Magic City (9 page)

“But, Lawton, listen, do you have any idea why anyone would try to steal this from you? Is it valuable in some way? Did Alan say anything about it?”

Lawton gave the photo a look and pointed at another man.

“This one I know,” he said. “Fifth row, skinny guy chewing on his fingernail right there. Guy ran a sports bet out of his Miami Beach condo. Billy Freestone, that's his name. Cheap hood, probably dead by now, got whacked by somebody. That's the kind of guys came to boxing matches. Gangsters, hoods, underworld types. Here's another one. This guy here.”

Lawton tapped a fingernail against the photo.

“This fellow, now this is some top banana. Forget his name, but he was a big-deal potentate of one kind or another. Probably dead, too. Not a profession you live a long time, gambling, loan sharking, dealing drugs.”

Thorn looked at the man Lawton was pointing at. Little guy with dark wavy hair and a squirrelly face. He wore a gray sports coat over a gray polo shirt. He was watching the action in the ring but didn't seem impressed.

“Before we go down to Largo, maybe we should have a word with Bingham. Find out what this is about. Why a couple of punks would want this thing enough to break in the house, draw a gun on me, come looking for you.”

Lawton said, “Alan was going to be my son-in-law till what's-his-name, that Keys weasel, came slithering along, stole my little girl's heart.”

Thorn stayed on Old Cutler, driving past the slapped-up housing projects with phony wilderness names: Hawk's Nest, Heron Harbor, Manatee Cove. Here and there he caught a glimpse of the scrubby palmettos and pinelands that once covered the southern peninsula, bulldozers parked nearby. The road became shady, houses growing formidable, disappearing behind hedges, coral rock walls, down curving drives.

At the next light he asked if Lawton knew the way to Merrick Gallery.

“Hell, boy. I've lived in this town seventy years. I know nooks and crannies the cockroaches haven't found.”

“Well, lead on, my friend.”

The photograph had slipped through Snake's fingers three times already. At Merrick Gallery it burned up before his eyes, at Bingham's house Carlos had stupidly destroyed the negatives, and during the bungled encounter with the roofer Snake lost it yet again. Further humiliation came at the old-age home, where he and Carlos had been thrown out by a single black security guard.

It was clear to Snake that he needed to step back, regroup, and plot his next step more carefully.

The Church of the Little Flower in Coral Gables had served as Snake's sanctuary for decades, and it was there he went to soothe his turbulent mind.

He planted Carlos in a rear pew and walked straight to the confessional, shut the door and knelt, and waited for Father Meacham to greet him.

Roughly Snake's age, the priest had been hearing Snake's confessions for over twenty years. It had been a trial for Meacham, listening to Snake recite the same admission several times each week. It was not for the machete killing of Humberto Berasategui for which he asked absolution, nor the maiming of the man who'd worn the big diamond ring. He felt no guilt for those acts and considered them no sins at all. But guilt still gripped him.

On the night when the killers came and the three children were sprinting across the lawn, if Snake had only run a step faster, only a single step, it would have been him that was shot, not Carmen. If it had been Snake who died, Carmen would have dealt with his death better than he had dealt with hers. She would have given the weight of her suffering to her God, and even if that had not relieved her of all her pain, it would have relieved her of most of it.

A hundred times every day he blamed himself for falling back half a step in fear when the bullets began to fly. Wishing over and over that he had gone down that night. His last sensations could have been the smell of the grass and Carmen's cries as she ran unhurt into the safety of the darkness.

No penance Father Meacham ever prescribed relieved Snake's burden. Yet he returned and returned again, carrying inside a Ziploc bag Carmen's small weathered Bible. Aside from a single photograph of her, the Bible was the only possession of hers that survived.

He had tried his best to honor his vow to Carmen, but Snake had long ago lost faith in God and any hope for atonement. Still, over the long years, the unvarying tranquillity within the high-domed chapel and the ritual of Father Meacham's blessings had provided Snake a modest relief from the turmoil of his shame and heartache.

The priest and Snake had come to a silent understanding. Snake would not be saved, would never enter the kingdom of heaven, and Father Meacham was under no further pressure to bring about his religious awakening. It was a mutually agreed-upon stalemate.

Meacham turned his head and looked through the tiny window at Snake.

“Yes, my son?”

“I have a question of some urgency, Father.”

