CHAPTER FIVE

Floyd had just finished making a pot of coffee when I walked through the door from twelve hours of pumping gas. The living room ashtray was full of butts and the air was thick with cigarette smoke. Floyd was all set to light another. His face looked a lot better than when we had met last.

"I've a feelin' I'm not goin' t'like what you're 'bout t'tell me," Floyd said, as soon as I shut the door.

"When did you get back?"

"Midday, I've been climbin' the walls since."

"Andy's dead. Murdered."

Floyd's thumb slid off the wheel of his disposable, extinguishing the flame. His lips moved as if he was going to say something, but had lost the words. He combed bony fingers through his hair.

"You said you'd seen him," he said softly.

"His body's in the print shop's chest freezer. His throat had been sliced through to his spine."

I made for the kitchen and, ignoring the coffee, broke the seal on a bottle of vodka. Lifting two highball glasses from a cupboard, I poured a hefty measure into each, then topped up with grapefruit juice. I stuck the bottle under my arm and carried the drinks through to the living room. Floyd had not moved. He was still holding the lighter and cigarette and staring blankly. I would have found a gentler way to break the news if I had thought Floyd was going to take it this badly.

I handed him a glass. "To Andy."

Floyd clinked glasses, but eyed the liquid as though it was poison.

"You sure it was him?"

"Yeah. He's been dead three years and eight weeks, give or take a day."

Floyd waited for me to explain.

"The only other person who knew the money had been moved was Andy. He helped me pack it, but stayed behind to clean the press. He was killed before he had a chance to strip the plate; there was no way he would ever have allowed the ink to dry on it. You left early that night − cut man in Barry Nelson's corner for his big fight at the Arena."

Floyd nodded slowly as it came back to him. It had been Andy's suggestion that they stagger their departures from the print shop and Floyd had always been the last to leave. Except on that particular night.

"He put Ray Stone down in the seventh. Finished him next round."

I hardly heard him. "Andy had an attack of jitters and suggested I take the money home."

"He was always getting' spooked. The man was obsessed with secrecy; he reckoned half of Miami were on to us."

"No, that night it was worse than usual. I thought it was because we had completed the final print run and had reached our target. We had agreed all along that three million would be it."

"Maybe he knew something you didn't." Floyd took his first taste of the vodka.

"Like what?"

"Dunno. Maybe he thought someone had been tailin' him."

"Someone that knew him, knew of his record."

Floyd mulled it over. "You sayin' a Treasury agent killed Andy?"

I took a slug of vodka and grapefruit juice and felt the spirit burn all the way down. "I don't see it. They would have had no reason to. Andy must have known whoever it was that turned up at the shop after I had left − he would never have let them in otherwise - and realized that he was in deep shit. He might have tried buying himself out of trouble by telling them about the three million. It didn't work."

"I'm followin' you. But how else could the Treasury agents know 'bout the money?"

"The killer saw a way to use it. He phoned the T-Men and gave them an anonymous tip-off. That wasn't good enough for a search warrant, so by noon the next day, they have themselves installed across from my place and are sending out for ribs."

"Now you're losin' me. How come this mystery man didn't just tell them where t'find Andy's body and lay the killin' on you?"

I had spent all day thinking it through. "He was smarter than that. He preferred to have me arrested on a handling charge, thinking that eventually the agents would put the whole story together, search the shop, and find Andy's body. The way the agents would read it was that I had killed Andy and taken his share. There would be nothing to suggest that their anonymous informant had known about the murder, or they could have thought that he was another partner who snitched on me before I carved him up as well."

"You're givin' Andy's killer credit for a lot of smarts."

"He was sharp enough to locate the shop."

Floyd said nothing for a few moments. He had some catching up to do.

"You could be right. He couldn't foresee that you would burn down your friggin' house and cop a plea to arson.

I thought of the irony. "Yeah. I guess Morrell's day wasn't the only one I spoilt."

"Have you heard from him?"

