somebody else was expecting Guel to return home. After the bell ringers left, he had eaten some cold beans from a can. Guel apparently liked black Cuban beans; Caballo had found a dozen or so cans in a cupboard and he had been living on them for the past three days, that and beer. He had also searched the back bedrooms and the bathroom, just to keep himself busy. He had found a tin box full of cash, which he'd taken, but nothing of significance.
When the shots outside sounded, he had placed the food and utensils under the sink and pressed his back against the kitchen wall to the left of the doorway. It was the right place to be. Behind the wall he leaned against, the living room led to the front door on one side and a Florida room opposite. The back door opened on the Florida room. The kitchen was to the right of the living room, connecting by an open archway. Another archway led from the kitchen to a short hall and two small bedrooms and a bath.
He heard the front door opening, then slamming shut. Steps. Heavy breathing. A rustling sound. Guel was looking out his front window, pushing aside the rattan blinds. Caballo tensed. More footsteps, coming closer. Guel rushed by him on the way to the bedrooms. To get his cash.
Caballo took a silent step, extended his arm, and fired twice at the back of Guel's head at a range of about four feet. The man collapsed. Caballo leaned over the prostrate Cuban and fired three more shots into the base of Guel's skull. Then he walked out through the rear door.
'What the hell was that?' asked Fulton, peering cautiously around the foliage, his pistol clutched high in both hands.
'What?' Karp was still crouched next to him, holding his hands out as if he had just done his nails, so that the blood dripping from his palms would not get all over him.
'Didn't you hear it? It sounded like shots. From in the house.'
'Well, shit, Clay, we know he's got a gun.'
'No, not his gun, another gun. Guel had a big piece, a.38 or a.357. This was like a little gun, a.22, four or five shots. Didn't you hear it?'
'No, my ears are still ringing from when you shot at him over my head.' He paused and listened, trying to ignore the ringing. 'Hey, I heard that.'
'Yeah, the door; our boy just went out the back.'
Karp jumped to his feet and started to walk around the hedge, but Fulton cursed, grabbed him by the belt, and yanked him back down again. 'Stay here, damn it! I oughta cuff your damn ankle to the fence, and I would, if I had cuffs.'
'Clay, I-'
'Just don't move, okay? If he gets by me and goes for his car, you just stay there, understand?'
Karp nodded.
Fulton, still crouched, moved in a quick rush down the concrete path to the door, flattened himself at the hinge side of the doorway, waited for a few seconds with his ear pressed to the door, and then slipped in.
Karp sat down on the pavement and worked on recovering his breath. He had a hole in his pants at the knee, where blood oozed, and his palms were beginning to sting fiercely. He pulled out a handkerchief and used it and a little spit to clean the road grit out of the scrapes on his hands and knee. Across the street an elderly Cuban woman observed him incuriously from her front step. In a solid Cuban working-class neighborhood like this, nearly everyone would be at work or school now; those that remained seemed in no hurry to report a gun battle on the street to the authorities.
At the end of the street a battered red pickup stopped and let out a man in stained work clothes. A school bus from a parochial school came down the street and dropped off three kids, who ran into houses. Another man, in khakis, a blue ball cap, and sunglasses, walked around the corner of the block, entered a tan sedan, and drove away. An elderly man came out of a house with a small dog on a lead. Then the street was quiet.
Fulton called to him from the doorway, and Karp rose stiffly to his feet and joined him.
'He's dead,' said Fulton. 'Our guy was waiting for him. There's a cracked pane in the rear door with fresh tape gum on it. He broke in and waited and shot Guel when he came in. Guel's in the kitchen; took a bunch in the back of the head with a small-caliber gun. Then our boy just strolled out the back over a little fence, into the next yard and away, while we were squatting in the fucking bushes. Shit! I hate this, this fucking half-assed police work. We should've come in here with a couple dozen guys and a warrant and sealed off… what's wrong?'
Karp had gasped and was staring wildly. 'Holy shit! I saw him. I just saw him! It was Caballo. He was wearing a blue ball cap, a skinny guy with sunglasses. He just walked around the corner and got into a car and drove away. And I was just sitting there, watching him. Christ!'
They looked at each other. There was nothing to say. After a moment, Fulton said, 'Well, fuck this! I'm gonna call it in and then we can wrap up and get the hell out of this town.'
'No, wait, I want to take a look around,' said Karp.
Fulton started to object, but then, seeing the expression on Karp's face, sighed and said, 'You're fuckin' crazy, you know that? Make sure you get his blood on your shoes and leave plenty of prints.'
Karp did not get blood on his shoes. There was a good deal of it on the kitchen floor and he had to step carefully past the corpse of Angelo Guel. One look at the two bedrooms and the bathroom told him that he was not going to find anything of relevance. All three rooms had been searched by an expert: drawers turned over, closets emptied, the mattresses and pillows slit and disemboweled. There was a blue metal bank box torn open in the mess, empty. Karp poked around desultorily for a few minutes, pausing to collect some Band-Aids and antiseptic in the ruins of the bathroom, and then came back to the kitchen, cursing under his breath.
'The fucker tossed the place too,' he said in response to Fulton's questioning look.
'You think there was something Guel had that he wanted?'
'Had to be. He did a real pro job on the place.'
'Uh-huh, back there, but not out here. He couldn't've, or the ambush wouldn't have worked. Guel would've seen the mess and been on his guard. He didn't touch either the kitchen or the living room or the back room that I can see.'
'Let's do it!' said Karp, brightening somewhat.
'No, let me do it,' said Fulton sourly. 'You sit on that couch and if I need legal advice, I'll ask.'
Karp sat on the couch and practiced first aid. Fulton started searching the Florida room. Forty minutes later, Fulton came out of the kitchen with a manila envelope and tossed it on the couch next to Karp.
'Where'd you find this?'
'Taped to the back of the fridge. Nobody ever looks there. Inside the fridge, yeah, but not behind it. Or under it. It's as safe as a-'
'What's in it?'
'Look for yourself. Bankbooks and some papers in Spanish. There's a ledger there you might find interesting.' Fulton had a broad grin on his face.
'Tell me.'
'Well, as far back as these bankbooks go, Guel's been depositing two grand a month in cash. Guess who from.'
Karp dumped the contents of the envelope out on the couch. The account book was the old-fashioned narrow black model, with greeny yellow pages ruled for double-entry bookkeeping. Karp was not a bookkeeper and his Spanish was rusty, but it was clear that listing income under columns marked 'actual' (verdadero) and 'reported to the tax man' (informe a impuesto) was not a generally accepted accounting practice. As far as the IRS was concerned, Guel's coffee and sandwich business was barely hanging on. But Angelo Guel was making plenty of money, much of it from a source identified in Guel's neat handwriting as PXK.
Karp shoved the material back into its envelope and stood up. 'Great, this is great,' he said. 'V.T.'s already got a lead on it, this PXK angle.'
'So what now?' asked Fulton, indicating the feloniously violated crime scene.
'What now,' said Karp pleasantly, 'is that I intend to walk down the block and call a cab from the nearest phone booth, pick up my stuff at the motel, and catch the first plane back to Washington. Basically, I'm fleeing, leaving you to clean up the mess here.'
Fulton laughed and sat down, rubbing his eyes. 'Some guy!' he said. 'He runs like a thief and dumps me in the shit, and after I just saved his life.'
'Hey, what can I say?' said Karp grinning. 'I'm a lawyer.'
'You didn't burn the place?'
