Blood Relations (21 page)

Ryabin had told Sam he’d seen an open-mouthed inflatable doll’in black fishnet stockings caught among the wires. Nobody had consulted the rank-and-file before the scaffolds went up to install the thing.

Behind him the door opened, and Eugene Ryabin emerged in a white-on-white shirt with French cuffs. His holster and badge were on his belt. He pressed the down button on the elevator.

“I apologize for keeping you waiting,” Ryabin said. His accent turned his last word into waitink. “We’re interviewing a girl who says a man she met last night, a student from Holland, beat her up.” He shrugged. “The tourists are striking back.”

They took the elevator to the lobby.

Sam said, “I ran into Dale Finley just now. He’s aware you’ve been asking questions about Marty Cassie.”

“Where I come from,” Ryabin said, “they had men like Dale Finley on the police force. He would have used pliers on a suspect’s testicles. What did he say to you?”

“He assumes I’m out to get Eddie Mora, and it would be better if I lay off. Let Eddie go to Washington, then I can win the election in November.”

:‘Do you think Eddie asked him to approach you?”

‘I don’t know,” Sam said. “It isn’t Eddie’s style. Finley has a reason to act on his own. If Eddie gets some national attention, Finley will be back in action. He can forget the stuff we give him-rounding up witnesses, taking statements, serving warrants. He probably got off on working for the CIA, before the Cubans broke his legs.”

Beyond the automatic glass doors a long walkway slanted to the street. Among the trees between police headquarters and city hall, bums sat or lay on white concrete benches. Their ranks were thinning out now that warm weather had set in. Soon the sun would melt asphalt, turn puddles into steam, and leave the Beach prostrate and panting. Sam loosened his tie. He had left his jacket in the car.

He said, “Finley told me I’m wrong, by the way. Eddie wouldn’t commit political suicide over this case. Meaning he wanted it dumped for the reasons he gave me-the girl is lying, the witnesses cancel each other out, and we’ll bust the budget on a sure loser.”

Ryabin’s heavy brows lifted. “You believe him?”

“I might, except for the way Finley came at Ali Duncan. He tried to make her run, Gene. Just before she was supposed to talk to me, Finley tried to scare her off.”

Ryabin walked in silence for a while. The top of his head was about level with Sam’s shoulder. Then he said, “Why did Eddie Mora give you the case? That, Sam, has made me curious.”

Sam watched a mixed-race Hispanic woman coming out of a market across the street, pulling a small child by the hand. Bleached hair. No bra. Filthy white T-shirt knotted at the waist. She staggered enough for him to realize she was drunk.

“For whatever reason, Eddie wanted this case to go away. He thought I’d rubber-stamp his decision not to prosecute. I wouldn’t want to get sucked into South Beach.”

“Because of Matthew.”

“And because I wanted Eddie’s job. Call it a bribe if you want to. It feels that way to me now.”

Ryabin looked at him.

“Eddie said he would be grateful. And I was ambitious.

I wouldn’t question a damn thing.”

They waited on the corner for traffic to pass. Washington Avenue had two lanes each way and parking meters at the curbs. A few scraggly palm trees were stuck into narrow, grassy medians. In the space of a few years, Sam had seen the neighborhood shops die off one by one: the old barber shop replaced by a chic salon, the diner by a restaurant that charged twenty bucks for a plate of sushi. High rents were killing off the old places, and chain stores were taking over; ugly but profitable cardboard glamour.

“I have a question,” Ryabin said.

At a break in the traffic they dashed across the intersection. When they reached the other side Sam said, “What’s the question?”

“What is Dale Finley using to get your attention?”

After a second or two, Sam said, “He knows about me and Caitlin.”

They turned north. “Who told him?”

“I don’t know, Gene. He asked around.”

“Is this another reason you took the case? Because of Caitlin?”

“Christ, no. I didn’t read the incident report till after I told Eddie I’d handle it.”

A guilty grimace deepened the lines on Ryabin’s face.

“I interviewed her myself at the Rape Treatment Center, where she took Miss Duncan. I’m sorry. I should have called you.”

Sam waved a hand. “Forget it.”

“I see her sometimes, walking with her camera. I say hello. She says hello.” Ryabin added, “You never told Dina.”

“No. She met Caitlin when I was working at Frank Tolin’s office, and I didn’t want to tell her. I still don’t.

