“Right dare on Collins. Two nights before I got busted. I met him a few blocks from the Fountain-blow. Dare’s a city parking lot where I hang.”
“The one where you do all your B-and-E’s?”
“Shit, you just like the policeman.”
“I need to know everything, Ernesto, otherwise I can’t help. Okay, so you’re hanging out, breaking into cars and ripping off Blaupunkts, whatever, and up drives this black guy in a new Olds and says, ‘Hey, Ernie, wanna buy this baby for two bills?’ That about it?”
“Yeah, ‘cept he dint know my name.”
Keyes said, “I don’t suppose you asked the gentleman where he got the car?”
Ernesto laughed—a muskrat mouth, full of small yellow teeth—and shook his head no.
“Don’t suppose you asked his name, either?”
“No, man.”
“And I don’t suppose you’d recognize him if you ever saw him again?”
Ernesto leaned forward and rubbed his chin intently. A great gesture, Keyes thought. Cagney in White Heat.
“I see dis guy somewhere before,” Ernesto said. “I doan know where, but I know the face. Big guy. Big black guy. Gold chain, Carrera frames, nice-looking guy. Arms like this, like a foking boa constripper. Yeah, I’d know him if I saw him again. Sure.”
Keyes said, “You had a remote suspicion that the car was hot, didn’t you?”
Ernesto nodded sheepishly.
“Why didn’t you unload it?”
“I was going to, man. Another day or two it’d be gone bye-bye. But it was such a great car … aw, you wouldn’t know about thins like that, man. You prolly got a Rolls-Royce or somethin. I never had a nice car like that. I wanted to cruise around for a while, that’s all. I woulda fenced it eventually.”
Keyes put the file back in the briefcase. He took out a recent photograph of B. D. Harper.
“Ever seen this man, Ernesto?”
“No.” The puppy eyes didn’t even flicker.
“Ever killed anybody?”
“On purpose?”
“On purpose, by accident, any way.”
“No, sir!” Ernesto said crisply. “Once I shot a guy in the balls. Want to know why?”
“No thanks. I read all about it on your rap sheet. A personal dispute, I believe.”
“That is right.”
Keyes rose to leave and called for a guard. Then he thought of something else. “Ernesto,” he said, “do you believe in black magic?”
The little Cuban grinned. “Santeria? Sure. I doan go to those thins, but it be stupid to say I do not believe. My uncle was a santero, a priest. One time he brought a skull and some pennies to my mother’s house. He killed a chicken in the backyard—with his teeth he killed dis chicken—and then dipped the pennies in its blood. Two days later the landlord dropped dead.” Ernesto Cabal made a chopping motion with his hand. “Juss like that.”
“You know what I’m getting at, don’t you?”
“Yes, Mr. Keyes. I never heard of no santero using suntan oil for anythin … “
Keyes started to laugh. “Okay, Ernesto. I’ll be in touch.”
“Don’t you forget about me, Mr. Keyes. Dis is a bad place for an innocent man.”
Brian Keyes left the jail and walked around the corner to Metro-Dade police headquarters, another bad place for an innocent man. He shared the elevator with a tall female patrol officer who did a wonderful job of pretending not to notice him. She got off on the second floor. Keyes went all the way up to Homicide.
Al Garcia greeted him with a grin and a soft punch on the shoulder. “Coffee?”
“Please,” Keyes said. Garcia was much friendlier since Keyes had left the newspaper. In the old days he was like a sphinx; now he’d start yakking and never shut up. Keyes thought it might be different this time around.
“How’s business?” Garcia asked.
“Not great, Al.”
“Takes time. You only been at it—what—two years. And there’s plenty of competition in this town.”
No fooling, Keyes thought. He had arrived in Miami in 1979 from a small newspaper in suburban Baltimore. There was nothing original about why he’d left for Florida—a better job, no snow, plenty of sunshine. On his first day at the Miami Sun, Keyes had been assigned the desk next to Skip Wiley—the newsroom equivalent of Parris Island. Keyes covered cops for a while, then courts, then local politics. His reporting had been solid, his writing workmanlike but undistinguished. The editors never questioned his ability, only his stomach.