Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 129, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 787 & 788, March/April 2007

Doorway to Heaven by Frank T. Wydra

Copyright © 2007 by Frank T. Wydra

Art by Luis Perez

Another so-so day in paradise, dawn just breaking, drizzle clouding the view of the beach, temperature on the south side of eighty, me, feet propped on the rail, catching it all through the lanai, sipping my third cup of black. Fort Myers Beach is like that, day starts out kind of punk and by noon it works its way out of the depression and up toward the manic end of life. The beach is no more than a seven by half-mile strip of sand on the east side of the Gulf, which God put there to keep the natives’ feet dry during high winds. Its real name is Estero Island, but somewhere along the way the real-estate agents figured they could make more money selling sand if they named the place after its big brother on the mainland, some would say swampland. I’m taking this all in, wondering if a few more hours of rays to add to my three-day tan is in the cards, when the cell rings.

“Hey, Matt,” the scratchy voice says, “how ya doin’?”

“Hey, Ov,” I’m back at him, wondering how I got lucky enough to have paradise put on hold, ’cause whenever Ovitz Marker calls, there’s some kind of trouble. Marker is this client of mine in the Detroit area, place I hang when I’m not on the beach. Over the years I’ve done maybe a half-dozen jobs for him, mainly tracking down money that somehow slipped out of his pocket.

“You staying down here, on the beach?” he asks.

Down here? I check the window on the cell and the area is 313, but that doesn’t tell me anything since all the cells are on Roam nowadays.

“Been here a long half-week,” I said. “You too?”

“Hey, December through March every year. Can’t stand the snow anymore. Y’know, get to be a certain age. Anyway, didn’t call to talk weather. You got time we can get together?”

“Something sociable, yeah, I got time, have a drink or two. Otherwise, I’m on vacation. Y’know how it is, Ov, everybody’s got to take a break.”

“Let’s do the drink,” he says, “give us a chance to talk. What say the Beach-A-Doo at five. Catch the sunset.”

“No business,” I say. Ov likes to squeeze free consulting into a drink.

“Whatever,” he says. “See you at five.”

The Beach-A-Doo is every man’s vision of a beach dive. Done up in shrimp and turquoise, the place looks as if it was designed by a pimp. Upstairs is the respectable part: dining room, every seat with a view of the gulf; terrace with a dozen Bimini umbrella tables; bar, long, coppered, with three bikini-topped tenders doing all drinks shaken, not stirred. Upstairs is where the gray-hairs pretend they’re young. But downstairs, where Ov wants to meet, is where the locals hang. Here the bar is open-air so you can catch a whiff of salt and seaweed while you watch young bodies push a volleyball on a sand court. One corner is owned by a steel-drum band playing Carib tunes while most space is filled with picnic tables and benches. In the Beneath, as this level is called by the natives, the tenders and staff are just past legal.

I get there fifteen minutes past and Ov is at the bar chewing with a twenty-something tender, nursing a straight-up martini. Ov is a tad past fifty, but with the extra flab he carries and the hair slicked over his bald spot he could pass for sixty, easy. Little guy, though, decked in khaki shorts showcasing his knobby knees and broomstick legs and a black shirt with neon orange, pink, and green parrots. Ov doesn’t like to draw attention to himself.

Seeing me, he shoulders a wave, then points to the stool next to his. The tender flashes whites and dimples pop to her cheeks. For a minute I toy with parking on the other side and seeing if there’s a snag in the works, but Ov ends that with his motions, saying, “Matt, hey man, thought I’d lost you.” He pats the stool and I sit, telling dimples I’ll take a Jack-rocks.

“So, you’re down here over the cold,” I say, keeping it light. “Got a condo, or what?”

His eyes brighten and he says, “What I wanted to talk to you about. Got it in ’eighty-seven when the market tanked. Guy couldn’t make the payment on his vig, so I took it in trade. Been coming down ever since. Started with maybe a week or two, then said, shit, who needs the cold. Nice place, two bedrooms, tenth floor, on the Gulf, little balcony. Not big, but I like it, all I need.”

