Diabla Makes an Entrance, Page 2

  When the phone rang, I knew it was trouble. Nobody calls me at 3 A.M. unless someone is dead.

  Chapter Four

  I reached for my cell in the darkness. I recognized Ricky’s voice instantly.

  “It’s Angie. Her place. Quick.”

  I jumped up and headed for the bathroom. I soaked a washcloth and swabbed the appropriate parts, threw on some deodorant, ran a brush through my hair, and slid into black slacks and a sweater. I grabbed my Glock and checked the clip on the way out. Hot Rod had stirred.

  “Have a bagel, if you want. Lock the door on your way out.”

  I fired up my old Taurus, put the red bubblegum machine on the roof and sped to the beach. The doorman was standing near the entrance looking like the Ghost of Christmas Past. A patrolman with a small notebook had him cornered. Another uniform stood at the elevator and one guarded the twentieth floor when the doors eased open. The coroner was already there. I flashed my ID. Ricky met me at the door.

  “You’re not going to like this,” he said.

  She was on the floor near the bedroom door. She wore a black silk kimono emblazoned with golden dragons. Her body was sprawled, but she seemed to be resting, almost comfortably. Her face was gray and still. The crimson stain had soaked the carpet. There was a lacy necklace of red around her neck. She was quite dead.

  The garrote had done its work; quietly, efficiently, I suspected. She probably wanted to cry out, but the sounds choked in her throat as she gasped for air and fought the blood flooding into her windpipe. I’d seen it before. Piano wire with small wooden handles at either end. It pierced the flesh and shut off the breath. Someone powerful. Probably a man. When handled with expertise, the wire was quick and deadly.

  The uniforms had already questioned the neighbors. Nothing seen or heard. Around three that afternoon, the doorman had admitted a man in brown in a UPS truck. He claimed to have a delivery. Nothing new for Angie. Her clients were always shipping little gifts of appreciation for her considerable talents. The driver was at the penthouse for only 15 minutes. Nothing unusual or suspicious in that, but the doorman said the guy left the truck running. UPS instructs their drivers to shut the truck down when making a delivery. I guess they’re afraid someone will go for a joy ride, maybe rifle some of the contents. A liability thing. The driver was probably a shill. The doorman barely took notice of him. No creditable description. He or someone else had gotten access to the penthouse and slammed the gate on Angie and the white picket fence she was longing for.

  I went into the bathroom and threw up. The green bile hung in my throat and burned as I tried to force it back down. I looked into the mirror, splashed some water on my face, but it didn’t help. The eyes in the looking glass were still mine. I thought about Angie. Maybe some different stitching, but we were cut from the same cloth. She was my friend. She had turned to me when she was lost and scared. Now she was dead and her dreams would haunt me. Sure, she was a hooker, but she was a lot like all of us. I remembered the words of an old buddy who had retired from the force, “We’re all whores. It’s just the price that’s different.” Angie did what she had to do to get by for as long as she could, and she wanted something better. We all do. It didn’t happen.

  There wasn’t much I could do at the scene. Forensics was crawling all over the penthouse and I had seen all I could take. I drove back to the precinct. I poured a cup of stale black coffee and collapsed at my desk. It was quiet. All of the dicks were home asleep in their beds, visions of sugarplums and all that shit. My mind simply wasn’t working. I scanned my drawers for something to eat, but all I came up with was a packet of cheese crackers that were way beyond their past due date. I heard the slap of leather in the hall. It was Ricky.

  Chapter Five

  He sat across from me. “Let’s find a bar,” he said.

  We did. A little after hours place off the strip, strictly illegal, but fitting for the filth that clung to me. We stuffed ourselves into a sticky booth in the corner and ordered two shots of Maker’s Mark, neat with a water chaser.

  “Okay, Dee. Crawl out of your cave. You are Diabla, the tough bitch who never sheds a tear and never leaves a case until it’s cracked. I know she was your friend. I know you feel responsible in some way. So quit feeling sorry for your worthless ass. We’ve got to catch the sonovabitch and send him to be somebody’s girlfriend at the state hotel.”

