CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The morning was half gone by the time I woke up. Father and daughter were still sleeping. Robin had used my room and I had stretched out on the sofa. I pulled on my clothes and walked through to the kitchen to make a pot of coffee. I was on my second cup when Robin appeared. Her eyes were puffy and bloodshot.

"Sorry about your face," she said, leaning against the door frame.

'Forget it. Want some coffee?"

I poured another cup and carried both of them through to the living room. "How are you feeling?"

"Not wonderful. You had no idea?"

'Not the slightest. But then I haven't been around much."

Robin's body tensed.

"I'm sorry, I said quickly. "I didn't mean anything by that."

She took a mouthful of coffee and fidgeted with the spoon. "Daddy didn't get round to finishing the story. There are some other things I still don't understand. How come the vault was empty, and what was the late night phone call to Tallahassee all about?"

She had a right to know, so I took my time and told her about. Andy and how he had been killed; the advert in the Miami Herald; the tv crew being tipped off; the disparate reactions I had provoked from the Koves. I even told her about my trip to Lake Okeechobee to meet Angelo and how I had kept it from Floyd. Robin interrupted every now and then to clarify a part of it. To her credit, she handled it well, though it would have taken something to top the previous night's bombshell.

"So you suspect it was Angelo who set Morrell up?" she said.

"He's the most likely candidate. He has a direct pipeline into Morrell's office and could easily have arranged for Nicole Cantrell to be tipped off at exactly the right time."

'But why would he want to go to all the trouble?"

"He wanted to be certain that Morrell didn't come snooping after him. Arranging to have the Secret Service publicly embarrassed on network tv was his way of ensuring that the status of the investigation was reduced. Cantrell will probably do some snooping of her own, but from what I've seen, she's more likely to side with Angelo."

"But if Angelo killed Andy, why did he wait so long to dispose of the body?"

Remembering Peter Culpepper's story I said, "I'm not so sure he did kill him."

"Who else could it have been? Somehow or other he discovered that Andy had printed bills with the wrong serial numbers. That would have been reason enough."

I shook my head. "All the complicated work had been done. It would have made more sense for Angelo to coerce us into printing a new batch. Killing Andy achieved nothing."

"You're assuming that what Angelo told you is true.'

"I don't follow you."

"That he was Andy's fence for the counterfeit. You've only his word on that. What if Angelo already had a counterfeit operation up and running, and killing Andy was his way of eliminating the competition."

I had to admit that I hadn't considered that. It helped to explain so much. After killing Andy, Angelo's plan to frame me had gone wrong, so he left Andy's body where it was to be discovered accidentally knowing that Morrell would still be try to pin the murder one me. But as time went on and the body still hadn't been discovered Angelo saw another way of using it. He pre-empted any investigation into Andy's disappearance by forcing Culpepper to send the fake faxes. Then on my release he set up the Boca Raton charade. The more I thought about it, the cleverer it seemed. Angelo had managed to eliminate the competition and neutralize Morrell.

It was smart okay. But there was one question that it didn't answer and, no matter how I looked at it, I always came back round to it. If Andy had been dealing with some other fence, why had he been printing incorrect serial numbers?

Robin and I talked it through for more than an hour, trying to find a way to break the circle, but without success. By then it was time for her to leave. She went into Floyd's room to waken him and let him know that she was going.

While Floyd was walking her downstairs, I looked out the number that Cross had given me and rang him. He was at home.

"Any luck running Andy down?" he asked, after I told him who it was had disturbed his Sunday morning.

"Not so far. There's one more possibility I want to try before I call it a day. That time Andy came to visit you in the penitentiary, did he happen to mention who his parole officer was? Maybe he could tell me where he is."

"It's worth a try. Dave Shapiro was Andy's parole officer. I remember because I'd just found out that Shapiro was to be mine as well."

I didn't like that. I didn't like that at all.

