Magic City (20 page)

Over in the parking lot Runyon and Stanton King hustled out of some bushes. Runyon trotted to a white Cadillac, jimmied the door, had it running in ten seconds, and handed it off to Stanton King.

Runyon got in King's green Jaguar and headed north on Dixie, chasing after Thorn and Snake, while Stanton roared south to catch up to Sugarman and the lady cop. A path dividing in the woods.

Pauline had about two seconds to decide which fork to take.

She went with Stanton. He was first on her list, and he had the Southwoods file. She'd do the others after she finished with him. Made perfect sense.

Better not to overthink it. Better just to drive, tail her targets as she'd been trained. Several times today Hadley S. Waters, the Big Cheese, had tried to get her to open up about Southwoods. Angling for some kind of moral discussion. The ethics of the scheme, any pangs of guilt she might be feeling. But Pauline wasn't having any of that. Once you started weighing the moral fat grams of any given operation, you were fucked. You did what you had to do, then did the next thing on the list. Anything more than that, you might as well walk naked into quicksand.

The highways were thick with early-morning traffic, pickup trucks full of construction workers, and delivery vans, and schoolteachers heading to work in the dark, tourists in rentals trying to get ahead of the crush. Caufield stayed a safe five cars back of the white Cadillac. Even if she lost Stanton in all the congestion, she had his cell and could call and get his location if need be.

A few miles farther south she realized where their little convoy was headed. Sugarman leading Stanton, and Stanton leading Pauline, down the Florida Turnpike to Florida City, the turnpike narrowing to one lane, then becoming U.S. 1, the desolate highway that led into the Florida Keys. Not Pauline's favorite part of South Florida. Too much water, not enough land. Too many citizens who lacked the proper respect for legal authority.

In the morning gusts off the Atlantic, Snake's hair was a tangle of spirals and loops, stirring around like a nest of restless eels. Bony-faced and erect, he watched a couple of guys on Harleys rumble across the lot and park in the shade of the pines.

Thorn ordered him to walk a few steps ahead as they crossed the gravel to Jimbo's. The .38 was cold and heavy against his thigh. Riding the sea breeze were wisps of sewage mingled with the sweet stench rising off the shoreline, where seaweed and pinfish had been trapped ashore by the retreating tide and were already rotting in the sun.

From what Thorn recalled, the outdoor bar at Jimbo's never shut down. At dawn the all-nighters thinned out to make way for the breakfast beer crowd, one shift replacing another in an endless procession of drunks and merrymakers, the morose and the severely addled. The wooden stools and picnic benches were always warm; the cooking ovens where king mackerel and marlin marinated in heavy smoke were forever stoked.

They threaded through the bikers in jeans and leather vests and women with stringy hair and hazy eyes. A few dozen of them were scattered about the outdoor tables, chatting quietly and eyeing Thorn and Snake with bleary indifference.

He found Jimbo out on the docks, watching a shrimp boat easing up to its mooring. He was unstooped since the last Thorn had seen him, ten, fifteen years back. A cigarette tucked in the corner of his mouth. He was barefoot and wore cutoff jeans that were one rip away from being rags. A white net shirt that showed his mat of gray chest hair.

His dome was bald, but his white ponytail hung to the middle of his back. Before he'd bought the fake bar and ridden it through the years into authenticity, he'd been a backcountry guide in Islamorada. Not the best guide, not the worst. But a friend of Thorn's dad, and a local legend for his exorbitant feats of daring when it came to the poker table.

“Who's your friend, Thorn?”

Jimbo blew smoke into the breeze.

“Not a friend,” said Thorn. “More like a prisoner of war.”

“You're not here to start trouble, are you, boy?”

“If my buddy here minds himself, we'll all be fine.”

Jimbo put out his hand and they shook. Snake got only a manly nod. Jimbo drew a deep drag on his cigarette and let it filter out with his words.

“Still tying flies?”

“When the spirit moves me.”

“Always thought you had some kind of magic shit going on when it came to bonefish flies. Don't know what it is, but those goddamn fish just love what you do.”

“You get out on the water much anymore?”

Jimbo squinted through the cigarette smoke.

“It's lost its appeal somewhat. The old bones are squeaking more than they used to.”

They watched the shrimpers tie off their trawler, then amble over to the beer window. Snake stood quietly, looking out over the mouth of the boat basin toward open water.

“What brings you up to Miami?”

“You remember Liston versus Clay? Nineteen sixty-four?”

“The fight?”

“Yeah, the fight.”

Jimbo said, “Do I remember it? Hellfire, I won more money on that boxing match than any bet in my life. Cassius made me a wealthy man. At least for a couple of weeks.”

“I got a picture I'd like you to look at.”

