Two days after I delivered the Morenos’ cash to Alberto Cruz, I got a call from Nestor while I was relaxing in my bedroom in Cocoplum after taking a slow evening off. There was so much noise where he was, I could barely hear him.
“Lupe, I can’t talk much. I’m calling from a pay phone outside the men’s room in Dirty Dave’s.” I heard someone shout in the background. “Your boy Alberto just returned from Betancourt’s office.”
“What?”
“That’s right. He got there at three oh-five and left at three twenty-five,” Nestor said without hesitation. I knew he had memorized the times and didn’t even need to consult his notes. “As a matter of fact, I’m looking at him right now. I don’t want to get too close to him, because I don’t want him to burn me. But I thought you’d be interested.”
Nestor could give a college course on understatement. “You’re right. I’m very interested,” I said. “You got pictures?”
“Hey, Lupe, how long have you known me?” Nestor said. “Of course I have pictures. Don’t insult me. I have him going into and coming out of Betancourt’s office building. Listen, I don’t want to stay here much longer, so I’m going outside. I’ll stop by in the morning when I get off my shift.”
Nestor hung up, and my room felt eerily silent after listening to the din inside Dirty Dave’s, a sleazy waterfront bar not far from Cruz’s apartment.
I had guessed this might happen. Alberto Cruz had no reason to go to Betancourt’s office during the day except to tell him about my visit. The lawyer would never allow Cruz to have such public contact with him unless Cruz insisted it was urgent. It hadn’t occurred to me before, but the break-in Betancourt wanted Marisol Velez to perform might have been at Alberto’s apartment.
Cruz probably sat around after I left and thought about how to turn the situation to his advantage. Once he received the first payment from me and saw that my offer was for real, he made his move. A calculating guy like Cruz would understand that his activities had been found out and that it was only a question of time before his job with Betancourt as well as his profits were gone. I just hoped Cruz didn’t get too greedy.
The air-conditioning in the house was turned on too low, so I opened my window, breathing in the rich night heat and the breeze from the bay. Papi was already in bed, and Fatima and the twins were on Key Biscayne visiting one of her friends, so I had the house to myself except for Osvaldo and Aida, who were done for the day and were in their quarters watching TV. At times like these, it was hard to imagine places like Dirty Dave’s and people like Cruz and Betancourt, but I knew I had to concentrate. Things could start to get dangerous for me.
As far as I knew, Cruz hadn’t personally contacted Michelle’s mother. He might have called her on the phone, but I was certain he hadn’t met with her, because so far my constant surveillance on him was tight. According to the investigators’ reports, Cruz mostly stayed to himself in the apartment, daily venturing out to Dirty Dave’s to get drunk and then staggering back home.
As far as I was concerned, however, I couldn’t take anything for granted as far as Alberto Cruz was concerned. The old sailor’s deviousness had been proven in the way he had shaken off his tail and broken into my apartment, for although my investigator had sworn that Alberto had not left his apartment that night at all, I was convinced he had, somehow. I had not imagined the stink of those cigarettes.
To call Dirty Dave’s a bar was probably giving it too much dignity. It was a wooden shack on the river that teetered dangerously toward the water when it was full of people. Its patrons were all locals, men mostly, and almost every one of them was probably wanted or involved in something that would lead him to the county jail.
As usual, I had run a routine background check on Alberto Cruz. I did an employment history and found that he held no steady, regular job. I ran a Social Security check on him for his prior employment, but nothing came up on the printout. This meant he was always paid cash for whatever jobs he might have worked, maybe even that his only income came from Betancourt. He was listed at the same home address for the last four years, which somewhat surprised me. Alberto was fastidious, but I didn’t see him as stable enough to live for long in any one place. Maybe I just couldn’t see someone staying in that magenta palace for so long, but you never can tell about taste—good or bad.
If his money came from Betancourt’s adoption business, then no wonder Cruz seemed worried for a second when I showed him the photographs, before he could catch himself and start scheming. No more babies, no more money, no more aluminum furniture.
My only question now was what he said to Betancourt. Did he warn him I was snooping around, or did he ask for money to keep quiet? As long as he delivered Michelle’s mother he could play all the dangerous games he wanted, as far as I was concerned—as long as he didn’t screw up before he helped me solve the case.
I wasn’t really worried that Betancourt would openly come after the Morenos or me. He was far too smart for that. He knew the Morenos wouldn’t try to act publicly, because that would expose their involvement in the illegal adoption and might jeopardize Michelle. Alberto, on the other hand, probably didn’t know the nature of Betancourt’s arrangements with the various adoptive parents. He knew his knowledge was worth a lot to someone, but he didn’t know why.