Just about the dumbest thing any parolee can do is to start poking about in the private life of his case officer. But on Sunday afternoon, that's exactly what I did. That's not how the game is supposed to be played; I was breaking all the rules. Your P0 knows all there is to know about you, and if there's anything there he doesn't warm to, he can have you turning cartwheels if he feels like it. On the other hand you know nothing of him other than cell-block gossip.

Shapiro's address was easy enough to find. He wasn't in the phone book, but he was on the electoral roll. Home was a house in Hialeah near the racetrack.

It was a fine day for a drive.

Shapiro's place was a bungalow in a subdivision zoned for medium-priced houses. The developers had optimistically designed it as a gated community, but now the concrete base of the security cabin was all that remained of the entrance. In an area of suburban housing where the residents do their own gardening and only one-in-four homes has a pool, there just isn't the sort of money to stretch to twenty-four-hour security. I drove along the street and parked in the shade of a date palm, three doors down from Shapiro's.

There was a red Honda in the driveway, the previous year's model, but no other sign of life. No kids' toys or bicycles lying on the front lawn. No cloud of barbecue smoke rising from the back yard. The grass had been burnt yellow by the sun and a couple of magnolia bushes were dying from lack of attention.

I sat there for twenty minutes, undecided over what to do. On a street like this on a Sunday it wouldn't be long before I got myself noticed. I was reaching for the ignition when Shapiro came out his front door. He was wearing a light-blue guayabera shirt and beige pants. He reversed the Honda onto the road. I ducked down as he drove past, letting him reach the end of the street before I started the car, swung around, and headed after him.

The stalking techniques I had picked up from my surveillance by the Secret Service helped me keep far enough back not to be spotted. As it worked out, Shapiro's destination didn't put me to much of a test. He was heading for the track, less than a mile from his house. He parked at the edge of a vast sea of cars and headed for the main gate. That it was a holiday weekend meant the crowds would be bigger than usual, but I still needed to be wary. The meeting would be half over by now and there weren't that many people filing through the entrances. Once inside, there would be less chance of my being spotted, but I could easily lose him in the throng.

I handed over the ten dollars admission and went after him.

Hialeah Park, with its flamingoes and soaring royal palms, must be easy one of the most beautiful racetracks in the world. The clubhouse had at one time been a favorite watering hole for the Palm Beach socialites. The French-style architecture had made it an institution, and drew in tourists even on no-racing days.

I lost Shapiro for a couple of moments, then spotted him making for one of the bars behind the walking ring. He joined a man sitting at a table in the shade provided by a candy-colored canvas awning. The man's face was hidden under the wide brim of a straw hat. There were no introductions and they didn't shake hands, but there was none of the easiness you'd expect between friends.

The man with the hat lifted his head to signal to a waiter, and allowed me a brief glimpse of his face. I recognized him immediately. He was a Butler contemporary of mine and not a man I was likely to forget. Switch Deacon, the con who had left the scar on my face. He'd been paroled on New Year's Day after serving eight years for armed robbery and was as mean as they come. I spun around and lost myself in the crowd. The chances of being spotted by Shapiro weren't that high, but Deacon had the evil eye that Culpepper had talked about. He wasn't a man I wanted to tangle with again.

From the relative anonymity of the crowded far side of the walking ring I kept a watch on them. They talked throughout the following two races, apparently not interested in the racing since neither of them placed a wager with the pari-mutuel. As the last race on the program was being called to post, Deacon and Shapiro drained their glasses and parted company. They headed off in different directions, walking slowly and to no obvious purpose.

If I stayed on Shapiro, there was the chance that I could inadvertently bump into Deacon and vice versa. I would have to leave it for now. I headed towards the exit.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Floyd wasn't expected at the gym the next day and on Sunday evening we drove to an ocean-front bar that served prime rib and good measures. We sat outside at a wooden table draped with a red-checked cloth. After we had eaten, the waitress cleared the table and brought us a bottle of Jack Daniel's. Thrilled with her tip, she didn't give a damn if we sat there all night talking and drinking. It was an idyllic evening. The warm breeze fluttered the flames of the bamboo lamps and blew a faint trace of smoke towards us, helping to keep the mosquitoes at bay.

