“How was I supposed to know that?” the blond asked.
“He had to go back to Iowa,” the woman said to Cattaneo. Back to the dude: “That sure didn’t work out, huh?”
“You can always walk,” the blond told her.
“I would if I didn’t feel sorry for your hopeless ass,” the woman said. “I walk and you’re on the street. I wouldn’t forgive myself for... several hours.”
“Where you livin’ now?” Cattaneo asked.
“Got a place up in Hollywood,” the dude said.
“What are you doing way down here?”
“Seeing the sights,” the woman said, too quickly.
“Tell you what,” Cattaneo said. “Give me your name and address and phone number. I know a guy in the dive business, he might be able to throw something your way. He’s up in Broward, not too far from you.”
“Don’t have the gear anymore,” the dude said.
“Give the man your number,” the woman said. “We can figure out the equipment.”
Now the guy made an effort to look hard at Cattaneo, but it fizzled: “You the man? Because I had some trouble with the man.”
Cattaneo grinned and took a bite of his sandwich and chewed, while he looked from the blond to the woman and back to the poor henpecked sonofabitch. The woman leaned across the table to the blond, and said, heavy whiskey gravel in her voice, “In three weeks, we won’t have enough cash to fuckin’ eat. Give the man your fuckin’ phone number.”
The cantankerous pairfinished before Cattaneo, and when they got up to leave, the woman leaned over the booth table to give him a shot right straight down to her belly button, and said, “Thank you very much, sir. If your friend needs somebody, Willy can work really hard. And we need the money.”
“See what I can do,” Cattaneo said, trying not to look sideways under the gap between her breasts and the jacket, and failing. “Maybe it’ll work out for everybody.”
He watched themout of the deli onto the sidewalk. The guy wanted to go south, but the woman wanted to go north. The blond finally gave in and trailed her along the sidewalk to the north and out of sight. Cattaneo went back to the remnants of his sandwich and thought about a slice of lemon cheesecake. He oughta watch his weight, but... cheesecake. It is, as a man once said, what it is.
And the diver... they badly needed a diver of the right type, and the dude had that look. Their previous diver had apparently been freaked out by the shooting on the Mako. They took their eyes off Jaquell for one minute and she disappeared into the Bahamas. Cattaneo and a couple of other guys went to look for her, but it was hopeless. So no luck there, not for the home team. Of course, he thought,shelucked out.
He went for the cheesecake and another bottle of Peroni. Five minutes later, he’d tipped the bottle up for a final mouthful, when a man walked in, looked slowly around the place, caught Cattaneo’s eyes, held them, then moved on to Lou, the sandwich maker.
The man was wearing a cotton sport coat, seriously wrinkled in the back, golf slacks over a small potbelly, and brown shoes a few shades too yellow. His face was pitted with some kind of disease scars that Cattaneo didn’t want to know about. He and Lou talked for a moment, and then they both looked at Cattaneo.
Cattaneo thought: Cop.
The cop walked over toward him and Cattaneo told himself to relax; no reason a cop should be talking to him.
The cop said, “Barry Cohen, Miami Beach police. You were talking to a blond guy and a tall black woman?”
“Yeah, they left ten minutes ago. I didn’t know them, they were just sitting at that table”—he nodded at the table—“and we had a couple of words. What’d they do?”
“You see which way they went?”
“Yeah, they went out on the sidewalk and turned that way.” He pointed south. “That’s the last I saw of them. What’d they do?”
The cop ignored the question again and asked, “What did they have to say for themselves?”
“They said they were looking for work. I think they might have come on a bus. They might have been walking, something one of them said... mmm, the blond guy said his feet hurt.”
“You didn’t know them?” Cohen asked.
“No. I did see them here a couple of days ago, though. What’d they do?”
“They’re thieves, we think. Working around here. We’re trying to catch up with them. You didn’t give them access to a car or...”
