The Consummata

I shook my head; my belly was tight with disgust. “Getting even for indignities he’d paid to have done to him. Man. This is one sick puppy.”

“Yes,” Bunny said. “Someone should put him out of his misery.”

“But this is great,” I said, beaming at her.

“Great?”

“Now we have a lead. Now we know how he gets his jollies, and it’s from a menu served up at a limited number of venues. You must know other houses or girls working solo, doing the S & M thing. It’s a way to find him.”

Bunny’s eyes were tight. “I think you will find Mr. Halaquez is banned from all such establishments, and the word’s gotten around among the women who work the bondage trade out of their apartments, as well. But I will give you a list, if you think that may help.”

“Sure. It’s a start.”

“The only other thing, Morgan...but it’s a long shot.”

“Hell. Guys get rich playing long shots. Go.”

Again she chose her words carefully. “There is a rumor... and for now it’s just a rumor...that the Consummata is setting up shop in Miami.”

I blinked. “Who or what is the ‘Consummata’?”

“A very famous dominatrix, at least famous in certain circles.”

“From Miami?”

“From nowhere. From everywhere. Sometimes she works alone, by appointment through intermediaries. Other times she has set up a location with other young women trained in the arts of sado-masochism. And, again, clients are by referral only. She has turned up in every major city in America and not a few in Europe. Her clients, they say, are among the most rich and powerful men in business and government. If she exists.”

“You don’t even know if she exists?”

“She is a rumor. A wisp of smoke. A legend. A dream. Lovely, a vision in black leather, they say...and, brother, would I hire her for the Mandor in a heartbeat.”

“How do I find her?”

Her laugh was inaudible. “I don’t think you can. But I can put the word out. If Jaimie Halaquez hears that the Consummata has graced Miami with her presence, he will certainly try to make an appointment with her. Any concerns for his safety, anything smacking of common sense, will fly from his evil mind.”

“Consummata,” I said, tasting the word. “What is that? Spanish? Italian?”

“Latin,” Gaita chimed in from the sidelines. “It has several meanings. One is...crowning touch. The other you might guess.”

“Sexual consummation,” I said.

“Got it in one,” Bunny said, cheerfully, slipping off her desk onto her feet.

I got up and faced her. “You’ve been a big help, kiddo.”

“Oh, you’ll be seeing more of me, Morgan.”

“You sure you really want that?”

She laughed. “Not sure at all. You might get ideas about raiding me. I wouldn’t put it past you...though why, with forty million bucks stashed away, you’d want to bother with small change like little ol’ me, I’d never know.”

“Don’t believe everything you read in the papers, Bunny.”

“About you, Morgan?” She slipped an arm in mine, walking me to the door. “I’d believe anything.”

Jaimie Halaquez had gone on the run with a purpose in mind.

He had tested the defenses and offensive capabilities of the opposition, and found them lacking in strength. His first kill had been made in a small motel outside of St. Louis, a young Cuban who’d been smart enough to find Halaquez but not skilled enough to survive. The next contact had been made north of Little Rock, and a third near Meridian, Mississippi, both resulting in dead emissaries from Miami’s Cuban community.

Traced on a map, Halaquez’s path took him away from the Miami area, then swung him back toward it again. These movements had nothing to do with reaching his final destination.

But wherever he was now, he was in position to make that final move.

The only thing that had me wondering was the relatively small amount of money involved. To some people— like those he’d taken it from—seventy-five thousand bucks was a lot of loot. If Halaquez made it to Cuba, and the dough had been converted properly, it could mean a lot more. Still, the Cuban exiles were, in their way, a national political group, and taking them on for this kind of cash was asking for trouble. Almost stupidly so.

And even if Halaquez did make it to Cuba, with the cash converted to a friendly-to-Cuba country’s currency, there would still be anti-Castro sympathizers ready to cut him down the first chance they got, and seventy-five grand wasn’t about to buy him perpetual protection.

A funny little hunch was scratching at me again. From one angle, this seemed all cut-and-dry, but from another it was sticky and wet. This was feeling like much more than just a small-time heist of $75,000 made worse by the betrayal it represented; to the Cubans of Little Havana, this seemed like a very big deal, but the reality was, the Halaquez score was small change.

So why did it feel like the big time?

Something seemed to be missing from the equation, and the longer I thought about it, the more that seemed to be the case. Offhand, it might look like a quick grab for seventy-five thousand bucks, and that could be enough of an incentive for anybody, even an amateur.

But then amateurs would hesitate at pulling off three kills, any one of which might get botched, risking Jaimie getting his ass slammed in some local jail. Halaquez could have disappeared into the vastness of America and somehow made it to Canada or Mexico, and become just another Latin louse with a grubstake. Instead, he’d hopscotched his way back to the Miami area....

Jaimie Halaquez had stolen money and left the state, and committed a trio of murders along the way, making this now an interstate affair, which meant the Feds were onboard. The FBI would have its ears to the ground and its own contacts within the Cuban freedom organization, so they’d know, at least basically, what was going on.

Whatever Halaquez was up to, it had all the earmarks of big professionalism, and the big pros don’t make a Federal case out of seventy-five thousand bucks.

I sat there in a Mandor suite decorated with an oriental motif, feeling ill at ease and even silly in a business suit padded out to make me look like a pudgy city councilman, hair powdered gray, and in pinched shoes that made my steps mince because I couldn’t help it.

The only thing that lent any comfort was the weight of the .45 in my belt and the three spare clips in my pocket.

Tami, a lush blonde who could have stepped out of the centerfold of the highest-end men’s magazine, kept looking at me through heavily made-up eyes that she kept half-lowered in deliberate fashion.

“Tell me, Morgan, if this were real life...would a girl like me really be attracted enough to a man like you to make her want to marry him?”

By “a man like you,” Tami meant the pudgy councilman I was pretending to be.

“If I were rich enough,” I said.

“Is that the only reason?”

I squirmed under the dark suit jacket. “Could be gratitude by way of blackmail. A guy like ‘me’ could have kept your sweet behind out of a jail cell.”

Long eyelashes, not real but pretty enough, fluttered. “What would it take for a man like the real you to be attracted to a girl like me?”

“Not much. You have it all going for you, sugar. But you need to know something...”

“You don’t pay.”

“Bingo.”

The living wet dream squirmed, looking at Gaita. “The man has confidence,” she remarked casually.

“Didn’t mean to hit a nerve,” I said.

“Oh, you didn’t.”