Stairway to the Bottom - a Mick Murphy Key West Mystery (24 page)

“Did you ever read the Maltese Falcon?” I watched as Alexei walked through the bar’s exit.

“I’ve seen the movie a dozen times,” Pauly said. “Why?”

“The diamonds,” I said and turned to him. “It’s their Maltese Falcon. They’re all looking for something that might not exist but they keep searching.”

“Could be.” Pauly lit a new cigarette.

Chapter 54

P
auly’s gaze swept over the grounds; stopping nowhere for more than a second, but that was all he needed before he sat back, satisfied with what he saw. A brief nod of his head brought the two men at the bar toward our table. Before they got there, Pauly pointed to the entrances and the men separated and moved.

“Cold,” Pauly said, exhaling smoke. He wasn’t talking about the weather.

“Scary. Are Viktor and Yakov still alive?”

Pauly grinned. “Well, we know they’re no longer here.”

“I’ve got a feeling Alexei isn’t big on second chances.”

“He’s a predator.” Pauly stumped out his cigarette. “He can’t survive with a weak link in the group. Think of the cheetah chasing the gazelle. It kills the slower, weaker gazelle, it doesn’t chase the head of the pack. The fastest survive. “

“Law of the jungle.”

“The concrete jungle. The difference between Alexei and the cheetah is the cat’s a beautiful animal and it kills to eat.”

“What’s next?” I reached into my shirt pocket for a non-existing cigar.

“The good news is they’re not out to kill you,” he said.

“The bad news.”

“They’re short on patience.”

“I’ve met the Limeys, the Frogs, our spooks and they were laughable.” I wished I had something other than tonic water to drink. A cigar would’ve been good. “But these guys…this one guy, he concerns me.”

“I knew people like him in my other life.” Pauly drained his glass. “You don’t wanna deal with them.”

“Too late.”

“Yeah, it is.”

“What do I do next?”

“Kill him, because as soon as you serve no purpose, that’s what the son of a bitch plans to do to you.”

“I was afraid of that.”

“Right now he needs you alive, or thinks he does. He knows we’ve made him and that your ass is covered six ways to Sunday, so he won’t make the same mistake he did at Schooner.” Pauly signaled Susan and she brought us drinks. I wanted a Jameson but got tonic water. “He’ll look for a weakness in you…”

“Tita!” I said.

“Be my guess. If he’s tailed you, he knows about her.”

“Shit. I’ve gotta find Norm.”

My cell phone chirped. Tita’s name showed on the screen. I raised my hand to keep Pauly from talking.

“Hi Tita,” I said.

“I’m running a little behind,” she said in a happy voice. “Maybe I should meet you downtown.”

“Everything okay?”

“Better than okay,” she said. “Nathan and Bob T have taken on all my clients, so we celebrated with a late lunch and are finishing up with the paperwork at my office.”

“That’s great, it leaves us more time together.” I wanted to have a happy voice too, but it didn’t come off. “When will you be done?”

“Before seven.” I heard Nathan in the background. “Nathan said at the latest, seven.”

I look at my wristwatch. It was a little past five. Where had the afternoon gone? “Yeah, around seven at the Hog.”

“I’ll be hungry too.” She laughed like a schoolgirl at the end of day. “Think of some place for dinner. My treat.” She sent me a phone kiss and hung up.

“Take your people off me and put them on her…like now,” I said to Pauly as I dialed Norm’s number. “Meet me at the Hog, as soon as you can,” I said when he answered.

“Give me thirty minutes. You okay?”

“I’ve had better days. I met Alexei.”

“Consider it a good day, you’re alive. Thirty minutes.” He hung up.

“You don’t want Tita to know,” Pauly said and it wasn’t a question.

“No.”

“I can put a four-man surveillance team on her,” he said and dialed his cell phone. “She still at the office?”

“Yeah, with Nathan and Bob T.”

“Get Gonzales, Padilla, and Fahey.” He spoke into the phone. “You remember Murphy’s friend, Tita Toledo? Yeah, the cute one…keep her safe but don’t let her make you…she’s at the office on upper Duval…two men with her, right now…she should be going to the Hog’s Breath from there…” Pauly turned to me. “She driving?”

“She has a scooter.”

“She’s probably on a scooter…don’t lose her…check in every hour, unless something goes down…no, they’ll want her alive…a kidnapping…yes…prevent it.” He turned to me after closing his cell. “Linder is a good man.”

