against.
The following events proved the Martinson instincts sharp:
1) Patrolman Kenneth Simms, recovering from a gunshot wound and probably considering another line of work, dropped by the station to visit his buddies. Taking note of the composite on a bulletin board, he said it bore a glancing resemblance to a guy who broke his jaw at Lefty’s, a bar on Washington that was now a coffee shop. The guy’s name, Simms recalled, sounded Irish and started with an H. He asked somebody to look it up. Harold James Healy.
2) Later that day, a Fort Lauderdale sergeant called Beach detectives and told them they might want to take a look at a bouncer in a joint called Sailor Randy’s.
And 3): Yesterday, an FBI fingerprint search spit out a match for a partial that had been lifted from the stereo in Manfred Pfiser’s room. It was identified as belonging to one Harold James Healy, last known address, New York City. With no help from the general populace, Harold James Healy was glowing super-nova hot.
Score one for Martinson.
The one thing they gained by releasing the composite was the likelihood of alerting the suspect to his status. And they created a task that would tie up Ron Robotaille for days. He was watching a tips hotline right now, unwrapping a piece of candy and sticking it into his mouth.
The FBI faxed a nice, neat package. Healy was born on 12/16/61 in Manhattan, and took his first fall on 5/23/78, for being a passenger in a stolen car. He earned an Adjournment Contemplating Dismissal.
On 11/12/90, he was arrested for possession of a controlled substance, codeine, and issued a summons. The judge slapped his wrist and Healy managed to outmaneuver the law until 8/15/94, when he was charged with assault in New York. His attorney plea-bargained it down to being a patron of a disorderly premises.
He did his very first bit a year later right here in the Dade County Jail. Tumbling on a slew of charges, including assaulting an officer, he got off easy. Nine months inside. Acevedo studied the mugs from Healy’s most recent bust. The French chick had a point. He did kind of look like Robotaille. It was a stretch, but Lili could see it.
She slanted her eyes at Robotaille, who was wearing a bored expression, taking an obligatory note from somebody on the phone. She looked from the mug shot to the composite to Robotaille. Healy wasn’t what you’d think of as ugly, but he was no Ron Robotaille.
Ron was great looking, and he was a nice guy, too, but he was so dull he made you want to scream. It took Lili two dates to figure it out. They had a decent, unexciting time at a restaurant in Aventura, and another night they went to see a boring movie, Robotaille’s choice, then for drinks in the Grove. Somehow or other, they wound up in Lili’s apartment.
Wait a minute. This was dishonest thinking. They wound up in Lili’s apartment because she was entertaining the idea of having sex with him, but when they got there, he wouldn’t shut up about his soon-to-be-ex-wife, which turned off Lili like a light switch. Robotaille managed to put two and two together. He wasn’t sure how, but he knew he’d blown it, and he didn’t ask Lili out again. Only now, even their most mundane exchanges were strained with a clumsiness that wouldn’t have been there if not for those two dates. Lili was sorry she’d bothered. If he wasn’t so handsome, and Lili hadn’t been so flattered, she wouldn’t have.
Robotaille looked over, and Lili quickly averted her glance to Healy’s mug shot. The look in Healey’s eyes was one of half-drunk exasperation, not that dead-lensed, clench-toothed, tough-guy stare that jumped out of so many of these pictures. Healy was trying out the you’ve-got-the-wrong-man stare. You saw a lot of those, too. Annick Mersault, that syrupy little pain in the ass, hadn’t done much with the shape of Healy’s face, or his nose, or his chin. But the eyes, she had gotten the eyes exactly right.
Wispy clouds splashed white like brushstrokes against the sky. It was a bright afternoon, a day for the Department of Tourism. Martinson was driving with the windows down. It was hot enough for the AC, but Arnie held out for the muggiest weather to run it, afraid that the shock of the cold air blowing on him could trigger a migraine.
