LONGO’S FUNERAL HOME was a long, low-slung, one-story brick building just off the South Dixie Highway in Coconut Grove. Horatio Caine figured it for a smaller business—formerly a little dry cleaner’s, maybe, or restaurant—that had undergone some renovation, the two wings on either side of the main section looking added on, some time in the last twenty years perhaps, the mortar a significantly lighter gray than the older part.
Such observations on Caine’s part were automatic by now—he’d been a detective too long to think any other way.
The generous parking lot on the west side of the building—had another business building been torn down to make way?—was full, accommodating both visitors’ cars and a small fleet of hearses.
Adele Sevilla found a spot for her Lexus, and the redheaded CSI, the blonde CSI and the dark-haired detective clip-clopped across an asphalt lot even as several older people in non-funereal-looking pastels were wending toward various vehicles, many of which were big-as-a-boat Cadillacs and Buicks.
As the law enforcement trio rounded the corner onto the sidewalk, they almost bumped into another old couple; the man going bald, wearing a blue blazer with gold buttons over a crisp white shirt and equally crisp white slacks—striking Caine as a geriatric purser from some cruise ship—and the man’s apparent wife, only a few years his junior, wearing a floral print dress and brassy blonde hair of a color unknown to God but familiar to beauty parlors. The couple nodded to them as the officers moved off the sidewalk to let them pass.
“Coral Gables all the way,” Sevilla said, once the pair was out of earshot.
Two wide-shouldered guys in dark suits lumbered toward them, each in their late thirties, both looking like anger-management-class flunkees, one of them giving Caine a sideways glance when the CSI refused to surrender an inch of the sidewalk this time. They reluctantly paused and allowed Caine and the two women to pass.
After the duo was well away, Calleigh quietly inquired of Caine, “Emissaries from Don Venici?”
“Could be,” Caine said.
Calleigh meant, of course, Peter Venici—the Don of Miami, the local Mafia crime boss who’d succeeded his retired father and was now left on his own to deal with the waves of competition who looked upon Miami as an open city ripe for the taking.
Caine felt sure that some time in the not too distant future he and his team would find themselves working the crime scenes of one of the biggest gang wars the United States would ever see; but today he had simpler crimes on his mind—like a double murder in Miami Beach comprising a torsoless corpse and a duct-taped chauffeur.
For now that would hold Horatio’s attention just fine.
He held the door open for his two associates and then they were inside, where the floral scent was immediate and almost overwhelming. The muzak was nondenominational organ, a shade too loud; and the anonymous lobby—cream-color indoor-outdoor carpet and lighter cream wallpaper with framed floral studies—was home to a few knots of older people chatting, most of them not even bothering to look up as new blood entered.
One of the ancient greeters habitually hired by Miami funeral homes approached them, a reed-thin old man in a dark suit that had started to outgrow him. His hair dangled in limp white wisps around ears that extended from his head as if trying to jump ship, his glasses seemed determined to slide to the very tip of his nose, and his brown eyes were dim behind a milky haze. Only the smiling dentures were of a recent vintage.
Sevilla had her hand in her jacket pocket to pull out her badge, but she changed her mind and simply said, “Abraham Lipnick visitation?”
“Room H,” the old boy said softly, and gestured to their right, like the Ghost of Christmas Past pointing out Scrooge’s own gravestone.
“Thank you,” Sevilla said civilly.
With Sevilla in the lead, they moved off down a wide hallway that led into one of the wings. The rooms on either side had placards next to their doorless entries, each designated with a letter—F on the right, G on the left, then H back on the right side. The room itself was long and narrow, twenty by ten, Caine estimated.
A surprisingly—even shockingly—simple wooden coffin lay open at the far end of the room, two older men standing to one side, greeting the mourners in a line of twenty or so. Overstuffed chairs and sofas lurked on the periphery, while several shallow rows of folding chairs faced the floral arrangements. Perhaps a dozen mourners—all elderly—sat talking quietly among themselves.
