Hard Case Crime: Dutch Uncle (24 page)

Anton Canter stood his ground. He was leaning, arms crossed, against a Dodge with missing hubcaps. Wearing tear-away sweatpants in U of M green and orange, he posed one ankle over the other, one sneaker toeing the asphalt. A gold-plated rope with a Mercedes-Benz hood ornament was fastened around his neck.

Martinson climbed out of the car. Canter stared him down until Arnie got right up next to him, eliminating his personal space. He picked up his chin and looked off to his right.

Arnie said, “Hello, Anton. How are you today?” He could feel the heat coming off the kid’s body, his temperature no doubt going up, bracing for this roust.

Canter said, “What you want?”

“I was just wondering how you were doing. Funny I’d think to find you here, all this nefarious activity going on all around you.”

“I live up the block,” Canter said, still looking away. “You know that. Where you want me to hang out?”

“Look better for you if you were hanging out at your job,” Martinson said.

“Less you count Mickey D’s for the minimum, there ain’t no jobs.”

“And why would you wanna do that, when there’s all this money to be made out here? What’s your P.O.’s name?” Martinson scanned the empty parking spaces, sighting the usual curbside flotsam, cigarette butts, broken glass, spent butane lighters, looking for Anton’s stash. “Never mind. I can look it up.”

Canter was too experienced to have the stuff on him, but Martinson knew it wasn’t far away. “Still doing your outpatient, Anton? I could check that, too, but I figured I’d save myself the time and just ask you. Give us the chance to catch up.”

Canter mumbled something into the breeze.

“I’m sorry,” Martinson said, “I didn’t hear you. You’ve got to learn to enunciate, Anton. I mean, I’m standing right here, for Christ’s sake.”

“Every Tuesday, I said.”

“Down to once a week, huh? Is that enough? Because I thought that drug program taught you something about people, places and things. Like what you’d want to avoid if you wanted to stay clean. Now look at you. Associating with a known criminal element, in a very dubious location, doing something I consider to be questionable at best. Judging from your present circumstances, I’d say you were all set to go and get yourself dirty.”

He was standing so close to Canter the upper part of his chest was touching Canter’s shoulder. Anton took a step to the right.

There was a screwed-up paper bag under the Dodge’s rear wheel on the driver’s side. Martinson picked it up and reached into the bottom of it. He pulled out a handful of crack vials.

“Ho, shit,” he said. “What’s this? You dirty little piglet.”

“That got nothin’ to do with me,” Canter said. “That mess was in the street.”

Martinson was going to stuff the vials into Canter’s pocket, but the sweatpants didn’t have any pockets. “Yeah, but what if I said I found these on you? Who they gonna believe Anton, me or you?” He put the vials back in the bag and folded it.

“That’s entrapment,” Canter howled. “That shit’s against the law.”

“Against the law?” Martinson laughed. “Take a look around, Anton. The only two out here is me and you.”

He unsnapped the strap on his holster. Anton Canter was all done posturing. Martinson had his undivided attention.

“I can do whatever the fuck I want.” He smacked his open palm into Canter’s chest, knocking him off balance. “You understand me?”

This felt good.

“You remember Josephine Simmons, don’t you? The old lady you beat half to death?”

Canter said, “I didn’t do it.”

“She died.”

“I didn’t do it and you know I didn’t do it.”

“I know you got an alibi,” Martinson said, “and I know it checked out. The first time. That’s all I know. But the State of Florida takes murder very seriously. So there’s going to be a whole new investigation now because it’s a whole new crime. Isn’t the criminal justice system wonderful?”

“I swear to God,” Canter said, “I never laid a finger on that woman.”

“Then you better start thinking about somebody who might have, you little cocksucker, and the next time I talk to you, which is gonna be real fucking soon, you better think about giving me that name.”

Martinson tugged on the gold rope with the Mercedes logo, and Canter’s head came forward. He pulled it again, harder, but it stayed around his neck. Tightening the slack, the third time he used both hands, and snapping the clasp, he pitched the necklace into the gutter.

The Switching Station was an overgrown dive with delusions of glamour, and though it might’ve been plush once, that was a long time ago. Track lights illuminated the dregs of a shag carpet, and three high-backed booths lined one wall. A hanging lamp threw a dim puddle of light on a pool table. Somebody had taped an OUT OF ORDER sign on an unplugged pinball machine.

