Pronto Page 5

"What's wrong with that?"

  Chapter SIX

  Transcription of a tape recorded 05 Nov., 2:20 P. M., monitoring the cordless handset of Jimmy Capotorto at his residence on Pine Tree Drive, Miami Beach, from the Eden Roc marina across Indian Creek. Jimmy Cap is in conversation with one of his aides known as Tommy Bucks.

  TB: Jimmy? Tommy.

  JC: Yeah...

  TB: There's a problem here collecting from people, I don't know their names. Some of them go by numbers.

  JC: Yeah, they use a number.

  TB: In case on the phone if somebody's listening...

  JC: Harry knows who those are.

  TB: That's what I'm talking about. You know, does he have a list?

  JC: What kind of list?

  TB: Of the names. So I know who to look for.

  JC: I don't know he's got one or not, maybe.

  TB: You can't tell if the numbers that lost paid or didn't pay. His writers don't know shit. I talk to them, they say people are calling up asking where Harry is and who they should pay.

  JC: So what's the problem? Get a guy to take his place. (Pause) Listen, you better come over. I don't want to talk about this on the phone. You never fucking know, do you?

  At 3:10 p. M. on 05 Nov. Tommy Bucks appeared on the patio where Jimmy Capotorto was sunbathing. The two were observed in conversation for the next few minutes. Also present were Jimmy Cap's girlfriend, Gloria Ayres, 22, of Hallandale, and one of his bodyguards, Nicky Testa, 24, of Atlantic City, NJ, sometimes known as Macho or Joe Macho.

  It drove the Zip nuts the way Jimmy told you things you already knew, or even things you had told him at one time and he forgot it was you. Right now he was lying on his stomach and you had to get down there close to his body to hear what you already knew he was going to say. Down close to his smell, his back soaking in the sun. He would turn his head. "Gloria? Where's Gloria?" And Gloria, with the string swimsuit stuck in her ass, would wait for Jimmy's bodyguard, Nicky, to wring out a face towel he kept soaking in ice water and hand it to her so she could wipe Jimmy down, cool him off. First his face as he raised his head, then she'd wipe down his back, Jimmy grunting and moaning while Gloria worked on him with the ice-cold towel, her tits coming out of the swimsuit. The second time she wiped him down Gloria looked this way, at the Zip hunched over in the lawn chair close to Jimmy, and winked at him.

  It told the Zip Gloria was on some kind of drug or she wasn't as afraid of Jimmy as she ought to be. She didn't seem to care if Nicky, the punk bodyguard, saw her fooling around either. They were about the same age. Nicky had light-brown frizzy hair and liked to pose, show off his build he worked on with weights. The Zip would catch the punk and Gloria grinning at each other and was positive the punk was fucking her.

  Sitting there in the sun, the Zip tried to imagine the girlfriend of any of the old-time bosses giving the eye to some guy that worked for them. Those people back then, Luciano, Costello, Joe Adonis, were respected because they had proved on the way up they were men and you better not fuck with them. Jimmy Cap was a different story: next in line to a boss that got shot in the back of the head. Whether Jimmy had it done or not, he was in the right place at the right time and now ran the show here. Extortion, shylocking, girls, some heroin, restaurant and bar supply companies, the same old stuff while the Latinos and the jigs were making all the money in South Florida. The Zip said to Jimmy one time, "Colored kids selling product on the street corners do better than your guys." He told Jimmy he should be moving crack as well as heroin and Jimmy said it wasn't his line. He said let the Latinos and the jigs kill each other over it. See? Nothing you hadn't heard before ever came out of him. Most of the time excuses, reasons to keep from having to get up off his butt.

  Jimmy telling the Zip now, the Zip hunched down close so he could hear the man talking into his shoulder, "We have to get another guy to step in there and run Harry's book. Even so, we're going to lose some of his players, business Harry built up, personal relationships. There's nothing we can do about that."

  It was as true as anything he ever said.

  "Or find Harry. Either way you want to do it."

  The Zip, perspiring, trying to protect the crease in his trousers, asked Jimmy what he knew about Harry Arno outside of he was from here originally and had lived in Chicago at one time. Jimmy didn't know much more than that. The Zip asked if Harry had a girlfriend and Jimmy said, "Yeah, talk to her, Joyce Patton. And go see the ex-wife again, she might know something."

