Palm Beach Nasty (3 page)

“You know, you are a
very
handsome man,” she said.

“Thank you.”

Well, truth was, he wasn’t. His looks were perfectly adequate, nothing special. Five eleven, thick blond hair with a nice wave and a very straight part. His eyes were a little too close together and if he was a woman, he would have gotten some collagen pumped into his thin, prissy lips. Done something about his nose, too. In fact, as soon as he had the money, he’d take his face into the shop.

But for now he made the most of what he had. He worked hard at maintaining a perpetual tan and dressed like a preppie, a look you could never go wrong with in Palm Beach.

Janet suddenly started thrusting up against him like a sexed-up bulldog. He fought the urge to bolt. The song ended, but she didn’t break the clinch. Then the band launched into a Rod Stewart standard, which seemed to plunge her even deeper into the mood. She moved her right hand from his shoulder up to the back of his neck.

Oh, Christ . . . please, no.
She started to caress his neck, then slid her hand into his hair.

Todd soldiered on, grinding into her gently, knowing he’d need a bucket of Viagra to get it up. Then, oh my God . . . she moaned. More like a bleat. She pushed into him and his hand slipped back down onto the blueberry. He gasped unintentionally.

“What, honey?” she whispered in his ear. “I turn you on, don’t I?”

“Oh, yeah,” he whispered back.

“Want to come back to my house?” She wheezed, apparently tuckered out by the fox trot.

He pulled his head back and smiled down at her.

“I’d follow you anywhere, babe.”

Please . . . just put one between my eyes, right now
, he begged silently. What pathetic third-rate ham had invaded his body? As they headed outside, walking down Peruvian, Todd had a strong urge to just roll her, snatch her jewelry, be done with the whole sorry mess. Then he reminded himself again.

He wasn’t into that anymore.

FOUR

C
rawford had written up his report in his car at the crime scene. Then he’d stopped off at Dunkin’ Donuts on his way back to the station.

He flashed back to Dominica McCarthy at the crime scene. First woman he’d ever seen look good in baggy, blue polyester.

Ott had gone straight back and was on the computer in his cubicle when Crawford got there. That was one of the many things Ott grumbled about—his cubicle—since he had had four walls and a door up in Cleveland. Even when the chief, Norm Rutledge, pointed out it was bigger than most of the others, Ott just shrugged. Said he was a corner-office kind of a guy. Crawford knew he really didn’t give a damn. He just liked busting Rutledge’s balls.

Ott looked up and chuckled.

“You look like a new man, Charlie.”

“The hell you talking about?”

“Don’t bullshit a bullshitter, finally got something with a little meat on it.”

Crawford just walked away, knowing Ott could read him like he had subtitles.

He went down to dispatch, where the Veriplate tag recognition system was.

“Mind if I get on your machine?” he asked the dispatcher.

“All yours.”

“Thanks.”

He backed the machine up to four in the afternoon and watched the procession of cars on tape coming onto Palm Beach via the south bridge. It was amazing how clear he could read the plates. After forty-five minutes he saw the black Mitsubishi. He stopped the machine. He moved closer and backed the machine up again. He decided to run plates on cars that came over the bridge an hour before and an hour after the Mitsubishi came over. Somewhere around a hundred fifty cars, he estimated.

A half an hour later he was looking down at a fire engine red Ferrari with the license plate, Rainmkr. No shortage of asshole rich guys with massive egos in Palm Beach, he thought. Thirty cars after that came a blue Ford Explorer SUV. He looked at the plate, but couldn’t make out anything. He backed it up again and froze it. Still nothing. No numbers, no letters, not even blurry ones.

Then it hit him. The possibility that whoever was in the Explorer could be his guys. Back about fifteen years ago some outlaw Einstein had come up with a special gelatin substance that bad guys, particularly bank robbers, sprayed onto license plates to obscure their letters and numbers. When the gel had been sprayed onto a plate, you could read it clearly with your eyes, but a camera couldn’t make out anything.

Ott came bursting into the dispatch area.

“Let’s take a ride out to the kid’s place,” he said. “He lived way out on Paladin.”

Paladin Road was in the West Palm boonies. Not a lot of $20 million spec houses out that way.

“Gimme a minute,” Crawford said, then filled in Ott about what he had seen on the Veriplate.

