Блейз Клемент - Duplicity Dogged Тhe Dachshund

In Florida a hot Cuban is a sandwich made of thinsliced ham, spicy pork, baby Swiss cheese, and sliced dill pickles. It’s called a Cuban because it’s stacked in a split Cuban roll, which gets its crispy crust from being baked in palmetto leaves. The whole thing is smashed flat in a hot buttered plancha —sort of like a waffle iron—and grilled until the cheese melts and the pickle juice steams into the meat. I only eat about one a year, because one gauge of how much time you have left before your arteries clog up is the number of Cubans you’ve eaten in your lifetime.

I followed Pete to a hole-in-the-wall café, and the deputy followed me. I wasn’t sure what the etiquette was for having lunch while being tailed, but when I got out of the Bronco, I gave him a wave and pointed inside. He must have been given orders not to talk to me, because he pretended not to see my hand signals.

Pete gallantly held the door open for me, and we gave our Cuban orders to a fat man in a white apron, then moved down the counter to pick up our drinks from an open cooler. Pete got a beer and I pulled out unsweetened iced tea. We carried them to a dark plastic booth and slid in to wait.

18

Up close, Pete’s face was a lot more reflective than he had seemed. Deep laugh lines fanned at the corners of his eyes, but the eyes were intelligent and watchful.

I said, “Josephine said you had something to tell me about Denton Ferrelli and Leo Brossi.”

“Yeah, the name rang a bell, so I made some calls. Brossi owned a fleet of casino ships that operated under the name Moon Surfer. Had about fifteen of them going out of different ports. Another company owned by a guy named Samson started sending casino ships into the same ports Brossi was using. Samson was gunned down on his way home one night. Papers called it a gangland-style killing, but nobody was ever arrested.”

“What’s Brossi’s connection to Denton Ferrelli?”

“Well, that’s what’s interesting. Turns out Brossi got the money to buy his casino ships from the trust that Denton Ferrelli manages. It was supposedly a way to stimulate the economies where Brossi’s boats operated.”

I said, “The property where Conrad planned to build the circus retirement home was originally bought to dock a casino ship. Denton bought it, and Conrad took it away from him.”

Pete’s eyebrows rose, and the cook in the apron hollered, “Cubans up!”

Pete jumped to his feet, hurried to the counter, and carried back plastic baskets holding Cubans and french fries, with little tubs of mustard and ketchup on the side. We busied ourselves for a minute pulling napkins from a stainless-steel holder and turning our baskets until they faced us to our satisfaction.

Floridians take their hot Cubans seriously. Fights sometimes break out over whether it’s okay to add mayonnaise or tomatoes to them. When I dipped mine in the tub of hot mustard, Pete winced.

I said, “Pete, somebody is trying to kill me, and it has to do with Conrad’s death. I can’t prove it, but I think it’s Denton Ferrelli.”

He said, “Denton’s always been twisted. When they were growing up, Conrad was a sensitive kid, maybe too sensitive, and Denton was a bully. Angelo gave Denton hell if he caught him tormenting Conrad, but Denton made the boy’s life miserable.”

He gazed over my head for a moment, looking into past memories.

“To be fair, there were people who made Denton’s life miserable too. Nearly every town we went to, some fool would say something about his birthmark, call it the mark of the devil or ask him if he was one of the circus freaks.”

He shook his head like a dog shaking off water.

“One of the clowns had a monkey act. This little spider monkey would play like he was exposing all the tricks, you know, running around and seeming like he was screwing everything up for the guy doing the gag. It was all rehearsed, of course, but the audience loved it.”

He gave me a stern glare.

“The monkey loved it too. All that propaganda those PETA people put out about how circus animals are mistreated is a bunch of crap. We probably took better care of our animals than they take care of their kids. That monkey lived in the train car with the clown, sat in his lap at the table, rode on his shoulder half the time. Anyway, Conrad made friends with the monkey, and Denton teased him about it a lot, called the monkey Conrad’s girlfriend, things like that.”

A pained expression crossed his face, and he took a long swallow of beer. When he looked at me, his eyes were suspiciously shiny.

“Denton sneaked in one day and broke the monkey’s legs. Snapped them like twigs. It broke Conrad’s heart. The kid was never the same after that. He went quiet and stayed to himself.”

My throat closed, and I laid my Cuban down. I can’t stand to hear about kids or animals being hurt, especially when it’s on purpose.

Pete said, “It wasn’t the first time Denton hurt an animal, but everybody had felt sorry for him with that mark on his face and they’d cut him a lot of slack. But when he hurt the monkey, that was it. It nearly killed Angelo. I mean, how could you live with something like that, knowing you had a kid that vicious?”

I shook my head. I couldn’t imagine how anybody could live with that. I couldn’t even breathe, thinking about it.

Pete said, “You know what the worst thing was about Denton hurting that monkey? He took it home to Angelo’s train car and laid it on the doorstep. Then he yelled to Conrad to come out. Acted real friendly, like he wanted to do something with him like a big brother. He was about ten, and Conrad was around five. Conrad fell for it and opened the door. There was the little monkey crying in pain, and Denton doubled over laughing.”

I thought of the kitten with broken legs, the last thing Conrad had seen before somebody shot him with a drug that paralyzed his lungs. Perhaps the last thing he saw before his heart stopped beating had been Denton laughing.

Watching me closely, Pete said, “I’ve thought Denton was a killer ever since his mother died. She worked with the horses, rode standing up on a white stallion, God, it was beautiful. She had a kind of psychic communication with those horses. I’ve seen her stand on one side of the ring and them on another, and I swear they read her mind. They would all move in unison, like a dance troupe.”

He took a swallow of beer and set the bottle on the table with a sharp thud.

“That’s how she died, with the horses. They were in a ring around her, standing on their hind legs, and somebody shot a dart into one of them. He stumbled and they all fell on top of her, kicking and hitting one another. She was trampled to death.”

I shuddered. “What an awful way to die.”

“Awful to watch too. The horses were screaming, the audience was screaming, little children were shrieking. The horses had to be put down. She would have hated that.”

“You think Denton—”

“He was there that night, watching, but I never saw the kid shed a tear. Conrad was hysterical, poor kid, but not Denton. I don’t think it even touched him.”

He snapped his mouth shut as if he didn’t want to let out what he was thinking and then said it anyway.

“They never did find out who shot the dart into the horse.”

I thought about what Guidry had said, about elephants being shot with dart guns from helicopters. But those darts had been filled with deadly drugs.

Pete fixed me with a keen blue stare. “Denton was there when Angelo died too. They were alone on Denton’s boat, and Angelo supposedly fell overboard and drowned. Angelo never even liked boats. That makes two deaths when Denton was present. Three, counting Conrad.”