The bartender at the Calabash was right. The Switching Station had the dead-eyed makings of a tough, freaky crowd. Walking in, Lili counted six patrons and that number was instantly thinned by two. A pair of rugged Cubanos slipped out the second they made her for a cop.

Somebody’s grandmother was bitching about her landlord in a drunken, foul-mouthed Spanish, but Lili didn’t recognize the accent as Cuban. Salvadoran, Costa Rican. Something. A sideburned Romeo listened to her woes, nodding compulsively.

The bartender was dressed as a woman, but it wouldn’t be right to say he was in drag. He was making no effort to fool anybody. He had beefed-up arms, broad shoulders, and a thick, muscular neck. Sporting a pigtailed wig, he also had a dense mustache in addition to a solid five day-growth of beard. He was shirtless under a gingham jumper, a tragic Dorothy taken a twisted trail west of the Yellow Brick Road.

Lili badged him and showed him JP Beaumond’s mug shots.

“Yeah, I know him. Pulled a knife in here once.” He had a rumbling voice, not a queenie lilt. Lili had never seen it done quite like this before. The wig, the clothes, the beard. The guy must’ve been on the cutting edge of some new gay style.

“Is he a regular here?”

“He’s been in a few times. I wouldn’t say regular. What’d he do now?”

A pockmarked poppo called him away. There was one other customer at the bar, a white male, maybe twenty-five. He was wearing a Ricardo Montalban suit, and had his heels hooked over the rung of his bar stool. He tapped his feet in the air, eyes darting, waiting for the action to start.

When the bartender came back, Lili said, “Actually, I’m looking for his buddy. Young kid, tall, probably Cuban. You ever see him come in here with anybody matching that description?”

“You gotta mean Alex. This other guy, the short one, he’s fairly new to the scene. Alex’s been around for years.”

“So you know him?”

“Like I said, he’s been around for years. Miami native, if I’m not mistaken. Last name Hernandez, Fernandez, something real common. Did you try the Ron-Da-Voo?”

“Not yet. Have you seen him lately?”

“Not since the night the short guy pulled the knife. They came in together. Alex’s fucked up, like everybody else who hangs out here, but he wouldn’t hurt a fly. What kind of trouble is he in?”

“I just wanna talk to him.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” the bartender said. “He really is a gentle, sweet-hearted kid. But that other one is a chemical spill. Completely toxic. He’ll never get in here again, I can tell you that. Just do me a favor,” he said, tossing a pigtail over his shoulder. “Don’t give me up, okay? It’d be bad for business.”

“Not a problem,” Lili said. “I appreciate your help.”

“And I appreciate yours.”

This was years before the hype washed over this town like a tidal wave, when all of South Miami Beach was sick with a poverty and an off-the-graph crime rate no European land baron or transplanted nightclub impresario, no Hollywood schlockenstein wanted to touch:

The punk’s name was John Colangelo, a Times Square hustler whose bloom was so long off his rose he’d been niggled into running a short con with his boyfriend, Rudy Burkalter. They took out some classified ads and a PO Box, and had suckers mail in checks and money orders made out to their bogus company. It was a rock-bottom bunco scheme, but they weren’t after any prizes for originality. And it wasn’t like they were making millions or even thousands, though they did have a few hundred bucks coming in every week, enough to cover the rent on their flop, enough to keep them in jumbos and T-Bird.

The fight was most likely over money. Colangelo grabbed the first thing handy, a cast iron frying pan, and whacked Burkalter with it. Then he hit him again. And again. Twenty-six times all together, until Burkalter’s head was a squishy nub on top of his neck. Colangelo emptied their post office box one last time, cashed the checks, and hit the road.

Who knows what he was thinking? Maybe he just wanted to go where the weather was warm.

But Miami Beach was not then and not now an ideal location to go on the lam. First of all, it was an island, and east of the city, you were in the Atlantic Ocean. West, you’d run into the Everglades. South, there was one lonesome road in and out of the Keys. And north was the direction Colangelo had run from. He was at the end of the line.

Before long, somebody made him for John Colangelo, who was wanted for the murder of Rudy Burkalter. That same somebody, his greedy heart set on some imagined reward, phoned the NYPD and informed them that John Colangelo was occupying quarters in an Ocean Drive fleabag, where he was registered as Jerry Collins.