I sip the Jack, waiting for him to get to it, and eventually he does. “You hear about the guy who took a dive last month? Did a one-and-a-half from his condo, no water in the pool?”

I hadn’t.

“Next-door to me. Same building, same floor, same view. Guy’s a wheeler on the beach, but weird. Name’s Rhodesia Sam, but everybody calls him Rhodo. Story is he comes out of Africa palming diamonds, starts buying up beach property like it’s all that’s left, mainly vacant lots but some run-down shacks, too. Anything, so long as it’s on the water. Pays top green. We figure he’s fronting for some rollers who are going to do a high-rise.”

Ov orders another martini and we both watch dimples shake the can. Fresh juice in hand, he picks up where he left off. “Five, maybe six years, me and Rhodo are neighbors and nothing passes but how-ya-dos. This year, though, I come down like I always do, after Thanksgiving, and there’s a hole in my wall. No shit, a door cut in between my place and Rhodo’s. I’m ballistic. I grab Rhodo and say, ‘What the hell’s with the hole?’ What does he do but give me a grin and says, ‘Oh, that, sorry, I should have asked, but my mom was visiting and I wanted a place she could call her own. Privacy, you know?’ My jaw’s at my belt. ‘You what?’ I says and he says it again, same thing. Guy like this, you never figure he’d have a mom. Anyway, then he says, ‘Tell you what, how about I buy your place? Pay you twice the market in trade.’ ”

Ov mouths one of the three olives from the martini. “Well, I like my place and selling’s never entered, but ‘twice’ catches my ear, so I asks, ‘What’s it mean, in trade?’ ‘Y’know,’ he says, ‘I got some property’s worth twice the market of your place. We swap. Trade. I get yours, you get mine.’ Twice the market, right away I’m thinking extra bedroom, extra bath, not that I’ve ever needed them, but y’know, down here space is space, maybe even on the fourteenth floor with a wrap-around balcony, that’s the kind of place you’re talking at twice the market. So I says, ‘This other property, tell me about it.’ You should have seen the smile on his face. Two gold molars showed. ‘You’re going to love it,’ he says. ‘You’re from Michigan, right? I’ve got this hundred-and-thirty-acre piece just above Gaylord, small lake on it and a cement plant.’ ”

Ov does the second olive. “I look at him like he’s crazy, which the dive proves he is, but at the time I don’t know he’s going to play pelican, but I should have figured with the hole in my wall and all. ‘Gaylord,’ I says, ‘Gaylord is in freaking Michigan. What are you talking about Gaylord and a cement plant? I thought you had something here on the beach.’ I’m yelling at the sucker, but he just puts out his hands, motions me to calm down, gives me a smile like it’s me who’s the crazy one for not jumping at this snowball, and he says all over again, ‘This place with the land, the lake, and the cement plant, this deal you don’t want to pass up.’ ”

Down goes the third olive. “By now, I’ve got no doubt the guy’s fifty-one short of a deck. Guy like that, you don’t come right out and say it, ’cause no telling where he goes from here, so I says, ‘Forget the deal and just fix my wall. While you’re at it, paint the whole freaking room and don’t pull shit like this again.’ And that’s the end of it. Can you believe? Next day drywall’s up. Week later paint’s on, everything back the way it was.”

Ten years, off and on, I’ve been doing stuff for Ovitz Marker. Ten years every conversation has a problem lurking in it. So I’m listening to this wondering where it’s going, because right now I can’t see the thorn.

“Hey,” Ov says to Dimples with a wink, “this here martini, you forgot the olives.” Dimples gives a friendly little snort and impales four olives on a toothpick. Scarfing the first one, Ov says, “Aphrodisiac.” I’m thinking Dimples ought to put the whole jar on the bar and let him go at them for all the good it will do.

“So,” Ov says. “What d’y’ think?”

