tranh’s voice answered midway through the second ring.

”John Cuddy, returning your call.”

”You are at your hotel?”

He sounded miffed. ”Yes.”

”Before trying you there, I dialed your cell phone, but without success.”

I stared at bottom drawer of the bureau, where I’d left the portable. ”I didn’t have it with me.”

”Mr. Cuddy, do you even have it turned on?”

Now a sardonic tone to Tranh’s voice. I waited a moment before saying, ”No.”

He took an equal amount of time, then said, ”I dialed your cellular as a test, to be sure the Colonel could reach you if necessary. As he cannot always be available himself for a return call from your hotel room, could you please keep the cell phone fully charged and with you—power
on
—at all times?”

”I’ll do my best.”

”Thank you again. I see no need to trouble the Colonel with the reason for my reminder to you.”

Favor supposedly owed. ”I appreciate that.”

”Good-bye, Mr. Cuddy.”

I started to say the same before realizing that Duy Tranh had already hung up on me.

Rising from the bed, I went over to my bureau and retrieved the cell phone from its drawer. When I pushed the button marked PWR, the tiny window lit up with a pale green background, telling me the phone’s own dialing number. A bar graph on the right-hand side showed the battery as fully charged.

I slipped the unit into my inside jacket pocket and went to the door. When I pulled it open, something like a battering ram hit me square in the chest.

Backpedaling, I registered Detective Kyle Cascadden’s following through with an open right hand to my breastplate. Granted I wasn’t expecting it, he’d still managed to drive almost two hundred pounds of me to the edge of the bed eight feet into the room.

I stayed on my feet as the back of my knees hit the mattress. Cascadden had slammed the door with his left hand and kept coming, bringing his right up to my throat and grabbing hold. Not choking me, just getting my attention and keeping it.

”All right, Beantown, now here’s the program. I got the room clerk by the short hairs, account of he’s got an old drug conviction I know about but the hotel don’t. So he called me soon’s he knew you were back up here. I got that kind of stuff on enough people, I can find you wherever you go in my town. We clear on that?”

I gave what I thought Cascadden would take to be a weak nod.

”Rest of the program. I don’t much like you coming into my squad room, showing me up with your high-handed Yankee power-trip. You were working for some dogshit defendant, I’d have to give you a mite of leeway, account of the courts won’t let me tell witnesses not to talk with the accused’s investigators.’ But you’re just butting your nose in where it don’t belong, and I don’t like that either. Fact is, I don’t much like anything about you. So, I catch you even just a bitty-bit dirty—like maybe you carrying unlicensed?—and Beantown, I’m gonna be on you like flies over horseshit. We clear on that, too?”

Another weak nod from me.

Cascadden started to squeeze harder on my throat. ”And I don’t mean formal, neither. I mean I come out and see you personal, like now, only maybe you gonna walk away with worse than some ache in your Adam’s apple.” A grin. Or, maybe you don’t walk away at all.”

Sagging a bit in my shoulders, I flopped my left hand up toward his right elbow under the shirtsleeve, my thumb and middle finger lightly probing on each side of the joint for the right spot. The one the unarmed-defense sergeant showed us in the sawdust pit back in Military Police Officer Basic.

When Cascadden squeezed harder still on my throat, I pinched my fingers into the flesh.

His right hand went limp against my collarbone as his eyes bugged and his face drained of color. Then he folded over at the belly, drawing in a ragged breath. When Cascadden let out the breath, he wheezed.

I said, ”This amount of pressure, you almost can’t think from the pain, right?”

One abrupt nod.

”A little more pressure, and you’d drop to your knees, maybe throw up all over my carpet here. Are we communicating?”

Another nod, more abrupt.

”All right, Cascadden, the difference between us is, I’m doing this to you only because you ran your routine on me first. I didn’t ask for the job I’m doing here, but I’ll do it, and things might be better for both of us if you could see your way clear to cooperate. If you can’t, though, just stay the hell away from me, and save the rousting for the college kids come Spring Break. Okay?”

An even faster nod than the first two, almost as though his head wanted off his neck.

I let go of the elbow, and his arm drooped to his side. Still doubled over, Cascadden stumbled backward a few steps, his left hand going up to the right elbow, massaging it tentatively. ”Mother-fucker... Mother-
fuck
-er.”

”Sticks and stones, Cascadden. Now get out of here.”

He turned and awkwardly used his left hand to open the door, letting the spring carry it shut behind him rather than slamming it as he had on his entrance.

That was when I caught myself in the mirror over the bureau. Grinning in a way I never thought I would.

The way that says you enjoyed what you just did.

* * *

I recognized him, but I also realized I’d have had a hard time describing him.

The nervous desk clerk was handing an older woman an envelope across the counter, using his hands to give her some kind of directions. He was about five-nine, with fine features and hair slicked back with some kind of gel. I waited until the woman walked away before going up to him. When he caught my movement, he looked up, smiling professionally.

But only briefly.

I said, ”Busy morning for you, huh?”

”Uh, yes. Mr.... uh—”

”Oh, come on now. You can’t have forgotten already? You had it right ten minutes ago when you spoke with Detective Cascadden.”

”I don’t think—”

”Unfortunately, though, Cascadden is a little free with his information. He let slip how firm you were about a certain personal... conviction.”

The clerk flinched.

I said, ”What’s your name?”

”Damon.”

I leaned into him over the counter. ”Damon, the problem with information about any kind of conviction is, once you share it, things can get out of hand.”

A nod.

”I don’t intend to share this information any further, but I want something in return.”