  “Fuck you, Ricky. You can’t know how I feel. She was getting out of the game. New hopes, a real future, a man she loved. It was all just beginning for her. Now she’s a corpse. Maybe a pretty one, maybe a rich one, but a dead one. Nevertheless, I might have helped her. I didn’t. So now I’m not supposed to feel like shit?”

  “Yeah. Feel like shit. Maybe you deserve it. Maybe you could have saved her. Maybe you’re the trashy cunt that some of the boys think you are. We can’t fix it. But we can damned sure see that the killer rots in his own kind of special hell.”

  I slogged the last of the bourbon, got up and walked to the gray Taurus.

  Rod was gone when I got home. I tried to sleep, but it was no use. Angie’s face flashed in and out of my consciousness like a strobe light. At dawn, I fixed myself a cup of coffee and mixed in a strong hit of Irish. Ricky was right. We’d hunt the bastard down even if he’d slithered into the bowels of hell. I went back to the office.

  Ricky had pulled an all-nighter. His face was gray and drawn and the wrinkles were deep in his starched white shirt. I could smell him a little as I sat in the chair across the desk. He looked at me and wearily shook his head. Then the phone rang.

  “Dee, I knew you’d want the latest.” It was my favorite forensics guy, Billy. “First of all, nothing on the silk box. Her place. Found a baggie of cocaine taped behind the toilet in the master bath. A few long blond hairs stuck to the tape. The coke was damned near pure, better than anything on the street right now. She had a .22 caliber Ruger in the drawer next to the bed. Not much else. I guess the maid had been in earlier that day. Everything was spotless. The only prints belonged to the corpse. There were a couple of smudges here and there, but nothing we could make book on. Her computer was clean. Nothing but a few emails and a couple of fashion sites she liked a lot. Anything else comes up. I’ll call. Just thought you’d want to know. ”

  “You’re the best, Billy.” I hung up and told Ricky how little there was, but something hit me.

  “One thing makes no sense. Angie was no doper. Hell, she didn’t even drink much more than a little red wine. She wasn’t a user, not even any weed, and she had a strict policy. The johns didn’t bring that stuff to her place. If they did, they left without any loving, and their names quickly disappeared from the appointment list in her little black book.”

  Ricky shook his head. “You got any idea who she was seeing? Anyone who might be worried about the pillow talk?”

  “I don’t know much. Maybe one guy, but I’ll bet there were more. Unless we can find her book, I don’t know where we start.”

  I grabbed my notebook and made a quick list. The box, the note, the perfume bottle and the Commandant. I had to see him.

  Chapter Six

  I called him at his office. I half expected his secretary to tell me he wasn’t available. She put me through immediately. His voice was muffled and distant.

  “I’ll see you, Dee. But not here. You know Bugsy’s Last Stand off Las Olas? Four o’clock. I’ll be at the table in the back.”

  I knew Bugsy from my days in the trade. He had been a moderately successful pimp. Pretty decent guy. Sharp dresser. Treated the girls nice and liked to brag about it. Kept them clean, dressed them okay, kept the dope down, regular checks for STD’s. When some mob guys tried to muscle in on his territory, he told them to “jump up his ass.” They broke his left leg with a sledge hammer. While he was in the hospital, he decided another line of work might be appropriate. Sold the boys his business and bought a quiet little bar away from the beach. He had his regulars and his health. He still walked with a noticeabl
e limp, but he’d learned a lot about keeping his mouth shut.

  I didn’t tell Ricky about the Commandant. I guess you’d call it professional courtesy. I figured he’d know sooner or later, but I wanted to check some things first. More than one call girl had fallen for the “leaving my wife” line. Angie was smart, but she had a heart. She couldn’t pass a homeless person on the sidewalk without dropping a five in the cup. She would have made a great kindergarten teacher if she wasn’t a hooker.

  It had been cloudy all day and the rain came down in buckets. Ricky had left the precinct to get some sleep. I looked out the window. Why the hell hadn’t I brought my foul weather coat or at least an umbrella? I bolted for the Taurus and fought the traffic down to Las Olas. I was running a little late and I didn’t want to give the Commandant any excuse to disappear. I pulled into a parking spot. The rain was thick and gray, but I took a deep breath and raced for the door.

