“What would you recommend, Wanda?” I asked.

  “If you ain’t had our food before, you need to have the combo dinner. Ribs and chicken,” she said with a definitive nod. “I make the corn bread myself.”

  “That’s me, then,” I said.

  “And for your other side? Collard greens?”

  I knew a lot of people in the South who claimed collard greens as some kind of national dish, but even they rarely ate it, and I wasn’t a fan. But I heard Danielle in my mind telling me to eat some vegetables, so I went with it.

  “And for dessert, we just made our famous pecan pound cake.”

  “Sounds fabulous,” I said.

  We each took a plastic chair to wait and caught up on old times. Punk had been a well-known face about town in the 1990s, but his celebrity waned as the news went online and even high school sports started appearing on cable television. He was a great writer and a decent enough radio commentator, but on camera he came across as grumpy and mean, although it didn’t seem to faze him one way or the other.

  When our food was ready, Wanda put everything in Styrofoam containers and bagged it up for us. She told me she hoped that I enjoyed my meal, and I told her that if the smell was anything to go by it was going to be fit for a king.

  Punk led us back out into the parking lot. I thought we might sit in his convertible and chat, but he handed me the bag of food and proceeded to the trunk of his car. He opened it up and pulled out a couple of faded canvas director’s chairs. Then he flipped open a small picnic table and set up a lunch spot right beside the smoking barbecues. I sat and doled out the food while Punk returned to the depths of his massive trunk and grabbed two ice-cold beers.

  With the vacant lot across the street as our view, we ate one of the finest meals I’ve ever had in my life. The ribs were smoky and tender and had just enough bite to pull away from the bone without much effort. The corn bread was sweet and savory and delicious, and the greens had a smoky, bacon-y essence that made me reconsider vegetables entirely. We clinked beer cans and ate in silence for a while, until the threat of indigestion slowed us down.

  Punk took a long sip from his beer. “So you’re after some background?”

  “Yeah,” I said, licking tangy barbecue sauce off my lips. “I’m looking into some stuff going on with this new arena. You know, the one in Mangonia Park.”

  Punk nodded. “The hockey arena.”

  “What do you think of it?”

  “Hey, I love the idea. I grew up in Buffalo, so I love hockey. But I wouldn’t put my money in it.” He bit into his pulled pork sandwich. Shredded meat squeezed out the back and dropped with a plop into his Styrofoam container.

  “Why not?” I asked.

  Punk chewed for a moment then washed his pork down with a slug of beer. “You know how many second-tier sports competitions folks have tried here? If they had bodies, they’d have filled the morgue. They’ve tried football—at least three times—and soccer. There’s been basketball and lacrosse and even this World Team Tennis thing, out on Key Biscayne. Sports leagues down here are like property development: for every one that produces a shiny new building, there’s a thousand lying in a grimy pile of broken dreams.”

  “But this one’s not lying in a pile,” I said. “They’ve got a shiny new arena, with tenants, and a new league.”

  “Look, I think the whole thing is folly. But I didn’t think they’d even get that arena off the ground. They weren’t the first ones to try. Since the old fronton closed back in the nineties, people have tried to do something good with that lot. I think they even wanted to put an Amazon warehouse there at one point. None of it came to squat.”

  “Until now.”

  “Yeah. I guess the guy behind it had some connections. I remember when they were pitching the whole idea. They started wheeling out all these old NHL stars—you know, the kinds of guys you’d only know if you were a hard-core Rangers fan, or from Canada. It felt like the same thing all over again. Until Lex Javits got on board.”

  “Lex Javits?”

  “Yeah, you remember him? Hall of Fame defenseman for the Red Wings.”

  “Yeah, I kind of remember. He played when I was in college, didn’t he?”

  “Probably. But after he finished his hockey career—or maybe even before he finished—he got into coffee shops. You know, like them Seattle ones that you find everywhere now.”

  “Starbucks.”