“What is it, Snake?”

“Is there any prohibition from seeking the truth?”

“Of course not. None whatsoever. You are encouraged to do so.”

“The truth will set me free, isn't that the holy word?”

“John 8:32, yes. ‘And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.' God will move heaven and earth to help you see his face.”

“And I am permitted to move heaven and earth myself?”

“Whatever it takes, my son, to know your Lord and master.”

Snake opened Carmen's small Bible and located the passage.

“I found this in Numbers, Father, 35:17. ‘And if he smite him with throwing a stone, wherewith he may die, he is a murderer: the murderer shall surely be put to death. Or if he smite him with a hand weapon of wood, and he die, he is a murderer: the murderer shall surely be put to death.'”

“Yes,” Father Meacham said. “This, too, is God's word.”

“Then the next verse,” Snake said. “‘The revenger of blood himself shall slay the murderer when he meeteth him, he shall slay him.'”

Father Meacham was quiet for a moment with his head bowed, eyes closed. When he opened them, he turned and looked directly at Snake.

“What exactly are you asking me, Snake?”

“The Bible doesn't have a problem with revenge. That's how I read it.”

“It's more complex than that.”

“But those are the words. Those are the Bible's words: ‘The revenger of blood himself shall slay the murderer when he meeteth him.' That sounds very simple to me, Father. Very simple. Very clear.”

Before Father Meacham could further contradict him, Snake rose and left the confessional. Carlos was waiting in the back pew near the door, paging through one of the girlie magazines he took with him everywhere. Snake slipped into a seat beside him.

At the rail across the aisle, Sister Madeleine was lost in prayer. A nun whose lustrous black hair sometimes showed at the edges of her hood. Hair as black and radiant as Carmen's. A nun who meditated for hours in the Church of the Little Flower. As devout, beautiful, and pure of heart as Snake's lost sister.

Incense floated through blades of sunlight beaming through the high window slits. The chapel had a hollow resonance that absorbed the sharp edges of sound. It was a timeless space where Snake felt the weight of his earthly cares lighten. The church had existed before he was born and would outlast his petty trials, his guilt, his anger and frustration. A place of suspended animation where the ancient rituals were unchanging, where the raging voices beyond those walls were muted to inconsequence.

Though he knew that when he walked out into the hard sunlight, all his sorrow and fury would begin to roll and crash again through his bloodstream, for those serene minutes in the sanctuary, he could sense Carmen's spirit wafting through the high warm air.

Years earlier he tried repeatedly to pray to God, to share in that holy union Carmen had discovered. But only dead silence answered Snake's deepest pleadings. Then one day, in a fevered state, he made the slightest shift in his prayers, directing them no longer to an indifferent divinity but directly to his lost sister. It felt like sacrilege, but in an instant he was rewarded with a swelling in his heart and a breathtaking rush of sweet air into his lungs. It was miraculous. By simply addressing his prayer to her, Snake had reestablished a fragile communion with Carmen.

Since that first instance, his sister had answered him only sporadically, as if she were measuring out her aid in tiny increments so as not to overwhelm him. What he got was a hallowed whisper that floated down from the vaulted ceiling, not words, not specific counsel, but the delicate murmurs of an all-knowing adult reassuring a child.

At first Snake worried he might be going insane and this voice he heard was nothing more than self-induced hallucination—produced by a longing so deep and abiding, it had begun to mimic real sound.

Though finally Snake settled on the belief that whether it was Carmen speaking within his head or Carmen out there in the sacred vapors, it was clearly her, and she was surely trying to console him. Just as certainly it was this soundless voice of his lost sister that was the single force that restrained Snake from buying a handgun and directing its blast into his vacant heart.

“So what's the play, big man?” Carlos said.

Snake pulled his eyes away from Sister Madeleine. So quiet, so at peace.

“We're going back to the house where the roofer was.”

“And do what?”

“We'll wait,” Snake said. “See who shows up. Get it right this time.”

 

Alex paced for ten minutes at the curbside before a cab picked her up. On the airport loop road, they got stuck in an unmoving line of cars. She kept trying Thorn's cell, but apparently he'd switched it off.

The five-mile drive to her home in South Miami that should have taken fifteen minutes took forty-five. She paid the cabbie and he hauled the bag out of the trunk and without a word roared away.