“Fuckin’ guys know what they’re doin’,” Ott said. “Like some of your mutt buddies up in the Deuce.”

Crawford slouched down in his chair, and looked at more plates.

The Deuce had been Crawford’s turf for eleven years. The district between Sixth and Ninth Avenues on Forty-Second Street—essentially Times Square—a neighborhood that was cleaned up by one of Giuliani’s squads, but still had a nasty underbelly of seediness and sleaze.

After another twenty minutes taking down plate numbers, Crawford went in and got Ott.

They went out to the back of the station, got into Ott’s white Caprice and headed west on Okeechobee.

Crawford’s phone rang just past the Florida Turnpike. He looked down at the number. It was Lil Fonseca. They’d been going out for two and a half months. It fell short of boyfriend-girlfriend status in his mind, but she felt otherwise.

“Hey, Lil.”

“You okay?”

“Sure, why wouldn’t I be?”

“I heard about the murder, the shoot-out and—”

“I’m fine, but, sorry . . . no shoot-out.”

It amazed him how fast the word traveled in Palm Beach, how distorted things always got. Like everyone had to twist, tweak and add their own spin to whatever story was currently making the rounds. Like that game Telephone.

“Does this mean I get to see you even less?”

“I’m gonna be flat out ’til we solve this.”

“Well, then, what are you waiting for,” she said, “solve it.”

“I got a feeling I’ll be hearing that a lot.”

They flashed by a broken down Pentecostal church. Nothing but churches and cows out this far.

“Don’t forget dinner next Tuesday,” she said, like ducking out wasn’t an option.

“I’ll try.”

“Pine Island Grille, seven thirty.”

“I’ll try,” he said again.

“Bye, honey. Be careful.”

He cringed a little. First time she’d said, “honey.”

Ott looked over and smiled, left hand on the wheel. “How’s little miss smokin’ hot?”

“Keep your eyes on the road.”

Lil Fonseca was definitely “smokin’ hot.” Throw in wild, enigmatic, a woman with her own agenda and, he suspected, eager to give him a makeover. Turn him into a guy who wore red pants, used words like “iconic,” and said “at the end of the day” a lot.

They had met a few months back while they were in line to get overpriced sandwiches at a place a block from the station.

Last time he was with her, she tried to take him shopping on Worth Avenue after describing his tie selection as “Russian Mafia circa 1990.” He told her every store on Worth was way north of his budget. She ended up taking him to an upscale thrift shop on South County. Most of the ties she favored there were either pink or lime green. Or had furry little Hermès animals on them. Worst part was that they started at forty bucks apiece . . . for a used tie. He told her he hardly spent that much on a brand new suit. They walked out empty-handed.

The thing Crawford didn’t get about Lil was that for a woman with undisguised social ambitions, what was she doing with him? A lowly cop. For that matter, what was he doing with her?

He looked over at Ott, one hand on the wheel, the other flossing his teeth with a plastic dental pick. Ott’s story was as straightforward as Lil’s was complicated.

Bald, lumpy and physically unprepossessing, Ott was a first-rate detective. He’d spent twenty-three years on the Cleveland force staring down at stiffs. Dutch on his father’s side—originally Van Ott—and Jewish on his mother’s, Ott was easy to underestimate. Part of it was because at age fifty-one, he looked ten years older. He stood just five seven and weighed in at over two thirty, but despite the donuts and Checkerburgers, he was in shape. Spent an hour a day in the gym before work and could bench three hundred pounds. He had no problem mixing it up either, a solid wingman.

He had told Crawford that it had gotten old—dead people on the Cleveland pavement—and the fact that Palm Beach probably had fewer than twenty homicides in its entire recorded history was a big plus for him. Not that people didn’t die all the time in Palm Beach—just not from TEC-9 drive-bys.

Twenty minutes later Crawford and Ott pulled up to a rundown bungalow on a dried-out, dirt road. The grass was brown on both sides of the house and a Chevy Z/28 was up on blocks in the back. A tar-paper shack would have been an upgrade.

“Like the goddamn Dust Bowl out here,” Ott said.

A tall girl answered the door dressed in short cut-off jeans and a bathing suit top. Crawford guessed sixteen or seventeen, a brunette with dark, striking eyes, bare feet and a body that had ripened early.

“Are you . . . related to Darryl Bill?” Crawford asked, showing ID.

