Tropical Swap (Key West Capers Book 10) Page 6

  Meg was patting the back of Glenda’s hand. “He’ll turn up,” she said. “You’ll find him.”

  Glenda’s lower lip was trembling. “I was an idiot to leave. I was an idiot to stay away so long. What was I trying to prove? That I don’t need him? Except I do.”

  Meg said, “Come on, think good thoughts. It’ll all work out.”

  Glenda tried to think good thoughts but the effort made her start to sniffle.

  After a moment Meg said, “Hey, I have an idea. I haven’t been to the beach yet down here. Crazy, right, not to get to the beach? You have a favorite? A local’s spot? Maybe after breakfast you could show me. Whaddya say? Feel like chilling out a little?”

  Upstairs, in the privacy of the master bedroom, Peter said, “The beach? Our whole life is upside down and you’re going to the beach?”

  Meg was slipping into a not too revealing two-piece and a bright yellow cotton cover-up. “I thought it would be good for Glenda,” she said. “Get her mind off things.”

  Peter was pacing short laps at the foot of the bed. “Ah, very Zen. Get your mind off things. Home invasions. AWOL husbands. Just rid yourself of negative thoughts and everything will turn out fine.”

  “You have a better idea?”

  “Yeah. For starters, how about we find Benny and find out if there’s a fucking cat dropping hairballs all over our apartment?”

  Meg was putting sunblock on her nose and cheeks. She looked at Peter in the mirror. “We’ve tried finding Benny. Benny apparently does not want to be found. What’s the point of sitting around obsessing about it?”

  “The point…” Peter began, then realized he had nowhere to go with it.

  “Look,” said Meg, “put yourself in Glenda’s place.”

  “We are in Glenda’s place.”

  “Can’t you see how upset she is? How alone? She comes to realize she made a terrible mistake in walking out. She swallows her pride and comes back on this desperate mission to try again. You see how brave that is? She has no idea if he still wants her back. Maybe he’s even taken up with someone else by now. But she risks it. Drives down here on this rollercoaster of hope and fear—“

  “Very touching,” Peter interrupted. “Must-see daytime television. But you’re getting all wrapped up in this romantic melodrama and we haven’t even told her about the coconut yet. Don’t you think she should know about the coconut?”

  “There’s time for that.”

  “You sure? When those footsteps were coming up the stairs last night it didn’t seem like there was much time left for anything except cremation.”

  “Right. And we all survived. And nobody got hurt. Except Glenda, who’s devastated that her husband isn’t here. Come on, Peter, think about it, have some sympathy. You and I, maybe we’re not very special people, maybe we’re just a sort of average normal couple, but I have you, you have me, we have each other. Glenda has nobody right now. And I think people who have nobody deserve a little extra kindness. Don’t you?”

  She kissed him on the cheek and headed out.

  12.

  Benny Bufano, a cup of lukewarm coffee at his side, sat in the Kaplans’ living room, just opposite the little alcove where the globe was, doodling in a small notebook he almost always carried with him. He was drawing faces; or rather the same face every time, though from different angles and with different shadings. He was doing this mainly to keep his mind off where he was and why he was there.

  To Benny, being in the Kaplans’ place was like being stuck in a foreign country he didn’t much like. Nothing worked quite the way he was used to. The coffeemaker had given him trouble. It was one of those fancy plunger jobs, and when he plunged it undissolved coffee grounds overflowed like lava and the coffee tasted muddy. There was no television in the living room, just shelves and shelves of books amid the gloomy furniture that was all in shades of brown. The only television was a crummy small one in the bedroom and it wasn’t even hooked up to cable. There were paintings on the wall that didn’t look like anything but paint.

  But of all the things that Benny didn’t like about being in the Kaplans’ condo, the most galling one by far was that it had never been his idea to be there in the first place. The whole thing had been thought up, as usual, by his father-in-law—the mastermind, the sometime benefactor, the control freak, the tyrant. Frank Fortuna had thought of everything: having Benny turn off his phone so there’d be no government snooping into where he’d been and who he’d spoken with; having him drive, not fly, from Key West to New York so there’d be no record of his having gone there; ditto staying in a home exchange rather than a hotel; and, tidiest of all, finding an apartment just around the corner from that of the person he’d been sent to kill.