“Jim?”

“Know him?”

“From here and there.”

“Okay, now about you.”

“Don’t worry about me, take care of Tita.”

“She’s taken care of,” Pauly said. “You got the Glock, right?”

“Yeah.”

“You got a backup?”

“No.”

“I would. You know the Sig Sauer P250?”

“No.”

“It’s got the trigger safety like the Glock. Very versatile. I was thinking, keep the Glock on the
Fenian Bastard
as backup and I’ll give you two Sig nine mils and some magazines,” he said. “If you need the gun, you don’t wanna be messing with different magazines.”

“You think it’s coming to that?”

“It’s not if, it’s when.”

“I need to carry two?”

“One ain’t gonna be enough and two might buy you an extra few minutes,” he said. “You meeting Norm in a little while, get his opinion. I bet he knows Alexei.”

“On the phone, he seemed to.”

“You wait at the Hog for me,” he said and stood. “I’ve got your back, but the Russians know it too, so be prepared for just about anything when the time comes.”

Chapter 55

S
cotty Emerick fooled with the stage’s sound mixer, making sure it worked properly with his guitar. The self-proclaimed
redneck beach bum
from Vero Beach had turned into a successful songwriter and lived in Nashville now.

Scotty drew big audiences during the Key West Singer-Songwriter Festival because of the list of hit songs he had written, and came back to Key West often enough to be considered a part-time resident. Sometimes he came for pleasure and sometimes for work; more often than not, he accomplished both.

I introduced him to Tita two years ago at the songwriters’ party at the Mango Tree Inn and we usually got together whenever he was here. He would do his acoustic set until ten tonight and I knew Tita would want to come by after dinner. Before the night ended, local and other Nashville singer-songwriters on the island would join him on stage. They turned the Smokin’ Tuna into a showcase of Nashville talent.

Susan gave me the bill and I paid it.

“Don’t let tomorrow bite you on the ass,” she said walking away.

I looked around and realized that Pauly’s men had not returned. Maybe I was on my own and, if that was the case, had no one to blame but myself. I was concerned with tonight turning into a bite-my-ass situation, tomorrow had to wait its turn.

At five-thirty I left, waving to Scotty and mouthing I’d be back. Charles Street took me to Duval. The sun was bright and tourists wandered the streets. The Tree Bar had customers packed in two deep and some wandered into Angelina’s Pizza. People outside Sloppy Joe’s, across the street, held onto their drinks on the sidewalk. Loud music blared from Irish Kevins and the Lazy Gecko had customers three deep at the bar. There was no shortage of partygoers, even on a late Monday afternoon. The good times of Key West went on.

So many people milling about made it hard for me to pick out the Russians or Pauly’s men. Maybe it was an impossible task. I knew they were there, somewhere in the shadows, watching. I felt their eyes on my back. For a couple of days I laughed at the ridiculous agents from the CIA—come on, Jimmy Piersall and Ted Williams; how do you take dead baseball legends seriously? Then there were the Frogs; damn, Frenchy was a character out of
Casa Blanca
. He chowed down on the hamburger, fries and a Budweiser while the other two—clichés of French snobbery—refused to eat their food, smelling it and pushing it away. How could I not be amused?

Of course, the Limeys were what I’d expected. Old school agents that figured a dead Catholic was one less IRA gunman they had to deal with. They were living defenders of Ian Paisley—a preacher who spewed such crap from the pulpit before he joined the peace movement. Now some Loyalists hated Paisley more than the United Ireland clan did. They didn’t scare me.

The Russians went by rules no one has figured out. They were cold, heartless and ruthlessly determined. Alexei scared me. Scared me because Tita was most vulnerable and they wouldn’t hesitate to use her to get to me. They, like the others, wanted something I didn’t have but refused to believe me. The others would wait, bide their time while replaying their Cold War spy games.

Alexei wasn’t playing a game. I had no doubt he had kept involved with criminal enterprises taken over by out-of-work KGB agents after the Soviet Union broke apart, and he prospered. He could only do that by being ruthless and deadly. He brought those traits with him to Key West.

Would any of them go away if I told them Dick

Walsh was in Cuba or Brazil and that he had their diamonds? Name a beach city and let them go search. Would it buy me the ten or so days Tita had remaining in Key West? Or would they continue to watch me while others checked out my story.

