Suspicion of Deceit (25 page)

"I've been shot at," Dixon said. "It gives you a new perspective on things, doesn't it?"

"Yes. You put up with less bullshit."

He laughed. "This is true. Very true."

Gail said, "Maybe something Seth knew got him killed. I wonder about Octavio Reyes. He was the only one who knew far enough in advance that Seth would be at the radio station."

"What did Seth know?" The amusement on Lloyd Dixon's face said he liked playing games.

"That Reyes was involved with you."

"Involved? We talked. That's it."

"The exile community thrives on rumors. Reyes could be ruined if they so much as
thought
he was putting money into the Castro regime. When Seth called to say he would go on the air to debate him, Reyes was upstairs in the studio, but he could have made a phone call to one of his extremist friends and told him God knows what."

Dixon eyed her steadily. "Extremist friends?"

"He has them," Gail said. "He probably goes target-shooting on weekends with Alpha 66."

"They aren't hit men, Gail. All right. Say that Seth was going to run his mouth. How would Reyes have known this in advance?"

"Seth could have told him when he called the station."

"Then Reyes would've been crazy to let him go on the air!"

"He lured him there and had someone waiting for him," Gail suggested.

"No. If you want somebody eliminated, you don't have it done in your own parking lot—unless you think it's going to make you look innocent." Dixon chuckled. "I'll show you how crazy this gets. I listen to the Spanish stations. Some people are saying the job was done by a Castro agent who knew that if he made it look like an exile act no one would believe it, so he intentionally made it
not
to look like the exiles did it, so the police would wonder if they
did.
If you follow that logic. Provocateurs have the wits of a fox."

Gail shook her head. "The police believe he was killed for personal, not political reasons."

"You'd like to nail Reyes, wouldn't you?" Dixon gave her a conspirator's grin. "He's in a good place, married to old man Pedrosa's granddaughter. He thinks your fiance is the black-sheep commie in the Pedrosa clan. I'd watch my back."

Angrily Gail said, "How can you associate yourself with him?"

The grin grew wider. "We're not pals. Besides, it's interesting to watch events unfold." He said, "I've got a bone to pick with you, lady. What was the meaning of that advice you gave Seth Greer, he should talk Rebecca into leaving me?"

Gail could only stare back at him.

"The night he died, you were at his house. So was my wife. She came home in a taxi, too drunk to drive her own car home. Seth called to see if she was okay. He thought I was out of town. I happened to pick up the extension in the kitchen. Oh, Becky, marry me. It was meant to be. Gail Connor says so. We can start over, roll back the years—"

"I never told him that!"

"—be happy together. You should have married me twenty years ago."

"I did not say that." Gail took a breath, staying calm. "I said he should be honest with her about how he felt. Look, I don't want to get involved in your marital problems."

"Be honest about his feelings. Jesus. That kind of talk makes me queasy. People start being totally honest with each other, they wind up wanting to choke somebody. And then you show up playing Dear Abby."

"That's enough," she said.

They looked at each other.

Lloyd Dixon's smile lifted one side of his mouth. "You think I shot him?" "You had a motive."

"Uh-uh. She wasn't in love with Seth—so she said, and I believe her. Don't speak ill of the dead, but Seth Greer couldn't have kept up with Rebecca. She's an expensive lady. I'm not complaining about it. I knew that when I married her."

"Another motive," Gail said. "You knew Rebecca was talking to Seth. Maybe she told him too much."

Dixon was enjoying this. "The police asked me about Seth. They found my wife's car in his driveway. I told them to check with the ferry master. I didn't leave the island. They keep a list of names, people going in and out."

"Unless a person leaves by boat."

"Takes too long. And the dock master keeps a list, too. I was home with my wife."

Gail made a slight shrug. "To answer your question—No. I don't think you shot him."-

They turned to walk back toward the hangar. On the way out they had passed a sleek little twin-engine jet with a long nose and swept-back wings. This one had no markings other than its FAA numbers on the tail.

Gail said, "Did you fly to Cuba in this?"

"Jesus, no. U.S. Customs and the Navy track the position of every airplane in the Caribbean. I leave it in Mexico or Jamaica, then go from there."