  “Whatever. So he’s got like a few hundred of them now, dotted around the Midwest and Northeast. He’s worth a pretty penny, I hear. And he spends half his year in Miami.”

  “Is that right? So what happened when he got involved?”

  “Like I say, up until then it was mostly a parade of B-grade stars and has-beens, but this guy behind it all brought in Javits and all of a sudden the thing seemed to get legs.”

  “Was the guy’s name John Trainor?”

  “Yeah, that’s him. I heard he was a local kid but had gone to school in New York and had all sorts of connections up there. How he got Javits on board, I don’t know. Maybe sweet-talked him by giving him a team.”

  “Javits has a team?”

  “Yeah, the Miami team. And he’s on the board of governors for the league.”

  “What do you know about the league? How’s it going?”

  “It’s going the way you’d expect it to be going. It’s hockey in South Florida, for crying out loud. Look, like I say, I love hockey. And like me, there’s lots of folks down here who grew up in New York, Chicago, and Montréal. Folks who love their hockey. The thing is, most of those folks are old now. You may find this hard to believe, kid, but I’m no spring chicken.”

  “You weren’t a spring chicken when I met you,” I said.

  “And you were just the same cheeky whippersnapper. What I’m saying is, these old folks, they don’t go to the game. They’re as happy as Larry to watch the NHL on their big-screen TV, chugging on a brewski while lying back in their Barcalounger. But to make it work, a league needs to attract a younger crowd. People who still need to go out to get their good times. Not people whose best days are all locked away inside their heads.”

  It was a good point. “So you’re saying that the league is struggling?”

  “Something new like this, it’ll always take time to bed down. But the trouble is, the guys who sink the money into these things, they’re usually not doing it out of a love for the game or civic pride. They’re in it for the return. The cashola. They’re usually not happy to lose money for ten years while a team grows roots in the community.”

  “But they’re on television, too, aren’t they?”

  “Sure, if you want to call it that. The arena currently hosts development league basketball, which is on one of the secondary local networks, and hockey is on ESPN twenty-nine or some internet channel. I mean, you gotta be a diehard to put in the effort to find it.”

  “But minor league baseball teams are doing really well around the country, aren’t they?”

  “Some of them are, that’s true. Some of these guys have found a smart business model: cheap ticket prices and low-cost concessions that bring in families just looking for a good time. But you gotta remember, baseball is ingrained in our psyche. It’s part of who we are, our national pastime. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I know most folks don’t bleed it the way you and I do. And even you I’m worried about these days. But again, it’s all still aimed at a younger market, a family market. If they’re going to make this thing work, this South Sunshine Hockey League, that’s who they’re pitching at. But I’ve been to a few games. They’re not hitting it just yet.”

  “Why not?”

  “All of the above. It’s not quite ready for primetime, so it’s not so slick. Last game I was at, the scoreboard and the timer went out for half the game. I think they’re not getting as much buzz as they hoped they would. It’s a tough market. We got a lot of top-flight pro sports down here. NFL, MLB, NBA, even MLS. Most folks already have a team to root for, some way to spend their dough. So unless they start tapping into a cash-rich market pretty soon, I don’t know how long this thing goes for.”

  “But they’re not even through their first season.”

  “Exactly. Look, we had a hockey league here before, in the nineties. Only lasted a couple years. With soccer, one competition didn’t even see out its maiden season. There’s been arena and off-season football, which comes and goes bust and then disappears and maybe comes back again later but never sticks. Like I say, the money behind everything wants a return. They could go buy some of these internet stocks, you know what I mean? Double their money overnight and all that.”

  “So you think this John Trainor might be on shaky financial ground?”

  “No, I think the guy’s loaded. He lives in Palm Beach, for crying out loud. But my sources tell me the guy has tried to get action in the major leagues before. He’s tried to buy into baseball, basketball, and even took a shot at the Carolina Panthers, I think. But he always comes up short. Word is he’s rich and connected, but not major-league rich and connected. Those guys don’t talk in millions or even hundreds of millions. Those guys are into billions.”

