Blood Relations Page 16

  “Mr. Hagen, the girl is seventeen years old. Is there any indication that the defendants realized this? Did she present herself as older?” A local TV reporter in the front row had stood up so he could get himself on video.

  Sam heard the unstated question, What kind of girl is this? He said, “I don’t know what they thought. Whether she looked fifteen or twenty-five, does it matter?” Sam waited a beat for emphasis. “No one deserves to be the victim of such a brutal attack.”

  “What can you tell us about her?”

  “Well, first, I admire her courage. She’s willing to testify against people who could influence her career. The young lady is a native of our area. She’s been modeling for about a year, and she hopes to pay her way through college. That’s all I’m prepared to tell you at this time.”

  Florida law prohibited publication of her name. Sam had begun to refer to Ali Duncan as the victim or the young lady. He didn’t want details of her life to show up in the press—not yet—although sooner or later the media would sniff them out. For now, she was the girl next door.

  A reporter from the Miami Herald asked about evidence, and Sam gave a brief overview, keeping his response as nonspecific as he could and refusing to give the names of any witnesses.

  The story had hit the national news the day before, but only in the form of a ten-second announcement on NBC that actor Marquis Lamont, along with two other men, had been arrested for an alleged sexual assault on a model in a Miami Beach night club. An entertainment news show had asked Sam for an interview, but he had refused to talk to them. Klaus Ruffini had not been mentioned except as a co-defendant, and George Fonseca not at all. The only in-depth coverage was local, although a pale young woman in black had come from New York to do a story for Women’s Wear Daily. Eddie Mora’s predictions of media bedlam had been wildly off the mark.

  The state attorney himself was absent. He had gone to a Cuban-American Bar Association meeting, tending to his own political fortunes, making sure he kept the local exile community happy so they didn’t scuttle his chances to go to Washington.

  “How did the girl get into the Apocalypse at age seventeen?” someone asked.

  Sam replied, “She was let in by the management. Most clubs are careful about this, but there are a few that cause problems.” He glanced around at his prosecution team, then said, “We’ve talked to Chief Mazik of the Miami Beach police department about a joint effort to identify and prosecute those owners and managers who don’t control the doors or who permit the use or distribution of narcotics on the premises, usually in the rest rooms or the so-called VIP rooms. This is not, and I stress this, a judgment on Miami Beach nightlife as a whole. Most of the clubs and restaurants are great places to go, an asset to the community.”

  As several reporters called out questions, Sam lifted a hand, then said, “You know, what concerns me, as a prosecutor and a resident of Dade County, is the idea that because we rely so much on tourist dollars, we have to excuse things that most other communities wouldn’t put up with. The attitude that people with enough money or sophistication ought to be indulged. This has consequences, particularly for our young people. What do they learn when we say that not everyone has to be held accountable to the same rules? I see forty thousand felony cases come through this office every year, and I can tell you that most of those defendants think that somehow the rules just don’t apply to them.”

  After a few more questions Sam checked his watch, apologized for having to cut it short, and thanked everyone for coming.

  Avoiding the lunchtime crowds in the elevators, Sam took the stairs to the ground floor with Joe McGee and Lydia Hernandez. Lydia, from Sexual Battery, was a petite young woman with frizzy blond hair. Hustling down the stairwell in her flats, she said that the motions demanding blood samples would be personally served on the defense attorneys in the morning.

  Joe McGee rounded the landing. “Good. We won’t have a whole lot of time. Fonseca’s lawyer says he’s going to ask for a speedy trial.”

  When he reached for the handle of the heavy steel door, Sam told him to wait a second.

  “I had a phone call this morning from Norman Singletary. He says Marquis Lamont isn’t so sure now he wants to plead out.”

  McGee groaned. “Oh, man. We’re offering the moon. What does he want?”

  “A not-guilty verdict,” Sam said. “He doesn’t want to plead to anything. If we lose him as a witness, someone has made it worth the risk.”

  “Klaus Ruffini,” McGee concluded.

  “Probably.”

  “Son of a bitch,” Lydia said. “How much do we need Lamont?”