Homicide detective Pat Judice called Beach police and gave them the rundown on John Colangelo. He also gave them the name of the hotel where Colangelo was holed up, a building that had since been torn down to make way for the inevitable forces of progress, a hotel whose name, at the moment, escaped Arnie Martinson.

Colangelo was not there when Martinson and Frank Matzalanis arrived to collect the debt he owed New York State, not to mention the memory of Rudy Burkalter. So they waited. They waited six hours. And during that six hours, Colangelo, with an overwhelming longing to return to his salad days, or perhaps just in need of some company or some cash, made a date with a Philadelphia businessman. The businessman’s wife, it turned out, was in another hotel room way up Collins Avenue.

Martinson was stretched out on the lumpy mattress, and Matzalanis sat on a rickety chair, with the lights off. By then, it was dark. When they heard voices in the hallway, they stood up and positioned themselves on either side of the door. They drew their weapons. The door opened, and as Colangelo reached for the wall switch, Martinson stuck the barrel of his .38 caliber service revolver into John Colangelo’s right ear. The key still clammy between a thumb and a forefinger, Colangelo raised his hands. His trick let out a bark before he broke down in sobs.

Pat Judice arrived the next day with a partner, and they flew back to New York with John Colangelo. Colangelo confessed. He copped a manslaughter plea and was sentenced to not less than fifteen years. He would be just about eligible for his second shot at parole now.

Judice was a ginger-haired man with a dozen years in on the hotshot Homicide Division. Arnie was wondering how he was getting along.

“Pretty good,” Judice said, over the long distance line. “I feel pretty good for a man my age.”

“I don’t know what kind of time you’ve got,” Martinson said, then used up some of it breaking down the Manfred Pfiser case. How they were getting close to a guy named Harry Healy.

“A precinct detective up there’s working something on a known associate of Healy’s, a loser by the name of Jimmy De Steffano. They took a fall together way back when, and this precinct guy, he figures they’re never too far out of each other’s sight.”

Pat Judice said, “What’s the cop’s name?”

“Cop is named Don Kellog and he works out of the, let’s see, Ninth Precinct. The Ninth.”

“Right. Don Kellog, Ninth Precinct.”

“Collared our man not long ago, as it turns out,” Martinson said, “before he made detective.”

“Nice,” Judice said.

“Anyway, I need this Healy soon as I can get him. I’m not squeezing you, but we could really use a hand with this.”

“I’m not making any promises, Arnie, but I’ll help you out if I can.”

“That’s all I’m asking,” Martinson said.

Judice said, “I’ve gotta go rid the streets of crime.”

“Whatever you can do to make this happen,” Martinson was about to say, but by that time he was talking into a disconnected line. Just then, he remembered the name of the hotel where he arrested John Colangelo. It was called the Sao Paulo.

The computer hit thirteen times on the name Alejandro Hernandez. Six of them were incarcerated, and of the two out of seven who were still in their twenties and free for the time being, one was five feet, two inches tall, and the other one was black.

A similar search on the name Alejandro Fernandez spit up eleven names, nine of whom were currently guests of the state, so Lili requested the records of the two on the outside. They were the same height and the same age, but the one who had a criminal record stretching back to his sixteenth birthday had also managed to lose an eye somewhere along the way.

That left one Fernandez, Alejandro, also known as Alex. Born: 7/3/68. Height: 6’2”. Weight: 140. In this photo, he was a doe-eyed kid with close-cropped hair, taken when he got busted for possession of a controlled substance, a quarter-gram of cocaine. The judge suspended his sentence. Lili got into her car and drove to 15th Street in Hialeah, the address listed on his record.

The Medical Examiner’s report stated that if Pfiser was shot while he was standing, then he had been killed by a person shorter than himself. This eliminated everybody but Beaumond. Only they couldn’t ascertain whether Pfiser was standing. In that case, why not Healy for Pfiser? Why not Leo Hannah? And why not Fernandez, Martinson had said, and Lili thought sure, why not?

The house was finished with stucco, like most of the other homes on the block. There was a grapefruit tree in the front yard, and the dug-out circle around the base of its trunk had been filled in with white stones. A line of shrubs banked the front of the place, six squat bushes trimmed to identical height. Two taller ones, shaped to resemble Christmas trees, grew on either end of the row.