Solomon & Lord Drop Anchor (17 page)

The 
Journal
 played it
straight. The Diamond death shared page one of the local section
with an expose that revealed that a sizable percentage of our
taxicabs are repainted stolen cars.

“Anything else?” I asked Cindy.

“Yeah. The managing partner wants to know why
you let yourself get appointed to be Nick Wolf’s flunky.”

“The old man have something against
fulfilling my civic duty?”

“No, something against a case that pays only
a third of your normal hourly rate. He wants a written response,
with copies to the New Business Committee, the Senior Council, and
the Allocation Committee.”

“What else?”

Cindy followed me into my office. I opened
the vertical blinds and stared at Biscayne Bay three hundred feet
below. Plump gray thunderheads hung motionless over Miami Beach. In
fifteen knots of easterly, the bay crinkles like aluminum foil.
Today, not a ripple.

“I have the poop on Compu-Mate,” she said
with a sly smile. She handed me a folder containing some newspaper
clippings and a printout from the secretary of state. “But boss, if
you’re that horny, I could fix you up.”

“What?”

“Rather than get hooked up with some loser
…”

“What’re you talking about?”

“My girlfriend, Dottie the Disco Queen. She
likes big guys who aren’t quite with it.”

“What about her herpes?”

“No 
problema
. In remission.”

“Maybe another time,” I said. “Anything
else?”

“Mr. Foot-in-the-Mouth called.”

“Symington? He hasn’t replaced me?”

“No such luck.” She handed me a bunch of
newspaper stories on computer paper. “A messenger delivered these a
few minutes ago.”

* * *

“I’m worried about Carl Hutchinson, all that
invective in his column,” Symington Foote said when I returned his
call.

“You’re just a little gun-shy right now,” I
told the publisher, reassurance coating my voice like honey.

“But these names he’s calling Commissioner
Goldberg. She’s very popular with the voters. And voters are
jurors.”

He was right about that. Maria Teresa
Gonzalez-Goldberg—born in Cuba, schooled in a convent, married to a
Jewish cop with an adopted black child—was a formidable politician.
She had swept into office two years earlier with eighty-six percent
of the vote. She then redecorated her office in teak, chrome,
leather, and glass to the tune of one hundred fifty thousand
dollars of taxpayers’ money. At a time the county couldn’t afford
to repair backed-up toilets in public housing projects.

“Marie Antoinette,” Foote was saying. “He
called her Marie Antoinette!”

“Fair comment,” I advised.

“Said she ought to redecorate a cell at
Marianna Institution for Women.”

“Rhetorical hyperbole,” I counseled
confidently.

“Said the ‘crossover candidate’ became the
‘carnivorous commissioner, feeding on the flesh of the poor.’”

“A bit grisly,” I admitted, “but she’s a
public official.”

“Seems I heard that before,” Foote said.

I spent the rest of the morning on the
newspaper’s work. I advised the business manager to accept the
advertisement from the airport hotel that promised “freedom
fighter" discounts to smugglers aiding the Nicaraguan contras. I
told the photo editor that the picture of the model wearing a bra
with a built-in holster for a Beretta was not an invasion of
privacy and accurately portrayed Florida’s new concealed-weapons
law. I told the city editor to ignore complaints that property
values would be hurt by the local map showing Dade County murders
by zip code. Finally, I told the food editor that the grilled
alligator recipe omitted cayenne pepper, and then I had lunch.

CHAPTER 6

The Lady and the Jockey

I wanted to get to Compu-Mate before the
afternoon storms. In the summer, the rain begins at
3:17 P.M. or thereabouts, every day. For an hour or so,
gully washers and palmetto pounders flood the streets. Drops
form 
inside
 the canvas top of my old convertible,
then plop one by one onto my head.

I aimed north on Okeechobee Road, storm
clouds gathering, traffic crawling. Our highways have not caught up
with our growth and never will. We built a high-speed rail system
too late and too small. We are a great urban sprawl,
Miami-Lauderdale-Palm Beach, four million people squeezed between
the ocean and the Everglades. We are low on water and electricity,
but high on asphalt and cement. Our public officials are beholden
to predatory developers who ply them with greenbacks and concoct
their own vocabulary.

Creeping overpopulation is “growth.”