Calleigh leaned in close to Caine. “Why the wooden coffin? These Coral Gables residents all look like they could afford more.”
Caine replied, softly, “Jewish law—nothing that impedes a return to the earth. No embalming—hence the rush to burial. ‘For dust art thou and to the dust thou shalt return.’ Genesis.”
Sevilla gave him a look, and Caine, feeling a little embarrassed, shrugged. He half-expected the detective to charge up to the old men and start popping questions; but Sevilla got into the receiving line, Calleigh and Caine dropping in behind her. The line moved quickly enough, but still provided Caine time to study the two men they had come to interview.
Their New Jersey cop contact, Irv Brady, had furnished a photo of Ciccolini, who Caine made as the man on the left. Tall, his back rigidly straight despite his age, Vincent Ciccolini stood next to the coffin, at the moment shaking hands with a stubby man in an ill-fitting suit.
The reputed assassin’s own suit was black with a light gray pinstripe, his shirt gray, tie black, shoes shiny and black and expensive-looking. He still had a full head of straight gray hair, parted on the left and swept right. His wide, bright brown eyes came up from the man in front of him, surveyed the room, paused for a second on Caine, then moved on until he was looking at the next person in line.
On Ciccolini’s left stood a shorter, balding man with a brown goatee and a wreath of short brown hair around the back of his head. Caine took the goateed man to be Anthony Rosselli. He had bigger ears, a slightly smaller nose, fuller lips, and kinder brown eyes than Ciccolini. Rosselli also wore a dark suit, with a white shirt and striped tie; his black wingtips looked far less comfortable than Ciccolini’s Italian loafers. Rosselli shook the hand of the man in the ill-fitting suit and where Ciccolini had used just one hand, Rosselli used both, making the gesture seem warmer, more personal.
Only two people remained now between Sevilla and Ciccolini, and Caine gave the two head mourners a hard study. He had little doubt that they had been the assassins the police authorities back east believed them to be. Or that is, to have been—fifteen years ago. Had they forgotten their trade, left business behind, for a world of shuffleboard, bargain matinées and early bird specials? Or, like some retirees, could they not let go of their trade?
Caine wondered.
Sevilla stepped forward and discreetly showed Ciccolini her badge. “We’re sorry to intrude and have no desire to embarrass you.”
In the somber mourning mask, Ciccolini’s eyes sparkled. “How could an attractive young girl like you ever embarrass an old man like me?”
Sevilla frowned. “Is there somewhere we can talk?”
Ciccolini whispered to Rosselli, they exchanged nods, and Ciccolini excused himself to those nearest him, after which he ushered the trio of cops through a door behind them. For a second they were in the wide hallway again, but Ciccolini took the lead and, walking briskly for a man of any age, moved up a short corridor on the other side. In less than a minute, they were standing outside the back of the funeral home in the diminishing sun of late afternoon.
“I’m Detective Sevilla. This is Lieutenant Caine and CSI Duquesne.”
Ciccolini smirked. “And I guess I don’t need to introduce myself,” he said as he withdrew a pack of Camel cigarettes from the pocket of his jacket. “Hey, no problem—I been dyin’ for a coffin-nail.”
“You seem to be holding up well,” Caine said dryly, “where the death of your friend is concerned.”
Smoke dragoned from Ciccolini’s nose and his smile was tobacco yellow, the only liability in the asset that was his still handsome face. “One thing I never share with cops is my feelings about my friends and family. That’s private. I’m willin’ to talk business with you guys…and gals. Comes with the territory.”
“But you’re retired,” Caine said, with a droll smile.
Ciccolini took a long drag from the smoke. Then he said, “Fifteen years, straight and narrow—and yet still there’s something so important that the Miami Police have to interrupt the middle of my friend’s wake?”
“Is a wake part of Jewish burial rites?” Sevilla asked with a frown.