  "Once was enough with the wife," the Zip said. "I can see why Harry left her. She was Family up there at one time in Palos Heights. I'll tell you something, it's harder to check on anybody that lives in that place now or used to, that Palos Heights, than anywhere I ever been. No, the main thing," the Zip said, and paused. "First I want to know, you giving me the sports book to run?"

  "What I said was I want you to handle this matter. That's all I said."

  "And I want to know, I'm in this, I get it straightened out, are you giving me the sports book or not?"

  "Okay, handle it and you can run the book."

  "You said before to handle it and you send this guy catches fish to do the job. Guy from the Lake."

  "Hey, Tommy? Handle it, okay? It's yours."

  "And I have the sports book?"

  "Jesus Christ -- yeah, it's yours."

  "People in that business," the Zip said, "they gonna see what happens they try and skim on me. Harry's gonna be found dead. Found dead in the ocean or in the swamp or he runs away someplace, to Mexico, I don't care where he is, Harry's gonna be found dead. Am I right?"

  Jimmy said, "What?" into his shoulder.

  "I say he's gonna be found dead."

  Jimmy raised his head to squint at the Zip's face. "Your nose is getting burnt." He kept staring and said, "You got a big fucking nose, you know it? I mean looking just at your face." He said, "Gloria? Come over here. Tell me who Tommy looks like."

  Gloria stood close to Jimmy Cap's lounge, hands on her hips, looking down at the Zip. "I don't know, who?"

  "It's what I'm asking you."

  "You mean like a movie star?"

  Jimmy said to his bodyguard, "Hey, Joe Macho. Who's he look like?"

  This punk Nicky Testa with his ponytail, his shirt off to show his body, stared at the Zip and said, "He looks like some of those outfit guys you see pictures of from the old days. Some of those guys, they look like they just got off the fucking boat."

  Jimmy Cap was grinning, nodding his head, so the punk was grinning, his attitude not showing any respect at all. When the Zip called him Joe Macho, which wasn't too often, he said it in a way that let the punk know he thought the name was a joke. Otherwise he saw him as just Nicky and called him that.

  Jimmy said, "Where's that picture you showed me? The one you cut out."

  The Zip shook his head. "I don't have it no more." He did, but wasn't going to show it to this punk.

  It was a photo of Frank Costello taken in the 1930s that had appeared in a news magazine last year. The Zip showed it to Jimmy Cap who looked at it and said, "Yeah, what?" Finally he caught on, seeing the resemblance, raised his eyebrows, and gave the Zip a nod.

  The Zip cut the picture out and took it to his tailor in Bal Harbour, an Italian guy in his seventies. He waited for the tailor to say, "Who is this, you?" or something like that. "This you or your brother?" But he didn't. The Zip said to him, "This is what I want, a buttoned-up look just like this. Dark-blue almost black double-breasted cut to fit close. Six buttons in front, right? Count them. Buttoned up high to show some white shirt and a pearl-gray tie with it. What do you say?"

  The tailor said, "Sure, if that's what you want."

  The Zip asked him, "You know who this is in the picture?" The tailor said no, so the Zip told him, Frank Costello.

  The tailor said, "I made a suit for Meyer Lansky one time, way back. I was down on Collins then in the McFadden-Deauville. Made him a beautiful suit of clothes and he stiffed me. You believe it? With
all his dough?"

  The tailor, there was a guy old enough to know better and even he didn't show any respect. What did Nicky, a punk like that, know about it? Or Gloria, aiming her bare butt at the Zip while she cooled Jimmy down with the cold towel. The Zip reached over, gave her a pat, and watched her wiggle her butt at him. Like saying he could have some if he wanted. The Zip was thinking he could have it all, anything Jimmy Cap owned, if he wanted. Why not? He had already taken over his sports book.

  Chapter Seven.

  Raylan had decided he needed to talk to the Zip to clear something up. Originally he'd thought of him as Tommy Bucks because it was what the Bureau guys called him. But then had started thinking of him as the Zip because that's what Harry called him and Raylan liked the sound of it.