Building spindly condos on Indian burial
grounds is “progress.”

Environmentalists are “doomsayers.”

So we bulldoze trees, fill swamps, drain the
aquifer, and then we build on every square inch, erecting a
concrete landscape of fast-food palaces, serve-yourself gas
stations, and tawdry shopping centers. Their signs beckon us from
the blazing pavement. Pizza parlors, video rentals, gun shops, and
a thousand other fringe businesses hoping to hang on for another
month’s rent.

Compu-Mate was in a renovated warehouse in
Hialeah, a city of ticky-tack duplexes and stucco houses with
plaster statues of the Virgin Mary planted in front lawns. In the
last thirty years, Hialeah has been transformed from a cracker town
of Panhandle and Alabama immigrants to a new home for Cuban
refugees. Not long ago, a Florida governor named Martinez was
forced to suspend an indicted Hialeah mayor named Martinez and
replace him with a city councilman named Martinez. None of the men
was related. Hispanics now are the majority population group in the
cities of Miami and Hialeah and are approaching fifty percent
countywide. Within the community, there are
old 
exilados
, who dream of returning to a 
Cuba
Libre
, Cubanzo rednecks, who drive pickup trucks festooned with
American and Cuban flags, and Yubans, Yuppie Cuban professionals
downtown. They are, in fact, like every other ethnic group, a
diverse lot that has added considerably to the community.

I parked next to an outdoor cafe where men
with leathery skin smoked cigars and drank espresso from tiny
plastic cups. Next door, three teenagers were making a mess of a
transmission, pulled out of a twenty-year-old Chevy propped onto
concrete blocks.

I already knew a lot about Compu-Mate. I knew
it was the latest way to profit from people’s fears of loneliness.
Like-minded consenting adults just a whir and buzz away, courtesy
of your personal computer. Talk sweet, talk dirty, titillate your
partner, and tickle your fancy until you get a phone number and
address. Then cross your fingers, take a deep breath, and wait for
the truth. The guy who called himself “Paul Newman look-alike" has
the gray hair, all right, but the blue eyes are milky, a paunch
hangs over his belt, and he’s three months behind on the alimony.
“Buxom blonde looking for fun" means overweight and bleached, a
manic-depressive.

I had some background on Max and Roberta
Blinderman, president and secretary of Compu-Mate, Inc., a Florida
for-profit corporation. Previously, they operated a video dating
service that went belly up, and before that, a modeling studio that
left a trail of unpaid bills and unfinished portfolios. As far as
Cindy’s research showed, Roberta had no criminal record. Max had
been a fair-to-middling jockey twenty years ago, once nearly
winning the Flamingo Stakes at Hialeah before getting suspended in
a horse-doping scheme. Lately he had pleaded guilty to bouncing
some checks, was put on probation, and made restitution. Two other
penny-ante cases: a mail-fraud case was nolle-prossed, and a
buying-receiving charge was dropped when the state couldn’t prove
the jewelry was stolen. By local standards, he was clean enough to
run for mayor.

The office was no-frills, a Formica counter
up front, a green metal desk in back. Next to the desk was a
decent-sized, freestanding computer that was probably leased month
to month. No waiting room, no sofa, no friendly green plants. A man
sat at the desk staring into a video display terminal. A woman
stood at the counter licking stamps and pasting them onto
envelopes—monthly bills to the customers, I figured.

“I’d like to sign up,” I told the woman
behind the counter.

“This ain’t the army,” she said, putting down
her envelopes and shoving a form in front of my face.

She was six feet tall and seemed to like it.
Her dark eyes were spaced wide and the lashes were long, black as
sin, and well tended. The complexion, which had that cocoa-butter,
coppery-tanned look with a healthy dose of moisturizers, creams,
powders, and blushes, was smoothly sanguine. The black hair was
layered and purposely messed, a wild look. Her nose was thin and
straight and so perfect it might have cost five grand at a clinic
in Bal Harbour. Her body was long and lean with some muscle
development in the shoulders and small breasts that were uncaged
under a white cotton halter top. The top of a denim skirt was
visible below her flat, browned tummy, but her legs were hidden
behind the counter.

I licked the end of the pencil like Art
Carney playing Ed Norton, made a whirling motion with my right arm,
and began filling out the form in block letters.

