Strip Tease Page 21
“Shall I call the police?”
“Suit yourself,” he said. “My guess is, they’ll be calling you.”
A man followed Erin home from work. It was three in the morning and the streets were empty. The man was careful to keep a distance of three or four blocks between his car and Erin’s smoky old Fairlane. He did a good job, because Erin never suspected that she was being trailed.
She parked beneath a streetlight and led Angela across the lot toward the town house. The man parked not far away, turned on the car radio and napped until dawn. He kept watch on the apartment until ten in the morning. When Erin didn’t reappear, the man drove away.
This happened two days in a row. On the third morning, Erin came out of the town house carrying a basket of laundry, Angela scampering close behind. Together they got in the Fairlane and went to a laundromat off Oakland Park Boulevard. Again the man followed, parking at a video store directly across the street. Through binoculars he watched Erin loading the washing machines. An hour later, he watched her loading the dryers. After she was done, the man didn’t tail her back to the apartment. Instead he hurried on foot across the street to the laundromat. He was thinking: This is the sickest thing I’ve ever done….
The congressman had been adamant.
“Erb,” he’d said, waving the photograph of the stripper, “I want her.”
“No, you don’t,” Erb Crandall said.
“I’ve never felt like this before.”
“Yes, you have.”
“I want her in all the wondrous ways that a man can want a woman.”
“Give me a fucking break,” said Erb Crandall.
“If you don’t help me find her, I’ll do it myself.”
“After the election.”
David Dilbeck said, “I can’t wait that long. I’m under a spell, Erb. I am … driven.”
“Sorry,” Crandall said, “I’ve got my orders.”
They were riding first-class on a Delta flight from Miami to Dulles; a one-day quickie. Somebody was giving a bullshit party for Tip O’Neill. Dilbeck paced the aisle, clutching the incriminating photograph to his breast. He simply would not shut up and sit down.
“Did you see the picture? Did you see what she looks like?”
“Very attractive,” Erb Crandall said.
“I want you to find her and offer her a job on my staff.”
“Have some breakfast,” said Crandall. Other passengers were starting to murmur. The next time Dilbeck came within range, Crandall grabbed the Eager Beaver photo and stuffed it inside a flight magazine, which he placed in his briefcase.
Soon Dilbeck tired. He sat down and said, “Erb, I won’t get through the campaign without her. She haunts my dreams.”
“Really. You know who haunts my dreams? Malcolm J. Moldowsky.”
“I need to learn everything about her. Everything.”
“We don’t even know her name,” Crandall lied.
“Find out, dammit. Find out everything.” Dilbeck’s eyes were on fire. “Erb, she’s not like the others.”
“Yeah, I can tell from the picture. For a minute I thought it was Julie Andrews, dancing in the Alps. Except she was naked with some guy’s face between her legs.”
The congressman seized Erb Crandall’s arm and said, “God, I am hopelessly possessed.”
You’re half right, thought Crandall. The hopeless part. “Eat your omelet,” he told David Dilbeck.
“After the election, you said?”
“Right.”
“Maybe I can endure it, Erb. Maybe I could get by if I had something of hers. Something to cherish!”
“Keep your voice down,” Crandall said. “I’ll see what I can do.”
The congressman tugged his arm again. “No, not like the others. No panties or garters or bra cups.”
“What then?”
He couldn’t believe it when Dilbeck told him. “You are deeply warped,” Crandall said.
“Now, what harm could it do? Seriously, Erb.”
So Crandall found himself in a laundromat, surreptitiously scraping the lint from the filter of a dryer. Not just any lint—the lint from the beautiful nude dancer’s personal laundry. Crandall wrapped the sheath of pink fuzz in a handkerchief. He saw a customer peeking over a stack of folded linens, and flashed a phony FBI badge that he kept handy for odd occasions.
When Crandall returned to the house, the congressman met him in the foyer. Dilbeck’s hair was freshly combed and his cheeks shone. He received the lint gratefully, in cupped hands. “My God,” he said. “You did it.” Then he disappeared into the master bathroom for a long time.
