Cold Case Squad (18 page)

"The French have a saying for it: Life has a way of always getting
fucked up." Martin Asher's laugh had a melancholy ring as he described
his past with Natasha.

The man was not what Burch expected. Still another unlikely match
for Natasha. It seemed they all were. Short, swarthy, and pudgy, Asher
wore what appeared to be a permanent five o'clock shadow and an
expensive suit that looked as though he'd slept in it.

His office was in a modern ten-story building, one of a dozen in a
busy light-industrial complex sprawled around a huge man-made lake
stocked with tropical fish and swans. Employees could stroll, jog, or
simply take in the view during breaks and lunch hours from promenades
and park benches along the water.

A plain, pale-haired woman smiled from a family photo prominently
displayed on Asher's desk. Two small children were enfolded in her
arms. A teenage girl sat next to them, her head on her mother's
shoulder. All resembled each other. Behind them stood a beautiful
dark-haired girl who resembled none of them. Age nine or ten, she was a
miniature version of Natasha, complete with attitude and a built-in
pout. She stared at the camera with sly amusement.

Lots of luck with that one, Burch thought.

"The family?" He assumed that the Asher children were his, hers, and
theirs.

Asher nodded. "The one in the back is Natasha's and mine."

"I can see the resemblance."

"Ah, so you've met Natasha. We don't communicate much anymore. She
recently remarried. Again," he said with regret.

He, too, had seemed apprehensive about a visit from a
detective—until he learned what it was about.

"Hadn't thought of Charles in years. Poor bastard. Loved the guy,
loved to hang out with him. The man was a regular chick magnet. Take
him to lunch, dinner, or for a drink and we'd have waitresses,
barmaids, and cocktail waitresses all over us. And the guy didn't even
drink."

"You and his widow got married pretty quick after the fire," Burch
noted.

"I was afraid she'd change her mind. Look at me," he said, pudgy
arms outstretched. "You've seen her!"

"So you two must have had a little something going on the side
before her husband's untimely demise."

Asher paused and licked his lips, as though debating how much to
reveal. He leaned forward, his face grave. "Look, they had problems. It
never would've lasted. Natasha requires a lot of attention, time, and
care, like some exotic flower, and Charles… Well, Charles had other
interests. She felt neglected."

"So she naturally turned to you for comfort and advice?"

"Exactly!" Asher seemed pleased that the detective understood. "So
after he died, it seemed only natural that we—"

"Where were you when Terrell was killed?"

"Look, I prefer to keep this between us." His eyes darted furtively
to the family photo, as though fearing that it might conceal a hidden
microphone that would broadcast his words to those pictured there.

He lowered his voice. "At a motel on U.S. One down near Dadeland…"

"With…?"

"Natasha," he whispered. "And the baby. I stayed for a couple hours
after she left, watched a movie. Room was paid for, I figured I might
as well. Look"—his voice took on a pleading quality—"I didn't know she
was gonna bring the kid. We used to get together there once or twice a
week."

"Did your pal Charles know?"

"No, but if he did, he wouldn't have cared. He was doing his own
thing."

"So that made banging your buddy's wife okay?" Burch asked mildly.

"Charles was serious about somebody he was seeing. I thought he was
crazy. To have a wife like Natasha and be chasing some redhead, a
stripper—I told him he was nuts."

"Who was the redhead?"

Asher shrugged. "Can't remember her name off the top of my head. You
know, they never use real names anyway. They use stage names. I forget
hers. But he called her Big Red. Tall, statuesque, beautiful woman, but
a stripper, for God's sake. And she was older than Natasha, in her
thirties. Been around the block a few times. Did an act with a snake. I
think it was a python, or a boa constrictor." He grimaced. "Huge.
Grotesque. The thing would wrap itself around her body."

"Big Red had legs up to here and a beautiful face, but kinda hard,
brassy, laughed too loud. People would turn around and stare."

If his description even approached accurate, Burch thought, it
probably wasn't her laugh that made people stare.

"Charles, he got a big kick out of her. Liked to show her off. Took
me to see her dance, introduced us."

"Where was that?" Burch leaned forward.

