Suspicion of Deceit (9 page)

Anthony sat beside her and pulled an ashtray closer.

Gail took a sip of beer. "I understand you were a mechanic in Cuba."

Smiling a little, he glanced at Anthony. "That's right."

"How did you become a private investigator?"

"Well, a mechanic is hard work and not much money. I said what the hell, you know? Might as well try this. Be my own boss. Tell me about this person, the opera singer."

In as much detail as she could recall, Gail related her conversation with Thomas Nolan. Supplied as much of his biography as she knew. Described what he looked like. "I can get you a photograph, along with whatever written information the opera has on him."

"That would help."

"What do you think about his story?"

"It's bullshit."

"How long will it take to find out what really happened?"

"Maybe a few days, maybe a week or two. Maybe never. We'll see." He glanced at the lovebirds, which had begun fluttering in their cage.

Gail said, "I can find the woman who went to Havana with Nolan."

"Lucia," Castillo said. "Or whatever her name is. How are you going to do that?" It was not a challenge. He wanted to acquire the method and file it away.

"A phone call to the opera house in Dortmund. Someone there must remember. Once I have her name, it won't be hard to find her manager. All singers have managers. He can tell me where she's performing now."

"That's a good idea. You speak German?"

"No, but I'll think of something."

Castillo laughed. "She's pretty smart."

"Yes, she is." Anthony was leaning back on the sofa, arms spread. He had left his tie in the car, and his jacket was open, revealing a shirt that had cost him two hundred dollars.. From time to time his fingers stroked through her hair. The other hand, on which he wore a black jade ring, held the cigar, and the rich smoke, sweet with an undertone of coffee, spun and curled toward the open window.

Gail asked, "Have you heard anything on the street about Thomas Nolan?"

"On the street?" Castillo seemed to smile. "No."

"What do you think might happen, if they want to make trouble?"

"Who are you talking about?" He looked back at her with patient brown eyes. "Who do you mean?"

After a moment, she said, "I see. 'They' don't exist."

"Nobody wants to make trouble. That's not the reason. See, Gail, these are people whose relatives were executed or tortured or maybe died in prison. People who lost everything they had, not that most of them had so much. You know? I'm not saying it's right or it's wrong, but I can understand where they're coming from. What do I think will happen? A lot of noise. The radio hosts go on the air, then people v»ith nothing better to do will make nasty phone calls to the opera. You don't worry about that. You worry about the ones who use this for their own purposes."

Gail repeated a word she had heard Anthony use.
"Oportunismo. "

"Yes. The opportunists."

"What do they gain by stirring it up?"

"They feel big. Important. Maybe they want to get elected. Or they've got a business and they want publicity. Or there could be personal reasons."

Referring, possibly, to Octavio Reyes. Anthony could have told Castillo about his brother-in-law during that long phone conversation. There were currents flowing in this room that she couldn't tap into. She felt impatient with the oblique conversation.

"Do you expect violence?"

Castillo sipped his rum, then with a knuckle dabbed at his droopy gray mustache. "No, I don't think you'll see much of that. If you do, it's probably coming from the other side."

"Other side?"

"Cuba."

She looked at him steadily. He did not elaborate. "What do you mean?"

"They have people up here."

"Who does? The Cuban government?" There was no reply. "You're telling me the Cubans would send spies or terrorists to Miami to . . . what? Set off a bomb at the opera, then blame it on the exiles?"

Anthony tapped some loose ashes into the ashtray, then turned toward Gail to say, "No. They don't set bombs. They keep an eye on what's going on. If the opportunity presents itself, they might push others to violence. The exiles are aware of this. They know they can be used, so they're careful."

"What if there's someone out there who doesn't get it?"

His hand rested on his knee, and smoke drifted from the cigar. "That's an unfortunate possibility."

For no reason Gail could see, the birds began chirping again, flying wildly in the confined space, their wings beating on the cage. She had the odd impression of having wandered into a flick from the forties. Film noir. And nobody had given her a script.

Castillo picked a flake of tobacco off his tongue. "A lot easier if this singer decided to go away, you know?"

This at least was real: She had no doubt at all that if Anthony asked him to, Felix Castillo would take care of the problem. One neat chop to the larynx would do it.