Erb Crandall locked the front door, went to the den, and lay down on a sofa. He turned on a game show and got drunk on gin. He closed his eyes and tried to remember when politics was fun.
19
Shad called Sgt. Al García and said it was time to talk. García picked him up at noon and took the new interstate west, out of the city. Shad wondered where they were headed. He told the detective about Mordecai’s plan to shake down the congressman. García wanted to hear about the photograph.
“Who’s in it, besides Dilbeck?”
“The guy he’s whaling on,” Shad said, “then me and Erin.”
“Where’s the original?”
“It’s a color slide. The lawyer’s got it, probably in a bank box but I don’t know where. Not even the secretary knows.”
García asked about Mordecai. How had Shad met him? What was he like? Shad recounted everything, starting with the cockroach scam. The detective chuckled at the business about the temp eating Shad’s yogurt, but otherwise listened seriously. He said: “So it’s your guess the lawyer braced Dilbeck with a copy of the picture.”
“That’s the way he laid it out.”
“And he promised you a cut of the payoff?”
“Yeah. Because I was a prime witness.”
“And because he screwed up your roach case.”
“Royal,” said Shad, spitting out the window.
“Now he’s missing and you’re finally worried. You think maybe the same thing happened to your lawyer that happened to poor Jerry Killian. And you’re thinking you might be next.”
Shad said, “It’s not me I’m worried about.”
“Me neither, Cueball. It’s your stripper friend.”
“Dancer friend.”
“Right. She’s a nice lady.”
Shad blinked straight ahead. “She got her daughter back. That ups the stakes.”
“I see your point.”
They came to a tangle of converging highways. García bore north on U.S. 27. On both sides was a rolling horizon of water and sawgrass.
“The hell are we going?” Shad asked.
“Beautiful downtown Belle Glade. How about a cigar?”
Shad said sure. Al García was pleased. They both lit up and the car filled with smoke. The detective rolled down the windows.
“Good?” he asked.
“All right,” Shad said.
“Hey, chico, you inhaling?”
“Yeah. I like it.”
“Damn,” García said. “That doesn’t burn like hell?”
Shad said he didn’t feel a thing. “I got what they call a high threshold.”
They rode about ten miles working on their cigars, not saying a word. Eventually García asked what it was like to work at a nude dance club.
Shad puffed out a heavy grunt. “After a while, you don’t notice.”
“Come on.”
“Really. I’m to the point where I get excited when they put their clothes on. That’s what happens after too long.”
García said, “I know guys would kill for your job.”
“They can have it. Being around naked women all day is bad for your outlook. After a while it’s just tits and ass and nothin’ special. Like if you worked an assembly line making Ferraris—before long, they’re just cars and that’s all. You understand?”
“Everything gets boring.”
“I know exactly how you feel.” Al García jerked a thumb over one shoulder. “Guess what I got in the trunk? An Igloo cooler. And guess what’s in the cooler? A human head.”
Shad violently expelled the cigar out the window. He wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his camo jacket.
“No joke,” García said. “Property of one Francisco Goyo, deceased. I can’t begin to tell you how much gas I’ve wasted on the case. The fat prick got dumped in a dozen different zip codes.”
“Why,” Shad asked, “do you got his head in an Igloo?”
“So it won’t stink up the car.”
“That ain’t what I mean.”
The detective said that a windsurfer on Key Biscayne had found the gruesome item by accident that morning. “I gotta drop it by the morgue on the way home. They got a Frigidaire full of Señor Goyo.”
“Goddamn,” Shad said, gravely.
“But I know what you mean about boring. Same old shit, day in day out.” García flicked the ash from his cigar. “You want to trade jobs?”
“Goddamn,” Shad said again.
