Florida Heatwave (16 page)

“Or if you turn me in. Nothing lasts forever.” I hung up the phone.

Less than five minutes later, I began conducting new research, and did not get up from in front of my computer until I had the information I was seeking: names and addresses for storage units in or around Manhattan. There were plenty of hardware stores around, so I wasn’t worried about where I was going to purchase the items to carry out my plan. As far as a large body of water where to dump a body, well, Manhattan was an island, so there was plenty of water to choose from. I was scheduled to fly up to New York in three weeks for a couple of interviews, so I would have time to investigate further.

The next day, I drove down to Florida City to find my last victim. It would be the last time I would be going down there.

BY JOHN BOND

I’m heads up
at the final table of the big one in the World Series of Poker at the Rio, against one of the top guns—Negreanu or Ivey or Doyle Brunson. Some part of my brain knows I’m snoozing in my unmarked Crown Vic, parked in the shade of a spreading banyan at Rio Vista apartments near the Miami River, languishing between deep sleep and wakefulness. But it feels real. My subconscious decides my opponent’s Chris Ferguson—the smartest guy in poker. Jesus they call him, with his flowing locks and beard. In Johnny Cash black with his Stetson and impenetrable shades like the eyes of some space alien, he reminds me more of
el Diablo.
He bets big, six times the blind. I peek down to two aces.

Engine running, AC blasting, routine chatter cackled from my Mobile Data Terminal—the twenty-first century’s version of the old police radio. I rolled over on the bench seat, a crick in my neck, struggling to hold on to the dream. Should I raise back or smooth call with my aces, try to trap? Ferguson has no respect for my action. Why should he? Nobody does. What would McKool do? Trap, surely. But I’m afraid my aces will get snapped. Life’s deck always deals me bitter cards. I decide to raise four times the pot. Either win it right there or maybe Ferguson will push and I’ll become world champion.

A fist slamming on the window of my patrol car startled me into wakefulness.

“
Coño
,” I muttered under my breath.

“Pablo! Wake the fuck up.”

Eddie Figueroa, my desk sergeant. We’d gone to the academy together. I rolled down the window. The sweltering June humidity poured into the Crown Vic.

“Some upstanding citizen called in a complaint about a homeless guy living in his car,” Eddie said. “Said it had been parked under this tree every day for a week.”

I stammered, unsure what to say. I’d been catching a nap at the Rio Vista most afternoons for a lot longer than a week.

“Didn’t you just get written up for a no-call no-show?”

I nodded my head. “Yeah, Eddie.” And about twenty tardies clocking in.

“Sergeant Figueroa. Aren’t those the same clothes you wore yesterday?”

“I guess so, Eddie. I mean Sarge.” My baby-blue
guayabera
and tan chinos. I had gone straight from patrol to McKool’s and back to work.

“I’m sending you home, Pablo. You, the lieutenant, and I are having a talk after seven AM roll call tomorrow.”

“That’s awful early, Sarge.” I worked the eleven AM to seven PM shift, Wednesday through Sunday.

Eddie threw me an angry look. “And don’t be fucking late.”

“I got no more sick or personal time.”

“Then you’re suspended without pay for the rest of the day.”

Coño.
That would go in my personnel jacket. Not the best career move for a guy about to take the detective exam. “Sarge …”

“Go home, Pablito. Get some fucking sleep. My wife could pack in for a tour around the world in those bags under your eyes.”

I drove to the little two-bedroom condo in Fontainebleau Park I share with my grandma. The Crown Vic’s a take-home car, one of the perks of my job as unmarked patrolman, the step between beat cop and detective. My parents died in a car crash when I was nine and Abuelita is all the family I know. She came to Miami in the Pedro Pan airlift in ‘62. Seventy-five years old, she makes me breakfast every day—always
café con leche, pan tostado,
and
plantanos maduros.

I slept like the dead for ten hours, then headed to McKool’s. Down the Palmetto to the Dolphin and across the south side of the airport, less than fifteen minutes. I like the riverfront—it’s the edge of my patrol district. I could make a good buck doing off-duty details arranged by the union, but McKool stakes me two bills of my first nickel in free chips when I come by his underground two-table poker game in a Miami River warehouse. The building sign says Miami Bridge Club; McKool even has a business license from the city. Running an underground game in Florida is a felony, but playing one a misdemeanor, not much worse than a parking ticket. Abuelita feels bad I work two jobs. I’ve never explained to her that McKool’s is only sort of a job.