"Ummm, mighta been Heavenly Bodies, that big club used to be on
Biscayne Boulevard at a hundred and sixty-third. But I couldn't swear
to it. She played the circuit, Fort Lauderdale, Key West, Miami Beach,
all the strip joints."

"Miami Beach?"

"Yeah. She was a headliner, I remember, at the Place Montmartre over
on the beach. You know the one, used to have that huge sign on top,
that big, blond reclining woman."

"I remember it." The hair on Burch's arms stiffened and stood on
end. "What became of Big Red once Charles was gone?"

Asher's face scrunched into a horsey frown. "Haven't heard a word
about her in years. She wasn't at the funeral. I'da noticed if she was
there. It woulda been pretty brazen of 'er to show up."

"Hey, a gal who strips on stage with a boa constrictor, or even a
python, ain't no shrinking violet. If she'da wanted to pay her
respects, a SWAT team probably couldn'ta kept her away."

Asher shrugged. "She was crazy about him."

"How stressed out was Charles about that wrongful death suit against
the weight-loss clinics? He upset enough to want to disappear?"

"A terrible thing." Asher averted his eyes and straightened
the blotter on his desk. "The widower took aim at the wrong targets.
Who could blame him? But it wasn't our fault. Our lawyers had it under
control. We took a financial beating, going bankrupt and all, but it
coulda been a helluva lot worse."

"Hypothetical question," Burch said. "If Terrell hadn't died, if the
man was alive today, where do you think he'd be, Marty? What would
Charles be doing?"

Asher's padded shoulders rose nearly to his ears. "Who can say?
Charles liked the good life, beautiful women, nice cars. The man never
looked back or had any regrets, as far as I knew.
Carpe diem
.
Seize the day. A guy like him, who knows? What do any of us know?"

"How true," the detective said.

"You're wasting your time, Sergeant. The fire was a tragic accident,
plain and simple. He wasn't the kind of guy anybody would kill. Nobody
murdered Charles Terrell."

"I think you're right," Burch said. He paused for another look at
the family portrait before leaving. "Nice family. You're a lucky man."

"Damn straight. I'm the luckiest man on earth that she took me back.
The woman has a heart of gold. Believe me."

"Took you back?"

"Oh yeah, Esther and I were married, with one kid, the oldest girl
there, when Charles died… I had to fly down to Mexico for a quickie
divorce so me and Natasha could get married."

"Two years later, Natasha and I crashed and burned when she found
somebody else. My life was in the crapper and Esther took me back.
Don't know what I ever did to deserve a woman like her. Believe me,
she's salt of the earth. But"—his voice dropped and his eyes changed—
"between you and me, after all she did to me, if Natasha walked in that
door right now and said, 'Hey, Marty, let's go…' "

He heaved a deep sigh. "God help me…"

"I hated the guy, I hated them all. I would have killed them with my
bare hands if I could have," Sal Vasquez told Nazario.

"My Celia never did a bad thing in her life." He sat in the back
room of his shoe-repair shop, surrounded by shelves of luggage, shoes,
and handbags all brought in for repair.

"We had three little kids, five, three, and one. It killed me. If it
wasn't for those kids, I'da done it. I would have killed them."

"Who could blame you? You lost so much," Nazario said.

"She had trouble losing weight after the last one. She was in his
store, checking out the over-the-counter diet pills, when Terrell touts
his program to her. She comes home all excited. Said she wanted to give
me a size-six wife for our anniversary. Her goal was to lose twenty
pounds by September fourteenth."

"She almost did it. She lost sixteen pounds by the middle of August,
but she wasn't feeling so good. I told her forget it. Stop the pills.
You look great. But she wanted to stay on the program and meet her
goal. She always kept her word. She thought I liked her the way she was
when we met. I did. But I loved her the way she was, no matter how much
she weighed."

"It was horrible. She went to bed that night right after the kids
went to sleep. That was unusual, I shoulda known something was wrong,
'cuz we always stayed up to watch the late news together, then Johnny
Carson's monologue on
The Tonight Show
."