“Most of our clients just punch us up on
their modems and do the paperwork by filling out the form on their
computer screen,” she said.

“My modem’s in the shop for an oil
change.”

If she thought I was funny, she kept it to
herself. She just watched my seersuckered self as I filled in the
blanks. I wrote my real name and address, chose “Stick Shift" as my
handle, used my old jersey number as a secret password, and
pretended to struggle with the rest. When I was done, I handed her
the form. She scanned it and scowled.

“This ain’t a dining club,” she said.

“Or the army,” I agreed.

“What’s ‘rare steak and cold beer’ supposed
to mean?”

“It asked my preferences,” I said, putting
some Iowa corn into my voice.

“Sheesh. Your preferences in 
bed
,
Gomer. Are you straight, gay, or bi?”

“Straight as an arrow, slim. Wanna see?”

“In your dreams. Hey, next blank you skipped.
You go for French or Greek?”

“No 
habla
 nothin’ but
English.”

“Oh brother! You got any fetishes? B and D, S
and M, water sports?”

“I’m a pretty decent windsurfer,” I
admitted.

She rolled her eyes toward the ceiling.
“Where you been, the friggin’ North Pole?”

“Maui, Aruba, the Baja,” I told her. “North
Pole’s too cold, even with a dry suit.”

“Listen, Ricky Retardo, I ain’t got all day.
You don’t fill in the blanks, the computer will spit out your
application, so you gotta tell me what you like. Now, Greek, that
means bum fucking, get it?”

“Even the poor got a right to get laid,” I
said. “It’s in the Constitution.”

She narrowed her dark eyes and gave me a
sideways look. “You know what French is, right?”

I didn’t say 
oui, madame
.I just
gave her my big, dumb-guy look. It isn’t hard to do.

“Like in the poem,” she said, “‘The French,
they are a funny race. They fight with their feet and fuck with
their face.’ Get it?”

I scrunched my face into its
genius-at-thought mode. “I get part of it.”

“Part of it?”

“I mean, fighting with their feet, I get
…”

She turned toward the back where the man was
now hunched over the keyboard of the computer. “Max! C’mere.”

A little guy, all wires and gristle in black
pants, black knit shirt, and white patent-leather loafers. A tattoo
of a snake showed green on a veined, browned forearm. A worm of a
mustache wriggled under his nose. He squinted at me through
suspicious eyes. All he needed was a switchblade to pick his teeth,
and he could have been a small-time grifter in 
Guys and
Dolls
.

“Yow, Bobbie,” he answered.

“Whyn’t you help Mister …”

“Lassiter,” I announced proudly.

They traded places. Her high heels
clackety-clacked as she legged it toward the back. Sleek, fine legs
with a comely curve of the calf undulating with each step. As she
slinked by Max he said, “Foot Long’s just about got Naughty Nurse’s
panties off.”

She sat down at the desk and peered into the
monitor. “Nurse’s been putting out for everybody and their cousin,”
she called back.

Max took his time examining my application. I
wondered if anyone ever failed the entrance exam. “You can listen
in?” I asked.

“Huh?”

I pointed toward the computer where Bobbie
sat, her long, lean body bent toward the screen.

“Someone’s gotta be the sys-op,” he said.
“Work the panel in case there’s a glitch on-line. We can tap into
any talky-talk, just like Southern Bell.”

“You must hear—or read—it all.”

“Yow. Till after while, it puts you to sleep.
Like how many ways can they describe it?”

He returned to the form, moving his lips and
tracing each line with a finger. “Say, you were just kidding here,
huh?”

“Yeah.”

“Bobbie don’t have much of a sense of humor.
Comes from having a hard life as a kid. You gotta make allowances
with a filly like that.” He grinned and showed me two rows of
shopping-center dental work. “You’re a straight shooter looking for
old-fashioned cooze in the missionary position, yow?”

“Yow,” I answered right back at him.

He gave me a temporary membership card and a
book of rules. I gave him a twenty-dollar bill.

“Ever have any trouble with your clients?” I
asked.

The word “trouble" made the mustache twitch.
“Whaddaya mean?”

“Like any women complain about guys putting
the make on ’em, they don’t like what’s being offered?”