LaBrava (6 page)

“I’m saying I want to get out of there,
now
, is what I’m saying. Clean out your ears. Take that girlish goddamn thing off while you’re doing it. I’m embarrassed to be seen with you.”

“Yes, but you don’t have the plan yet,” Cundo Rey said, not the least self-conscious, fishing now, pulling the line in slowly. “You got this woman has a big place, very expensive, you been with her, what, a few times . . .”

“I was with her last night.”

“Okay, she’s got a big place, a car . . .”

“Cadillac Eldorado.”

“Some jewelry maybe . . .”

“You spook, we ain’t gonna rob her.”

“No? What we going to do?”

“We gonna hang her up and flat skin her.”

Cundo Rey began fooling with his earring again. “Hang her up and skin her. Flat?”

“Only first, right now, we got to find out where she went.”

“You don’t want to wait for her to come home.”

“When’s that? She in a hospital, a rest home or what?”

Nobles paused, squeezed his eyes to slits and grinned, show the Cuban he had his number along with great admiration. “Be easy to find out. Man as nervy as you are. Be fun, too. What else you got to do?”

Three young girls with trays came by. Cundo Rey, fooling with curly ends of his raven hair now, working in his mind but always aware, looked up idly as they passed the booth. Nobles didn’t say a word to them, didn’t reach out or make a grab. He was serious today, all business.

He had started out, with his first hamburger, talking about a guy he wanted to stomp, a guy he didn’t know but wore a shirt with bananas and different fruit on it. Some guy who had . . . “sandbagged” him? He wanted to know where the guy lived. But first he wanted to find the woman who had been a film actress.

“You don’t have a feeling for this woman?” the Cuban asked.

Nobles said, “I want a feel I pick one about twenty years younger. This here is old meat. Good looking, you understand, but aged.” Nobles hunched over the table. “Come on. Ain’t any of us getting any younger.”

“I’ll tell you what it is,” the Cuban said, “why I hesitate. I don’t like to get drunk.”

“You have about five rum and Cokes, get you a little glassy-eyed’s all. So it looks real. I Meyers-Act you in there and you find the record book first chance, see where they took her. Glenn says it’s like a blue notebook. Be on one of the desks but not in that back office, the office to the west side of the building, in there. Bear right as you go in the front door. Blue notebook, it’s got the record of where everybody’s sent, whether they went to detox or the shelter or if they left with somebody, the name and address of the party.”

Cundo Rey said, “Glenn knows where the book is, why don’t he do it? Go in and ask where she went.”

“No, Glenn ain’t the person I thought he was. See, they was to ask him why he wants to know, Glenn, he’d start to sweat like he’s got little bugs up his ass, become twitchy, afraid they’d call Boca Police and check him out. No, Glenn ain’t casual enough for this type of deal.”

“Yes, but you bring him into this . . .”

“No. No, I haven’t. I come out of the bar last night looking around—was Glenn told me where they took her, that’s all. See, Glenn’s from Umatilla originally, me and him go way back. But this here’s not any kind of deal for old Glenn.” Nobles winked and grinned. “I got you, partner, what do I need anybody else for?”

“I still don’t like to get drunk,” Cundo Rey said.

“Hey, no, just get feeling good’s all.”

“I got another idea,” Cundo Rey said. “You finished?”

They left the McDonald’s and got in Nobles’ official dark blue star-decorated Plymouth.

“One time I was picked up,” Cundo Rey said, “it was up in Volusia County, strange place, man. I don’t know what I was doing there, making a special delivery, ‘Vette to some guy ran whiskey, I think. Everyone there talk like you.”

Nobles grinned at him. “Sure, that’s close to my neck of the woods. Fact I know several boys ran booze.” He saw Cundo’s shirt unbuttoned, Cundo leaning forward to take it off. “The hell you doing?”

“I was in the jail there, they say plead guilty, man, go to Apalachee for a year, I think was the place they tole me.”

Christ, raising his skinny butt to slip his pants off now. Nobles would look from Cundo to the Federal Highway and back again, moving along north in light traffic. “Apalachee Correctional,” Nobles said, deciding to be cool. “I think it’s for juveniles, but I guess a squirt like you could get sent there.”

