A Mighty Fortress (20 page)

I thanked Margery on my way out. She seemed relieved that I was leaving.

I pushed open the door to the parking lot. The heat and humidity stopped me and sucked all the air out of me. I squinted, waited for the sweat to return. I took off my coat.

“Fancy seeing you here.” The last voice I wanted to hear. But it was no surprise when I turned and saw C-Rod coming my way. I held the door open for him and his partner, John Shields, who was right behind him.

“You warm him up for us?” Shields asked.

I said nothing. Shields went into the building first, and I was left holding the door open for C-Rod.
 

C-Rod stopped short of entering. “Why don’t you hang around, Porter? I’ve been meaning to pay you a visit.”

“You know where to find me,” I said and released the door.
 

He caught it and held it open. “Don’t forget about the funeral today. How about we meet up there later?” He made a gun with his fingers and fired a shot at me.

In my car, I threw the suit jacket in the backseat and grabbed my phone. I phoned Dr. J’s office. She was out of town for the rest of the week, of all things, attending a conference in Miami. I thought of my law school dean. I thought of a lot of things while the receptionist asked me if I wanted to leave a message.

I didn’t.

There’s really nowhere to hide in a cemetery, especially in Florida, where most of the terrain is flatter than a Kansas prairie. I settled for the shade of an ancient oak tree. I found myself thinking more about the tree than Scalzo’s small graveside ceremony, as I imagined what the tree had stood as a witness to over the centuries, back to when this land was inhabited only by natives and gators and deer. I wondered whether a hangman’s noose had ever dangled from one of its limbs. I imagined the tree standing solemn watch over all of the ceremonies of mourning that had taken place in its presence, like Chad Anthony Scalzo’s less than a football field away, where men returned to the ground, from dust to dust. And I wondered if its roots would ever take nourishment from the rotting corpse of Chad Scalzo.
 

The only person I recognized graveside was Kiki. It was clear who the deceased’s father was. Art Scalzo was close to seventy and wore a buzz cut that was died black. He looked like his son, but carried about an extra forty pounds and a commensurate slouch in posture. Even watching from this distance through a Government Issue scope, I could see that he’d had plastic surgery, apparently to tighten the skin. I snapped a few photos in case my memory failed me.
 

He was surrounded by an entourage of burly men with low centers of gravity and wide, heavy gaits. The one who stood to his right, though, really caught my attention. He stood about a foot above the rest of the entourage. As far as I could see, he had a heavy head of salt and pepper hair, and a scar that ran from under his left eye to his mouth.
 

I thought about what Judge Pinkerton had said about the days when men whose last names ended with vowels ran Tampa, and I wondered what assortment of the alphabet this crew’s surnames represented.

“We have to stop meeting like this.”
 

C-Rod had snuck up on me behind the oak tree. He wore khakis and a navy V-neck T-shirt.

“You been working out, detective? You look good.”

“We need to talk, Porter.”

“Didn’t we just talk a few hours ago?”

He took a few steps to block my view through the scope.
 

“You mind?” I asked. “I’m very busy.”

“Yeah, so your friend Valencia tells us.”

I lowered the scope. “What did you say?”

He grinned. “You heard me. We just finished talking to her after we visited McSwain.”

I bit my lower lip, felt a little steam on my neck.

“She must care a lot for you, man. She’s really worried about these mafia guys.”

“What do you want from me, C-Rod?”

He nodded toward the ceremony. “We shouldn’t talk here.”

“I don’t think they can hear us, Lieutenant.”

“Yeah, I wouldn’t bank on that.”

I raised the scope to get a last look at the crowd. My aim was a little off, but I noticed another figure standing beyond the ceremony, about a hundred yards past the mourners. He was hard to miss, as he was tall, taller even than the scarred goon standing nearest to Art Scalzo. I figured this guy to be about my height. He wore a white shirt that even from this distance caused my eyes to squint through the scope. He, too, seemed to be hiding out and keeping an eye on the Scalzo party. At first I wondered if he was Shields, but he was too tall and lanky to be C-Rod’s partner.
 

“You better be careful,” C-Rod said as I continued eyeing my counterpart across the ceremony grounds.

