me to pay off a debt. I’d have never collected the cash, so I took it. Where in Detroit did they make your Lexus?”
He tapped his finger on the bag again.
I’d have been within my rights to keep the negs. But I’d never made—or lost—a penny by doing so. “They’re my property, right?”
He nodded. “They’ll be bagged and tagged. With a signout slip.”
I extracted Duffy Lee’s second bag from my shirt pocket. “I just kept them to screw with you, anyway.”
Liska didn’t laugh.
I knew the waitress drill at El Siboney. Middle-aged women, all sisters or cousins or friends since childhood. One walks to your table while carrying on a mile-a-minute Cuban conversation with all the others. For an instant there is a lull in the talk. She will look you in the eye. You must give her your whole order. Take too long, the chatter in Spanish resumes. You wait until the next lull to order. If a tourist has questions about the food, the waitress develops an urgent need to be elsewhere. She motions, Wait a sec, be back in a minute. A long, long minute. So you learn by watching, or learn the hard way. Once you know, you order quickly. You say your main dish and side dish in Spanish, order your drink in English. She will say, “Thank you, honey,” and beeline for the swinging door to the kitchen.
Liska ordered arroz con polio. I ordered ropa vieja. Old clothes.
I said, “Where do you eat on Tuesdays and Thursdays?”
“My desk. A lady in the office goes to Publix, brings back tossed salads, Caesars, the usual rabbit food. Man’s gotta watch his wasteland—I mean waistline—this day and age.”
“Why me, yesterday?” I said.
“We found a headless body and thought of you.”
“Your praise . . . Well, now we’re even.” I stupidly upped the ante: “Did you ever reconcile with your ex-wife?”
The moment I said it, I wished I hadn’t.
Liska kept rolling. “In a minute or two I’m going to ask a favor. So for now I’ll forget you said that. We got the Marathon doofus to drive down. The ants on the body spooked old Lester. Kept looking behind himself, like the head might appear. He ducked into the mangroves to barf, right into some bum’s campsite. Lester was too afraid to barf. That’s when I called you, got a busy signal. A minute later you had the good fortune to answer. We put Lester Forsythe in his car and sent him back up the road.”
Liska paused while the waitress put my iced tea on the table, then said, “You made an appearance at Caroline Street.”
“Abbreviated.”
“I heard that, too. What, exactly, went down?”
“This the favor?”
He nodded. “That’s why I said ‘exactly.’ ”
I told the chronology, the list of those in attendance, a description of the body, Hayes’s flakiness.
“It’s identical to one I had a year ago,” he said. “Damn near identical.”
Holloway hadn’t been the only person in town to notice the similarity. It made sense that Chicken Neck’d see it.
I said, “That wasn’t one that I photographed.”
“Right. The FDLE swooped in. Their boys did the scene-scoping. Right down to fingerprints off the toilet-flush handle. Then they handed it back to me. Or most of it. I never closed the case. The little I’ve heard, I’m told it’s been passed along to young Dexter.”
The waitress placed Liska’s meal before him: chicken and yellow rice, chunks of chorizo sausage, green olives, pork, a side dish of plantains. She replaced the empty red plastic basket with another—a stack of buttered Cuban bread. My plate came second.
I said, “Why here, three days a week?”
“Look around.”
Cuban housewives, aging hippies, a few business owners. In a corner, his face half-hidden in the
Herald
sports section, Captain Turk, who kept the
Flats Broke,
a light-tackle charter skiff, next to Sam Wheeler’s
Fancy Fool
at the Bight.
“Don’t ask me why, ‘cause I don’t know,” said Liska. “Cops don’t eat here. Men or women, nobody city,
He tapped his finger on the bag again.
I’d have been within my rights to keep the negs. But I’d never made—or lost—a penny by doing so. “They’re my property, right?”
He nodded. “They’ll be bagged and tagged. With a signout slip.”
I extracted Duffy Lee’s second bag from my shirt pocket. “I just kept them to screw with you, anyway.”
Liska didn’t laugh.
I knew the waitress drill at El Siboney. Middle-aged women, all sisters or cousins or friends since childhood. One walks to your table while carrying on a mile-a-minute Cuban conversation with all the others. For an instant there is a lull in the talk. She will look you in the eye. You must give her your whole order. Take too long, the chatter in Spanish resumes. You wait until the next lull to order. If a tourist has questions about the food, the waitress develops an urgent need to be elsewhere. She motions, Wait a sec, be back in a minute. A long, long minute. So you learn by watching, or learn the hard way. Once you know, you order quickly. You say your main dish and side dish in Spanish, order your drink in English. She will say, “Thank you, honey,” and beeline for the swinging door to the kitchen.
Liska ordered arroz con polio. I ordered ropa vieja. Old clothes.
I said, “Where do you eat on Tuesdays and Thursdays?”
“My desk. A lady in the office goes to Publix, brings back tossed salads, Caesars, the usual rabbit food. Man’s gotta watch his wasteland—I mean waistline—this day and age.”
“Why me, yesterday?” I said.
“We found a headless body and thought of you.”
“Your praise . . . Well, now we’re even.” I stupidly upped the ante: “Did you ever reconcile with your ex-wife?”
The moment I said it, I wished I hadn’t.
Liska kept rolling. “In a minute or two I’m going to ask a favor. So for now I’ll forget you said that. We got the Marathon doofus to drive down. The ants on the body spooked old Lester. Kept looking behind himself, like the head might appear. He ducked into the mangroves to barf, right into some bum’s campsite. Lester was too afraid to barf. That’s when I called you, got a busy signal. A minute later you had the good fortune to answer. We put Lester Forsythe in his car and sent him back up the road.”
Liska paused while the waitress put my iced tea on the table, then said, “You made an appearance at Caroline Street.”
“Abbreviated.”
“I heard that, too. What, exactly, went down?”
“This the favor?”
He nodded. “That’s why I said ‘exactly.’ ”
I told the chronology, the list of those in attendance, a description of the body, Hayes’s flakiness.
“It’s identical to one I had a year ago,” he said. “Damn near identical.”
Holloway hadn’t been the only person in town to notice the similarity. It made sense that Chicken Neck’d see it.
I said, “That wasn’t one that I photographed.”
“Right. The FDLE swooped in. Their boys did the scene-scoping. Right down to fingerprints off the toilet-flush handle. Then they handed it back to me. Or most of it. I never closed the case. The little I’ve heard, I’m told it’s been passed along to young Dexter.”
The waitress placed Liska’s meal before him: chicken and yellow rice, chunks of chorizo sausage, green olives, pork, a side dish of plantains. She replaced the empty red plastic basket with another—a stack of buttered Cuban bread. My plate came second.
I said, “Why here, three days a week?”
“Look around.”
Cuban housewives, aging hippies, a few business owners. In a corner, his face half-hidden in the
Herald
sports section, Captain Turk, who kept the
Flats Broke,
a light-tackle charter skiff, next to Sam Wheeler’s
Fancy Fool
at the Bight.
“Don’t ask me why, ‘cause I don’t know,” said Liska. “Cops don’t eat here. Men or women, nobody city,
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