Her Camry was gone. Thorn's rusty, spavined VW Beetle hunched at the curb. A ladder lay across her front walkway, roofing equipment scattered around the lawn. At least Thorn had the sense to lock the door before he left.

She unlocked the door, stepped into the foyer. She tried his phone again, got no answer. She stepped into the kitchen. All cleaned up from breakfast. The Makita drill sat on the kitchen table, dark tar on the drill bit.

Buck tugged on his lead, ready to be free. Not understanding why they'd made the journey to the airport, worked through the long obstacle course to the gate, boarded the plane, taken up a position in the rear emergency row, the only place where service dogs were allowed. Five minutes later they got up, made a sudden exit, riding home in another cab only a couple hours after they'd left.

“Okay, okay, easy does it, boy. We're home.”

Alex squatted down and unsnapped his leash. He shook himself hard and cantered away to the rear of the house in search of Lawton and Thorn.

Alex called out Thorn's name even though the car was gone and she knew he wasn't there.

Something was off-key. His voice on the phone, the disarray in the front yard, Thorn abandoning his work in the middle of the day, and some other edginess in the air she couldn't identify.

She dialed Harbor House and got Lilly the receptionist. Before she could get the question out, Lilly said, “There was a young man here, handsome fella. He took Lawton off with him.”

“Thorn?”

“Blondish hair, dark tan, boat shoes and shorts. Rangy guy.”

“Why did he take Dad?”

“I think it had to do with the other two fellas that were here before him. Real sleazy types. They were asking for Lawton, but Marvin ran them off.”

“What's this about, Lilly?”

“That's all I know. Two seedy guys, then this rugged guy in boat shoes. Is that your boyfriend? Nothing personal, but I was wondering if he's taken.”

“Is Marion Davies there?”

“At a luncheon with the board of directors.”

Alexandra thanked her and hung up.

She left her bag in the foyer, walked down the hallway, and was punching in Thorn's cell number again when she heard Buck snarl, then a commotion in one of the back bedrooms, a man grunting, furniture overturned.

The dog yelped, then made a helpless squeal that ceased abruptly.

She didn't keep a handgun in the house, so she swung around, dropped the phone on the counter, threw open a drawer, snatched a carving knife, and crept down the hallway.

She halted outside the door of Lawton's bedroom, stilled her breath, listened. Heard nothing. She was lifting her leg to give the door a side kick when a man's arm locked around her throat and dragged her into Lawton's room. He whacked the knife from her grasp.

For the past two years she'd been neglecting her karate training, so was slow in her reaction, but the instincts were still there. She seized the man's thumb and cranked it backward against the joint.

He cursed and his grip loosened a notch. Then there was another man standing in front of her. Tall and thin with a bony face and silver-blue eyes. Behind him she glimpsed Buck lying on the Oriental rug. Tongue out, panting, a gash near his ear.

“Are you going to be nice? Cooperate with us?”

“Put the smackdown on her, dawg. Bitch is breaking my thumb.”

Alex gave the joint a sharp tug, and the man's grip gave way. She ducked free and pivoted to put all her weight behind a backward elbow into the guy's solar plexus. A stocky man. Sheathed in muscle, but the point of her elbow found the tender zone below his sternum. Blew the air from his lungs, sent him staggering.

She was swiveling back to block whatever the tall man was throwing her way when the butt of a pistol flashed at her skull. She shot up a hand to deflect but was late. It struck her square in the temple, and the jolt sagged her knees and locked the air inside her lungs. The sunlight danced.

She had enough wattage for a front kick to the guy's groin, but it was too slow, too late, too feeble. He slid to the left and drew back the pistol and hammered the butt against the same patch of skull as before, and Alex felt her muscles soften and heard a whistling shriek like a teapot at full boil, then the floor came flying up.

 

Carlos drew his shoe back to kick the woman, but Snake halted him.

“My thumb, man, she almost tore it loose.”

“Leave her alone,” Snake said.

“Nice-looking broad,” Carlos said. “She's out cold, we could do whatever we want.”

“Forget it, Carlos. None of that.”

Snake stood over her body. He was weak in the legs. Striking the woman had sent tremors down his arms, echoes of the clash of the machete blade against flesh and bone.

“Don't be getting spooky on me, Snake. What the hell're we supposed to do with this woman?”

“What we're going to do, Carlos, is trade her for what we want.”