  In all, it was a well-laid plan, and except for Benny’s squeamishness about committing a cold-blooded murder, it really could have been a pretty simple job. Follow Lydia Greenspan home or ambush her as she left her building. Force her into the car, ice her at leisure, and dispose of the body in time-honored fashion somewhere along the New Jersey Turnpike. This would not even require much of a detour or so much as an extra toll as he headed back to Florida. The only problem was that Benny was not at all sure he’d be able to pull the trigger.

  So he sat there in the Kaplans’ dull and genteel living room and thought about his options. None of them was appetizing. The path of least resistance was to kill Lydia and be done with it. But he was afraid that if he did that he would never again have a night’s sleep free of gruesome dreams. If, on the other hand, he balked at icing Lydia, the first thing that would happen is that Mikey would kill his cat, unless the cat had starved to death already. A distressing thought, but okay, it was just a cat. The bigger problem was that Benny would be in deep trouble with Fortuna, a position that generally proved fatal. True, as the big man’s son-in-law Benny might reasonably expect some leniency. But was he really family any more? Technically he and Glenda were still married. But she’d left him and she’d shown no sign whatsoever of coming back. Over the past weeks she’d ignored his pleas to talk things over. Chances are she’d told her father she never wanted to see him again. Well, that could be arranged, and a lot more efficiently than by divorce. Then again, if Glenda didn’t love him anymore, how much did it really matter what happened to him? Not much. Since she’d left, he hadn’t even felt like he’d been living, just going through the motions. Sleepwalking through the days. Faking attention, pretending interest. Missing her pushed everything else off to the side and into the shadows.

  Now he closed his little notebook, finished his muddy coffee, and got ready to head down to Grand Central to stalk his prey and eat some more oysters that he didn’t want. Going through the motions. Starting the job and vaguely hoping that he wouldn’t have to finish it. He had no other plan.

  “So here’s the crazy part,” Glenda was saying. “The crazy part is that until just a few days ago, it was Benny who was trying to get us back together. He kept calling, he wanted to talk. I was so stubborn I wouldn’t even listen. As soon as the calls stopped, I was desperate to have him back. Crazy, right? Shit, maybe I am crazy.”

  “You’re not crazy,” Meg said soothingly. “You’re going through a rough patch. It happens.”

  The two of them, side by side on big pink towels, were hanging out at Fort Zach, Key West’s best beach and also its strangest. It was hidden behind some Navy property and situated right next to the harbor entrance, which featured a ship channel that had been dredged extremely close to shore. The result was that at Fort Zach you could often have a stunning panoramic vista of twinkling turquoise sea and in the very next moment a gigantic cruise ship would loom up and you would feel that you were about to be run over, right there on your towel, by a city.

  “I’ve tried to go into therapy,” Glenda said. “Couple times, in fact. First was after my Mom died. I was seventeen. No Mom. No sibs. All these mixed up feelings about my father. Poster child for therapy, right? My father said, ‘No way. I don’t want some qua
ck with a diploma on the wall knowing all about you, all about our family.’ I said, ‘Pop, they’re sworn to secrecy.’ He said, ‘So was Joe Valachi. Forget about it. You have problems, honey, things on your mind, you talk to me.’”

  A pair of jet-skis roared past, kidney-slamming across the wakes of bigger boats. An errant Frisbee bounced and scratched across the sand. Glenda rubbed more sunblock onto her legs and went on.

  “That’s really kind of funny, right? My father’s the issue and he’s also the only person I’m allowed to talk to. Where’s that going? So I don’t think I ever quite grew up. How could I? My father handling everything, protecting me. Then delivering a husband right to the dining room table. Not that Benny was exactly a grownup either. Poor Benny.”

  “Why poor Benny?” Meg said, and the question had just a bit of an edge to it, since she’d already taken Glenda’s side.