Ciccolini shrugged. “Hell, I don’t know. Just tryin’ to do right by Abe somehow. We did the wooden coffin routine, I know that much.”
“But you didn’t speak to any of his Jewish friends,” he noted.
Ciccolini made a V with fore-and middle fingers. “Abe had two friends down here—me and Tony. But I figured he’d want a kosher burial. Gotta be quick too…the guy here says he’s gotta be in the ground twenty-four hours after the fact.”
Caine lifted an eyebrow, then nodded toward Calleigh, who stepped forward and handed Ciccolini a photocopy of the top page of the Trenton police report from her pocket.
“We’ll see if this jogs your memory,” Caine said.
Ciccolini scanned it for only a few seconds. “This? You interrupt our mournin’ for this stale shit? That was last century, guys—I was cleared of that before Blondie here hit puberty.”
Calleigh frowned—not offended, Caine didn’t think; she was probably doing the math.
Caine said, “Bullets matching the ones from that case have shown up this century—in a murder here in Miami.”
Ciccolini exhaled smoke, his expression giving them nothing. “No kiddin’. That is kinda out there, isn’t it?”
“Way out,” Caine said. “Quite a coincidence, gun from a Trenton murder turning up in Miami. It’s also a coincidence that the man accused of the original crime—however long ago—now lives here too.”
Ciccolini shrugged, and his manner was not hostile. “Hey, I can see your problem, and why you might think I was involved—guess in your place, I’d come around and rattle this old cage myself—but if you read that file closer, you’ll notice the Trenton police never found the murder weapon.”
“Which is how it was able to turn up years later,” Caine pointed out.
Unimpressed, Ciccolini said, “They never traced it to me, never arrested me. Oh, yeah, they rousted my ass—talked my ear off, held me for questioning, only when push came to shove…they had nada.”
“But we both know,” Caine said, keeping his tone carefully good-humored, “not being charged doesn’t make you innocent.”
Ciccolini gave the CSI a tiny smile. “I got a pal who can rent you a boat, Lieutenant, if you wanna go fishing. Look, this is a coincidence. You had to follow it up. You did. I cooperated. Anything else?”
Offering up his own little smile, Caine said, “In my line of work, you have to look at all coincidences with a skeptical eye.”
“It’s part of your job. No offense taken.”
“Mrs. Rosselli said there’ve been break-ins in your neighborhood. I was just thinking, one way that weapon could’ve gotten to Miami would be if you owned it, and somebody stole it.”
“Which would get me off the hook for this new murder, right?”
“Right.”
“But for the old murder, I’d suddenly be openin’ up a whole new can of worms for you to go fishing with. Sorry to disappoint you: I didn’t do either one of these crimes.”
“Then I would imagine you can account for your whereabouts on Monday evening.”
Ciccolini nodded, his face turning melancholy. “That was our last night out, the boys. Abe, Tony, and me, we were playin’ poker in a little club we like. We kinda lost track of time—Abe was winnin’ big, which he didn’t usually. Anyway, normally we wouldn’t stay out that late…after all, we ain’t kids.”
“How late?”
“After midnight. Not sure how far past, exactly.”
“And then?”
Ciccolini shrugged, pitched his cigarette and sparks flew; but his words were calm if grave: “On the way home, Abe complained that his chest hurt. We went straight to the hospital…and were there, in the emergency-room waiting area, until he passed away last night.”
“We are sorry for your loss, Mr. Ciccolini,” Caine said. “But you’ve been down this road enough times to know we’ll still need to check out your story.”
Ciccolini looked mildly exasperated, his eyes cutting toward the back door of the funeral home, then back to Caine.
“Then what do you need?”
“Where were you playing cards?”
“Carrelli’s Social Club in Miami Beach.”
“Can’t say I’ve heard of it.”
“It’s on Drexel near Espanola. No idea the street number—you’ll have to look it up on your own time.”
Caine gave him a quick nod. “And which hospital?”
“Mt. Sinai.”
