Pronto (6 page)

"It would to me."

She shook her head. "I can't help you."

"You mean you won't."

She said, "What's the difference?"

Raylan Givens was standing by as McCormick and another agent searched Harry Arno's apartment. They were casual about it, Raylan didn't think very thorough, though they didn't make a mess tossing the place. Raylan almost asked if they were looking for anything in particular, but decided to keep quiet. McCormick would sound like he was a nice guy, but underneath it was a snot-nose attitude he couldn't hide. He liked to make fun of people, especially with another agent to show off in front of. One on one, when you had business with him, he wasn't so bad. Then, he hardly paid any attention to you. McCormick was about fifty-five, heavyset, had his suit coat off to work in his shirtsleeves, his blue-and-yellow-striped tie pulled down.

Looking around the living room he would raise his voice to the other agent searching the bedroom, telling him that after he had the resident agent's job in West Palm he was ready to retire, take a job in corporate security, and should've instead of coming down to this Third World city. Talking about Miami. He said he worked an investigation once, a broad who lived in this same hotel tried to extort six hundred grand from the old guy who owned the place. They had her practically indicted and you know what happened? The old guy married her. His attitude: So she was trying to take him, he didn't give a shit, he wanted her. Not long after that he died of natural causes. She was a former movie star, Jean Shaw?

The agent in the bedroom said he'd never heard of her, but then asked where she was now.

"Who knows?" McCormick said.

Talking, they didn't seem too interested in what they were doing. Going through the motions. McCormick was in the kitchen now, bent over poking around in the refrigerator. Coming out to the living room he said to Raylan, "You wear that hat all the time?"

"When I go out," Raylan said, "yeah."

"You wear it when you sit down to eat?"

"Not usually."

"Some of you cowboys do. Never take your hat off. Watch country music awards on TV. You see all these bozos sitting there with their hats on, pretending they're cowpokes." He said, "Why don't you make us some iced tea? There's some instant in there."

It was the first time since they got here McCormick had spoken to him, and what was it about, his hat. Raylan fixed two glasses with ice cubes and lemon wedges he found and brought them out to the dining table. McCormick looked over from where he stood at a wall of pictures. Raylan thought he was going to ask to have his brought to him, but he came over to the table.

Raylan said, "You haven't found anything? Any clues to where he might be?"

"No, but I'll let you know if I do," McCormick said. He raised his voice to the other room saying, "Jerry? Raylan wants to know have you found any clues."

Jerry's voice came back, "Who?"

This was Jerry Crowder, a young agent who could learn a bad attitude, Raylan believed, hanging around McCormick. Basically he was a good guy, big and rangy, a former college football player. Raylan had backed him a couple of times making arrests.

McCormick had picked up his iced tea. He sipped it looking at Raylan and said, "I've meant to ask you, when Harry Arno gave you the slip, did he stick you with the dinner check?"

Giving Raylan a serious, interested expression now, waiting.

"Sixty bucks," Raylan said. "I paid it."

"I hope you don't put it on your expense account." Raylan didn't say anything and McCormick said, "What grade level are you?"

"GS-Eleven."

"For how long?"

"Seven years."

"Stuck, huh? That's a shame. I understand this is the second time you've let Harry Arno get away. Is he a friend of yours?"

"I've never thought of him as such, no."

"Didn't they teach you never let a prisoner out of your sight?"

Raylan said, "He wasn't a prisoner," and knew right away he shouldn't have. It was like talking back to the teacher.

McCormick said, "Well, you were watching him, weren't you? That's what we're talking about."

Raylan felt now he had to keep going and said, "You want to know how I see it?"

"How you see what?"

"This situation, with Harry."

"I sure would, but wait," McCormick said, and called out, "Jerry, come in here." Crowder appeared in the bedroom doorway, almost filling it, and McCormick motioned to him. "Have an iced tea. Raylan's going to tell us how he sees it."

Coming over to the table Jerry said, "How he sees what?"

"That's what we're going to find out." McCormick looked at Raylan. "Go on."

"Well, first of all," Raylan said, "I can't think of a reason why Harry would take off knowing he needs protection. Another reason, he's too smart to become a fugitive, have to hide out the rest of his life."

McCormick said, "You know Harry pretty well?"

"I was with him on two occasions. Both times we talked, shared experiences, you might say."

"If he realizes he needs protection," McCormick said, "and knows he'll become a wanted fugitive if he runs, then why did he?"

"Maybe he didn't," Raylan said. "Maybe he was abducted."

They hadn't thought of that, both of them turning enough to look at each other. "By who," Jerry said, "the bad guys?" And McCormick jumped in, asking, "What about the fact an eyewitness saw him walk out of the restaurant and get in his own car? Someone there to meet him."

"He could've been tricked," Raylan said. Damn, wishing he had thought this through and had answers.

It did stop them again, giving them something new to consider. McCormick said, "He comes out thinking it's a friend driving his car?"

"Somebody he trusts."

"But it isn't. Is that what you're saying?"

It was simpler in his mind. "Something like that," Raylan said.

"But why's he leave you sitting there and duck out? What would the plan be that he got taken in? You understand what I mean? Did a friend set him up?"

Raylan shook his head. "I don't know. I haven't figured it out yet. Right now it's a feeling I have."

"It would seem to me," McCormick said, "his idea was to take off. That's the feeling I get."

"Or somebody talked him into it," Raylan said, thinking hard.

"I'll tell you how I see it," McCormick said, straight now, not having fun with him. "You don't want to believe you twice blew your assignment and because of it you aren't going to get any higher in the Marshals than where you are. So you want to blame it on someone else, Jimmy Cap, the bad guys? You've told yourself this bookie you've come to know so well, he wouldn't fuck you over again, you trust him. Raylan, is that what you're thinking? You see yourself getting sent back to the academy as an instructor? Then retiring and living in Brunswick, Georgia, the rest of your life?"