I told Floyd about Shapiro's rendezvous at Hialeah. He agreed it was unusual, but didn't read anything sinister in it.

"Parole officers are a lot like cops," he reasoned. "Who do they meet other than low-lives and wrong-doers? There has t'come a day when some of them wake up and realize they crossed the line were friends are concerned. They're not too unhappy 'bout that − adds a little spice."

"Switch Deacon has no friends. He's way too mean for that. Besides they didn't act as though they were buddies."

Floyd was more interested in the bottle of bourbon than listening to me voice my suspicions about Shapiro. "Forget it. He catch you on his tail, he'll have you back in the pen before you have time t'blink."

So I told him about Shapiro having handled the investigation into Norman Kove's accident and how, years later, he also happened to have been Andy's parole officer. That grabbed Floyd's attention. He straightened his back and the creases on his forehead deepened. He crushed the ice cube he had been sucking noisily on.

"What do you make of it?" he asked.

"I don't know. I suppose it could just be a coincidence, Shapiro seems to carry the caseload of two or three POs. Odds are high that he'll meet up with people he knew from his state police days."

Floyd lit a cigarette and took a long hard pull. He saw the way I was looking at him.

"The condemned man's entitled to a smoke," he said softly.

I didn't say anything. There was a lump the size of a pool ball stuck in my throat.

Floyd topped up our glasses and slapped a grin on his face. "What you plannin' t'do 'bout a job?"

"I was thinking of contacting a couple of guys I knew from the Fire Department. They've left the department and have set up a business leasing fire-fighting equipment to the private sector."

"I don't see you as no salesman."

"They need somebody to install and service the equipment. One of them wrote to me in Butler offering me a job, but Shapiro already had the gas station lined up and I thought it might have had complicated my release if I had accepted the other job."

"Maybe the job's gone."

"I hope not. I'm running out of cash."

"I can stretch to a hundred. Just say the word"

"Thanks, Floyd. I've some wages still to come from the gas station. I'll drive over and pick them up tomorrow."

The bulk of the holiday traffic was heading towards the ocean by the time I left the apartment and started out for the Exxon station. The bourbon had left a fur on my tongue and I'd swallowed a couple of painkillers and borrowed a pair of Floyd's sunglasses.

I was three miles away when I caught first sight of the pall of black smoke hanging in the still air over the neighborhood of the gas station.

As I got closer the reek of char grew stronger and a firefighter's instinct told me where it was coming from. Turning off the ramp, I saw that my hunch had been right. The fire was out, but it had left the Exxon station a smoking, blackened shell. A Seagrave pumper was pulled across the entrance to the station and the forecourt was swimming with water. A fire at a gas station is every firefighter's worst nightmare. Thankfully, this time it had been brought under control before it had reached the underground storage tanks.

I pulled over and stopped. Two police radio cars and a Fire Department aid car had sealed off the exit. A couple of firefighters, their faces grimy, still wearing their Janesville bunking jackets, were rolling up a two-and-a-¬half-inch hose. The engine number on their helmets told me that they were from the Carol City East station. I knew one of the lieutenants there. I asked if he had ridden with them and they told me that he worked a different shift.

Nobody made any effort to stop me as I walked past the Seagrave for a closer look at the devastated building. Bile washed into my stomach as the foul stench of burnt tissue reached me. Three firefighters emerged from the remnants of the building carrying a Stokes' stretcher. The charred corpse was curled in the 'pugilist' attitude that the human body takes when burnt. It was a phenomenon I had seen more times than I cared to remember and had heard several medical examiners explain it. How the heat produces a greater contraction of the flexor muscles than the extensor muscles, causing the incinerated victims to appear as though they were crouched, ready to throw a punch.

Going by the size of the carbonated body, it could only be Ryder.

A white-shirted fire department investigator was supervising the removal of the body. One of the gas station employees was speaking to him and pointed in my direction. He, in turn, signaled to a Hispanic six-footer with a detective's badge pinned to his lapel pocket.