As he thought about that, something struck Caine as odd, but before he could comment, the back door opened and Anthony Rosselli stepped outside.
“Vinnie, please—people are asking for you.” Rosselli’s voice was steady, but Caine could hear the struggle for control in it. His grief was closer to the surface than Ciccolini’s.
Who turned toward Caine and raised both eyebrows and gazed at the CSI like a man through a gunsight. “We through here?” A new coldness was in the voice.
“You can go, thank you,” Caine said; then—as Ciccolini headed for the door—he turned his own hard gaze on the bald, goateed man, adding, “Mr. Rosselli, a moment of your time?”
Rosselli still held the door open with one hand and glanced back down the hallway toward the main corridor. “If it can wait…”
“It’s okay, Tony,” Ciccolini said. “Get it outa the way. It’s no big deal. These officers just have a weird kinda coincidence they need to satisfy themselves about. Just talk to them for a minute and they’ll be gone…. Right?”
Caine nodded.
“Sure,” Rosselli said, with a shrug. “Whatever, Vinnie.”
So, Caine thought, Ciccolini is the boss.
At the doorway, Ciccolini paused. “Should I tell Abe you’ll be interrogatin’ him next?”
Caine said nothing, but he could feel Sevilla tense up beside him.
Rosselli said, “That ain’t funny, Vinnie.”
Nonetheless Caine smiled and said, “Well, Abe wouldn’t be the most uncooperative witness I’ve ever had.”
Ciccolini’s face softened. “I really do wish I could send the old bastard out here. Losin’ a friend, a close friend…like the kids say…it sucks.”
Calleigh said, “Please accept our condolences. And thank you for your time, Mr. Ciccolini.”
He favored her with another of those tiny smiles, then disappeared inside, door closing of its own volition.
Under the same line of questioning, Rosselli seemed more nervous than Ciccolini, his hands fluttering as he spoke, diving into his jacket pockets, only to come flying out again as he told them pretty much the same story Ciccolini had.
A little too close maybe, Caine thought, almost rehearsed; but then again, the two men had been friends for most of their adult lives and Caine knew that sometimes friends did tend to parrot each other. If they hadn’t been two parts of a suspected three-man hit squad, he’d have thought nothing of it.
This time, Caine asked the question that bothered him about both their stories.
“If you were at a club on Drexel, South Beach, Mr. Rosselli,” Caine asked, “what made you take Mr. Lipnick to Mt. Sinai?”
Sevilla chimed in: “Yes, instead of South Shore—that’s closer to where you were.”
Rosselli shrugged and nodded and turned his hands upside down. “True, true, but Abe liked Mt. Sinai better. He thought they had better heart doctors.”
“Did he have a history of cardiac trouble?”
“He’d had a bad ticker for maybe ten years. Had a stroke too, a while ago, though he bounced back good. The docs knew him at Mt. Sinai, and Abe was comfortable there. I hope to hell he didn’t croak ‘cause we didn’t take him to the nearest hospital. But he had attacks before and always come out of it. We just didn’t know how bad he was.”
Caine nodded, turned to Sevilla. “Anything?”
Before the detective could come up with a question, Rosselli, still a bundle of tics, said, “Look, as far as this gun is concerned…I don’t have to tell ya, these pieces float all over hell. It really ain’t such a surprise that a piece from the East Coast winds up down here.”
“Perhaps not,” Caine said, “but we have to look into it.”
“Sure. Can I, uh…get back to Abe?”
“Certainly.”
They followed the man back inside, this time filing past the coffin too. Looking down at the body inside, Caine wondered if these men could possibly have committed a kidnapping and double murder.
Ciccolini looked to be in pretty good shape, but Rosselli stooped a little, and even in the coffin Lipnick looked like he would have had trouble lifting more than a cup of coffee. Frail, riddled by the trouble his heart had given him, Abraham Lipnick might have been one of a million other men who had come to die in the sun and shade of Miami Beach.
