Cattaneo grinned and took a bite of his sandwich and chewed, while he looked from the blond to the woman and back to the poor henpecked sonofabitch. The woman leaned across the table to the blond, and said, heavy whiskey gravel in her voice, “In three weeks, we won’t have enough cash to fuckin’ eat. Give the man your fuckin’ phone number.”
* * *
The cantankerous pair finished before Cattaneo, and when they got up to leave, the woman leaned over the booth table to give him a shot right straight down to her belly button, and said, “Thank you very much, sir. If your friend needs somebody, Willy can work really hard. And we need the money.”
“See what I can do,” Cattaneo said, trying not to look sideways under the gap between her breasts and the jacket, and failing. “Maybe it’ll work out for everybody.”
* * *
He watched them out of the deli onto the sidewalk. The guy wanted to go south, but the woman wanted to go north. The blond finally gave in and trailed her along the sidewalk to the north and out of sight. Cattaneo went back to the remnants of his sandwich and thought about a slice of lemon cheesecake. He oughta watch his weight, but . . . cheesecake. It is, as a man once said, what it is.
And the diver . . . they badly needed a diver of the right type, and the dude had that look. Their previous diver had apparently been freaked out by the shooting on the Mako. They took their eyes off Jaquell for one minute and she disappeared into the Bahamas. Cattaneo and a couple of other guys went to look for her, but it was hopeless. So no luck there, not for the home team. Of course, he thought, she lucked out.
He went for the cheesecake and another bottle of Peroni. Five minutes later, he’d tipped the bottle up for a final mouthful, when a man walked in, looked slowly around the place, caught Cattaneo’s eyes, held them, then moved on to Lou, the sandwich maker.
The man was wearing a cotton sport coat, seriously wrinkled in the back, golf slacks over a small potbelly, and brown shoes a few shades too yellow. His face was pitted with some kind of disease scars that Cattaneo didn’t want to know about. He and Lou talked for a moment, and then they both looked at Cattaneo.
Cattaneo thought: Cop.
The cop walked over toward him and Cattaneo told himself to relax; no reason a cop should be talking to him.
The cop said, “Barry Cohen, Miami Beach police. You were talking to a blond guy and a tall black woman?”
“Yeah, they left ten minutes ago. I didn’t know them, they were just sitting at that table”—he nodded at the table—“and we had a couple of words. What’d they do?”
“You see which way they went?”
“Yeah, they went out on the sidewalk and turned that way.” He pointed south. “That’s the last I saw of them. What’d they do?”
The cop ignored the question again and asked, “What did they have to say for themselves?”
“They said they were looking for work. I think they might have come on a bus. They might have been walking, something one of them said . . . mmm, the blond guy said his feet hurt.”
“You didn’t know them?” Cohen asked.
“No. I did see them here a couple of days ago, though. What’d they do?”
“They’re thieves, we think. Working around here. We’re trying to catch up with them. You didn’t give them access to a car or . . .”
“Man, I talked to them for five minutes, max. I come here every day for lunch—I live three blocks from here,” Cattaneo said. “If they’re thieves, I want them caught. This neighborhood is going to shit. Never saw them before two days ago . . . Lou probably knows them better than I do. I didn’t give them access to anyone.”
The cop nodded and said, “Okay. If you see them again, call 911. My name again is Barry Cohen, Miami Beach. Tell the 911 operator to call me.”
“I’ll do that,” Cattaneo said. “I hate fuckin’ thieves.”
The cop said, “Headed south?”
“Yeah. Ten minutes ago.”
* * *
The cop left, headed south, and Cattaneo got up and stepped over to Lou. “You know what those guys did? The blond and the black chick?”
“Yeah. Somebody must’ve told Cohen that they were in here. Cohen says they were over at the Rue Rouge yesterday. The black girl got talking to the valet and pulled him away from his board and they think the guy lifted some car keys. Somebody did, anyway. They took the car, a Porsche Cayenne, one of those remote-entry things, and the car had the owner’s registration. They drove over to the owner’s house, used the keys to get in and ripped off a few thousand bucks worth of electronics and some other shit. Silverware, a statue, some suits and shoes, some tools from the garage. Chain saw. They would have got more but there was a security system on a one-minute delay so they only got about two minutes’ worth of stuff. When the security company called the guy at the Rue Rouge, halfway through his lunch, he went running out to get his car and it was gone. They found it under I-95 with the wheels gone.”
“So they got some used electronics and some wheels?”
“I guess. Expensive wheels, though.”
Cattaneo briefly thought about climbing on Lou about pointing him out to the cop, for talking to the dude and dudette. After a moment’s consideration, he didn’t, because (a) Lou thought he was an upright citizen so why wouldn’t he point him out, and (b) he liked the corned beef sandwiches and didn’t want Lou hockin’ a loogy in there.
“Hate thieves,” Cattaneo said to Lou. “They make it so hard for the rest of us.”
* * *
By the time Cattaneo left the deli, the blond and the chick were looking out the rear window of their ten-year-old Subaru Outback. They saw the cop leave, and then, a couple of minutes later, Cattaneo. The blond took a burner phone from his pocket and punched in a number.
“Davenport . . .”
“Yeah, this is Virgil. I’m with Rae. We talked to Cattaneo. We got a bite. Cohen was just in there, laying out our bona fides.”
“Excellent. Now we wait. The apartment’s good?”
“We’re gonna fire up some weed tonight, to give it that necessary je ne sais quoi,” Virgil said.
“Hey: no inhaling . . . and what’s with the Latin and fuckin’ French?”
“I’m a high-quality cop,” Virgil said.
When he got off the phone, Rae said, “It’s bona-FEE-days, dumbass. FEE-days does not rhyme with ‘fries.’”