The Four Corners Of The Sky (52 page)

Sun splintering through the dirty window blinded her. “Was he in the car?”

The Cuban vigorously shook his head. “No, no, no, no, no. And its windows were open. But his jacket was caught in the front seat, with his wallet in it. His driver’s license. Jack Peregrine, West Palm Beach.”

Slowly, Annie thought about this. “A driver’s license in his real name?”

Raffy sucked wistfully at his coffee. “The cops think he tried to swim to the surface but didn’t make it. It’s not easy water.”

She thought further, motionless.

Raffy gently reminded her that her father wasn’t at all well. “Prison wasn’t for such a man. Take it from me. He would rather be dead.”

Annie sat up firmly. “He’s alive. It’s a con. He planted the coat and wallet. He sank the car as a decoy.”

Raffy searched her eyes. “You think so? I mean, I know you hope it but do you think it?”

She nodded. “I think it.”

The Cuban raised his eyes for a long moment as if his imprisoned past were painted in the ceiling and he wanted to study it. “Late at night in our cell, Jack used to tell me stories of the great stings. Like Ponzi. ‘A con’s a work of art,’ he’d say. ‘If it’s not,’ he’d say, ‘you might as well stick a .45 in a man’s back and steal his wallet.’” Raffy’s thin shoulders lifted his yellow rayon shirt in an apologetic shrug. “In regards to which, your papa did steal Miss Napp’s wallet…Well, he took her whole purse. Which Miss Napp claims had three hundred dollars in it, but that’s a
shvindel
, in my humble opinion.”

Annie asked him why, if her father was so
successful
a con artist, was he so hard-pressed for cash that he had to steal the purse of the receptionist in a cheap convalescent center and flee in another woman’s car? Why did he live so constantly in danger of the thing he said he hated most—imprisonment?

The small man pointed both forefingers at her like pistols. “I never said Jack was ‘successful.’ Because there were times when to be honest I didn’t think he was necessarily thinking things through. What I said was, and this is as true as truth,” Raffy brought the two pistols together and kissed the tips, “he was pretty gorgeous…I mean, artistically speaking.”

For a while they sat in the noisy restaurant, both thinking about Jack Peregrine. It had never occurred to her before—the way things don’t occur to children about their parents—that her father had style but he didn’t really have brains. She laughed at the realization. In fact, he’d been lucky that he’d survived all these years. After all, she’d had to come to his rescue when she was only five and six and seven years old.

She asked Raffy where he thought her father might have gone into hiding after ditching the Lexus
SUV
in the bay.

The Cuban bit at his soft lips. “I don’t know. He always tells me, don’t worry, Raffy,
mi amigo
, I’ll be in touch,
vaya con dios.
If he’s alive, he’ll get the word to us, that I know. Meanwhile, I am myself a wanted man—”

She interrupted. “I’ll talk to Dan Hart and see what he can do for you.”

“Oh Annie, Annie. ‘Therefore is wingéd Cupid painted blind.’” Raffy dramatically strummed an imaginary guitar. “That’s the wisdom of the Swan. Love is blinding you from the fact of the matter. Which is this above all: Never trust a policeman! If there’s one thing I learned from the street, because I never had the opportunity for a college education, it’s the son-of-a-bitch cops will say anything to close a case and the Miami police, in particular Miami Vice, well, they are not sincere individuals.”

The mournful sweetness of Raffy’s dark eyes as he offered this warning about Daniel Hart rattled her. What did she really know about the man she’d just slept with? What if Hart had been using her, making a fool of her? As doubt rushed like heat through her body, she felt sick.

“Eat something.” The Cuban slid a plate of toast closer. “But I’ll be honest. I didn’t care for your husband either.”

“We’ll be divorced in a week.” She squeezed her neck. “No. I promised him I’d wait a month.”

He asked her why she’d done that.

She rotated her neck side to side. “So Brad would lend me the plane to get to Miami to see Dad.”

Raffy smiled at her. “Ah, I told you, didn’t I tell you? With
familia
, you cannot take it or leave it. Not if you’re human, which you definitely are.” He poured milk in his coffee but it didn’t seem to help the taste. “Last night at the Dorado bar, your husband gave a one-dollar tip to my cousin Juan at the piano, a man with a large family to support, one dollar. As the Bard tells us, nothing can come of nothing. Not to mention he left the place with Skippings, pardon me, forgive me, but, well the word sounds like
balabuster
, if you know what I mean. She always treated Chamayra like gum on her shoe—”

Annie rubbed her fingers at her temples. “Wait a minute. Back up. Did you say Brad left with Melissa Skippings?”

