Florida Heatwave (29 page)

Picture a fifteen-foot cube with steel gray walls and green-tinged fluorescent lighting. Add a mix of body odors and Pine-Sol, though the floor looked to have been swabbed with coal tar. Put nine old-fashioned shoe box-sized wall phones a few feet apart, five feet off the floor. Men at six of the phones hid their faces from each other and spoke, I believed, six different languages. Opposite the trip-lock door was a man in a glass-enclosed bullet-proof booth—the type used in all-night gas stations.

I couldn’t have guessed the man’s nationality. Middle Eastern, Indonesian, Central American. I remembered hearing a Tex-Mex entertainer friend describe the utter panic he once felt on a train in Germany. Four skinheads — who dislike immigrants in general—thought he was Thai and wanted to stomp him. Only when he sang Charley Pride’s “Kiss an Angel Good Morning” and “Sundown” by Gordon Lightfoot did the toughs relent. He later joked that it took tunes made famous by a Canadian and an African-American to convince four Europeans that a Texan of Mexican parentage wasn’t Asian.

Given the Florida Keys’ proximity to Cuba, I opted for Spanish with the man in the booth. With a blatant American accent, I told the man I wanted to call Costa Rica. He asked to see my permit call card.

“I have no card, I’m the guest of Arso. He told me to come here.”

He came back with a give-a-shit shrug and shook his head.

“He told you about me,” I said.

“Go ahead, speak English.”

“He was here fifteen minutes ago. The Serb with the scar on his chin.”

He looked aside with disgust. “Show me the number you want to call.”

I showed him a slip a paper. It read 2221-4012.

He inhaled deeply, bit his upper lip, then exhaled. “I’ll need a thirty-dollar deposit.”

I pulled a wad of bills from my pocket and found a fifty. I placed it into the metal cash drawer. The man pulled the drawer away from me, extracted the bill and did not offer change. So far, so good. He had pegged me as a drug dealer wishing to make an anonymous call.

“Dial 0-1-1,” the man growled. “The country code is 506.” He pointed to a vacant phone on the far wall.

I walked across the floor, picked up, waited for a tone, then dialed 911. I made sure the call connected, then hung up and turned to face the man. “I heard weird noises through this receiver,” I said. “I’ll take my money back.”

His evil smile could’ve cut right through the cruise ship. Time to go.

I walked out to the warm sunshine, threw away the ball cap, unbuttoned my shirt and went back to the tourist trinket bazaar.

These days no police force in the country ignores a “911-hangup.” Too often they’re the result of domestic disputes about to go violent. Within ninety seconds two city squad cars and a burgundy Impala were blocking traffic on Front. For the first minute after that it was Keystone Kops. Then I heard sirens inbound from the south and east.

I wanted to watch the glorious confusion but I couldn’t afford to be a witness. I walked to the Pier House and took a one-night “patio” room near the pool. My cell phone rang eight minutes after I had seated myself on my patio.

Margaret had a pleasant shape for a woman in her early forties. I won’t bore you with details. I mean, what do people not do in short-term trysts? To quote from the classic rock song, it was over, under, sideways and down. We laughed and, for a few minutes, danced nude without music. We showered, monkeyed around some more, and agreed that we should meet in the future but not pursue the affair while aboard the ship. She put on her clothing, kissed me sweetly and left first.

I walked back down Front Street. What must have been a zoo of activity was now three men in bulky, jet black shirts and trousers on the sidewalk. I stopped into the trinket shop and asked the counter clerk about the hubbub three hours earlier.

“We heard that Homeland discovered a terrorist communication cell,” said the woman. “I guess the city never knew the place existed.”

I waved my hand at the street. “So where did all the cops go?”

“They got called away an hour ago,” she said. “Someone found a man’s body in the restroom at Sloppy Joe’s.”

“What’s happening on our little island?” I said.

“Maybe the same as always,” she said with an odd smile. “With more people getting caught.”

Perfection is often an accident. Sometimes it’s plain perfection.

