True Detective (26 page)

It was risky, to say the least: for Cermak. certainly, but for me, too. The smart thing to do would've been to turn this assignment down. Only it was never smart to turn Al Capone down. It was also never smart to turn down ten thousand dollars, which is what my client had promised me, after all- on the minor condition that I succeed.

So I did some groundwork. I got back in my forty-buck Ford and crossed the county causeway, passing by Palm Island (where the Capone masion was), white sunlight bouncing off pleasure-craft-cluttered Biscayne Bay. Then I was on the ten-mile-long, considerably narrower island that was Miami Beach, following Collins Avenue north through a collage of pseudo-Mediterranean hotels and apartment houses and mansions that (of course) faced the beach, with accompanying terraces and swimming pools (for those who found the Atlantic too crowded or salty or whatever). I rolled by white sand splashed with color by sun umbrellas and bathing-suited figures that scurried to and from cabanas bigger than my office back home; and glimpsed golf courses, private landing docks, the bougainvillea-spread walls of palatial estates, and palm-sheltered coves where yachts moored and speedboats raced. No Hoovervilles, though.

In a subdivision off Collins Avenue, away from the Atlantic and toward a placid lagoon called Indian

Creek, were some comparatively modest homes, not mansions, just vacation bungalows with a meager three or four bedrooms. One of these homes, which were spaced rather far apart with well-tended but not overly tropical front yards, was the winter home of Mayor Cermak's son-in-law, a doctor who, not coincidentally, had recently been appointed Illinois Director of Public Health. A rather modern-looking single-level stucco house, set back from the street and partially obscured by shrubs and palms, this was where Cermak was likely to be staying. I parked my car on the street and walked up the lawn, where a gardener was working on the shrubs by the house.

"Hello," I said.

The gardener, a dark little bowlegged man in coveralls and a floppy hat, turned and glanced at me with a moronic smile and kept clipping the hedge as he did.

"I'm with the Miami
Herald
," I said. "I was wondering when Mayor Cermak is expected."

"He come pretty soon," the man said. Cuban?

"How soon?"

"Tonight sometime." He kept clipping.

"Is anybody home?"

"They not down here."

Who?"

"The family. They in Chicago."

"Okay. Thanks."

He smiled some more, and then started looking at what he was doing.

I went back to the Ford. So much for Cermak's own security: that guy would've told John Wilkes Booth where Lincoln was sitting. On the other hand. Cermak would undoubtedly have a fleet of bodyguards with him. and security would be stepped up once he moved in.

Next stop was Coral Gables, which joined Miami on the west and, while not as overtly wealthy as Miami Beach, was a well-to-do little community. Some overly zealous city planner had put in a cream-color stucco archway you drove under as you "entered," limited the buildings to a mock-Spanish design, stuck matching awnings on everything, and tinted the sidewalks coral. The Miami Biltmore Hotel loomed above this contrived, palm-bordered landscape, a sprawling hacienda gone out of control, with a central tower adjoining an assortment of wings to face in a gently curving C the putting greens that were its lawn.

The attendant who took my car didn't seem to believe I could be staying at a place this grand; neither could I.I hauled my shabby suitcase across a lobby of potted palms and overstuffed furniture and potted, overstuffed politicos, who were scattered about the lobby in groups of three to six, smoking cigars, laughing, talking loud, having the grand sort of time the victors have when they've been dividing up the spoils.

FDR's right-hand man. Jim Farley- who was to be his postmaster general, and was currently his patronage chief- was not among the Demos loitering about the Biltmore lobby. But his presence was felt: between puffs of cigar and dirty stories were speculations about who would get what, and it was Farley these men were in Miami to see. It was Farley who was Cermak's target.

I had a reservation, and a bellboy took me up to a room with a double-bed and a view of the golf course. It was two in the afternoon; I called the desk and asked for a wake-up call in two hours. I went to sleep immediately, and when the phone rang, I jumped awake. But I felt rested.

I shaved and threw water on my face and got back into the white suit: I had a Panama and sunglasses, too. I looked like a few thousand other people in Miami. I left my suitcase in my suite, but took the two guns with me, my automatic in my shoulder holster (it didn't bulge much under the coat) and the.38 in my belt, where its short barrel nudged my lower belly.