“So I tore my clothes off,” Cundo Rey said.

“You did?”

He had his clothes off
now
, pants and silk shirt, sitting there in skimpy red jockeys as he unfastened his gold chains.

“I told them there were all these little invisible creatures crawling all over me and I screamed and scratched myself enough to bleed.”

“Invisible creatures,” Nobles said, grinning. “Shit.”

“So they sent me up to this place, Chatahoochee, instead. You know where it is?”

“You bet I do. Nuthouse right up there by the Georgia line.”

“Yes, so one night I walked out, stepped across that line to freedom. I’m going to leave my shoes on.”

“I would.” Nobles turned onto Northeast Fourth, let the car coast as it approached the stucco mental health facility up on the left. There were cars at a gas station farther on, but none on the street.

“I’m going to trust you with my jewelry. So don’t sell it.”

“No, I’ll take good care of it. Listen, I ain’t walking in with you bareass.”

“It’s okay, they let me in. A blue notebook, uh?”

Nobles braked gently to a full stop and pointed. “Be in the office that end of the building there.”

“Okay, I’ll call you later,” Cundo Rey said, opening the door.

Nobles said, “Wait a sec. There’s a broad works in there, I think she’s the supervisor. Brown wavy hair, these real long legs, nice high butt. See if you can find out where she lives or if she just works nights or what.”

“Man, you don’t want much, do you?” Cundo Rey got out, slipped off his red briefs and dropped them in through the window. “Hide these . . . where? So I can find them.”

“I’ll put ’em in a paper sack, in the bushes back there where they park. Then you come on over the public beach, nobody’ll think you’re strange.”

“Okay. I see you.”

Jesus. Nobles couldn’t believe it. He watched Cundo walk around past the front of the car—bareass as the day he was born back of some sugarmill, except for his tan socks and white shoes—watched him cross the street and walk up to the mental health place, cheeks of his ass pale moons, lighter than his dusky skin and it surprised Nobles. Look at the son of a bitch, like he was out for a stroll. As Cundo turned half around and waved Nobles mashed the gas pedal and got out of there.

HE FOUND MAURICE IN 304,
the guest suite facing the ocean, the room filled with sunlight and old slipcovered furniture. Maurice took the prints without comment, began studying them as he moved toward the closed door to the bedroom. LaBrava came in, followed him part way. He was anxious, but remembered to keep his voice low.

“Why didn’t you tell me who she is?”

“I did tell you.”

“That’s Jean Shaw.”

“I know it’s Jean Shaw. I told you that last night.”

“She’s supposed to be an old friend—you couldn’t even think of her name.”

“I like this one, the expression. She doesn’t know where the hell she is.” Maurice looked up from the prints, eyes wide behind his glasses. “What’re you talking about, I couldn’t think of her name? Twenty years she’s been Jeanie Breen. I told you she left the picture business to marry Jerry Breen, her husband. I remember distinctly telling you that.”

“How is she?”

“Not suffering as much as I hoped.”

“You bring her some breakfast?”

“What do you think this is, a hotel?” Maurice turned to the bedroom, paused and glanced back with his hand on the door. “Wait here.” He went in and all LaBrava saw was the salmon-colored spread hanging off the end of the bed. The door closed again.

Wait. He moved to one of the front windows, stood with his hands resting on the air-conditioning unit. He thought he knew everything there was to know about time. Time as it related to waiting. Waiting on surveillance. Waiting in Mrs. Truman’s living room. But time was doing strange things to him now. Trying to confuse him.

What he saw from the window was timeless, a Florida post card. The strip of park across the street. The palm trees in place, the sea grape. The low wall you could sit on made of coral rock and gray cement. And the beach. What a beach. A desert full of people resting, it was so wide. People out there with blankets and umbrellas. People in the green part of the ocean, before it turned deep blue. People so small they could be from any time. Turn the view around. Sit on the coral wall and look this way at the hotels on Ocean Drive and see back into the thirties. He could look at the hotels, or he could look at Maurice’s photographs all over his apartment, be reminded of pictures in old issues of
Life
his dad had saved, and feel what it was like to have lived in that time, the decade before he was born, when times were bad but the trend, the look, was to be “modern.”

