The Four Corners of the Sky_ A Novel - Michael Malone [177]
Annie sat up firmly. “He’s alive. It’s a con. He planted the coat and wallet. He sank the car as a decoy.”
Raffy searched her eyes. “You think so? I mean, I know you hope it but do you think it?”
She nodded. “I think it.”
The Cuban raised his eyes for a long moment as if his imprisoned past were painted in the ceiling and he wanted to study it. “Late at night in our cell, Jack used to tell me stories of the great stings. Like Ponzi. ‘A con’s a work of art,’ he’d say. ‘If it’s not,’ he’d say, ‘you might as well stick a .45 in a man’s back and steal his wallet.’” Raffy’s thin shoulders lifted his yellow rayon shirt in an apologetic shrug. “In regards to which, your papa did steal Miss Napp’s wallet…Well, he took her whole purse. Which Miss Napp claims had three hundred dollars in it, but that’s a shvindel, in my humble opinion.”
Annie asked him why, if her father was so successful a con artist, was he so hard-pressed for cash that he had to steal the purse of the receptionist in a cheap convalescent center and flee in another woman’s car? Why did he live so constantly in danger of the thing he said he hated most—imprisonment?
The small man pointed both forefingers at her like pistols. “I never said Jack was ‘successful.’ Because there were times when to be honest I didn’t think he was necessarily thinking things through. What I said was, and this is as true as truth,” Raffy brought the two pistols together and kissed the tips, “he was pretty gorgeous…I mean, artistically speaking.”
For a while they sat in the noisy restaurant, both thinking about Jack Peregrine. It had never occurred to her before—the way things don’t occur to children about their parents—that her father had style but he didn’t really have brains. She laughed at the realization. In fact, he’d been lucky that he’d survived all these years. After all, she’d had to come to his rescue when she was only five and six and seven years old.
She asked Raffy where he thought her father might have gone into hiding after ditching the Lexus SUV in the bay.
The Cuban bit at his soft lips. “I don’t know. He always tells me, don’t worry, Raffy, mi amigo, I’ll be in touch, vaya con dios. If he’s alive, he’ll get the word to us, that I know. Meanwhile, I am myself a wanted man—”
She interrupted. “I’ll talk to Dan Hart and see what he can do for you.”
“Oh Annie, Annie. ‘Therefore is wingéd Cupid painted blind.’” Raffy dramatically strummed an imaginary guitar. “That’s the wisdom of the Swan. Love is blinding you from the fact of the matter. Which is this above all: Never trust a policeman! If there’s one thing I learned from the street, because I never had the opportunity for a college education, it’s the son-of-a-bitch cops will say anything to close a case and the Miami police, in particular Miami Vice, well, they are not sincere individuals.”
The mournful sweetness of Raffy’s dark eyes as he offered this warning about Daniel Hart rattled her. What did she really know about the man she’d just slept with? What if Hart had been using her, making a fool of her? As doubt rushed like heat through her body, she felt sick.
“Eat something.” The Cuban slid a plate of toast closer. “But I’ll be honest. I didn’t care for your husband either.”
“We’ll be divorced in a week.” She squeezed her neck. “No. I promised him I’d wait a month.”
He asked her why she’d done that.
She rotated her neck side to side. “So Brad would lend me the plane to get to Miami to see Dad.”
Raffy smiled at her. “Ah, I told you, didn’t I tell you? With familia, you cannot take it or leave it. Not if you’re human, which you definitely are.” He poured milk in his coffee but it didn’t seem to help the taste. “Last night at the Dorado bar, your husband gave a one-dollar tip to my cousin Juan at the piano, a man with a large family to support, one dollar. As the Bard tells us, nothing can come of nothing. Not to mention he left the place with Skippings, pardon me, forgive me, but, well the word sounds like balabuster, if you know what I mean. She