CHAPTER EIGHT

On Wednesday, the soonest she could make it downtown, Gail went by the opera building on Biscayne Boulevard. Rebecca Dixon was expected in at two o'clock.

Gail arrived early to speak to her mother first. Irene Connor was one of the volunteers, and Gail found her in the anteroom of the general director's office talking on the phone. She looked unusually businesslike in a bright green dress and her size-five
faux
alligator pumps. Gail came closer. Her earrings were tiny frogs on lily pads, just visible beneath her auburn curls.

Irene finished the call, which had to do with a tour for high school students, then retrieved a lit cigarette from a potted philodendron on the window sill. The window was open, drawing out the smoke. "Hello, darling." She took a last puff and crushed it out in the pot. "When the cat's away—" She dropped the butt into a piece of paper, which she wadded and threw into the trash. "Don't worry. Next week I'll have to be a good girl. Jeffrey Hopkins will be back. How nice to see you. What's up?"

Gail closed the door and told her about Felix Castillo—everything except how and where Anthony had met him.

Irene pressed fingers to her heart. "Sometimes—not too often, but sometimes—I think I ought to move to Tampa and live with my sister."

"But how boring," Gail said, "and then who would I rely on for gossip?"

"I don't
gossip."

"No, you're my . . . snitch." Gail laughed. "My counterspy, my mole in the organization." Then she grew serious. "And you never heard any of this."

Irene fixed her with a sharp blue gaze. "They could tear out my nails. All right. What are you after?"

"Just a couple of small favors. I need a photo and resume of Tom Nolan from the files, if you have it." Irene said that they did. Gail continued, "I also need to find the English soprano he sang with in
Lucia di Lammermoor
before they went to Cuba together. This was a performance in Dortmund, Germany. Rebecca and Lloyd Dixon were there, but I don't want to ask them because somebody—probably Lloyd—told Tom Nolan to lie to me about his trip. It wouldn't be too hard to find the soprano, would it?"

"I shouldn't think so. Lloyd told him to lie to you? Well, no wonder it sounded so innocent. All right, I'll call the Stadts Theater in Dortmund," Irene said after a moment. "No problem. Now for the rest of it." Opening a filing cabinet, she walked her fingers over the tops of folders, then pulled out one of them.

A black-and-white publicity photograph showed Nolan looking straight into the camera. No smile, just hollow cheeks and deep-set eyes. His performance credits covered four pages. There were copies of reviews from major newspapers. His appearance in Havana was not mentioned.

Gail returned the photo and papers to the folder. "When Rebecca gets here, tell her I need to talk to her. Meanwhile, I'm going to find Tom Nolan. Could you make me two copies of these? I'll be back in a few minutes."

Irene curled one small hand around Gail's elbow. "Darling, what about Mr. Pedrosa's birthday party on Saturday? Should we go? Maybe you should discuss it with Anthony. It might be too awkward for everyone."

"I refuse to allow Octavio Reyes to spoil it," Gail said. "Of course we'll go. Don't worry. It's going to be fine."

The main rehearsal hall was generally used by the orchestra. Today the chairs and music stands were in a far corner, and the wood floor was marked with different colors of tape, indicating the various stage sets for
Don Giovanni,
still under construction elsewhere in the building.

There were two dozen people in the room, dressed casually in jeans and sneakers and faded T-shirts. Some were singers, others not. It was hard to tell the difference. Gail assumed that some of the younger ones were students. One man walked backward unreeling a measuring tape. A woman on her hands and knees was sticking blue tape on the floor. The director and conductor stood by the piano. The pianist played a few bars, then stopped for some discussion.

Gail had come through the corridor that linked the offices to the other parts of the building—rehearsal rooms, dressing rooms, carpentry and costume shops, finally the theater itself. The receptionist had told her that the principal singers would be in the orchestra room working on blocking. Through the partially open door Gail could see most of the room, but she did not see Thomas Nolan.

She came a step farther inside, then stopped.

Lloyd Dixon was walking in her direction. Having been spotted, Gail had no choice but to go in. She let the door click shut behind her.