“I’m his sister, Misty,” she said, stifling a yawn. “What’d he do this time?”

“I’m Detective Crawford, my partner, Detective Ott, can we come inside?”

“Okay . . . is this serious?” She scratched her cheek.

“Yes,” Crawford said.

“Tell me,” she said.

The house was hood rich—Salvation Army-furnished—except for one expensive-looking sofa and a huge hi-def Sony. On its screen, guys on dirt bikes were jumping fifty feet in the air off built-up mounds.

“Can we sit down?” Crawford asked.

Misty gestured to a sofa. Her eyes were flitting from side to side, jumpy now.

Crawford and Ott sat down in the red leather sofa that looked brand new.

Misty sat on the arm of a love seat, one leg on top of the other, jiggling nervously.

“How do we reach your parents, Misty?” Crawford asked.

“You don’t . . . my father’s in jail, my mom—” she raised her arms, “who knows?”

Crawford leaned forward.

“I’m sorry to have to tell you, Misty but . . . Darryl was killed.”

She jumped up and put her hands to her mouth.

“Oh, my God, no.”

Then she started screaming “no” over and over.

She put her hands over her eyes, tears flooded through them.

She bumped into a coffee table, then kicked it with her bare foot.

Crawford looked at Ott knowing he was thinking the same thing. Notifications . . . by far the worst part of the job.

“I’m very sorry for your loss,” Crawford said.

Misty walked to her kitchen, tore a few paper towels off the roll and wiped her eyes. Crawford glanced around and noticed a shopping bag from Saks, another from Neiman Marcus, and an elliptical exercise machine, unused and unsweat upon.

Misty came back over. She looked older than when they walked in.

“What happened?” she asked, mopping her eyes with a paper towel.

“He was beaten and . . .” Crawford hesitated.

“What? Tell me.”

“Hanged,” Crawford said.

She screamed “no” again, this time raking her cheeks with her nails.

“What do you mean?” she pleaded. “Who . . . who
hangs
a person?”

“We are very sorry,” Crawford said again, then looked at Ott.

“Misty,” Ott said, “any idea who coulda done this? Anybody your brother—”

“No,” she screamed again, “this can’t be real.”

She put her hands on her head and slammed her eyes shut.

Crawford and Ott just sat there.

Then she opened her eyes and reached for two shiny, pink seashells in a straw basket on the table in front of her. She played with them like they were worry beads. Tears streamed down her cheeks. After a moment, she put her head in her hands, letting the shells drop silently to the carpet.

Crawford went and got some more paper towels.

She took them and looked up at him.

“I want you to leave now,” she said.

“I understand,” Crawford said.

She walked over to a window and looked out.

“We need to ask you to do something very hard. We need you to come down and ID—”

Misty burst into loud sobs, her whole body shaking.

“It can wait ’til tomorrow morning, if you want,” Crawford said. “We could pick you up.”

“I want to go do it now. In my own car.”

She said she wanted to change first. Clean up.

She wanted to look her best for her dead brother, Crawford could tell. He gave her directions, then he and Ott walked out to their car.

“Christ,” Crawford said, opening the door, “sure as hell doesn’t get any easier.”

“No kiddin’,” Ott said, starting the engine and turning to Crawford. “You check out those shopping bags? That TV? Guarantee you that sucker was five grand.”

Crawford nodded. “Like she’s got herself a sugar daddy or something.”

“Yeah, and it sure ain’t dear old Dad.”

FIVE

N
ick Greenleaf, briefly Todd Tropez and before that, Todd Gonczik, was shaking a drink called a Bahama Blast at Viggo’s in Citiplace. It was for Cynthia Dexter who had become one of his regulars. The place was just starting to fill up. It was Happy Hour.

Since his rutting session with Janet Schering a few nights back, Nick had come to the conclusion that marrying a rich woman—two, maybe three times his age—might indeed be possible, it just wasn’t something he had the stomach for. He’d also faced the reality that snagging a well-off, slightly used, forty-something woman was just not in the cards. Because, for the most part, their skin was still reasonably tight, their legs toned and their breasts hadn’t toppled over yet. Truth was, they had a fair amount of playing time left and had way better options than a somewhat charming bartender, capable of the occasional literary allusion. Nick grudgingly accepted his place in the hierarchy: a notch below a tanned, handsome golf pro, nip and tuck with a dashing Latin waiter.