ain’t fucking with us. I’m pretty sure this guy’s on the up-and-up. My sources tell me not to sweat it,” he said in his fifth and final message. “This guy’s a pro, a moneyman. He’s got no use for violence. Bad for business, he says. I’ll see you later.”
I was ten minutes early. The Black Flamingo was an abandoned art deco hotel on the wrong end of Miami Beach. There was nothing unusual in that. The most prominent design features in this part of town seemed to be foreclosure signs. Apparently, the cocaine economy had yet to trickle down to this end of the beach. As seedy as it was, there was a kind of decadent charm to the area, an echo of great things that once were. And the ambient sound of the ocean only added to its down-at-the-heels allure.
There was a gap in the plywood at the back of the old hotel, as Barto had said there would be. In spite of the ex-marshal’s assurances about the remoteness of violence, I felt better for having Mr. Roth’s little.25 in my pocket. There was no getting around it. I’d carried a firearm strapped to some part of my body almost every day going on fifteen years. Although I’d never had occasion to fire a single shot in anger, I felt naked without a gun. Unfortunately, Mr. Roth’s.25 had about as much stopping power as a spitball.
I snapped on my flashlight and stepped through the hole at the back of the hotel into what had been the kitchen. I could see the flickering shadows of candlelight beneath the doors that led out of the kitchen into what I assumed was the dining room. I made my way ahead around the dusty stainless-steel kitchen fixtures. With a flashlight in one hand and my other hand nestled around the.25, I used my right shoulder to push through the double doors.
I used a little too much nervous energy and spilled sideways through the doors. Before I could regain my balance, I stumbled over an old bundle of linens left carelessly in the middle of the floor. Except it wasn’t a bundle of linens at all. I think I knew that even before I hit the ground. The candle blew out.
“Fuck! Barto!” I scrambled to the body, clenching madly at the flashlight. In one panicked motion I flicked the flashlight back on and rolled the body onto its back. “Barto, are you all right?”
Only it wasn’t Barto, and he was as far away from all right as I was from Singapore.
“You’re a little early, Prager. I see you’ve met Gedalia Morenos.” Barto’s voice bounced off the tile floor and plaster walls in the darkness. “He was a big man in Little Havana. He had a special talent for getting
“Like the Alfonsecas, for instance,” I said, trying to keep Barto talking.
“Oh yeah, just like them.”
“So it was you who arranged for Alfonseca to take the fall for Moira’s murder.”
“Too bad you figured that out so late in the game, Prager.”
It was no good. The source of his voice was impossible to locate. But as long as the place stayed dark, I would keep breathing. I pulled the.25 out of my pocket and undid the safety.
If I could buy a little more time to calm myself down, I might have one chance.
“So I was wrong about Spivack,” I called out, pressing my belly to the ground next to Morenos’s body.
“Not completely,” Barto answered in a lower voice that didn’t bounce around the room quite as much. “Using a guy like Alfonseca to take the fall was Joe’s idea, only he wouldn’t go through with it all the way. It was such a good idea, too good to let go to waste.”
“You had no such qualms. Two ex-wives to take care of, right?”
“No problems at all,” he answered. “The bitch was already dead.”
Good. If my guess was right, Morenos’s body was between me and Barto. My showing up early had prevented Barto from getting the body out of the way and lining up a clear shot.
“So you went through with it without Spivack. He didn’t know about it until it was too late. And by then, he had to play along or risk being exposed himself.”
“Yeah, something like that.”
“If you kill me,” I shouted, “they’ll tie you to me through the checks I paid you with.”
“What checks? I got rid of those ten minutes after you gave ‘em to me. Anyway, why don’t you let me worry about that. Your troubles are all over.”
A blinding light flashed, there was a loud crack, and Morenos’s lifeless body jumped. It jumped again, again. I couldn’t afford to hesitate. I aimed the little.25 into the beam of light and emptied the clip, each shot aimed slightly higher or lower, further left or right than the last. Something clanged against the tile floor. Glass broke. The room went dark again. Barto moaned, but I didn’t hear him fall. I didn’t wait around to see how badly he was hurt. I picked up my flashlight and ran, banging through the kitchen doors, into the sharp corners of the kitchen fixtures and out into the night.
I scrambled to my rented car, fumbling for my keys as I went. I forced my hand to steady and turned the ignition. It caught immediately and I was off. It was all I could do not to floor the gas pedal, but I couldn’t risk getting pulled over, not with Irving Roth’s empty pistol in my lap. I could also feel blood begin seeping out of the cuts the kitchen fixtures had gifted me with as I ran for my life. When I was several blocks away and sure I heard no sirens, I pulled to the curb and disassembled the.25. I wiped the individual pieces clean with the sleeve of my jacket. I threw part of the automatic off a bridge as I crossed. I tossed another piece down a storm drain. I dumped the empty clip in a garbage can near the motel.
If Barto was in any kind of traveling shape at all, I didn’t figure to have much time before he showed up at my motel. But I had something to do even before I cleaned up and got out. I put in a call to Israel Roth.
“Mr. Moe”-his voice was happy and a little boozy-“it was a joy to see you today.”
“You too, Izzy. I hear in your voice that you’re still enjoying the vodka.”
“Guilty as charged.”
“Listen, Mr. Roth, I need you to do something for me and I need you to not question me about it.”
“What’s wrong? Are you all right?” The airiness went right out of his voice. “Where are you?”
“I’m okay. I’m okay, but I need you to do this for me.”
“What?”
“Go to the local police station and report your gun missing. Don’t overdo it. Be apologetic. You’re an old man, they won’t be too rough on you. Tell them you had it with you this afternoon when you went to the store and when you checked for it, it was gone. Tell them something like that. Will you do that for me?”
“Are you hurt?”
“Izzy, please. I’m fine. Just do it. Do it now!”
“I’m doing it. I’m doing it.”
“I’ll call you tomorrow and we’ll talk about it then. Just to let you know, you saved my life today. Thanks. Bye, Mr. Roth.”
I hung up. I knew it would be better for me to check out immediately and get out of town, or to another motel at least. But I couldn’t risk the desk clerk at this motel or the next seeing me in the disheveled state I was in. I tore off my clothes and took a fast shower, scrubbing my hands almost raw. Luckily, none of the cuts I’d accrued were either deep or on my face. None were readily visible. I packed in a hurry, careful to keep the clothes I had just removed in a separate pillowcase.
The desk clerk was too busy with hourly customers to pay me much mind. I paid my bill in cash and asked for directions to Cocoa Beach. I had no intentions of going there, I just remembered the name from
I drove all night, fueled by a sick kind of elation. I was alive. A man had actually tried to murder me and I was still alive. But was he? I’d done it, finally. I’d shot a man. Or had I? I guess I’d find out one way or another. I’d never bought into that crap about violence begetting violence. I believed it now. There was a direct line from Carl Stipe’s murder to Moira’s to Spivack’s suicide to what I’d done tonight. What I failed to recognize was that a chain of violence, unlike basketball, did not come with a twenty-four-second clock. It didn’t matter that Carl Stipe had died almost thirty years ago. Once he was killed, more violence was inevitable.
I dumped the pillowcase containing the clothes I’d worn during the exchange of gunfire in the rear end of a garbage truck parked at a rest stop outside Tampa. A little farther north, I turned in my rental car and took a bus up into Georgia. I flew from Savannah, Georgia, to Charlotte, North Carolina, and from there into La Guardia. I called Katy to tell her I was all right, but lied about where I was. I called Wit’s hotel room in L.A. He wasn’t in. I left a