While I was still taking all this in, I was jumped on by two uniformed policemen and had my wrists cuffed behind my back. One of them informed me of my rights as his buddy gave me his opinions on murdering bastards who plant firebombs.

The homicide investigation unit worked out of the sixth floor of the Metro Dade police headquarters' building. Detectives Menendez and Barker were the two detectives who had caught the call to the Exxon station. They booked me in, had me swap my clothes for a set of orange overalls, then left me to stew for three-quarters of a hour in a locked interrogation room. That it was the second time it had happened to me inside the space of a few days didn't make it any easier.

Menendez and Barker reappeared just before one-thirty. Menendez threw a manila folder onto the tape recorder table. He leaned against the wall, lit a cigarette, took a pull, and exhaled down his nostrils. The gray smoke wreathed around his head, giving him a slightly demonic appearance. He rested a hand on the folder and flicked the edge of the paper with his thumb.

I was asked to sit at the larger table in the center, the seat furthest from the door. The functional civil service furniture added to the sense of drabness that pervaded the room. The walls were painted an undistinguished cream. A fly-stained plastic cover diminished the light from a neon strip fixed to the ceiling. Barker hung his jacket over the back of a chair, close enough for me to smell the soot from it. He sat down opposite me, rolled up his shirt sleeves and started to tap out a tune with a ballpoint on the back of a notebook, staring me right in the eye all the time.

Menendez stirred himself, switched on the tape and recited date, time, and the names of those present.

"Feel like talking?" he asked.

"Maybe I should have a lawyer here," I said.

"If you fire-bombed the gas station, I suggest you do," Barker said.

I knew something of the games detectives play; the sly ways they have of adhering to the Miranda code, while still managing to ensure that their suspects do not avail themselves fully of the rights it affords them. I was prepared to play along with them for now.

"Let's get this over with," I said. "For the record, I had nothing to do with the fire."

"Tell us about your movements for the last twenty-four hours."

They kept their hard eyes on me as they took turns asking questions. In the space of the next few hours, I pieced together most of the story from the scraps of information they disclosed in their attempt to have me admit to murder.

The fire had engulfed Ryder's office at nine-thirty am. Several witnesses claimed to have heard the loud crack of an explosion a second before all the glass in that end of the building spilled onto the asphalt. A fireball blew along the corridor from Ryder's office, enveloping the cashier at the cash desk. He had sustained third degree burns over sixty percent of his body and was on a life-support machine. The prognosis wasn't good.

Initial investigation by the fire department suggested that a container of gasoline had been placed in a drawer of Ryder's desk. When he pulled it open, a trigger device had ignited the gasoline, incinerating Ryder.

It hadn't taken the detectives long to decide who their prime suspect was. I was a convicted arsonist fired by Ryder three days before, and who was known to have punched him before leaving. My turning up at the scene convinced them that they had the right man. It was apparent that they weren't wasting many police man hours looking for other suspects. Someone had done a hell of a job framing me.

There was no hard man, soft man routine with Menendez and Barker. Their technique was well-drilled and professional. One session would be interrogative: What had my fight with Ryder been about? Had I learnt about booby traps in the Fire Department'? Then they would switch to persuasive, as they tried to trap me with an out: Ryder was a piece of shit, nobody would blame me for doing what I did. If it was anybody's fault, it was my parole officer's fault; fixing an arsonist up with a job in a gas station.

They were so credible, I almost found myself falling for it.

I was brought a meal of hamburger and fries sometime in the early evening and left to eat it in solitude. There was a paper cup of cherry coke on the tray. Who says cops have no sense of humor?

Menendez brought three pieces of bad news with him when he reappeared: the cashier had died; they had found an unlicensed gun under the pillow of my bed; preliminary forensic examinations had shown the presence of hydrocarbons on clothes the police had taken from the apartment..

"What did they expect?" I said. "Up to a few days ago I was working at a filling station."

Menendez didn't seem that impressed. "You didn't wear your own clothes while at work. You were issued with overalls."

'Yeah, but oil and gas would have been on my hands. Some would have rubbed off."