Gold Coast

He had already noticed the Cuban-looking guy in the crowd, lining the cement rail. Yellow shirt, white jacket. The same one Karen had pointed to who’d been sitting at the bar last night. Marta’s brother.

Maguire, on the aluminum pole, gave them the double hand-feeding with Bo

And the other Cuban-looking guy with him, why was he along, what, to watch?

Maguire asked the crowd, the little kids, if they wanted to see a mouth-to-mouth feeding. They said, “Yeeeeeeeeees!”

No, he had seen too many like the other Cuban-looking guy. They were bouncers in go-go joints. They hung around sports arenas. Marta’s brother looked like he’d been a fighter; the neck, the trace of scar tissue around the eyes. The other Cuban-looking guy was bigger; he could be a lightheavy sparring partner for a good middleweight.

“And that’s our Flying Dolphin Show for this afternoon,” Maguire said, and told everyone next, to kindly proceed to the Shark Lagoon area. Hooker was doing the color over there today. Maguire’s next job, in about twenty minutes, was to a

They were waiting. The only ones still up here.

Maguire walked toward the stairway. He heard one of them say, “Just a minute.”

And thought, Your ass.

He put the bucket down without breaking stride, moving with purpose but not ru

Now run. And if they ran after him, it was absolutely for certain not to deliver a message he wanted to hear. He began ru

The bucket of fish sections was where he’d left it. Maguire picked it up and stepped back from the open doorway, hearing their steps coming up toward him now, stiffened his arm holding the bucket, let the first one come through to the outside, Marta’s brother, and swung the bucket into the face of the other Cuban-looking guy, turning him reeling, took the bucket in both hands, fish pieces falling out, jammed it down over the guy’s head and, still holding onto it, ran the bucket, the guy coming with it to the waist-high rail, hitting the cement as Maguire grabbed the guy’s legs and threw him into the tank.

Marta’s brother stood watching.

Maguire moved to the wire gate in the rail that opened to a small platform on the other side, close to the water, where Hooker would go into the tank with his mask and air hose. Maguire waited, looking from the gate to Marta’s brother who was fifteen to twenty feet away.

“What do you want?”

Jesus Diaz said, “This is a warning.” He didn’t know what else to say. “Keep away from the woman.”

Maguire said, “What?” Not sure he heard him right. He looked past the gate to see the other Cuban pulling himself up on the platform. Wet-gray bottlenose heads came out of the water to watch. Maguire waited until the Cuban’s hand reached the top of the wire gate, his face appearing, coming up slowly, and slammed a right hook into the face, sending the man back into the tank as the dolphin heads disappeared.

“I’m talking about Missus DiCilia,” Jesus said. “Keep away from her or we go

Maguire scowled. His hand hurt something awful. He said to Jesus, “You work for Roland or what?”

Jesus said, “Be smart, uh? Stay away from her.”

Or what? Maguire thought. He took two steps toward Jesus, saw the man’s hands go behind his back and reappear with a gun, a heavy automatic, Colt or a Browning. The other guy was coming up out of the water again.

Maguire said, “Well, I got to go.”

Jesus said, “Don’t work too hard.”

Maguire went down the stairway holding his sore hand, shaking his head.

12

“THE FIRST THING YOU BETTER DO,” Maguire said, “is fire your maid, and anybody else around here. How about the brother?”

“No, he doesn’t work for me.”

Karen was wearing big round sunglasses and a brown and white striped robe, open. Maguire couldn’t see her face, her expression, as she looked at him and then out across the lawn; but he could see her brown legs and firm little belly and the strip of tan material almost covering her breasts. Maguire wore jeans and a shirt over his red Seascape T-shirt. He had come here from work and now, on the patio, he was trying to make Gretchen go away so he could concentrate on Karen.

She said, “I can’t believe it. Marta’s been here as long as I have. I think she was seventeen when we hired her.”

“Give her a reference then,” Maguire said. He’d push Gretchen away and she’d come back to him, thinking he was playing.

“I can’t just fire her.”

“Can you get rid of her for awhile? Send her on an errand.”

“She did the grocery shopping yesterday-”

“Tell her you need some Spaghetti-O’s, something. We’ve got to get her out of here.”

“For how long?”

“An hour anyway.”

Karen got up and went into the house.

Maguire watched her. She didn’t seem worried or upset. She didn’t have nervous moves or do anything with her hands. Andre Patterson would try to sign her up.

Maguire had told her about Jesus Diaz and the other one coming to see him, not telling her all of it, but making a point of the warning. That was clear enough, wasn’t it? Jesus worked for Roland. If they knew things about Karen that Marta could have observed, then Marta was telling them. And if they knew things Marta couldn’t have known, then the house was bugged or there was a tap on the phone. Probably a tap. Karen had said, “Really?” quietly interested. Was she different again? She seemed different every time he saw her.

There was a newspaper on the umbrella table, part of the Miami Herald, the “Living Today” section. Maguire reached for it. It wasn’t today’s “Living Today” though. It was last Sunday’s, and he didn’t immediately recognize the woman in the photo. Karen DiCilia and a man, her former husband-yes, somewhat familiar to Maguire from newspaper photos years ago-Frank DiCilia. Both dressed up, both wearing dark glasses, coming out of someplace, a doorman standing behind them.

The headline said, WHAT IS KAREN DICILIA’S SECRET? A smaller line, above it, said, WIDOW OF MOBSTER WON’T TALK.

In the Miami paper, taking up the top half of the page. He didn’t know how he could have missed it.

The story below, with before-and-after shots of a woman, said, TWENTY-YEAR WAR ON FAT TAPERS OFF IN VICTORY, and maybe Aunt Leona had cut it out of the paper. There were usually things cut out of the Herald by the time he got it Sunday evening.

“Widow of Mobster…” Jesus, he bet she loved that. The photo with Frank was dated four years ago. She looked the same.

“Why would an attractive forty-year-old widow, comfortably situated, chic, outgoing…”

Forty years old?

And that was four years ago.

“… give up her independence to marry a former (?) Detroit mob boss relocated in Fort Lauderdale’s fashionable Harbor Beach area?”

Maguire’s eyes moved down the columns. Background stuff. Formerly Karen Hill. Married to an engineer. Daughter an actress.

“Since Frank DiCilia’s death, Karen has become virtually a recluse, seldom venturing out to the fashionable clubs or attending the charitable benefits that used to be de rigueur for her.