I watched him another moment, and realized this guy wasn’t watching the service. He was watching me. No scope or binoculars, but he apparently didn’t need them. He stared me straight down. And he seemed to know when I realized this, because he raised his left hand and waved.

I lowered the scope and felt a chill tickle my spine. If nothing else, I was interested to hear what C-Rod had to say. “I’ll tell you what, C-Rod, how about I let you buy me lunch?”

I had to hand it to C-Rod—he had good taste in food. He’d suggested Arco-Iris on Columbus, and judging by the leisurely way he stood there waiting for me by the front door, he must have beat me on the drive over by a good five minutes.
 

“Good choice,” I told him as he held the door open for me.

It was well after the lunch rush, so we had no problem getting a table. Everyone working there seemed to be on a first-name basis with C-Rod. I realized he was good people to them, a local boy grown up and done well. We found a booth and were both ready to order without looking at the menu. He went with a media noche sandwich, and I ordered palomilla with garbanzo soup and fried yucca. Something about stress made me eat fried foods, and you just can’t beat a lightly breaded and fried hunk of tenderized meat when existential angst strikes.

The waitress left us alone to face each other. Rodriguez obviously wasn’t one for awkward silences. “So, you find Scalzo’s killer yet?” he asked.

I chuckled. “That’s the best you can do?”

“What do you mean?”

I guessed he really wanted an answer. “I saw a guy back there scoping out the funeral. He with you?”

He shook his head. “Only one of us there today, and you’re looking at him.”

“FBI?”

He shrugged. “You’d have to ask them.”

The waitress dropped off our iced teas, and C-Rod went straight for the Splenda. “So, Shields know you’re snooping around today?” I asked while he stirred in his artificial sweetener.

“What else would I be doing?”

“Just seems odd, you working like this without your partner. You hiding something from him?”

C-Rod shook his head, but I could tell from his eyes he was hiding something, or at least thinking about something he wanted to hide. “He took the afternoon off is all. We do that sometimes, you know?”

“Of course.” I took a breath. The food couldn’t arrive soon enough. “So what’s really on your mind, lieutenant? Something tells me you could care less how my investigation’s going.”

He nodded. “You’re right. This is personal, Porter.”

“Glad we’re being honest. Tell me how you really feel about me, Detective.”

He glanced down at the Formica tabletop where he let his eyes wander for a moment before he raised them again. “Should come as no surprise, the last few years, I would have killed you if I had the chance.”

“You
have
given me that impression at times.”

“I was wrong, Porter. I don’t know. Maybe I was looking for a scapegoat, someone to blame for all the things I screwed up.”

“I’ve said it a zillion times, I was just doing my job.”

“Yeah, I get that,” he said with a sigh. “I of all people should get that. I guess I thought I was above the law, worked hard, put my life on the line every day, so I was entitled to run around on my wife, see whatever woman pleased me.”

“I take it the divorce went through?”

“All the way, man. Alimony, weekend visitation with my daughter, Rose. She’s six now, man. Six years old. I don’t pay alimony anymore because my wife remarried. She was the love of my life, and I screwed it up good.”

I thought back to the pictures I’d taken of C-Rod at a steakhouse near International Town Center almost three years earlier. They’d done the job, all right. “I’m sorry you had to go through that. I really am. Sorry for your wife, too.”

He gave me a stoic stare. “No, Porter. I am. I’m sorry.” He took a deep breath. “I’m sorry.”

“Water under the bridge.” I extended my hand. He shook it and with a tight grip.

The waitress arrived with our food, maybe surprised to see us shaking hands that long after we’d arrived. She set the sandwich in front of me. I slid it across the table to C-Rod, and she took the cue and set the fried steak and sides in front of me.

“Anything else?” she asked.

I looked at the three plates holding my lunch. “This should do it.”

“You eat like a horse,” C-Rod said.

“First meal I’ve had all day,” I said.

“You do that intermittent fasting shit?”

“Not on purpose. Sometimes, accidentally.”

He nodded, chewing his crusty sandwich. I almost regretted not getting the same thing until I took a bite of my steak. Tender, salty, and delicious. I could always come back for dinner.

