'Ta-daaaaah!' sang Sondergard, and flipped a thin brown window envelope onto Karp's desk.
'It can't be!' said Karp, picking it up.
'It is! It's a miracle. I've alerted the Pope.'
Karp opened the envelope and read the amount on the green Treasury check within. 'What happened?' he asked.
Sondergard shrugged. 'Search me, Jack. About three-thirty the guy from the CG took a call and they packed up and left. A half hour ago a messenger arrived with these checks. I made some calls, but nobody could tell me what was going on. Basically, they just cleared our budget, pay, admin, travel, the whole nine yards. The word is, it came direct from Flores. In any case, we're in business!'
When Bea left, Karp called Hank Dobbs's office and was told he had gone home. He called the Dobbs home.
When the congressman came on the line, Karp said, 'I like the way you work. Our budget came through just now. We have checks.'
The was a peculiar pause on the line, as if Dobbs had forgotten the issue. 'Oh. Oh, yeah, that's great,' said Dobbs vaguely.
'No, really, I appreciate it a lot.'
'Good, fine, glad to help-so, how are you going to spend your new riches?'
'For starters, I think a trip down to Miami to see Mosca, and if he's got anything good, bring him back.'
'He's agreed to talk to you?' said Dobbs. He sounded surprised.
'So it appears. I'd like to get down there before he has second thoughts. In any case, with money, it's a whole new ball game. So tell me, how did you roll Flores on the budget? From this end it looked like somebody just flicked a switch.'
'Oh, you know-tricks of the trade, tricks of the trade. I guess water wears away a stone if it drips long enough.' Abruptly, Dobbs changed the subject. 'By the way,' he said, 'your wife is here. I believe congratulations are in order.'
'Excuse me? Congratulations?'
'Yes, she just bought my neighbors' car. I don't know how they do it, but the ladies know when we're flush even before we do. Do you want speak to her? She's right here.'
'Yes,' said Karp, baffled. 'I think I do.'
'How did it go?' asked Bishop.
'No problem, the guy showed up, dropped the package in the waste can, and left. It looks like it's all there. The film looks right too, but I guess you want to check out the whole thing.'
'He didn't see you? You weren't followed?'
'No, like I said, it went okay, a good dead-drop, like the old days. I guess the next job is to start scoping this Karp character out, right?'
'Yes, but not now. You need to fly to Miami first. I think it's time to close out some of our former assets there.'
FOURTEEN
The alarm clock brought Karp up out of confused dreams. He tried to cling to the dream state before it faded-something about Oswald, a lineup of Oswald clones in some dark police station, Karp peering into each identical face in turn, all smirking, a feeling of imminence, of some disaster that would strike if he couldn't pick out the real one. Men standing around, impatient, important, and there was something about Marlene in there too…
'What's wrong?' This was from Marlene herself, warm in the bed beside him.
'What? Nothing, I'm just getting up.'
'You were groaning.'
'Oh! Was I? I was having this weird dream.' He told her about it, as much as he could remember, and then shrugged and laughed. 'I have Oswald on the brain.'
'Your subconscious is trying to tell you something,' she offered sagely. 'This guy you found… what's his name…?'
'Caballo.'
'Yeah. You think he's the double. Maybe the real hit man.'
'Oh, crap, maybe, who knows?' said Karp, stretching, but reluctant to leave the warm bed for the barely heated bathroom. 'V.T. said maybe Oswald was his own double,' he added sleepily. 'Whatever that means. I'll believe anything at this point.'
Marlene rolled over so that her face was above his. 'Actually,' she said, 'I'm Oswald.'
'You are?'
'Yes, I had a sex change operation right after the shooting, and also plastic surgery and secret drugs to make me younger. Then, I manipulated you into marrying me, and the master conspiracy organized your entire life so that you would be picked for this job, where I could thwart the investigation by draining your vital bodily fluids.' She demonstrated some draining action on his mouth.
'If you're really Oswald,' he asked, 'how come you give such good head?'
'Oh, puh-leeze!' she crowed. 'Look at the pictures of him, or me, that is! Is that every ten-dollar male hustler you ever saw on the Deuce?'
'I guess you've got me there… Lee. Well, this is certainly going to add some piquancy to our sex life from now on.'
'Speaking of which,' she said, wriggling her upper body onto his chest, 'what time does your flight leave?'
'Eight-twenty.'
'Oh, good, we have time for a quickie.' She threw a hot thigh over his midsection. The oversize T-shirt she wore to bed had ridden up and Karp could feel the amazing heat of her sex pressing against his hip.
'I guess this means you don't hate me anymore,' he said among the kisses. She straddled him and set herself up, bouncing lightly on the tip before the first delightful drop.
'No, I still hate you a little,' she said, 'especially since you're running off to bask in the sun.'
'I'm not basking,' Karp objected, not very seriously. 'It's business.'
'Don't be silly, you'll bask your ass off, while I'm stuck in the freezing rain, but as you can see my hatred has fallen below my fuck threshold,' she said, and then she said, 'Aah!'
'Well, this sure as hell beats chasing muggers through the sleet on St. Nicholas Avenue,' said Clay Fulton brightly. They were driving across a sparkling Biscayne Bay on Broad Causeway in warm sunlight, Fulton at the wheel of the rented Pontiac, Karp beside him, studying a road map.
'Make the first right you can, onto Bay Drive,' said Karp.
'Hey, I been here before, remember? Nice neighborhood,' Fulton observed as they drove down a street lined with palms and clipped bushes flowering pinkly with oleander and hibiscus. 'We're in the wrong business.'
'Yeah, we should've been mobsters,' Karp agreed. 'On the other hand, he probably suffers from skin dryness due to overexposure to the sun's rays. It's a trade-off.'
Fulton made a turn and pulled to the curb. 'Okay, this is it, we're here.'
Karp grabbed a battered cardboard folder and stepped out of the car into the bright warmth of the street and the odors of flowers, hot stone, salt water.
It was a small stucco house, two-story, colored sun-faded pink with white trim. There was a low wall around the property, topped by a tangled bougainvillea vine. They walked through a wrought-iron gate and entered a small courtyard that contained a kidney-shaped pool, some chairs and loungers, a round table with a Cinzano umbrella stuck through it, and a redheaded woman in a yellow bikini, sunning herself on one of the loungers.
She lifted her sunglasses and peered at them, squinting. She was leather brown from the sun and her skin had the smooth and slightly oily look of an old saddle. Karp judged her to be in her late thirties. She had the sort of lithe body you get if you danced professionally in youth and you work out a lot after youth has fled.