Now another time frame was presenting pictures, from real life and from memory. A 1950s movie star with dark hair parted in the middle, pale pure skin, black pupils, eyes that stared with cool expressions, knowing something, never smiling except with dark secrets. The pictures brought back feelings from his early teens, when he believed the good guy in the movie was out of his mind to choose the other girl, the sappy one who cried and dried her eyes with her apron, when he could have had Jean Shaw.

There were no sounds from the other room. No warning.

The door opened before he was ready. Maurice came out and a moment later there she was in a navy blue robe, dark hair, the same dark hair parted in the middle though not as long as she used to wear it and he wasn’t prepared. He hadn’t thought of anything to say that would work as a simple act of recognition, acknowledgment.

Maurice was no help. Maurice said, “I’ll be right back,” and walked out, leaving him alone in the same room with Jean Shaw.

She moved past the floral slipcovered sofa to the other front window, not paying any attention to him. Like he wasn’t there. He saw her profile again, the same one, the same slender nose, remembering its delicate outline, the soft, misty profile as she stood at the window in San Francisco staring at the Bay. Foghorn moaning in the background.
Deadfall
. The guy goes off the bridge in the opening scene and everybody thinks it’s suicide except the guy’s buddy, Robert Mitchum. Robert Mitchum finds out somebody else was on the bridge that night, at the exact same time. A girl . . .

He saw the movie—it had to have been twenty-five years ago, because he was in the ninth grade at Holy Redeemer, he was playing American Legion ball and he went to see the movie downtown after a game, a bunch of them went. She did look older. Not much though. She was still thin and her features, with that clean delicate look, always a little bored, they were the same. He remembered the way she would toss her hair, a gesture, and stare at the guy very calmly, lips slightly parted. Robert Mitchum was no dummy, he grabbed her every chance he had in
Deadfall
, before he ended up with the dead guy’s wife. That was the only trouble with her movies. She was only grabbed once or twice before the good guy went back to Arleen Whalen or Joan Leslie. She would have to be at least fifty. Twelve years older than he was. Or maybe a little more.

He didn’t want to sound dumb. Like the president of a fan club.
Miss Shaw, I think I saw every picture you were ever in
.

She said, without looking at him, “You don’t happen to have a cigarette, do you?”

It was her voice. Soft but husky, with that relaxed, off-hand tone. A little like Patricia Neal’s voice. Jean Shaw reminded him a little of Patricia Neal, except Jean Shaw was more the mystery-woman type. In movies you saw Jean Shaw at night, hardly ever outside during the day. Jean Shaw could not have played that part in
Hud
Patricia Neal played. Still, they were somewhat alike.

“I can get you a pack,” LaBrava said. He remembered the way she held a cigarette and the way she would stab it into an ashtray, one stab, and leave it.

“Maury said he’ll bring some. We’ll see.”

“I understand you’re old friends.”

“We were. It remains to be seen if we still are. I don’t know what I’m suppose to do here, besides stare at the ocean.” She came away from the window to the sofa, finally looking at him as she said, “I can do that at home. I think it’s the same ocean I’ve been looking at for the past . . . I don’t know, round it off, say a hundred years.”

Dramatic. But not too. With that soft husky sound, her trademark.

He said, “You were always staring at the ocean in
Deadfall
. I thought maybe it was like your conscience bothering you. Wondering where the guy was out there, in the water.”

Jean Shaw was seated now, with the
Miami Herald
on her lap. She brought a pair of round, wire-framed glasses out of the robe and slipped them on. “That was
Nightshade
.”

“You sound just like her, the part you played.”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“I think in
Deadfall
you lured the guy out on the bridge. You were having an affair, then you tried to blackmail him . . . In
Nightshade
you poisoned your husband.”

She hesitated, looking up at him, and said very slowly, “You know, I think you’re right. Who was the guy in the bridge picture?”

“Robert Mitchum.”

“Yes, you’re right. Mitchum was in
Deadfall
. Let me think. Gig Young was in
Nightshade
.”

“He was the insurance investigator,” LaBrava said. “But I think he grew flowers, too, as a hobby.”

“Everybody in the picture grew flowers. The dialogue, at times it sounded like we were reading seed catalogues.” She began looking at the front page of the
Herald
. Within a few moments her eyes raised to him again.