  I walked in looking like a wet dog, my hair dripping and the cold rivulets running down my neck. The Commandant was at the table in the back, just like he said. He wore jeans and a tattered camo jacket. A green baseball cap was pulled down over his forehead. I nodded at Bugsy. He nodded back and I slipped into the booth. There were two tumblers half full of Irish and a water chaser on the table.

  I looked at Angie’s paramour. He seemed sick, skin bloodless, dark hollows under the yellow eyes. My Dad, Fritz, had a phrase for that look, “shot at and missed and shit at and hit.” It was a perfect fit. His brown hands were folded on the table. They seemed to tremble and twitch with a life of their own.

  “Hello Commandant.” I said quietly.

  “Make it Stu.”

  “Okay, Stu. Talk to me.”

  “I can and I will, but this is all off the record. If you can’t guarantee me that, this little interview is effectively over. We’ll talk about the Dolphins, maybe some politics, finish our drinks and be on our way. I want Angie’s killer, but I can’t be involved. I got too much to lose, Dee.”

  “Okay, Stu, but I can only promise so much. I don’t know how ugly this will get. I will give it my best shot. She was a friend. You know that. I owe her.”

  “Okay, I guess I’ve got to trust you if I want to see the bastard with his balls cut off. But don’t forget, Detective, I know people. Some are nice, others can get very nasty.”

  I know a threat when I hear one. I didn’t doubt for a moment that an unfortunate accident could be looming in my future if I screwed up. Still, I needed information. I was sure he knew things I needed to know.

  “I got the message loud and clear,” I said, “Now talk to me.”

  He looked down at the table and took a sip of the brown liquid in the shot glass. He followed it with the taste of water and stared for a moment at the glass.

  “I loved her. I didn’t care about her past. I was only looking to our future. I was going to leave Nancy.”

  I had met Nancy once at a fundraiser I was trapped into attending. She was a handsome, dark headed diva. Always looked like she just stepped from the pages of VOGUE. She came from money, claimed to be a great, great, grandniece of Henry Flagler, the railroad magnate who opened up Florida and changed it from worthless swampland into a Valhalla for retirees and a playground for the rich, the famous, and the arrogant. Her photo was a mainstay of the society pages. Ms. Longstreet with the Senator. Ms. Longstreet at the Charity Gala. Ms. Longstreet at the Art Auction. All of the places the beautiful people go to be seen. She did some good things, but the thing she was best at was letting you know you just weren’t quite up to her standards. Her nose had a permanent lift to it. Easier to look down on you, my dear.

  “So did Nancy know about Angie?”

  “You kidding me. The bitch had me followed. Some private detective named Callano. Pictures, the whole bit. She didn’t care as long as she had me by the balls. ‘Have your silly flings, just cover your ass.’ That’s what she told me. We never discussed it. As a matter of fact, we never discussed anything. She was always planning her ‘functions’ and I had my life. We were on two different planets. The two of them never shared the same orbit.”

  “So that’s all?”

  “Not exactly. I told her I wanted a divorce. Two weeks ago. She went nuts.

  “Who the hell do you think you are? You just gonna up and leave me for that slant-eyed cunt?”

  “I lost it. Grabbed her by the shoulders. Hell, she hit me with a two-thousand dollar vase. Seven stitches. Luckily my hair covered most of it. She went on. ‘Sorry, you low life sonovabitch. I guess you’ve forgotten who I am, what I know, and who I know. I’ll see your ass in hell before you hit the door.’ She snatched the keys to the Mercedes and was gone before I could get the blood to stop running. I didn’t see her for two days. Don’t know where she went or who she was with. When she came back, she was Miss Society Queen all over again. Like it had never happened. I guess she thought she had me. She doesn’t.”

  “So you were going to leave?”

  “Damned right. Just waiting for the time. Then . . .” His voice faded.

  “Angie?”

  The Commandant was a big man, probably 6’3’, 220 or so. He shrank down in the booth, now half his size.

  “When did you find out?”

  “I didn’t find out. I saw her. I went by the penthouse around five. We were going to have a drink. No answer at the door. I let myself in with my key. She was on the floor, blood everywhere. Her neck . . . I’ve seen enough of ‘em. I knew she was dead. At first, I couldn’t move. Then my guts started to heave. I wiped everything down and got out of there fast.”