Odd to think that, only fifteen years ago, the man in this coffin had still been a professional killer. Only the prominent nose that might have been flattened from long-ago punches gave any hint that this was not your average shuffleboard player; the wide wrinkled forehead, the deflated jowls, the wisps of gray hair, all reminded Caine of the greeter in the lobby.
Caine stopped in front of Ciccolini and Rosselli again on his way out. “We apologize for the intrusion and, again, we’re sorry for your loss.”
Ciccolini extended a hand. “No hard feelings.”
Caine shook the hand, the grip firm. Then he shook hands with Rosselli, whose grip was less firm and noticeably clammy.
“You know,” Ciccolini said, patting his side sport-coat pocket, out of which a brown paperbag peeked, “I’m sending Abe off the same way as Sinatra—with a pack of smokes, a bottle of bourbon, and a roll of dimes.”
“So he can always make a phone call,” Caine said, half-smiling.
Ciccolini nodded.
As Caine turned to go, Ciccolini said, “I hope you find who you’re looking for, Lieutenant. I’d just like to see this cleared up, so we can finally leave Trenton back in New Jersey where it belongs.”
At the back of the room, they paused and watched awhile, as the pair continued to greet mourners.
Sevilla asked, “What do you think, Horatio?”
“I usually have a gut instinct about these things.”
“I know you do.”
“But…not this time.”
Silently, Sevilla led Caine and Calleigh outside.
Calleigh said, “Those old boys don’t look like they could kill time, let alone two healthy, much younger men.”
“It looks like a ground ball,” Caine agreed, “but you know what we do with them.”
“Run ‘em all out,” Calleigh said.
Sevilla said, “Ciccolini seems pretty spry to me.”
“You’ll be checking their story,” Caine said.
“Oh yes.”
“All right. Calleigh, let’s get you back to the lab. I want you to keep up with your workload, so if anything else comes in on this case, you’re clear.”
“I’m for that. What about you?”
Caine’s eyes tightened. “I’m going to take another shot at Daniel Boyle.”
“I don’t suppose you’re talking about with a gun,” Calleigh said, almost wistfully.
“No…but I’ve got a few Boyle ‘bullets’ I haven’t spent yet.”
He took the women back to headquarters, then drove to Miami Beach, crossing on the southernmost road, the MacArthur Causeway.
Night had settled over the city and blue lights highlighted the bridge to the Port of Miami across the main channel of Biscayne Bay. Tiny stars out over the ocean looked like pinpricks in the sky, as if some bright light was on the other side of the night, seeping in; it gave Caine a feeling of being something small in the middle of something big. He did not mind the feeling; in fact, he took a certain comfort in it.
As he came off the causeway, Caine glanced left at South Shore Hospital, right there on Alton Road. He took the left on Alton and went north ten blocks to Fifteenth, then cut east seven more to Drexel. At the corner, he looked to his right and there, on the other side of the street, was the social club Vincent Ciccolini claimed he and his two cronies were at Monday night. Twenty-two blocks from South Shore Hospital.
Mt. Sinai was closer to fifty blocks north through the bumper-to-bumper traffic of Collins Avenue—the same Collins Avenue where Felipe Ortega’s limo had been found in a parking lot.
A car behind him honked its horn and Caine eased through the intersection going on east to Collins Avenue before again turning north. Maybe the men were telling the truth; it was possible that Lipnick’s condition had worsened once he got to the hospital, or that Ciccolini and Rosselli didn’t recognize just how bad off Abe was. Until Sevilla spoke with the folks there, there was no way to know.
During rush hour, people on their way home tried to drive fast on Collins but with little success. Once night settled in, the traffic moved at roughly the speed of a glacier. And again Caine had to wonder: why had the old men come this way? Monday was lighter traffic, granted, the weekend’s tourists having bugged out Sunday night, but still…
At Forty-first, he glanced west toward Mt. Sinai as if merely turning that way would afford him a glance at the hospital that was still blocks away down that street.