The train station was in downtown Miami, on First off Flagler, near the majestic Dade County Courthouse, a big Gothic wedding cake of a building whose layers rose twenty-eight stories. The Florida East Coast Railway Station, on the other hand, was a long, low-slung mustard-color wood-and-brick affair with an arched overhanging roof from which a large sign said MIAMI, in case you forgot what town you were in: a dinosaur of a building left over from pre-boom Miami, a frontier-style station where you might expect to catch a stagecoach instead of a train. I left the Ford in the parking lot in back and wandered inside, where I bought a Miami
Daily News
at the newsstand, and found a place on the end of one of the slatted high-backed benches where I could get a view of all doors, and could sit and pretend to read while I watched and waited.

It was five, and Cermak was due in at six. The place was pretty empty when I first got there, but began to fill up quickly with others who. like me. were meeting folks arriving on the Royal Poinciana. which was what the Dixie Flyer out of Chicago turned into at Jacksonville.

I saw several pretty young women- white teeth flashing in tanned faces, tanned legs flashing under colorful print dresses- and exchanged flirty smiles with those who weren't arm in arm with a sweetheart, and a few who were, when the sweetheart wasn't looking. It occurred to me that this wouldn't be a bad town to get laid in. Unfortunately, every time I saw a blonde, it reminded me of my quarry; and every time I saw a dark-haired girl- particularly one with short dark hair- I thought of Mary Ann Beame.

That blond killer hadn't been the only thing my mind had turned over and over, obsessively, on the train ride to Miami. Mary Ann Beame was dancing around my brain like Isadora Duncan; she'd really done a job on me. I hadn't been with that many women. I was no virgin, of course- but I thought the same of her. And it disturbed me. I thought maybe I was in love with her. I also thought she was using me. like an actor in a play she was directing in the little theater of her mind. I never wanted to see her again; I wished I was with her now.

Why
not
pick up a Florida filly for the night? I didn't owe Mary Ann Beame anything; she was just a client. So she'd given me her virginity; so what? It was just another retainer, wasn't it?

Well, I wasn't in Miami for the sunshine. I was here on a thousand-dollar retainer, which wasn't exactly anybody's cherry, but it was nothing you'd want to lose easily, either. And my night was already planned for me: I'd have to stick by His Honor, when he showed up, possibly through the night. That's why I'd grabbed the two hours sleep at the Biltmore; that's why I had a Thermos of hot coffee waiting in the Ford.

Pretending to read the front page of the
News
for an hour led to my actually reading most of it, in bits and pieces. There was news of Chicago; it had been two days since I had left, after all, the snow just starting. The storm had paralyzed the city, but fifteen thousand of the unemployed had been hired to dig out Cook County, and efforts to provide relief housing for the down-and-outers in the parks and Hooverville residents had been stepped up. So there were no more deaths by freezing, though some emergency snow-shovelers got hit by streetcars or had heart attacks. That was as far as the
News
article went. No doubt some of the Chicago papers were cheeky enough to point out that Mayor Cermak left for Florida just after the storm hit: even in the year of the fair, that couldn't go unreported.

General Dawes was on the front page, too. He was in Washington, D.C., subpoenaed by the Senate Stock Exchange Committee to testify' about his role in connection with Samuel Insull. Insull was the utilities tycoon who during the twenties headed companies worth some $4 billion and had a personal fortune around SI50 million. There was a new board game I had played with Janey a few times: Monopoly. Insull had turned the business of electricity and gas, and railroads, into a game of that; and when he was finished, his paper empire was worth about as much as the little colored "money" you used to buy Boardwalk.

Just two years ago, the Chicago banks were turning the city's requests for loans down and honoring Insull's; one of those loans came from the Dawes bank, to the tune of SI 1 million. Now the General was in front of a Senate committee, and Insull was in Europe somewhere.

Not that anything would come of it: the General would weasel his platitudinous way out of it. But the fact that this had made the front page of the Miami
Daily News
meant that the embarrassment was nationwide- hardly the sort of publicity the General might hope for, in the year of the fair. It made me smile.