  “Oh, the usual. Shitty parents. Drunk father, depressed mother. So to get out of the house he falls in with a certain crowd and tries to be accepted by doing what they do and kind of tries to believe that’s what it means to be a man. Except he knows it’s wrong. Of course he does. I sensed that right away. That’s probably why I fell for him instead of one of the bigger, stronger guys. Benny, you see his doubts. He thinks he can hide them but he can’t. You see he wants a different life but just doesn’t know how to make it happen.

  “Like, okay, here’s an example,” she went on. “Not long before I walked out he tells me he’s got an idea for a legitimate business. I say great, I’m thrilled, what is it? He wouldn’t tell me, just that it was legit. Fine. So who does he go to to try and make it happen? This local bigshot Carlos Guzman, who’s probably as crooked as my father. That made me furious. But it was also sad. Like, these are the only kinds of people he knows how to talk to?”

  She broke off. In her frustration she’d been digging holes in the sand with her feet. She took a moment to fill them in and smooth them over and then began again. “He means well. I know he does. That’s the part that kills me. I just wish we didn’t fight so much.”

  Meg sat up and squinted out to sea. A spray of small fish broke the surface as they fled from something that was trying to eat them. A distant buoy rocked hypnotically in the current. “Wha’d you fight about?” she asked.

  “Anything,” said Glenda. “Nothing. We just fought. It was stupid. Childish. And we both knew it. That’s the second time I pushed for therapy. Marriage counseling. I say to Benny, ‘Let’s talk to someone, let’s try at least to figure out why we can’t stop arguing.’ And Benny’s answer is just like my father’s. ‘No one needs to know our business.’ But here’s the thing. He wanted the counseling as much as I did. Maybe even more. I could see it in his eyes. He just couldn’t let himself do it…But jeez, I’m sorry, I’m talking way too much. I really don’t have girlfriends, I don’t get to talk like this. How about you? You have girlfriends that you talk to?”

  Meg took a moment to think it over. Sure, she had buddies from the yoga studio and her assorted jobs, women with whom she shared the occasional lunch and lots of pleasant chit-chat. But when it came to really talking, really airing things out, the person she spoke with was her husband.

  “What a concept!” Glenda said, when her new friend had explained this. “Conversation. Maybe Benny and I can try that sometime.” She gave one of her wry and wistful shrugs, then hugged her knees and looked out to sea. “I mean, a girl can dream, can’t she?”

  13.

  Special Agent Andy Sheehan, ramrod straight and confident as always, stood without a topcoat in front of the gleaming Park Avenue tower in which the too-successful trader Marc Orlovsky had his offices. It was lunchtime and droves of people were streaming through revolving doors, hailing taxis, slipping into limousines or spotless SUVs. Most wandered off in twos and threes, little knots of friends or colleagues chatting, laughing. When Orlovsky appeared he was alone.

  He was a dark-haired man of average size but there was something subliminally unpleasant in his looks. This was mainly to do with his posture. His head hung slightly too far forward, buzzard-like, and though he wasn’t fat his sloping shoulders made him look dumpy in his three thousand dollar custom suit. His chin was too thick and it hung pinkly over the edge of his snug collar. Sheehan watched him from fifty yards away as he paused briefly on the sidewalk, glanced casually around him, then started strolling south. He weaved through the crowds and dodged bike messengers at the cross streets, and the agent had no trouble tailing him to the foot of Park Avenue, through the teeming lobbies of the Helmsley and the Met Life buildings, and down the escalator to the vast and soaring atrium of Grand Central.

  Once inside the terminal, Orlovsky seemed to grow more cautious, more tentative. He meandered past the ticket windows, checked his watch, glanced up now and then at the splendid vaulted ceiling with its painted constellations, perused the timetables, checked his watch again. By this shuffling, serpentine sort of progress he made his way over to the famous four-faced clock just as a very ordinary-looking woman in a simple cloth coat was reaching it by way of a staircase from the lower level. They met as if by chance and stood together for not more than twenty seconds. They exchanged a few brief words, then the woman handed Orlovsky a tiny piece of paper, a scrap no bigger than a stamp. The trader appeared to read it very quickly, then brought his hand to his mouth and walked away.

  Sheehan saw it all, but he’d been so intent on witnessing the transaction that he failed to notice that someone else was observing it as well. Benny Bufano, queasy from the combination of stress and oysters and racing up the stairs to get a step ahead of the woman in the cloth coat, had been watching from the mezzanine.

