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“Or,” I said, “I could grab some folks from the pool investigators downstairs.”
“That sounds like a good idea,” Valdez said, standing.
Delmara followed suit, tucking his notepad into his suit jacket and forcing a half-smile to his face. “Nice idea on the mixer, Detective,” he said, following Valdez out the door.
Roy grabbed my shoulder. “Great theory, Carson! Morningstar was gushing over the idea.”
“Gushing?”
“If Vivian isn’t pissing on an idea, it’s gushing. You’re winning her over, bud.”
“Yeah? What about the others?”
We heard a cleared throat and turned to see Gershwin, chair tipped back, dressed in black jeans and a T-shirt advertising a surf shop. Both Roy and I had forgotten about the kid. “If y’all don’t need me for anything,” he said, “the folks in maintenance would like me to mop the bathroom with my tongue.”
Roy tucked away his notes and nodded absently. “Good for you, kid. Keep it up.”
Gershwin shook his head and was gone.
10 (#ulink_3e1d7b8f-abcc-57df-b32f-36992e72cd10)
Roy and I elevatored down to the investigators’ floor, a horizontal hive of cubicles like I’d vacated in Mobile. Harry and I had our jammed-together desks closest to the elevator and my eyes turned there when the door opened, seeing not a lineman-sized black man dressed in a clashing color palette, but a white guy in his mid fifties with a wind-tunnel blowback of gray hair and Elvis Costello glasses. It wasn’t Harry but a Florida version of Martin Scorsese, and for a moment the world felt unsteady.
Where am I?
“Here you go, Carson,” Roy said, snapping me back to the present. “Grab who you need.”
I studied the cubicles, most empty. The ones holding people held busy people: some guys on phones furiously scribbling notes as they talked, two women and a man bent over a desk and arranging photos, a pair of guys arguing in another cube.
“Everyone looks busy, Roy.”
He laughed. “What … you think I keep my lovelies sitting in a corner and jiggling their nuts while they wait for an assignment? Who looks good, Carson? Pick an assistant or two. Shit … wait … let me introduce you to everyone.”
I heard myself giving my Happy to Be on the Team speech a dozen more times while trying to remember a roster of names.
“How about Gershwin?” I said, seeing the kid reading in a far corner. “He doesn’t look busy.”
Roy looked uneasy, like I might actually be serious. “That would make Gershwin a member of the crew, Carson, maybe not a great idea right now. The others might get a bit miffed that—”
“Who gave me the You’re-in-Charge speech, Roy?”
Roy puffed out a resigned breath. I walked across to Gershwin, still licking his thumb and turning pages. “What you reading?” I asked.
He held up the Yellow Pages for Miami-Dade. “I’m scoping out the concrete section. I didn’t know anything about this crap before.”
“You got anything going on right now?” I said. “I might be able to use you.”
He tossed the book and leaned back in the chair with his hands behind his head and kicked his heels up on the desk. His smile was as wide as it was false. “What, Alabama … you need coffee? A shoe shine? Someone to run your laundry to the cleaners?”
“You seem to have an attitude problem, Gershwin.”
“I came here to work and instead I get treated like I spit in the face of everyone in the FCLE. You know what F-C-L-E spells, right? Fickle. McDermott treats me like I’m transparent, and everyone else looks the other way when I walk in a room.”
I pushed his feet off the desk. He wasn’t expecting it and it brought him to sitting erect. I sat where his feet had been and looked him in the baby browns. “If you’re unhappy all you need to do is complain to the family of that kid you saved and have them pull strings on your behalf. Again.”
The chin jutted. “I never asked them to push for me.”
“Your refusal technique must be flawed. A powerful family offered you an unearned step up and you took it.”
I’d scored a hit. The kid started to argue, had nothing. He nodded at me. “Truth is, I was tired of handling DUIs, brain-dead methheads and crackers screwing their dogs and daughters. I wanted action and when the kid’s family said to pick my spot, I said Miami.”
