Magic City (17 page)

Still one shy of the Morales murders. Take them off the table, one by one. She could do it. She still had the cojones. She could manage it in a day, two at most. Provided they didn't run, didn't hide. That would draw it out but wouldn't make it impossible.

Somebody might go squealing to the cops. Yeah, now that would be a complication. She had people inside Miami PD, people at Metro-Dade she trusted. She was working that angle already, putting word out in case the Collins woman checked in with her superiors at work. She even had a slime-ball she was tight with inside the local FBI field office if it got to that point.

Hadley Waters would okay anything she asked. He'd turn his eyes. Give support. That is, if she bothered to ask. But it would be far better to present it as a done deal. Keep Hadley's hands clean. Plausible deniability. He'd appreciate the hell out of that. It was leverage she could use later on. If he won the nomination, his seat at the CIA would be vacant. Who else could do that job as well as she could? First female director, that had a nice ring.

So that was it. Take all seven out, be done with it. Along the way the photo was bound to pop up. Burn that, get the Southwoods papers from King, burn those. If Stanton didn't hand them over, torture him, torture Lola in front of him. He'd cave.

Of course, she'd have to wait for Runyon or Stanton King to check in again to find out everyone's location. Play along with them a little longer. But once she knew where everyone was hiding out, she could start.

She looked at her list of names. It was just a game she was playing, mental chess.

She looked out the window at the pool, a blue shimmer in the darkness.

But the more she imagined it, the more she liked. Get involved, bull by the horns. It got her blood kicking. The way she used to feel every minute of every day, before she got old and started dialing back.

Yeah, why not? Seven scalps. Step way outside protocol. Out beyond the ozone. When the thing was done, Hadley would be forever grateful. Damn, the more she thought about it, the more her blood cooked.

Thorn was at the motel vending machine, feeding in quarters for granola bars and a single bag of pork rinds for Sugarman. Two cans of Coke. A freshly delivered
Miami Herald
from the bin.

While he stood with his food and newspaper, a current of air flooded the breezeway, carrying scents of hot pavement and chlorine from the motel pool and the aroma of warm doughnuts and coffee. It was still a couple of hours till sunrise, but Thorn could see the night clerk setting out a small breakfast in the lobby. He was tempted to go inside and help himself, but he expected his photograph might be on the TV by now, or somewhere in the morning paper, a suspect in the Porn Shop Massacre, or at least a drawing of his likeness, so for now the Coke and granola bars would have to do.

Back in the room Sugar was at the dinette table, studying the Xeroxed pages. He looked up when Thorn came in, and leaned back in the chair.

“Now we got three.”

“Three?”

Thorn set the food on the table, popped open a Coke, and took a hit.

“You didn't look at these pages?”

“I scanned them,” Thorn said. “Printed out everything around those dates. I haven't been over it in detail, no.”

Sugar slid the boxing photo across the table and tapped the slender man with the pencil mustache who sat beside the thin blond woman.

“So?”

He handed Thorn one of the Xeroxed newspaper pages.

The photograph had appeared on the second page of the lead article the morning after the massacre. The man Snake had hacked to death with his father's machete was named Humberto Berasategui. He ran his own plumbing firm in Miami. The grainy newspaper shot seemed to be a passport photo in which the man was wearing a dark suit and black tie. Same narrow mustache, same wavy black hair and skinny face.

“These people at the fight are the raiding party,” Thorn said. “Having a relaxing evening's entertainment before they go murder eight people.”

“Starting to look that way.”

“No wonder Snake and Carlos want this thing. It's proof of who killed their parents.”

“Don't know how much proof it is,” Sugarman said. “Far as I can see, it's still just a photograph of a bunch of people. Mayor, mobster, plumber. There's nothing here that actually proves anything. Nothing says these people were in league, conspiring to do anything illegal. The plumber, yeah, it turns out he was one of the killers, but just because he's sitting next to these people, you know, it's not evidence of anything more than he was at the fight, sitting in the same row with some other people. Couldn't take it into court.”

Thorn sat down and picked up the photo and tilted it toward the lamp.

“Maybe I'm playing tricks on myself.”

“What?”

“The guy in Alexandra's hospital room, the one trying to strangle her.”

Thorn pointed at the chunky man sitting between Stanton King and Meyer Lansky.

“You're shitting me.”

“I didn't get a great look at the guy. It was dark, and our scuffle was done in thirty seconds. He's forty years older. But it's the same build. Same blocky head. Meaty hands. I didn't see any diamond, but it could've been there. He had on latex gloves.”