He shrugged to himself. No use getting ahead of the evidence; when your brain got too far out in front of the investigation, you could get seriously whiplashed.
Anyway, his best suspect was still Lessor’s step-son—Daniel Boyle.
Normally, the wife would be a good suspect, possibly the prime one, especially if (as with Lessor) there were rumors of infidelity; but she had seemed so adamant in her defense of her late husband, even arguing with her own son over what seemed to everyone else on the planet to be blatant infidelity, that Caine could only wonder if Deborah Lessor could be that skilled an actress.
Of course, her late husband had been, by all accounts, one hell of a talent scout.
Pulling the Hummer into the driveway of the Conquistador, Caine eased up to a vacant spot normally reserved for taxis and parked. As he got out, a cabby slid up next to him, rolling down the power window on the passenger side.
“Hey, buddy! That’s reserved.”
Caine showed him the badge.
“What, and you think that gives you the right…”
Bending down, his left arm resting on the roof of the taxi, Caine looked inside at the driver, a guy in his late fifties who smelled like he hadn’t showered since the Marlins won the series…in other words, 1997.
“And how many violations am I going to find this evening?” Caine asked cheerfully.
“Fine, fine! Fuck it.” The cabby hit the button to roll up the window, already pulling away, probably hoping to catch Caine’s toes under the wheels.
His cell phone trilled and he answered it. “Horatio.”
“H.” Tim Speedle.
“Got something for me, Speed?”
“Guy named Plummer stopped by.”
“Daniel Boyle’s driver.”
“Good one, H. How do you stay on top of details like that?”
“Because I lead by example, Speed.”
“Ah. Anyway, Plummer verified his boss’s story and brought in security videotapes that clearly show Boyle in the hotel, right when he said he was there.”
“Any way to verify these tapes?”
“Not really. They could be cooked, all right.”
“So this would be worthless information. Anything that isn’t?”
“Yeah, but I can’t take credit. Sevilla told me to pass along to you that the club on Drexel checked out—your geriatric suspects, right?”
“Right,” Caine said. “Did she get times?”
“Nope. The manager she talked to remembered your coots coming in, but didn’t see them leave.”
“What about Mt. Sinai?”
“She hasn’t got to that yet—had to go out on another call. Said she’ll check the hospital tomorrow.”
“Thanks, Speed.”
“Hey, we’re full service around here, H. Later.”
“Later.”
So, the old men were at the club—Caine just didn’t know how long, exactly. Maybe he would swing past the hospital on the way back. Sticking the phone in his pocket, he walked through the glass doors and into the lobby of the Conquistador, which was not terribly busy—couple checking in, few people heading down the hall toward the bar, a handful going the other direction toward the restaurant for a late supper.
When the couple left the front desk, Caine stepped up. The clerk was an attractive Hispanic woman in her early twenties. She had short black hair, close-set brown eyes, and a thin mouth too generously covered with bright red lipstick. Her name tag read LARA.
She gave him her professional smile; where the Hispanics were concerned, Caine had to take it back: they were more consistently friendly and seemed to value tourists. “May I help you?”
“Daniel Boyle, please.” He didn’t bother with a badge or intimidating “Miami-Dade Criminalistics” introduction.
“Just a moment.” She turned and called to someone in the back office. “You know where Mr. Boyle is?”
A female voice answered, “Where is he always this time of night? In the lounge.”
Caine nodded his thanks and turned in that direction. As he neared the Explorer Lounge, the throbbing bass of the band thudded into his chest. A young black man in a black suit with a black T-shirt underneath sat outside the door. Caine could tell the man had been watching him all the way down the corridor and didn’t miss much. No money box out here, so Caine figured the guy was just checking IDs.
Caine drew back his jacket so the man could see the badge on his belt. The guy’s eyes widened, just a trifle, then he nodded his approval, his eyes returning to the corridor, where a young couple headed this way as Caine opened the door and slipped inside.
