The Consummata

else?”

Now he leaned forward, as if suddenly there was something worth being confidential about. “There’s a big old house, built in the thirties, one of them stucco mansions, out on Palm Island—near the old Capone estate. Nobody’s lived there for years, but it gets rented out, for parties and so on. Word is somebody took it for the next couple months. Paid top dollar to do so.”

“Somebody.”

“Some woman. Some beautiful woman.”

“About fifty?”

“No age. No description. I can dig further and get more, maybe lots more. I can put private eyes on it, if you have the bread. We could stake the place out, see who shows up. Doesn’t have to be your Consummata babe. It’s a long shot. Longer than any they play at Hialeah. But it’s a shot.”

Maybe not so long a shot. A mansion on private grounds, out on Palm Island—what better place to install a whipsand- chains playroom or two? Where better to set up an elaborate if temporary dungeon? Elegant enough to suit her clients, secluded enough to let them scream for mercy, or more. What else could the Consummata ask?

“Keep digging,” I said.

“And it will be worth...?”

Discreetly, I passed him another three hundred bucks off the roll. “Enough?”

He slipped it away. “For now. If you pay for the pie.”

“I’ll pay for the pie. You just deliver. I’m in no position to go out on the snoop myself.”

“I gather that.” He glanced at me speculatively. “Anything else you want?”

“Yeah. Get what you can on anybody engaged in traffic with the Cuban mainland. Even suspected activity. Castro shut the casinos down, but I hear he doesn’t mind selling the decadent West illegal dope. You know, just to help along the decline of democracy.”

Muddy whistled, or anyway tried to. “Brother, you’re asking for a lot. That’s military ground you’re troddin’ on. And what isn’t military is Mob.”

“Information can be bought. That’s your business.”

He shrugged. “I guess you’re right—anything and anybody can be bought, can’t it?”

“Not everybody,” I said.

CHAPTER EIGHT

I took a circuitous route back through the night to the beginning of the maze Gaita had led me into, reaching into my memory for the right paths and the tunnels that had been part of an abandoned Prohibition brewery.

At intervals I stopped, listened for any feet that might be following my own, wondering whether Walter Crowley would still have kept any of his men posted in the area— Muddy had said the chase had been called off, yet I knew Crowley had only recently sent my photo around to the hotels.

When I was sure I wasn’t being followed, I felt my way through the last brick-lined corridor that curved over me like a vault to the nearly invisible door at the end, swung it open on its silent hinges and took a flight of considerably less silent stairs to the top. I laid my ear against the panel, heard nothing, then slipped my fingers in the recessed handle and slid it open.

She was sitting there at the dressing table, her eyes so intent on fixing her makeup, she didn’t notice me until I was all the way in. Then she stiffened, snatched a pair of scissors from the tabletop, and spun around in the chair.

“Hello, Gaita,” I said.

She took in a soft gasp, laid the scissors slowly down, and allowed a tremor of relief to take her body.

“Morgan,” she said, “you bastard. Don’t do that again—not ever! People, they can get killed that way.”

“People can get killed a lot of ways.”

That melted her glare, which became a self-conscious smile as she realized the negligee had partially opened, and the suddenly shy little courtesan, with a deft motion of her fingers, folded the lapels one under the other, covering the fullness of her dark-tipped breasts.

“You look like you’re dressed for a client,” I said.

Her eyebrows rose indignantly and her nostrils flared with pride. “Senor Morgan— do not mistake me for the others who work here. Gaita chooses her own company—I am the only one at the Mandor Club with this privilege.”

“Any guy you choose would be a lucky devil.”

She shook her head and dark curls bounced off her shoulders. “These days I choose to be alone.”

“Expensive choice in your trade.”

She ignored that, cocked her head and peered at me. “You surprise me, Morgan.”

I sat on the edge of a bed. Soft, springy, with a tropical floral spread.

“There aren’t many places left for me to go in this town,” I said. “The hotels aren’t safe. They either have a photo of me, or my room blows up before I get there.”

Gaita let seconds drag past before she replied, never taking her eyes from my face. “That’s why I have been waiting, Morgan. I knew you would come back.”

“I thought you said I surprised you.”

“I didn’t hear you enter. But I knew you would come. You have questions?”

I glanced at the door, then back to her.

“It is locked,” she said. “Even Bunny does not have a key. We have privacy.”

That meant a guy could slap her around till she talked, or toss her lovely behind on the lush carpet and ravish her, and with a hand over her mouth, who would know?

Instead I just there sat on the edge of the bed, realizing for the first time how damn tired I was. Somehow a few days had slipped by and there had just been odd fragments of sleep grabbed in even odder places.

With no menace at all, I asked, “Why’d you pick the Amherst, Gaita?”

“Because it was a hotel I could afford. It was not a special place, only out of the way, where I thought you would be safe.”

“Nobody suggested it to you?”

“No, Senor Morgan. It was my idea only.”

“Your friend Tami—you trust her?”

“Completely.”

I slipped out of my sport jacket and tossed it on a chair. The .45 in the shoulder sling was showing now. “How’d you make the arrangements?”

“By phone from here.”

“I don’t see a phone in this room.”

“I used Miss Bunny’s private line.”

And Bunny had assured me her phone wasn’t tapped.

“Could anyone have overheard you?”

“I do not think so. The door, it was closed. I spoke softly. With my hand cupped, like this? No, I’m sure there was no one listening.”

“Could Tami have passed the information on?”

Gaita gave a slow negative shake of her head, her hair swirling softly about her neck. “Already, I have asked her. Nada did she remember mentioning to anyone, not even accidentally. And she knew of the importance of your escape, if not the reasons.”

“Uh-huh.”

Her chin raised. There was no fear in her voice but I could make out a slight movement in her dark eyes. “Morgan, do you suspect me? Do you think that I....”

“No,” I said.

“You trust me? You believe me?”

“As far as it goes. I just don’t think it would’ve gone down that way.”

“What way, senor?”