No way, I thought. You’re getting flaky.
Ms Amardara hovered less, thankfully, staying in the kitchen to supervise a catering job for three hundred people. Ziggy and I shared its largesse, making sandwiches from ropa vieja and chomping pickled jalapeños. A minute of resolute No’s by Gershwin had restrained her from pushing a dozen-item banquet cart to our table.
“I’m gonna operate on the assumption the coyote is John Doe Bottom Layer,” I said, sandwich in one hand, papaya juice in the other. “It fits Morningstar’s time frame and Mullard’s time speculation.”
“Mullard’s brain is gooey. But I’ll buy in.”
“So we got a guy with a knife who kills a coyote. Though it happens two years ago, it revolves around human smuggling. He goes into the ground first. One year later Mr Knife gets ripped off by Perlman, so he removes the accountant’s hands as punishment. I figure a sadist like this guy probably watched Perlman howl for a bit, then sliced his throat.”
“Ouch. Bet the Perlster wished he’d been watching Johnny Wadd beaming aboard Princess Jasmin while Mr Spock locked on.”
“No doubt,” I said. “And somewhere around that time the shipment of Hondurans went bad. It must have been right after Perlman got whacked—”
“Because he got dumped in the cistern first.”
“Yep. A separate incident. Next came the Honduran problem, when Carosso got called: ‘Hey Paul, could you come over here with a truck full of concrete? We need you fast.’”
Gershwin nodded and sucked a gulp of mango soda. “Carosso shows up and loads bodies into the mixer, an inspired solution. The mixture goes down the hole and it’s all over. ’Cept no one figured on developers.”
I stared aimlessly into the restaurant. The lunch crowd was gone, the ubiquitous Bert and Lenny kvetching at the bar, the ladies playing their mah-jongg. I heard clatter from the kitchen and snatches of Amardara’s voice as she orchestrated the proceedings.
“You in there, Big Ryde?” Gershwin asked after I’d spent a stretch in the ponder zone.
“I’m still bugged about who knew the cistern was there. The damn thing is in the middle of the center of the nexus of nowhere and surrounded by brush, besides.”
“That why you stare at the brush and kick at the ground at the site? Pissed off that it’s got secrets?”
I grunted, not having noticed. “Maybe. Subconsciously.”
“Could it have been Carosso? He drove the truck there, after all.”
“Nothing links Carosso to the area, never lived nearby, never pulled a job below Fort Pierce. Miami and points south were outside his comfort zone.”
Criminals, especially the dullards, tended to operate in circumscribed locales, places they knew and were comfortable within. I put Carosso in that batch.
“But Delmara did the due diligence,” Gershwin said. “A rancher had it for years, then it was owned by a guy who didn’t go near the parcel, afraid a python would bite his tootsies.”
“Someone knew. We figure that out, we’ve got a window into this thing.”
I started the thousand-yard stare again.
“You’re not going to be happy until we visit the site again, are you?” Gershwin said.
We stepped outside and found the sky was a roiling, unsettled gray as an afternoon thunderhead swept over the city, the sun buried and the air thick with the smell of incoming rain. The gulls seemed lost in the imposed twilight, wheeling without purpose or joy, and winging for cover amidst the low buildings of the neighborhood.
Gershwin and I walked the gangplank toward the lot, the tiki torches flickering in the freshening breeze. I saw the usual vehicles in the lot, the two six-passenger golf carts used by the Jewish folks from the nearby retirement center, and Amardara’s bright red Caddie. It fit, the retirees were the only clientele in the restaurant.
No, my mind said, another vehicle was at the side of the building, tucked behind a corner planting of foliage and palms. I studied the vehicle, a white panel van with the engine rumbling. The van shivered on its springs, like weight was shifting inside and the darkened passenger-side window rolled halfway down. A raindrop pinged off of my forehead as the truck started to move. Something made me throw out my arm and stop Ziggy in his tracks. “Down!” I screamed as the van charged. I saw shivering bursts of flame and dove into the shallow pool of the fountain. Gershwin crouched behind a palmetto as bullets shredded the foliage and whined off the rock border of the pool.
“Jesus,” Gershwin said, eight feet away and pulling his hat tight to his head.
It started to rain, hard. I stuck my head up for a split second and a burst sent me back down. The van was under fifty feet away and approaching.