In need of a nap, I showed my passport and Glee Ticket and reboarded the cruise ship. Three men were loitering in the passageway outside my stateroom. After we exchanged introductions, they expressed a desire to speak with me about my room steward, Arso Petrovic. I invited the Key West detective and the Customs and Border Protection agents into my cabin. Even with the residual chlorine stench in my room, their undersized knit shirts stank of cigarettes and gun oil and aftershave.

The Feds let the city guy take the lead. If I had to guess I would say he was two or three years my junior.

“Did you have any conversations with your steward?” he said. “About his plans for being ashore in Key West?”

“Is he in trouble?”

“We’re investigating an incident in a local bar.”

“He asked what I intended to do in town,” I said. “He told me that he needed to call his mother in … Belgrade, I believe. That used to be in, what, Yugoslavia? He said his mother was sick and he couldn’t call her from the ship.”

“That part of Serbia used to be Yugoslavia,” said one of the Feds.

Oh, thank you for your history lesson.

“And what were your plans for Key West?” asked the detective.

“I wanted to rent a bike and wander the back streets with my camera.”

“Great idea,” he said. “Get many good pictures?”

I shook my head. “I didn’t rent the bike, didn’t take a single photo.”

The larger of the two Feds poked his finger at me. “You’ve made three sailings on this barge in the past three months. I’m sure there’s a good reason, right?”

I nodded. “One reason, three words.”

“I’m all ears.”

“I chase pussy.”

“Gotcha,” he said. “No luck on the mainland, back in the hometown?”

I shrugged. “First off, I live in Lake City, Florida. If you’ve ever gone through there, you can imagine the social life. Second, if you price hotels, rental cars and restaurants, you can figure it out. A six-day cruise is cheaper than four nights in Lauderdale. Plus the ongoing risk of drunk driving. I like my cocktails.”

“That’s it?” said the city detective.

“Something about the ocean’s roll puts spirit in the old cougars.”

“Why does this stateroom smell like a swimming pool?”

“The hot tub …” I pointed my thumb upward. “It sprung a leak last night and some of the water came up through my shower drain.”

The smaller Fed took his turn: “Can you account for your time ashore today?”

“I took a room at the Pier House.”

“While you were already paying for this room, sir?”

“I met someone there,” I said. “We spent several hours of … bliss.”

“Which hours?” said the other Fed.

“Noon to three, roughly.”

“Someone from Key West?” he asked.

“No, a married woman who’s on this cruise. She didn’t want her two female traveling companions to know that she was being unfaithful to her husband.”

“Could you give us her name, please?”

I gave it a dramatic pause. “Can you assure me that her dalliance won’t be revealed?”

The city guy said, “Do you imagine that adultery constitutes a scandal in the Keys?”

“How about I just show you my receipt from the hotel?”

The small Fed toughened his voice. “How about that plus the name?”

I told him Margaret’s full name and that I had no idea of her cabin number.

The Feds began moving toward the door. I felt a weight lift from my shoulders. The Key West detective hung back as if something was still on his mind. He chewed his upper lip then slowly nodded. “They found your steward murdered in town.”

I stared at him, feigned disbelief, and said nothing. Plain perfection.

“Some monster cut his tongue out,” he said. “Can you imagine the barbaric mind behind that?”

“No, but it makes me want to skip the evening meal.”

The man looked toward the door. The Feds were out in the hallway.

“You’re from Lake City,” he said. “You have a brother … named Geoff?”

I stared at him again, without words. I felt perfection melt away. After a few seconds I loosened up and gave him a quick nod.

“I was in his National Guard unit. He sure got a rotten deal.”

His posture told me another shoe would drop. He looked me in the eye. “I’d bet a bundle that Arso Petrovic fought for the other team.”

I was still stuck for words.

“Just to let you know,” he said, walking for the door. “We’re not total bozos down here. Don’t come back.”

BY JOHN LUTZ

Lily
was in her usual back booth in the bar at the Royal Roman Hotel in Miami near South Beach. It was one of the newer, plusher hotels masquerading as twenties renaissance, all pink and blue pastel Art Deco. A hard place to find a sharp angle.

