Read Online The Consummata by Max Allan Collins, Mickey Spillane - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Max Allan Collins, Mickey Spillane
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made in a small motel outside of St. Louis, a young Cuban who’d been smart enough to find Halaquez but not skilled enough to survive. The next contact had been made north of Little Rock, and a third nearMeridian, Mississippi, both resulting in dead emissaries from Miami’s Cuban community.
Traced on a map, Halaquez’s path took him away from the Miami area, then swung him back toward it again. These movements had nothing to do with reaching his final destination.
But wherever he was now, he was in position to make that final move.
The only thing that had me wondering was the relatively small amount of money involved. To some people—like those he’d taken it from—seventy-five thousand bucks was a lot of loot. If Halaquez made it to Cuba, and the dough had been converted properly, it could mean a lot more. Still, the Cuban exiles were, in their way, a national political group, and taking them on for this kind of cash was asking for trouble. Almost stupidly so.
And even if Halaquez did make it to Cuba, with the cash converted to a friendly-to-Cuba country’s currency, there would still be anti-Castro sympathizers ready to cut him down the first chance they got, and seventy-five grand wasn’t about to buy him perpetual protection.
A funny little hunch was scratching at me again. From one angle, this seemed all cut-and-dry, but from another it was sticky and wet. This was feeling like much more than just a small-time heist of $75,000 made worse by the betrayal it represented; to the Cubans of Little Havana, this seemed like a very big deal, but the reality was, the Halaquez score was small change.
So why did it feel like the big time?
Something seemed to be missing from the equation, and the longer I thought about it, the more that seemed to be the case. Offhand, it might look like a quick grab for seventy-five thousand bucks, and that could be enough of an incentive for anybody, even an amateur.
But then amateurs would hesitate at pulling off three kills, any one of which might get botched, risking Jaimie getting his ass slammed in some local jail. Halaquez could have disappeared into the vastness of America and somehow made it to Canada or Mexico, and become just another Latin louse with a grubstake. Instead, he’d hopscotched his way back to the Miami area....
Jaimie Halaquez had stolen money and left the state, and committed a trio of murders along the way, making this now an interstate affair, which meant the Feds were onboard. The FBI would have its ears to the ground and its own contacts within the Cuban freedom organization, so they’d know, at least basically, what was going on.
Whatever Halaquez was up to, it had all the earmarks of big professionalism, and the big pros don’t make a Federal case out of seventy-five thousand bucks.
I sat there in a Mandor suite decorated with an oriental motif, feeling ill at ease and even silly in a business suit padded out to make me look like a pudgy city councilman, hair powdered gray, and in pinched shoes that made my steps mince because I couldn’t help it.
The only thing that lent any comfort was the weight of the .45 in my belt and the three spare clips in my pocket.
Tami, a lush blonde who could have stepped out of thecenterfold of the highest-end men’s magazine, kept looking at me through heavily made-up eyes that she kept half-lowered in deliberate fashion.
“Tell me, Morgan, if this were real life...would a girl like me really be attracted enough to a man like you to make her want to marry him?”
By “a man like you,” Tami meant the pudgy councilman I was pretending to be.
“If I were rich enough,” I said.
“Is that the only reason?”
I squirmed under the dark suit jacket. “Could be gratitude by way of blackmail. A guy like ‘me’ could have kept your sweet behind out of a jail cell.”
Long eyelashes, not real but pretty enough, fluttered. “What would it take for a man like the real you to be attracted to a girl like
Traced on a map, Halaquez’s path took him away from the Miami area, then swung him back toward it again. These movements had nothing to do with reaching his final destination.
But wherever he was now, he was in position to make that final move.
The only thing that had me wondering was the relatively small amount of money involved. To some people—like those he’d taken it from—seventy-five thousand bucks was a lot of loot. If Halaquez made it to Cuba, and the dough had been converted properly, it could mean a lot more. Still, the Cuban exiles were, in their way, a national political group, and taking them on for this kind of cash was asking for trouble. Almost stupidly so.
And even if Halaquez did make it to Cuba, with the cash converted to a friendly-to-Cuba country’s currency, there would still be anti-Castro sympathizers ready to cut him down the first chance they got, and seventy-five grand wasn’t about to buy him perpetual protection.
A funny little hunch was scratching at me again. From one angle, this seemed all cut-and-dry, but from another it was sticky and wet. This was feeling like much more than just a small-time heist of $75,000 made worse by the betrayal it represented; to the Cubans of Little Havana, this seemed like a very big deal, but the reality was, the Halaquez score was small change.
So why did it feel like the big time?
Something seemed to be missing from the equation, and the longer I thought about it, the more that seemed to be the case. Offhand, it might look like a quick grab for seventy-five thousand bucks, and that could be enough of an incentive for anybody, even an amateur.
But then amateurs would hesitate at pulling off three kills, any one of which might get botched, risking Jaimie getting his ass slammed in some local jail. Halaquez could have disappeared into the vastness of America and somehow made it to Canada or Mexico, and become just another Latin louse with a grubstake. Instead, he’d hopscotched his way back to the Miami area....
Jaimie Halaquez had stolen money and left the state, and committed a trio of murders along the way, making this now an interstate affair, which meant the Feds were onboard. The FBI would have its ears to the ground and its own contacts within the Cuban freedom organization, so they’d know, at least basically, what was going on.
Whatever Halaquez was up to, it had all the earmarks of big professionalism, and the big pros don’t make a Federal case out of seventy-five thousand bucks.
I sat there in a Mandor suite decorated with an oriental motif, feeling ill at ease and even silly in a business suit padded out to make me look like a pudgy city councilman, hair powdered gray, and in pinched shoes that made my steps mince because I couldn’t help it.
The only thing that lent any comfort was the weight of the .45 in my belt and the three spare clips in my pocket.
Tami, a lush blonde who could have stepped out of thecenterfold of the highest-end men’s magazine, kept looking at me through heavily made-up eyes that she kept half-lowered in deliberate fashion.
“Tell me, Morgan, if this were real life...would a girl like me really be attracted enough to a man like you to make her want to marry him?”
By “a man like you,” Tami meant the pudgy councilman I was pretending to be.
“If I were rich enough,” I said.
“Is that the only reason?”
I squirmed under the dark suit jacket. “Could be gratitude by way of blackmail. A guy like ‘me’ could have kept your sweet behind out of a jail cell.”
Long eyelashes, not real but pretty enough, fluttered. “What would it take for a man like the real you to be attracted to a girl like
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