LaBrava Read Online Free PDF

down on his spine, head hard against the wall to straddle his legs. Worked free the bluesteel revolver stuck in his jeans, a familiar feel, a .357 Smith. Held him by the hair with one hand and slipped the blunt end of the barrel into his open mouth. Nobles gagged, trying to twist free.
    LaBrava said, “Suck it. It’ll calm you down.”
     
    They got him into a room, Nobles rubbing the back of his neck, looking around before they pulled the door closed, saying, “Hey, who the hell you suppose to be?”
    LaBrava said, “The asshole photographer,” and locked the door.
    They locked the gun in the desk. He told the slim girl he hoped the guy didn’t try to bust the place up before the cops came; he’d stay if she wanted him to. She said it had been busted up before, look at it. God. She said thanks, really, but he’d better get out of here or he might be hanging around all night, the cops playing games with him. They might be the guy’s buddies. She said she wouldn’t be surprised if they let the guy out and all laughed their ass off. Cops really thought they were funny. Some of them anyway. Talking, nervous now that it was over. She was some girl. Supervisor here, but forced to work all hours, the slim girl’s name was Jill Wilkinson.
    He asked her what she thought Nobles did. She said he was probably a rent-a-cop, he acted like one.
    That’s what he was, too. LaBrava checked the dark-blue Plymouth sedan parked out in back before going to the Mercedes. There was a gold star on the door and the inscription STAR SECURITY SERVICE, PALM BEACH COUNTY, FLORIDA .
    He drove around front to see Pam and Maurice coming out with the woman, Jeanie Breen, the woman with her head lowered but as tall as Maurice and as pale as her dress, letting him help her with his arm around her waist. They got in back, Maurice saying to him, “What were you doing, shooting the drunks?”
    Maurice told him they were going to stop in Boca, pick up some of Mrs. Breen’s things. Mrs. Breen was coming back to South Beach with them, stay at the hotel a while.
    After that Maurice’s tone was soft, soothing, and LaBrava would look at the mirror to be sure it was Maurice back there. The little bald-headed guy, his glasses catching reflections, the woman a pale figure curled up in his arms. Maurice calling her sweetheart, telling her a change would be good . . . talk to your old pal . . . whatever’s bothering you. Get a new outlook. LaBrava heard the woman say, “Oh, shit, Maury. What’s happening to me?” Worn out. Still, there was an edge to her tone. Life in there. Anger trying to break through the self-pity.
    What was her problem—living in a luxury condominium on the ocean—if her hair wasn’t falling out or she didn’t have an incurable disease?
    Maybe living in the luxury condominium on the ocean. By herself.
    It did not occur to LaBrava until later—cruising at seventy, the dark car interior silent—that the woman in the back seat could be the same one Nobles had tried to take out of there. A woman he’d been drinking with earlier in the evening.

4
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    LaBRAVA DID HIS PORTRAIT WORK in an alcove off the Della Robbia lobby that Maurice said had originally been a bar: the area hidden now by a wall of cane screening nailed to a frame and clay baskets of hanging fern.
    This morning he was working with the Leica, wide-angle lens and strobes, shooting the young Cuban couple, Paco Boza and Lana Mendoza, against a sheet of old, stiff canvas that gave him a nothing background. Paco sat in his wheelchair wearing a straw hat cocked on the side of his head, one side of the brim up, the other down, cane-cutter chic. Lana stood behind the wheelchair. She wore a cotton undershirt that was like a tank top and would stretch it down to show some nipple in the thin material. Pretty soon, LaBrava believed, she would pull the undershirt up and give him bare breasts with a look of expectation. The two of them were fooling around, having fun,