"She was sound asleep, like an angel, when I came to bed. I was
careful not to wake her up. Something woke me about three a.m., a noise
she was making, breathing funny, like snoring real loud. I turned on
the light and asked if she was all right. I tried to help her sit up.
Her eyes were open, she just looked at me but she couldn't talk. Some
foamy stuff came outta her mouth and nose. I was looking for the
address book, for her doctor's number, when she stopped breathing.
Stopped. Just like that."

"I started yelling and screaming, trying to call nine-one-one. It
woke up the kids and they were screaming. It was only a few minutes but
it seemed like forever. Nobody came. I tried to give her CPR, then I
just picked her up and carried her down to the car, screaming for the
next-door neighbors to watch my kids. I took her to Baptist."

"I musta been driving eighty miles an hour, screaming all the way
for Celia to wake up. I was crazy, scared I'd get lost in the dark and
miss the turn to the hospital."

"The rescue squad arrived right after I left. My neighbors told them
I'd taken off for the hospital. I nearly crashed into the emergency
room entrance. The squad had called ahead and people were waiting.
Medics came running out. They worked on her for forty-five minutes.
Nothing. She was twenty-eight."

"I wanted them to pay, to keep them from killing anybody else. I
hired a lawyer, but they had a better one and it didn't work out for
us."

"Did you ever do anything else to retaliate against Charles Terrell,
or anybody, for what happened?" Nazario asked.

"No," Vasquez said. "No, I take that back. I did. I prayed to God
for justice. I couldn't forgive. When I saw in the newspaper that
Terrell was killed, that the fires of hell had consumed him, I was
glad. I would have lit the match gladly, but I didn't have to, God did
it for me."

"He's not lying," Nazario told Stone and Burch at La Esquina de
Tejas. "Guy lost his wife, hates Terrell and Asher, but he had nothing
to do with it. Scratch him off the list."

"The stripper," Burch said, "she's the key. If the son of a bitch is
alive, what do you want to bet Big Red is with him or knows right where
he's at? I ran Big Red through known aliases but came up with nothing."

"Probably just a pet name," Nazario said. "I have a CI, a stripper.
From when I worked narcotics. I'll see if she's got a line on Red.
Those girls, they all know each other."

"Good. And we've gotta pull up missing persons reports from
'ninety-two and look for one who mighta had a connection to Terrell.
That's gonna be tedious as shit."

"Right," Stone said. "I hate it when people are so quick to report
somebody missing but forget to tell us when the happy wanderer turns up
wearing a sheepish grin."

"We can forget the missing finger." Burch sighed. "If Terrell did
fake his own death, he sure as hell wasn't lucky enough to find a
candidate who matched his general description and also happened to be
missing the same finger."

"You know what that means," Stone said.

"He hacked it off himself, before burning up the body," Nazario
said. "A cold, scary guy. Wonder why he and Natasha didn't work out?
They seem so perfect for each other."

Burch turned to Stone. "How's Meadows coming?"

"How the hell can I even work on the case with all the media shit?"
Stone said. "I thought we do it and that's it. I show up today
galvanized, energized. Dozens of messages waiting, but none are tips in
my case. They're all requests for more interviews! You believe that?"

"A star is born." Nazario sipped his
cortadito
.

"Padron is lining up more radio and print interviews with reporters
from the cities where there were killings. I can't shake the guy."

"Your new best friend," Nazario said.

"I feel so phony, it's a non-story—there's no new developments,"
Stone said. "The papers all say we're closing in on the killer."

"In Miami you can tell a lie at breakfast and it's true by dinner,"
Burch said. "Don't worry about it."

"It's the price of fame," Nazario said. "Before you got here, Sarge,
you shoulda seen, a buncha customers stood up and applauded when Stone
came back from the men's room."

"Thought my fly was open," Stone said. He grinned and leaned back in
his chair.

His picture, with the chief and prominent politicians clearly in the
background, was splashed five columns across the front of the morning
paper displayed in big yellow news racks on every street corner.

"Your fifteen minutes won't come cheap," Burch said. "When they run
in a pack, reporters go into a frenzy. They want your time, your
attention, your whole goddamn life. And they raise holy hell if they
don't get it. Then they'll turn on you, all of a sudden. Slam you for
not accomplishing anything. The best way to deal with the press is to
find a good reporter you can trust, build a relationship with that one,
and avoid the pack."