Nightbird (28 page)

Ryan shoved Winters back into the elevator and let the door close. Winters had gone stone white. He was breathing hard and
clutching a brown attaché case to his chest. He began sliding down the wall. Ryan pushed the button and the elevator rose.

“Stand up straight,” he said. “Let’s meet the rest of the choir.”

Trey Winters closed his eyes and slid all the way to the floor. Ryan wanted to lean down and hit him, but he’d never had a
decent left. So he kicked him. Once, in the side. Hard. Winters gasped as the elevator door opened.

“Gimme that old-time religion,” Buster Scorza said.

Ryan pulled Scorza into the elevator. When the door closed he pressed the red stop button.

“You need a doctor, not a priest,” Scorza said, staring at Ryan’s head.

“We’re all going to feel better when we leave here,” Ryan said.

“Hope nobody’s fucking claustrophobic,” Scorza said.

Ryan raised his leg and kicked Scorza, planting his heel above the porn king’s knee. Scorza yelped and grabbed his leg, kneading
the muscle.

“What is this, kung fu night?” he said.

The priest stopped whistling. Scorza’s cologne threatened to devour the oxygen. Ryan knew he couldn’t be too loud. He waited,
still unable to breathe comfortably. Winters rolled over in a fetal position.

“We’re in church,” Ryan said softly. “Watch your language, and I won’t kick you again. Now open the case.”

“It’s not in my nature to handle the property of others,” Scorza said, brushing Ryan’s heel print off his Burberry.

“Mr. Winters has no objection. Do you, Mr. Winters?… I thought not.”

“It’s not my nature to jam up a cop, either,” Scorza said. “But I’m making an exception here.”

Scorza took a cell phone from his pocket. Ryan grabbed it out of his hand and stuck it in his own pocket.

“So much for the U.S. Constitution,” Scorza said.

Ryan picked up the case and jammed it into Scorza’s chest. He told him to turn it around and just hold it. He wondered why
the priest wasn’t whistling. Maybe he was poking around, looking for the source of the noise.

“What happened to your head?” Scorza said.

“I got mugged.”

“Where’s Joe Gregory?”

“Getting married.”

With his left hand Ryan unsnapped the locks of the attaché case. It was full of money, no surprise. Stacks of fifties tied
in thick green rubber bands.

“Who the hell would marry Joe Gregory?”

“Lucille Le Sueur,” Ryan said as he rifled through the attaché case, looking for anything other than money. Scorza, holding
the attaché case across his forearms like a Bensonhurst butler, stared at him.

“You’re cowboying this case,” Scorza said. “You got no backup, no partner. Dressed like that. Looking like a truck ran over
you. You’re playing commando out here.”

“Shut up, and close the case.”

“I’m betting this is something we can work out right here and now, my friend.”

“I’m not your friend.”

“I might be the best friend ever,” Scorza said. “See, the truth is that me and Winters found this money up here during our
morning vespers. So I’m thinking we split it, coupla nice Catholic boys like us. Do whatever you want with your share. Buy
a nice wedding present for Gregory.”

“Look at me,” Ryan said. “Do I look ready to play your goddamn games?”

“Hey, we’re in church,” Scorza said.

“And this is where we’re going to stay. Until someone tells me what this is for.”

“It’s a simple American business deal,” Scorza said. “I’m the lendor, he’s the lendee. My friend just has a little cash flow
problem right now. I’m helping out.”

“A member of one of the richest families in the city has a cash flow problem, so he comes to the local porn guy. I really
believe that, Buster.”

“Don’t kid yourself, cash is cash.”

“I’m being blackmailed,” Trey Winters said from the floor.

“Jesus Christ,” Scorza said.

The priest resumed whistling. God and Hoagy Carmichael would be proud.

“I want this to end,” Winters said. “I’m sick of it all.”

Ryan reached around for his gun. The attaché case fell, and money spilled over the floor and Trey Winters’s body. Although
they practiced at the range, the gun felt awkward in his left hand. He planted the barrel in Scorza’s forehead.

“Artillery is not a good idea in cramped quarters,” Scorza said.

“Is this guy blackmailing you, Winters?”

“No, no. I don’t know who it is. All I know is I have to have the money ready by tonight. Be in my office, by the phone, at
one
A.M.
”

“You see the flaw in your logic?” Scorza said. “If I were involved in this scheme, would I act as the lendor? Steal my own
money?”