Rafael nodded vigorously. “Yes!
La puta
who fired my Chamayra from Golden Days. But I have to be honest, it could be your husband was only waiting with her for valet parking.”

“I doubt it.” Annie burst out laughing, which hurt. “Melissa Skippings. Did you know this? She was married to Dan. I’m serious. They’re divorced.”

“Skippings and Hart, you’re making a joke!” The news stunned him. “Wait’ll I tell Chamayra, if she’ll stop hanging up on me. All the world’s a stage, Annie, or possibly more precisely, cable television. Coffee?”

She was struck once more by how oddly restful it was, talking with Rafael Rook, despite her horrible headache. With a comforting pat of her arm, he offered her more aspirin. “What with all the whips and scorns and fardels of life, even the extra-large bottle of Tylenol from Costco is insufficient. Such a world we live in. Such a world. Grandpapa[__] Simon Rook died for what he thought was America but it turned out to be only the same old bowties and wingtips piling their fortunes on our backs.”

Annie tried to finish the piece of toast but she wasn’t hungry. She had faith that her father had sunk Skippings’s
SUV
without drowning in it. But where was he now and how would he reach them? What should they do to help him?

Pouring salsa on his scrambled eggs, Raffy danced his fork above his plate. “Look at it this way: That your papa ditched her Lexus is infinitely superior to the alternatives.”

“True.” She sipped slowly at her tomato juice.

“But
zindik nit,
we have to look at all rational possibilities. It’s possible he was shuffled off. It’s possible Diaz grabbed him and wants to trade him. Jack’s enemies,” sadly suggested the Cuban, “the rotten bastard sons of bitches, if you ask me how much of the milk of human kindness is in them? Not this much.” He held up the heavy brown mug of coffee. “But it’s also possible, and let’s believe it, he just swam away.”

A memory came to Annie. “I used to dunk him in the pools. At the motels where we stayed. He always said he would never drown. I didn’t know this at the time, it had to do with his brother Johnny dying in the family pool. Dad said it wasn’t possible to drown him. He said he could float for a hundred years.”

“Like Mark Antony, dolphinlike.”

They sat a while longer.

Raffy sipped his coffee, nodding in thought. “Okay, here is my plan. You go to the bank in Cuba and get the jewels with the passwords. We put the jewels back in the Queen and we trade the Queen to Diaz for your papa’s debt.” He looked at her sadly. “Or maybe we trade the Queen to Diaz for your papa himself if that
s.o.b.
has got him for ransom.”

“But if Diaz had Dad, wouldn’t he call you or—”

Suddenly Raffy saw something behind her. Whatever it was made him fling loudly out of his chair, flipping it over. He ran, stumbling past crowded tables, weaving around waitresses as he headed for the kitchen doors. There he collided with an enormous bald waiter with a walrus moustache. With surprising dexterity, the waiter swung a large tray of fried eggs and hash browns out of Raffy’s path. Raffy slid between the kitchen doors.

Looking around for the cause of the Cuban’s abrupt flight, Annie spotted Dan Hart as he moved toward her through the crowded restaurant.

T
he detective made his way through the tables of noisy breakfasters. Maybe it was the blue of his cotton shirt that made Annie feel as if a wave were about to roll over her. When he took off his sunglasses, his eyes added more blue. Reaching her table, he stopped and shook his head in reproach. “You couldn’t wake me up?”

“No,” she told him. “Nobody could. How’d you find me?”

“Got your messages. Saw your rental car out there.” He pointed toward the window with a steel courier case he held. It was the case she’d hidden under her bed when she left. “So, do you know your dad wasn’t Coach Ronny Buchstabe?” he asked her. “Coach Ronny was eighty-six and married a hooker in her twenties and had a heart attack.”

She was hoping he hadn’t seen Raffy. “Ah. Yes. Thanks.”

Dan swung the case in the direction of the kitchen doors. “Rafael Rook had another appointment all of a sudden?”

She shaded her eyes from the sun that was glinting in the big window behind him. “Rook? That was just some man hitting on me.”

He righted the knocked-over chair and picked up the broken coffee mug. “Looks like you had a strong reaction.” Sitting across from her, he placed the case on the seat beside him. “You’re actually a pretty convincing liar. But Rafael Rook is peeking out of the kitchen doors at us right now.”