"With your false identity papers. You aren't afraid of getting arrested or shot?"

"That's what makes it fun."

Without saying so, Gail began to see how Rebecca Dixon had grown tired of her husband's adventures— if that's what they were. She stopped walking. "One more question?"

A few paces past her, Dixon checked his watch. "One more."

"Why did you and Thomas Nolan go to Costa Rica?"

There was a brief moment of puzzlement, then it hit him. "And where did you get that?"

"Jane Fyfield. Tom was explaining to her why he had to leave Havana ahead of schedule."

"I gave him a ride," Dixon said. "He asked if I could take him to Costa Rica. He'd been there the year before on vacation and inadvertently left a suitcase. A friend was keeping it for him. So we went over to Mexico, picked up the plane, then headed south."

"A little out of the way for you, wasn't it?"

"Not cruising at five hundred knots."

"The friend couldn't ship the suitcase back?"

"Tom said no."

"What was in there?" Gail asked.

Dixon grinned at her. "I think we're on question four already. I waited at the bar in the airport in San José for a couple of hours till Tom came back. He didn't say, I didn't ask. We refueled and got back to Miami the same day we left Havana. He said thank you, goodbye, see you for
Don Giovanni,
and that was that."

"You helped him smuggle something into the U.S.," Gail said.

"That implies contraband. I don't know what was in there, and I respected the man's privacy." "How do you know it wasn't drugs?"

"He's not the type."

"What about Customs? Don't they usually ask?"

"If they see it."

"What does that mean?"

"It means nothing. I took him to Costa Rica as a favor, and he brought back something that belonged to him. I don't inquire into private matters that are none of my business." Dixon raised his white eyebrows at her, then glanced at his watch. "I've got to pick up Rebecca. We have a funeral to go to."

Gail sat in her car in the parking lot of the Miami Opera wondering if Thomas Nolan would arrive before she had to leave. The funeral home was less than ten minutes away, and she had planned to meet Anthony there.

She sat in her car because she hadn't decided yet what she would say, or if she would speak to him at all.

It was not, technically, her car but the Ford sedan she was renting while her own car was in the body shop. She had decided to fix it, then buy something else. Even if a new windshield were installed and the bullet holes were puttied up and painted over, she still wouldn't be able to get into it without seeing Seth Greer hanging for one hideous moment on the outside mirror, his breath wheezing through a bloody and shattered throat.

Gail scooted further down in the seat and rested her head on the headrest.

Lloyd Dixon had just handed her a suitcase full of BS, she was sure of it. And by now, more likely than not, he would have called Tom Nolan and told him to lie, just as he had told Tom Nolan to lie the first time Gail had spoken to him. Speaking to Nolan might not produce any answers, but Gail wanted to look in his face and see how he responded.

She did not know if the suitcase had been real or fictitious. If real, Lloyd Dixon would have insisted on knowing what it contained. He was not stupid. Customs would have confiscated his airplane for smuggling. But only if the contents had been contraband. Which meant that they weren't.

Unless Lloyd Dixon had done it for fun. Quite possible.

The more Gail thought about it, the more certain she became of not getting an answer. What she wanted from Tom Nolan was not to know what was in the damned suitcase, but what Lloyd Dixon had really been doing in Cuba, and whether Octavio Reyes had been there, too.

She saw a gray van come across the parking lot. They went through the drill. Van pulling up to the side door of the rehearsal hall, driver's side toward the street. Bodyguard getting out, going around. Only the top of the rehearsal hall door was showing. It opened. Then closed. Felix Castillo reappeared. He was dressed for the role—dark suit, a black collarless shirt, and rubber-soled black shoes.

He did not, however, get back inside the van, but started coming across the parking lot toward Gail. It took her a minute to realize what was different about his left hand—there were five fingers on it. As he got closer, she could see that it was some kind of prosthetic device worn like a glove.

He leaned down to her window to see in. His heavy gray mustache had been trimmed, showing more of his crooked teeth when he smiled at her.

"Hello, Gail. Are you looking for me?"