Thorn fingered the bruise on his cheekbone. Even his stomach muscles had begun to ache. The guy must be near seventy, but he had the punch of a heavyweight in his prime.

“Give Alex a look at the guy. See what she says.”

Thorn leaned over to the venetian blinds and slid one slat up to see outside. He'd found a perfect angle to view the base of the stairway, the only way up to the second floor. If Snake got the message from his dispatcher and showed up, he'd have to pass that way going to room 212. It wasn't much of a ruse, but it would have to do.

“You watch for Snake, okay?”

“You think the guy's that stupid?”

“I think he wants this photo real bad. Stupid or not, he'll show.”

Thorn picked up the photograph, walked to the bedroom door, opened it, and stuck his head inside. Alexandra's breathing was hoarse but regular. He stood for a moment in the doorway, then crossed the room and went to the edge of the bed and bent over and touched her lightly. Her forehead was damp and warm, and the scuffs on her neck were swollen and bruised. But she was alive. Very much alive.

He eased down onto the bed and took her free hand in his.

It lay there for a moment, then came to life.

She blinked, took a few seconds to examine her surroundings. The cast on her left shoulder and upper arm seemed as heavy as a slab of concrete. She looked at him and withdrew her hand from his grip.

“Where am I?”

“A motel on Dixie Highway.”

“Why?”

“Somebody tried to kill you. I got there in time, carried you out. You were pretty groggy, so I guess you don't remember.”

“His name is Runyon,” Alex said in a raspy voice. “I remember that.”

“The man who attacked you? You know his name?”

“He murdered a nurse right in front of me.”

“I saw her body,” Thorn said. “Nothing I could do for her.”

“That was Patty. She recognized the guy, called him Runyon. He used to have a TV show.”

“Don't talk,” Thorn said. “You're weak.”

“He's one of the guys who took the fall for the illegal war in Central America,” she said. “One of those fanatics.”

“Okay.” Thorn wasn't sure which illegal war she meant.

“Where's Buck?”

“At an animal clinic. They're taking good care of him. He'll be fine.”

Her eyes held his for a moment, then slid away.

“I need you to look at this.”

He held out the photo and she turned her attention to it. With her good hand she rubbed the focus back into her eyes and took the photo from him.

“This is why Dad died?”

Thorn said nothing. She held it for a long while, shaking her head.

“Man with the diamond ring. Third row. Chunky. Recognize him?”

Alex handed the photo back.

“Runyon,” she said. “Edward Runyon.”

“That's what I thought, but I wasn't a hundred percent.”

“What is this, Thorn? What the hell is this?”

“Has something to do with a mass murder that took place forty years ago in Miami. A Cuban family was killed: husband, wife, their fourteen-year-old daughter. Five other guys, too. Anti-Castro militia types.”

“What does this have to do with us?”

“Lawton had this copy of the photo. The surviving sons of the murdered family came looking for it. More than that, I'd just be guessing.”

“A goddamn photograph.”

“I know, it doesn't make sense.”

“Tell me something.”

“Yeah?”

“After I left for Tampa, was there a point when you could have just handed over the photograph to these creeps and walked away?”

“Yes, there was.”

“But you didn't.”

“No, I didn't.”

“That's what I thought.”

“If I had it over…”

“Yeah, if we all had it over.”

He stood up, watched her blink the mist from her eyes, then turned and went to the outer room and shut the door.

“She doing okay?”

“She'll make it.”

Sugarman looked up.

“She's beating up on you pretty bad, huh?”

“Nothing I don't deserve.”

At the hospital after five minutes of CPR, he'd brought her back. Maybe she'd been on the brink of death and his quick reaction saved her life. Maybe she was just unconscious and would have revived on her own. He wasn't in a credit-taking mood. He still felt a nasty clang in his hands from the aluminum baseball bat hammering Carlos Morales's skull. Probably be feeling that clang for a long time.

After he'd roused her from unconsciousness, Alex was too fragile to walk. Thorn phoned Sugar in the parking garage, filled him in, and Sugar came sprinting. Thorn helped her into her gray slacks and pink sweater, and with Sugarman running interference, the two of them smuggled her down an inner stairwell without a brush with security or staff.

“So we got names for four of the five?” Sugarman said.

“The man sitting next to Lansky is Edward Runyon. Some kind of soldier of fortune or something.”

“Edward Runyon? You're kidding.”

“Not a night for kidding.”

“Christ, Edward Runyon is a world-class scumbag.”

“I heard,” Thorn said. “Some illegal war thing.”