I poured myself another glass of vodka, not bothering with the grapefruit juice this time. "Yesterday morning. He stopped on his way home from tucking Governor Kemple into bed. It seems I've got under his skin and he's dying to scratch. I can't be sure, but I may have been tailed to Boca. I didn't take any chances; my own shadow had trouble staying with me once I hit the sidewalk, but they could have hung around my car until I returned."

Floyd's face tensed over as the news sank in. "Have you thought what t'do with Andy? We can't leave him there; our fingerprints are plastered all over the place."

I shook my head. "Not any longer."

"We gotta deep-six the body."

"Too risky. If I did shake Morrell's men last night, he'll order an increase in surveillance. I don't want to give him the opportunity to pin a murder rap on me."

"I could do it. Morrell has nothing on me. What's t'stop me taking Andy on a one-way trip to the Glades."

I shook my head again. "He was our friend. Besides, my parole officer has this address, which means Morrell probably already knows more about you than your mother ever did. From now on we can't take any chances."

"Did Andy have family?"

"I don't know. He didn't talk much about himself. I knew he liked to bet football, that he preferred fried chicken to burgers, Pepsi to Coca-Cola, but he was reluctant to open up about his personal life. Just once I remember him mentioning it. We were talking about a boxer who had been paralyzed in the ring and he started on about his friend Pete being confined to a wheelchair. He told me that they shared an apartment on Sunset Islands' Twenty-fifth Street and what alterations had had to be made to accommodate the guy's chair. He didn't give me his second name."

"That's fuckin' great. All we've have t'do is place a notice in the Herald."

"I was thinking we could do just that."

Floyd stared at me, his eyes huge. "What are you talkin' about, man? You been drinkin' coolant?"

"Why not? Andy's dead and it's not something that's going to go away. Whoever killed him has already had one go at pinning it on me. What's to stop him trying again? Even if he doesn't, the print shop's bound to be discovered sooner or later. If we stick an ad in the paper asking for information about the whereabouts of Andy Kove, it could stir things up. At the very least, it'll make the killer sweat a bit. Someone might have information about Andy that would help point a finger in the killer's direction."

Floyd finally got around to lighting his cigarette. He blew a stream of smoke into the air. "Ain't no one in this town goin' t'tell you a damned thing."

"They will if the reward is big enough."

"Now I know you can't handle your liquor. I'm two months behind on the rent, and last I heard, Butler wages weren't so hot."

"We can promise any amount we feel like when we know that we won't have to pay out."

Floyd's face lit up in a huge grin. "Now you're talkin'. What sorta figure had you in mind?"

"Ten thousand dollars."

Floyd whistled. "There's been people resurrected for a whole lot less. But what about Morrell? If he sees Andy's name appearin' in the small ads, he's goin' to start nosin' around."

"We'll use a box number."

"That'll not stop him."

"I know, but what harm if he does? Should the killer give up the print shop, Morrell would have to wonder what we were playing at if we had been the ones to put him in the freezer."

"It's going t'take a sight more than that t'beat murder one."

"For now, it's all we've got." I drained my glass. "Have you anything to write on?"

"You have enemies in high places," Shapiro told me when I showed up at his office on Friday morning for the first of our bi-weekly appointments.

"Hu-huh?"

"My boss took a call from the Governor's office yesterday afternoon. You're to be drug-tested."

"I'm not a user," I said, not all that surprised that Morrell had exerted his influence with Kemple.

"We'll see. Start rolling up your sleeve while I fetch the technician in."

I looked around the office as I waited. Shapiro's desk was still swamped in files and I recognized the names of a few cons from Butler who had been released before me. I wondered how they were coping with freedom. I doubted very much if any of them had a body on their hands and the Secret Service breathing down their necks.

The girl who took my blood was a blonde kid with great legs and a beach tan. She gave me a strong stare as she removed the needle and brushed a thigh against my arm as she left. It flashed across my mind that she looked a lot like Sylvia Syms.

Shapiro said it would take a week for the results to come through. He fired a couple of routine questions about how I was settling in at Exxon, then told me to split.