When I arrived McKool called me into one of his cluttered back rooms—queen-sized bed, couch, TV with Nintendo, folding card table with four metal chairs, little desk with a computer for people to play online while they wait for a seat, framed tourism posters of Vegas on the walls, walk-in closet off to the side.

McKool likes that I don’t have baggage. No wife, no kids, no girlfriend—I can’t afford dating and poker both. My deal is I stay until the game breaks. Some nights I bust out early, and spend my time playing Nintendo. McKool calls me Blue, even though I’m plainclothes, and says he’d rather have me than hire a security guard. He has Cartouche, from his days in the Rangers and Delta, but he likes having a cop in the game. Especially a cop who puts his paycheck in play.

“Tell the Pizzas to skip the next lap,” McKool said to Cartouche. “I need to talk to them.” Cartouche looks like a toffee-colored Mr. Clean but bigger, right down to the gold earring—and he never smiles. Doesn’t talk much either, and what he does say is in an incomprehensible French-Canadian accent.

I bluff a lot, but people know it and tend to pay me off. McKool once told me good players design trap plays to use against players like me. Most people have a playing style—they call or raise or fold too much, bluff too much, try to run over the game too much, pay off too often or not enough, play too many or not enough hands. McKool says the trick is to encourage your opponents to make more of the kinds of mistakes they’re going to make anyways. Trap them into being themselves. That’s all too complicated for me—I play by feel. McKool says that’s just an excuse for me to avoid the mental work necessary to beat the game. One reason I play by McKool’s is he gives me poker tips—he says it’s better for him if I don’t go broke too fast.

Cartouche opened the door to the main room. Both tables were going strong, players eating and yakking and watching the NBA playoffs, chips clacking away. He beckoned to the Pizzas. McKool would never pull them out if it would jeopardize the five bucks a hand rake that pays his bills. McKool is all about the rake.

Joey the short one and Jimmy the skinny one followed Cartouche into the room. They’d showed up at McKool’s for the first time on a Sunday. Bobby Two-Ways brought them by; he’d met them at the Italian-American Club’s Saturday game, a wild and wooly twenty-five to fifty-dollar dealer’s choice shootout. I’d played there once, lost two weeks’ pay and never gone back. Their name wasn’t Pizza, of course. They weren’t even brothers, but McKool has a nickname for everybody and he called them the Pizzas.

“Yo, McKool, why you pull us out? The game’s jamming,” Jimmy said. Jimmy’s dumb, but okay. Joey, though, he’s a smart-ass. He always needles me in the game, tries to set me on tilt. You can tell he hates cops.

“Sit,” McKool said.

Jimmy looked at Joey, as if for direction. Joey shrugged and sat on the couch. Jimmy took a seat next to him.

“You guys carrying?” McKool asked.

Jimmy looked to Joey again.

“Why would that matter?” Joey said.

McKool has a hard and fast no weapons rule. And no drugs. Bad beats at the poker table and weapons do not mix well together. Bad beats, weapons, and drugs are worse yet. I leave my service Smith & Wesson 4006 and my ankle piece in my cruiser when I play. I suspect Cartouche is armed; either way the guy is a human weapon. McKool explained it to the Pizzas. They weren’t happy.

“In our line of work hardware is a necessity,” Joey said.

“You’d probably be better off in my line of work. It pays the bills and then some with no hardware needed; easy living,” McKool said with a smile. “Leave the heat in your car. Or check them with Cartouche. Or don’t play.”

No way would McKool bar these two fish—he builds his game around live ones. These two were doomed to go off for their last dollar. He was bluffing. Maybe. McKool’s a hard read. When he moves on a pot, McKool stacks the chips. I don’t know why it works for him but not me.

Jimmy looked at Joey. Joey hesitated, shrugged, then reached under his jacket and pulled out a Colt Diamondback and handed it to Cartouche. That’s a fine gun, a smaller version of the legendary Python; they don’t make them anymore. Cartouche reached in his pocket for a handkerchief then took the Colt. Joey nodded to Jimmy. Jimmy handed over two Glock G36s—the best semi-automatic handgun on the market in my opinion.

“That all of them?” McKool asked, looking hard at Joey.

Joey said to Jimmy, “The blade too.”