What I think is that if I can get rid of Ov, there’s still a chance with Dimples. What I say is, “A character.”

“Yeah, well,” Ov says. “It’s a good story. But now the chitchat’s over, maybe we can spend a minute on business.”

I give him the queer eye. “Vacation, Ov, vacation. We don’t do work on vacation.”

Like I never said it, Ov says, “You got to help me with this one. Besides, knowing you were in town, I already passed your name to this guy and he wants to talk with you.”

I push away from the bar. “Ov, I’m on vacation. Way I see it, what you got to do is go back to this guy and pass him another name. I’m out. And, so there’s no hard feelings, here’s a ten for the drink.”

I’m walking away and Ov’s yelling after me. “Your money’s no good here, and the guy I told, he don’t take no for an answer.”

The sun’s been up for a half-hour and I’m sitting on the deck, still in skivvies, feet propped on the table, trying to decide whether to bike out to Lover’s Key or just walk to the beach, when a woodpecker raps on my door. Four days I’ve been here now, and this is the first time anyone, I mean anyone, has touched that door. “Don’t need any,” I yell, but the pecker does it again.

Pulling on some plaid shorts, I pad over to the door. On the other side is a guy wearing a suit coat and tie. Mormon is the first thing that flashes because on the beach nobody still drawing breath sports a tie. But somehow the guy doesn’t look like a Mormon. They’re always young, clean-cut, fresh-looking. This guy is anything but. More like used, cut-up, and ready for the trash bin. The suit is black, the tie is grey silk, and the guy standing behind the guy has at least ten inches on him and four on me.

“You Jaxon?” the little guy with the tie asks.

“Yeah,” I say, “and whatever you’re selling, I don’t want any.”

“Inside,” he says, reaching up with splayed fingers to push my chest.

Now I’m easygoing, but one of the things that puts me off is short guys in ties pushing me on the chest and giving me orders in my own rented house. So I stand my ground and gently but firmly swat his hand from my chest saying, “Flake off, Charlie.” This time the tree in the second row reaches an arm over the short guy with the tie’s head and starts for my neck. Before it gets there I have the wrist in my paw pushing it upward so that he grabs nothing but cloud. But I don’t get a chance to show off my kung fu or jujitsu because the short guy has a cannon stuck in my belly-button, trying to push it through to my spine.

“Inside,” the guy with the tie says again, and this time I figure, why not. “Sit down,” the tie says, sliding the Magnum back in his coat. “Treat all your customers like this, you’re not going to stay in business long,” Tie says.

“A,” I say, “most of my customers don’t pack. B, I’m on vacation, no customers wanted. C, my license’s no good here. D, what’s it to you?”

“Check it out,” Tie says and Tree starts a tour of my palace. To me he says, “Who cares what you want? You talk to Marker? He’s supposed to let you know I’m hiring you. He says he talked to you, last night. He talk to you?”

Ov’s talk at the Beach-A-Doo slides back into my head and I roll my eyes. “Hey, I told him same thing I told you. I’m on vacation: rest, relaxation, no jobs. Got it? So thanks for thinking of me, but find yourself another boy. Now, if you don’t mind.”

The tie looks at me with a cocked head. “You’re not getting this, are you? Nobody’s asking you if you want the job. What I’m saying is that you’re taking the job.”

“Or what?”

“Or Ovitz Marker gets whacked. How’s that for an or-what?”

I nod my head and give him a dumb look like I’m impressed. “Pretty good or-what,” I say. “Thing you want to do on the way out is let me know where I should send flowers. Ov was a good client.”

It takes a second, but eventually a smile works its way onto Tie’s face. “You’re okay,” he says. “I like that. Most guys I know, give a little heat, they fold. Not you. That’s pretty good. Hey, you know who I am? Marker tell you that? Who you’re dealing with, here?”

“My guess would be Snow White and you left the other six dwarfs at home.”