It had taken her a few seconds to recognize him in loose khaki pants and a brown leather bomber jacket. Long use had left scratches and nicks, wearing the leather to suede around the zipper. There was a plaid shirt underneath. Dixon looked her up and down, a quick male appraisal. "Well, it's our lawyer. Tom says you spoke to him Monday. Back for a follow-up?"

She noticed Thomas Nolan a few yards behind Dixon. Apparently they. had been talking. Nolan glanced back at her, then went to join a group of his friends. "No, I dropped by on some other matter and thought I'd take a look at the-rehearsal."

"They don't like visitors," Dixon said.

"You're here."

"I'm taking off."

Gail gestured toward Dixon's jacket. "I didn't see a biplane in the parking lot."

"Uh-uh. A Cessna Citation Five jet out at Tamiami Airport. My new toy. I'm taking her out for a spin. You ought to come along sometime."

There was something sexy about this man, Gail decided, surprising herself. He was up in his fifties, with a thick neck and heavy shoulders. His white hair was clipped short. But such a
guy.
She had heard that Dixon had been a helicopter pilot in Vietnam. Gail imagined him in a scene from
Apocalypse Now.
Flight helmet and sunglasses. Rockets streaking into the jungle. The rattle of a machine gun in the open doorway. He had stolen Rebecca away from her first husband, the banker. The poor man had fled rather than fight for her, so the story went.

Gail turned her back on the room and spoke quietly. "Lloyd, let me ask you something. Did you speak with Tom before I went to see him? Maybe offer him some ideas on how to respond to my questions?"

His smile lifted one side of his mouth. "No, Gail, I didn't. Why are you making a big deal out of this? Let me clue you in. The Cubans I know think it's a joke. The others—the so-called hard-liners—they don't really give a shit. It's a pose they have to take, or they can't belong to the club. They got here all pissed off because they didn't have the power anymore. Now they do. They're older, they'd rather go about their business. My advice is, don't push it. What happens, happens."

"Maybe you should tell that to Octavio Reyes."

He continued to look at her. "Who is Octavio Reyes?"

Gail said, "The Cuban radio commentator on WRCL."

"A member of the club. Don't worry about it." From his back pocket Dixon took a billed cap, dropped it on his head, and smoothed it down. The words DIXON AIR TRANSPORT made a circle around a small jet.

"You might worry," Gail said, "when the receptionist out there starts getting death threats. I'm going to recommend that the opera hire a full-time security guard."

"Tell the receptionist to hang up the goddamn phone."

"If anything happened to one of the employees or musicians and we had not taken precautions, the opera could be held liable."

"Lawyers." Dixon shook his head. "Hell, I don't care. If a security guard makes you sleep at night, hire one." He grabbed the door's metal push bar in a meaty hand. The smile reappeared. Then he winked. "Some fun, huh?"

Not wanting to follow him through the corridor, Gail crossed the rehearsal room and looked out the window. The vertical blinds were open, giving a view of the parking lot.

Who,
he had asked,
is Octavio Reyes?

There had been at Gail's former law firm a partner so elderly he had clerked at the Supreme Court during the Depression. He would often drop a quote from Cicero or Virgil into his oral arguments—in Latin, making Miami juries squint in confusion. He was finally exiled to a tiny office, where he wrote convoluted, increasingly philosophical legal briefs, which clerks in their twenties would rewrite, then laugh about over lunch. Gail had been among them. She rode down in an elevator with him one night and talked about the trial she would do the next day—her first. How do you tell, she asked, if a witness is lying? Easy. If he's lying, he either looks at you or he doesn't.

It had taken a long time, but the meaning had finally clicked. Sometimes the eyes drift away. Sometimes they stay right on you, not a blink.

A blue Ford pickup truck was parked among the cars and vans out there. Not a new one, but the kind a man could toss engine parts into and not worry about scratching the paint. The windows were tinted. There was a trailer hitch. A CB antenna. A bumper sticker with an American flag. Dixon appeared, keys in his hand.

Just as he opened his door, a silver Jaguar turned into the parking lot, sunlight glinting on the windshield. Rebecca's car. She parked in the general director's spot near the entrance. Dixon stood watching her. The wind opened her long white sweater—probably cashmere. From a distance of ten yards she looked coolly at her husband, but neither of them spoke.