LITMIR.BIZ

       6

      We headed to Kemp’s apartment, a furnished house Kemp rented with two male roommates, flight attendants. Both had been away during the time Kemp had been abducted. One roomie, Lawrence Kaskil, arrived as we did, pulling up on a sleek racing bicycle in a white T-shirt over black Lycra biking shorts.

      “I called the police on the second day I was back,” Kaskil told us, tossing his blue helmet into a closet and exchanging his biking shoes for neon green flip-flops. “It wasn’t unusual for Dale to be gone overnight, but after two days I got worried.”

      “You got back from where?”

      “Mexico City.”

      “Your other roommate, Tad Bertram, was where during this time?”

      Kaskil flapped to the small kitchenette and studied a calendar stuck to the fridge with a magnetic Scotty dog. “Tad overnighted in London, then to Cairo. He dead-headed to Rome for two days and is now back in London. He’ll be in tonight. I dread telling him about Dale.”

      “Dead-headed?” Gershwin said.

      “Taking a flight, but not working it. He took a couple days off to see the sights.”

      I took a look at the calendar, new to us, the Missing Persons unit having neglected to do any follow-up. But Rod Figueroa had it all figured out: just a case of sexed-up boys. And why work when you can gawk at nekkid wimmen in your Hustler?

      “These notes on the calendar,” I said, checking the previous month. “Dale – Tampa, Dale – SA, Dale – ORL … What’s that about?”

      “Overnight sales trips. Tampa, St Augustine, Orlando. Dale put out-of-town days on the calendar.” Kaskil paused. “But sometimes he was gone overnight and it wasn’t indicated.”

      “When he’d meet someone?” I said. “Like on a date?”

      Kaskil nodded. “Those could be, uh, impromptu.”

      “You and your other roomie, Tad Bertram … you’re gone a lot?”

      “We’re here maybe eight or ten days out of the month. We joke that we each pay a third of the rent, but Dale gets the place to himself seventy per cent of the time.”

      “When you arrived home from Mexico City, did anything seem amiss?”

      Kaskil’s features tightened in thought. “It was like Dale had played with rearranging the furniture, then put it back almost in place, but not quite.”

      “Let’s talk enemies – did Dale have any?”

      “A lot of times Dale gets cruised, and if he’s not in the mood he can be fast with put-downs. But no, there’s, like, no one who has it in for him. Not enough to do such an ugly thing.”

      We asked everything we could think of, then walked to the door. Kaskil asked if he and Bertram could visit Kemp and I discouraged it, telling them to wait until he regained consciousness.

      I didn’t mention it was a crapshoot as to that ever happening.

      We interviewed neighbors and friends of Kemp, getting nothing. When the day dwindled to dusk, Gershwin headed home and I decided to crib at the Palace, saving the hour-long drive. The Palace was a recent addition to the FCLE’s ongoing accumulation of confiscations. Gershwin and I had nailed a piece of garbage who’d made big money trafficking in human beings, hiding his gains in real estate. One property was the Palace Apartments, a small building on the west side of downtown, near the Tamiami Trail.

      Roy McDermott was a director of the FCLE not for deductive abilities, but his artful wrangling of funds and favors from the lawmakers in Tallahassee, a group the masterful McDermott milked like plump cows. Roy had convinced legislators to sell off all Kazankis’s properties except the Palace, to be used as quarters for visiting FCLE staffers and an occasional safe house for witness-protection efforts.

      I arrived and grabbed my overnight valise from the rear of the car. My ID card buzzed me through two bulletproof doors – an addition for the witness-protection aspect – and into a small lobby with framed seascapes on the walls. A clipboard on an elegant mahogany table indicated three rooms were occupied: two agents from Jacksonville and a departmental attorney from Tallahassee. They were on floors one and two, leaving the top floor, the fourth, fully mine.

      My suite resembled an upscale extended-stay facility: twin couches and chairs in the main room, plus a large TV screen and modest sound system, a desk, a wardrobe, chest of drawers. The galley-style kitchen held cooking necessaries and a half-size fridge. The bathroom had both shower and Jacuzzi. The bedroom had a queen-size bed, another desk and chair in the corner.

      Though a part of the FCLE’s inventory for three months, the Palace had already developed a fine tradition: if a visitor brought potables to the room and had something left when departing, the beverages stayed. I held my breath and opened the refrigerator …

      Three cans of Bud, two of Heineken, two Cokes, and seven airline-sized bottles of liquor, including two Bacardi golden rums. Bless you, I thought, mixing a rum and Coke – no lime, but I could rough it – then tucking the file beneath my arm, and heading out. The fourth-floor suite had one aspect I prized above all others: a stairway to the roof.

      I climbed and opened the door to the night skyline of Miami. Buildings towered like glass and metal hives with a skeleton staff of bees still buzzing within, whole floors dark, others alight for the cleaning staff and workers pulling all-nighters. A helicopter rumbled in the distance as traffic sounds drifted up from the street.

      On my last stay I’d purchased a sturdy folding chair, and bungeed it to a vent. I set it up, put the drink beside me and my feet on the two-foot ledge. Below my soles was sixty feet of open air and three a.m. traffic, half taxicabs. I sipped rum and Coke, pulled my phone, and took another stab at my errant brother.

      Per Clair’s instructions I thought so hard that my mouth formed the words Answer the phone, Jeremy. I visualized my brother cocking his head to the phone ringing in his office and lifting it to his ear … visualization another of Clair’s suggestions.

       Answer …

      The phone again directed me to his voicemail. Two dozen of my calls already lay in the electronic wasteland of my brother’s VM box … so much for synchronicity. Anger boiling in my gut, I held the phone to the night sky, growling, “God-dammit, Jeremy. Call me now and let me get on with my life.”

      Five seconds later my phone riffed an incoming call. I checked the screen and saw the name AUGUSTE and stared in disbelief: Jeremy’s alter ego, Auguste Charpentier. I wondered if I’d already gone to bed and was dreaming.

      Elmore

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