Final Stroke (15 page)

Jan had written this all down, and Steve, reading it, smiled with pride. But then he frowned.

“A fly in the ointment,” he said.

“Right,” she said. “It sounds like there could be one or two.”

“Something else … other things.”

“There are other things that are fishy, but you can’t remember them right now?”

Steve nodded. “No … funeral.” He pointed to Jan then to him
self. “Us? Her funeral?”

“Right,” she said. “I’ll find out about it and we can go.”

Steve smiled. Then he said, “Last time … seizure … thought stroke. This time I know … just seizure.”

They hugged and went back to his room where they closed the door and kissed. After the kiss, while Jan straightened her hair, Steve managed to push the chair from beside the bed to the door and prop the backrest beneath the door handle. Then he leered at her, trying to make it look as obscene as he could.

She went to him and put her arm around his waist to help him walk back to bed. “Do you think we should so soon after a seizure?”

“What the hell,” he said, holding the back of her head with his good hand as they walked slowly toward the bed. “What the hell.”

“What the hell has become our own private shorthand. It stands for all the cliches. Life is short, we’re not getting any younger, and if we don’t do it now we might kick ourselves later.”

Steve held her with his left arm and swung his right arm around
behind her. She could feel his right hand caress her buttocks weakly. “Physical therapy,” he said. “Physical therapy.”

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For a change of scenery, Valdez took old Route ?? across
to Naples instead of the Everglades Parkway. When he left Miami, after the morning call from Skinner, the sun had been in his face, forcing him to lower his visor and squint ahead into the haze of the horizon. He’d used eye drops before he left Miami, and because of the air conditioner in his face during the drive, used them again when he parked in the shade of the visitor breezeway at the side of Hanley’s palm-lined drive. Although it was not quite noon, the heat felt like a flame-thrower when he stepped out of his car. Yes, like he was a young man again in simpler times before all this global warming and terrorist crap. A young man new to the agency sent out to use flame-throw
ers on a cannabis crop planted out on the Keys by a bunch of Cuban immigrants.

He recalled that back then—decades before cell phones and the Internet—he had told his friends Skinner and Christensen about the flame-throwers during one of their regularly scheduled evening con tacts on whatever amateur radio band was open at the time. They had
probably used the forty or eighty meter band because he recalled heavy static during their conversation. Skinner and Christensen joking that they could hear the crackling of the fire. Anyone new to Miami’s agency office in those days was sent out on these ATF and FBI-style assignments in order to maintain the office’s clandestine stature. All those years working out of the same office. All those years piled up so he and his wife could some day retire in comfort. All those years working and waiting, and then cancer comes along.

During the short walk in the overwhelming heat to Hanley’s front door, Valdez felt as if the years trudging behind him were about to overtake him.

Hanley answered the door. “You’re just in time for lunch.”

“I’m too old for this,” said Valdez, stepping through a wall of cool air.

“Too old for lunch?” asked Hanley.

“Not that. I mean the heat, and the drive.”

“But this time you won’t have to drive home in the dark,” said Hanley.

Valdez followed Hanley through the cool house to the breakfast room that overlooked the lanai and the pool on the north side of the house. The table was set for two with a frosty pitcher of iced tea in the center. Valdez was glad to see they would not be having lunch out in the heat. Maria, Hanley’s Cuban housekeeper, brought salads from the kitchen.

“Good morning, Mr. Valdez. How was your drive?”

“Good morning, Maria. Except for the sun, the drive was fine. I’d forgotten the reason I used to come for dinner. Now I’ll have to drive back into the setting sun.”

“Clouds are predicted this afternoon,” said Hanley. “So perhaps you’ll be spared the sun in your face … Thank you, Maria. Give us a few minutes to finish our salads.”

Hanley and Valdez waited until Maria went back into the kitchen and closed the door behind her before they began speaking.

Hanley got right down to business. “Please tell me what’s new with Mr. Babe.”

“We checked again,” said Valdez. “He definitely had a stroke. At first we thought he might have been a plant to find out what Mrs. Gia
netti knows. But now we don’t have to worry about Mrs. Gianetti.”

“What do you mean?” asked Hanley.

“She’s dead.”

Hanley poured glasses of iced tea and they began eating their sal
ads, glancing out toward the view of the coast to the north through the lanai windows. The sun shining down through the haze made the coast disappear several estates up from Hanley’s estate. Valdez thought this was appropriate, climate change and pollution erasing the Naples estates in the distance, estates most likely owned by executives of some of the biggest polluters.

Hanley finished chewing a mouthful and put his fork down. “What’s the game?”

“Game?” asked Valdez.

“The details,” said Hanley. “We’re both old enough as it is. You know how I despise dragging out the fact-gathering.”

Valdez put down his fork. “Sorry, I wasn’t sure if you knew.”

“You’re my source,” said Hanley. “That’s also part of getting older, and being retired.”

“Mrs. Gianetti slipped and fell at the facility. It’s been reported as an accident, but we’re checking into it. Apparently, so is Babe. Or at least his wife is. She’s questioned the staff about the old lady’s death.”

“Is there any indication that Mrs. Gianetti’s extended family might have been involved?”

“We checked the bugs on Chicago mob phones,” said Valdez. “No
chatter there.”

“How can you be sure?” asked Hanley.

“I thought you knew,” said Valdez. “We’ve had access to the fre
quencies and codes for their cells phones for quite some time. The Chicago mob isn’t as sophisticated as it used to be. Low level hoods let things out for a price.”

“Any indication she might have revealed something before she died?” asked Hanley.

“That’s always a possibility,” said Valdez. “She might have said something to visitors, to someone on the staff, or even to Babe, since the two of them attended rehab together. As I said last time, our man has been watching and listening, but he can’t be around all the time.”