“Way more than that. Bay of Pigs, that arms-for-hostages thing, Watergate, you name it. All kinds of down-and-dirty bullshit our boys in Washington tried to pull off, Runyon's hovering around. One of those self-styled patriots, gun for hire, super-hawk. Few years back he had a dumb-ass TV show. Big talker. Bullying his guests. He's the guy who's missing his first two fingers. That's his trademark.”

“What's that mean?”

“End of his show every night, he used to say the same thing. ‘Don't forget, peace comes with a price tag, and that price isn't always pretty.' Then he'd flash the two stumps, and say, ‘Peace.' Real sweetheart.”

Thorn nodded, looking at the closed door of the bedroom.

“Guy's certifiable,” Sugar said. “But there's people who worship him.”

Thorn reached out, slid the Xeroxes over, and paged through them for a few minutes. He found the passage he recalled, reread it quickly.

“What if we can put Runyon at Morales's house?”

“How?”

“Snake whacked off two fingers of one of the attackers. Fingers were left behind on the floor in one of the kids' bedroom. Appeared to be first two digits of the right hand of a man who weighed somewhere around two hundred pounds.”

“That's good. But it doesn't exactly nail it down.”

“It does for me,” Thorn said.

“Jesus, your boy Snake is a charmer. Hacks one guy to death, chops two fingers off some hulk.”

“And he was only twelve years old at the time.”

“This is the guy you're luring over to have a powwow with?”

“Snake and I have a strong common interest. I can give him four of the five people in this photograph. Two of the four were at his house that night. And he just might be able to give me an overview of what we got going on.”

“You killed his brother, for christsakes. He's going to sit down with you and make nice?”

“I intend to give him that opportunity.”

They sat for a while, Sugarman eating pork rinds, Thorn staring at the Clay-Liston photograph. Those five people sitting side by side. Four of whom they had names for. Only the blond woman was left.

Every few seconds while Sugar munched, he took a look out the blinds.

A minute or two later Thorn drew the cell phone from his pocket and dialed 911 for the second time in a few hours.

“Turning yourself in?” Sugar said.

Thorn said to the dispatcher, “I want to report a homicide.”

Sugarman turned back to the venetian blinds.

“Name is Alan Bingham.” Thorn gave her the street and approximate address. Then he hung up while she was asking him for more information.

“You're guessing these guys, Snake and Carlos, they killed Bingham?”

“They showed up at Alexandra's and knew Lawton had the Clay photo. Bingham gave it to Lawton as a gift. Who else would know that but Bingham? Lawton thought he heard gunfire at Bingham's last night, and I blew him off. Bingham didn't show up at his gallery this morning like he was supposed to, and didn't answer his phone when the gallery guy called. And when I was up on the roof I saw his cleaning lady arrive and the key wasn't in the mailbox like she was expecting. His car was there, but he didn't answer her knock. My bet is he's inside that house and he's dead.”

“Aw, man,” Sugarman said.

“Something else I want to know,” Thorn said. “Why'd some seventy-year-old government goon show up in Alex's hospital room, trying to strangle her? I'm getting the feeling there's two different agendas working here.”

“You're losing me.”

Thorn stood up, dug the invitation list he'd gotten from Carbonnel out of his back pocket. Scanned it fast.

“Stanton King and wife Lola were at the gallery opening last night.”

“You got a list? How'd you manage that?”

“Lawton and I dropped by there first thing this morning. I was just sniffing around at that point.”

“You been a busy man.”

“Okay, here's how it went,” Thorn said. “Mayor goes to a gallery opening. He spots himself in a photo up on the wall. There he is, 1964, he's sitting two down from Lansky, cheek to jowl with these other people, two of whom, Humberto Berasategui and Runyon, were at the murder scene later on that night.

“The photo's hanging up on the wall for anybody to see. All it would take is one person standing there, noticing the young mayor or remembering one of these guys. Lansky was a public figure, so was the mayor, then eventually Runyon became one, too. A lot of people in this town might've even recognized Humberto Berasategui from the newspaper stories. If somebody identifies one of these people, starts asking questions, there's a reasonable chance it all gets exposed.

“So what does the mayor do? He freaks and sics his deranged sons on the thing. Snake and Carlos break into the gallery, destroy the photos, go to Bingham's house. Before they kill him, they squeeze Lawton's name out of him, somebody else who's holding a copy, bingo, we're off to the races.”

Sugarman thought about it. He didn't say anything for a minute, looking down at his Coke can.

“That's means King has a different motive than Snake. Snake wants to know who killed his family. He thinks the photo's going to show that.”

“Yeah, I think that's it,” Thorn said. “The two times I've been around him, he wanted to examine the photo, not destroy it. He and Carlos had it in their hands long enough, if they wanted, they could've just ripped it up right then.”