Hard to find a sharp angle on Lily, too. She was a month past her thirty-fifth birthday but looked like a twenty-five-year-old high fashion model that had put on a little too much weight in the right places. In fact, she told her customers who weren’t regulars that she was a model. They believed her. They believed whatever they wanted about her. Fantasy was part of the deal. Anyone glancing at Lily wouldn’t have guessed. The slender, coolly attractive blonde in the back booth looked more like a travelling conservative business woman than a prostitute. She had her long hair swept back severely and pinned in a bun and was wearing a pale gray pinstriped business suit with tailored slacks and jacket, white blouse with mock bow tie, virtually no makeup. The kind of woman who might own her own company, which in fact she did, though she accepted work contracted out by Willis Gong.

When she’d begun this business ten years ago as a student at the University of Miami, Lily hadn’t thought of herself as a prostitute. She’d been simply a college girl in need of cash, making some temporary concessions and rationalizations.

It turned out to be easy money. Even easier than she’d imagined. And nothing like she would have guessed from watching TV or movies. A girlfriend named Doris had introduced her to a bartender at one of the convention hotels who for a small percentage would let her sit in the lounge where men would make contact with her. Lily had a chance to size them up, decide for herself whether she’d trade sex for money, before going upstairs with them to a room the bartender somehow managed to supply even when the hotel was fully booked.

Lily and Doris sometimes worked as a team. Both had been psychology majors; they knew about fantasy. Both were young and unspoiled and attractive, which translated into so much money that both of them dropped out of school to devote more hours to their newfangled occupation. Lily had stayed away from the drugs that were offered free and for sale. Doris hadn’t. Now Doris was dead. Lily was bruised.

That was where the years had left them. They hadn’t left Lily financially comfortable, but she was close.

Close enough, she thought, to do something she’d been considering since her work had become less fun and more … well, work. And since Doris had been found strangled to death in a hotel linen closet.

Willis Gong arrived, smiled at Lily, and slid into the booth to sit opposite her. They talked here from time to time. It was dim where the booth was, well beyond the bar in the long, hazy lounge, and far enough away from other customers so that conversation was private.

Lily, no longer an idealist, thought of herself as a prostitute now, but she still didn’t think of Willis as a pimp, even though he arranged with employees of half a dozen hotels to allow her and several other prostitutes to operate from their restaurants or lounges. He was an amiable, middle-aged man with thinning white hair and kindly blue eyes, and given to faded Levis and plaid shirts. At first Lily had thought his gentle nature might conceal something ugly, but it turned out that the thoughtful and soft-spoken man who maximized and shared in her profits was exactly as he seemed. Lily couldn’t remember Willis ever getting angry or raising his voice, and some of his clients had given him plenty of reason.

He ordered his usual glass of white wine then looked at Lily more closely and frowned. There was a cut near the left corner of her mouth, and bruises around both wrists.

“The fella from Kansas City?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Lily said. She decided not to mention the similar bruises around her ankles, or the welts on her thighs and buttocks. When she’d gone to the hotel room she brought her valise of tricks that included her leather restraints; the client had insisted on using ropes. She’d brought her cloth belt; he had a leather belt. Lily felt the pain again from last night. “He turned out to be a son of a bitch.”

“Didn’t seem the type,” said Willis.

“Neither do we.”

Willis smiled. “You got a point.”

“I’m gonna quit, Willis. It’s time.”

“You sure?”

“I don’t want to find myself with somebody like Kansas City who won’t know when to stop. I don’t want to end like Doris.”

“Understandable.” Willis sipped his dry white wine, unperturbed. He’d been here before. “So what’ll you do?”

“Go into business for myself. Another kind of business.”

“Need money?”

“No, thanks to you. I’ve got enough for a start somewhere else. In some other city.”

“I don’t wanna sound like a pessimist, Lily, but most new businesses where the owner doesn’t have previous experience fail.”

“I’ll be working with something experience has taught me a lot about,” Lily told him. “Men.”

Willis took another sip of wine, then he grinned and squeezed her hand.

“Let me know when you go public. I’ll wanna buy stock.”

A year later. Another booth, another hotel bar, this time in Sarasota.

Lily was seated alone, coincidentally wearing the same conservative business woman outfit that had been a turn-on for Kansas City. She was sipping a daiquiri and watching a man at the bar. Brad. Lily knew about the Brads of the world. She was waiting until he got halfway through his second drink and would be feeling the effects of his first.