the jagged Miami skyline seemed to glisten in the renewed air and I walked the grounds and the nearby streets for an hour, grabbing a coffee from a street vendor and sipping it beneath a tall King palm in a tiny streetside park, the fronds swaying and rattling against one another.
When I returned, Ava was closing the body, the heavy stitches straight from Frankenstein. The top of Kylie Sandoval’s head lay beside her on the table.
“Well?” I said.
Ava replaced the bowl of skull as she spoke. “I’ve identified four sites struck by a blunt instrument, two on the head, two on the body. I suspect it was one of these blows that broke her nose, another that shattered the left temple, creating intercranial hemorrhaging. I think I’ll find more.”
Ava shed the gown and mask and I followed her to her office, utilitarian, shelves of medical and forensics texts and a simple desk and chair. There was a single large painting on one wall behind her desk, a streetscape of Key West in thick swaths of impasto oil, the houses dark and hunkered shapes, the twilight sky dappled with fierce strokes of orange and red, one slender palm bridging earth and sky, as still as a patch of paint can be, yet somehow moving within the frame of the picture.
It was a stunning work and my brother had painted it, claiming his move to Key West had brought out his artistic side. I had never been able to fathom the inside of his head, and his sudden ability to paint further scrambled my understanding.
Ava studied her notes. “I need analysis from other tissue samples before I confirm my suspicions of multiple trauma sites. Should take a few hours, same with the tox screens, and I’ll call you with the results. They might be quite interesting.”
I was crossing the parking lot when my phone rang: Belafonte.
“Can we speak?” she said.
“We are.”
“I mean … meet somewhere? I really need to talk to you, hopefully today.”
“Where are you?”
“Flagami, tracking down information on Kylie.”
“Gimme an address. Preferably a bar where I can get a decent beer.”
“I’m, uh, in uniform.”
“Go home,” I told her. “And await further instructions.”
I hung up and pressed the fifth number down on my speed dial. Three rings.
“Carson, what’s up?” Vince Delmara. He sounded beat.
“What did you do to me, Vince?”
“Belafonte? She’s all I could find, Carson. Really. Every detective or soon-to-be detective is beating the streets on Menendez. Did you see any news show last night? All they talked about was lack of progress. We’re in crash-and-burn mode here.”
I sighed. “OK, Vince. But I gotta problem with Officer B.”
“I figured. She’s smart like a whip, but I think she was born with a broomstick up her—”
“Not that. She’s in uniform.”
It took a second for Vince’s frazzled mind to grasp. “Shit, of course. I’ll get her reclassified as undercover. Anything else?”
“Call and tell her when it’s done. I’m not sure she likes the sound of my voice.”
Twenty minutes later my phone rang, Belafonte. “Detective Delmara just phoned. He said—”
“I know. Jump into street clothes and let’s reconvene near a beer tap.”
I drove over and parked outside a decent-looking place in West Buena Vista named the Sea Breeze – something of a stretch, since the bay was about fifteen blocks distant, but perhaps they meant during hurricanes. Belafonte pulled in two minutes later, driving a venerable Crown Victoria, a former cruiser, given that I could see the logo beneath the fading paint job supposed to cover the previous usage. I stepped out as she did, finding she’d transformed from officer to female, the creased brown uni now blue slacks and a white safari shirt buttoned to the top. Both the slacks and shirt had been pressed rigid. Her shoes were pumps with a two-inch heel. She looked like an advertisement for Sears, except Sears models tended to look happy.
I passed by the bar, the woman behind it offering a smile and a “What you folks need? I’ll bring it over.”
I glanced at the taps and I ordered an Eldorado IPA from the local Wynwood Brewing Co. Belafonte said, “A glass of water, Pellegrino if possible.”
The joint was mostly empty and I angled toward a booth in a far corner, sat as Belafonte followed suit. I stared at her and offered my widest smile, receiving only an anxious look.
“There’s something I wanted to say, Detective Ryder.”
I stuck my fingers in my ears.
“What are you doing?” she said.
“I can’t hear you. My fingers are in my ears.”
“Have you gone daft?”
“I’m not going to listen until you order a freaking drink, Belafonte. Unless you’re a confirmed teetotaler or a recovering alcoholic, we’re going to sit here like two standard-issue cops and sip an honest and refreshing beverage while we talk.”
“It’s not professional to drink during duty,” she said.
“You’re now plainclothes, Officer Belafonte. It’s not professional to get drunk on duty, or otherwise impaired. I expect this case to take us to some pretty low places. We can’t go into a joint where people are banging down whiskey shots and order Pellegrino.”
The big eyes challenged me as the waitress arrived with one beer, one fizzy Italian H20. “Will that be all?” she asked.
“I’ve changed my mind,” Belafonte said, the eyes holding on me. “Please be so kind as to bring me a Rum Collins, light.”
“Atta girl,” I said. “Now, didn’t you have something to discuss?”
The big eyes dropped, came back up. “I should have gone with you to the procedure, Detective Ryder. I know nothing of autopsies. And never will unless I attend one.”
“Stop by the morgue any day and tell Dr Davanelle I sent you. Now, what do you know about Kylie? Did she have a pimp?”
A nod. “It may have been why she needed to get back to the street. Fear of the guy. Or maybe he had the drugs.”
“Did she, Kylie, mention a name?”
“Someone named Swizzle. Should we go out and try and find him?”
“We don’t go out, not yet. First we ride on the coattails of others.”
My call went to Juarez, a detective with Miami Vice. He was dedicated and bright and a favorite of Vince Delmara.
“Swizzle?” Juarez said. “You’re probably talking about Shizzle, Shizzle Diamond. Real name’s T’Shawn Matthews. Collects runaways and confused girls from the streets and bus stations. He’s good at being what they need, uncle or daddy or friend, then takes a few weeks to feed ’em and fuck ’em and hook ’em on heroin.”
“I think there’s a rap song there.”
“I ain’t writing it. Matthews – I ain’t using that idiot pimp name – rides his herd hard and moves them around, sometimes as far north as Orlando. But mostly it’s Liberty City or the sadder parts of Flagami and so forth. He might run ’em over to the Beach, but he tends to venues with dark alleys and cheap motels, usually watching from a car or the window of a bar, sipping brandy while his sad little troupe services johns.”
“Any