She had a rough time with Matthew’s accident. And then I imagine my daughter hearing about this from some kid at school who read it in the paper.” Sam laughed. “Caitlin never told Frank, either. And now Dina’s consulting him about a wrongful death suit. The whole thing has infinite possibilities for blowing up in someone’s face.”

Ryabin nodded. “And what is Dale Finley going to do, light the fuse?”

“Not if I leave Eddie Mora alone.”

“Will you?”

“That would be the intelligent thing to do.”

They were silent for a while, walking. They had decided on a bar a couple of blocks away that served sandwiches. Ryabin said, “So. What next? Do you let Eddie Mora go to Washington, to solve crime in America for us?

Perhaps work his way into the Oval Office in eight T, “I frankly don’t give a shit.”

Filling his lungs, Ryabin rested his fingertips lightly on the starched front of his shirt. “You should come lie on the beach, Sam. Get a tan. Relax.”

“You really get a kick out of this place, don’t you?”

“I know. Reading the newspapers you think Miami is worse than the South Bronx. But look. Sunshine. The blue sky, the lovely young people.” Ryabin nodded toward a threesome of girls skating past on long honey-gold legs, backpacks over their shoulders.

Blue sky and sunshine. Enough of it to blind you, Sam thought. Palm trees and bare skin and the endless, blinding glitter. Rushing over the causeway, climbing the stairs to Caitlin Dorn’s apartment, hearing the summer downpour outside the open window by her bed, believing things could be so simple.

“Do you still want to know about Martin Cassie?”

“Sure. Tell me about Martin Cassie.”

Ryabin said, “Thirty-six, born in Queens, father a trumpet player on the Tonight Show with Jack Paar. Attended but never finished City College. Real estate license with Tropic Realty and Investments. They say he made a sale three months ago, one condo unit. He married a year ago-a German named Uta Ernst, but she’s not living with him at present. His secondhand BMW was repossessed last month, and he is overdrawn at First Union Bank.”

Sam looked at him. “Very good.”

“He was the realtor for the building where Caitlin lives,” Ryabin said. “The Englander Apartments. Frank Tolin bought it from Anna. You remember.”

Anna was Ryabin’s wife. Four years ago Anna had owned the Englander. She had inherited the apartments from her sister Rivka, who had died when the building burned. Another tragedy for the women Eugene Ryabin had brought out of the Soviet Union.

Ryabin had suspected arson, but without a motive or suspect, the case eventually died. Frank Tolin poured money into the place, and by the time Sam left his office, Frank was still complaining that it had been a mistake.

Bad luck, he had said. Ghosts.

Ryabin continued his recitation. “Marty Cassie has coordinated publicity for Miami Beach civic groups-unpaid, but good for making contacts. He knows the city councilmen, the mayor, the heads of the departments. He pretends to have money. Now he’s claiming partnership with Klaus Ruffini.”

He paused to move around a man shouting through the open door of a small gift shop with a display of gay postcards and Tshirts in the window.

The man’s hair had gone a little wild, and his pants hung so low his plaid shirt had come halfway out. He was carrying a limp, leather-covered Bible with pages edged in gold leaf.

“What is so hard about that, my friends? Man was made for woman, woman was made for man. It’s simple. It’s in the Bible. Man for woman, woman for man. Is that a difficult concept for you to understand?”

A muscular man with a shaved head, heavy work boots, and tight denim shorts slit up the sides came out of the shop, unlocked his bicycle, and steered it into the flow of traffic.

“What a freaking circus,” Sam muttered.

“You know, Sam, in this city, if you act important, and maybe even fool yourself, and you do it with flair, and you wear the right clothes, and you have a good tan, people will believe you.”

Sam could vaguely picture Marty Cassie from more than four years ago: the perpetual smile, the jaunty little ponytail, the silk sport jacket.

“From what I’ve heard,” Sam said, “the Grand Caribe is Ruffini’s answer to Disney World.”

“Yes, like an island in the Caribbean.” Ryabin smiled.

“I went to the sales office for the condominium, which already is built. They told me there’s too much of Europe here, too much trying to be Cannes or Portofino. The Grand Caribe is more Miami. There will be buses to and from the discount malls, the cruise ships, and Orlando.

And of course room for a casino, which sooner or later the voters will approve.”

They stopped walking, having reached the place they had agreed on for lunch.

“Ruffini must be out of his mind,” Sam said.

Ryabin’s eyes danced with evident amusement. “No!

Klaus Ruffini understands American culture very well.”