The old man flicked his butt into the lagoon and led them over to a picnic table apart from the others, parked beneath a coconut palm.

“My office.” Jimbo sat on the bench, and Thorn dragged his shirttail up and drew out the envelope.

Snake was watching silently from two paces away.

“Now's the time, Snake. Take a gander.”

Thorn drew out the photo and lay it before Jimbo and leaned in with a knee braced on the bench. Snake eased up to Jimbo's other shoulder. Thorn watched him bend forward and study the image, his mouth tensing, eyes tracking back and forth along the rows of fight fans. His first real look.

“I remember that week like it was yesterday. All the big names flocking into town. Christ, the Beatles were here, clowning around with Clay at the Fifth Street Gym. Joe Louis, Jack Dempsey, Godfrey, Gleason. Then you had all the politicians in the world coming down to hear Lyndon Johnson talk a couple of days later. Shit, Miami was the center of the universe that week.”

“The photograph, Jimbo,” Thorn said.

“So what am I looking for?” Jimbo straightened the photo against the rough wood planks of the table.

“Anybody you recognize.”

“Sure. This guy, for instance.”

He tapped the squirrelly faced man in gray.

“I got that one already,” Thorn said. “Meyer Lansky.”

“Oh, yeah. Lansky was a big-time badass. Not a killer himself, but he could give the nod. Still, all in all, compared to the trash we got now, old Meyer was a first-class gentleman. Played by the rules. Paid off when he lost.”

“What about the blonde?”

Snake was standing erect again, eyes drifting away to the riffling water of the lagoon. He'd seen all he needed.

“What've you got, Snake?”

He opened his mouth, then closed it and looked at Thorn with something different in his eyes. The steeliness had softened into more malleable material.

“You were expecting a revelation and you didn't get it.”

“Something like that,” Snake said.

“This guy.” Jimbo thumped a stubby finger against a man in a suit. His black hair was slicked back and his cheek was stained with a large red welt. “That's the goddamn mayor. What was his name?”

“Stanton King,” Thorn said.

Snake looked at him.

“The man who raised me,” Snake said.

Jimbo craned around for a longer appraisal of Snake.

“You're one of the mayor's boys, huh?”

“The only one left.” Snake shifted his gaze to the sky above the rim of pines and was silent.

“Hell, I used to know your mom, Lola. Oh, now there's a classy lady. She could bring a room of men to their feet. Yes, she could. They still together, those two?”

“They are,” Snake said. Then he turned to Thorn and said, “Why are you fucking with me, Thorn? If you know these people already, what do we need this old man for?”

“Easy, Snake.”

Snake went around the table and faced them.

“The heavyset man with the diamond,” Snake said. “Pumping his fist, whispering in Lansky's ear. “Who is he?”

“His name is Edward Runyon,” Thorn said. “He's the guy who was shooting at us a little while ago.”

“Shooting, as in guns?” Jimbo said.

Thorn nodded.

“I think the time has come for you to tell me what in fuck's name this is about, Thorn.”

“Might be safer for all involved if I didn't do that.”

“I don't much like those terms.”

“Jimbo, I just need the blonde.”

“Well, shit,” Jimbo said. “I know the broad, I just can't pop her name.”

“No hurry,” Thorn said. “Take your time.”

“I can tell you one thing. She's running this little extravaganza.”

“How's that?”

“You don't see it? Sensitive guy like you. Look at her. Look at the other guys around her. I spent half my life staring at assholes across a poker table. You get so you can read their eyes, and I don't mean who's holding the high hand, either. You see little things happening in the group. One guy afraid of another guy, or some asshole so fixated on another asshole, he'll do anything to make sure the guy he hates loses. Things like that. That's what I'm looking at here. Group dynamics.”

“I'm looking,” Thorn said. “But all I'm seeing is a bunch of people watching a fight.”

“Row three, these people are sitting together. Five of them, including the woman. They're a group. The mayor, Lansky, the woman, the pinkie-ring guy, and this little Cuban fellow on the end with the Clark Gable mustache. The blonde's holding four aces, and all these other guys know it. They're leaning her way like a bunch of daisies toward the sun.”

“I don't know, Jimbo. I'm not seeing it.”

“Look some more.”

Maybe Thorn was kidding himself, but after a minute staring at the photo, examining their posture, the direction of their eyes, their expressions, Thorn detected the slightest of tilts in her direction. More than the attraction of a good-looking woman. In one way or another all of them were splitting their concentration between the action in the ring and the blonde sitting among them in the third row.

“So who is she?”

“Priscilla, Darlene. No, that's not it. Goddamn my fuzzy old brain.”

“If I told you the name of the other guy, the one sitting next to her, would that help?”

Jimbo said he thought it wouldn't hurt.

