Philip Kerr: The Five Year Plan (1998)

A Five Year Plan

Philip Kerr

Chapter ONE

'Ah-choooo!'

The sneeze reverberated like a gunshot.

Jimmy Figaro glanced around his well-appointed office to check nothing was damaged.

'Fuckin' hay fever,' sniffed Rizzoli from behind a napkin-sized handkerchief. 'According to the fuckin' Herald, the pollen index is 129. That's on a scale of 201. On account of all the fuckin' mango trees we got down here in Florida.'

Rizzoli sneezed again, a great explosion of noise that was half growl, half whoop, like the yahooing sound a rodeo-rider might make on exiting the ring aboard a bucking horse. He said, 'It was up to me? I'd burn every fuckin' mango tree in Miami.'

Figaro nodded vaguely. He liked mangoes. He'd never given the trees much thought, but now that he did, his mind's eye saw Ursula Andress in Doctor No, singing a song about mango trees as she wiggled her ass out of the Caribbean sea with a conch in her hand. Why couldn't he have a client like that for once instead of a minor mobster like Tommy Rizzoli?

'Every fuckin' one of them. Bonfire of the mango trees.' Rizzoli chuckled. 'Just like that fuckin' movie, huh?'

'Which movie is that, Tommy?'

'Bonfire of the mango trees.'

Figaro felt himself frown. He was uncertain if Rizzoli was making a joke, or if he really did think that was what the movie was called.

'You mean Tom Wolfe?'

Rizzoli rubbed his nose furiously and shrugged.

'Yeah, right.'

But it was plain to Figaro that Tommy Rizzoli knew as much about Tom Wolfe as he did about fine porcelain. Figaro turned his attention back to the notes he'd been making. The facts were as clear as Tommy Rizzoli's guilt. He and an unnamed associate -- but most probably it had been Rizzoli's half-brother, Willy Barizon -- had taken extortionate control of most of Dade County's ice-trucking. There was that and the assault on one of the arresting police officers that had left the man with a broken nose.

'Ah-chooo!'

The trooper's nose. It was almost ironic in view of the allergic condition of Rizzoli's own Durante-sized hooter. But Rizzoli was adamant that the trooper had slipped and fallen.

'How do you feel about a plea, Tommy?'

'As in guilty plea, or plea for mercy?' He took hold of his nose and bent it one way and then the other, almost as if it had been broken. 'No fuckin' way.'

'As in plea bargain. I figure they'll drop the assault if we put our hands up to the extortion. Meanwhile I suggest you sell your interests in the ice and trucking business and get ready to pay some kind of fine.'

Both men flinched as outside the office door, a woman screamed. Figaro tried to ignore it.

'The People's evidence is at best not much more than hearsay,' he continued. 'Just a couple of undercover cops. I can make them look like Swiss cheese.'

'That's the cheese with the holes in, right?'

'Precisely. The DA knows it too. I don't see that you have to go to jail for this.'

'You don't?' Rizzoli snorted like he had been fast asleep. 'You don't? Well, that's great Jimmy. You know, I never much liked ice anyway.'

There was a knock at the door.

'It's a bitch to handle. On account of the interesting crystalline structure.'

'Come.'

'Somethin' I read about. S'got a laminar structure. Which means it deforms by gliding. That's why ice kind of falls apart the way it does. Like a deck of cards.'

Figaro's secretary peered round the door.

'And I ask you, Jimmy, what kind of business can you build on a crystalline structure like that?'

'I don't know, Tommy. Yes, Carol?'

'Mister Figaro? I wonder, could you spare a minute please?'

Figaro glanced at his client.

'I think we're about through here,' he said, standing up. 'I'll speak to the DA's office. Give me a week to structure a deal, Tommy. OK?'

Rizzoli stood up, automatically straightening the cuffs and the creases on his shiny sharkskin suit.

'Thanks Jimmy. 'Predate it a lot, man. Naked Tony was right. You're one of us.'

Buttoning his own jacket and ushering Rizzoli toward the open door, Figaro looked pained.

'No, don't make that mistake, Tommy. Y'know, Tony means well by that remark, but it's not true. I'm your priest, is nearer to it. Priestly intercession before judgment on your behalf. Only don't ever fuckin' confess to me. I don't want to know. If you're guilty I don't give a shit any more than I would if you were as innocent as a walk round a church on a Sunday afternoon. All I care about is whether we can make a better case than the other guy.' He grinned. 'It's a lawyer thing.'

'I got ya.'

The two men shook hands, which served to remind Figaro of how tough and strong the other smaller man really was.

'So long Jimmy, and thanks again.'

Figaro waved Rizzoli through the reception area and beyond the doors of Figaro & August, and then glanced questioningly at Carol.

'I think you'd better come and see this for yourself,' she said and led the way through the suite of offices to the boardroom.

'When we saw what it was, we thought we'd better have it put in here,' Carol explained nervously. 'Gina's in the Ladies' room with Smithy. It was Smithy who unpacked it. I think she had a bit of a shock.'

'It was Smithy who screamed?'

'She's sort of a nervous individual, Mister Figaro. Nervous, but loyal. Smithy cares about you. We all do. That's why an incident like this is so upsetting. I suppose, with our client list, it's understandable. But this -- this is like something out of the movies.'

'Now I really am intrigued,' said Figaro and followed her into the boardroom.

Smithy was now lying on the sofa beneath the window, and Gina was fanning her pale-looking face with a copy of the New Yorker.

Figaro recognized the cover. It was the issue that included the profile of himself. He glanced around the room, his dark, quick eyes serving a usefully photographic memory, taking in the probable chain of causation. The New Yorker piece. The dismantled packing case. The pubic clumps of straw. The delivery item itself.

Free standing, about five feet high, and looking like something that had met the stony gaze of a Gorgon, was a topcoat made of stone.

'What kind of sick person?' Carol bleated. 'No, wait just a minute. I know what kind of person. There's a name on the delivery note.'

She handed him a sheet of pink paper and placed a tentative hand on her boss's shoulder. It was the first time in three years of working for Figaro that she had ever touched him and she was surprised to find hard muscle underneath the jacket of his expensive Armani suit. He was a tall, attractive man, in good shape for someone who spent most of his time in the office and the rest of it in court. Kind of like Roy Scheider, she thought. The same long nose. The same high forehead. The same glasses. Only paler. Almost as pale as the woman lying on the couch.

'Do you feel all right, Mister Figaro? You look a little pale.'

Figaro, who was rarely in the sun, looked away from the stone topcoat and met her eye. For a moment he said nothing. Then he laughed.

'I'm fine, Carol,' he replied, and started to laugh again, only this time it really took hold of him until he had taken off his glasses and was leaning with both hands on the boardroom table, tears streaming down both cheeks.

Chapter TWO

Two things happened on the morning of Dave Delano's release from the Miami Correctional Center at Homestead.

One was that Benford Halls, recently transferred from Homestead to the State Penitentiary at Stark, was executed. Although Stark was many hundreds of miles upstate, the circumstances of Halls's final hours -- meticulously reported on almost all of Florida's TV and radio stations -- caused a lot of anger and resentment among the cons at Homestead. Not only had Halls been kept waiting for several hours after his scheduled 11 p.m. execution because of a problem with the ancient electric chair, but it had also been reported that movie actor Calgary Stanford had been allowed to attend the execution in order to research a death-row role he was soon to play.