Again, he chuckles. “You got a good routine. Keep it up; I’ll get you a gig at the Sands. But just so you know, I’m Al Capon.” He says it so it sounds Italian. “And I run this town.”

“And I thought you were dead. Figure that.”

“You’re thinking of the other guy. Scarface. Big Al. Me, I’m still kicking.” He fishes a card from his pocket and flicks it to me and I see his name is spelled without the “e.” Capon, French for castrated chicken. While I’m thinking of some cute remark the birdless bird says, “Now, let’s cut the bullshit and get to it. I need my six mil back and Marker says you’re the guy to find it. What I’m talking here is five percent finder’s fee. How’s your vacation now?”

I make good money; even so, the three hundred K catches my ear. “Nice number,” I say, “but I’m not into contingent work.”

Tree has finished his tour of my estate and takes his proper place one step to the rear and left of Little Al. “Okay,” Capon says, “you get your fee with the five percent as a sweetener when you find the stash. Cecil, give him five K walking-around money.” Cecil pulls a wallet out and starts fingering through what look like hundreds.

Sliced balls or not, the guy knows how to play his cards. “You’ve got my attention,” I say. Man’s in desperate trouble, even the best of us have to make sacrifices. “Tell me how this six mil walked out of your pocket.”

Cecil hands me a pack of bills about a half-inch thick. They’re hundreds. Capon says, “Marker told you about Rhodo, right?”

“Some.”

“Well, I run some businesses here on the Beach. Mostly the pleasure kind. People come down here, they want to have a good time. I help them out. Natives, too. Anybody looking for a good time, they come to my people. Rhodo, he was my banker. By the way, I’m telling you this like you’re my lawyer. This is privileged stuff. Goes in one ear, stays there. You understand?”

I shake my head. “I’m no lawyer, got no privilege.”

“You’re not listening,” he says. “I’m telling you this is privileged. Talk in your sleep, I hear about it, your ticket gets canceled. After that you don’t talk to nobody except maybe worms. So anyway, Rhodo, he’s my banker, sort of. This business of mine, it’s profitable. Yeah, we got expenses, but there’s plenty left over. But regular banks, they got too many forms. Makes a guy nervous. Y’know what I mean? So, whenever I get some cash Rhodo converts my trading money into diamonds and what’s left into real estate. You’re asking why I’m telling you all this. Well, I send you on a hunt, you got to know what you’re looking for. So that’s it. The six mil is probably in cash, diamonds, or real estate. Rhodo, he’s not talking, so you’re the one who has to find it.”

“This six mil,” I say, “tell me about it.”

“What’s there to tell? It’s gone and I want it back. End of story.”

“It go all at once or over time?”

“Hey, pretty good. Now I see it. Over time. Last couple of years. I got this accountant and he gives me the high sign that what’s going out doesn’t add with what’s coming in. Six mil and change, he says. I figure the change is probably expenses, so I round it. Still, six mil is six mil. So I asks Rhodo about it and during our conversation he slips over the rail of his condo.” Capon gives Cecil a “you dumb motha” look and Cecil jukes his head as if his collar’s too tight. “Accident,” Capon says, “but I still want my six mil.”

“Any idea where I should start looking?”

He gives me the same look he just gave Cecil and says, “If I gotta do the work, what’m I paying you for?”

As it was, Capon popped for two names: Rhodo’s lady friend, Lulu, and a local real-estate agent who Rhodo used to buy property. They seemed a good place to start.

Lulu was somewhere between twenty and forty. With all the Botox and lifts going around, it’s getting harder to peg an age. She was a model type with all her bones in the right place and just enough padding to make looking easy. If the sun hadn’t bleached her hair, her dresser deserved an Oscar. I’m a sucker for a pretty face, so one look and she had me. Classic straight nose, ripe lips, high cheeks, brown eyes that had never been red. Face like that, some part of it had to have been paid for.

I introduce myself, including Jaxon with an X, then start to work around to business. Ten seconds into this spiel I made up, she says, “You working for Little Al?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“He got you chasing that six mil he thinks Rhodo snatched?”