  The way he got on the Zip's tail was to wait till he showed up at Jimmy Cap's and then hang on to him after that. The Zip was in there only fifteen minutes, got in his Jaguar and cut through streets to head south on Alton Road, Raylan thinking he was going home and would find out where he lived. The Jag got to Fifteenth and turned left, went past that little park there and turned right onto Meridian. When the spiffy dark-green car all of a sudden pulled to a stop across from the Flamingo Terrace apartments Raylan realized, Jesus, the guy was going to see Joyce Patton. There was no way they could be friends. No, it had to be the Zip was going to question her about Harry, get her to tell him things she might know. Use force on her if he had to. Beat her up. Maybe do worse than that. All this was in Raylan's mind as he drove past, U-turned at Eleventh, the south end of the park, and pulled up in front of the Flamingo as the Zip reached the stoop of Joyce's terrace apartment and rang the bell. Now, Raylan out of the car and starting up the walk, the Zip was banging on the door with the edge of his fist. Raylan didn't think at this moment it was going to open. Maybe it wasn't, until Joyce looked out the peephole and saw him coming up behind the Zip, the man too intent on what he was doing to be aware of anyone behind him. So that as the door started to open Raylan was moving up fast on the Zip, and as the door came wide open and Joyce appeared and saw she had to get out of the way, Raylan hit the Zip from behind, grabbed him around the shoulders, and took him down hard on the living-room carpet. The Zip landed on his side, twisted around to lie face up and now had Raylan astride his chest, pinning his arms to his sides. He didn't ask Raylan who he was or what he was doing, not with that furious look on his face. No, he started to buck and twist and didn't calm down till Raylan had his nine-millimeter out and was telling the Zip, "Keep still, or I'll shoot your nose off your face."

  Joyce watched Raylan, sitting on the man, look over and touch his hat brim with two fingers. This U. S. marshal she had never seen without his cowboy hat. The man beneath him wore sunglasses, a pearl-gray tie with his dark suit. He wasn't moving a muscle now, Raylan holding the gun on the man's chest, the tip of the barrel resting on his chin. She heard Raylan say, "What'd you come here for?" The man under him said, "Get the fuck off me."

  With a gun in his face.

  Two guys on her living-room floor in dark-blue suits talking to each other.

  "I was looking to ask you," Raylan said to the man under him, "if you know where Harry Arno is, but I 'magine you came here to ask the same thing." He looked up again. "You know who this is?"

  Joyce, standing away from them, shook her head. She held her hands in front of her twisting a ring Harry had given her as a birthday present.

  "He works for Jimmy Cap," Raylan said, and looked down at the man in the sunglasses again. "I'm going to shoot his nose off he don't answer me. What'd you come here for?"

  "Talk to her, say hello."

  "About what, Harry Arno?"

  "About her. I see her around. You know, so I want to get to know her."

  Raylan looked up at Joyce again. "What do you think?"

  She shook her head. "I've never seen him before."

  "Mr. Tommy the Zip," Raylan said. "I'd say he came to ask if you know where Harry's at. I think we can all agree on that." He said to the Zip, "I wondered if you had him. I didn't think so, but I wanted to be sure. So, you don't know where he's at or have any idea. Is that right?"

  Joyce moved closer to them. She heard the Zip say, with an accent, "No, I don't know."

  "Well, the lady here, she don't know either. So she don't need a bozo like you coming around. You understand?"

  "Okay."

  "Don't bother her no more."

  The man didn't move or say anything.

  "You hear me?"

  "Yeah, okay."

  Raylan brought his ID case out of his inside coat pocket and held it open in the Zip's face.

  "Can you read, partner? It says I'm with the U. S. Marshals Service. You ever come around here again I'll be all over you like a bad smell. You understand me?"

  "Yeah, okay."

  Joyce saw Raylan look up at her again.

  "Anything you want to tell him?"

  She shook her head.

  "I'm letting you off easy this time," Raylan said, rising to his knees and then pushing up on one of them to stand up. Stepping away he said, "Are you packing? Roll over on your tummy for me."

  Raylan stooped now to feel around the Zip's waist, Joyce watching the two men in dark-blue suits.

  Do you believe this?

  Roll over on your tummy? Raylan sounding more country today than he did before, in Harry's apartment.