The lounge was dark, the candles on the tables providing the only illumination other than stage lights. There seemed to be a pretty good-size crowd, at least as much as Caine could tell courtesy of the swirling spots that intermittently let him see different parts of the room.
On stage, the band blasted away, the brass fighting percussion for dominion, as Maria Chacon ruled over them all, hardly trying; she was in a much more revealing costume than last time, singing to the crowd. Probably not Cole Porter, he thought, or Paul Simon for that matter; but the song did have that compelling bass beat and Maria’s strong sultry voice. The crowd was coming out of their seats, a few even dancing in the aisles, animal and bird sounds erupting from around the room. Either Maria was very, very good, or this audience was very, very drunk…maybe both.
Quick-scanning the room over the tops of the bobbing heads, he searched for Daniel Boyle with no luck. Then, suddenly, he realized the man was standing right next to him in the dark; he’d been tucked back beside the doorway—Caligula viewing all from his box.
“Amazing what sex, loud music, and no cover charge can accomplish,” Boyle said, working his voice up, leaning in to Caine’s near ear.
“Let’s step outside,” Caine said, in no mood to compete with the roar of the band and the whooping crowd.
Boyle pointed to his ears, signaling that he couldn’t hear. Caine was considering grabbing the man by the lapels of his Armani suit and dragging him into the hallway when Boyle pointed toward the door.
Out in the hall, Boyle did not pause, rather kept walking, toward the lobby, Caine falling in alongside him, as they put some distance between themselves and the noise of the lounge.
Halfway down the hall, the boyishly handsome hotel manager turned to Caine and paused. “What can I do for you, Lieutenant?”
A couple, walking hand in hand, moved past them.
“Could we use your office?” Caine asked.
“Why not?”
Caine followed Boyle across the lobby, past the front desk, and through a door marked PRIVATE. Boyle let him inside the non-spacious office, then closed the door before circling the long way around his cherry desk, a wing extending from the left side with a computer monitor atop it.
Behind the desk, on the wall, hung a large color photo of the Conquistador circa 1955, a large neon conquistador head standing sentry, the name in red script arching around his helmet. Another disembodied head, Caine noted. The picture hung just a little crooked.
Boyle motioned for Caine to have a seat, which he did.
“I assume you’re here to update me on the investigation,” Boyle said. “Do you have a suspect yet?”
“Yes,” Caine said.
“Really. Who?”
“You.”
Boyle almost seemed to lose his balance in the chair; quickly recovering, he said, “Why would I be a suspect? You know that I have an airtight alibi—”
“Funny thing,” Caine said, “just about the only people who use that phrase—kind of antiquated, B-movie phrase, don’t you think, ‘airtight alibi’?—are murderers.”
“If you’re going to charge me—”
“Oh no. I don’t have a case against you. Yet.”
“Then why do you suspect me, for God’s sake?”
“Because, Daniel…may I call you Daniel? Because you insist on lying to me.”
The hotel manager swallowed thickly; his expression took on a wounded quality. “I have—I did lie about my feelings about Tom. I was just trying to…keep family business, you know…private.”
“Private. As in, private investigator?”
That caught Boyle by surprise; his mouth dropped open. “You know about that?”
“I heard secondhand. But you’ve finally confirmed it. You hired one to try to get the goods on your stepfather. His cheating on your mom.”
“That’s right. Not here—it was on the Vegas end.”
“Did you share this with the Las Vegas authorities? They arrested your stepfather on a murder charge—they believed he’d murdered a woman he was sleeping with. Anything your investigator found—”
“But that’s just it. My stepfather was discreet. The investigator didn’t find anything.”
“Just the same, I’ll need his name and contact information.” Caine would pass this along to Catherine Willows.
“No problem,” Boyle said, rather contritely. He went to his Rolodex and found the name and was writing it down on a memo pad when Caine spoke again.
“What else have you held back, Mr. Boyle?”
