know what he was? He was an investigator for the Internal Revenue.'
'Jesus,' Evelyn said, 'he sounds like a lovely person.'
'No, he's okay. He'll tell you he was in the wrong business,' Maurice said. 'Now he spots an undesirable, a suspicious looking character, all he wants to do is take the guy's picture.'
'He sounds like a character himself,' Evelyn said.
'I suppose you could say that,' Maurice said. 'One of those quiet guys, you never know what he's gonna do next... But he's good, isn't he?'
'He isn't bad,' Evelyn said.
Chapter 2
'I'M GOING TO TELL you a secret I never told anybody around here,' Maurice said, his glasses, his clean tan scalp shining beneath the streetlight. 'I don't just manage the hotel I own it. I bought it, paid cash for it in 1951. Right after Kefauver.'
Joe LaBrava said, 'I thought a woman in Boca owned it. Isn't that what you tell everybody?'
'Actually the lady in Boca owns a piece of it. 'Fifty-eight she was looking for an investment.' Maurice Zola paused. ' 'Fifty-eight or it might've been '59. I remember they were making a movie down here at the time. Frank Sinatra.'
They had come out of the hotel, the porch lined with empty metal chairs, walked through the lines of slow- moving traffic to the beach side of the street where Maurice's car was parked. LaBrava was patient with the old man, but waiting, holding the car door open, he hoped this wasn't going to be a long story. They could be walking along the street, the old man always stopped when he wanted to tell something important. He'd stop in the doorway of Wolfie's on Collins Avenue and people behind them would have to wait and hear about bust-out joints where you could get rolled in the old days, or how you could tell a bookie when everybody on the beach was wearing resort outfits. 'You know how?' The people behind them would be waiting and somebody would say, 'How?' Maurice would say, 'Everybody wore their sport shirts open usually except bookies. A bookie always had the top button buttoned. It was like a trademark.' He would repeat it a few more times waiting for a table. 'Yeah, they always had that top button buttoned, the bookies.
'Edward G. Robinson was in the picture they were making. Very dapper guy.' Maurice pinched the knot of his tie, brought his hand down in a smoothing gesture over his pale blue, tropical sports jacket. 'You'd see 'em at the Cardozo, the whole crew, all these Hollywood people, and at the dog track used to be down by the pier, right on First Street. No, it was between Biscayne and Harley.'
'I know... You gonna get in the car?'
'See, I tell the old ladies I only manage the place so they don't bug me. They got nothing to do, sit out front but complain. Use to be the colored guys, now it's the Cubans, the Haitians, making noise on the street, grabbing their purses. Graubers, they call 'em, momzers, loomps. 'Run the loomps off, Morris. Keep them away from here, and the nabkas.' That's the hookers. I'm starting to sound like 'em, these almoonas with the dyed hair. I call 'em my bluebirds, they love it.'
'Let me ask you,' LaBrava said, leaving himself open but curious about something. 'The woman we're going to see, she's your partner?'
'The lady we're gonna rescue, who I think's got a problem,' Maurice said, looking up at the hotel; one hand on the car that was an old-model Mercedes with vertical twin headlights, the car once cream-colored but now without lustre. 'That's why I mention it. She starts talking about the hotel you'll know what she's talking about. I owned the one next door, too, but I sold it in '68. Somebody should've tied me to a toilet, wait for the real estate boom.'
'What, the Andrea? You owned that, too?'
'It used to be the Esther, I changed the name of both of 'em. Come here.' Maurice took LaBrava by the arm, away from the car. 'The streetlight, you can't see it good. All right, see the two names up there? Read 'em so they go together. What's it say?'
There were lighted windows along the block of three- and four-story hotels, pale stucco in faded pastels, streamlined moderne facing the Atlantic from a time past: each hotel expressing its own tropical deco image in speed lines, wraparound corners, accents in glass brick, bas relief palm trees and mermaids.
'It says the Andrea,' LaBrava said, 'and the Della Robbia.'
'No, it don't say the Andrea and the Della Robbia.' Maurice held onto LaBrava's arm, pointing now. 'Read it.'
'It's too dark.'
'I can see it you can see it. Look. You read it straight across it says Andrea Della Robbia. He was a famous Italian sculptor back, I don't know, the fourteen, fifteen hundreds. They name these places the Esther, the Dorothy--what kind of name is that for a hotel on South Miami Beach? I mean back then. Now it don't matter. South Bronx south, it's getting almost as bad.'
'Della Robbia,' LaBrava said. 'It's a nice name. We going?'
'You say it, Della Robbia,' Maurice said, rolling the name with a soft, Mediterranean flourish, tasting it on his tongue, the sound giving him pleasure. 'Then the son of a bitch I sold it to--how do you like this guy? He paints the Andrea all white, changes the style of the lettering and ruins the composition. See, both hotels before were a nice pale yellow, dark green letters, dark green the decoration parts, the names read together like they were suppose to.'
LaBrava said, 'You think anybody ever looks up there?'
'Forget I told you,' Maurice said. They walked back to the car and he stopped again before getting in. 'Wait. I want to take a camera with us.'
'It's in the trunk.'
'Which one?'
'The Leica CL.'
'And a flash?'
'In the case.'
Maurice paused. 'You gonna wear that shirt, uh?'
LaBrava's white shirt bore a pattern of bananas, pineapples and oranges. 'It's brand new, first time I've had it on.'
'Got all dressed up. Who you suppose to be, Murf the Surf?'
There was a discussion when LaBrava went around the block from Ocean Drive to Collins and headed south to Fifth Street to get on the MacArthur Causeway. Maurice said, we're going north, what do you want to go south for? Why didn't you go up to Forty-first Street, take the Julia Tuttle? LaBrava said, because there's traffic up there on the beach, it's still the season. Maurice said, eleven o'clock at night? You talk about traffic, it's nothing what it used to be like. You could've gone up, taken the Seventy-ninth Street Causeway. LaBrava said, you want to drive or you want me to?
They didn't get too far on I-95 before they came to all four lanes backed up, approaching the 112 interchange, brake lights popping on and off as far ahead as they could see. Crawling along in low gear, stopping, starting, the Mercedes stalled twice.
LaBrava said, 'All the money you got, why don't you buy a new car?'
Maurice said, 'You know what you're talking about? This car's a classic, collector's model.'
'Then you oughta get a tune.'
Maurice said, 'What do you mean, all the money I got?'
'You told me you were a millionaire one time.'
'Used to be,' Maurice said. 'I spent most of my dough on booze, broads and boats and the rest I wasted.'
Neither of them spoke again until they were beyond Fort Lauderdale. They could sit without talking and LaBrava would be reasonably comfortable; he never felt the need to invent conversation. He was curious when he asked Maurice:
