but don’t really want to be alone.”
“More information than I’m comfortable with, too,” Fiona said.
“No one wearing that much oil and that little clothing can have an opinion on what constitutes too much information,” Sam said.
Junior’s phone was registered to someone named Julia Pistell. “Any idea who this Pistell woman is?” I asked.
“According to Yvonne, there’s exactly one person in the United States named Julia Pistell with another phone record,” Sam said. “And she’s a college student in Vermont.”
“So she’s not a Cuban gangster?”
“Doesn’t appear so,” Sam said. “I’m going to guess she’s been the victim of identity theft, particularly since I ran her credit and she’s now the proud owner of ten credit cards, all in good standing, mind you, so that’s good for her.”
There was one number that appeared at least twice a day for a week; some days, it appeared close to a dozen times. There was another number that appeared five times in one day and then not once after that. Sam had circled the most frequent number in red pen, the other number in blue. It was far more organization on Sam’s part than I was used to. “Who’s this in red?” I asked.
“You’re looking at him.”
“He called you?” Fiona said.
“No,” Sam said. He waved his arms about. “This him. The Ace Hotel.”
“This isn’t a him. It’s an it,” Fiona said.
“Sister, I’m not real strong on the pronouns right now,” Sam said. “You’re lucky I’m not speaking in tongues anymore.”
“Why is he calling this hotel?” I said.
“He’s got a villa here, or his friend Julia does,” Sam said. “It’s been rented for a month.”
“I want to say, Michael, that I am liking this man more now than I did yesterday,” Fiona said. “He does have good taste in kitsch resorts.”
Renting a villa at the Ace Hotel for a month would cost upwards of ten thousand dollars, but that’s not what had me wondering what his motive was.
“Who is in it?” I said.
“No one answered when I called,” Sam said.
“You get a room number?” I asked.
“I managed to make sweet eyes at the girl behind the counter,” Sam said, “and when that didn’t work, I gave a bartender a hundred bucks and told him to meet us out here when he had the information, and that you’d compensate him then, as well.”
Sam was always happy to spend someone else’s money. “What about this other number?” I said.
“Ah, yes,” Sam said, “the plot thickens. Seems your friend Barry took a few calls from Junior, as well.”
Barry is a friend to a lot of people in Miami, particularly people with money to launder. If you want the best man in the business, he’s the man to go to. But I had a hard time believing Barry was working directly with an organization like the Latin Emperors. He tended to prefer to work with sole proprietors. Less chance of getting snitched out by someone… or getting shot. Barry could get you what you needed, but he wasn’t the kind of guy to consort too much with the more violent members of his profession, mainly because he wasn’t exactly handy around a gun, or a fist, for that matter.
“How do you know this is Barry’s number?” I said.
“Hours of intensive sleuthing,” Sam said, “and then I called it and he answered.”
“What did he say?” I said.
“First, that he was happy to hear my voice. Second, that he was curious regarding Fiona’s current romantic status. And third, that he was scared to death of Junior Gonzalez,” Sam said.
“That’s wonderful,” I said.
“I told him you’d call him, see if you could ease his beating heart a little bit.”
A common misconception about people on society’s fringe is that they have some indelible sum of street smarts that Joe Public does not. The truth is that you usually end up on society’s fringe because you lack a certain facility with the idea of cause and effect. Having street smarts really just means you don’t know how to exist in the real world where people are ruled by the idea that what they do will engender consequences.
That was Barry, in a nutshell.
“I’ll add that to my to-do list, right after saving Father Eduardo’s life,” I said. “What was he doing for Junior?”
“That’s what he wants to talk to you about,” Sam said. “He said it was just a consulting gig.”
“A consulting gig?”
“Ecomony’s tight, Mikey. Everyone’s taking on new job duties these days.”
“It’s true,” Fiona said. “I’m pondering a move into corporate sales and service. Like Blackwater, but with better outfits.”
Luckily, a hotel employee approached us before the conversation could continue between Sam and Fiona. He wasn’t young or hip enough to be one of the bar-tenders (all of whom wore tight black T-shirts and black pants trimmed in white, which made them look like lost, if fashionable, mimes), especially not with his gray hair, salt- and-pepper mustache and rather nervous demeanor. As he walked, he kept looking over his shoulder, as if he thought a tsunami was approaching, and even when he faced forward, his eyes continued to dart. His name tag said PABLO.
“Are you the people with the money?” Pablo asked.
“This your guy?” I asked Sam.
“No,” Sam said. “Where’s Louie?”
“On break,” Pablo said. “He sent me.”
“Why are you so nervous?” I asked.
“I need the money first,” Pablo said.
I pulled out my wallet and examined the contents. I only had about sixty dollars. That wasn’t much of a payoff, but I hadn’t hit the cash stash prior to our visit to the hotel. I handed Pablo the money, anyway, and waited while he counted the ones, fives and the lone twenty.
“This is only fifty-seven dollars,” he said. “My life is not worth only fifty-seven bucks.”
“That’s all I have,” I said.
“I’ll take your watch,” Pablo said.
“No, you won’t,” I said.
Pablo looked from me to Sam to Fiona. He lingered on Fiona for a moment too long.
“The leering you are doing would cost you fifty dollars at any reputable peep show,” Fiona said. “And if you stare a moment longer, it’s going to cost you your kneecaps.”
Pablo whipped his head back in my direction, which caused beads of sweat to fly from his scalp. It was nice outside, but not nice enough to make this man a sweaty mess.
“Your sunglasses,” he said to me. “Your sunglasses, and we’re even.”
When you’re a spy, you sometimes make sacrifices for the greater good. I could buy another pair of sunglasses, so I handed Pablo mine. He put them on immediately. They weren’t quite his look, but he seemed content. “Follow me,” he said. That he didn’t also say “if you want to live” was a great relief.
8
Work for the government long enough and what you realize is that there’s no such thing as absolute privacy. Every moment you spend holding your cell phone is a moment that can be tracked. Every Web site you visit on the Internet can be tracked. Every search you enter into Google can be tracked, so if you spend a lot of free time searching for ways to blow up airplanes, be aware that there’s someone who is now looking for reasons why you might want to blow up an airplane. Everything you do behind the privacy of your front door is really just a sham: If