García drove directly to the Belle Glade post office. He asked Shad to wait in the car so as not to terrify bystanders. At the desk, García showed his police badge and asked about the box number given by the three mysterious Jamaicans at the Flight-path Motel. The clerk, a handsome woman with thick gray hair, said the box indeed belonged to a Mr. John Riley, but that Mr. Riley had not picked up his mail in six months. There was an excellent reason.
“He’s passed on,” the clerk said.
“I’m very sorry.”
“Then you’re in the minority.”
García said, “Who could tell me about it?”
“Anybody,” the clerk replied. “Riley was a crew boss at Rojo Farms. He was shortin’ his cutters and they all knowed it. One morning he got runned over by a migrant bus.” The clerk paused. “It was a accident, accordin’ to the state patrol.”
“But maybe not,” García said.
“Misself, I lean toward a act of God. Riley was a bad man. Bad things happen to bad men.”
“And this was six months ago?”
“At least. And they still curse his name, the cutters do.”
“Anybody curse it more than others?” The clerk said, “I don’t follow.”
“Did any of the men have a special reason to hate Riley, besides the money he was stealing?”
The clerk was greatly amused. “What other reason would they need?” She began sorting the mail, arranging it in neat stacks. Many of the envelopes bore scriggly printing and foreign stamps; Belle Glade was a migrant town. The clerk said, “Sounds like you’re after somebody in particular.”
“Don’t laugh,” García said. “It’s three Jamaicans.”
“Oh my.”
“I asked you not to laugh.”
“But his whole crew was Jamaicans.”
“I figured,” García said. “And they all hated him, right?”
“Worse than a snake.”
Back in the car, García asked Shad if he wanted to ride over to Clewiston and see a sugar mill. Shad said he had no earthly interest.
“It’ll help make sense of all this,” García said. “Save your gas and tell me about it on the way back to Lauderdale.”
“Why the hurry?”
Shad’s neck inflated. “Because there’s a goddamn Cuban head in the trunk!”
“Señor Goyo was Panamanian.”
“Jesus!” said Shad.
A marsh rabbit appeared in the middle of the road. Al García weaved around it without braking. “This congressman,” he said, “his balls belong to the sugar companies. They need him up in Washington, to keep things right. So when dorky little Killian threatens a blackmail, the sugar people’s people get nervous. You with me?”
Shad pointed ahead and said, “Speed trap.”
García said, “For Christ’s sake, I’m a cop. Remember?” He blinked his dashboard light at the state trooper as they flew by. “You aren’t even listening,” he said to Shad.
“Yeah, I am. Sugar money.”
“Killian makes his demand, which is so weird it probably freaks out Dilbeck’s people. Fix a custody case? they’re thinking. Lean on a judge? We’re dealing with a crackpot, they’re thinking. So somebody—not Dilbeck, but somebody close—makes a phone call.”
“And so long, crackpot.”
“Right. Three cane cutters show up and snatch Killian, probably out of his apartment.”
“How do you know they’re cane cutters?”
“Scars, man. They’ve got the scars on their legs. Cutters are always whacking themselves by accident with those damn machetes; even the good ones do it. Anyway, they haul Killian to a cheap motel and—as a sick joke—register in the name of a dead boss man. The motel is where they drown him. Then they put him on ice—”
“Don’t tell me,” Shad said. “Another fucking Igloo.”
“Not likely,” said García, steering with one hand, waving the dead cigar stub with the other. “Anyway, they ice him down and drive straight to Missoula, Montana. Or maybe they use the Rojo corporate jet, who knows—”
Shad said, “Why Montana?”
“That’s where Killian vacations. See, it was set up to look like a fishing accident.”
Finally Shad cracked a smile. His colossal white dome bobbed as García heard him swallow a laugh.
“What is it?”
“Man,” Shad said, “three Jamaicans cruising through Montana.
“Yeah, I know.”
“Holy Christ. Is that a riot? Jamaican cowpokes.”
“They had nerve,” Al García said. “Whoever it was.”
“You’ll never get ’em.”
“You’re right.”
