The Little Death

Chapter Ten

It was just after noon when Louis saw the cruiser swing into the parking lot of the Palm Beach PD. He had spent the last half hour sitting under the awning of an art gallery, watching the rain and thinking about Margery’s Fernando Lamas murder fantasy. It was probably the most far-fetched lead he had ever pursued, chasing down a lawn guy based on a five-year-old rumor that he had been caught in some woman’s bedroom.

But what else did he have right now?

Swann exited the cruiser, jogging through the rain toward the station entrance. He was working his arms into his navy blazer and didn’t see Louis until he was only a few feet from him.

Swann stopped abruptly under the entrance’s overhang. “Mr. Kincaid,” he said. “Are you waiting for me?”

“Yeah, I need your help.”

Swann pulled a Tic-Tac dispenser from his pocket and popped one into his mouth. “I’ve already given you all the help I could. Reggie Kent’s fate is in Detective Barberry’s hands.”

“Yeah, we met.”

“I take it he blew you off?”

Something in Swann’s voice made Louis realize that Barberry had done the same to Swann. He wondered if Swann had more of an interest in Reggie Kent’s case than he had led them to believe.

“Yeah, he blew me off, more or less.”

Swann nodded. “Well, I don’t mean to be rude, but I really need to go, Mr. Kincaid.”

Louis thought about asking Swann to go across the street to Hamburger Heaven. God knew he needed something in his stomach besides Margery’s champagne. But he realized there was probably no place on the island where Swann would not feel the curious eyes of the people he was expected to shield from the outside world.

“Look, Lieutenant,” Louis said, “I’ve learned something about Mark Durand that I think you need to know. And you need to know it before Barberry does.”

Something sparked in Swann’s eyes. “I know all I need to know about Mark Durand,” he said. “I know it would take more than an Armani suit and capped teeth to get him entree into these people’s living rooms.”

“I don’t know about living rooms,” Louis said. “But it got him into some pretty exclusive bedrooms.”

Swann’s jaws stopped working the Tic-Tac. “What exactly are you saying?”

“Mark Durand was not just a walker. He was screwing wealthy women for money and gifts.”

“Who told you this?”

“Reggie Kent,” Louis said.

“It’s obviously a lie to deflect suspicion from himself,” Swann said. “Even if it were true, why didn’t he tell Detective Barberry this the first time we spoke to him? It would certainly add a multitude of suspects to the list.”

“He was embarrassed that his protégé had sunk so low.”

Swann cocked an eyebrow.

“I also think he wanted to protect his lady friends,” Louis said. “Strangely, he still seems to think more of them than they do of him.”

That seemed to register with Swann. He ran a hand across his mouth. “Could Mr. Kent provide any proof?” he asked. “Any names?”

“He says he doesn’t have names.”

“Then why should I be concerned?”

“Because Kent’s scared shitless,” Louis said. “And if Barberry presses him, he’ll spill his guts. Barberry will dig up everything he can, and he won’t give a rat’s ass about being discreet. Within days, you’ll have an army of reporters crawling over the tops of your nice fifteen-foot hedges, trying to take pictures of horny old widows.”

Swann looked down at the sidewalk, arms crossed, jaw working the Tic-Tac like crazy. He might be the island’s gatekeeper, Louis thought, but his department was no different from any other-the shit rolled downhill.

“We need to make Kent feel safe,” Louis said.

“How?”

“We need to let him know that between you and me, we can keep him out of Barberry’s sights.”

Swann rubbed his brow. “I can’t help Mr. Kent,” he said. “I’ve been told to stand aside and let the county investigation take its course.”

“In other words, turn a blind eye to an innocent man going to jail.”

“You don’t get it, do you?” Swann said. “These are powerful people who will do anything to protect their privacy. Anything.”

“Including taking this cushy little job of yours away, right?” Louis asked.

Swann stuck a finger in Louis’s face. “Screw you.”

Louis pushed Swann’s hand away. “Look,” he said. “You’re not part of their world. You’re a cop, for crissakes, and whether you believe it or not, that makes you better than them.”

Swann had taken a step to go inside, but he stopped and turned back. His cheeks held a rush of color, and his eyes were snapping, but Louis didn’t think it was from anger. It was something closer to a wounding. Louis gave the feeling a few seconds to settle in before he spoke again.

“All I need is some information,” Louis said.

“What kind?”

“You ran my plate and name when I came on the island,” Louis said. “I’m guessing you guys also keep track of the service people who work here. Maids, gardeners, people like that.”

“Why do you care about service people?”

“I got a lead on another guy who was doing the same thing as Durand.”

“So?”

There was nothing to do but lie. “He’s missing.”

Swann stared at him. “What’s his name?”

“I only know his first name. And that he was a lawn guy.”

Swann looked like he had just bit down on something sour.

“Do you guys keep track of service people or not?” Louis asked.

Swann held Louis’s eyes for a moment, then looked around, like he was scouting out eavesdroppers. “All right,” he said. “About a year ago, some of the residents got together and told us to videotape everyone coming across the bridge and run checks on them.”

Louis shook his head slowly, thinking about those turrets out on the bridge. What a nice, convenient place for cameras.

“We didn’t do it, for God’s sake,” Swann said. “The lawyers told us it was probably unconstitutional.”

