Sitting at a desk, playing solitaire in a pool of greenish light, was one of the last people in the world I hoped to see: Officer Cruz. One of the homicide cops who'd interrogated me the other night. Who'd ordered me to drop this thing. Who'd threatened me with evidence tampering and warned me of the erotic horrors that would befall me in the pen. He looked up at me and the skin tightened at his improbable hairline. "Fuck you doing here?" he said.
At that, Mickey Veale brightened somewhat, seemed to get his balance back. He even managed to get a little playfulness into his tone. "Ah," he said, "you gentlemen know each other."
"We've met," said Cruz, and he continued turning cards. "Amsterdam likes to poke around crime scenes."
His dismissive tone annoyed me. I paid taxes. I had rights. I said, "Somebody has to. I mean, if the cops are playing solitaire on gambling boats —"
Cruz bristled but Veale seemed to enjoy the repartee. Smiling once again, he said, "Officer Cruz does security for me. So does his partner, Officer Corallo. On their own time. Perfectly legit. Have a seat."
Sitting, I thought, Security, right. A do-nothing job for very good pay; a vaguely lawful kind of bribery. Ozzie Kimmel had nailed it—the cops were in the pocket of the handful of players who ran the town. Why was I surprised?
I must have been brooding on this, because Mickey Veale, seated opposite me by now, said, "So, Pete, you wanted to talk?"
I cleared my throat, said, "Right." Then I remembered a familiar dream, probably one of those that everybody has: You're in a play. Maybe you're the lead. And as the curtain lifts you suddenly realize that you've never seen a script.... I started anyway. "Lefty Ortega—I believe you knew him?"
"We had some business together," said Veale.
"What kind of business?"
"Water sports. A concession over by the Hyatt."
"Paradise," I said.
"That's right."
"So now you're in business with Lydia?"
"Seems that way," said Veale. "I mean, Christ, Lefty's barely cold."
"Lydia thinks I shouldn't trust you. Why would that be, Mickey?"
Veale shrugged affably, indifferently. "Lydia's a whore."
"You like whores," I reminded him.
"Some," he admitted, and left it at that.
I drummed fingers on the desk. Thinking aloud, I said, "She hates you. You hate her. Why would people who hate each other's guts be partners in a business?"
"You think that's unusual?" said Veale.
He had me there.
He paused a moment, then continued rather condescendingly, rubbing my face in my naivete. "Pete," he said, "have you ever done business in a foreign country? That's what it's like down here. You need a local partner to get you in. You don't have to like them. You have to give them a piece of something, in exchange for which they grease the wheels for you."
At this I could not help glancing at the moonlighting homicide detective, sulking over his now suspended game of cards. "Like what wheels do they grease?" I asked.
Casually, Mickey Veale said, "Licenses, permits, variances. Boring municipal crap."
I expected it got more exciting than permits but I let it slide. "Okay," I said. "So you gave the Ortegas a piece of the watersports business. What else?"
The big man slowly folded his pudgy hands. "Sorry, that isn't public information."
In semiconscious mimicry, I folded my hands too. Leaning forward I said, "That's okay. I'm not a public eye."
I thought that was rather clever. No one else did. There was an awkward moment that turned out to serve a useful purpose. A failed joke creates embarrassment, and embarrassment breeds hostility, and I'd badly needed something to get my juices flowing. More aggressive now, I said, "Look, two people have been killed—"
I got loudly interrupted at that point. Officer Cruz had been sitting there as taut as a chained-up dog. Now he jumped in so fast that it was clear he'd just been waiting for me to cross a certain line, hoping I'd cross a certain line. "I told you to stay away from—"
I surprised myself by pointing a finger and shouting him down in turn. "Are you off duty? Then back off and let me talk."
Cruz was halfway out of his chair by now. I was about one-tenth out of mine, when it dawned on me, to my horror and amazement, that I was close to striking a fighting pose. This was preposterous. I remembered reading, as a kid, that the person who threw the first punch was the one who'd run out of ideas. This notion had struck me as pretty wise but now I saw it was baloney. Who threw the first punch was the guy who believed he could score a quick knockout and not get hit back. By increments I hoped would be invisible, I started lowering my cowardly ass back into the seat.