More pertinent to my present interests was the small inset article announcing a testimonial dinner for James A. Farley, chairman of the Democratic National Executive Committee, to be held by the Roosevelt for President Club at the Biltmore Saturday. Also as honored guests would be "a group of leading Democrats who are guests of metropolitan Miami this week." That would include Cermak, undoubtedly. Tickets were two dollars each and reservations could be made at the Biltmore. Looked like I better rent a tux. I wondered if I could rent one my automatic wouldn't unduly bulge under.

It was ten till six. and I'd seen a lot of pretty girls, but no blond killer. Normally, that would be okay with me; but any hope of my getting this over with quickly was slipping away. I'd have to be Cermak's shadow for the next few days or week or however long His Honor decided to stay in a sunnier clime; and tailing somebody who knows you isn't the easiest thing in the world to pull off, particularly over a relatively long stretch of time.

You met the trains outside, in front of the station, right out in the middle of the street, with the courthouse looming at left. The sun was on its way down, but it wasn't quite twilight yet, and I felt conspicuous, though I probably wasn't. It was just light enough out to justify leaving the sunglasses on, and I leaned against the building and watched the people waiting, watched the Royal Poinciana come up the middle of a Miami street. Then it was a scramble of redcaps with carts and porters and people getting off the train and others greeting them. Several of the pretty girls I'd been daydreaming about met their husbands or boyfriends and walked out of my life. I watched for the blond. He could be meeting the train; he could even have been on it. I didn't see him.

I saw Cermak. He came down off the train, looking overweight and tired, a hand on his stomach, a conductor helping him down the couple steps. Two watchful bodyguards preceded him- one of them was the son of Chicago's chief of detectives, a pale fellow about thirty; the other was Mulaney, the skinny cop I'd seen in Cermak's suite at the Congress, that time with Miller.

Speaking of whom, Miller and Lang followed Cermak off the train, and I said a silent
Shit
I'd hoped they wouldn't be along; I'd hoped their notoriety in the Nitti matter would've precluded Cermak's bringing them. But here they were.

Now my work was really cut out for me. The chances of Lang and Miller making me were far greater than Cermak, who might not recognize me if I walked right up to him; to him, I was just another nobody. But with Miller and Lang around, I'd have to keep my distance.

On the other hand, the four bodyguards, and their watchfulness, indicated Cermak was somewhat aware of the danger he was in. It meant this Florida trip might be at least partially an attempt to get away from Chicago till it cooled off, figuratively speaking.

Well, there was no blond killer here to greet the mayor. Instead, two wealthy-looking businessman-types in their late fifties approached him with smiles and outstretched hands. Cermak's tiredness fell away like a discarded garment and he beamed at them, his cheeks turning red, immediately pumping their hands like the politician he was. All the while, the four bodyguards kept around him, almost circling him, looking the crowd over. No one from the press seemed to be present; no fanfare at all. just these two businessman friends, who stood and talked with Cermak while a redcap rounded up his luggage.

I kept well back as I followed them around the station to the parking lot behind. Cermak and his wealthy-looking friends (who seemed to be apologizing for Miami's shabby train station) and Miller got into one of two waiting chauffeured Lincolns. So did Lang and the other two bodyguards; the luggage went with them.

I followed them over the county causeway to Miami Beach; as I expected, they went to Cermak's son-in-law's house. I didn't turn down the street after them, but pulled over and waited till they'd had a chance to unload the Lincoln and go inside. It was twilight by the time I parked across the road and down three quarters of a block, in the shadow of some palms, to keep watch.

The night was cool; I rolled the windows most of the way up, locked the doors, and sat in the back seat. That may sound stupid to you, but it's standard procedure: a person in the back seat is less noticeable, and people at a glance see only the empty front seat and assume the car has been parked and left.

Between eight and eleven, Cermak had several visitors: several more prominent-looking types I thought I recognized Chicago millionaire John Hertz- called on him. So did a carload of what I took to be politicos, come over from the Biltmore. Once in a while one of the bodyguards could be seen strolling across the front yard. That was a good sign, actually: if Cermak's bodyguards were keeping on their toes, I wouldn't have to keep an all-night surveillance.