“King and Edward Runyon coming from one direction, Snake coming from another. I don't like the sound of that.”

“It's like Sophocles,” Thorn said. “Oedipus.”

“Oh, boy.”

“A father tries to keep the truth from his son but accidentally winds up doing stuff that causes the son to discover the very thing the father's trying to hide. Cosmic irony.”

“There's another way to read it.”

“All right.”

“There are no accidents.”

“Stanton subconsciously wants to be exposed?”

“Maybe it's not something he can put words to.”

“Well, if that's true, then I'd like to help him out.”

Thorn stood up, carried the morning
Herald
over to a green chair near the tiny kitchen.

While Sugar kept an eye out the blinds, Thorn opened the paper and began to read the article on the Porn Shop Massacre. They'd printed an old police photo of Lawton and had run a fairly current shot of Alexandra posed against a white background like a school picture. She looked beautiful nonetheless. Black hair freshly brushed, a slight, knowing smile. Those dark eyes that Thorn found fascinating: probing one minute, alluring the next.

At the bottom of the front page the article mentioned a suspect wanted in the killings. A man of about six feet, medium build with dreadlocks.

Dreadlocks?

Thorn read the sentence again, then turned the page and there was the artist's rendering of the prime suspect in the porn-store murders.

It was a sketch of a black man, early twenties with a blocky face, a scar across his right cheek, and long Rasta dreads.

Thorn got up, carried the paper to the table, and lay it in front of Sugar.

“This is their person of interest for the porn-shop thing.”

Sugarman looked at it for several seconds, then looked up at Thorn.

“They missed the twinkle in your eye.”

“This isn't funny, Sugar.”

Sugarman ate the last pork rind, had a sip of Coke, looked out the blinds, then turned back to the newspaper.

“Where'd they dig up this guy?”

“They invented him,” said Thorn. “Article says two witnesses identified him as the killer of Carlos Morales and Lawton Collins. Old lady clerk at the porn shop and some customer. Their descriptions matched.”

“Putting it on a brother, wouldn't you know?”

“Why doesn't this make me feel relieved?”

“What it means is, Snake or Runyon or somebody got to the clerk, gave her her marching orders. Send the cops wild-goose chasing in one direction, so Runyon or whoever is free to come after you. Neat trick.”

“It's why they attacked Alex in the hospital. So she wouldn't contradict any of it. Last thing they want is for the cops to start digging around. Alex knows about the photo, she knows what really happened at the porn shop. She's a danger to them.”

“So are you, Thorn.”

Sugarman wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. Took a long drink of his Coke. Stifled a belch.

“Whole thing's getting complicated,” Sugar said.

“We need the blonde,” Thorn said.

“Maybe she's just a floozy, somebody's date.”

“Doesn't look like a floozy to me. Looks like a tough broad.”

“Forty years later, that isn't going to be easy, identifying some woman. A town like this, everybody coming and going. She'd be in her sixties by now. She could be a grandmother in Milwaukee. Waste a lot of time looking, and it might not explain anything.”

“I know somebody I can ask. Guy with links to that time. Boxing, gambling, you name it, he was into it.”

Thorn looked again at the sketch of the black man with dreadlocks. Then he folded up the paper and laid it on the floor by the chair.

“Who the hell do you know in Miami?”

“Remember Jimbo?”

“Jimbo? That old crook still alive?”

“I don't know,” Thorn said. “But I know where to find him if he is.”

“If it were me running the investigation,” Sugar said, “I'd go confront the mayor. He's smack in the middle of this.”

“I'll put him on the list.”

“And this guy Shepherd Gundy.”

“Gundy?”

“One of the investigators of the Morales murders.”

“I must've missed that.”

“It's in the pages you Xeroxed, a few days after the murders. Second Lieutenant Shepherd Gundy, military investigator based at Homestead Air Force Base.”

“Military? Why was the military investigating this?”

“That's exactly the reason I'd want to talk to him.”

Sugarman looked out the blinds again.

“Look, Sugar,” Thorn said. “You and Alex need to get back down to Key Largo till this is over. Keep her out of harm's way. Take her to a doctor down there. She's going to need somebody to look at that arm.”

“And leave you in the middle of this.”

“It's my mess, Sugar. I need to clean it up myself.”

“I'm okay with getting Alex somewhere safe. But leaving you on your own in Miami? I don't know, man. We've already seen how that turns out.”

“You could keep on arguing. But you know it won't change my mind.”

“Yeah, I know that. I surely do.”