Boyle looked up, deer in the headlights; thought about it, really seemed to be considering the answer. “I can’t think of anything that would help you.”
Caine had come here to rattle the man and shake something loose; Boyle seemed rattled enough, but nothing was falling out. The CSI decided to go a step further.
“Let’s talk about Gino Forlani,” Caine said, “and the Cappelletti brothers.”
“Shit,” Boyle said, his face whitening. “You’re not going to drag my…my friends into this?”
“Your friends who have organized-crime connections, you mean? Your stepfather’s murder has all the earmarks of a mob hit. Did you think we wouldn’t notice your associations?”
“They’re just…acquaintances, that’s all. Friendly acquaintances. We, you know, play some golf together. Once in a while. Now and then.”
“Once in a while.” Caine crossed his arms. “Now and then. I thought you weren’t going to lie to me anymore.”
Boyle’s head drooped. “All right. You caught me in another, uh…”
“Lie. Want to try again?”
Boyle rubbed his forehead with his fingertips, as if trying to scrape the flesh off his skull. Finally, he exhaled, endlessly. “I…I owe them some money.”
Uncrossing his arms and leaning forward, Caine said, “See? Isn’t it a relief to tell the truth?”
The hotel manager just glared at him.
“And why do you owe them money, Daniel?”
“…Gambling debts.”
“Be more specific?”
Shrugging, Boyle said, “Basketball, football, horses, whatever season it is, that’s what I bet…. What can I say, I’m a sports fan.”
“How much are you into them for?”
“Not that much.”
“How much, Daniel?”
“Really—only ten g’s. Nothing.”
Caine frowned. “Why don’t you just pay them off, then?”
Boyle sighed. “I really don’t have that kind of money. My mother has cut me off, where gambling debts are concerned; and I’m on salary here. I get paid just like everybody else.”
“I doubt that it’s like everybody else.”
“I make money commensurate with just about any hotel manager in Miami Beach.”
Caine nodded. “And you live in the family home. Not much overhead, Daniel.”
“Fine. The truth is, I piss most of it away. I’ve been gambling for years, since college, and always done all right; but this basketball season is killing me. My reserve’s gone and I can only pay Gino and the Cappellettis a little at a time. I’m barely covering the vig as it is.”
Caine looked hard at the man. “You understand, Daniel, this is not clearing you. It’s only making you a better suspect.”
Boyle held up surrendering hands. “I’m trying to be honest with you.”
“And I’d just find out anyway.”
“You’d just find out anyway.”
Caine mulled. Then: “Gino going to back your story?”
Boyle snorted a laugh. “He’s a fucking mob guy! You think he’s going to tell you the truth?”
“Well then…”
His eyes painfully earnest, Boyle sat forward.
“Honest to Christ, Lieutenant—I’ve got no idea who killed Tom. Yeah, I hated him…but for what he was doing to my mother. She loved him, still does. I would never have hurt him, not physically—his death’s practically killing my mother. And I would never do anything to hurt her, if I could help it.”
“You’d never hire a private detective, for example, to follow her husband around?”
Boyle looked stricken. “You wouldn’t tell her about that, would you?”
Caine didn’t answer, instead asking, “How is your mother doing?”
He sighed again. “I just put her on a plane back to Vegas—sedated to the gills. She’s going to make funeral arrangements. When are you going to release the remains…such as they are?”
“Not for a while. Could be a week. Could be more.”
“Well, would you have the coroner contact me, Lieutenant, so I can make arrangements to get the—whatever—back to Vegas? I’ll need to go back for the funeral, myself. I mean, if I’m a suspect, can I…?”
“We could allow that, I think.”
“Thanks for that much, anyway.” He laughed, bitterly. “I could always take Tom home in a duffel bag. I do get two carry-on’s.”
Caine rose. Smiled. “You might not want to share that one with your mom, Daniel.”
And the CSI left the hotel manager there, to ponder that.