Straits of Fortune - Anthony Gagliano [43]
“I think you’re a fucking liar. That’s what I think. I think your partner decided to go solo, keep the cash for himself. So you go overboard like the sack of shit you are, and he takes a few potshots at your head, only we show up and he’s got to boogey. Is that it?”
“If that’s the case,” I said, “where are the people we smuggled? Oh, wait, I got it now. Me and my partner forgot we were both citizens, and so we were taking turns smuggling each other into Miami. This morning was my turn. Yeah, that’s it. You know, Cortez, Susan told me you were crazy. I’m just glad to see now she was wrong.”
“She told you I was crazy?” Cortez asked.
“Let’s just say that she mentioned you were the jealous type.”
“You telling me she didn’t come on to you?”
“Not to my face, no.”
“What the hell does that mean, ‘not to my face’? What are you, some kind of fucking leprechaun or something?”
I looked at him for a moment, confused. It had been a long time since anybody had called me a leprechaun.
“I think I need to talk to a lawyer,” I said.
“What were you doing in the water?”
“Taking a swim. I’m a personal trainer. I have to stay in shape.”
“What about the guy with the rifle and the speedboat? We’re supposed to forget about that? Just fish you out of the drink and let you go on your way?”
“Sometimes you just have to let bygones be bygones,” I told him. “Besides, this is Miami—people get shot every day. Maybe he thought I was somebody else.”
He smiled thinly, picked up the old-fashioned black phone, and placed it in front of me like an offering.
“Dial away, scumbag.”
I dialed a number and listened as it rang. Cortez watched me, grinning.
“Which lawyer you calling?” he asked. “If I were you, his last name would be Dershowitz.”
“Can’t afford him,” I said. “I’m calling your ex-wife.”
Cortez blinked, and then his eyes widened. He smiled broadly as he took a long drag on his cigarette. Then he exhaled. “This is going to be better than I thought,” he said.
“Won’t that bitch be surprised?”
Susan Andrews, formerly Susan Cortez, had been a hardworking, highly underpaid prosecutor when she was referred to me by Judge Dryer, a client of mine, who, sad to say, got sent to jail for taking bribes over on Miami Beach. Susan and Ruben—Inspector Cortez—were divorcing, and I was the centerpiece of her personal renaissance, her transformation from unhappy and unappreciated wife to unattached single. It seems she had caught Ruben coming out of the Stardust Motel on Biscayne Boulevard with her best friend, a rather curvaceous fellow attorney, at which time Susan had decided not only to get rid of Ruben but to hire herself a personal trainer and to get back into shape. I had trained her five days a week, which is a lot of time to spend with a woman who’s going through a divorce and who therefore tends to see her husband’s philandering face superimposed over that of any male foolish enough to get within range.
But for fifty bucks an hour, a man has to be willing to walk through a minefield now and then and trust that his charm will allow him to live long enough to make a profit. But I liked Susan. She was mean and crazy and gave off the kind of chronic bad vibes that lead to the whimsical purchase of handguns, but still, I liked her. She made it clear that she hated men and was indulging me only because of my expertise and Judge Dryer’s recommendation. I, in turn, had made it clear that I didn’t give a shit about her personal problems and was only in it for the money, which, of course, as a lawyer, she seemed to appreciate, at least from the standpoint of a fellow professional.
For the better part of six months, I ran with Susan, I biked with Susan, and I showed Susan how to lift weights. But what she liked most was putting on the eight-ounce gloves and going a few rounds with me in a park near her new crib in the Grove. Basically, what she liked to do was beat the shit out of me three times a week, weather permitting. Forgetting her violent frame of mind, I had insisted that she wear headgear and padding while I, being Jack Vaughn,