“Never in a million years.”
“I’m quite sure,” García said, “they’re already back in Kingston. Or dead.”
The temperature light on the dashboard flashed red, so he steered the Caprice to the shoulder of the road. He opened the hood and checked the hose fittings, which seemed tight. There was no sign of a leak from the radiator. “Wires,” the detective muttered, and slammed the hood.
Shad was gone from the car. Al García found him forty yards away, three rows deep in a field of tall cane.
“So this is it,” Shad said. A fat blue horsefly gorged on his gleaming scalp. The fly was so big it looked like a tattoo.
García snapped off a stalk of cane and sniffed it. “What a deal these bastards get. All the water they want for practically nothing. Imported slave labor for the harvest. Then they get to sell the crop at jacked-up prices, courtesy of the U.S. Congress. And when they’re all done, they’re allowed to dump the stink straight into the Everglades.”
Shad was impressed. “Land of opportunity,” he said, probing the black muck with the toe of his boot.
“Millions and millions of dollars,” García said. “Killian had no idea what he was dealing with. Same goes for your ace attorney.”
They got back in the car. Shad declined the offer of another cigar. The horsefly remained attached to his head. García reached over and brushed it away.
Five miles later, Shad said, “So where’s your jurisdiction on this deal? I don’t see a Miami connection.”
The detective smiled ruefully. “Dilbeck’s congressional district is in Dade County. That’s the best I can do.”
“Pitiful,” Shad remarked.
“Nobody else is much interested. I can’t just let a homicide slide.”
“Other words, you’re doing this off the clock.”
“That’s why I need your help,” García said.
“Think they’ll come after Erin?”
“I think they’ll come after everyone in that photograph, if necessary. I think they won’t even hesitate.”
Shad turned to look out the window. They were out of farm count
ry now. The Everglades shimmered west to the horizon. “She’s got her little girl back.”
“So you said.”
“I guess that don’t count.”
“Not with these people.” García stopped at a fishing camp to buy another bag of ice for Francisco Goyo’s severed head. Shad frowned when he heard the trunk pop open, the cubes pouring out of the plastic. He hoped García wouldn’t try to show him the damn thing. Some cops got off on shit like that.
When they were back on the road, Shad told the detective that he’d done some state time.
“Oh, I know. Manslaughter.”
“Manslaughter two,” Shad said.
“That was the plea. The crime was manslaughter.” García saw that the temperature light had come on again. He thumped the dashboard with a fist, and the light went out. “God bless General Motors,” he said.
Shad asked if he knew about the agg assaults, too. García said sure.
“My boss, Mr. Orly, he’d hit the fucking roof,” Shad said. “Hiring a felon and all. He could lose his license.”
García kept his eyes on the road. “Don’t worry about your boss,” he said. “I needed to know. He doesn’t.”
“I appreciate that.”
“Here’s another thing: I’d prefer not to be informed if you’ve got a piece, OK? Because if I see it, then I gotta do something. Like arrest your ass, OK? That’s the law, felons can’t carry a gun. So don’t feel obliged to take it out and play, because then we got a problem.”
Shad said, “I’m with you. Let’s talk about Erin.”
“Yeah.” The detective drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. “We gotta figure something out.”
“Shouldn’t be hard,” said Shad. “With my good looks and your brains.”
* * *
Malcolm J. Moldowsky prowled the penthouse restlessly. The ocean view did not soothe him, nor did the fine cognac. He was a resentful man, deeply resentful that a person of his stature should be forced to worry.
Moldy was at the top of his game: insidiously powerful, obscenely wealthy and largely untouchable. Up until now. Lately his hard-earned arrogance had lost some of its starch. He was feeling vulnerable, even shaky. Others were to blame. Free-floating incompetence threatened to destroy an artifice that Moldowsky had spent years constructing. He knew how his hero, John Mitchell, must’ve felt when those idiots bungled a simple burglary. A life’s work destroyed by unspeakable stupidities.