”They don’t pay me enough here to—”

”Different coin of the realm, Damon. All I want is advanced notice from you.”

Hope and confusion both. ”Notice?”

”Of any trouble headed my way that you sniff out first.”

”Trouble.”

”That’s right. Either Detective Cascadden or anybody else. You think you can do that for me?”

Damon glanced around before nodding. Vigorously.

”I’m going out now.”

”Uh, have a nice day.”

”I’ll try to, Damon. I’ll really try.”

Mitch Eisen’s office showed an address in what I thought of as the southeast quadrant of Fort Lauderdale. I used the shore route A1A to reach it, partly because I wanted to get the hang of handling the Cavalier but mostly to clear my head of the feelings Kyle Cascadden and Damon had left in me. Watching people jog, race-walk, and roller-blade along the oceanside path helped, especially with the beach, turquoise water, and swaying palm trees as backdrops.

South of Broward Boulevard, I turned back west until I found a strip mall lying between the right avenues. There was no sign on the three-story building that read like the business name of a rock group’s manager, maybe because the Dunkin’ Donuts and Mail Boxes, Etc., on the ground floor had taken up all the available advertising space. I parked the Cavalier across from the short line buying fresh-brewed coffee and fresh-baked health food.

Between the two establishments, I found a glass and chrome door with three apartment-style mailboxes inside it. The middle one showed a piece of masking tape with ”M. Eisen, Ltd.,” so I climbed the flight of stairs to the second floor.

There was only one door, a plastic faux-grained plaque not quite centered on it but reading ”M. Eisen, Ltd.” as well. Knocking, I wondered why the manager of even a faded rock group couldn’t spring for at least a second plaque downstairs.

A muffled ”It’s open” came through the door, so I turned the knob. A man was sitting at the secretarial desk in the outer office, a threshold behind it leading to an inner one. I recognized the hair transplant from the video of the birthday party that Sergeant Lourdes Pintana had shown me back at police headquarters. It looked like nursery rows of Christmas trees, planted at identical intervals.

Eisen glanced up at me. ”Yeah?”

I went through the formalities anyway. ”Mr. Eisen?”

”No, Mick Jagger. The fuck are you?”

I realized that it hadn’t been so much the door muffling his voice as the voice itself. There was a breathy quality to it that wouldn’t carry five feet in an empty church, even though he didn’t seem older than fifty or so. Eisen looked thinner than he had in the video. I’d always heard that the camera adds ten pounds, but in this case, the subtraction made the guy almost emaciated, the name spiral over a tornado logo on his black T-shirt almost completely covering his narrow chest.

”My name’s John Cuddy. Nicolas Helides thought I should talk to you.”

”Oh, the private eye, right?”

”Right.”

”Tranh told me I might get a visit. How come you didn’t call, let me know you were coming?”

”Thought I’d just drive over.”

”Yeah, but why not use your cellular from the car?”

”Tranh told you he’d given me a cell phone?”

Eisen blinked. ”No. No, he didn’t. I just—shit, man, everybody who’s anybody has one now.”

”I wonder if we could talk about Veronica Held.”

A frown this time. ”You know, my lawyer doesn’t think I should be talking to you at all.”

”But Nicolas Helides does.”

The frown evolved into a shrewd grin. ”John, I like a man knows when he has leverage for negotiating.” Eisen glanced behind him. ”Let’s go into my office. I can’t stand the fucking clutter out here.”

The desk Eisen rose from sported folded correspondence and waxy faxes, eight-by-ten photos and tape cassettes. ”Secretary out sick?”

”Huh?” he said over his shoulder as he led me through the inner doorway.

”Your secretary. He or she out sick for a while?”

”Oh, I don’t have what you’d call a formal secretary. Got this single-mother chick, used to work for a temp agency, but she got tired of having to go to different places all the time. So I pay her less to come here more. Only one of her yard-apes is sick with something, so I’m up to my ass in shit from people I don’t even know.”

”I’m surprised they can find you, Mitch.”

Eisen waved me to a seat before collapsing as heavily as his weight would let him into a high-backed judge’s chair behind a desk at least as cluttered as the one we’d just left. ”Find me?”

”Without any advertising downstairs.”

”Oh, that doesn’t stop the wanna-bes. I could change my name and move to Tahiti, and I’d still be getting demo tapes recorded in somebody’s fucking garage.”

”You ever find new clients that way?”

”What, off the street, so to speak?”

‘Yes.”

”Once in a great while.” Eisen pursed his lips, which somehow caused the hair plugs to march like a drill team toward his forehead. ”Was how I found Spi Held, tell you the truth. Or how he found me.”

”And when was this?”

”Back in seventy.” Eisen swung in his chair, waving this time at the wall of photos to his left and my right. ”That’s us, whole first row there.”

I followed his hand gesture to a vertical line of framed shots, some posed, some candid. Most had a younger, heavier version of Eisen in them, with four even younger men around him. I recognized Buford Biggs despite the Jimi Hendryx Afro and husky build. I also recognized the fat, bald one called Gordo, but you would have been hard-pressed to pick the man Lourdes Pintana identified to me as Spi Held, and the fourth man with dishwater-blond hair falling onto his shoulders was clearly not the young drummer I’d seen in the video of the party.

I said, ”Who’s the guy with the long blond hair?”

”The...? Oh, that was O’D.”

”Oh-Dee?”

”Tommy O’Dell. Original drummer in the band. Called him ‘O’D’ for short, because of his last name.” A cough that I realized stood for a grunted laugh. ”Or because of how he checked out. Always thought that’s how the stone should have read.”