“I’ll give you forty-five.”
Britt hung up the phone, distraught and exhilarated at the same time.
Forty-five minutes gave her just enough time to stop at the city morgue first. She had an idea. But as she grabbed her purse, the phone rang.
“Montero, Miami News.”
“Is this Miss Britt Montero?”
“Yes, can I help you?” answered Britt impatiently.
“Miss Montero, this is Fay Leonard. You don’t know me well, but I have something to tell you. It’s about—a head.”
This was getting to be a busy night, Britt thought. She sat down to listen.
7. THE LOCK & KEY—Evelyn Mayerson
Britt found Fay Leonard in the back of the Fishbone Grill beside a chalkboard that announced Chilean salmon as the catch of the day. Except for a few grizzled men with creased and sunburnt necks speculating on the depths to which Pat Riley would ream out the Heat, the restaurant was empty.
Fay rapped her rugged nails on a polyurethane table. She and Britt knew each other slightly through their pioneer families. The difference between them was one of strata. While Fay’s mother and father were able to trace their Miami roots respectively to a wrecker who had created his own wrecks by placing decoy lights and to a carpenter who had fashioned driftwood coffins, Britt’s claim to founder status was only matrilineal.
“I thought it would be better,” said Fay, “if we did this before Jake got here. He complicates things, if you know what I mean. It’s all that busted cartilage. Whenever he moves, he clicks. It’s distracting when you’re trying to have a conversation.”
Britt slung the wooden chair away from the table and sat astride it. “You sounded pretty frantic, Fay. What is it you want to tell me?” And weren’t you supposed to be kidnapped? she thought to herself.
“My ex is missing.”
“I’d say that’s good news.”
Fay looked around her, then leaned across the table. “This is serious, Britt. Before his disappearance, Phil told me that he was afraid that Cubans were coming after him.”
“Tell him to stop renting leaky flotilla boats.”
“It’s nothing like that. Phil is afraid of Cuban Cubans. The last time I saw him, he was talking crazy about karate-trained guys in black shirts and some kind of business deal gone sour. I know what you’re thinking, it sounded crazy to me, too. Except that what he did to me was even crazier.”
The pieces of Fay’s abduction suddenly came together like metal filings on a magnet. “Wait a minute. You mean it was your ex-husband who kidnapped you?”
Fay leaned back. “How did you find out that I was kidnapped?” Her eyes narrowed. “Of course. Jake. I should have figured. Look, Britt, it’s a long story. Let’s just say that I have this head that came out of a canister. And it resembles Castro. My grandmother’s got it on ice, but it’s beginning to thaw. She says she saw another one just like it, but I don’t know whether to believe her. Old people get confused. On the other hand, I retrieved another canister myself. Whatever it’s all about, it’s big. Miami could lose half its population. And dummy Phil is somehow connected. I’m scared. I’m scared for Phil.”
Britt struggled to maintain a poker face, hoping that her eyebrows had not given her away. Big Joey G. was right. There really were two canisters. But that was the least of it. Britt had seen more gore and carnage than most doctors. She had heard more startling confessions than most priests. But this one had grabbed her right in the throat. It was a minute before she could make herself say anything. She wanted it to sound as hard-boiled as possible.
“People usually want to give me a story. It looks like you’re here to get one.”
Fay bit open a cellophane package of oyster crackers. “I can scuba-dive to three hundred feet, Britt, but I’m over my head with this. I didn’t know who else to talk to. I thought of the cops, except with Phil’s rap sheet, they’ll drag their feet and that could get him killed. And it all sounds so bizarre.”
“Can you trust your grandmother not to talk?”