Murder at the Library of Congress - Margaret Truman [1]
“Excellent. See you in the morning, Esteban.”
“Sí, mañana por la mañana.”
Warren Munsch assiduously avoided Miami’s fancier Chinese restaurants in favor of the one he sat in this night, a small storefront take-out place with four tables, in a strip mall near the airport. He wasn’t particularly concerned with the quality of the food on his plate, as long as it wasn’t foul. Warren Munsch ate to satisfy hunger, to fill the void three times a day. That’s how he approached most aspects of his life.
The ribs and fried dumplings rested heavily in his digestive tract as he left the harsh fluorescent lighting of Go Go Hunan and stepped into the relative darkness of the parking lot. It was oppressively hot and humid; he felt as though he were wrapped in a rubber sheet. He looked up at the sound of a jet approaching Miami International, the aircraft slicing across the full moon like a thin bug. Munsch hummed the old song “Moon Over Miami” as he walked to where he’d parked his new black Cadillac at a far end of the lot, away from other cars. He got in, cracked open a window, turned on the AC, lit a cigarette, and checked his watch. Morrie would be leaving his house about now, he thought. Garraga, too, if he hadn’t drunk his dinner and fallen asleep in a stupor. Two hours to go.
Another jet screeched overhead. Munsch opened the glove compartment and fingered an envelope containing airline tickets. He wasn’t fond of flying, although he could brace himself when flight was unavoidable. He closed the glove compartment, leaned back against the vehicle’s headrest, and closed his eyes. Maybe I’m getting a little too old for this, he thought. Lately, he’d found himself becoming forgetful, small lapses but annoying: Why-did-I-come-into-this-room? sort of things. It wouldn’t have worried him if he were in some other line of work. But since coming out of Raiford a year ago, his second stint behind bars, he realized that forgetting something, even a seemingly insignificant something, could land him back there, which he was determined to avoid. Maybe this job should be his last. It promised a good payday, plenty of money to get out of Miami, maybe go to his daughter’s house in Oregon. He grimaced at the thought. Not with all those kids running around. W. C. Fields was right about kids: “Anyone who hates children and dogs can’t be all bad.” The Bahamas, the British Virgins, maybe even South America or Cuba. He opened his eyes, lit another cigarette, and smiled. Cuba was appealing. Warren Munsch liked Cuban women, and if there were plenty of them in Miami, imagine what Havana must be like.
“Buenos días, señorita,” he said to no one, drawing deeply, and coughing.
An hour later, after having dozed off, he left the parking lot and drove south on Red Road into Coral Gables, a ten-minute drive, where he slowly circumvented the European-style fountain at the intersection of Sevilla Avenue and DeSoto and Granada boulevards, one of fourteen such roundabouts written into the city plan back in the 1920s. He pulled to the curb, turned off the lights, and lit up, leaving the engine and air-conditioning running. The heavy heat and humidity, and now the rain, had cut down on the number of people on the street that night, although it wasn’t deserted. It never was. Coral Gables, “the City Beautiful,” seldom failed to draw tourists day or night, summer or winter. Nothing dumber than a tourist, Munsch thought; he’d relieved his share of them of their vacation money. No easier creature on earth to scam than a dumb tourist.
Garraga was the first to arrive. He walked slowly, stopping to stare at the fountain as though it held some special fascination, making too much of a point that he wasn’t going anywhere in particular. Eventually, the tall, lanky Cuban, wearing jeans and a yellow tank top, sidled up to the Caddy, looked around, opened the front passenger door, and slid in.
“How are you, amigo?” Munsch asked, a fresh cigarette sending a cloud of blue smoke in Garraga’s direction.
“Good,” Garraga said, adding his pungent