  McGee said, “We’ll be okay if the witnesses don’t crap out.”

  “Let’s see what happens between now and the arraignment,” Sam said. “Then I’ll have another talk with Norman. Threaten some serious jail time. That might change Lamont’s mind. Or we give him immunity from prosecution and force him to testify. We’re in for a rough ride, boys and girls.”

  Sam opened the door, and they walked into the lobby, then out the rear entrance of the building, squinting in the bright light. Wind tossed the tops of the trees and chased tattered pages from the newspaper across the parking lot.

  Joe McGee was grinning. “I feel a little sorry for Marquis.”

  “Why, for God’s sake?” Lydia demanded.

  “Well, he isn’t getting much media coverage. He’s probably going, ‘Hey, where is everybody? You mean I’m not big enough to have all the TV networks down here? Nobody wants to put me on the cover of the National Enquirer?’” McGee jerked his head toward the Justice Building. “Sam, you coming over to the cafeteria?”

  “No, you two go ahead. I’ve got a meeting.”

  Sam’s silver Honda was parked in a private space. As he approached he noticed someone leaning against the fender, a white-haired man in a tan sport jacket and knit shirt. Dale Finley. Sam hadn’t seen Finley since telling Beekie to get him off the investigation team in the Duncan case.

  Finley came a couple of steps closer with his uneven gait.

  “You’re looking for me?” Sam took his keys out of his pants pocket.

  “I caught the press conference on TV,” Finley said. “All that about setting examples for our young people. Very inspiring.”

  Sam stuck the key in the car door. “Excuse me. I’m late for an appointment.”

  “With Gene Ryabin.” Finley smiled, and the scar across his chin pulled at his lower lip. “I asked your secretary.”

  “What do you want, Finley?”

  “Cut to the chase.” Finley’s scalp gleamed through the bristly white crew cut. “Detective Ryabin, so I have been given to understand, has been making inquiries about Martin Cass. What reason? I pondered this. Then I remembered that Mr. Cass is an associate of a businessman from Italy currently residing on Miami Beach. And Mr. Cass has been heard to remark that he personally asked Hal Delucca, the city manager, to persuade the Dade state attorney not to proceed on a certain sexual battery case involving the said Italian businessman.”

  Finley’s pale eyes, which had been taking in the movement of people through the parking lot, fixed now on Sam Hagen. He said, “I know what you’re thinking. You’re mistaken, but I won’t argue with you. Consider this, though. If you fuck up his nomination, he will stay here, and you can’t beat him in an election, not in Dade County, amigo.”

  Sam opened his door. “Stay out of my sight, Finley.”

  “It could be an interesting trial,” Dale Finley said. He watched Sam take off his jacket and put it on a hanger behind the front seat. “The lead prosecutor asking questions of the witness, then the defense asking the witness did she ever spread for the prosecutor.”

  As Sam slowly grasped what Dale Finley was saying, he felt a wave of fury build, then sweep through him. He turned slowly around, wanting to get his fists around Finley’s lapels.

  “You don’t have to be concerned anybody’s going to run out and blow bells and whistles.” Finley gave
a slight shrug. “As long as we understand each other.”

  He turned and limped across the parking lot toward the state attorney’s office, the sides of his sport coat lifting and falling in the wind.

  Waiting for Ryabin, Sam stood outside the Criminal Investigation Unit looking down into the terrazzo-floored lobby. A piece of publicly funded art hung just below him, suspended on thin cables from the high ceiling. The sunlight pouring through the windows glowed through blue and green glass disks and bounced off turquoise, brown, and maroon rods and wires bent into weird shapes. Every time he came over here he tried to figure out what it was supposed to mean, beyond the $85,000 it had cost the city. Up where the eye-bolts screwed into the walls, the plaster was getting rust-colored and flaky. That much money could have fixed the leaks in the roof.

  Sam leaned his elbows on the railing. Maybe it was seaweed. Occasionally maintenance would pull out a Styrofoam cup, like the ones that washed up on the beach. Ryabin had told Sam he’d seen an open-mouthed inflatable doll in black fishnet stockings caught among the wires. Nobody had consulted the rank-and-file before the scaffolds went up to install the thing.