  Chapter Seven

  Suddenly the whole game had changed. I asked him why he didn’t report it.

  “I was scared. It was too much too fast. She was dead. Nothing would change that. My career, my standing in the community. I could see it all going up in smoke. Plus, I didn’t want to be suspect number one. I lost the most important thing in my life. I didn’t want to lose everything else.”

  I watched his hands twist. They were big and powerful. He was certainly strong enough to handle a garrote. Angie trusted him. She wouldn’t hesitate to turn her back to him, maybe to lead him to the bedroom. A minute or two was all it would take. I filed it away, but only for now.

  “So you got to find her killer, Dee. You can turn him over to me if you like. Save you a lot of time and the state a lot of money.” His eyes went hard and the hands became bloodless fists of granite.

  “Give me some time, Stu. We can make it right. See the bastard swing one way or another.”

  I sounded good, but I knew it was bullshit. A crummy line out of a cheap detective novel that might buy me some time. I had to be careful. He was definitely connected to people who had very large balls . . . and violence was often their handmaiden. As for Nancy, I didn’t want to get within ten miles of that bitch. I’ve often heard that hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. In her case, I’d take heavy odds it was true. Great motive. She might even deserve a lofty ranking on the top ten suspects list.

  At the same time, I’d best remember Falstaff’s line “discretion is the better part of valor.” I could end up in Fairbanks, Alaska back shaking my ass with a brass pole for a partner, if not floating face down in the New River.

  He weighed my comment and simply nodded, but there again was the threat not far below the surface of his jaundiced eyes.

  He lurched in my direction for a moment, but caught himself. It unnerved me. Something cold crawled up my neck.

  On the way back to my apartment, I called Ricky. I had to trust someone. If I was gonna be the Lone Ranger, I needed Tonto beside me . . . real quick. He was standing on the street outside my building next to his waxed Caddy XLR when I got out of the Taurus. He was glorious in his usual finery. Sharkskin gray slacks. You could see your face in his black tassel loafers. The sport coast was pure Cardin. No tie around the neck of the creamy silk shirt. We went up. He sat at the chipped Formica table.

  “Red wine?
” I asked.

  “Do I need something stronger?” I poured him a double of Evan Williams over ice and a whisper of tap water.

  “Graveyard talk, Ricky. You and me for now . . . and nobody else.”

  I told him about my meeting with Stu Longstreet. I left out a few of the details, but the big picture was clear. Unfortunately, the solutions weren’t.

  “So really, we got next to nothing,” he said. “A couple of leads, maybe some half-assed assumptions and we got to handle all of this off the books. At least for now. Hell, we got enough stuff on our desk now to take us into the next century. So what do we do, hire Sam Spade to do our leg work?” It didn’t sound like a bad idea.

  “I know,” I said exhaustedly, “now let me get my notebook and we’ll wade into the shit.”

  He made a snorting sound, kind of like a pissed off rhinoceros. I began to write.

  Stu had to be a suspect. Nancy probably wasn’t strong enough to handle the garrote and Angie wouldn’t have let her in anyway. We knew the lovely Ms. Longstreet had hired Louis Callano to trail Stu. I knew Callano. He was big, fat, and ugly. A first class creep always hungry for a buck and he wasn’t very particular about how he got it. He could easily have pulled the piano wire into her neck. I wonder how he looked in UPS brown.

  Ricky just listened for a while.

  “So did the Commandant know anything about the cocaine?” he said.

  “I didn’t ask. Maybe I should have, but we need some cards to play if things get tough. I didn’t tell him about the driver, either.”

  Ricky asked me for my impression of Longstreet. Genuine grief or some academy award performance?

  “Oh, he was definitely bent out of shape. Big tough guy like that shrinking, slumping, dissolving into a lump. I thought he was going to cry. I think he loved Angie and I think he was really leaving the wicked witch of the north. Doesn’t mean he didn’t kill her. Maybe Angie had changed her mind. Maybe the grieving wife was going to pay her off. Keep the money and the status, not to mention avoiding being crucified in the gossip columns. And where was sweet Nancy during those two days after their blowup? Plenty of time to find a killer. A nice little retainer and the balance upon delivery of a certain body to the morgue.”