I left the car where it was and walked to the offices of the Herald to place the ad that Floyd and I had drawn up. I had them run it over the weekend, but didn't bother with the Herald's Spanish-language insert, El Nuevo. Ten thousand dollars was a lot of money in any language. Before returning to the parking lot, I phoned the Exxon station and told them that I wouldn't be coming in.

Taking the MacArthur Causeway across to South Beach and Sunset Islands, I found a place to park on 25th Street and started my search for Andy's friend Pete. Walking east, I avoided the tourist traps and concentrated on the places where the locals would be known: the convenience stores, the cheap restaurants, and the bars where you could get a drink without a paper parasol in it.

I struck out on the first three blocks. Then, in a health food store on the next, I spoke to a woman who knew Pete. The guy stopped in with her once or twice a week and would park his wheelchair on the sidewalk under the awning. She told me that his name was Culpepper and he lived in the upmarket Biscayne Vista apartment complex across the street.

When I pressed the bell, a man's voice on a security link asked me what I wanted. I explained and was buzzed through.

Pete Culpepper greeted me in the hallway from his athlete's wheelchair, the type that paraplegics use in marathons, constructed from carbon fiber for lightness and maneuverability. It was evident from Culpepper's highly developed arms and upper body that he was long-distance wheeler. He had a blonde crew cut and wore a sport shirt and cotton sweats. Behind square-framed glasses were brown, intelligent eyes.

"What do you want with Andy?" he asked, still blocking the door with his chair.

'We were close friends up to a few years ago when we lost touch with each other. I've been thinking a lot about him recently."

Culpepper eyed me suspiciously. "I never heard him mention your name."

I put the man's mind at rest. "We weren't lovers. He told me all about you. How you and he planned the alterations needed to cope with your chair."

"I was hoping it would be you at the door," Culpepper said, waving me in. He reversed silently across the beech wood floor. The cords in his arms resembled strands of nylon rope.

I gave him a questioning look as I followed him into the apartment.

He rolled himself over to the window. "I like to sit here and watch people down on the street. Most of them are deadly dull, but you caught my interest. I had my eye on you even before you spoke to Diane. You said you're trying to locate Andy?"

Culpepper's sudden switch of topic caught me off guard. I sat down on the only seat in the room, a two-seater sofa with a Navaho print rug spread over its back. The room didn't have much in the way of furniture. There was a rack of weights fixed halfway up the wall. The television was also elevated, keeping most of the floor space clear. Displayed in a wall-mounted glass case were half-a-dozen medals, the type awarded for completing marathons.

"Yeah. I lost contact with him three years ago and I'm trying to track him down. I knew he lived someplace around here, but I wasn't sure exactly where."

Culpepper held my gaze. "Aren't you curious to know what it was that interested me in you? It was the way you looked at other people on the sidewalk. I could tell that you've been in prison. You didn't just glance at them, you gave each your full attention, full eye contact - however briefly. Every now and then you would stop and look back, like a tiger in a jungle that knows he hasn't much to fear, yet never lets his guard down. Andy taught me to watch for it in men who have been in prison; he called it their yard eye."

"I've done some state time."

"Is that where you ran into Andy?"

"No. He was in Raiford; I was at Lake Butler; at different times. We met a few months after he was released. Do you know where he is?"

"I wish I did. Andy walked out on me Thanksgiving three years ago. We had been dining with friends at a restaurant in the Riverwalk."

One week before my arrest. "What did you break up over?"

A hurt look flashed across Culpepper's face, but was replaced so quickly that I couldn't swear I had not imagined it. A man in a wheelchair had to be a pro at masking his feelings.

"He never told me. He left the restaurant early, saying he had something to do and would see the rest of us back here. By the time we arrived home, he had taken all his belongings and gone. Our friends were very embarrassed for me. To misquote a Kenny Rogers' song, "You picked a fine time to leave me, Andy.""

"Did you have a row?"

"No. Nothing."

"Had anything been troubling him?"

Culpepper's brow creased. "What business is it of yours? I thought you were his friend, not his goddamn therapist."

"I didn't mean to cause offense. You seem to blame yourself for Andy walking out, and I thought that maybe it was something he had to do for other reasons."