  Punk looked at his half-eaten sandwich and shook his head. “It’s a hell of a thing to think you’re poor because you can’t buy into a major-league sports team.” He ate a spoonful of baked beans that smelled like molasses. “It won’t be this guy or his lack of trying that brings this thing down. You mark my words: it’ll be the money. The money will run out of patience, sooner rather than later.”

  “But Trainor is the money,” I said. “It’s his company that owns the whole show, and half owns the arena.”

  “It’s his company, but is it his money?” Punk shrugged his beefy shoulders. “I don’t know. All I’m saying is, if you want to find a common thread in all these little leagues and teams and competitions that fail, it’s that these guys never play with their own money.”

  This was also a good point. It made me think about what Charita Jain had told me. About the county issuing a bond to pay for their share of the arena. It made me wonder where the rest of the financing had really come from.

  “You know, I didn’t get that deep into this story. My beat is the games, not the politics behind them,” he said.

  “I know, Punk.”

  “But there was someone who came at this story from that angle—the business side, the political side.” Before he even opened his mouth again, I knew exactly whose name he was going to say. “Maggie Nettles. She’s a reporter at the Post.”

  “Yeah, I know Maggie.”

  Punk stuffed the final piece of sandwich into his mouth. “You should talk to Maggie,” he said through sauce-covered teeth.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  I returned to the office to find Ron hadn’t had any lunch at all. Feeling sorry for him after my culinary feast, I drove him up to Longboard’s to grab one of Mick’s carved turkey and cranberry on sourdough sandwiches. Despite the early afternoon sun, the breeze coming through the courtyard had a cool tinge to it, the first hint that autumn was giving way to winter, such as it was in South Florida.

  Ron and I were halfway through our beers and giving serious consideration to settling in for the afternoon when Ron’s phone rang. He glanced at the screen. “The bride.” He slipped from his stool and wandered to the back of the courtyard.

  “No lunch for you?” asked Muriel.

  “I ate already,” I said.

  “Don’t let Mick find out you eat elsewhere,” she said, offering me a wink.

  “As long as I don’t regularly drink elsewhere, I think Mick’ll survive.”

  Ron returned to the bar but not to his seat. “So, Cass and Danielle were playing tennis at The Breakers.”

  “Okay,” I replied.

  “They’ve just gone out to the patio to have a late lunch.”

  “Do I need to know this?”

  “You’ll never guess who just walked past them into the Seafood Bar.”

  “Elvis?”

  “Not Elvis. The guy you’ve been asking about, John Trainor.”

  “He’s at The Breakers? Now?”

  “Yes. But you didn’t ask me who he was having lunch with.”

  “Who’s he having lunch with, Ron? Tell me, tell me.”

  “Since you asked so nicely, I will tell you. He’s having lunch with Senator Brian Vargas.”

  It was too good an opportunity to pass up. After Muriel put the rest of Ron’s sandwich into a cardboard box, we dashed out into the parking lot and headed for Palm Beach. When we arrived, I stopped at the valet, and Ron and I strode up the steps into the lobby.

  The Breakers was that kind of hotel that exuded quiet money. In a state that prided itself on glitz and sunshine, the lobby was dark and all kinds of New England clubby.

  We walked down the wide corridor and around to the Seafood Bar. While the name engendered visions of fish and chips wrapped in newspaper and oysters by the dozen served in plastic trays, the Seafood Bar was the kind of place where you could run up a tab that some small Pacific Island nations would struggle to cover.

  I didn’t know John Trainor from a bag of malted barley, but when I scanned the room, I did recognize the face of Senator Vargas from television.

  “Don’t go too crazy,” Ron whispered as I took off across the room. It looked like I was interrupting a cozy lunch, the two of them plotting world hockey domination, or some such thing.

  “John Trainor,” I said as I reached the table.