There was another possibility, of course. Betancourt might know all about me now, and might have already phoned one of his former clients—a contract killer for the drug cartels, maybe—to have a talk with me. I shut off my bedside lamp and got under the covers—after I checked to make sure my spare gun was in the nightstand drawer.
It was hard to sleep that night.
* * *
The next morning Nestor’s report was waiting for me when I got to the office. Nestor was gone.
I’d overslept when I finally dropped off, and Leonardo beat me to work. He was overdressed by his standards, in an authentic Venice Beach Gold’s Gym T-shirt and a pair of khakis.
“Looking good, young man,” I said as I picked up the reports from his desk. “We’ll have you in wing tips and a double-breasted suit before you know it.”
“Alice isn’t into that yuppie thing,” he said, staring at a legal pad filled with figures and totaling them up on the office adding machine. “You know, I sold Nestor two bottles of vitamins this morning. One more and I’m over my quota for the month. Then I get a bonus.”
He smiled at me sweetly. “No way,” I said. “I get all the vitamins I need without taking one of your horse pills.”
Leonardo was about to begin one of his dissertations on health, exercise, and why I was headed for a life of ruin and varicose veins, when I waved him off and made for my office. The last thing I needed that morning was to be told my digestive enzymes were probably out of kilter. Whatever he meant by that.
At my desk I wondered if I should tell Leonardo about Cruz’s visit to Betancourt and my suspicions about my apartment, but I stopped myself just as I was about to rise from my chair. What was I going to do, tell him to look out for armed gunmen in ski masks crashing through the front door? The case was moving forward, and it was no time to turn totally paranoid.
But it had been three days since I gave Alberto Cruz ten thousand dollars of someone else’s money, and I still had nothing from him. It was time to start sweating. If Alberto knew where the birth mother was and planned to deliver her, he probably would have done so by then. He wanted the balance of the money too much to wait for no reason.
I looked over Nestor’s meticulous report and referenced it against those made by the other contract investigators. Cruz had followed a routine that week: he got up late, worked on the Mamita for a little while, went back home, and inevitably ended up at Dirty Dave’s. No visitors came to his apartment, and he didn’t meet anyone in particular at the bar. He usually ate a brown-bag lunch on the boat, then had his dinner at the bar. It seemed he was just marking time.
Regina didn’t answer when I called, and I had a phone message from Jose Antonio Moreno that Michelle’s condition was stable again. It seemed I had to do something that ran completely against my nature: wait and see what happened.
* * *
I found Osvaldo on the couch in the reception area when I returned from a quick lunch. That was strange: Osvaldo usually did his work at the cottage outside and left without speaking to either Leonardo or me.
Maybe Leonardo was growing pot again. That was the last thing I needed. Ever since the first incident, Osvaldo had almost completely avoided Leonardo. The only reason Osvaldo was civil to him at all was because the young man was Mami’s nephew, so there had to be something good about him. I suspected Osvaldo felt he just hadn’t found it yet.
The old man sat quietly, in his gardening clothes with a straw hat in his hands. He looked worried. Leonardo was silent at his desk, staring at a poster of the Mr. Miami Beach contest that he’d recently tacked up on the wall.
Osvaldo leapt up when he saw me. “Lupe,” he said, “I have to talk with you. Now.”
It was completely out of character for the old man to order me around like this. In a joking way, sure. But this was serious, and something had to be truly wrong. With a glance at Leonardo—who gave me a frightened “I’m innocent” look—I escorted Osvaldo into my office.
Osvaldo gingerly took a seat. “You know the birds-of-paradise I’m trying to grow outside your window?” he asked. “The ones giving me all that trouble?”
I nodded, even though I had no idea what he was talking about. I knew, though, that this had to do with more than flowers.
“Look, Lupe.” He dug into his pocket, pulled out five cigarette butts, and shoved them under my nose. I pulled back quickly. They were Gauloises. I knew the smell.
“Where did you find these?”
Osvaldo took my arm and led me out of the office. We didn’t stop until we had circled the cottage and ended up in the back, facing my office window. He pointed to some scraggly plants underfoot. “There!” he said. “I found them there this afternoon. Someone has been watching you, Lupe!”
He yelled so loud that he scared the family of parrots living in the upper branches of an avocado tree on the edge of the property. The big royal-blue-and-green birds squawked and complained for a moment, until the mother bird saw nothing was wrong, took charge, and settled everyone on their perches again.