  Each reasonably satisfied with the progress of the day’s surveillance, each oblivious to the other’s presence, the FBI man and the hit man discreetly turned to follow their respective targets and walked off in opposite directions.

  At JB’s Grouper Wagon, Peter, lunching alone, had claimed a high stool at the counter that flanked the sidewalk and was waiting for his sandwich. Like most people when they eat alone, he was slightly uncomfortable, had some trouble deciding what to do with his hands. He fiddled with the napkin dispenser, looked around for something to read, a newspaper, a flyer, anything. There was nothing so he just watched the parade of people going by. A few were dressed more or less like Hollywood’s idea of pirates. One had a cockatoo crapping down his shoulder. The afternoon had crossed over from warm to hot and the countertop smelled like dried ketchup. Trying to look like he was relaxed and having fun, Peter secretly wondered why he didn’t enjoy vacations more. He knew he was supposed to look forward to them but then he seldom enjoyed them. It was a conundrum.

  Preoccupied with this riddle, he was surprised when he heard a soft, deep voice just behind him and to his right. “This seat taken?”

  He wheeled and saw the old man with the little dog who’d been at JB’s the day before. “Oh, hi. Bert, right?”

  “Right,” the old man said, offering a papery hand and settling with more caution than he wanted to show onto the high stool. “And you’re the individual who was extremely curious about a certain person who we mutually agreed we wouldn’t talk too much about. Where’s your lovely wife today?”

  “The beach.”

  “Nice day for it. What about you? You also allergic to a little sunshine?”

  “Actually,” said Peter, “she went with a friend.”

  “You got friends down here? That’s nice.”

  Peter’s sandwich arrived. Aromas of fried fish and onions curled up from the plate. He pushed it aside and dropped his voice to a confidential murmur. “Actually, she went with Glenda Bufano.”

  At that, Bert cradled his chihuahua a little more snugly against his middle. His face took on a look that was not exactly suspicious but bore a suggestion of who-is-kidding-who-here. “Wait a second,” he said. “So you do know the Bufanos?”

  “We know Glenda,” Peter said, “as of about one o’clock this morni
ng.” He told Bert about the odd circumstances of her unexpected arrival at her own house. Then he finally picked up his sandwich.

  “So lemme make sure I have this right,” the old man said. “They’re on the outs, but Glenda comes to Key West on the erroneous though understandable assumption that she will find him here. Except she doesn’t.”

  “Right,” said Peter.

  Bert’s lunch arrived. He fed the dog a couple of black beans before he had anything himself. “Two lousy beans, dog’s gonna fart all afternoon,” he said, “but that’s life.” As an aside to the dog, he said, “You’re a big little farter, ain’t ya?” Then, turning his attention back to the subject of Benny, he went on, “So Glenda can’t reach him, you can’t reach him, he don’t call anybody back.”

  “That’s about it.”

  “Sounds like he’s gone whaddyacallit…wha’ do people say these days? Off the griddle.”

  “Off the grid,” said Peter.

  “Griddle, grid, he ain’t in touch with nobody. This would tend to suggest or let’s say indicate that he is on let’s say an errand.”

  “What kind of errand?”

  This was a gauche question and Bert’s only answer was to bite into his sandwich.

  “Like, a dangerous errand?” Peter pressed.

  With surprising daintiness Bert wiped his big lips on a napkin. “How should I know?” He fed the dog a morsel of grouper, which the dog captured on a pink tongue about half the length of its body. “But talk about dangerous—the most dangerous job in America, know what it is? Garbageman. More garbagemen get hurt on the job than firemen and cops put together. Maybe killed too. Read that somewhere, can’t remember where. Don’t know if garbage falls on them, they fall off the truck when it goes around a corner…Don’t know.”

  “Very interesting,” said Peter. “But about Benny—“

  Bert stopped him with a raised hand and a forbearing look such as a teacher might direct toward a willing but ungifted student. “It appears like you didn’t notice that I was trying to gently move the conversation away from a subject that I find personally inappropriate and not suited to the occasion of lunchtime in a public place with an individual I hardly know.”