  Trainor looked up at me. He was about fifty, with a decent head of blond but slowly graying hair. I suspected he had looked middle-aged in college. He had one of those faces. He seemed to be in pretty good shape, but he had the kind of jowls that meant he could have added or lost twenty pounds and either way it wouldn’t have made any difference to the way his face looked. He offered me a confident if not quizzical smile.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “Have we met?”

  “No. My name is Miami Jones. I’m an investigator working on behalf of Stone Strong Insurance.”

  “I see.”

  He said nothing more, so I waited. People often don’t like that uncomfortable silence and feel the need to fill it with the most interesting information. John Trainor was not one of those people. He had a glint in his eye as if he knew he was a golden child, and he had all the time in the world to wait for me to get to the point.

  “I’m investigating sabotage at the new arena.”

  “Sabotage, you say? How mysterious.”

  “It’s more than mysterious,” I said. “It’s criminal.”

  “Well, perhaps you should call the police. But I surely don’t see what this has to do with me.”

  “Doesn’t your company, Provents, run the arena on behalf of Palm Beach County?”

  “Provents manages the arena on behalf of the stakeholders, both public and private, but I don’t get involved in the day-to-day down there. Might I suggest you speak with Con Gelphert about it? He’s the CEO, you know.”

  I knew. And I was pretty certain that he knew that I knew. And if there’s one thing that gets my goat more than any other, it’s people yanking my chain. It sometimes used to happen when I was pitching, back in college and in the minor leagues. I might throw one outside the box for a wide ball, or maybe into the dirt in front of home plate, and the batter would give some kind of lip like, “Nice pitch,” or, “Cy Young material.” My catcher could be fairly certain that the next pitch was either going to be a heater right over the plate for a strike, or a heater right at the batter’s earhole.

  “In the course of my investigation, I’ve uncovered a lot of things that make absolutely no sense. But top of the list has to be why anyone would be stupid enough to start an ice hockey league in South Florida.”

  I wouldn’t want to play poker with this guy. I got the sense that if his hand was a dud, he could have bluffed his way to Babylon. He didn’t flinch, he didn’t frown, and the smug smile stayed plastered on his face.

  “I can understand how these things would be beyond your intellect,” he said.

  I glanced at Senator Vargas. “And it seems like no one from the city, the county, or even the state wanted anything to do with this project until you got involved—right, Senator?”

  Vargas wasn’t quite so unflappable, but he wasn’t a hothead either. He offered me a frown and shook his head. “I don’t know who you are, and I don’t particularly care for your tone of voice, but I can assure you that whatever you think you know, you’re wrong. This was a great project for the people of Palm Beach County, and for the state of Florida. We’ve brought thousands of jobs here, and over the next ten years, hundreds of millions of tourist dollars will flow into the region because of the arena. I’m sorry you can’t grasp that.”

  “Funny,” I said, “the people who I spoke with that actually work at the arena all had jobs before, so I’m not sure you really created anything. And do you really think that tourists come to Florida to watch hockey?”

  “You’d be surprised,” he said.

  “You got that right.”

  “Are you a resident of Palm Beach County?” asked Vargas.

  “Yes, I live on Singer Island.” The words came out of my mouth before I had time to check myself, to recall that I didn’t live on the island anymore. Yet I didn’t feel the need to correct myself. “Why do you ask? Drumming up votes?”

  “As it happens, I’m not running for re-election this year. I’m retiring from the legislature.”

  “You don’t look old enough to be retiring from anything,” I said.

  “Well, I’ve done my service for the people of Florida,” he said. “Have you done yours?”

  “Every day.”

  I felt the presence of someone at my shoulder and turned to find the bartender standing behind me.

  “Can I offer you a drink at the bar, sir?”

  It was as polite a way of saying get out as I’d ever heard, and I didn’t want to make any more of a scene than I already had; I knew that Ron and Cassandra enjoyed the Seafood Bar on a regular basis.