"You know what Andy's like. He doesn't give freely of himself. A personality like an iceberg − nine-tenths hidden."

"You didn't hear from him after that?"

"Not once."

"What about his family? Didn't they tell you anything?"

Culpepper grunted. "You obviously haven't had that pleasure. I rang them a few times after Andy left, to ask them to have him get in touch. They just didn't want to know and pretty soon stopped taking calls from me. They own half of Marion County and run a citrus-canning operation outside Ocala, but talk about dysfunctional. His father died in a car crash when Andy was sixteen and his mother fell into a whisky bottle. His older brother, Robert, married to a ball-breaker called Angela, runs the business and made damned sure that Andy never saw a nickel other than the income from his father's trust fund. Andy made it easy for his brother by growing up gay and having himself ostracized by his mother. There's a younger sister called Janene. Has the face of an angel, according to Andy, but as far as I'm concerned she has a heart darker than the devil's. When Andy was caught counterfeiting travelers' checks, the family closed ranks and convinced his mother that Andy had turned to crime to pay for my hospital treatment."

"Any truth in that?"

"No. I injured myself falling off a mechanical bull at a fun park. One of the protective cushions shifted and I cracked my spine against a steel bolt. I hired a sharp lawyer who took forty percent. He was worth every cent. I may be crippled, but poor I'm not. Anyway, my accident happened a year before I met Andy and most of the major medical bills had been taken care of by then. All I need now is prescribed pain medication and a new chair every so often. Liver and kidney failure will kill me long before I squander my compensation."

"It's hard to accept that nobody wondered where Andy went?"

"If they did, they didn't ask me. You're the first."

For some reason I didn't believe him. I looked around the room again. It was clear that Culpepper was living on his own. I didn't know what to say to the guy. I couldn't very well tell him that Andy had had his throat cut, and had a chest freezer for a funeral casket.

"I'll leave you my number in case you hear anything," I said eventually.

"There's some paper and a ballpoint in the kitchen. I'll get them for you."

We traded numbers and said goodbye.

I drove along Collins Avenue towards Broad Causeway. The sky was clear blue and the beaches were busy.

My mood was dark.

I had gone there looking for answers and found only more questions. What drove a man from a wealthy family, with a private trust income, to forge travelers' checks? And from the way Culpepper told it, the Kove family had not lost much sleep over Andy's disappearance, but that didn't mean they would wish him harm?

On the other hand, Culpepper was the abandoned lover − still sore over the way he had been treated. Whoever had killed Andy would have needed a lot of upper body strength and Culpepper certainly had that.

I would give a lot to know where Andy had spent the week between Thanksgiving and the night he died.

A build up of traffic was forming at the toll plaza. As I waited in line, I glanced in the rear view mirror and saw a dark blue panel truck pull in four vehicles behind. When it was my turn to pay, I tossed the correct change into the basket, waited for the barrier arm to lift, then threw in one of the golf balls.

By the time the toll attendant had left his office to clear the blockage, I was long gone.

CHAPTER SIX

It was more than a decade since I had last been inside a canning plant, when, still at high school, I had worked the vacations as a packer in a plant similar to the one owned by the Sunshine Juice Company, the Kove family business. After leaving Culpepper's apartment I had driven non-stop to Marion County and managed to locate the plant without much trouble. It would have been hard to miss. Taking the Daytona to Ocala highway I had passed through an almost continuous belt of citrus plantations. Neat rows of trees stretched to the horizon in every direction, the ripe fruit dotted like specks of paint spattered against a green canvas. The air smelt of their crisp, tangy zest. Every half-mile was an advertising hoarding announcing that the fruit was being Grown by Sunshine, Picked by Sunshine, Canned by Sunshine. It was the start of the grapefruit harvest and the fields were filled with pickers and their trucks.

I left my car in the visitors' parking lot outside the plant's administration block and reported to reception. If I were right, Robert Kove would be at the plant personally supervising the first big canning operation of the year. I asked the female receptionist if it would be possible to speak with him. She told me to take a seat while she found out.