  Now he was helping the Zip to his feet and the Zip was giving him a look because he didn't get it either. He was calm now behind his sunglasses, straightening his suit coat, pulling it down and smoothing it over his chest and stomach, putting his ego back together, Joyce detecting a touch of arrogance: the Zip looking about the room as he brushed himself off, looking absently until he came to her and stopped. He removed his sunglasses and held them, still looking at her with a sleepy expression he had to believe was cool, and it wasn't bad, really. Showing her he was in control of himself, allowing this to happen.

  Raylan stood by the open front door now, suit coat unbuttoned, his gun put away. He said, "Here's the way out, Mr. Zip, and don't come back."

  Mr. Zip.

  She watched him pause to look at Raylan again before walking past him, Raylan much taller in his hat and cowboy boots. Mr. Zip was about Harry's size -- now that she thought of it -- both of them, by today's standards, little guys.

  Raylan was thin and looked tall standing alone by the door. He watched Mr. Zip walk out to his car and the Jaguar drive off before he turned to Joyce.

  "What if he comes back?"

  Joyce shook her head. "I don't know where Harry is. Really, I can't help him."

  "Maybe not, but what if Mr. Zip doesn't believe you?"

  She said, "Are you trying to cheer me up?"

  He left saying he'd see what he could do about her situation.

  Joyce made herself a drink in the kitchen, Club and water, and brought it out to the living room to stand at a front window looking at the park across the street. At the park and at her options. Leave town. Stay with a friend. Count on Raylan to arrange some kind of protection.

  He was a weird guy. He was funny and she wondered if he meant to be. There was no affectation about him, nothing put on. He sat on the gangster, told him to keep still or he'd shoot his nose off, and politely touched his hat brim and nodded to her. Mindful of his manners -- sitting on the guy on the floor and telling him to roll over on his tummy. He did look like a marshal in a Western. He could be a lawman or a cowboy with that stringy look and his Kentucky drawl. She wondered what he looked like with his hat off and wondered again if he knew he was funny.

  It was only a block to Miami Beach Police headquarters on Washington Avenue. Raylan's plan was to talk to Buck Torres, get him to put Joyce under some kind of protective surveillance. Torres would say no, because he couldn't spare the men. Not because she was uncooperative, everyone believing she knew where Harry was. Torres wasn't that kind. He'd say to Torres, "Look, I'm with you. Sure, I think she knows. I thi
nk she helped him get away. So what are you going to do, punish her? Let the Zip get hold of her and do what he wants?" Torres would say he still didn't have the men. So the next step would be, try to get Torres to go to McCormick to get McCormick to request a surveillance team from the Marshals Service. Protect an innocent woman who got trapped in a deal the Bureau put together and wasn't her fault. He could hear McCormick come back with "Why don't we let the Zip have her and then pick him up for assault with intent? What's wrong with that?" With his innocent look, to make you think he was kidding.

  Raylan came to Washington Avenue and turned left to park across the street from the Art Deco police headquarters, which Raylan thought of as some kind of religious temple with its round front rising up four stories. Crossing the street he was about run over by a girl with long blond hair riding a bicycle. There were all kinds of girls around here with long blond hair, long black hair; he had seen some on motorized skateboards cutting through crowds on Ocean Drive. South Beach was not too much like Brunswick, Georgia.

  Inside, the lobby rose three floors wide open to show railings and rows of office windows up there. It was a modern new building, the holding cells with aluminum toilets, a sally port around on the side street where they brought in prisoners. Raylan approached the information counter and told the officer there he'd like to see Sergeant Torres and gave his name.

  If you went in the holding-cell area you had to surrender your weapon. It was the cleanest city jail Raylan had ever seen in his life.

  Up on the wall here they had an American flag framed in behind glass.

  There were not too many visitors, a few civilians waiting around. Maybe a witness asked to come down and look at a lineup. A woman asking if this was where her husband was being held.

  Buck Torres had come out of a doorway and was already crossing the lobby when Raylan saw him. Torres holding what looked like a computer printout sheet.

  He also seemed like he had something to tell, but was going to let his visitor go first.

  "I'd like to speak to you," Raylan said, "about Harry's friend Joyce Patton. I know you think she knows where he is, as do others. You know what I mean? Like Jimmy Cap, and that's a problem I see facing us."