“Calm down, Osvaldo,” I said. “It’s not good for you to get so agitated. This is no big deal. Remember your blood pressure.”
I patted his arm affectionately, trying to control his sudden trembling. The thing was, he was right to be shook-up. I was now dead certain it was Gauloises I had smelled in my apartment earlier in the week.
I took the butts from Osvaldo and inspected them. They were in varying stages of decomposition—two were almost identical and seemed to have been smoked fairly recently, while the other three were all different from each other. It hadn’t rained the last few days, so they were all in pretty good condition.
Alberto Cruz had visited Solano Investigations on more than one occasion, that was obvious. For what? He hadn’t been inside, because the alarm would have gone off. I knew the cigarettes were smoked at different times, but that was it.
Had he started watching me before I went to his apartment to see him? I had to stop myself from getting too paranoid. I couldn’t let myself think people were after me the whole time or I would go crazy. I had to think clearly. Nestor was too honest to lie about losing Cruz, and I had Nestor’s reports inside. This raised more serious questions. When did Cruz start watching me, if it was indeed Cruz and not someone else trying to make me think it was, and how much did Betancourt know about my investigation? The circle was narrowing, and too quickly.
* * *
To steady myself I decided to catch up on other cases I had going—nothing nearly as pressing as the Morenos’. I had a hidden-assets case in which Hugh Bresnan, a rich stockbroker from New York, moved to Florida to escape his creditors up north. He declared bankruptcy, but meanwhile bought a fifteen-million-dollar oceanfront home in Miami and called it his homestead. There was nothing his creditors could do, since state law protected his primary residence.
No wonder Florida is called “bankruptcy heaven.” But I found a couple of other properties this guy owned—a condo for his mistress and a townhouse for his college-age son. The client was going to be very happy, and Solano Investigations would earn a fee. I guess the only unhappy part was Hugh Bresnan, but he would never even know my name.
My very first client had been a domestic, a referral from Osvaldo, of all people. A seventy-eight-year-old neighbor of his from Havana was convinced his seventy-five-year-old wife was cheating on him. A job was a job, especially the first one, so I started following the old lady around. For the first three days I found nothing. She visited her two daughters daily, stopped off at her church to help set up flowers on the altar, then played canasta with her friends. I thought the old man was definitely nuts, and started feeling guilty about taking his money.
On the fourth day, while I searched my mind for a way to tell my client I was quitting, the wife drove to a seedy hot-sheets motel off Eighth Street in Little Havana. I was fascinated and shocked when I saw her sneak into one of the back rooms.
Soon an elderly gentleman arrived, parked his car, and walked slowly to the old lady’s room. At this point I had to pinch myself in the side to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating.
They stayed in the room for almost two hours. She emerged first, followed by the disheveled older gentleman a few minutes later. I got pictures and sat alone in my car for a while to compose myself, then dropped off the film at a one-hour developing place. I had a shot of Cuban coffee while I waited. The photographs turned out perfectly. Both their faces were so clearly defined they could have been professionally taken portraits.
I called my client at home and told him I needed to see him. He said his wife would be away for a few more hours, and he wasn’t feeling well. I wanted to get it over with as soon as possible, so I agreed to stop by his house instead of making him come to my office.
The client lived in a neat, modest apartment on Coral Way, near the entrance to the Key Biscayne bridge. I hesitated in his tiny living room, dreading telling him what I’d found. To stall for time, I accepted his offer of a glass of ice water.
When he went to the kitchen to get it, I looked around the living room and saw rows of photographs displayed on the side tables. I could easily recognize the wife. And in one ornate silver frame I noticed a picture of three people: my client, his wife, and to my horror, the man I saw coming out of the motel room.
I almost jumped through the low roof when my client appeared behind me. He caught me staring at the photo and told me that the third man was his brother, Modesto, who had never married and lived only two blocks away. The picture was taken at my client’s fiftieth wedding anniversary.
There was no way I could break the old mans heart. I said his wife was completely faithful to him and that he was imagining things. I told him I wouldn’t charge for the case, since there really was nothing to report. That day I found Modesto’s home address and anonymously mailed him the photographs with a note attached: Unless he stopped the affair, copies would be mailed to his brother. It was a bluff, but I was certain it worked.
I lost money on that first case, but I learned an invaluable lesson: Nothing is ever as it seems. And when someone suspects something is wrong and comes to me for help, ninety-nine percent of the time they’re right.
The Morenos knew what was wrong when they came to my office. And now I knew something wasn’t right with Alberto Cruz. The question I asked myself was: Would I find out the answers before problems I couldn’t even imagine found me?