“No shit.”

Swan hesitated, like he had something else he wanted to say. Louis could tell the guy was struggling with something deep inside.

“You have something to tell me, Lieutenant?” Louis asked.

Swann blew out a slow breath. “We used to make all the workers carry ID cards. We even fingerprinted them,” he said. “We stopped it four years ago.”

Margery had said Emilio had been around the island about five years ago. That made it 1984. Could he be this lucky?

“Do you still have these cards?” Louis asked.

Swann nodded toward a large Spanish-style building half a block away on the median behind the fountain. “The station used to be over there, too. We have them stored over there.”

“Can I take a look?”

“I can’t let you in our storeroom alone.”

“Then go with me.”

Again, one of those strange frozen moments where it was almost possible to see the rusty grind of Swann’s courage.

“I have to go inside and check in,” he said. “Wait ten minutes, and meet me around back of that building at Devil’s Door. Look for the gargoyles.”

Swann went inside. Louis stayed where he was, a little surprised at Swann’s quick pivot from dickhead to detective. Maybe it was just another dimension of this strange place, where people saw nothing and knew everything, and doing the right thing required walking through something called the Devil’s Door.

Louis went across the street and around the building to the far side. The rain had finally let up, and he waited at the odd-looking door. It was heavy wood, framed by elaborate stone scrolling and two stone devil heads.

Swann came around the corner a couple of minutes later. “Why the weird name?” Louis asked.

“I don’t know,” Swann said as he unlocked the door. “Before my time. Probably because they thought they were bringing the prisoners into some kind of hell.”

Swann pushed open the door and quickly ushered Louis inside. When the door closed, a dusty gray light settled down around them. The place was stuffy and long abandoned, but it was far from hellish.

The walls were celery-green stucco, the archways and baseboards edged in colorful painted tiles, the terra-cotta floor chipped and scuffed. It looked more like a hotel lobby in Key West than a jail.

Swann led him down the hall and around a corner to what had once been two jail cells. The doors had been removed, and the cells were filled with plain white boxes neatly labeled with dates and the words GUEST PROFILES.

“Profiles?” Louis asked.

Swann gave a wry grin. “Better than labeling the boxes ‘people to talk to if someone is robbed.’”

“Very funny. Where’s 1984?”

Swann pointed to the bottom box in the tallest stack. It was partially crushed. “Right there, 1980 through ’85, when we stopped.”

Louis stepped into the cell and started shifting boxes. When he finally dragged the one needed to the middle of the cell, he was standing in a cloud of dust, and Swann was gone.

He sat down on the floor and took off the lid. Inside the box were hundreds of five-by-seven index cards, neatly filed in perfect rows. Given the meticulousness of the clerk who had been assigned the task of preparing these for storage, Louis was sure he would find 1984 in the back right-hand corner. He did.

Each card was exactly the same. A small photograph stapled to the upper left corner, the worker’s name printed across the top, and the individual’s data-age, address, place of employment-typed below. He had sifted through almost all of the cards when he realized nearly every face in the stack was black or brown.

And there were thousands more in this box and others. People with interchangeable faces who had moved unnoticed through the resplendent ballrooms and the safari bedrooms. People who often performed the most intimate of services yet remained strangers. The kind of people you pretended not to know when you met them on the street.

“You find your guy yet?”

Louis looked up. Swann was standing at the cell door, hand on the bars.

“Not yet.”

“Hurry it up. I have to get back.”

Louis went back to the cards. He was almost finished with the stack for 1984 when a name stopped him.

Emilio Labastide.

He was twenty-five years old, six foot one, and 170 pounds. He was a gardener, and his employer was a company called Clean amp; Green, located in West Palm. There was no social security number-something that would have made it easier to trace him.

Louis stared at the small photograph. Labastide was handsome in an earthy, unkempt kind of way. Black hair, hooded dark eyes, and an insolent half-smile probably directed at the cop taking his picture. Louis could imagine the bored rich women, sitting in the shade of their patios, watching the shirtless gardener sweat in the white-hot sun. It was something right out of a Harlequin novel.

Swann knelt down next to him. “That our guy?”

“I think so,” Louis said. “You recognize him?”

“No.”

“Why no social?”

“Probably an illegal,” Swann said. “They come and go like the weather.”

Louis pushed to his feet. “Can I keep this?”

“Let me make you a copy,” Swann said. “If Labastide turns out to be a witness or something, we’re going to need evidence of an investigative trail.”

Louis heard the “we” Swann had used but decided to let it go for now. He pulled his notebook from his pocket and wrote down the information, just in case he was wrong about Swann’s interest and Swann decided at some point to destroy the card. When he finished, he was surprised to see that Swann had picked up the open box and returned it to its stack. Swann dusted his hands and faced him. Suddenly, he looked like a kid caught behind the church with a cigarette.

“You’ll be real discreet when you talk to him, right?” Swann asked.

“Sure.”

“And you’ll let me know if there’s any truth to what Reggie Kent said?”

“Sure.”

Swann looked down at Labastide’s index card, then back at Louis. “I guess I’ll just have to trust you.”

Louis smiled. “Andrew, this could be the beginning of a beautiful relationship.”