“And here you are. What do you expect to happen?”
“What else? McDermott’s gonna dump me at some backwater desk until I get tired of pushing paper and retreat to the sticks.”
“And that’s what you plan to do … quit?”
“That’s McDermott’s plan. Mine is to, to …” He pulled up short and frowned.
“What?”
“I dunno,” he said, honestly perplexed. “I don’t have a clue.”
I pushed the Yellow Pages his way. “Here’s an idea: start checking concrete companies for employees with criminal records. Or does that lack the action you’re looking for?”
11 (#ulink_29ba5b27-d787-5cf7-b9d9-dc8a6750f125)
The dark-haired woman finished tapping on the MacBook Air and switched it off. She sat behind a mahogany desk, antique and polished to a soft gloss. The sole light flowed from a Tiffany-shaded desk lamp and the woman’s olive skin seemed to glow in the light. She wore a sedate navy ensemble, her dark hair curled in a businesslike chignon.
“I’ll be finished in a moment, Orlando,” she said.
There were no personal trappings in the room, no pictures of family or mugs with funny sayings. The desk held only an in and out basket, the latter holding a neat stack of various invoices. The office – painted in a sedate, mossy green with two windows draped in burgundy – was almost as large as Orzibel’s.
The woman turned to the credenza behind her desk. The doors opened to a built-in floor safe the size of a mini-fridge, welded to the frame of the building and immovable. The safe was designed to resist nearly any assault short of cannon fire. She locked the computer in the safe and reclosed the credenza.
“When is the man arriving?” she said, looking across the room.
“The client is downstairs with a bottle of Dom Pérignon,” Orzibel said, waiting in a wing-back chair with hands tented beneath his chin. He was in soft black leather: jacket, vest and pants. His boots were tipped with silver and ticked in time to the bass notes filtering through the floor.
“Dom? On the house?”
Orzibel laughed. “What he spends with us, I don’t care if he drinks a case of it.”
“Is the product ready?”
“Tericita, and Alicia. And Yolanda from the fresh shipment. I will present them when the client is ready, a parade. The man likes little parades before his party.”
“All dressed the same, right? For his choosing?”
“Si. It must be the pink dresses and pink canvas shoes. White panties. And red scarves for the hair. I keep a supply of several sizes in my office for when the client wants a party.”
“Mr Chalk hurt one last time, Orlando. Badly.”
“He paid well for his sport.” Orzibel’s long fingers made the money-whisk. “Are you suddenly concerned about their welfare?”
“I’m concerned about arousing attention. The man is not of normal mind.”
Orzibel waved her words away. “I have taken extra precautions by reserving a rear cabana suite at the Oceana, where sounds cannot travel through the trees. Chaku will stay nearby during the man’s festivities, though he will not interfere unless sounds carry.”
“We must be able to trust the owner of the Oceana, Orlando. Totally.”
“The owner has a side business selling various substances. He knows we know this. And I promised him an evening with one of our best products. Free.”
The woman gave Orzibel a look of irritation and turned to retrieve the MacBook from the safe, setting it on her lap. “You must always tell me when you make side arrangements, Orlando. I must note it or the records will be off.”
“Instead of praise for my careful planning I get a lecture on my memory? Would it be painful to your mouth to say something nice?”
“I have a duty to keep the accounting, Orlando.”
“Yes indeed,” Orzibel said, voice wet with sarcasm. “How dare anyone forget the numbers for your precious accounts.”
The woman’s eyes turned cold. “I keep precise numbers not for me, Orlando Orzibel, but for the one above. El Jefé. Mock me and you mock him.”
“I mock no one,” Orzibel said, sitting straighter and looking as if the room had grown tight. “I will go and start the parade.”
The woman nodded, then seemed to find an afterthought worthy of a frown. “One more thing, Orlando: What of the new one named Leala? Why haven’t you chosen her for the parade?”
