The Four Corners of the Sky_ A Novel - Michael Malone [101]
“Lie down!” insisted Mrs. Weimar.
The man pursed his full lips as if he were going to kiss her. “Mrs. Weimar, this is Lt. Annie Peregrine Goode.”
Annie skidded backwards on her skates in order to look him over. “You are Rafael Rook?”
He bowed politely. “Rafael Ramirez Rook, expatriated from the unhappy island of Cuba. On my mother’s side, the Ramirezes of Havana, silversmiths to the finest families for two hundred years. And as my padre would say, neither Hook nor Crook, but Rook, plain Rook, from Miami, four generations, two Orthodox, two Reformed. My grandpapa believed in America and America left him floating in the surf. Bay of Pigs. So-called.”
“You are the man named Rook who telephoned me in North Carolina?”
“With all respect.” He bowed again. “Call me Raffy.”
She skated in a circle around to face him. “Where’s my father? I know he left St. Louis and came to Miami. I know the police are after him and somebody beat him up.”
“What’s going on with you two?” Mrs. Weimar shoved between them. “Are you in on this thing together? Are you going to rob me?”
Annie pointed at her cap. “I’m a naval officer.”
“Anybody can wear a hat!” The woman shook the Cuban by the shoulders. “He’s a con man.”
Backing away, Raffy held up his hands. “Annie, I apologize. I honestly expected your papa to enjoy a reunion with you in St. Louis. It meant everything to him.”
“Sure. Well I was in St. Louis and instead of a reunion, he ran off from the cops and told me to bring something here to you in Miami.”
Raffy’s face took on a crafty look. “Did you?”
Annie’s temper flared. “‘Did I?’ I flew him the King of the Sky practically through a goddamn twister to St. Louis. I had to beg a man I’m divorcing to lend me his jet to fly here. A man my dad had just conned into flying him to Miami!”
“Jack could always get places.”
“Believe me he better die. Where is he?”
“You don’t make any more sense than he does.” Mrs. Weimar backed away. “Who’s dying?”
Raffy gently brought the elderly woman to Annie. “This is the daughter of a friend who is unfortunately…” He pointed behind him at the Golden Days facility. “In here.”
“My dad’s in Golden Days!?” Annie looked at the stucco building. “I came here this morning. They told me he wasn’t.”
Raffy explained that Jack Peregrine had been admitted under an alias and that security was tight at the extended care facility because they’d recently received so much bad publicity from local television exposés.
Mrs. Weimar took a cigarette out of a pink leather case. “I’ll say! After you eat a meal in this place, you’ll go to McDonald’s and feel like the Four Seasons.” She turned to face the building and gave it the finger. “But you’re not in Golden Days to eat, you’re in there to die.” With a long flaring match from a box in her purse, she lit her slim cigarette.
The slender Cuban jumped away from her. “You could set your hair on fire with a match that big. What are you, the Statue of Liberty?”
The old woman puffed contemplatively. “I need to rest. I feel dizzy.” She sat gingerly down on the curb. Raffy sat beside her, tenderly brushing aside a Palmetto bug. “You all right?”
“You should ask?” She smoked for a moment.
“My grandpapa loved the Statue of Liberty,” he told her.
Nearby, Annie removed her skates and put on the running shoes that she had tied around her neck.
Mrs. Weimar smoked some more. “Coming into the harbor, this is from Russia, my mama saw the Statue of Liberty from her uncle’s shoulders. Talk about tired and poor, they’d had it!”
Rook nodded. “But it all worked out?”
“Her great-great nephew? Three first-rate delis, two