“Humberto Berasategui,” Snake said. “The small man on the end with the mustache. He owned a plumbing business in Hialeah. Berasategui came with the killers and stood sentry outside. A few hours after this picture was taken, I killed him. Out in my front yard, I hacked him to death with my father's machete.”

Jimbo muttered something under his breath.

“What is it, Jimbo?”

“I think I'm starting to get the picture. What you boys are into.”

He pushed back from the picnic table and climbed free. He looked around his property with an anxious frown as though expecting gunfire. But as far as Thorn could tell, there was only the usual assortment of harmless losers and drunks and a couple of firemen ending their shift.

“Her name's Pauline,” Jimbo said. “I don't recall her last name. Don't know if I ever knew it. But that's definitely Pauline. I didn't run with that crowd. They stayed to themselves. But I knew 'em. Everybody knew 'em.”

“Pauline,” Thorn said. “You're sure?”

“Absolutely.”

“Could it be Pauline Caufield?”

Jimbo blew a smoke ring down at the table and washed a hand through its remains.

“Sounds right. Pauline Caufield. Yeah, I think that's it.”

“Who is Pauline Caufield?” Snake said.

Jimbo told them to wait just a minute. He headed over to the kitchen shack and went in the back.

“Who the fuck is Pauline Caufield?” Snake said.

“Easy, tiger. I'll give you what I got. Just relax a bit.”

A minute later Jimbo came out of the shack with a scrap of paper in his hand. He went over and handed it to Thorn. A name and address scrawled there.

“Miguel Cielo?”

“I'm doing this only because I was close to your old man.”

He dusted his palms against each other and stepped back.

“Who is he, Jimbo?”

“Maybe what I should do, I should put this in context for you, son. That time period. The year that picture was taken, back in the early sixties.”

“Okay.”

“For starters, you should know the CIA station in Miami was their largest outpost in the world, outside of their fucking headquarters in Langley. Nineteen sixties, those spooks ran three, four hundred front companies out of Miami. That's the kind of place this was. Next to tourism, CIA was the biggest game in town. More agents made their bones in Miami than anywhere else on the globe. Back then you pull out your pecker and take a piss, you'd wet some spook's leg.”

“Pauline Caufield was CIA? That's what you're saying?”

“Well, now that's not the kind of thing you know for a fact,” Jimbo said. “But it was pretty clear she wasn't in town to tan her butt on the beach. She ran with a crowd that was different than anybody else down here at the time. Short haircuts, military types, dead serious. And she was a hard-ass, and a woman of mystery. That's as close to knowing as you can come with their kind.”

“What's the CIA have to do with this?” Snake said.

“How old were you the night it happened, boy? Ten, eleven?”

“I was twelve,” Snake said.

“Well, they don't teach this in civics class, I guess. But as you might remember, back in 'sixty-four you had a few hundred thousand brand-spanking-new residents of our fair city. And guess what? Down to the last man and woman, every one of them damn Cubans voted.

“And guess what else? When it came to voting, they all voted exactly the same way. There was one thing and only one thing they cared about. You make them happy on that one thing, you get elected. I guarantee you, all those CIA folks, they were here trying like hell to make the Cubans happy. At least make them think the U.S. government was doing everything in its power to run the commies back into the Sierra Maestra where they came from, so all those refugees could go back to Havana. That's why the CIA was here then. That's why they're still here. Only now it's not just the vote. It's the money, too. A million, two million happy Cubans goes a long way toward deciding who sleeps in the White House.”

Jimbo dug another cigarette from his pants pocket, lit it, and blew fretful smoke up toward the sky.

“And Miguel Cielo?”

“I don't want my name used,” he said. “You didn't get this address from me, I never saw your ass today.”

Jimbo's eyes cut away and strayed out to the lagoon.

“Who is he, Jimbo?”

“What he was called was El Padrino.”

Thorn looked over at Snake.

Snake said, “Godfather.”

“That's right,” Jimbo said. “His outfit was known as La Corporación. The guy ran a
bolita
game, like the lottery. Made millions. Ran the show down here all through the sixties and seventies, split his time between Miami and New Jersey. If Lansky took a shit, before he squatted he cleared it with Cielo.”

“How's he fit in?”

“Miami's like anywhere else,” Jimbo said. “You want to get anything of significance done, you make deals with the devil. Cielo was one of the head devils. Cielo on the Cuban side, Lansky on the Anglo side. If the CIA was up to something, wanted their path cleared, Cielo would be out there chopping the underbrush. Lansky would be, too. The feds loved pitting one against the other. That's what our federal boys been doing ever since. Cielo and Lansky were up to their elbows in CIA shit. If anybody knows what this little gang of boxing fans were up to, it's Miguel Cielo.”