A pause. “A peon, that Leala. The client deserves better. I’m sending her to Madame Cho. Cho will get stupid little Leala started in her career.”
“It’s not stupidity, Orlando. It’s ignorance … the naïveté of a peasant. There’s a difference.”
A mischievous light came to Orzibel’s eyes. “Were you ever that ignorant, cariña? That naïve?”
“How else did I get here?”
Orzibel uncurled from the couch and crossed the room, leaning against the desk with his arms crossed. “Ah, but you showed a special light, amiga. And you used it well, didn’t you?”
The woman returned the computer to the safe and turned to see Orzibel’s leer.
“Don’t look at me like that, Orlando. It’s not to be.”
“You are not his, princésa. El Jefé has others. Surely you are not blind to it: you see everything.”
“I am his when he needs me. And he needs me to run this enterprise.”
A flash of anger. “I run this enterprise.”
The woman hid a smile. “Ah, forgive me, Orlando. I meant the part of the enterprise that keeps track of things. So that he can—”
“So he can count the money we make,” Orzibel said.
“Be careful, Orlando. Dangerous words lead to dangerous places.”
Orzibel froze, eyes darting side to side as if fearful of hidden listeners. “I was not speaking against him,” he said quickly. “I have nothing but respect for his enterprises. He should be praised for having so much money to count.”
“Which bring us back to Leala, Orlando. Her innocence, her naïveté. That’s what our special client pays big money for, no? Why did you not include her in the parade?”
“Did you not hear?” Orzibel snapped. “I decided to send Leala to Cho.”
“But Leala is a virgin, is she not? Worth more money?”
“Why are you questioning me? You make decisions about the numbers. I make decisions about the product.”
The woman leaned back in the cushioned chair and regarded Orzibel as if he were a caged animal at a zoo. “Things get a bit hot yesterday, Orlando?” she said after a moment’s reflection. “Just couldn’t control yourself? Again?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“I inspected Leala myself, Orlando. Two days ago she was a virgin. What would my finger find today?”
“Fuck you,” Orzibel hissed. But at the edges of his eyes, fear.
The woman’s eyes remained level and unblinking. “What would you do if the Jefé discovered he has lost money because you lost control, Orlando? Could you ever return to pimping runaways collected from parks and bus stations?”
Orzibel’s hands clenched into fists, his eyes blazing. He seemed to waver between worlds. Then, as if depleted of oxygen, his head slumped forward. He started to speak, but threw his hands up in surrender.
“I-I had a moment of weakness. It was all a mistake and I humbly beg you to, to …”
The woman began laughing. “Begging demeans you, Orlando. Plus it’s not sincere.”
“I am confessing my sins! The girl’s flesh was too beautiful for my will. Something dark came over me and I—”
“Please, Orlando, you’re turning my stomach. But be assured I will keep my tongue on the matter and you will stay safe from wrath. Go with the girls you have selected. But make sure Chaku stays close during the man’s pleasures. Mr Chalk is truly sick.”
“Sick is money,” Orzibel muttered, turning for the door. He paused in the entrance. “Gracias for your silence in the matter of my weak moment. I am in your debt, Amili Zelaya.”
“Here you go, Carson.” Roy handed me a small box and a file folder bulging with official documents. “You’re officially official. I got you a brand-new shootin’ iron, too, a Glock 17. And your shield.”
I took the badge and almost moved it to my pocket, but it felt so good I closed my fingers around the metal. “What’s my designation, Roy? You ever figure that one out?”
He handed me my ID card. I stared. “‘Consulting Investigative Agent, Senior Status’? What’s it mean?”
Roy grinned like he’d just invented the rainbow. “I’m not quite sure, since you’re the only one. You’re an investigative agent like the crew, but you’re also a full-time consultant like the art and finance guys. It gives you the broadest range of freedom I could buy.”
“How about ‘Senior Status’?”
“That’s kinda like four-star general in the pecking order. It means people will want to be nice to you.”
“The crew?”