“I got a serious question for you, Porter.”
 

“Shoot.”

“You been working this case all week, too. What do you think of Don Alexi?”

Now we were getting somewhere. “I think the guy’s a creep. I don’t think he’s your guy.”

“Why not?”

“Call it a hunch.”

“Well, a hunch and a dollar will you get you a coffee in my department.”

“That’s why I’m not in your department.”

“So Naval Operations Analysts work on hunches?”

“Sometimes,” I said. “Then again, I’m not in the Navy anymore, either.”

“Well, let’s say you wanted to nail Alexi. Tell me everything incriminating you’ve found on him.”

“Well, he’s got as much of a motive as anyone in this twisted mess.”

“What do you mean?”

I slowed as I reached the midpoint of my steak. I wanted to make sure I enjoyed it. “He hated Scalzo, resented him for his inroads with Pilka, and stood to profit from getting rid of him.”

C-Rod nodded along, as though I were telling him nothing new. “What else you got?”

“Well, the thing that really bothered me about the guy…” I thought back to the Fed Ex package.

“What’s that?”

“His guns. The guy had a collector’s automatic in his office the day I was there. Said he’d been trying to unload a lot of guns for some reason.”

“That made you feel uneasy?”

“Yes, and no. It showed the guy was a real nut job. But if he’d just killed Scalzo the night before, would he really be bragging about his gun collection?”

C-Rod nodded that he saw my point, but followed that up with a shrug. “Maybe if he’s enough of a nut job, he would.” He gestured to the waitress that he was ready for a refill. Then he glanced down at the last third of his sandwich. “So enough about Alexi. What can you tell me about the girls who were there that night?”

“With all due respect, lieutenant, this is becoming a one-way conversation, isn’t it?”

He feigned a sly little laugh. “Oh, you wanted to get information from me? Forgive me, Porter. If that’s the case, you really ought to tell me something I don’t already know.”

“Such as?”

“Such as who the girls were at Armani’s.”

“Not sure I know anything about them I haven’t already told you. So why don’t you tell me what you know, and I’ll see if I can fill in any blanks.”

He nodded, fair enough. “We know from the videos at the restaurant that there was a blonde and a brunette and some goofball with a ponytail. We know from valet surveillance that they all three left the restaurant together. The guy with the ponytail, he was staying at the Hyatt right there on the bay. Videos in the lobby show him and the blonde going up to his room right around 8:30. The brunette gets in a cab a few minutes later. She’s never seen again.”

That sounded about right to me. “Sorry, it sounds like you know more than I do. There’s nothing else I know other than what I told you the other day.”

“See, Porter, right there I know you’re full of shit.”

“How so?”

“Well, for starters, you told us the brunette’s name was Angie.”

“That’s what she told me.”

“Turns out her name’s Evie.”

“So she lied to me. Or changed her stage name.
 
That really hard to believe?”

“And the blond MILF. You sure you don’t know anything else about her?”

I had to be very careful here. Last thing I needed hanging over me this week was an obstruction of justice charge. “Yeah, you’re right, lieutenant. That slipped my mind. Sure, I’ve seen her since Sunday night.”

“And she works for your employer, right?”

I nodded. “I didn’t know that last time we talked. I didn’t know until Monday afternoon.”

“So let’s have it out, Porter. What’s this lawsuit really about?”

“God’s honest truth, Rodriguez, I don’t know, and I don’t know that anyone else does, for that matter.”

C-Rod shook his head. “You haven’t given me much, Porter.”

“I think I could say the same thing.”

He grinned at that. “I’ll show you mine, if you show me yours?”

“What?”

“I got something I know you don’t know, and I’ll tell you right now. But first, you need to tell me two things you’re sure I don’t know.”

“Two for one?”

He shrugged. “Hey, I’m the cop.”

“Still doesn’t sound fair.”

He leaned forward. “You know, Porter, I forgot to tell you I know your neighbor. What’s his name, Hector? Hector Garcia?”
 

I’m sure my glare told him he had my attention.

“Hector’s a good guy. We went to high school together. I know he’s down on his luck. Be a shame he lost his job for doing something as stupid as helping you break into a crime scene.”