Traffic was one fact of South Florida life the tourism people never got around to mentioning. This ride between Miami and Ft. Lauderdale got more aggravating every time he made the drive, and he did it only when it couldn’t be helped. The state started a highway improvement program a decade ago, and Martinson couldn’t remember the last time all the lanes on the interstate were open. He drove past coned-off quarter mile sections. Long stretches of road he swore were finished the last time he came this way had somebody in florescent orange flagging traffic to a virtual standstill. What used to be a forty-minute trip could sometimes take an hour and a half if you weren’t lucky. Highway improvement. He got off on Sunrise Boulevard.
Sailor Randy’s was in a strip of yahoo-joints that catered to a young crowd, go-go bars and indoor-outdoor booze shrines roping them in with goofball promotions. A sandwich board at the entrance to the parking lot said TUE: DRESS TO KILL WED: LADIES DRINK 2-4-1 ETC. Arnie wondered what you got for that ETC.
The club featured two outside bars and a cinderblock building that looked like a warehouse standing behind them. Inside, the concrete and cement trapped the stink of stale beer. Two Latin teenagers were dealing with a delivery, restacking cases of Heineken on a handtruck that was as tall as either of them. They wheeled it into a storage room, one kid pushing, the other bracing the load so it didn’t wind up on the floor. The deserted space had a weird feel.
Martinson knocked on a half-opened door and pushed it in. A man was sitting at a desk. He looked to be in his late thirties, with a rock star haircut and a beard flecked with grey. He looked up, saw Martinson, and said, “Hi.”
Martinson badged him.
The man introduced himself as Bryce Peyton, and stood up to shake hands. He was about 6’2” and he had huge hands, his right covering Arnie’s like a catcher’s mitt. He said he owned Sailor Randy’s.
“I’m investigating a homicide that occurred on March fifth,” Martinson said. “We got a tip from the Sheriff’s Office that this guy might be working in your place.” Arnie showed him Healy’s mugs.
Peyton pulled a variety of faces, squinting, bringing his eyebrows together, pursing his lips and pushing them out. No question in Martinson’s mind he knew the suspect, but he might’ve been debating whether to give him up.
Peyton said, “Healy, huh? He told me his name was Harry James.” He handed back the photos. “Am I gonna need a lawyer? Because if I’m gonna need a lawyer, you’re supposed to tell me. That is, if I’m not mistaken and I don’t think I am.”
Where was this guy coming from? Martinson said, “What would you need a lawyer for?”
“In case I was under arrest.” Peyton lit a Chesterfield. Now there was a brand you didn’t see every day. He took a sip from a glass on his desk.
“I’m just trying to run a business here,” he said. “Make a living and pay my taxes. Trouble with the law? I don’t need it.”
Martinson thought, pretty shaky. Maybe he was worried about the illegals he had stocking his beer.
The first two fingers on his smoking hand were stained to the second knuckle, from sucking those lung- busting Chesterfields right down to the nub, probably a good forty or fifty a day. Martinson wanted to tell him, There’s a reason people quit smoking.
“Listen,” Martinson said, “whatever you got going here, I don’t give a shit about it. I’m asking you what you know about Harry Healy.”
“He was this drifter type looking for work.” Peyton picked up his glass and drained it. It wasn’t water, it was vodka. “I felt sorry for him, but to tell the truth, I needed the help. By the time March rolls around, I get a thousand heads a night in here. Somebody’s gotta control ’em. Harry seemed like a nice guy, and he did a good job.”
Martinson said, “Where is he now?”
“I haven’t seen him in a week. He took Tuesday off, and he was supposed to work Wednesday, but he never showed up. He said he had experience and he worked like he had experience. He’s from New York, you know. He dropped the right name, so I hired him.”
“What name?” Martinson said. He had his notebook out.
“Frankie Yin.” Peyton inhaled a chestful of smoke and blew it toward the ceiling. “You ever hear of Frankie Yin?”
“Why would I have heard of Frankie Yin?”
Peyton’s irises shined with a reverential gleam. His hands gestured loosely, as if words wouldn’t do justice to