So much for privileged info. “Anything you can tell me about it?” I said, trying to stay cool. She gave me a head chuck and pulled the door for me to come in.

Her place was nice. Bigger than mine and better furnished, sort of contemporary, which you don’t see a lot of on the beach. Not one seashell or picture of sand in sight. The furniture seemed to be all leather and chrome, neither of which does real well in the salt air. Enough money, though, it doesn’t matter how often you trade in the old for the new. “Drink?” she asked and I gave her the usual.

After we were settled on this blue leather sectional — me on one end, her on the other — she says, “So, I suppose Little Al told you Rhodo scammed the six mil: cash, diamonds, or dirt.”

“Something like that,” I said.

“Give you five-percent finder’s?”

I gave her a right-on cock of my head. “Five percent.”

She laughed. It was a pretty laugh with a cynical undertow. “Pretty dumb, huh? Guy thinks someone finds six million, tax-free, no strings, untraceable, they’re going to turn ninety-five percent of it over.”

“Depends, I guess, on whether you do this as a business or a hobby. You think Rhodo took it, or what?”

Again she laughed. She was one of those women who, almost anything she said started with a little laugh or at least a smile. You know, the kind that win all the beauty contests. “It’s gone, Rhodo took it. Man had glue on his fingers.”

“Word is, you were his girl. That fit?”

The laugh. “Yeah, he gave me a lavaliere. We had it all planned, ten years from now we were going to get engaged.”

“You two travel much? Business? Pleasure?”

The smile. “You don’t believe I’m going to say, ‘Yeah we went to Capetown once a month to buy diamonds or Zurich to check if they had the numbers right,’ do you? Let me save you time, Mr. Jaxon with an X. Yeah, Rhodo and I traveled, but most of his business he did over secure lines. Yeah, we had a wide circle on the Beach and over in Naples and Bonita, but I can’t think of any one of them who would help you. Most of them had no idea of the business. Most of them wouldn’t have cared. No, I have no idea how he went over the rail. He wasn’t the kind that likes high dives. You think maybe he was helped, go ahead and think it, I can’t give you any help there. Do I know where the money is? No. Do I know if he converted it to diamonds or land? No. Do I know anything that can help you? No. Would I share it if I did? No. So there it is. Nothing I can do for you.” And the smile never left her face.

“You mind, I finish the drink?” I asked. Of course, she laughed. I took a big one, but left a little in the glass for a chaser. “You meet his mom when she was down for Thanksgiving?”

If you were really paying attention, you would have caught the hesitation in her eyes before the smile and the little laugh. “What mom?” she asked.

Dimples, whose name turns out to be Suzy, was once again tending as Ov and I checked in for happy hour and the sunset. Ov looked a little nervous, as he should, considering how he set me up. We ordered the usuals and Suzy slid a bowl of giant olives next to Ov’s glass. She was too smart to look as young as she was. “So, you knew about this?”

He gave me the bashful look, saying, “I’m into Little Al for ten gees.”

Second time I’d heard Capon called “Little Al” and here I thought I’d made it up. Go figure. “And,” I said, taking the first sip of Jack, “the stuff about Rhodo, how much of that was the setup and how much God’s truth?”

Eyes bigger than Suzy’s boobs, he plays the innocent. “What I said? Yesterday? God’s truth.”

“Including him taking a voluntary dive?”

“Well,” he says, stretching it longer than the seventh inning. “Some things better to be left unsaid.”

“And you and Rhodo, most you ever said was a how-ja-do as you were getting on the elevator?”

Another “Well…”

“And you met his mom?”

This time he’s shaking his head so hard the hair flap falls across his forehead. “No, no. Never said I met her, just that she was there. What Rhodo told me.”

“He say where she lived, this mom of his?”

Another shake so the flap drops to his eyes and he has to brush it back, but it doesn’t quite get to the right place so he looks like Dagwood. “No, no. Just what I told you.”

