LITMIR.BIZ

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mixture given Kemp, but it would have been like trying to open a twelve-foot stepladder in a room with an eight-foot ceiling. And anyway, I was tiring of Rod Figueroa.

      “If it’s your opinion that this wasn’t a crime, Detective,” I said, ju-jitsuing him with his own words, “then we’ve taken nothing from you. If you could be so kind as to send us any files you have, I’ll be appreciative. Have a nice day.”

      I set my card on his desk and backed away. I nodded at Gershwin and we spun and left the office. I heard the sound of tearing paper, but didn’t turn. We retreated down the hall and waited until Delmara appeared.

      “How’d it go?” he asked.

      “Figueroa doesn’t seem cut out for the job, Vince, an obvious bias against gays. Most Missings cops I know are past that.”

      “Figueroa’s an asshole. He comes by it naturally – his daddy’s an asshole, too. But a high-ranking asshole in MDPD, which is why junior’s got way too much pull for a guy barely thirty. Little Roddy was in Theft last I saw, but I guess Daddy wanted junior to get some Sex-Crimes cred on his way up.”

      “Daddy is?”

      “Captain Alphonse Figueroa. A guy who started on a beat in Little Havana and made all the right moves. Knew he was making ’em, too.”

      “Political type?” I asked.

      “Understudied with the old school macho types who ran the place a couple decades back. They pushed Figueroa upstairs, gave him a cushy desk in Community Relations. Daddy Figueroa’s a piece of work … I think he’s on his fifth wife. Unfortunately, he’s high-profile in the older Cuban community, one of the department’s PR assets. So junior gets a lot of sway.”

      “What’s wrong with Figueroa’s face?” Gershwin asked. “Looks like someone scrunched it in a vise.”

      Delmara shrugged. “Some kind of accident when he was a kid, running a jet ski while drunk, plowed into a boat. No one’s ever really said.”

      “Figueroa’s moving up in the department?” I asked.

      “Daddy says, ‘Maybe my sonny boy should get experience in the Missing Persons unit’ and you can hear the yessirs and pens filling out transfer forms.”

      “The asshole’ll probably be Chief some day,” Gershwin muttered.

      Delmara slapped a hand on my partner’s shoulder.

      “You are indeed old beyond your years, Detective.”

      Gershwin and I crossed Biscayne to Miami Beach, heading to the Stallion Lounge, the last place Dale Kemp had been seen. I figured it had to open early to air out from previous evenings, the smell of beer and bodies and a gazillion drenchings of cologne thick as fog in the semi-darkness. It was booths and a few tables, half of the floor set aside for dancing. The walls were dark wood with sconces for light. A mirrored ball hung from the ceiling.

      I saw four guys in a back booth. Two were in full black leather regalia, like they were rehearsing for the Village People, the others resembled prep-school wannabes, clean-cut, white tees tucked into dark jeans. Loafers at the end of long and crossed legs. Except when they turned our way, their eyes looked a thousand years old.

      A guy stood behind the long bar rinsing glasses, and I knew he’d made us from the moment our heels slapped the floor. He was inches over six feet and looked carved from a block of chocolate, pneumatic biceps rippling as he toweled the glassware, his chest broad and ripped under a blue denim vest that glittered with studwork.

      We walked his way, but his eyes stayed on his drying. “You’re wasting your time,” he said in a sing-song voice that didn’t fit the physique. “We card everyone.”

      He meant they asked for proof of age, though I figured a faux driver’s license printed on construction paper would pass muster.

      “Good for you,” I said, pulling Kemp’s photo from my jacket. “But that’s not why we’re here. Know this guy?”

      The bartender flipped the towel over a cannonball shoulder, took the shot and held it closer to the light. “Dale. He’s in here pretty regular, though I haven’t seen him in a few days.” The eyes got serious. “He all right?”

      “We think he may have had his drink spiked. It would have been about ten days ago.”

      “That’s just fucking nasty.”

      “Dale have any enemies you know about?”

      He blew out a breath. “Dale could be cruel sometimes. Especially to ugmos who hit on him.”

      “Ugly people?”

      “Dale never dispensed charity.”

      I took it that meant deigning to frolic with less attractive beings. “Anyone seem particularly interested in Dale that night?” I asked. “Hit on him?”

      “Are there bees around honey? People are always scoping Dale out.”

      “Anyone buzzing around that particular evening?”

      “I can’t recall anyone who …” he stopped and frowned.

      “What?” I asked.

      “Dale got a call on the house phone. That doesn’t happen much, everyone having cells. He was at a table and I yelled over that someone wanted to talk. Dale took the phone and handed it back, said there was no one there.”

      “Male voice?”

      “Deep and kind of raspy.” He lowered his voice an octave. “‘Hello, is Dale Kemp a-boot?’ Those were his words.”

      “You’re using a Canadian pronunciation,” Gershwin said. “Kind of.”

      The barkeep nodded. “Or maybe it was kind of British.”

      I leaned close. “Tell me this, if you remember. When Dale came to the phone, was he holding his drink?”

      He closed his eyes. “He held the phone in one hand and put the other over the receiver, asked who it was. He must have left his drink behind.”

      “That’s the picture in your head?” Gershwin asked. “For sure?”

      “I always like looking at Dale.”

      We returned to the Rover where I tapped my fingers on the wheel. “The perp sits in the corner, watches. When Kemp’s friends aren’t near, he calls the landline, asks for him. The barkeep calls, Kemp gets up …”

      Gershwin finished the scenario. “The perp hangs up and walks by Kemp’s booth, pausing to spike his drink with homemade witches’ brew.”

      I put the safari wagon in gear and we pulled into a balmy afternoon, the street a festival of brightly plumaged youth bustling from bar to bar, called by music or hormones, the world an endless caravan of vibrant moments. They were young and beautiful and invulnerable.

      Or so they supposed.

      Debro left his downstairs apartment and walked upstairs with his feet crunching on the wood-plank steps. The ancient building had been a small auto-parts warehouse and the red-brick walls were crumbling on to the steps. The door at the top was metal. He unlocked it and stepped into a spacious antechamber furnished with a table beneath a wall-mounted cabinet. The far end of the chamber held a door with a small wire-reinforced window at eye level.

      Debro went to the window and flipped a switch on the wall. The room beyond the chamber lit up, the light from track-mounted spots screwed into the ceiling joists. After purchasing the building last year, he’d machine-sanded the floor to be an inch higher in the center, sloping down to small gutters, the gutters feeding into the drainage system from the roof. He’d then covered the floor in linoleum, caulking the seams.

      All he had to do to clean up after his penitents was hook the hose into the wall faucet and rinse the floor. Debro allowed his boys twenty ounces of water a day, which was

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