From out of nowhere Jimmy produced a wicked-looking folding gravity knife. Cartouche entered the walk-in closet and closed the door behind him, then came out a moment later without the weps.

“Cartouche will return ‘em when you cash out,” McKool said. “We don’t have to have this conversation again, right?”

After the paisans sat back in, McKool as usual sat me to the left of Florence, the ninety-ish trust fund widow from Aventura he calls Flapper. Shows up for dinner six nights a week, stays exactly nine hours, loses regularly and can afford to keep on losing forever—customers don’t get much better than Flapper for a guy like McKool. Sometimes McKool sends Bobby Two-Ways or one of the dealers to give Flapper a ride, but usually she drives her big Caddy, which astounds me because she couldn’t read a billboard with a magnifying glass, let alone see a stop sign or pedestrian. He puts me on one side of her and Bobby Two-Ways on the other because she always picks up her cards and holds them right in front of her face to see them. He knows Bobby and I won’t take advantage by peeking.

A couple of hands in an eight came on the river making me trips. Flapper checked. I mentally counted her down—a little over two grand in front of her. I bet a nickel, trying to induce a call out of her.

She came over top on me. “All-in,” Flapper said.

Feeling pot-committed and thinking I might have her, I called. Flapper showed the Jack-ten of spades—the eight that made my trips had made her straight, but she’d had me from the flop. She’d completely, totally, set me up to blow off all my chips. Even the blind-as-a-bat little old lady was setting trap plays on me.

I left the game just after sunup and drove to the MPD South District Headquarters in Little Havana and met Eddie right after the AM roll call. A woman was there as well—a suit. The LT introduced her as representative from Human Resources, there to witness my counseling. On television lieutenant’s offices are spacious, with glass windows. In the real world, they are cubbyholes, barely bigger than a closet—the four of us scrunched into the tiny space. The HR lady asked me if I wanted my union rep present, but I waived my right. The LT ran through the litany of my absences, callins, no call-no shows, tardies over the past year. A long list. They asked me why I came in late or called in so often and I told them I had trouble sleeping, nothing more complicated than that. The HR lady suggested I see a doctor. They suspended me for three more days without pay, told me if my problem continued there would be more serious consequences, and had me sign a counseling statement.

I don’t read poker books, but Bobby Two-Ways has a whole shelf full, and at his apartment in Surfside once I’d noticed a title that stuck with me—
Play Poker, Quit Work and Sleep Till Noon.
For the next three days I lived the life of a professional poker player. I ran good too, made more than my lost pay. My first day back at work I managed to punch in seven minutes and fifteen seconds late—technically I wasn’t tardy until 11:07:30. I didn’t get a tardy the first week, and started to feel I could balance my life as wannabe-detective with wannabe-poker pro.

The Sunday after my suspension I arrived at McKool’s and handed Lefty Louie, one of the dealers, my three bills to buy in, but he shook his head. “Big meeting,” Louie said, gesturing to one of the back rooms. “McKool wants you in there.”

I tapped on the door and Cartouche opened it. The Pizzas leaned against the far wall, arms crossed. At the table with McKool sat a bald guy with waxed head, about five foot two and damn near as wide. His hands, big as cinder blocks and perfectly manicured, sat folded precisely in front of him. On each pinky he wore a chunky ring, not diamonds as I’d have expected, but some kind of old-looking stone. I took a spot on the wall by the door.

“Blue, this is Big Tiny,” McKool said. “The Pizzas work for him. Tiny, Blue.”

The fat man looked at me, then back to McKool. “Your cop.”

McKool nodded. “Big Tiny wants to invest in my game. Says I need the muscle. I was telling him a little about my Army days. That I have Cartouche. And you. I’m okay with protection.”

“It would be a mistake to underestimate our value,” Big Tiny said in a high-pitched voice. “Big mistake. We got people. Our people got people. We’d take over your collections. Give you a spot to lay off your sports action. Make your life easier.” He picked at an imaginary spot on a fingernail, then looked up and leaned forward toward McKool, said softly, “And safer.”

McKool shook his head. “I appreciate your concern for my safety, but I don’t think so. Thanks for the offer, though.” He stood up, turned to the Pizzas leaning on the wall. “You boys want some chips?”

“Not tonight,” Tiny answered for them. “I’m sure we’ll be back.”