"Not really. I was going to speak to Tom Nolan, but I chickened out." She told him where she had just come from, the Dixon Air Transport hangar at Tarmami Airport. "I just found out from Lloyd Dixon that he and Octavio Reyes are planning to do business in Cuba—when the regime falls. That could be next week or beyond our lifetimes. I don't know how patient they are. It might be a good idea to find out if they're doing more than talking about it."

"Did he give you any details?"

"They attended a University of Miami seminar on the topic, and Dixon was in Cuba during the investment conference two years ago." Gail paused, then said, "This isn't news to you, is it?"

He shrugged a little. "I might have heard something."

"Where?"

"You know. Around."

"What else have you found out from . . . around?" Castillo shrugged. "You should probably talk to Tony about that."

"Why?"

"Well. You know. It's his deal now."

"His deal? Whatever that means. How did you find out about Reyes and Dixon?" But Castillo straightened up from the window. "Felix, I asked you to look into this, remember? Octavio Reyes is the one causing grief for the opera. My client? I'd like to know what you found out in case I have to lean on him."

"You should talk to Anthony about it."

"I
will,
Felix. Anything to do with Octavio I run by Anthony, but that doesn't mean you have to leave me in the dark."

"Well, it's not up to me."

"Anthony told you not to tell me anything, didn't he?"

Castillo made a vague salute with his half-prosthetic hand and smiled at her again. "Nice to see you, Gail." He walked back to his van. She watched him open the door and step up to the driver's seat, the hem of his pants rising just enough to show the gun strapped to his left ankle.

CHAPTER TWENTY

A canopy had been erected over the gravesite. Mourners filled the space underneath and spilled out onto the grass in rows six deep. Gusts of wind played with the ribbons on flower arrangements laid across the coffin.

From where she stood with Anthony behind the last row of chairs, Gail estimated that two hundred people had followed the hearse from the funeral chapel to the cemetery. Seth Greer's elderly parents sat weeping between his sister and brother. Friends and associates at his accounting firm stared numbly ahead, unable to accept what had happened. Behind them stood members of every cultural and political organization in the city, as well as a couple of hundred miscellaneous onlookers.

Camera crews had filmed the arrival of city manager Alberto Estrada. Noticing the video cameras, Estrada had gone over to make the expected statement about tragedies bringing the community together. Uniformed police were keeping reporters away from the gravesite itself until the service was over.

Gail held onto Anthony's arm, feeling the tension in his body. Rebecca Dixon stood beside her husband in the crowd on the other side of the coffin. Slightly parted lips gave the impression that behind the dark glasses her eyes were closed.

Lloyd Dixon's aviator-style sunglasses turned slightly in Gail's direction, and she averted her eyes.

Were you really at home with your wife when Seth Greer was shot to death so close to me that I found his blood on my clothes?

If the exiles hadn't killed Seth, and Octavio hadn't done it, and a provocateur was an insane suggestion, then who had? Seth Greer had been well liked, hadn't gambled or done drugs, and the books at his accounting office were in order. But he was having an affair with a married woman. A woman whose husband picked up the extension and heard that her lover would soon be debating Octavio Reyes on the air. The exiles would be blamed if the lover died outside the studios. Men like Lloyd Dixon would know how to have certain things done.

Did he love Rebecca enough to kill for her? Gail wondered if he knew the truth about her past. Rebecca had said that she had told him about Los Pozos. Had she told him about accusing Emily Davis of being a spy for the CIA? Or brushing the mud off Emily's face and closing her eyes? Lloyd could be right: Too much honesty and someone will wind up wanting to choke you.

Gail took another glance at Rebecca. She was leaning against her husband. How many milligrams of what kind of tranquilizer were deadening her response to the sight of her lover's grave?

The burial in Los Pozos had been nothing like this. Not this blue and sunny day, these neat rows of chairs, and a coffin laden with fresh flowers. Here the dirt taken out of the earth was under a green covering made to look like grass. At some distance was a high hedge of glossy green legustrum, and just beyond it, a shed. The backhoe and shovels would be inside. When everyone was gone, cemetery workers would lower the coffin, erect a stone, and lay sod.