She glanced behind her, and in fact Raffy was undeniably standing with his head stuck out of the doors. She said, “Hey, come on, give that poor guy a break, Dan. I told him you’d intercede for him. He just wants to help out my dad.”

“Everybody just wants to help out your dad. You included. Well, I’m officially off the case.” Dan blew a flamboyant good-bye kiss in Rook’s direction. “So
vaya con dios
, Rook.”

She rubbed at her temples. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. You look like you’re seriously hung-over.”

She nodded. “I said I wasn’t much of a drinker.”

He looked solemn. “Annie, there’s something I‘ve got to tell you.” Her heart sped: what if he were going to say that their being together last night had been a terrible mistake? Instead he reached for her hand and kissed her fingers. Relieved and preoccupied with the feel of his lips on her fingers, she nodded. “One. You know your dad stole a car from Golden Days?”

She shrugged in an uncommitted way.

“Also.” He pulled a police bulletin printout from the pocket of his jeans. “My partner just took this off the
MPD
feed.” The gist of the police wire was that a stolen vehicle, a 2000 Lexus
SUV
, had been recovered from Biscayne Bay after crashing through a guardrail on the causeway. Inside the car were certain personal effects. There was no body in the car but fingerprints on the driver’s license had identified the driver as John Ingersoll Peregrine, who was currently wanted for questioning in three states, including Florida. He was presumed drowned. “You don’t look surprised,” Dan added.

Annie asked if the effects included her father’s wallet. After glancing through a two-page document, Dan said yes, the wallet was there with Peregrine’s driver license in it. She asked what the wallet looked like. The description didn’t resemble the wallet her father had shown her in the hospital. “Were there old photos of me in it? Baby pictures?”

He checked the list. “Nope. No photos in there.”

Annie smiled. “Then he planted the wallet and he’s not dead.” Odd how sure she was that he would always keep those pictures of her in his wallet.

“But there were a couple of IDs. Plus $280 in cash.” Dan handed her the report.

Looking over the list, she let her eyebrow arch. “You think my dad had IDs in his own name? No way.”

Rubbing his unshaved cheek, Dan studied her face. “You’re saying he dumped the Lexus and swam off? The thought did occur to me.” Grinning, he ran his fingers through his curls. “I sure hope Melissa kept up her car insurance. It was her Lexus.”

Annie laughed. “I heard that rumor.”

He set the metal case on the table between them. “Okay. This morning I wake up with your dog but you’re nowhere to be found. So I’m taking a shower and I hear the dog bark. There’s no one in the room when I get there but the door’s wide open. I see this metal case lying in the middle of the floor.”

“In the middle of the floor?” Her first thought was that Rafael Rook had robbed her before showing up at Rest Eternal.

“So now you’re surprised.” He swiveled the case on the tabletop. “Is this where you kept
La Reina Coronada?
”

Annie spun the combination to 2506 and popped open the latches. The Queen of the Sea was no longer inside. In its place, there was a note in printed capitals on Dorado stationery that said “
IOU
$1,000,000.”

Annie slapped the lid shut. “Goddamn it. My dad took the Queen.”

Dan looked at her with skepticism. “You and your dad and Rafael Rook—who just peeked out of the kitchen again—you’re in this whole scam together, aren’t you? You’re pulling a sting?”

She laughed. “On whom?”

“On me, for one. Don’t con me.”

She raised her eyebrow. “Ditto.”

Dan waved for a waitress. “I’m starving.” He took a piece of Annie’s toast, which he ate with a grimace. “Cardboard. Also, did you know your husband checked into the Hotel Dorado last night and was there looking for you at one in the morning?”

She asked who’d told him that.

“Juan Ramirez. Relative of Rook’s. He’s the piano player in the bar.”

“That man should have his own talk show.” She felt her neck flush. “Did ‘Juan’ tell you Brad was in there hitting on your ex-wife?”

“Melissa would hit on a mannequin if he wore nice enough clothes. I guess your husband would too.” Dan opened his arms in a comic gesture. “God’s speed and God bless.”

“Please stop calling him my husband,” Annie sighed, rubbing her head. She was thinking that she’d been an idiot to promise Brad not to sign any divorce papers for a month; she didn’t want to have to admit to Dan that she’d done so. “I’ve really got a hangover.”