  Behind him the door opened, and Eugene Ryabin emerged in a white-on-white shirt with French cuffs. His holster and badge were on his belt. He pressed the down button on the elevator.

  “I apologize for keeping you waiting,” Ryabin said. His accent turned his last word into waitink. “We’re interviewing a girl who says a man she met last night, a student from Holland, beat her up.” He shrugged. “The tourists are striking back.”

  They took the elevator to the lobby.

  Sam said, “I ran into Dale Finley just now. He’s aware you’ve been asking questions about Marty Cass.”

  “Where I come from,” Ryabin said, “they had men like Dale Finley on the police force. He would have used pliers on a suspect’s testicles. What did he say to you?”

  “He assumes I’m out to get Eddie Mora, and it would be better if I lay off. Let Eddie go to Washington, then I can win the election in November.”

  “Do you think Eddie asked him to approach you?”

  “I don’t know,” Sam said. “It isn’t Eddie’s style. Finley has a reason to act on his own. If Eddie gets some national attention, Finley will be back in action. He can forget the stuff we give him—rounding up witnesses, taking statements, serving warrants. He probably got off on working for the CIA, before the Cubans broke his legs.”

  Beyond the automatic glass doors a long walkway slanted to the street. Among the trees between police headquarters and city hall, bums sat or lay on white concrete benches. Their ranks were thinning out now that warm weather had set in. Soon the sun would melt asphalt, turn puddles into steam, and leave the Beach prostrate and panting. Sam loosened his tie. He had left his jacket in the car.

  He said, “Finley told me I’m wrong, by the way. Eddie wouldn’t commit political suicide over this case. Meaning he wanted it dumped for the reasons he gave me—the girl is lying, the witnesses cancel each other out, and we’ll bust the budget on a sure loser.”

  Ryabin’s heavy brows lifted. “You believe him?”

  “I might, except for the way Finley came at Ali Duncan. He tried to make her run, Gene. Just before she was supposed to talk to me, Finley tried to scare her off.”

  Ryabin walked in silence for a while. The top of his head was about level with Sam’s shoulder. Then he said, “Why did Eddie Mora give you the case? That, Sam, has made me curious.”

  Sam watched a mixed-race Hispanic woman coming out of a market across the street, pulling a small child by the hand. Bleached hair. No bra. Filthy white T-shirt knotted at the waist. She staggered enough for him to realize she was drunk.

  “For Whatever reason, Eddie wanted this case to go away. He thought I’d rubber-stamp his decision not to prosecute. I wouldn’t want to get sucked into South Beach.”

  “Because of Matthew.”

  “And because I wanted Eddie’s job. Call it a bribe if you want to. It feels that way to me now.”

  Ryabin looked at him.

  “Eddie said he would be grateful. And I was ambitious. I wouldn’t question a damn thing.”

  They waited on the corner for traffic to pass. Washington Avenue had two lanes each way and parking meters at the curbs. A few scraggly palm trees were stuck into narrow, grassy medians. In the space of a few years, Sam had seen the neighborhood shops die off one by one: the old barber shop replaced by a chic salon, the diner by a restaurant that charged twenty bucks for a plate of sushi. High rents were killing off the old places, and chain stores were taking over; ugly but profitable cardboard glamour.

  “I have a question,” Ryabin said.

  At a break in the traffic they dashed across the intersection. When they reached the other side Sam said, “What’s the question?”

  “What is Dale Finley using to get your attention?”

  After a second or two, Sam said, “He knows about me and Caitlin.”

  They turned north. “Who told him?”

  “I don’t know, Gene. He asked around.”

  “Is this another reason you took the case? Because of Caitlin?”

  “Christ, no. I didn’t read the incident report till after I told Eddie I’d handle it.”

  A guilty grimace deepened the lines on Ryabin’s face. “I interviewed her myself at the Rape Treatment Center, where she took Miss Duncan. I’m sorry. I should have called you.”

  Sam waved a hand. “Forget it.”

