Riding the Rap

Santo said, “Bullshit,” to the girl. Or it might’ve been some word in Spanish, Raylan wasn’t sure. There wasn’t any doubt about the guy’s ma

“These guys work at being a pain in the ass,” the girl said. “I told you, it’s the way they are. Sometimes I don’t know what I’m doing here.”

Raylan said, “I was go

“They become sociable when it gets dark, they dance like crazy.” She began moving in a kind of mambo shuffle to the radio. “We go to clubs in Hialeah.”

Santo, on the balcony, stood hunched over the metal rail leaning on his arms. Raylan walked out there to stand next to him, thinking all he’d have to do was lift the guy up by his belt and ask again where Bobby Deo was.

Instead, his gaze settled on Ocean Drive and the strip of art deco hotels in their pastel colors that looked to Raylan like big ice-cream parlors. Hotels with cafés fronting on the street where the trendies stayed in season and girls with string bikinis stuck in their bums came cruising by on Rollerblades; young guys hotdogged on skateboards and photographers posed ski

He heard the girl behind him and said, “It isn’t anything like back home, is it? Wherever that might be.”

She said, “It sure ain’t, it’s fun.”

“Santo here your boyfriend?”

The banty rooster stirred as the girl said, “God, no, I’m with Bobby, when he’s here.”

“Where can I find him?”

Santo, turning his head, said, “Melinda, you don’t have to tell him nothing. You hear me?”

She said, “Hey, fuck off. Okay?”

Raylan turned to her standing in the doorway. “I only want to ask him about this friend of mine, if he’s seen him.”

Santo said, “Yeah? What do you show your badge for?”

Raylan said, “Why don’t you stay out of it, partner?” and looked at the girl again, Melinda. “You know where he is?”

“He’s working. He won’t be back for, I don’t know, a while.”

“I don’t have to see him in person, if you have a phone number where I can reach him.”

He waited.

She said, “I might have it someplace.”

“I’d really appreciate it. This friend of mine, Harry Arno? I’m hoping Bobby knows where he is.”

“Bobby was working for him?”

“Yeah, they’re friends.”

Santo, turning his head again, said, “I never heard of no Harry Arno.”

Raylan said, “How far’s it down there to the pavement, forty, fifty feet? Keep looking at it.”

He turned to see Melinda going into the living room and put his hand on Santo’s shoulder.

“Nice talking to you.”

She was bent over the desk now looking at notes, scraps of paper by the phone. Raylan came up next to her. “Will he give you any trouble?”

“Who, Santo? He touches me Bobby’ll kill him.” She straightened saying, “Here it is. He called me once and gave me the number. You want me to write it down for you?”

Friendly because they had something in common, their accents and, maybe, because there were moments when she was homesick and he reminded her of some farm town or coal camp way off the interstate.

“I’d appreciate it.”

He watched her write the area code, 407, but couldn’t make out the rest of the numbers.

“You say Bobby’s working. What’s he do?”

The girl looked up at him, maybe a little surprised.

“He’s a gardener.”

Raylan said, “Oh.” And said, “He is, huh.”

“A master gardener. Bobby learned grounds beautification when he was up at Starke.”

Raylan took the piece of notepaper she handed him, folded it without looking at the number and thanked her.

She said, “I sure like that hat.”

At the door he touched the brim to her. He would think about this girl, remind himself to check on her in a week or so, see how she was doing. In the hall he stopped to unfold the notepaper the way a poker player might look at his hole card the first time, sneaking a peak and hoping.

And there it was. The same number Joyce had given him for Warren Ganz.

He used the pay phone in the lobby to call Torres.

“It’s a small world,” Raylan said. “I’ve already spoken to Bobby Deo without knowing who he was.” And had to explain that. “Now I’ll have to have another talk with him. What about Harry’s car?”

“Hasn’t shown up.”

“You get a chance to check on Dawn Navarro?”

“Nothing in the computer. Who is she anyway?”

“Certified medium and spiritualist, she’s a psychic, hangs out at a restaurant in Delray, the place where Harry was supposed to meet Bobby Deo.”

“She knows Harry?”

“Says she talked to him for a minute. I’ve got her down as the last person to see Harry before he disappeared from the face of the earth.”

“Or went down to Key West to get drunk in peace. You think she knows what happened to him?”

“She knows something she’s not telling me.”

“Dawn Navarro,” Torres said, “she sounds like a stripper. She lives in Delray?”

“Nearby.”

“You’re working out of the Palm Beach County Sheriffs Office, for Christ sake, talk to the people up there, ask around. If she’s been up on any kind of charge somebody there will’ve heard of her. Check with Crimes Persons. I have to tell you how to do your job?”

“I appreciate it,” Raylan said. “Listen, you don’t happen to know anything dirty about a guy named Warren Ganz, do you?”

“Good-bye,” Torres said and hung up.

sixteen

Starting out, Chip had pictured a damp basement full of spiders and roaches crawling around, pipes dripping, his hostages huddled against the wall in chains. He wanted it to be as bad as any of the places in Beirut he’d read about.

He told Louis and Louis said, “Where we go

All right, but the living conditions had to be miserable, the worse the better. They could certainly find a place infested with bugs, those big palmetto bugs. Maybe a shack out in the Everglades.

Louis said, “We go

All right, then some place with concrete-block walls. Drive in steel staples and hook up chains with two-inch links, the kind they used over in Beirut.

Louis said, “I don’t know nothing about any steel staples or how you drive them into concrete. Chains with two-inch links-how you bend a chain that size around a man’s ankle? Bicycle chain’s what you use, the kind you chain your bike to a post with so nobody go

Chip said they’d feed their hostages cold rice and mutton, hard stale cheese… Spill the food on purpose, the way the guards did over there, and make them eat it off the floor. He favored leaving overripe bananas in the room, out of their reach, the smell becoming worse each day.

Louis said, “Worse for anybody has to go in there.” He said, “Where we go

When he brought in cookies and potato chips and stuff, Chip wanted to know if they were holding a hostage or having a house party.

Once they saw they’d have to use this place, Louis said, “Chipper, there’s no way to treat hostages like they did in Beirut in a five-million-dollar house in Manalapan, Florida.”

This morning, Thursday, Louis said, “Almost a week now I been taking the man to the toilet. Have to unchain him, wait for him to do his business and chain him up again.”