“This mom wouldn’t be named Lulu, would she?” And he looks at me like the gears in his head are slipping but still making time. “Forget it,” I say because his look has told me everything I need. “You know a real-estate guy named Dan Brown?”

“Dan Brown? Sure. Who doesn’t? Everybody calls him Crapper Dan, ’cause he’s got this stomach problem, but he’s the biggest sand peddler on the island.”

“What say you and I go talk to Crapper Dan, see if he wants to show us Rhodo’s condo, like I want to buy it.”

He looks at me funny, like I’m not getting it. “He can’t do that. The place is sealed.”

“What sealed?”

“Sealed like by the cops. Y’know. They found some stuff in Rhodo’s pocket. Coke, maybe. So they threw the freeze on it.”

“So nobody’s been up there since the dive?”

“Just the cops.”

“And part of what Little Al does on the island is peddle powder?”

“I ain’t saying that.”

I look at him and, from the scared on his face, he doesn’t have to mouth the words to make them so. But, one thing I learned about Ov, long time ago, when I was just getting started, is that he’s got enough street smarts to be a sewer rat. “What’s your guess, where Rhodo put the take,” I ask, “stones, coin, or sand?”

“No-brainer,” he says, “same thing everybody else thinks. Got to be stones. Property, too complicated with all the paperwork, deeds and such. Cash, too much bulk. You ever figure how many suitcases it would take for six mil? Book a passage on the Queen Mary, that much luggage. What’s left is stones. Put six mil in your pocket, and he’s got the connections at the rock farm.”

He’s right, I’m thinking. Only thing that makes sense. The little stash Cecil dropped on me, the lousy five gees, didn’t take much space, but put together, what, twelve hundred of those stacks, adds up. And then I start doing the math trying to figure just how much space twelve hundred of those little five-grand packs would actually take.

I threw a twenty on the bar for Suzy and said, “Let’s go.”

“Where?” Ov says, as if missing the sunset would put him in purgatory for half of eternity.

“Find a preacher,” I say, “maybe a six-pack of them.”

It took most of the evening to find a half-dozen flock tenders willing to play the game. Not that we found any that weren’t, but the beach is a small place and there aren’t that many white collars floating around. We laid out the plan, set out the timetable, then left it in their hands. Each would go in in turn, do his bit, and exit. No overlap, no witnesses except Jehovah.

Ov and I made a trip to his place, where I had him make a mark on the wall where the door had been. The outline was thirty inches wide and six foot six high, a tad over nine thousand cubic inches in the cavity. We left the latch open and then went out to see if we could catch the sunrise at the Beach-A-Doo. Next morning, after a good breakfast, we check his place and call the police to report the vandalism. Party or parties unknown had broken into Ov’s apartment and had ripped out a section of wall. Damnedest thing. There was almost no mess. The vandals were very neat; they’d even put the carved-up plasterboard in a little box ready for the trashman. Other than that, no damage, nothing missing. Gendarmes shook their heads, but wrote it up so Ov could file the insurance claim. I went out to catch some rays, figuring I’d only a few days left to do some serious skin damage.

End of the third day after the vandalism Capon calls and asks how I’m doing on the case. Not good, I tell him, no leads and the trail’s cold. I offer to give him back thirty-eight hundred of the retainer, because this thing’s not going anywhere. He says, “Keep working on it,” so I say, “Okay,” but I’m not planning to break a sweat. Yeah, a thousand went to pay the deductible on Ov’s insurance and I figured we’d spent another two hundred on drinks at the Beach-A-Doo, so the thirty-eight was all that was left in the kitty. That I dropped off in a church box on my way to the airport.

In the cab to Southwest Regional, I read in the little Island paper, comes out once a week, about all these new drug prevention and rehab centers starting up on the island. Things the churches are doing, seems about a half-dozen of them got together, and I think it’s good that the people in paradise take care of their own. I’ll have to come back again next year; sure beats the snow in Detroit.