of such types, you understand, but each service must have some of them. Ah, reckless, that is the word I was looking for. Reckless. So. Perhaps he died, from this. Or he has become old and careful. I'm sorry I can't help you.'
'No, you've been more than helpful, Mr. Reltzin,' said Marlene.
'I am happy to,' said Reltzin. 'Perhaps you could in return do me a small service.' He rose and went over to a bookcase and returned with a small portrait in a silver frame. A thin woman in early middle age peered out, squinting against the sun. With her was a younger woman, pretty in her dowdy clothes, and a little girl, in blond pigtails, holding her hand. 'My family,' said Reltzin. 'They were taken, of course. I tell myself, they would have been taken anyway, if I had returned, but… you perhaps have contacts, with the government? They must all be dead, but, if you could, I would like to know. If you could.'
'How did it go?' asked Bishop.
The man who called himself Caballo said, 'Hold on,' walked over and turned down the television and picked up the phone again. He said, 'No problem. So, there's just Guel left here, right?'
'Right. But the situation with Guel is that he's apt to have papers.'
'You're thinking a fire?'
'Yes, that would be best,' said Bishop. 'Make it a hot one.'
SIXTEEN
Tony Bones and his little entourage were easy to spot on the sun-sodden terrace of the Bal Harbour Inn. Karp watched them for a moment from the shaded entranceway. Occupying two tables of the twenty or so arranged around the curving terrace, they wore suits in pastel fruit colors, darker shirts opened down to the chest, considerable gold showing amid the hair there, bad shaves, and sharp razor cuts. Karp himself was wearing an inappropriate dark Washington-lawyer suit and tie.
There was a churning among the population of the two tables. Men rose and left in pairs and trios, other pairs and trios arrived. One man only was stationary amid this movement. Tony Bones was dressed in a pale tan suit and a dark red open shirt, and over this he wore a long, thin hatchet face, the mouth a lipless V like a shark's, flat black eyes, same fish. A central casting Mafia don, thought Karp; with a face like that he should have gone into installing carpeting and let the guys who looked like the family grocer run the Mob.
Karp walked slowly toward the two tables. As he approached, all the button men stopped what they were doing and looked him unsmilingly over.
Then Tony spotted him. Big grin, a wave. He didn't stand, he shook Karp's hand sitting. He was very short; he didn't want his people to see him standing next to Karp. Aside from that, the gangster seemed genuinely glad to meet him. As Karp had expected; this was an odd aspect of his long-standing relationship with the Honorable Society, in New York and, so it seemed, here in Miami. They always gave him a smile and a big hello, whether he had sent them to prison or not; maybe especially if he had sent them to prison. This confirmed Karp's impression that wise guys were essentially insane people.
Now Karp was being introduced to a covey of Joeys, Jimmies, Jillies, and Johnnies with indistinguishable vowel-terminating names. Tony Bones gestured him to a chair. The others drifted away.
'How's it goin', Butch? You want something? Coffee? You eat yet? Sure?'
'Yeah, I just ate, Tony. I guess you heard already.'
'Yeah, yeah, hell of a thing. The girl called me in the morning. Fuckin' Colombians!'
'Why do you think it was Colombians?' asked Karp.
'Hey, Colombians, Jamaicans, Cubans, whatever. The fuck I know! I'm gonna find out who and then they're gonna wish they was still back in the fuckin' jungle.'
'You're sure it wasn't an outfit?'
Tony looked insulted. 'Nahh! What're you talkin', outfit? What, somebody wants to send me a message, send Santos a message, they whack Jerry Legs? Hey, why'nt they whack my dry cleaner, my liquor guy? It don't make no sense, follow? You're sending somebody a message, it don't make no sense to send it in Chinese, you know? They want me to fuckin read it. They want to whack somebody, they go for somebody with some weight on him. Him, for instance.' Tony pointed out one of the Joeys.
'The other thing, it could be, maybe Jerry burned somebody. But I think, no, that wasn't his thing. He wasn't interested in business, he wasn't a hustler. You wanna know, Jerry didn't have much goin' for him upstairs, tell the truth. So why whack him, except some fuckin' jungle spic don't know any better?'
'You know this guy?' Karp slid the photo of Angelo Guel across the table. Tony looked at it carefully.
'This the one you think did Jerry? What, a Colombian, right?'
'Cuban. And I've got no reason to believe he had anything to do with the murder. In fact, I happen to think that whoever hit Jerry is going to go after this guy. Angelo Guel his name is.'
'You know who he is? The shooter.'
Karp passed him another eight-by-ten. 'I like this guy for it. He calls himself Bill Caballo.'
The capo stared at the photograph. 'How come you like him for it?'
'Mostly gut feeling. This guy's turned up in a lot of places, connected to the Kennedy thing in various ways. We were talking to Jerry about stuff that might pin down the connection between Cuba, the CIA, and the assassination. It turned out he knew a lot of good stuff. He got whacked for it, so I look at who benefits from having him killed, and who among all those people has a rep as a serious shooter, and I come up with Bill here. Of course, they could've hired some kid off the street too, but I doubt it. You wouldn't.'
'I wouldn't what?'
'If you wanted to kill somebody and you didn't want it traced back to you. Would you hire some kid for a couple of grand or would you get Jilly over there to do it? I mean, what's the best way of keeping it close?'
Tony nodded. 'Yeah, right, I see what you're saying. Not Jilly personally, to tell the truth, but let's say I got a guy of that type.' He tapped the photo of Caballo. 'So, you think this scumbag is the hitter for… for what? The people did Kennedy?' He looked at the photograph more carefully. 'Yeah! This guy looks like what's-his-name, the scumbag they framed, Oswald.' He compressed his lips thoughtfully and nodded several times. Tony Bones had dropped out of school in the tenth grade but he was a full professor with tenure in the Department of Comparative Conspiracy. It gave Karp a peculiar and disturbing sense of satisfaction to find that Tony Bones was not an adherent of Warren.
'We could find this guy, if he's still in town,' Tony offered.
'The only reason he'd still be in town is if Guel is in town too,' said Karp. 'Find Guel before he does and we have a good chance.'
Tony indicated the two photographs lying on the table. 'Let me keep these. I'll put the word out.'
Karp wrote the phone number of his motel on the back of Guel's picture, and then hesitated, holding the glossy.
'Tony, you're gonna tell me if you find this Guel, right? And if Caballo turns up, I need to talk to him too. No Johnny Roselli on this one, okay?'
Tony smiled. The flat shark's eyes were unamused. 'Roselli was a Chicago thing. Had nothing to do with any of the outfits down here. I tell you what, Butch. I find this fucker, I'll ask him did he whack Kennedy. He'll talk to me.'
Fulton was waiting on Collins Avenue outside the hotel, in the Pontiac, with the AC running. When Karp got in, he asked, 'How did it go?'
'Shitty,' Karp snarled. 'You were right, we never should've gone to see him. Crap!'
'What, he told you to get lost?'
'No, worse. He's going to look for Guel and if Caballo makes a move, he's going to grab him.'
'He told you this?'
'No, but that's what's going to go down.'
'So, what do we do?'
'Find him ourselves, you, me, and Al. Hell, we haven't even started. Maybe he's in the phone book. Maybe he's on late-night TV selling carpet-Crazy Angelo the Rug King. We could get lucky.'