“Have you seen the blackmailer?” Ryan said.

“A man hands me envelopes on the street. Dark skin, hat pulled down. I think his hair is black, he’s not as tall as I am.
Maybe six one or two.”

“Spanish accent?” Ryan asked.

“He hasn’t spoken,” Winters said.

“I have no idea what you two are talking about,” Scorza said, a little red loop of a gun barrel on his forehead.

Ryan put his gun away and took out Scorza’s cell phone. He handed it to him and told him to dial Joe Gregory’s beeper number.

“Keep the phone,” Scorza said after he dialed. “It’s prepaid to a hundred bucks. I’ll just take my money and get out of here.
Never say a word. My lips are sealed.”

He bent down and scooped stacks of bills into the case. Ryan waited until he’d finished and then put his foot on it.

“Why didn’t you go to your wife for the money?” Ryan said to Winters.

“I didn’t want her to know.”

“Too late now,” Scorza said.

“You didn’t want her to know about you and Gillian Stone,” Ryan said.

“Yes,” Winters said slowly. “That’s it.”

Scorza’s phone rang.

D
anny Eumont, his arm out the window of Honest Val’s pickup, ventured farther into the swampy center of Florida than he ever
wanted to. They’d driven an hour since they’d left the convent. The sun beat down on slash pines and bald cypress. A sour
odor hung in the air over the saw grass. On the radio Billie Holiday sang “Strange Fruit,” a song once banned in the South.

“Ringling Brothers used to winter in Sarasota,” Val said. “A lot of performers live out here in the off season.”

“Way out here in the boondocks.”

“That’s the way they like it. Away from the stares.”

“I think I hear dueling banjos.”

The roadway was stained with thousands of road-kill remains, fur and blood everywhere. Occasionally a few curled strips of
blown truck tire retread. Rickety wooden stands advertised muskrat, melon, and croc. Water stood on both sides of the road.

“Ringling doesn’t winter here anymore?” Danny said.

“They moved the operation down the coast to Venice. At the same time they cut down on their side show operation. Some of these
people tried to hook up with other circuses, state fairs and such. No welfare for them. No way. These people I’m taking you
to now… are only strange to look at. Their hearts are all in the right place.”

“Tell me about the Nuñez family.”

“Faye stayed with them until she was a teenager. Premier trapeze act. Then the father got hurt, or sick, I forget which. After
that he started drinking. Died of cirrhosis in record time. My source tells me the rest of the family moved back to Mexico.
He can tell you more.”

They turned off the highway onto a path of crushed clamshells, bleached white from the sun. Shells crunched under the pickup’s
tires for a quarter of a mile, then Honest Val threaded through a narrow opening in overgrown hedges. They came out into a
collection of trailers and shacks that seemed to be set down helter-skelter, dropped carelessly like Gypsy luggage.

“The Nuñez family lived in that white prefab. Some Romanian tumblers have it now. My source lives in that place over there,
the double wide.”

“Wouldn’t it be better if they lined up these places in rows?” Danny said. “Then the plumbing and the electrical work would
be uniform.”

“Yeah,” Honest Val said, shrugging. “Probably.”

They snaked between trailers. In the yards kids ran and played games. Normal-looking kids. He’d expected lobster boys, bearded
ladies, lizard-skinned fire eaters, and eight-foot-tall tattooed Chinese hermaphrodites.

“Most of the performers are on the road,” Val said. “This is show season for the ones with contracts. You come here in January.
You’ll see something then.”

They stopped in front of the double wide. Tied to a large doghouse in front was an odd-looking animal with long white hair
and one horn in the center of its head. A sign read, “Beware dangerous unicorn.”

“Puff is a special breed of goat,” Honest Val said. “At birth they pull their horns together and try to braid them into one
big horn in the center. It was the big attraction a couple of years ago, until animal rights people got into the act. He belongs
to Jake Bugel, he owns this park.”

Honest Val knocked on the screen door, and the unmistakable squeak of a geriatric Munchkin warned him not to do that again
if he valued his kneecaps. Val pushed open the screen door.

“You bring a sprocket wrench?” Jake Bugel said.

“What’s a sprocket?” Honest Val said.

Bugel sat on a milk crate in the middle of the living room floor. He was staring at a motorcycle in the center of a bed-sheet
that protected the rug. It was the tiniest motorcycle Danny had ever seen. Assorted engine parts were scattered around the
bedsheet.

