LaBrava

LaBrava said to Jean, 'I don't think the plan was to kill Shepperd Strudwick. It was something else. I remember he kept getting newspaper clippings that announced his death. To scare him...'

'Maier Suchowljansky, born in Russia,' Maurice said, 'that was Meyer Lansky's real name.' He traced his finger over a photograph of the Miami Beach skyline.

LaBrava said, 'I can't remember who played the good guy.'

Jean said, 'Maybe there weren't any good guys.'

'Right here,' Maurice said, 'this is where he lived for years, the Imperial House. His wife's probably still there. That's Thelma, his second wife. She used to be a manicurist, some hotel in New York. Met Lansky, they fell in love...'

'Victor Mature,' LaBrava said.

But Jean was watching Maurice. 'Did you know Lansky?'

'Did I know him?' Maurice said, moving to another photograph. 'MacFadden-Deauville... Lansky used to come in there. They all used to come in there. You know what I paid for a cabana, by the swimming pool, so I could run a horse book right there, for the guests? Woman'd send her kid over to place a bet. Forty-five grand for the season, three months. And that doesn't count what I had to pay S & G for the wire service, Christ.'

'But you made money,' Jean Shaw said.

'I did okay. Till Kefauver, the son of a bitch... You know who this is? The bathing beauty. Sonja Henie. We used to call her Sonja Heinie. Here's another spot, the dog track, you used to see Meyer Lansky once in a while. This spot here, the Play House...'

LaBrava looked over.

'... used to be big with the dog-trackers. Also the fight fans. Fighter from I think Philly, Ice Cream Joe Savino, he used to sell Nutty Buddies in the park, he bought the place about twenty years ago. I don't know what it's like now. It's all changed down there.'

'But you'd never move,' Jean Shaw said, 'would you?'

'Why should I move? I own the joint--most of it--I got the best beach in Florida...'

'Maury, if I'm actually harder pressed than I've let on--'

'Harder pressed how?'

'If I get to the point I'm absolutely broke, would you consider buying me out?'

'I told you, don't worry about money.'

LaBrava listened. Watched Maurice come back to his chair.

'Maury, you know me.' She was sitting up in the sofa now and seemed anxious. 'I don't want to become dependent on anyone. I've always had my own money.'

'This whole area right in here, from Sixth Street up,' Maurice said, 'we're in the National Register of Historic Places. That impresses buyers, Jeanie. We hold the developers off, the value can only shoot up.'

'But if I need funds--'

'If we see values start to go down, that's different.'

LaBrava listened. It didn't sound like Maurice, the old guy who loved the neighborhood and would never leave.

'Five years ago the Cardozo sold for seven hundred thousand,' Maurice said. 'Way they've fixed it up I bet they could sell it, double their investment. Almost double, anyway.'

She was sitting back again, resigned. 'What do you think the Della Robbia's worth?'

'Four and a half, five hundred, around in there. But listen,' Maurice said to her, 'I don't want you to ever worry about dough. You hear me?'

LaBrava listened. He heard Maurice talking like a man who had money, a lot of it.

They reached her door. She said, 'How about a nightcap? Or whatever might appeal to you.'

Was that from a movie?

Maybe it was the way she said it, the subtle business with the eyes. How did you tell what was real and what was from pictures?

She could surprise him, though--sitting close on the slip-covered sofa with their drinks, something to hold till they had to put them down--she could look vulnerable and come at him quietly with, 'Tell me I'm pretty good for an old broad. I'll love you forever.'

And his answer to that--like a knee jerk, reflecting his yes-ma'am upbringing--'Come on. What're you, about three or four years older than I am?'

She said, looking him right in the eye, 'Joe, I'm forty-six years old and there's not a damn thing I can do about it.'

Shoving numbers into his mind that would have made her a teen-aged bride in Obituary in the black dress, coming onto Henry Silva, leading him on, the two of them conspiring to sting her husband.

He pushed the numbers out of his mind by thinking: She isn't any age. She's Jean Shaw. And by looking at her face, at the little puff circles under her brown eyes that he loved to look at. If she wanted to play, what was wrong with that? Play. Maybe he could've been in the movies too if he hadn't gone to Beltsville, Maryland, learned how to shoot guns and taken an oath to protect the lives of Presidents and important people. Bob Hope, little Sammy Davis, Jr., Fidel Castro...

He said, 'Jean.'

Within the moment her eyes became misty, smiling but a little sad. 'That's the first time you've said my name. Will you say it again?'

'Jean?'

'Yes, Joe.'

'You're gonna have to be very careful.'

'I am?'

'I have a feeling you might be in danger.'

She said, 'You're serious, aren't you?'

Yes, he was serious. He was trying to be. But now even his own words were beginning to sound like lines from a movie.

He said, 'Jean. Let's go to bed.'

That sounded real.

She said, 'I'm hard to get, Joe. All you have to do is ask me.'

That didn't sound real.

Chapter 13

I HAVE A FEELING you might be in danger. All the next day he would hear himself saying it.

The tone was all right, not overdone, and he believed it was true, she was in danger. But it didn't sound right. Because people who were into danger on an everyday basis didn't talk like that, they didn't use the word.

He remembered the guy who wholesaled funny twenties standing up in federal court hand at his throat--the judge banging his gavel--and saying, 'Joe, Jesus Christ, all my life I been in shit up to here, but never, never would I a thought you'd be the one'd push me under.'

The Miami street cop assigned to paperwork, typing memos, said, 'I gotta get back out there, put it on the line with the fuckups, or I'm gonna be sniffing whiteout for my jags.' A week later the Miami street cop, still doing paperwork, said, 'Whatever happened to splitting heads, kicking the shit outta assholes? For the fun of it. Is the game still going on or what?'

The Dade-Metro squad-car cop, drinking Pepsi out of a paper cup, said, 'The guy had the piece, he was pressing it against me--into me, right here, under the rib. He pulls the trigger, click. He pulls the trigger, click. He pulls the fucking trigger and I come around like this, with the elbow, hard as I can. The piece goes off--no click this time--the fucking piece goes off and smokes the guy standing at the bar next to me with his hands up. We get him for attempted, we get him for second degree, both.' The Dade-Metro squad-car cop said, 'Did you know you rub a plastic-coated paper cup like this on the inside of the windshield it sounds just like a cricket? Listen.'

Buck Torres said, 'Who is this guy? Do we know him from somewhere before?'