  “I see her sometimes, walking with her camera. I say hello. She says hello.” Ryabin added, “You never told Dina.”

  “No. She met Caitlin when I was working at Frank Tolin’s office, and I didn’t want to tell her. I still don’t. She had a rough time with Matthew’s accident. And then I imagine my daughter hearing about this from some kid at school who read it in the paper.” Sam laughed. “Caitlin never told Frank, either. And now Dina’s consulting him about a wrongful death suit. The whole thing has infinite possibilities for blowing up in someone’s face.”

  Ryabin nodded. “And what is Dale Finley going to do, light the fuse?”

  “Not if I leave Eddie Mora alone.”

  “Will you?”

  “That would be the intelligent thing to do.”

  They were silent for a while, walking. They had decided on a bar a couple of blocks away that served sandwiches. Ryabin said, “So. What next? Do you let Eddie Mora go to Washington, to solve crime in America for us? Perhaps work his way into the Oval Office in eight years?”

  “I frankly don’t give a shit.”

  Filling his lungs, Ryabin rested his fingertips lightly on the starched front of his shirt. “You should come lie on the beach, Sam. Get a tan. Relax.”

  “You really get a kick out of this place, don’t you?”

  “I know. Reading the newspapers you think Miami is worse than the South Bronx. But look. Sunshine. The blue sky, the lovely young people.” Ryabin nodded toward a threesome of girls skating past on long honey-gold legs, backpacks over their shoulders.

  Blue sky and sunshine. Enough of it to blind you, Sam thought. Palm trees and bare skin and the endless, blinding glitter. Rushing over the causeway, climbing the stairs to Caitlin Dorn’s apartment, hearing the summer downpour outside the open window by her bed, believing things could be so simple.

  “Do you still want to know about Martin Cass?”

  “Sure. Tell me about Martin Cass.”

  Ryabin said, “Thirty-six, born, in Queens, father a trumpet player on the Tonight Show with Jack Paar. Attended but never finished City College. Real estate license with Tropic Realty and Investments. They say he made a sale three months ago, one condo unit. He married a year ago—a German named Uta Ernst, but she’s not living with him at present. His secondhand BMW was repossessed last month, and he is overdrawn at First Union Bank.”

  Sam looked at him. “Very good.”

  “He was the realtor for the building where Caitlin lives,” Ryabin said. �
��The Englander Apartments. Frank Tolin bought it from Anna. You remember.”

  Anna was Ryabin’s wife. Four years ago Anna had owned the Englander. She had inherited the apartments from her sister Rivka, who had died when the building burned. Another tragedy for the women Eugene Ryabin had brought out of the Soviet Union.

  Ryabin had suspected arson, but without a motive or suspect, the case eventually died. Frank Tolin poured money into the place, and by the time Sam left his office, Frank was still complaining that it had been a mistake. Bad luck, he had said. Ghosts.

  Ryabin continued his recitation. “Marty Cass has coordinated publicity for Miami Beach civic groups—unpaid, but good for making contacts. He knows the city councilmen, the mayor, the heads of the departments. He pretends to have money. Now he’s claiming partnership with Klaus Ruffini.”

  He paused to move around a man shouting through the open door of a small gift shop with a display of gay postcards and T-shirts in the window.

  The man’s hair had gone a little wild, and his pants hung so low his plaid shirt had come halfway out. He was carrying a limp, leather-covered Bible with pages edged in gold leaf.

  “What is so hard about that, my friends? Man was made for woman, woman was made for man. It’s simple. It’s in the Bible. Man for woman, woman for man. Is that a difficult concept for you to understand?”

  A muscular man with a shaved head, heavy work boots, and tight denim shorts slit up the sides came out of the shop, unlocked his bicycle, and steered it into the flow of traffic.

  “What a freaking circus,” Sam muttered.

  “You know, Sam, in this city, if you act important, and maybe even fool yourself, and you do it with flair, and you wear the right clothes, and you have a good tan, people will believe you.”

  Sam could vaguely picture Marty Cass from more than four years ago: the perpetual smile, the jaunty little ponytail, the silk sport jacket.