They went into Pogo’s, a dark, wood-paneled dive with dusty windows and faded posters of old Miami Dolphin games, where a cold draft could still he had for under two bucks. By now the plain-clothes cops who usually came in for lunch had gone back on duty. A slender black woman in a gauzy Indian skirt wrapped over a swimsuit sat on a bar stool speaking into a portable telephone in a language Sam couldn’t place. There was a small lightning bolt tattooed on her left breast.

They took a table in the back and ordered sandwiches.

The waitress brought their drinks. Iced tea and a beer. The air conditioner buzzed in the wall.

Ryabin took a cigarette from his pack. “Don’t move away yet. The city commission is going to vote no on the Grand Caribe.” His gold lighter flamed, illuminating his lined face and throwing shadows upward from his tangled eyebrows.

Sam picked up his beer. “Nastrovye.” He closed his eyes and took a few deep swallows, then set the glass back on the wooden table in the ring it had left. He rubbed his forehead for a while.

“Edward Jos6 Mora went to Harvard Law School,” he said. “Did you know that?”

“No.” Smoke wreathed Ryabin’s head.

“Eddie graduated near the top of his class.” Sam stretched out his legs. “I was about midway down the list at the U. of Florida-which is not a bad school, by the way.”

Ryabin sipped his iced tea.

“He clerked for a justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, and he married a woman whose father owned half the sugar plantations in Cuba.”

“Is that so?”

“And Edward Mora, who learned Spanish from Berlitz, and who is so fucking preppy he buys his toilet paper from Brooks Brothers, would be delighted to see Klaus Ruffini in prison. One would think.”

“Yes. One would,” Ryabin said, and smoked his cigarette.

“And one also wonders, Detective, why Eddie Mora is associating with a lowlife like Dale Finley.”

Ryabin sat looking at Sam Hagen for a while. Finally he smiled broadly, and the gap between his front teeth showed. I thought-forgive me-that you were going to leave it alone.”

Sam picked up his beer. I thought so, too.”

in the entrance hall of the Cathedral of St. Nicholas, an old woman in a flowered dress sat reading the Bible on her knees, smoothing the pages with pale, twisted fingers. She looked up and smiled when Dina Hagen came in. Light reflected off her heavy glasses, ” Kalispera, Constandinamou.”

Dina nodded. “Kalispera, kyria.

She put money into the box for a candle and carried it into the small, overheated room where two dozen or more were already burning. She lit the candle and wedged it into the sand, then crossed herself, right to left, and kissed the icon of the Blessed Virgin.

An hour ago she had kissed her father on the forehead and told him she was going to take a walk. She had left him in his chair on the back porch, gazing dimly through the screen, his feet in slippers. Aunt Betty was clattering dishes in the sink. Go, she had said. I’ll look out for him.

No one was in the sanctuary. Dina walked slowly up the red-carpeted aisle, her hand trailing along the wooden pews. Each arch and curve of this church were familiar to her, the white marble and gold trim, the icons, the crystal chandeliers, the walls vaulting upward to a skyblue dome. God himself was painted on those upper reaches, and farther down, his prophets. The names of all four of Dina’s grandparents were written on stained glass windows. When her father died, he would be remembered on a plaque or pew, along with her mother, already gone. Matthew’s name was carved on a granite bench outside.

As a girl, Constandina Pondakos, like her friends, had dreamed of being married here in a long, white dress.

There would be flowers at the attar, the smell of incense, the ancient liturgy, everyone dancing afterward. But the priest said no, not unless her fiance converted.

Sam explained to him that yes, his mother had been Jewish, but he wasn’t religious at all. Father Demetrious had shaken his head, the long, gray beard moving across the black robe and heavy silver cross. My son, believing in nothing is worse than being a Jew. Sam would have to become Greek Orthodox. Or Catholic, if he preferred.

Insulted, Sam had stubbornly refused, on principle, he said, even when Dina begged, then threatened to give back his ring.

She had married him anyway, love outweighing pride.

Now, on principle, Sam was resisting the idea of a lawsuit: Matthew had been to blame for his own death.

Sam was wrong, of course, and in the end he would be glad Dina had insisted. He would understand. He knew the horrible perversities human beings were capable of. He had seen the smashed bones of the child who had been thrown through a window to his death. And he had brought charges against the men who had raped that poor girl on South Beach. Those were his causes. Dina would fight for hers, and eventually Sam would understand.