McCormick put on his blank expression again.

"What's wrong with that?"

Chapter
SIX

Transcription of a tape recorded 05 Nov., 2:20 P. M., monitoring the cordless handset of Jimmy Capotorto at his residence on Pine Tree Drive, Miami Beach, from the Eden Roc marina across Indian Creek. Jimmy Cap is in conversation with one of his aides known as Tommy Bucks.

TB: Jimmy? Tommy.

JC: Yeah...

TB: There's a problem here collecting from people, I don't know their names. Some of them go by numbers.

JC: Yeah, they use a number.

TB: In case on the phone if somebody's listening...

JC: Harry knows who those are.

TB: That's what I'm talking about. You know, does he have a list?

JC: What kind of list?

TB: Of the names. So I know who to look for.

JC: I don't know he's got one or not, maybe.

TB: You can't tell if the numbers that lost paid or didn't pay. His writers don't know shit. I talk to them, they say people are calling up asking where Harry is and who they should pay.

JC: So what's the problem? Get a guy to take his place. (Pause) Listen, you better come over. I don't want to talk about this on the phone. You never fucking know, do you?

At 3:10 p. M. on 05 Nov. Tommy Bucks appeared on the patio where Jimmy Capotorto was sunbathing. The two were observed in conversation for the next few minutes. Also present were Jimmy Cap's girlfriend, Gloria Ayres, 22, of Hallandale, and one of his bodyguards, Nicky Testa, 24, of Atlantic City, NJ, sometimes known as Macho or Joe Macho.

It drove the Zip nuts the way Jimmy told you things you already knew, or even things you had told him at one time and he forgot it was you. Right now he was lying on his stomach and you had to get down there close to his body to hear what you already knew he was going to say. Down close to his smell, his back soaking in the sun. He would turn his head. "Gloria? Where's Gloria?" And Gloria, with the string swimsuit stuck in her ass, would wait for Jimmy's bodyguard, Nicky, to wring out a face towel he kept soaking in ice water and hand it to her so she could wipe Jimmy down, cool him off. First his face as he raised his head, then she'd wipe down his back, Jimmy grunting and moaning while Gloria worked on him with the ice-cold towel, her tits coming out of the swimsuit. The second time she wiped him down Gloria looked this way, at the Zip hunched over in the lawn chair close to Jimmy, and winked at him.

It told the Zip Gloria was on some kind of drug or she wasn't as afraid of Jimmy as she ought to be. She didn't seem to care if Nicky, the punk bodyguard, saw her fooling around either. They were about the same age. Nicky had light-brown frizzy hair and liked to pose, show off his build he worked on with weights. The Zip would catch the punk and Gloria grinning at each other and was positive the punk was fucking her.

Sitting there in the sun, the Zip tried to imagine the girlfriend of any of the old-time bosses giving the eye to some guy that worked for them. Those people back then, Luciano, Costello, Joe Adonis, were respected because they had proved on the way up they were men and you better not fuck with them. Jimmy Cap was a different story: next in line to a boss that got shot in the back of the head. Whether Jimmy had it done or not, he was in the right place at the right time and now ran the show here. Extortion, shylocking, girls, some heroin, restaurant and bar supply companies, the same old stuff while the Latinos and the jigs were making all the money in South Florida. The Zip said to Jimmy one time, "Colored kids selling product on the street corners do better than your guys." He told Jimmy he should be moving crack as well as heroin and Jimmy said it wasn't his line. He said let the Latinos and the jigs kill each other over it. See? Nothing you hadn't heard before ever came out of him. Most of the time excuses, reasons to keep from having to get up off his butt.

Jimmy telling the Zip now, the Zip hunched down close so he could hear the man talking into his shoulder, "We have to get another guy to step in there and run Harry's book. Even so, we're going to lose some of his players, business Harry built up, personal relationships. There's nothing we can do about that."

It was as true as anything he ever said.

"Or find Harry. Either way you want to do it."

The Zip, perspiring, trying to protect the crease in his trousers, asked Jimmy what he knew about Harry Arno outside of he was from here originally and had lived in Chicago at one time. Jimmy didn't know much more than that. The Zip asked if Harry had a girlfriend and Jimmy said, "Yeah, talk to her, Joyce Patton. And go see the ex-wife again, she might know something."

"Once was enough with the wife," the Zip said. "I can see why Harry left her. She was Family up there at one time in Palos Heights. I'll tell you something, it's harder to check on anybody that lives in that place now or used to, that Palos Heights, than anywhere I ever been. No, the main thing," the Zip said, and paused. "First I want to know, you giving me the sports book to run?"

"What I said was I want you to handle this matter. That's all I said."

"And I want to know, I'm in this, I get it straightened out, are you giving me the sports book or not?"

"Okay, handle it and you can run the book."

"You said before to handle it and you send this guy catches fish to do the job. Guy from the Lake."

"Hey, Tommy? Handle it, okay? It's yours."

"And I have the sports book?"

"Jesus Christ -- yeah, it's yours."

"People in that business," the Zip said, "they gonna see what happens they try and skim on me. Harry's gonna be found dead. Found dead in the ocean or in the swamp or he runs away someplace, to Mexico, I don't care where he is, Harry's gonna be found dead. Am I right?"

Jimmy said, "What?" into his shoulder.

"I say he's gonna be found dead."

Jimmy raised his head to squint at the Zip's face. "Your nose is getting burnt." He kept staring and said, "You got a big fucking nose, you know it? I mean looking just at your face." He said, "Gloria? Come over here. Tell me who Tommy looks like."

Gloria stood close to Jimmy Cap's lounge, hands on her hips, looking down at the Zip. "I don't know, who?"