I bought a cigar at the shop on Front Street and entered into the Hog’s Breath through the T-shirt shop. I stood in the shadow of the indoor bar and looked out toward the patio, as the inside restaurant filled with couples wanting an early dinner. Patio table seating was full and there were only a few open stools at the bar. Joel Nelson entertained on stage, he had finished a song, and the crowd applauded.

“They’re not out there,” came from behind me.

I turned quickly and the two men Pauly had following me stood there. I smiled out of embarrassment. “Where are they?” I knew we were talking about the Russians.

“Rob Murdock.” He extended his hand and we shook. He had silver-blond hair cut military close and was a thin six-foot. “They met two SUVs and drove away.”

“All of them?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Alexei and his four, the one at the bar, that makes six. He has to have at least one more we haven’t spotted.”

“But probably two. Wayne Bruehl,” the other one introduced himself. “They had to have both exits covered…to be safe.” Wayne had a few inches on Rob and a thicker frame. His salt and pepper hair suggested he might have a few years on Rob too.

“So they’re here.”

“Or outside. Inside they can cover all three exits,” Rob said. “We’ll spot ‘em.”

“How come you’re not watching Tita?”

“Pauly’s got others doing that,” Wayne said. “You go about whatever you had planned. We’ve got your back.”

“When Tita gets here, there’ll be eight of us, a small army.” Rob grinned. “You’re gonna be okay.”

My being okay didn’t concern me. Tita’s wellbeing did. I walked into the crowded patio and took an empty barstool away from the stage. Stephaney held a bottle of Jameson for me to see and I nodded. She poured the Irish whiskey into a plastic cup filled with ice.

“You alone?” She slid the cup in front of me.

“Waiting.” I took a sip of the drink and let it warm my mouth before I swallowed.

“Good luck getting more seats.” She walked away to serve another customer.

I scanned the patio crowd as Joel sang. Across the stage, I could see him as he strummed his guitar. Three female bartenders, Stephaney, Kris and Niki, hurried about servicing the customers and waitresses. I couldn’t see Murdock or Bruehl, but I wasn’t supposed to. I wondered what a Russian looked like. They weren’t all six-foot giants, so was I looking for one or two guys of regular height. Were they even together? Should I be looking for a woman?

“The sun’s still out.” Norm’s voice came from behind me as he commented on my not drinking beer since the sun was still out.

I turned. I smiled. I took a long swallow of my drink. “You know this asshole?”

Norm ordered a beer from Kris and poured some into his plastic cup before answering. “Yeah, I had the pleasure.” He tasted his beer and pushed closer. “He spent time in Central America back in the day.”

“KGB?”

“KGB division that trained the Cuban DGI.”

The KGB helped form and train the
Cuban Dirección General de Inteligencia
in 1961 and it warned Castro about the CIA-backed Bay of Pigs invasion in 1962.

“He doesn’t look that old?”

“His father…or maybe it was an uncle ran the operation back then,” Norm said. “Alexei visited the island and never wanted to leave the tropics.”

“That was then,” I said. “The Russians pulled out of Cuba a long time ago. What is he now?”

“Now he’s part of a very powerful underworld in Russia,” he said. “Alexei has businesses around the world, but this is the first time I’ve heard of him in the States.”

“All these other agents are jokes.”

“You think so?” Norm said.

“Alexei’s no joke.” I finished my Jameson. “He scares me.”

“He should,” Norm said. “He and your buddy Doyle Mulligan are two of a kind. Cold and methodical. He wants the diamonds and will do whatever it takes to get ‘em.”

“He said they were his, no matter who found them.”

“Believe him.”

I told him about Pauly wanting me to have two guns and extra magazines and, to my surprise once again, Norm thought it was a good idea.

“I talked to Jim Ashe, at JIATF,” he said. “There’s a couple SEALs he’s sending over.”

“I don’t want anyone on me.”

“Two-gun Mick!” He chuckled while shaking his head.

“Pauly’s got guys on me,” I said. “He put a couple on Tita before we left the Tuna. A couple of SEALs would make me feel a lot better if they were protecting her.”

“Those guys were actually glad to see me.” He ignored my comment.

“Good, but I want them to protect Tita. Right?”

“Pauly’s Jar Heads and the SEALs are meeting up and will work out Tita’s detail and without her any the wiser. Okay?”