“I thought you were going to get a backup,” said Hanley.

“I have assigned a backup,” said Valdez, smiling as he leaned back in his chair to reach into a side pocket. He pulled out several folded sheets of paper and handed them across the table to Hanley. “She’s new from Langley, but sharp. She was able to get hold of a notebook kept by the detective’s wife, Mrs. Babe. She made a copy of the contents and got the notebook back to Mrs. Babe without her knowledge.”

Hanley took a pair of reading glasses from his shirt pocket and put them on. After studying the sheets of paper for several seconds, he stared at Valdez above the reading glasses. “Your office has had more time to study this than me. What do you think it means?”

“Apparently the detective thinks Marjorie Gianetti might have been murdered.”

“Do you think there’s anything to it?”

“Could be,” said Valdez. “There are a few entries referring to some kind of Gianetti family secret. And I assume that being who her husband was …”

“Yes,” said Hanley, studying the sheets again. “If I were you I’d be
especially interested in the nephew … Lamberti. He’s the type who

could make trouble.”

“What kind of trouble could he make?” asked Valdez.

Hanley put aside the sheets of paper, put his reading glasses away, and resumed eating his salad, chewing two mouthfuls before continu
ing. “Lamberti’s a typical hood. His father was tied in with the Team
sters, probably helped rip off the unions and maybe even get rid of Hoffa. This Lamberti is the same. He’ll go after the money and I’m concerned that in doing so he’ll dig up more than he should. On the inside they call him Max the Fly.”

“Why do they call him that?”

“Because like his father he has a tendency to buzz around looking for ways to make money off old mob ventures.”

Valdez also resumed eating and finished a mouthful before com
menting. “I still don’t understand why our predecessors left Gianetti senior with all that money.”

“It’s too late to try to understand the actions of our predecessors,” said Hanley.

Valdez smiled. “I’m old, and I’m curious. The original plan, what was it for?”

Hanley smiled. “It goes way back.”

“Illinois politics or national?”

“National,” said Hanley. “Heads could roll if it ever got out.”

Valdez glanced toward the view of the hazy coast. “Does it have anything to do with the fix we’re all in now?”

“What fix is that?” asked Hanley.

“All this global warming crap. All these so-called weather-related incidents.”

Hanley took a sip of iced tea before answering. “In a way. But then, in our world everything affects everything. You know that.”

“This isn’t like that other incident from the nineties, the envi
ronmentalists disappearing. Or is it? I wondered because of Gianetti Junior being an environmentalist.”

“No,” said Hanley. “It’s not like that at all. But I’ll let you in on one thing. Keeping this one under wraps is more critical than keeping that episode under wraps. In fact, I would say this is the most critical matter we’ve come upon during our stroke watch.”

“I noticed,” said Valdez, “there are references in Mrs. Babe’s notes to President Reagan and President Carter. Apparently Mrs. Gianetti said her husband was fond of Reagan but not so fond of Carter. Would I be right to suppose it has something to do with one or the other?”

Hanley smiled as he swallowed a mouthful, then said, “One, or the other … or both.”

“Well,” said Valdez, “I guess during my stay on this old earth I’ll never know everything that’s happened. And I take back what I said before. I’m old, but I’m not that curious. You know what frightens me most?”

“What’s that?” asked Hanley.

“What frightens me is that some day I’ll have a stroke or get Al
zheimer’s and they’ll send in a younger guy from the Miami office so he can watch me drool and shit my pants.”

Both men laughed and continued eating. Maria came from the kitchen with sandwiches and a fruit bowl. They waited for Maria to leave before speaking again.

Hanley turned back to Valdez. “Since my wife passed away I’ve grown very fond of that woman.”

“I know what you mean,” said Valdez. “At my age, and with my wife also gone, I’ve begun admiring many women. Actually, any woman over eighteen and under sixty will do.”

They laughed again, and resumed eating their sandwiches and
fruit.

“Tell me,” said Hanley, “is the young woman from Langley good looking?”

“I wouldn’t throw her out of bed,” said Valdez.

“Do you think she’ll be able to spot trouble early enough to nip it in the bud?”

“She’ll do fine,” said Valdez. “In her last report she insists being able to shadow Mrs. Babe without her knowledge. She says only an
other woman could do what she’s been doing. Her reports are very de
tailed. As a side note, you’ll be happy to know that Mrs. Babe and her husband have not allowed the stroke to interfere with their sex life.”

“That’s good news,” said Hanley. “Perhaps an indication there’s still hope for us.” He glanced toward the kitchen door through which Maria had disappeared. “However, if Mr. Babe is well enough to perform in bed, I wonder how well he’s able to practice his old profession?”

“A fair question,” said Valdez. “A question that’s at the top of the list for both our contacts.”

Valdez left soon after lunch for his drive back to Miami, telling Hanley this might give him time for female companionship later that evening if he played his cards right. He took the Everglades Parkway back rather than the so-called scenic route he’d taken to Naples that morning. The sun was still high during the drive. A much more pleasant way to travel. He had aimed the air-conditioning vents to ward the passenger side so the dry air would not irritate his eyes. He had tuned to the Latin Rhythms music channel, its beat pounding away relentlessly like the rapid heartbeat of a younger man during sex. If the weather was lousy in Chicago he didn’t want to know. All he wanted to know was that nothing Mrs. Gianetti knew from her hus band would come around and bite someone more powerful than him in the ass. As long as that didn’t happen, and as long as real estate
prices didn’t outdistance the savings he’d managed to put away by at tending to these special projects for Skinner, he’d live to be an old fart in his Naples estate and maybe get himself a Maria to wile away his time on this old earth.

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