“What’s the mileage?” Honest Val said. “I’m your odometer man.”

“Nine thousand original. All under a tent.”

“Call a real mechanic.”

“It’s Russian made,” Bugel said. “Nobody around here will touch it.”

“Call the junk truck,” Val said. “You’re too old for that thing anyway.”

“It’s not for me. It’s for Sasha’s kid. The bareback rider. You met her. Nice heinie, lives with the asshole who thinks he’s
the next Houdini.”

“He’ll make his escape soon,” Honest Val said.

The furniture was a mixture of low and high, but the low was made specifically to be low, not furniture with the legs cut
down. Or sawed off. A picture of a dining set with the legs sawed off jumped into Danny’s mind. His Groucho persona was tapping
his cigar, ready to jump in anytime armed with his repertoire of jokes. The short program.

While coffee brewed, Jake Bugel brought out a stack of old circus programs. The Nuñez family was a featured act for several
years. They were a handsome group, two men and two women, all dark skinned and raven haired. Danny looked closely at the women,
bookends, but neither woman was Faye Boudreau. Bugel walked in a rocking motion back and forth from the kitchen, the coffee
sloshing back and forth in the pot.

“Sugar or Sweet’n Low?” he asked.

“Sweet’n Low,” Danny said.
Like your last wife
, Groucho whispered.

“That’s Francisco, the father, in front,” Bugel said, pointing to the thinner man in white tights. “We called him Frankie.
The muscular guy is his son, Victor. The girls were twins, Ava and Ana. This Frankie Nuñez was the greatest trapeze performer
I ever saw, and I seen them all. Believe me. The good Lord played a cruel joke on Frankie Nuñez. He gave him all the talent
in the world and then made it impossible for him to use it. Arthritis so bad he couldn’t make a fist.”

You know what they say,” Danny said. “God laughs when we make plans.”

“Amen, brother,” Val said.

“I’m glad to hear that Faye is doing okay,” Bugel said, still walking back and forth in the painful-looking style. “She had
a rough road, that kid. Boudreau beat the shit out of her, and did who knows what else.”

The host came in with a plate of cookies. Groucho wondered if they were shortbread. Why not? Bugel had a sense of humor. On
the living room wall was a print of da Vinci’s
Last Supper
. Jesus and the Apostles were little people. And who was around to say that was wrong?

“Frankie died about eight years ago,” Bugel said. “The mother and two sisters live in Mexico.”

“What about Victor?” Danny said.

“Another talented son of a bitch,” Bugel said. “He stops by every winter. Summers he does some kind of street performing in
New York. Juggling, I think. Could be fire eating. These kids learn it all growing up here. Works with a partner, a Russian
clown named Pinto.”

“Would this Victor visit Faye if he knew she was in New York?” Danny said.

“They were always tight, those two.”

“Would you consider him her boyfriend?”

“Off and on they had a thing going for a while, then she moved to Miami. Victor has that whole macho thing going for him.
He’s got a few skeletons, real ones, if you know what I mean. He likes to whack women around. He roughed Faye up a coupla
times, and she split. But don’t get me wrong about Victor. He can be a sweetheart.”

“Sounds like it,” Danny said.

“Some people say he has a mean streak. But they were a tight family. Faye was a lot better off with them than those Canuck
bear humpers. I tell you something: When Frankie Nuñez couldn’t perform anymore, they disbanded the act. They wouldn’t even
go on performing without Frankie.”

“Tell him that cop story,” Val said.

“Oh, right,” Jake said. “About three years ago the word comes back here that Faye took a bad beating from some psycho cop
she was living with down in Miami. He got locked up, but Victor comes back from New York and hears about it. He drove down
to Miami to see what was going on. After that the cop disappears off the face of the earth. Never showed for trial. Everybody
around here figures Victor turned him into alligator lunch.”

“Did you say Victor has a Russian partner?”

“Yeah, Pinto. His last name is Timoshenko. Drives an old beat-to-shit Chevy Nova, the vinyl top peeling off. They have an
apartment in the Bronx.”

“Two Ten Echo Place,” Danny said, recognizing the name Timoshenko from the mailbox list.

“That’s it,” Jake said. “I grew up in the Bronx, Walton Avenue near East Burnside. Sometimes they stay with my cousin, who,
believe it or not, still lives in that fucking hellhole.”